Tag Archives: Education

Connect confidently with Google Meet security features

Safer Internet Day is about coming together for a better, safer internet – and we at Google for Education are committed to working with schools and families to provide a safe online learning environment. Every day, Google keeps more people safe online than anyone else in the world with products that are secure by default, private by design and put you in control. And this promise extends to all that we build for you, school leaders.

Constant online protections for education

At Google for Education, we’re always looking for new ways to keep you safe. All of our products are private by design, which means they support compliance with the most rigorous data privacy standards — including FERPA, COPPA and GDPR — and are regularly audited by independent, third-party organizations. By making Google for Education products secure by default, we provide additional layers of protection, with ad-free learning experiences that help keep students safe from online threats and age-inappropriate content. And we put you in control, with a dashboard that gives you full visibility of your data and security, regular Google Security Checkups that help you maintain a secure account and additional security features in your security center to protect your school’s data and devices.

Our goal is to support and protect each member of your education community so they can focus on what matters most: teaching and learning.

Google Meet offers more moderation, control and integration

With our ongoing effort to provide a safer learning environment, we’ve been focusing on combating a prominent security pain point for many schools today: video meetings. We’re excited to share some recently announced enhanced security measures for Google Meet to help educators and students connect in a full class setting or one-on-one with fewer distractions and more privacy and security.

In-meeting moderation controls: To help educators engage with their students, we’ve added more ways to help moderate class meetings and eliminate unwanted intrusions or interruptions. With these new features hosts can:

  • Control who can use the chat and present features
  • Turn on or off audio and video of individuals or everyone in the main call and breakout rooms
  • Move participants from breakout rooms[f18fc6]back to the main room
  • Share moderation controls with up to 25 co-hosts

Control and visibility: We know admins need more ways to protect their schools and more data and insights to drive comprehensive decision making, so we’ve rolled out additional admin features that allow them to:

  • Apply safety settings across their domain
  • End meetings for everyone and prevent people from rejoining
  • Get insights into how people are using Meet
  • Identify, triage and act upon any security breaches[f3304d]

Google Classroom integration: We’re making Meet and Classroom work even better together. The Google Meet integration with Classroom helps educators meet and work with their classes more easily and securely, allowing them to:

  • Access the Class Meet link from the stream to limit distribution to class members only, while making meeting links easier for teachers to manage and for students to find
  • Keep students in a waiting room until the teacher joins, and uninvited guests must ask to join to ensure a safer environment for class interaction
  • All designated co-teachers are co-hosts by default so multiple teachers can help keep the class meeting on track and secure

Built-in security

In addition to these newly added moderation and security features, Google Meet runs on one of the world's most advanced security infrastructures for scalability and control. Meet adheres to IETF security standards for Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP). In Meet, all data is encrypted in transit by default, whether meeting on a web browser, on the Android and iOS apps, or in meeting rooms with Google meeting room hardware. Meeting IDs are 10 characters long, with 25 characters in the set, making unauthorized access by guessing the ID extremely difficult.

We look forward to sharing more about our work to keep you safer with Google, including details on our new partnership with Khan Academy to develop free, online lessons that will help teach people how to stay safe online.

We remain committed to providing industry-leading privacy and security protections built into Google for Education products, which enable students and teachers to work better together by connecting safely and securely.

Investing in Detroit with Ford and Michigan Central

At Google, we believe everyone should have the opportunity to learn the skills needed for today’s most in-demand jobs. Across the country, we are investing in workforce readiness and mentorship programming, and are growing our efforts by partnering with others in the private and public sectors.

Consistent with this, today in Detroit we announced that we will be joining Ford Motor Company as a founding member of Michigan Central. Michigan Central is a new innovation hub where companies, government and community stakeholders will focus on the future of mobility — both in terms of economic opportunity and transportation solutions — in Detroit and beyond. Michigan Central will deploy new urban transportation solutions, workforce development and other tools to tackle the world’s mobility challenges to create opportunities for everyone. This new partnership will bring together the automotive and tech industries to equip job seekers with new skills, mentor high schoolers learning to code and provide critical tools for Michigan Central projects and research.

1. Expanded opportunities to learn digital skills

Since 2017, Grow with Google has trained more than seven million Americans in digital skills. We have trained more than 200,000 Michigan residents, working in partnership with approximately 260 organizations across the state. Beginning today, we will team up with local nonprofits to provide free access to our Google Career Certificates, which help people enter high-growth career fields including data analytics, IT support, project management and user experience design. No prior experience or degree is required, and jobseekers get access to resume templates, coaching and career placement support, mock interview practice and more. 82% of graduates have reported a positive career impact within six months, such as a raise, a promotion or a new job.

There are more than one million U.S. roles open in the Certificate fields. To provide additional job opportunities for our Certificate graduates, we created a network of more than 150 companies, including, Verizon, Deloitte and of course, Google, that are committed to considering Certificate graduates for jobs. Ford will now partner with us to consider new graduates for relevant roles, and will offer current employees the opportunity to participate in the Certificate program.

A woman sits at a laptop while a man in a Grow with Google shirt stands up and talks to her

A Grow with Google training in Michigan.

2. More access to computer science skills for high schoolers

Providing better access to computer science for students, particularly to those from racial and ethnic groups that remain underrepresented in STEM, has been an important part of our work in Michigan. We've previously worked with organizations like the Kapor Center's SMASH Program, Wayne State University and the Detroit Public Schools to provide computer science education and resources to historically underrepresented students in the region.

Now Code Next, our immersive computer science education program for high schoolers ,will provide coaching at a new Code Next Lab in Michigan Central for local Detroit students, so that they can learn and develop the skills needed to pursue further education and careers in technology fields. Code Next focuses on serving Black, Latino, Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native students, and nationally, approximately 88% of Code Next graduates have gone on to pursue STEM majors at the higher education level. This Code Next Lab is Google’s first in the Midwest, and will join our other locations in New York and Oakland in offering computer science education programming. The Lab will provide live coaches, state-of-the-art technical equipment and content ranging from Javascript programming to UX design.

3. Powering technology with Google Cloud

In order for the United States to build the next great technologies, people need access to the latest data and digital tools. That’s why we are bringing Google Cloud technology, including our Cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities and data and analytics tools, to Michigan Central to be used on projects and research for future mobility solutions.

The world is in the midst of a digital revolution – cities, mobility, digital tools and the skills people need for their jobs are all changing. It goes without saying that truly effective solutions can come about only through collective efforts, and we are confident our partnership with Michigan Central will enable us to make a difference in the lives of Michigan residents and communities around the world as they navigate these changes.

Investing in Detroit with Ford and Michigan Central

At Google, we believe everyone should have the opportunity to learn the skills needed for today’s most in-demand jobs. Across the country, we are investing in workforce readiness and mentorship programming, and are growing our efforts by partnering with others in the private and public sectors.

Consistent with this, today in Detroit we announced that we will be joining Ford Motor Company as a founding member of Michigan Central. Michigan Central is a new innovation hub where companies, government and community stakeholders will focus on the future of mobility — both in terms of economic opportunity and transportation solutions — in Detroit and beyond. Michigan Central will deploy new urban transportation solutions, workforce development and other tools to tackle the world’s mobility challenges to create opportunities for everyone. This new partnership will bring together the automotive and tech industries to equip job seekers with new skills, mentor high schoolers learning to code and provide critical tools for Michigan Central projects and research.

1. Expanded opportunities to learn digital skills

Since 2017, Grow with Google has trained more than seven million Americans in digital skills. We have trained more than 200,000 Michigan residents, working in partnership with approximately 260 organizations across the state. Beginning today, we will team up with local nonprofits to provide free access to our Google Career Certificates, which help people enter high-growth career fields including data analytics, IT support, project management and user experience design. No prior experience or degree is required, and jobseekers get access to resume templates, coaching and career placement support, mock interview practice and more. 82% of graduates have reported a positive career impact within six months, such as a raise, a promotion or a new job.

There are more than one million U.S. roles open in the Certificate fields. To provide additional job opportunities for our Certificate graduates, we created a network of more than 150 companies, including, Verizon, Deloitte and of course, Google, that are committed to considering Certificate graduates for jobs. Ford will now partner with us to consider new graduates for relevant roles, and will offer current employees the opportunity to participate in the Certificate program.

A woman sits at a laptop while a man in a Grow with Google shirt stands up and talks to her

A Grow with Google training in Michigan.

2. More access to computer science skills for high schoolers

Providing better access to computer science for students, particularly to those from racial and ethnic groups that remain underrepresented in STEM, has been an important part of our work in Michigan. We've previously worked with organizations like the Kapor Center's SMASH Program, Wayne State University and the Detroit Public Schools to provide computer science education and resources to historically underrepresented students in the region.

Now Code Next, our immersive computer science education program for high schoolers ,will provide coaching at a new Code Next Lab in Michigan Central for local Detroit students, so that they can learn and develop the skills needed to pursue further education and careers in technology fields. Code Next focuses on serving Black, Latino, Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native students, and nationally, approximately 88% of Code Next graduates have gone on to pursue STEM majors at the higher education level. This Code Next Lab is Google’s first in the Midwest, and will join our other locations in New York and Oakland in offering computer science education programming. The Lab will provide live coaches, state-of-the-art technical equipment and content ranging from Javascript programming to UX design.

3. Powering technology with Google Cloud

In order for the United States to build the next great technologies, people need access to the latest data and digital tools. That’s why we are bringing Google Cloud technology, including our Cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities and data and analytics tools, to Michigan Central to be used on projects and research for future mobility solutions.

The world is in the midst of a digital revolution – cities, mobility, digital tools and the skills people need for their jobs are all changing. It goes without saying that truly effective solutions can come about only through collective efforts, and we are confident our partnership with Michigan Central will enable us to make a difference in the lives of Michigan residents and communities around the world as they navigate these changes.

The Chromebook repair program: A sustainable fix for schools

Did you know that using a Chromebook can help reduce your carbon footprint? In fact, Chrome OS devices made by our manufacturing partners consume up to 46% less energy than comparable devices and are designed with sustainability in mind — from their durable shells to their scratch-resistant glass. And we’ve worked with these same partners to make Chromebook components interchangeable, reusable and safely disposable.

Graphic showing two stats: “Chrome OS devices consume up to 46% less energy than comparable devices” and “Switching 1,000 devices to Chrome OS can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90%.”

Sustainable features like these are particularly helpful to the education world, with 50 million students and teachers using Chromebooks made by our manufacturing partners. With such a large community of Chromebook users, we want to work with our partners to build towards a more sustainable device ecosystem — starting by helping schools find information about repairable devices. Today, we’re taking the first step by creating a Chromebook repair program for schools, beginning in the United States.

Animation showing tools , with text explaining the benefits of a student-led repair program — including faster and more cost-effective repairs.

Easily find repairable devices

Many Chromebooks have been repairable for years, with some repairs already covered under system warranties and managed by authorized service providers. But it’s been challenging for school IT administrators to find information about which devices they can repair. As part of the Chromebook repair program, we’re partnering with companies like Acer and Lenovo to spotlight more Chromebooks that are repairable. On our new site, schools can easily identify which Chromebooks have commonly repaired components, like the keyboard, display and palmrest. Online manufacturer guides will also show how to repair the devices, find tools to safely fix them, get replacement parts, find training and get system update access if needed. This is just the first step, and we’re looking forward to hearing feedback to help grow and improve the program.

Start your own school repair program

Some Chromebook manufacturers, like Acer, provide training for schools to perform their own repairs. So, many schools have already created Chromebook repair programs, working alongside teachers and IT teams to repair their devices (shout-out to some of our favorite names, like “Chromestop” and “Chrome Depot”). Some even offer Chromebook repair as an elective course. In-school programs like these are not only eco-friendly, they can significantly reduce turnaround time, save on costs and help students learn valuable skills.

"Acer designs its Chromebooks for the education market with both durability and ease-of-repair in mind,” says James Vick, Vice President, Customer Service, Acer Pan America. "On campus repair programs enable students to help their own school by conducting safe and rapid repairs of Chromebooks, while also teaching them a valuable transferable skill that can help them pursue a career in the IT field. Acer supports valuable programs that give students an opportunity for hands-on learning beyond traditional curriculum.”

We’re inspired by schools around the world that are creating their own Chromebook repair programs — like Jenks Public Schools in Oklahoma, whose in-school repair service led to faster turnaround time for Chromebook repairs and stronger IT skills in graduates. To help others get started, we’ve created a playbook for setting up a Chromebook repair program in your school, with input from IT administrators. Keep an eye on our page for more resources and sustainability-focused devices best suited for a repair program.

Looking for a sustainable way to reuse other devices? Schools can also revive and extend the lifespans of PCs and Macs by converting them to deliver a Chrome OS experience using CloudReady.

Acer designs its Chromebooks for the education market with both durability and ease-of-repair in mind. On campus repair programs enable students to help their own school by conducting safe and rapid repairs of Chromebooks. James Vick
Vice President, Customer Service, Acer Pan America
Three images of students at school with Chromebooks, repairing devices and participating in a Chromebook repair program

Students at Jenks Public Schools in Oklahoma run their own student-led repair program for Chromebooks

Educate the next generation

Preparing today’s students for tomorrow’s environmental challenges is also key to our commitment to sustainability. As we aim to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030, we’ll continue to share Google’s best practices with the education world. And we’ll keep developing sustainability courses in our Teacher Center and through programs like Science Buddies, Your Plan, Your Planet, Google Arts & Culture Expeditions, Experiments with Google and Google Earth Education.

Supporting education with a new line of Chromebooks

Chromebooks play an important role in the classroom, helping 50 million students and teachers learn and collaborate from wherever they are. So as the education world adjusts to new changes, especially when it comes to virtual learning, our devices should too. Teachers need more powerful machines to help them plan and share lessons, manage student performance and teach both remotely and in person; IT teams need devices they can easily repair, repurpose and upgrade; and students need ones that keep their personal and school data safe, and can easily fit into a backpack.

So today, we’re introducing a new line of more secure and sustainable Chromebook devices — plus updated programs, resources and Chrome OS advances — built entirely for education.

Discover more device options

We know there are many types of Chromebooks out there, and it can be hard to find the right match. On our new Chromebook discovery page, you can easily search for device capabilities like graphic design and lesson planning. You can also find which Chromebooks have features like LTE connectivity, improved video conferencing and camera-based document scanning.

Gif of three enterprise grade Chromebooks rotating

New teacher-inspired Chromebooks — like the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook and Lenovo ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook — have improved stylus capabilities, design and performance. And with the same OS as their students, teachers can easily help them troubleshoot and navigate the latest updates. New student devices — including the HP Fortis 14 G10 Chromebook, ASUS Chromebook Flip CR1, Dell Chromebook 3110 and Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Go — also have greater durability and updated connectivity capabilities. And like all Chromebooks, each one has a cloud-based operating system that keeps apps and documents securely backed up, even if devices are damaged or lost.

With these new, more powerful devices, schools can continue helping students plan their futures. Read how the Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania is using Chromebooks to deliver design software programs like Adobe to prepare their students for design and engineering jobs.

Repair, revive and future-proof your devices

The best way for schools to drive sustainability while cutting costs is by extending the life spans of their devices. We just announced the Chromebook repair program, where we’re working with partners like Acer and Lenovo to share more information about Chromebooks that schools can easily repair themselves with proper training. As part of the program, we’ve also introduced new resources and best practices like setting up a student-run IT shop.

Animation showing tools , with text explaining the benefits of a student-led repair program — including faster and more cost-effective repairs.

For more about these updates, visit the revamped Chrome Enterprise and Education Help Center. You can also register for our upcoming virtual event, Teach With Chrome Series, to hear from teachers and other educational leaders using Chromebooks in the classroom.

Supporting education with a new line of Chromebooks

Chromebooks play an important role in the classroom, helping 50 million students and teachers learn and collaborate from wherever they are. So as the education world adjusts to new changes, especially when it comes to virtual learning, our devices should too. Teachers need more powerful machines to help them plan and share lessons, manage student performance and teach both remotely and in person; IT teams need devices they can easily repair, repurpose and upgrade; and students need ones that keep their personal and school data safe, and can easily fit into a backpack.

So today, we’re introducing a new line of more secure and sustainable Chromebook devices — plus updated programs, resources and Chrome OS advances — built entirely for education.

Discover more device options

We know there are many types of Chromebooks out there, and it can be hard to find the right match. On our new Chromebook discovery page, you can easily search for device capabilities like graphic design and lesson planning. You can also find which Chromebooks have features like LTE connectivity, improved video conferencing and camera-based document scanning.

Gif of three enterprise grade Chromebooks rotating

New teacher-inspired Chromebooks — like the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook and Lenovo ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook — have improved stylus capabilities, design and performance. And with the same OS as their students, teachers can easily help them troubleshoot and navigate the latest updates. New student devices — including the HP Fortis 14 G10 Chromebook, ASUS Chromebook Flip CR1, Dell Chromebook 3110 and Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Go — also have greater durability and updated connectivity capabilities. And like all Chromebooks, each one has a cloud-based operating system that keeps apps and documents securely backed up, even if devices are damaged or lost.

With these new, more powerful devices, schools can continue helping students plan their futures. Read how the Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania is using Chromebooks to deliver design software programs like Adobe to prepare their students for design and engineering jobs.

Repair, revive and future-proof your devices

The best way for schools to drive sustainability while cutting costs is by extending the life spans of their devices. We just announced the Chromebook repair program, where we’re working with partners like Acer and Lenovo to share more information about Chromebooks that schools can easily repair themselves with proper training. As part of the program, we’ve also introduced new resources and best practices like setting up a student-run IT shop.

Animation showing tools , with text explaining the benefits of a student-led repair program — including faster and more cost-effective repairs.

For more about these updates, visit the revamped Chrome Enterprise and Education Help Center. You can also register for our upcoming virtual event, Teach With Chrome Series, to hear from teachers and other educational leaders using Chromebooks in the classroom.

The Chromebook repair program: A sustainable fix for schools

Did you know that using a Chromebook can help reduce your carbon footprint? In fact, Chrome OS devices made by our manufacturing partners consume up to 46% less energy than comparable devices and are designed with sustainability in mind — from their durable shells to their scratch-resistant glass. And we’ve worked with these same partners to make Chromebook components interchangeable, reusable and safely disposable.

Graphic showing two stats: “Chrome OS devices consume up to 46% less energy than comparable devices” and “Switching 1,000 devices to Chrome OS can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90%.”

Sustainable features like these are particularly helpful to the education world, with 50 million students and teachers using Chromebooks made by our manufacturing partners. With such a large community of Chromebook users, we want to work with our partners to build towards a more sustainable device ecosystem — starting by helping schools find information about repairable devices. Today, we’re taking the first step by creating a Chromebook repair program for schools, beginning in the United States.

Animation showing tools , with text explaining the benefits of a student-led repair program — including faster and more cost-effective repairs.

Easily find repairable devices

Many Chromebooks have been repairable for years, with some repairs already covered under system warranties and managed by authorized service providers. But it’s been challenging for school IT administrators to find information about which devices they can repair. As part of the Chromebook repair program, we’re partnering with companies like Acer and Lenovo to spotlight more Chromebooks that are repairable. On our new site, schools can easily identify which Chromebooks have commonly repaired components, like the keyboard, display and palmrest. Online manufacturer guides will also show how to repair the devices, find tools to safely fix them, get replacement parts, find training and get system update access if needed. This is just the first step, and we’re looking forward to hearing feedback to help grow and improve the program.

Start your own school repair program

Some Chromebook manufacturers, like Acer, provide training for schools to perform their own repairs. So, many schools have already created Chromebook repair programs, working alongside teachers and IT teams to repair their devices (shout-out to some of our favorite names, like “Chromestop” and “Chrome Depot”). Some even offer Chromebook repair as an elective course. In-school programs like these are not only eco-friendly, they can significantly reduce turnaround time, save on costs and help students learn valuable skills.

"Acer designs its Chromebooks for the education market with both durability and ease-of-repair in mind,” says James Vick, Vice President, Customer Service, Acer Pan America. "On campus repair programs enable students to help their own school by conducting safe and rapid repairs of Chromebooks, while also teaching them a valuable transferable skill that can help them pursue a career in the IT field. Acer supports valuable programs that give students an opportunity for hands-on learning beyond traditional curriculum.”

We’re inspired by schools around the world that are creating their own Chromebook repair programs — like Jenks Public Schools in Oklahoma, whose in-school repair service led to faster turnaround time for Chromebook repairs and stronger IT skills in graduates. To help others get started, we’ve created a playbook for setting up a Chromebook repair program in your school, with input from IT administrators. Keep an eye on our page for more resources and sustainability-focused devices best suited for a repair program.

Looking for a sustainable way to reuse other devices? Schools can also revive and extend the lifespans of PCs and Macs by converting them to deliver a Chrome OS experience using CloudReady.

Acer designs its Chromebooks for the education market with both durability and ease-of-repair in mind. On campus repair programs enable students to help their own school by conducting safe and rapid repairs of Chromebooks. James Vick
Vice President, Customer Service, Acer Pan America
Three images of students at school with Chromebooks, repairing devices and participating in a Chromebook repair program

Students at Jenks Public Schools in Oklahoma run their own student-led repair program for Chromebooks

Educate the next generation

Preparing today’s students for tomorrow’s environmental challenges is also key to our commitment to sustainability. As we aim to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030, we’ll continue to share Google’s best practices with the education world. And we’ll keep developing sustainability courses in our Teacher Center and through programs like Science Buddies, Your Plan, Your Planet, Google Arts & Culture Expeditions, Experiments with Google and Google Earth Education.

Celebrating a decade of partnering with Technovation

In 2006, engineering grad student Tara Chklovski looked around at her classroom and realized how few women and people of color were in the room. Determined to change that, Tara launched Technovation, and this year, Google is celebrating over a decade of support.

In 2010, we brought the first group of 45 girls to Google’s Mountain View cafe to learn from Google mentors how to build and bring apps to market through Technovation Girls, a program that prepares girls for tech entrepreneurship and leadership.

The first Technovation Challenge season was conducted in-person, with Google mentors helping the group to learn how to build apps using MIT App Inventor. In the decade since, Google has continued to support Technovation, both through groups of dedicated volunteers, as well as through funding. In 2017, Google hosted Technovation's World Summit, and along the way has helped Technovation reach 350,000 people across 100 countries. The collaboration also allowed Technovation’s AI education program to empower 20,000 children and parents to identify problems in their communities and develop AI-based solutions.

Through Google.org, we support organizations using technology and innovation to help more students, particularly those who have been historically underserved, get a better education. Since 2013, we’ve given more than $80 million to organizations around the globe focused on closing the computer science education access gap. And we recently shared resources to help nonprofits like Technovation that are working to close the gender gap in CS education.

To date, Google’s investment in Technovation programming totals nearly $2 million, and more than 50 Technovation alumni have worked at Google campuses around the world. Those alumnae include women like Padmapriya in India, Dalia in Palestine, Jenny and Emma in the United States, and Adelina in Moldova, who graciously agreed to share their stories about participating in Technovation.

The current Technovation Girls season is now open—if you know a girl who's ready to change the world, let her know about Technovation and encourage her to sign up. And if you want to support girls taking their first steps as technology creators and entrepreneurs, learn more about participating as a mentor or a judge. There are thousands of girls like Padmapriya, Dalia, Adelina, Emma, and Jenny who are just getting started and could use your encouragement!

2021 Year in Review: Google Quantum AI

Google’s Quantum AI team has had a productive 2021. Despite ongoing global challenges, we’ve made significant progress in our effort to build a fully error-corrected quantum computer, working towards our next hardware milestone of building an error-corrected quantum bit (qubit) prototype. At the same time, we have continued our commitment to realizing the potential of quantum computers in various applications. That's why we published results in top journals, collaborated with researchers across academia and industry, and expanded our team to bring on new talent and expertise.

An update on hardware

The Quantum AI team is determined to build an error-corrected quantum computer within the next decade, and to simultaneously use what we learn along the way to deliver helpful—and even transformational—quantum computing applications. This long-term commitment is expanded broadly into three key questions for our quantum hardware:

  1. Can we demonstrate that quantum computers can outperform the classical supercomputers of today in a specific task? We demonstrated beyond-classical computation in 2019.
  2. Can we build a prototype of an error-corrected qubit? In order to use quantum computers to their full potential, we will need to realize quantum error correction to overcome the noise that is present during our computations. As a key step in this direction, we aim to realize the primitives of quantum error correction by redundantly encoding quantum information across several physical qubits, demonstrating that such redundancy leads to an improvement over using individual physical qubits. This is our current target.
  3. Can we build a logical qubit which does not have errors for an arbitrarily long time? Logical qubits encode information redundantly across several physical qubits, and are able to reduce the impact of noise on the overall quantum computation. Putting together a few thousand logical qubits would allow us to realize the full potential of quantum computers for various applications.
An interactive map of our journey to build an error-corrected quantum computer.

An interactive map of our journey to build an error-corrected quantum computer

Progress toward building an error-corrected qubit prototype

The distance between the noisy quantum computers of today and the fully error-corrected quantum computers of the future is vast. In 2021, we made significant progress in closing this gap by working toward building a prototype logical qubit whose errors are smaller than those of the physical qubits on our chips.

This work requires improvements across the entire quantum computing stack. We have made chips with better qubits, improved the methods that we use to package these chips to better connect them with our control electronics, and developed techniques to calibrate large chips with several dozens of qubits simultaneously.

These improvements culminated in two key results. First, we are now able to reset our qubits with high fidelity, allowing us to reuse qubits in quantum computations. Second, we have realized mid-circuit measurement that allows us to keep track of computation within quantum circuits. Together, the high-fidelity resets and mid-circuit measurements were used in our recent demonstration of exponential suppression of bit and phase flip errors using repetition codes, resulting in 100x suppression of these errors as the size of the code grows from 5 to 21 qubits.

Chart chronicling repetition code

Suppression of logical errors as the number of qubits in the repetition code is increased. As we increase the code size from 5 to 21 qubits, we see 100x reduction in logical. Image acknowledgement: Kevin Satzinger/Google Quantum AI

Repetition codes, an error correction tool, enable us to trade-off between resources (more qubits) and performance (lower error) which will be central in guiding our hardware research and development going forward. This year we showed how error decreases as we increase the number of included qubits for a 1-dimensional code. We are currently running experiments to extend these results to two-dimensional surface codes which will correct errors more comprehensively.

Applications of quantum computation

In addition to building quantum hardware, our team is also looking for clear margins of quantum advantage in real world applications. With our collaborators in academia and industry, we are exploring fields where quantum computers can provide significant speedups, with realistic expectations that error-corrected quantum computers will likely require better than quadratic speedups for meaningful improvements.

As always, our collaborations with academic and industry partners were invaluable in 2021. One notable collaboration with Caltech showed that, under certain conditions, quantum machines can learn about physical systems from exponentially fewer experiments than what is conventionally required. This novel method was validated experimentally using 40 qubits and 1300 quantum operations, demonstrating a substantial quantum advantage even with the noisy quantum processors we have today. This paves the way to more innovation in quantum machine learning and quantum sensing, with potential near-term use cases.

In collaboration with researchers at Columbia University, we combined one of the most powerful techniques for chemical simulation, Quantum Monte Carlo, with quantum computation. This approach surpasses previous methods as a promising quantum approach to ground state many-electron calculations, which are critical in creating new materials and understanding their chemical properties. When we run a component of this technique on a real quantum computer, we are able to double the size of prior calculations without sacrificing accuracy of the measurements, even in the presence of noise on a device with up to 16 qubits. The resilience of this method to noise is an indication of its potential for scalability even on today’s quantum computers.

We continue to study how quantum computers can be used to simulate quantum physical phenomena—as was most recently reflected in our experimental observation of a time crystal on a quantum processor (Ask a Techspert: What exactly is a time crystal?). This was a great moment for theorists, who’ve pondered the possibility of time crystals for nearly a century. In other work, we also explored the emergence of quantum chaotic dynamics by experimentally measuring out-of-time-ordered correlations on one of our quantum computers, which was done jointly with collaborators at the NASA Ames Research Center; and experimentally measuring the entanglement entropy of the ground state of the Toric code Hamiltonian by creating its eigenstates using shallow quantum circuits with collaborators at the Technical University of Munich.

Our collaborators contributed to, and even inspired, some of our most impactful research in 2021. Quantum AI remains committed to discovering and realizing meaningful quantum applications in collaboration with scientists and researchers from across the world in 2022 and beyond as we continue our focus on machine learning, chemistry, and many-body quantum physics.

You can find a list of all our publications here.

Continuing investment in the quantum computing ecosystem

This year, at Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, we reaffirmed our commitment to the roadmap and investments required to make a useful quantum computer within the decade. While we were busy growing in Santa Barbara, we also continue to support the enablement of researchers in the quantum community through our open source software. Our quantum programming framework, Cirq, continues to improve with contributions from the community. 2021 also saw the release of specialized tools in collaboration with partners in the ecosystem. Two examples of these are:

  • The release of a new Fermionic Quantum Simulator for quantum chemistry applications in collaboration with QSimulate, taking advantage of the symmetry in quantum chemistry problems to provide efficient simulations.
  • A significant upgrade to qsim which allows for simulation of noisy quantum circuits on high performance processors such as GPUs via Google Cloud, and qsim integration with NVIDIA’s cuQuantum SDK to enable qsim users to make the most of NVIDIA GPUs when developing quantum algorithms and applications.

We also released an open-source tool called stim, which provides a 10000x speedup when simulating error correction circuits.

You can access our portfolio of open-source software here.

Looking toward 2022

Resident quantum scientist Qubit the Dog taking part in a holiday sing-along.

Resident quantum scientist Qubit the Dog taking part in a holiday sing-along led by team members Jimmy Chen and Ofer Naaman.

Through teamwork, collaboration, and some innovative science, we are excited about the progress that we have seen in 2021. We have big expectations for 2022 as we focus on progressing through our hardware milestones, the discovery of new quantum algorithms, and the realization of quantum applications on the quantum processors of today. To tackle our difficult mission, we are growing our team, building on our existing network of collaborators, and expanding our Santa Barbara campus. Together with the broader quantum community, we are excited to see the progress that quantum computing makes in 2022 and beyond.

Supporting digital education in Europe

The way we teach and learn has changed. We have all seen the world shift beneath our feet during the pandemic, as homes became classrooms and teachers found new ways to connect with their students while using technology in new ways.

While schools around the world are now moving back towards in-classroom learning, the importance of access to digital tools has been brought into focus, not only to support hybrid learning practices but also to ensure students are equipped with the tools and skills that set them up for success in building the future they want for themselves.

We’re excited to see that many EU member states, guided by the Digital Education Action Plan, have allocated a significant portion of Recovery and Resilience Facility funds towards national digital education transformation plans. However, large-scale projects in digital education sometimes struggle to deliver expected benefits or outcomes, and investments in digital equipment for schools are often under-utilized. To address this challenge and to support countries with their digital education transformation plans, Google is thrilled to announce the €15 million Google for Education EU Digital Support Fund.

Working with SMEs to support digital education

The Google for Digital Education Fund is designed to foster the development of a high-performing digital education ecosystem, including the provision of infrastructure, connectivity and digital equipment, enabling digitally competent and confident teachers, and training staff. The Fund is open to local SMEs who are supporting national education projects funded by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility program. They can apply for funding from Google for the duration of the program (or until the funds have been exhausted) to cover Google's digital equipment and software. In this way, the Fund will contribute to addressing key digital education priorities in the EU by stimulating local innovation ecosystems in education and training.

A picture of a teacher wearing a mask teaching children in a classroom who all have their laptops open

The fund can be used towards supporting teacher training to help them leverage the most out of devices in the classroom

What does that look like in practice?

We have already seen impactful ways this could work across the EU region. The Municipality of Plovdiv in Bulgaria exemplifies the type of digital education transformation program that the Google Digital Education Fund intends to support. The aim of the Municipality of Plovdiv’s program was to successfully implement a cloud platform in order to deliver on the “digitalization and modernization of the learning process” and elevate the digital skills of educators and learners in all 77 of the schools in the Municipality. This program was delivered over three years from 2017-2019 and was the first digital education program of its kind in Bulgaria. Plovdiv’s School in the Cloud program has become the benchmark for all of Bulgaria and has led to widespread use of the Google for Education platform, with more than 10,000 teachers trained (over 1,000 of them certified by Google), and thousands of Chromebook devices being used across the country in accordance with acceptable use policies established by the Ministry of Education in Bulgaria.

Looking to the future

Our goal is to provide the information, tools and services that help students build knowledge, fuel curiosity, and prepare for what’s next. We are proud and excited to support the European Digital Education Action Plan, and look forward to helping EU Member States deliver successful digital education transformation programs.

The Google for Education EU Digital Support Fund is available to qualifying SMEs that are supporting EU Member State national digital education transformation programs funded through the Recovery and Resilience Facility and related to the provisioning of Chromebooks (with the associated Chrome Education Upgrade license) and Google Workspace for Education. Click here to learn more and to apply.

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