Summer may be drawing to a close, but we don’t want the fun to stop. So this month we’re bringing Playtime, our event for Android apps and games developers, to London, Paris, and Berlin. More than 600 attendees will hear from experts and learn how to grow their businesses and succeed on Google Play, the app store for Android devices.

Europe has a strong culture of innovation and success when it comes to mobile development. Many of the world’s leading games and apps come from European companies — Rovio (Angry Birds), King (Candy Crush Saga), BlaBlaCar and SkyScanner are all building on Android to boost their business success globally. In fact, in 2015, the top five most downloaded games across iOS and Android globally all came from Europe: Subway Surfers (Kiloo, Denmark), Candy Crush (King, Sweden/UK), Clash of Clans (Supercell, Finland), Candy Crush Soda Saga (King, Sweden/UK) and Despicable Me (Gameloft, France). And with Android users downloading an average of 95 apps on their phone, there’s a huge opportunity for developers to create even more successful businesses on the platform.

At Playtime, developers will learn about the tools available in the Google Play Developer Console to test and develop their app. Take Playdemic, a 40-strong mobile game studio based in Manchester, UK, which has transformed the success of their app Village Life on Google Play by using the testing tools available to them. Over the past few months, they have seen their review score increase from 4.1 to 4.4, and their revenue has increased by 300%, with Village Life becoming a Top 150 grossing game on Google Play in May this year.

We will also show developers Early Access, a new tool that lets them test and develop their apps with actual customers in a beta version prior to launch — a crucial way to iron out any bugs. In the three months since we began offering this option, we’ve seen that users are eager and willing to send developers constructive feedback in exchange for getting their hands on the latest exciting apps and games. Open beta titles have been installed over one million times in a 40-day period, and demand is growing.

Playtime starts in London today, then continues on to Paris on Sept. 6 and Berlin on Sept. 8. To continue supporting those who base their business on Android, we’ll be hosting more events over the next few months — stay tuned.

Posted by Mark Bennett, International Director, Google Play

When emergency services get a call, they need to know the caller’s location to send help and save lives. Today, over 70% of calls to emergency services come from mobile phones, but locating these mobile callers can be a major issue. Current emergency solutions rely on cell tower location (which can have a radius of up to several kilometers) or assisted GPS (which can fail indoors).

Accurate emergency location can be the difference between life and death. In fact, the US Federal Communications Commission estimates “an improved location accuracy which results in reducing wireless E911 response time by one minute can result in saving over 10,000 lives annually”.

To help address this issue, we created the Emergency Location Service in Android. This feature, when supported by your network, sends location from your phone to emergency services when you dial an emergency number. This uses the same location technologies available to apps on your phone, including Wi-Fi, GPS, and cell towers, to produce a more reliable emergency location both indoors and outdoors.

This feature is solely for the use of emergency service providers, and location is never seen or handled by Google. It is sent from your handset to emergency services only when you explicitly place an emergency call, either directly or through your mobile network.

Emergency Location Service is supported by over 99% of existing Android devices (version 2.3 out and upwards) through Google Play Services. The service activates when supported by your mobile network operator or emergency infrastructure provider.

Our service is already live today for people with Android phones in the UK and in Estonia. We’ve collaborated with several mobile network operators and emergency services to make this possible:

We look forward to making Android’s Emergency Location Service available internationally, and are actively engaging with more countries and operators to make this widely available. If you are a mobile network operator or emergency infrastructure provider interested in supporting better emergency location from Android devices, get in touch with us.

Posted by Akshay Kannan, Product Manager

Just as the world’s precious artworks and monuments need a touch-up to look their best, the home we’ve built to host the world’s cultural treasures online needs a lick of paint every now and then. We’re ready to pull off the dust sheets and introduce the new Google Arts & Culture website and app, by the Google Cultural Institute. The app lets you explore anything from cats in art since 200 BCE to the color red in Abstract Expressionism, and everything in between.

Our new tools will help you discover works and artifacts, allowing you to immerse yourself in cultural experiences across art, history and wonders of the world—from more than a thousand museums across 70 countries:
• Search for anything, from shoes to all things gold
• Scroll through art by time—see how Van Gogh’s works went from gloomy to vivid
• Browse by color and learn about Monet’s 50 shades of gray
• Find a new fascinating story to discover every day—today, it’s nine powerful men in heels



With a virtual reality viewer like Google Cardboard, you can use the Google Arts & Culture app on iOS and Android to take a virtual tour of the street art scene in Rome; step inside a creation by famous street artist, Insa; or even travel 2,500 years back in time and look around the ancient Greek temple of Zeus.

You can also subscribe to the new Google Arts & Culture YouTube channel. Find out what Kandinsky and Kanye West have in common and meet the New York-based “cyborg artist” Neil Harbisson.



We’re sure you’ll want to see some of the artworks in real life too—and the Google Arts & Culture app is there to help. Click “Visit” on a museum’s page to get opening times, find out what’s on that day and navigate there in one click. We’ve also been experimenting with a new feature. The Art Recognizer is now available in London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Just pull up the app, point your phone’s camera to a painting on display and find all the information you want to know about the artwork. We’re planning to roll this out to museums around the world—so stay tuned.


There’s much to learn about our shared cultural heritage. Download the app for iOS and Android to unlock a world of experiences, every day.


Posted by Duncan Osborn, Product Manager, Google Cultural Institute

Editor's note: For 2016, there are five Community Impact Awards: one for each top project that focuses on fixing a difficult problem across North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. We're also ramping up to announce the 16 Global Finalists that will be joining us for our Awards Celebration -- check out the Top 100 submitted by students around the world!

This year, the Google Science Fair invited students from around the world to use science and engineering to make something better. And they did not disappoint. From creating more eco-friendly fuel to making our water safe to drink, we were so impressed with the creative and thoughtful solutions to big world problems that students shared with us. Out of the thousands of projects from over 107 countries, we're excited to share the Top 100 ideas selected by the judges. You can see the full list of the 100 Google Science Fair Regional Finalists here.

These 100 Regional Finalists are all in the running to become one of the 16 Global Finalists, who will join us in Mountain View on September 27 for our sixth annual Awards Celebration.

In addition to our regional finalists, please join us in congratulating the Community Impact Award winners from Turkey, Ezgi and Ilyada. This science duo is using aluminum cans to make buildings stronger during earthquakes.

Read more about their incredible idea on the Google Science Fair website.

Thanks to the generous support of our partners — LEGO Education, Scientific American, National Geographic, and Virgin Galactic — Community Impact winners will receive mentoring and educational scholarships to help them make the world a better place through science, math, and engineering. They’ll also be joining our Global Finalists at Google headquarters for the Awards Celebration.

To find out who the 16 Global Finalists will be, check out the Google Science Fair site on Aug 11, and keep up with news about the fair on Google+ and Twitter.

Posted by: Andrea Cohan, product marketing manager Google Science Fair

The timeless heritage of the Valle dei Templi has an online home now on the Google Cultural Institute and on Google Street View. If you're planning a trip to Sicily, or if you simply want to discover the treasures of the ancient city of Akragas - now Agrigento - from your own home, starting today you can embark on a journey to discover the 1300 hectares of the Archaeological and Landscape Park of the Valley of the Temples directly from your smartphone or computer by visiting g.co/valledeitempli.



Through 11 digital exhibits available in English and Italian, with over 1000 images on Google Arts & Culture, you can relive the magic of “Magna Graecia”, the coastal area of modern day Southern Italy, where Greek city-states flourished over 2500 years ago. You can walk along the sacred road to the majestic Tempio della Concordia, and admire its grandeur even at night.


Il Tempio della Concordia

What else? Well, the digital exhibitions on Google Arts & Culture will let you learn more about ancient sports traditions in the ancient colony of Agrigento. You can enjoy its cultural landscape and walk through the countryside, among the almond and, orange trees and flowers that adorn the entire area, evoking memories of ancient times.

Take a trip among the divine protectors of the earth, the most venerated of the Sicilian colony according to Cicero. Then, admire the Doric Temples, a symbol of the expansion of Akragas under the rule of the tyrant Terone in the 5th century BC. Lastly, enjoy a short walk back in time to discover the paleo-Christian side of the city, which dates back to the 4th century BC.


In the paleo-Christian necropolis with Street View


Your virtual trip is not over yet. Use Google Cardboard, a simple virtual reality viewer with the Google Arts and Culture app for iOS and Android, and you’ll find yourself in the midst of the ruins of the doric temples of Akragas, marvelling at their beauty and at the stunning landscapes of the iconic temples in the valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A trip back in time and space to one of the iconic sites in human history is now accessible for everyone with just a click.

Posted by Luisella Mazza, Head of operations, Google Cultural Institute

The internet continues to be a boon for creators, their communities, and the content industry. At Google, we are committed to helping these industries flourish online. Today, Google’s services provide content for people all around the world and generate significant revenue for rightsholders. YouTube alone has now generated over $2 billion to rightsholders by monetizing user-uploaded content through Content ID, its industry-leading rights management system.

We take protecting creativity online seriously, and we’re doing more to help battle copyright-infringing activity than ever before. Today, we are releasing an update to our How Google Fights Piracy report, which explains the robust programs, policies, and technologies we have put in place to combat piracy online.

Here are a few highlights from those ongoing efforts:

• Leading the industry in finding copyright solutions that work: We go above and beyond the requirements of the law to lead the industry in finding solutions that work. Content ID is a great example of this. Content ID goes beyond a simple "notice-and-takedown" system to provide a set of automated tools that empowers rightsholders to automatically claim their content and choose whether to track, block or monetize it on YouTube. Content ID is a highly effective solution and today, over 98% of copyright management on YouTube takes place through Content ID, with only 2% being handled through copyright removal notices.

• Providing new revenue streams for media industries and content owners: Content ID has also created a robust new revenue stream for the content industry. YouTube has paid out over $2 billion to rightsholders who have monetized their content through Content ID since it first launched. In fact, today well over 90% of all Content ID claims across the platform result in monetization. The music industry chooses to monetize more than 95% of their claims, opting to leave the content up on the platform - half of the music industry's YouTube revenue comes from fan content claimed via Content ID. Thanks to Content ID, YouTube is also the only platform that gives partners an automated way to directly monetize background/incidental use and covers.

• Connecting fans to better legitimate alternatives: The best way to battle piracy is with better, more convenient, legitimate alternatives. And Google is all-in when it comes to partnering with the content industry to build and enable those alternatives. Through YouTube and Google Play, Google is in the business of helping users legitimately discover, purchase, and enjoy music, movies, books, magazines, and apps. Thanks to these platforms, Google Play has paid out more than $7 billion to developers while YouTube has paid out more than $3 billion to the music industry. Today, Google Play also makes music available in 62 countries, movies in 105 countries, and books in 75 countries.

• Solving for Search: Thanks to the efforts of Google’s engineers, the vast majority of media-related queries that users submit every day return results that include only links to legitimate sites. For any problematic links that may appear for rarer “long-tail” queries, our systems for processing copyright removal notices handle millions URLs each day, in less than 6 hours on average. And when we get a large number of valid notices for a site, our search ranking algorithms demote that site in future search results.

• Following the Money: Rogue sites that specialize in online piracy are commercial ventures, which means that one effective way to combat them is to cut off their money supply. As a global leader in online advertising, Google is committed to rooting out and ejecting rogue sites from our advertising services. Since 2012, Google has blacklisted more than 91,000 sites from AdSense for violating our policies against copyright infringement, the vast majority caught by AdSense’s own proactive screens. We have also been working with other advertising leaders to craft best practices aimed at raising standards across the entire online advertising industry, including in the US, UK, France, Italy, and Asia.

Protecting and fostering creativity online is a priority for Google. We remain committed to investing in efforts to address copyright infringement online, collaborating with rightsholders and protecting the interests of our users.

Posted by Katherine Oyama, Senior Policy Counsel, Google