Category: Google Cloud

It’s the middle of the middle month of a choppy year and I’m thinking about how we stay steady. I’m thinking about ballasts, the heavy things—weighty, substantive—employed in ships to lend balance. My ballast is my family, and I’m lucky enough to have a few. There’s the family of my blood, those mad geniuses who share my last name; the family of my friends, wild spirits exploring the limits of what’s possible; and, last but not least, the family I walked into when I came to Google.

This Pride, Google and Google’s LGBTQ+ community are celebrating families big and small, chosen or inherited, as part of #ThisIsFamily. We encourage you to post on social media about the people who make up your family (no matter how you define it) and to donate to nonprofits like PFLAG, It Gets Better and GLAAD. Google.org has pledged to match up to $100,000 in total in donations to these three organizations during the month of June.

That’s not the only way we’re celebrating Pride. In typical Google fashion, we’re helping you connect with the world around you (and having a bit of fun) across our products:

• In Google Maps, this year’s parade routes are paved with rainbows.
• You’ll find rainbow “easter eggs” scattered through Google Search and G Suite, and you can join the fun from your desktop by switching your Gmail to a Pride theme for the month of June.
• Google Play Newsstand has a special feature page for Pride-related coverage.
• On YouTube, we’re celebrating the LGBTQ+ creators who are #ProudToCreate a better future with their imagination, creativity, talent, and truth through our YouTube Spotlight Channel, Twitter, and Instagram.
• We continue to help businesses declare their establishments “LGBTQ+ Friendly” or “Transgender Safe Space” on their business listings in Google Maps and Google Search.
• One year on from our initial donation to the LGBT Center of New York in collaboration with the National Parks Foundation, Google.org is contributing another $500,000 (for a total of $1.5 Million) to the Center to help with the digitization of LGBTQ+ history. The project is called Stonewall Forever, and we need your help to find, preserve, and share the untold stories of LGBTQ+ history.
• Google Arts & Culture has a dedicated Pride collection celebrating LGBTQ+ history, with 20 exhibits and over 2,700 artifacts, part of which comes from the Stonewall Forever project. 

Ballasts, like families, help us stay steady amidst commotion. Paradoxically, maybe, these heavy things also lift us up.

Celebrating Pride, from our families to yours.

In 1958, U.S. corporations remained on the S&P 500 index for an average of 61 years, according to the American Enterprise Foundation. Fast forward to today and companies are being replaced approximately every two weeks. In this rapidly changing market, traditional companies are looking for ways to stay competitive and more and more enterprises, including Nielsen, Colgate and Airbus, are turning to G Suite to help them reimagine how they work to keep pace.

We know that enterprises want to move to cloud-first collaboration to transform how they work, but, understandably, they have questions about how to make it work in a business of their size. What happens with email security? How can they manage their data? How does G Suite work with the tools and systems they already have in place?

Yesterday we announced new products to help businesses reimagine how they work, and today we’re sharing additional solutions we’ve built to address these concerns.

Here’s a snapshot of what we’re announcing today. Read on for more detail.

• New Gmail (Redesigned security warnings, Snooze, Offline Access and more generally available for G Suite users)

• Cloud Search (being deployed by an initial set of customers)

• Google Voice for G Suite (available in our Early Adopter Program*)

• Drive Enterprise Sku (available for purchase)

Keeping businesses (and emails) secure

Keeping your data secure is our top priority, which is why we use machine learning to analyze threat indicators across billions of messages in Gmail to help quickly identify potential security attacks in the making. Machine learning helps protect more than 1.4 billion active Gmail user accounts from nearly 10 million spam and malicious emails every minute.

Today, we’re making the new Gmail generally available to G Suite customers so that, in addition to these baked-in security features, more companies can take advantage of features like redesigned security warnings, snooze, offline access and more. You can learn more in this post.

Bringing the best of Google Search to enterprise data

Searching through your company’s data should be as easy as doing a web search. But the reality is most companies’ information is spread across different silos and systems that don’t talk to each other, which makes finding things a lengthy chore. We introduced Cloud Search last year to make it easy to find information across G Suite in a way that’s intuitive and assistive. Today, we are announcing new Cloud Search functionality to help companies intelligently and securely index their third-party data beyond G Suite, whether that data is stored in the cloud, or on-prem.

Companies, like Whirlpool Corporation, have started deploying Cloud Search’s new capabilities to unify search across multiple data sources. Using Cloud Search’s new SDKs, APIs and connectors for third-party connectivity, Whirlpool created a custom app called Whirlpool SearchPro that indexes more than 12 million documents across different on-prem and cloud systems and returns results in 100s of milliseconds on average. Moreover, search results reflect the specific permissions and access controls from each of the source systems to ensure that individuals only see the information they should.

We launched the new Gmail earlier this year and packed it with features to help you prioritize and accomplish things right from your inbox. And it’s a good thing too, because it’s estimated that we send and receive more than 100 emails a day.

With this volume, it can be tough to stay focused on what matters. Here are five ways the new Gmail can help you save time and get more done.

1. You can prioritize emails more easily.

How many times have you read an email and forgotten to respond? It’s easy to do. To help you remember, Gmail will “nudge” you to follow up or reply to messages by sharing a quick reminder next to the email. Powered by machine learning, it uses cues like frequent contacts and more to remind you to respond to stuff that’s higher priority.

Inbox by Gmail has been a great place to experiment with new ideas like snoozing emails to later, as well as try the latest AI-powered experiences like Smart Reply, Nudges and high-priority notifications to help you stay productive.

Four years after launching Inbox in 2014, we’ve learned a lot about how to make email better—and we’ve taken popular Inbox experiences and added them into Gmail to help more than a billion people get more done with their emails everyday. As we look to the future, we want to take a more focused approach that will help us bring the best email experience to everyone. As a result, we’re planning to focus solely on Gmail and say goodbye to Inbox by Gmail at the end of March 2019.

We introduced the new Gmail in April this year, incorporating many of the same features you’ve come to love about Inbox plus newer features like Smart Compose, which helps you draft emails faster. Read more about how these features in Gmail can help you manage your inbox better in this post.

We know change is hard, so we’ve created a transition guide to help you switch from Inbox to the new Gmail with ease. All your conversations are already waiting for you in Gmail. See you there.

I’m one of those people who always cuts it close at the airport—it’s a race through security, with just enough time to grab the airline essentials: water bottle, magazine, a soft pretzel if I’m lucky. But I just learned that I can whip out Google Maps to find my way around the airport (by searching the airport name and terminal number), so I no longer waste time running around looking for my snack of choice.

For two decades, Google has built products that make my life more useful. Eight of these products now have a billion users, and with all that extra time at the airport, I got to thinking—how many other unknown tips and tricks are out there? Since Google is celebrating its 20th birthday this month, I present a party favor: tips on Google’s most-used products, straight from the people who helped build them.

Search

• For lovers of covers: Try searching for a song and then tapping “other recordings” for different renditions.
• Don’t burn daylight: Make the most of your daylight hours by knowing when the sun will go down. Search [sunset] to get the time the sun will set today.
• For content connoisseurs: If you’re a fan of bingeable TV shows or a movie buff, you can see all the places to stream any show or film by searching [watch] followed by the title. (Head’s up: this is available in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Germany and India). 

Emily Moxley, Director of Product Management

Maps

• Beat the crowds: Use Google Maps to find out the estimated wait times and popular times to visit your favorite restaurants and businesses. 
• Don’t get lost in the parking lot: If you’ve ever spent way too long searching for your parked car, this tip’s for you. After navigating to your destination, tap on the blue dot and then “Set as parking location” so you can always find your way back to your parking spot.
• Quickest route to the airport snacks: If you’re flying to a new place, you can use Google Maps to help you find your way around an airport. A quick search for an airport terminal name, say “SFO Terminal 1,” will show you the lay of the land, including nearby gates, lounges, restaurants and stores.

Dane Glasgow, VP of Product

YouTube

• Just add popcorn: Developed to cut down on glare and give you that movie theater experience, Dark Theme turns your background dark while you’re watching YouTube. It’s available on desktop, iOS and now rolling out to Android. 
• Pick your pace: Speed up or slow down the playback of a video by tapping on the three dots at the bottom right of any video. 
• Take a shortcut: While watching a YouTube video, use the numbered keys to seek in a video. For example, hitting “2” will take you 20 percent into the video, “6” will take you to 60 percent into the video, “0” will restart the video. 

Brian Marquardt, Director of Product Management

Gmail

• The ultimate to-do list: Open Tasks in your side panel within Gmail, then drag and drop emails to turn your messages into action items. 
• Shhhh: Declutter your inbox with Gmail’s mute feature, which pushes the entire conversation to your archive and any future conversations on the thread bypass your inbox to be automatically archived as well. 
• Take it back: Don’t fret over embarrassing typos, unintentional reply-alls, or other email taboos. In your Gmail settings, just implement a 5-30 second cancellation period on your sent emails and once you’ve fired one off, you’ll receive a prompt to “Undo.”

Kevin Smilak, Engineering Director

Google Drive

• Give your docs a gold star: Find your favorite Drive items by starring your most important docs within the Drive main menu, and then bookmarking your Starred page. 
• File_name_V2: Freeze moments in time by naming different versions of the docs you edit frequently. In a Doc, Sheet, or Slides go to File > Version History > Name current version. Name any version then access it easily from “Version history” by name. 
• Your search is our command: Google Drive makes the text within all of the images and PDFs you upload searchable. Try searching for a phrase that you know is inside a picture or PDF, which is especially helpful when you can’t remember your filename. 

Alexander Vogenthaler, Director of Product Management

Android

• Lost and found: If you’ve misplaced your Android phone, Find My Device lets you locate it by signing into your Google account. Or you can call it directly from a browser by typing “find my device” on Google. Lock your phone remotely or display a message on the lock screen, so if someone finds it they know who to contact. If you’re convinced it’s lost for good, you can erase all your data.
• Always reachable: Don’t miss any urgent phone calls and messages from important contacts like close family members or your child’s school, even when you have Do Not Disturb turned on. Just add a star to people that matter to you, and then allow calls and messages from “starred contacts only” in Do Not Disturb settings. 
• Use your voice: You can ask your Google Assistant to handle tasks on your Android phone (running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or later). Start by saying “OK Google,” then try “take a screenshot,” “turn on flashlight,” or “open WiFi setting.” You can even ask to “take a selfie”—this will open the camera app and start a countdown. Cheeeeeeeese. 

Sagar Kamdar, Director of Product Management

Google Play

• When you’re good with faces, but not names: Just hit pause on your movie, tap the circle around the actor or actress’s face, and learn more about them and what other movies they’ve been in.
• Read like a superhero: When you’re reading a comic on your phone, tap on a voice bubble and use your volume buttons to zoom in on the dialogue between two characters.
• What you wish for: You can create a wishlist to keep track of items you want to install or purchase on Google Play.

Kara Bailey, Global Merchandising Director

Chrome

• Access history across devices: Open Chrome and click on “History.” From the drop down menu, click “Full History” and “Tabs From Other Devices.” If you’re signed into the same Google account on both your phone and your computer, you’ll see the article you were just about to finish on your way into work.
• Keeping tabs on your tabs: You can save eight days of time per year using keyboard shortcuts. Try this one in Chrome: jump between tabs at light speed by pressing Ctrl and the tab number you want to go to (i.e., Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3).
• 👀☝😀 = 🎉. Right-click in any text field for a shortcut to access emoji on any platform Chrome can be found.

Ellie Powers, Group Product Manager, and Chris Beckmann, Product Management Director 

In May, we introduced Smart Compose in Gmail on the web, which uses machine learning to help you draft emails faster. It has already saved people from typing over 1 billion characters each week and now it can help you write emails even faster while you’re on the go. We’re bringing Smart Compose to the Gmail mobile app, starting with Pixel 3. Smart Compose will offer writing suggestions as you type and if you like what you see, just swipe right to use it.