The Official Google Blog

Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help preserve the open internet

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 10:00:00 +0000

Editor's note: Today is the Net Neutrality Day of Action, and we’re sending this email to Take Action, our community focused on issues that are important to the future of the internet. We wanted to share it more broadly so everyone can see how to get involved.

The net neutrality rules that protect the open internet are in danger of being dismantled.

Internet companies, innovative startups, and millions of internet users depend on these common-sense protections that prevent blocking or throttling of internet traffic, segmenting the internet into paid fast lanes and slow lanes, and other discriminatory practices. Thanks in part to net neutrality, the open internet has grown to become an unrivaled source of choice, competition, innovation, free expression, and opportunity. And it should stay that way.

Today’s open internet ensures that both new and established services, whether offered by an established internet company like Google, a broadband provider, or a small startup, have the same ability to reach users on an equal playing field.

It’s an important chapter in this debate, and we hope you’ll make your voice heard.

Tell everyone that you want to keep the Internet free and open.

Google and many others are joining together to call on the FCC to preserve the open internet, and we encourage you to act too!

Together, we can make our voices heard and we can make a difference.

To find out more, including how to share your views with the FCC, visit https://netneutrality.internetassociation.org/action/.

Introducing Gradient Ventures

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 19:00:00 +0000

AI-powered technology holds a lot of promise—from improving patient health to making data centers more efficient. But while we’ve seen some amazing applications of AI so far, we know there are many more out there that haven’t even been imagined yet. And sometimes, these new ideas need support to flourish.

That’s why we’re announcing Gradient Ventures, a new venture fund from Google with technical mentorship for early-stage startups focused on artificial intelligence. Through Gradient, we’ll provide portfolio companies with capital, resources, and dedicated access to experts and bootcamps in AI. We’ll take a minority stake in the startups in which we invest.

Many members of our team are engineers, so we’re familiar with the journey from big idea to product launch. The goal is to help our portfolio companies overcome engineering challenges to create products that will apply artificial intelligence to today’s challenges and those we’ll face in the future.

Our portfolio is already growing, and our first companies are making progress, including Algorithmia, a marketplace for algorithms and functions, and Cogniac, a suite of tools used to create and manage visual models.

Through AI, yesterday's science fiction is becoming today's nonfiction. There's everything to reimagine as we usher in this new era of technology—and we're excited to work with entrepreneurs to start building it.

Responding to the “Campaign for Accountability” report on academic research

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 18:00:00 +0000

Today the Campaign for Accountability released a report about our funding of academic research. It claims to list hundreds of papers we’ve “in some way funded.” The report is highly misleading. For example, the report attributes to Google any work that was supported by any organization to which we belong or have ever donated (such as CCIA).

Nevertheless, we’re proud to maintain strong relations with academics, universities and research institutes, in our own name, so we wanted to take a few moments to respond to the report.

We run many research programs that provide funding and resources to the external research community. This helps public and private institutions pursue research on important topics in computer science, technology, and a wide range of public policy and legal issues. Our support for the principles underlying an open internet is shared by many academics and institutions who have a long history of undertaking research on these topics—across important areas like copyright, patents, and free expression. We provide support to help them undertake further research, and to raise awareness of their ideas.

These programs (and those run by other companies) augment the government and university-funded research that is the backbone of academic discourse in the United States.

We also run policy fellowship programs. Most other companies do this too; the difference with Google is that we list ours publicly on our policy website.

Our funding is guided by these principles:

Disclosure requirements: When we provide financial support, we expect and require grantees to properly disclose our funding. If there are ever omissions or unclear disclosures, we work to tighten our requirements.
Independence: We value academic independence and integrity. We offer grants for discrete pieces of research, not to shape academics’ subsequent scholarship. The researchers and institutions to whom we award research grants will often publish research with which we disagree. In fact, many of the academics listed by the Campaign for Accountability have criticized Google and our policy positions heavily on a variety of topics. Here are just three of the academics on their list, opposing and arguing against us on antitrust, net neutrality and privacy.

The irony of discussing disclosures and transparency with the “Campaign for Accountability” is that this group consistently refuses to name its corporate funders. And those backers won’t ‘fess up either. The one funder the world does know about is Oracle, which is running a well-documented lobbying campaign against us. In its own name and through proxies, Oracle has funded many hundreds of articles, research papers, symposia and reports. Oracle is not alone—you can easily find similar activity by companies and organizations funded by our competitors, like AT&T, the MPAA, ICOMP, FairSearch and dozens more; including hundreds of pieces directly targeting Google.

We’re proud of our programs and their integrity. The “Campaign for Accountability” and its funders are, clearly, not proud of theirs.

Journalism 360 grant winners announced

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 17:00:00 +0000

While advances in immersive storytelling—360 video, virtual reality, augmented reality and drones—have the potential to make journalism richer and more engaging, it can be challenging for journalists to adopt and embrace these new tools. In 2016, the Google News Lab, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Online News Association created Journalism 360, a coalition of hundreds of journalists from around the world to build new skills required to tell immersive stories. Today, the coalition announced the 11 winners of its first grant challenge, which will fund projects to tackle some of the most critical challenges facing the advancement of immersive journalism: the need for better tools and trainings, the development of best practices, and new use cases.

Here’s a bit more about the winning projects:

Aftermath VR app: New Cave Media, led by Alexey Furman in Kyiv, Ukraine.
An app that applies photogrammetry, which uses photography to measure and map objects, to recreate three-dimensional scenes of news events and narrate what happened through voiceover and archival footage.
AI-generated Anonymity in VR Journalism: University of British Columbia, led by Taylor Owen, Kate Hennessy and Steve DiPaol in Vancouver, Canada.
Helps reporters test whether an emotional connection can be maintained in immersive storytelling formats when a character’s identity is hidden.
Community and Ethnic Media Journalism 360: City University of New York, led by Bob Sacha in New York.
Makes immersive storytelling more accessible to community media (local broadcasters, public radio and TV, etc.) and ethnic media through hands-on training and access to equipment. The team also aims to produce a “how to” guide for using immersive storytelling to cover local events such as festivals.
Dataverses: Information Visualization into VR Storytelling: The Outliers Collective, led by Oscar Marin Miro in Barcelona, Spain.
Makes it easier to integrate data visualizations into immersive storytelling through a platform that includes virtual reality videos, photos and facts. For example, a user could show a map of the Earth highlighting places without water access, and link each area to a virtual reality video that explores the experience of living there.
Facing Bias: The Washington Post, led by Emily Yount in Washington, D.C.
Develops a smartphone tool that will use augmented reality to analyze a reader's facial expressions while they view images and statements that may affirm or contradict their beliefs. The aim is to give readers a better understanding of their own biases.
Spatial and Head-Locked Stereo Audio for 360 Journalism: NPR, led by Nicholas Michael in Washington, D.C.
Develops best practices for immersive storytelling audio by producing two virtual reality stories with a particular focus on sound-rich scenes. The project will explore, test and share spatial audio findings from these experiments.

Immersive Storytelling from the Ocean Floor: MIT Future Ocean Lab, led by Allan Adams in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Creates a camera and lighting system to produce immersive stories underwater and uncover the hidden experiences that lie beneath the ocean’s surface.

Location-Based VR Data Visualization: Arizona State University, Cronkite School of Journalism, led by Retha Hill in Tempe, Arizona.
Helps journalists and others easily create location-based data visualizations in a virtual reality format. For example, users could explore crime statistics or education data on particular neighborhoods through data overlays on virtual reality footage of these areas.

Voxhop by Virtual Collaboration Research Inc.: Ainsley Sutherland in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Makes it easy to craft audio-driven virtual reality stories through a tool that would allow journalists to upload, generate or construct a three-dimensional environment and narrate the scene from multiple perspectives. For example, a reporter could construct a three-dimensional crime scene and include voiceovers detailing accounts of what transpired in the space.

Scene VR: Northwestern University Knight Lab, led by Zach Wise in Evanston, Illinois.
Develops a tool that would make it easier for journalists and others to create virtual reality photo experiences that include interactive navigation, using their smartphone or a camera.

The Wall: The Arizona Republic and USA TODAY Network, led by Nicole Carroll in Phoenix, Arizona.
Uses virtual reality, data and aerial video, and documentary shorts to bring the story of the proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico to life.

Over the course of the next year, the project leads will share their learnings on the Journalism 360 blog. Because this is all about building community, the recipients will also gather at the Online News Association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. this September to discuss their projects, answer questions and share their progress. In early 2018, they will present their finished projects.

To learn more about Journalism 360, follow the blog or on Twitter. You can learn more about the Google News Lab’s work in immersive journalism on our website.

I Am Amazon: Discover your connection to the rainforest with Google Earth

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 15:00:00 +0000

For many people around the world, the Amazon is a mysterious faraway land of impenetrable jungles, majestic rivers and indigenous peoples. But what many of us may not realize is that we all have a connection to the Amazon—through the air we breathe, the water that irrigates the food we eat, the natural ingredients in the medicines we use, or the shifting weather patterns that we experience around the globe.

Today we invite you to venture into the heart of the Amazon and discover your connection to the world's largest rainforest through Voyager, Google Earth's storytelling platform. You’ll find 11 new interactive stories about different parts of the vast Brazilian Amazon region, which is home to about 27 million people and a wide array of cultures.

All of these stories are told by the diverse peoples who call the forest home, and some were produced by one of Brazil's greatest storytellers, the acclaimed film director Fernando Meirelles. Combined, they create an immersive web and mobile experience told through video, mapping, audio and 360° virtual reality, covering a broad range of issues facing the future of the rainforest—and, consequently, the planet.

These stories reflect the complexity of the Amazon, which produces 20 percent of the Earth's oxygen and is home to one in 10 of the world's animal species. Learn about the supply chain behind the vast array of forest delicacies, like Brazil nuts and açaí, that end up on supermarket shelves worldwide; or about local economies once dependent on illegal logging that are now reorganized around sustainability efforts; or about Quilombolas, communities of descendants of enslaved peoples, and their struggle to obtain titles for their lands.

View "I Am Amazon" in Google Earth

Thanks to our partnership with the Instituto Socioambiental, we're also publishing in Google Earth Voyager for the first time a comprehensive atlas of indigenous lands in Brazil and the people who live there. And we're filling in those maps with in-depth interactive stories told by the Amazon communities themselves.

You can learn about indigenous peoples like the Tembé and the Paiter Suruí, who are using monitoring technologies to protect their territories from illegal incursions by outsiders and deforestation; or the Yawanawá, a tribe that under the leadership of women has revived its cultural heritage and carved out a place in the global cosmetics industry by sustainably harvesting urucum, a reddish seed used in lipstick and other products.

These stories are the culmination of 10 years of work with the peoples of the Amazon. Back in 2007, Paiter Suruí leader Chief Almir came across Google Earth and quickly saw its potential to help safeguard the heritage and traditions of his people. So he proposed a partnership with Google that resulted in an online map of Suruí cultural heritage, the first ever indigenous community-led deforestation and forest carbon mapping project. Through this project, the Suruí calculated the value of their forest on the voluntary carbon marketplace, and became the first indigenous community to receive funds for preserving their lands.

Technology is an important tool that is helping us to protect the forest and keep our traditions alive. Ubiratan Suruí Suruí Indigenous People's Association

Over the years, we've built on this work with the Suruí and expanded it to an additional 30 communities in the Amazon, with more to come. We also recently integrated certified Brazilian indigenous territories into Google Maps, all 472 of them.

Since its creation more than a decade ago, Google Earth has always aimed to bring the magic of our planet to everyone in a beautiful, accessible and enriching way. We hope these fascinating stories from the Amazon do all of that and more, inspiring curious minds to explore, learn and care about our vast, fragile planet.

New report shows southern Europe’s tourism sector has room for online growth

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 14:00:00 +0000

When it comes time to plan a holiday, the internet is an essential research tool. Whether to pick a destination, find a hotel or identify the local sites on and off the beaten path, online content is essential to helping most of us make these plans. And that's why it is so essential that popular tourist destinations, and those hoping to attract more visitors, have high quality content online.

A new research paper from Oxford Economics shows just how critical that online content is for tourism destinations across Southern Europe. Consumers increasingly turn to and trust what they find online with over 60 percent of consumers seek information online from websites and social media making these sources more trusted than traditional media and personal recommendations. In fact, 56 percent of tourism revenue in the EU is now researched or booked online, an increase from 43 percent since 2012.

Since Oxford Economics’ initial research, many tourism destinations have improved their bookings, revenue and job growth by increasing the amount of online content available. For example, more than 180,000 and 90,000 new jobs have been created in Italy and Spain respectively due to improvements in online content.

Cultural content is a key component of what potential tourists are looking for when planning a holiday. Tourism-related searches have grown by about 45 percent since 2010. Across southern Europe, 23 percent of tourism searches are culture-related including for music, arts and festivals, historic sites and museums. And for many of the most lucrative source markets like the U.S., these cultural searches are even higher than some European countries where mass market sun and beach holidays remain important.

Oxford Economics’ research shows that not only are online resources essential research and booking channels for tourism, but that there remains a gap between the amount of online content from Southern Europe and the potential demand from source markets. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs could be created by investing in more online content.

Google is working with partners across these markets to encourage more tourism businesses and cultural organizations to improve their online content to help capture this potential increase in visitors. Our Grow Greek Tourism Online program has helped tens of thousands of Greek tourist destinations get online and improve their web presence. We trained Online Advisors who provide face to face training for businesses in more than eighty cities across Greece. We’ve also worked with 234 cultural partners in these countries, making cultural heritage like the Acropolis Museum in Athens, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid more accessible to tourists and locals through Google Arts and Culture.

In Malta, where 43 percent of total tourism-related queries are focused on cultural attractions, historical sights and famous buildings, cultural information represents a concrete opportunity for local tourist businesses and cultural institutions to grow their audiences online. We worked with Heritage Malta to create the “Wonders of Malta.” This is a unique collection offering viewers from across the world the opportunity to experience the most spectacular collection of Maltese treasures all in one place, at g.co/wondersofmalta. We also made Street View available in Malta, benefiting organizations and businesses. The street-level imagery of the location can help them promote and increase awareness of their business—whether it's a restaurant, hotel, local attraction or any other point of interest.

PAIR: the People + AI Research Initiative

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 16:20:00 +0000

The past few years have seen rapid advances in machine learning, with dramatic improvements in technical performance—from more accurate speech recognition, to better image search, to improved translations. But we believe AI can go much further—and be more useful to all of us—if we build systems with people in mind at the start of the process.

Today we’re announcing the People + AI Research initiative (PAIR) which brings together researchers across Google to study and redesign the ways people interact with AI systems. The goal of PAIR is to focus on the "human side" of AI: the relationship between users and technology, the new applications it enables, and how to make it broadly inclusive. The goal isn’t just to publish research; we’re also releasing open source tools for researchers and other experts to use.

PAIR's research is divided into three areas, based on different user needs:

Engineers and researchers: AI is built by people. How might we make it easier for engineers to build and understand machine learning systems? What educational materials and practical tools do they need?
Domain experts: How can AI aid and augment professionals in their work? How might we support doctors, technicians, designers, farmers, and musicians as they increasingly use AI?
Everyday users: How might we ensure machine learning is inclusive, so everyone can benefit from breakthroughs in AI? Can design thinking open up entirely new AI applications? Can we democratize the technology behind AI?

We don't have all the answers—that's what makes this interesting research—but we have some ideas about where to look. One key to the puzzle is design thinking. Instead of viewing AI purely as a technology, what if we imagine it as a material to design with? Here history might serve as a guide: For instance, advances in computer graphics meant more than better ways of drawing pictures—and that led to completely new kinds of interfaces and applications. You can read more in this post on what we call human-centered machine learning (HCML).We’re open sourcing new tools, creating educational materials (such as guidelines for designing AI interfaces), and publishing research to answer these questions and spread the power of AI to as many people as possible.

Open-source tools

Today we're open sourcing two visualization tools, Facets Overview and Facets Dive. These applications are aimed at AI engineers, and address the very beginning of the machine learning process. The Facets applications give engineers a clear view of the data they use to train AI systems.

We think this is important because training data is a key ingredient in modern AI systems, but it can often be a source of opacity and confusion. Indeed, one of the ways that ML engineering seems different than traditional software engineering is a stronger need to debug not just code, but data too. With Facets, engineers can more easily debug and understand what they’re building. You can read full details at our open source repository.

Supporting external research

We also acknowledge that we're not the first to see this opportunity or ask these questions. Many designers and academics have started exploring human/AI interaction. Their work inspires us; we see community-building and research support as an essential part of our mission. We’re working with a pair of visiting academics—Prof. Brendan Meade of Harvard and Prof. Hal Abelson of MIT—who are focusing on education and science in the age of AI.

Focusing on the human element in AI brings new possibilities into view. We're excited to work together to invent and explore what's possible.

Experience Dunkirk in WebVR

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 16:00:00 +0000

It’s World War II. You’re trapped on a beach, deep within enemy territory, with no place to take shelter or even hide. All you can do is wait for the rescue boats to come. Would you escape?

You can see for yourself with the Dunkirk WebVR game for Chrome, a unique, collaborative VR experience based on the upcoming movie. It transports you back to the siege of the beaches of Dunkirk in June 1940, and it’s available now. Playing with a friend or solo, you can experience the battle as either of two soldiers, both trying to survive. You’re plunged into this moment in history through alternating perspectives—and every choice could mean the difference between life and death. In the end, just like the movie, the game shows the power of people working together in extreme circumstances and how the human spirit can persevere when all looks lost.

Because the game is available in WebVR, instead of as a native app, it’s easier for anyone to experience it. It works across all devices—you can play it in a web browser like Chrome, on a phone, or with any VR headset that supports WebVR, like Cardboard and Daydream.

The Dunkirk WebVR game for Chrome is a collaboration between Warner Bros, the Google Chrome VR team, Jam3, and Google Zoo, our in-house creative think tank for brands. Check it out now and catch Dunkirk (the film) in theaters on July 21, 2017.

Helping entrepreneurs in Singapore make a bigger global impact

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 01:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: This post comes from Grace Sai, CEO and Co-founder of Impact Hub Singapore, Singapore’s largest community of entrepreneurs dedicated to prototyping the future of business, society, and technology.

Two and half years ago, Ematic Solutions joined the Impact Hub Singapore community as a two-person team with an idea about revolutionizing e-mail marketing. Today, they are a 130 person strong startup, with teams in seven countries across Asia, serving companies like Grab and Sephora as customers. The core of the team still calls Impact Hub Singapore home.

That’s just one of the more than 1,200 member stories we’re so proud to have been a part of in the last five years. But, we know there is so much more potential here. In Singapore, the number of startups has grown from 350 to more than 3,500 in half a decade. Singapore, dubbed the “Sand Hill Road” of Southeast Asia, has the largest amount of venture capital available for startups. In a short span of time, this island nation consistently ranks among the top 10 countries in the world for startups, and ranks first in the world for startup talent.

That’s why we’re extremely excited to join the global Google for Entrepreneurs partner network today, as the first member from Southeast Asia joining a worldwide community of 50 partners.

As Singapore’s earliest and largest co-working community, our mission at Impact Hub has been to create intimate spaces and communities that support an entrepreneur’s journey from launching an early-stage startup to overseeing a mature venture. We have two spaces in Singapore — Hub@Cuppage and Hub@Prinsep. Recently we have also launched our own venture fund to invest in the pre-seed and seed stages of tech startups; and a corporate innovation practice to enable more collaboration between startups and corporates. To get a feel for our space, here are a few photos:

Hubbers at work in our Hub@Prinsep space.

Our Hub@Prinsep cafe proudly displays our partnership with Google for Entrepreneurs.

Everyone has a seat at the table at Hub@Cuppage

Our bright kitchen space at Hub@Cuppage aims to make our Hubbers and visitors feel right at home.

Since we opened our doors five years ago, we have supported more than 1,200 members—affectionately known as “Hubbers”. We’re proud to have been the home to some of the country’s most successful startups—from burgeoning high-growth ventures such as Nugit, Saleswhale, Grain all the way to ‘Unicorns’ such as Braintree and Twiliio. Entrepreneurs working out of our space have raised more than $180 million (S$250 million) to date.

This partnership provides us with a share of Google’s tremendous support in the form of financial resources and expertise for our community. Hubbers will have access to programs such as Google for Entrepreneurs Exchange, a series of weeklong, industry-specific global immersion programs aimed at helping startups gain access to new markets and insights as well as Google Demo Day, an event that brings together a diverse group of startups from around the world to showcase their technology and meet top investors and mentors in Silicon Valley. With access to these global programs we hope to smoothen the journey for Southeast Asia’s entrepreneurs into larger regional and international markets, and ensure they have the tools to quickly scale and be even more successful.

As a member of the Google for Entrepreneurs partner network, we’re now one step closer to this reality. Thanks to this partnership, our community will have access to work, tinker and dream from more than 20 spaces—from Sydney to Seoul to San Francisco and Sao Paulo. They now also have the benefit of meeting new folks and building their businesses from any one or all of Google’s six Campuses.

From our earliest days, Impact Hub Singapore’s community has been described as a tribe. We couldn’t be more excited to join forces with Google—a truly global tribe—to champion the growth and success of our entrepreneurs who are at the heart of everything we endeavor.

The High Five: an old photo and a new world record

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 18:00:00 +0000

Search trends this week—with data from Google News Lab—made us re-think history, re-evaluate what it means to be “full” and reconsider what to eat for dessert today.

Could it be?

Eighty years after her mysterious disappearance, legendary aviator Amelia Earhart is back in the news. A recently discovered photograph suggests that she may have survived the crash in which she was thought to have died. Searches for the History Channel spiked 200 percent after the network’s documentary revealed the photograph, and the most common search queries included, “When did Amelia Earhart die?” “What happened to Amelia Earhart?” and “When did Amelia Earhart disappear?”

Frank-ly impressive

Search interest for hot dogs heats up every July, but this year it peaked after Nathan’s annual Hot Dog Eating contest. Joey Chestnut relished in his record-setting victory of 72 hot dogs and buns consumed in 10 minutes. Will competitors ever ketchup? Top search queries about this hot-dog eating feat include “How much money did Joey Chestnut win?” ($10,000) “How many calories did Joey Chestnut eat?” (approximately 11,520) and “How does Joey Chestnut eat so many hot dogs?” (We’re stumped on that one.)

Getting the (arti)facts

Turns out “tile samples” that traveled from Israel and the United Arab Emirates to Hobby Lobby-owned stores in the U.S. are not actually tile samples. They’re ancient clay cuneiform tablets that had been smuggled into the United States from Iraq, and now Hobby Lobby has agreed to forfeit the artifacts. After the incident, queries for Hobby Lobby artifacts spiked 19x higher than Hobby Lobby coupons, and people also searched for “Hobby Lobby smuggling,” “Hobby Lobby cuneiform” and “Hobby Lobby fined.”

Swinging rackets and swatting ants

People were buggin’ out at Wimbledon this week when hundreds of amorous flying ants swarmed the courts. Love was in the air for the male ants, who swarmed and followed the queen ant as she set off to create a new nest. People in the U.K. were searching the most about the flying ants, but worldwide, search interest spiked 400 percent higher than search interest in termites. People are curious about, “How to get rid of flying ants?” “How to treat flying ant bites?” and “When do flying ants mate?”

Would you like some coffee with dessert?

We’ve been dunking our Oreos in milk for years, and now Dunkin’ Donuts and Oreo have come together to create a new snack—classic chocolate Oreo cookies on the outside, with mocha-flavored creme on the inside. Sweet tooths and caffeine-fiends are searching for “Dunkin Donuts Oreo review” and “Dunkin Donuts Oreo near me,” and they may be more interested in sweet snacks than sweet drinks. Search interest in Oreo Mocha was over 300 percent higher than Mocha Frap.

Exploring virtual worlds with WebVR and Matterport

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 16:00:00 +0000

Editor’s Note: When you build with WebVR, anyone can explore VR experiences with Chrome and Daydream View. Ashish Agrawal is the head of new initiatives and virtual reality at Matterport. In this post, he explains why WebVR was a great tool for Matterport and how the team added WebVR support to their platform.

Matterport tours combines 360º panoramas with a unique Dollhouse View (3D data) to give users a complete view of a space.

Individual 360º photos are great for a quick preview of what a place looks like, but with a Matterport Space, you really feel like you’re actually there. Our virtual tours combine many 360º panoramas along with 3D data to create an immersive, interactive experience.

By combining our 3D camera hardware with custom vision processing in the cloud, we’ve built a platform to create virtual environments from real places. Thousands of people have used our technology to digitize more than 450,000 real-world places into 3D experiences: celebrity homes, museums, canyons, iconic architecture and much more.

While you can access Matterport Spaces through a web browser on desktop or mobile, exploring them in virtual reality takes an additional step. Previously, you had to download the Matterport VR app from the App Store, Oculus Store, or Google Play and switch to the app whenever you wanted to go into VR. Now with Matterport’s implementation of WebVR, no external app download is required—everything you need is right in the Chrome web browser. You can go to a mobile website that has a Matterport Space embedded on it, tap the VR button, put the phone into your Daydream View headset, and you’re ready to explore.

Matterport was one of the first companies to partner with Google to bring VR to Chrome. We started integrating our product with the WebVR API while it was still in beta. We took this early step because we really believe in WebVR as a future platform, and we wanted to be there right when it launched.

Let’s dig a little deeper on how we implemented it. Because our WebGL-based player works on desktop and mobile platforms, you could already explore Matterport Spaces through a browser. We wanted to ensure that we retained this optimal performance with added WebVR support. However, a full optimization, including all the features we’ve added to our WebGL-based player in the last few years, would have taken time. So in the true spirit of keeping it simple, we made a version of the player with the WebVR Boilerplate and a stripped down version of our loading and rendering code, and we optimized everything for performance.

Here are a few of the things we did to optimize performance in VR:

To shorten load time, we preload the WebVR version immediately after the user invokes the player rather than after the hand controller calibration.
For the initial launch, we removed all the features included in our normal desktop/mobile version.
We render only what’s necessary and nothing more.
We profile on the actual target device, not on a developer’s computer.

To learn more, read our in-depth case study.

Now when you enter WebVR, we switch to the stripped-down WebVR-based version of the player. And when you exit, we switch back to our normal WebGL-based player. You don’t even notice the change.

‘Hawaii Oceanside Villa’ in WebVR. The white line is the ray-tracing from the controller. Blue circles are locations the user can teleport to.

There’s more to virtual reality than gaming, and we here at Matterport are committed to making it simple to create, discover, and share great VR content. WebVR is helping us accomplish these goals by making it even easier for our users to explore. Check it out for yourself by visiting the Hawaii Oceanside Villa. Just tap the VR button in the corner and pop it into a Daydream View. It’s the next best thing to being there.

Manage access to third-party apps with new G Suite security controls

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 17:00:00 +0000

Protecting your organization’s most sensitive data and assets is a constant challenge. G Suite helps protect your data in a number of ways: thwarting attackers with advanced phishing detection through machine learning, mandating strong authentication with security key enforcement and preventing data leakage through tools such as DLP.

Today, we're adding another security feature that improves data access control and enhances phishing prevention—OAuth apps whitelisting, giving your organization added visibility and control into how third-party applications are using your data.

New third-party application access controls

OAuth apps whitelisting helps keep your data safe by letting admins specifically select which third-party apps are allowed to access users’ G Suite data. Once an app is part of a whitelist, users can choose to grant authorized access to their G Suite apps data. This prevents malicious apps from tricking users into accidentally granting access to their corporate data.

With these new security controls, an admin can:

1. Get fine-grained visibility into the third-party apps that are accessing G Suite data.

G Suite Admin console

2. Allow access to only trusted and vetted third-party OAuth apps.

3. Guard OAuth access to core G Suite apps data by preventing unauthorized app installs, thus limiting the problems caused by shadow IT.

Once the OAuth whitelisting settings are in place, access to third-party apps is enforced based on the policy set by admins, and employees are automatically protected against unauthorized apps.

Enable OAuth Apps Whitelisting for your domain

This feature is being rolled out in phases and will be made available within the Admin console in next few days. Check out instructions on how to get started here. And if you’re interested in learning more about how your business can collaborate, store and communicate securely in G Suite, visit the G Suite Security page.

Blocks: Easily Create 3D Objects in VR

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 16:00:00 +0000

Today, it takes complex software and a specific skillset to create compelling VR and AR experiences. That software also requires building 3D objects on a 2D screen—something our brains aren’t wired to do. It occurred to us that creating the objects while in virtual reality could make this easier. So we developed Blocks, a VR app for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift that lets you easily create beautiful, 3D objects in no time.

Blocks is simple enough for anyone to use, even those without any prior modeling experience. It’s designed to feel more like playing with children’s blocks than working with traditional 3D modeling software. Starting with a simple set of shapes, a color palette, and an intuitive set of tools, you’re able to naturally and quickly create almost anything you can imagine, from a piece of watermelon to a whole forest scene.

When your creation is ready, you can export it as an OBJ to use in AR or VR apps you're developing. You can also share it to the web or generate an animated gif. Explore other people’s creations at vr.google.com/objects for inspiration or as a starting point for your own remix.

We’ve already seen amazing creations and use cases from 3D modelers, artists, developers and even people with no modeling experience at all—ranging from a robot that could star in a game, to a skyline meant as a backdrop for a Tilt Brush sketch, to some cacti made just for fun.

Get Blocks for free starting today on Oculus Store and Steam.

Making it easier for publishers to share fact check content

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 16:00:00 +0000

With the spread of misinformation online, it’s become increasingly important for news publishers to have a way of communicating to users what information is verified. In 2016, we launched the Fact Check label in Google News and Search to make it easier for people to find articles that fact check public information, ranging from claims to public statements to statistics. Today we’re making it even easier for publishers to help Google find and distribute accurate, fact-checked content across Google News and Search.

There are two ways publishers can signal their fact check content to Google. The first is by adding the Share the Facts widget, which is a plug-and-play way for publishers to indicate their fact checks. Today, we're expanding the Share the Facts widget to six new languages: German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesian, Hindi and Japanese (it’s already available in English, French and Italian). Share the Facts was created by Jigsaw and the Duke University Reporters’ Lab led by Bill Adair. Currently, organizations such as The Washington Post, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, La Stampa, Gossip Cop, AGI, The Ferret and Climate Feedback are using the Share the Facts widget.

In addition to new Share the Facts widget languages, soon you’ll see fact-checked content from these new partners:

Aos Fatos, a Brazilian fact-checking organization launched in 2015
Wiener Zeitung, an Austrian news organization founded in the 1700s
El Confidencial, a Spanish news organization founded in 2001

We hope to expand the widget soon to publishers in Indonesia, Japan and India.

The second way that publishers can get involved with Fact Check is by adding Schema.org ClaimReview code directly to article pages. Applying the code to fact check content means Google News and Search may apply the “fact check” label to your content.

Expanding the use of the Fact Check tag to more news organizations around the world is important to raising the visibility of quality journalism on Google. If you’d like to learn more about how to participate in the Fact Check tag, head over to our help center. You can get information on the Share the Facts widget on their website, or email the team at team@sharethefacts.org.

Building a map for everyone

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 15:00:00 +0000

Many of us take for granted simple things like walking through a doorway, taking the stairs to the next floor, or always having a comfortable seat at a restaurant table. But for tens of millions of people worldwide, those very things aren’t possible unless a place has a wheelchair accessible entrance, elevator or accessible seating. Today we’re introducing a new way to add accessibility details about places to Google Maps and Search.

For those like Luis Duran, who are passionate about helping people better navigate and explore his city––this tool is for you. When you want to share accessibility information about a place or add details about many places quickly, just open Google Maps on Android, open the main menu, and then tap “Your contributions.” Tap “Uncover missing info” and sort by “Accessibility” to find places around you that are missing this kind of information so you can start filling it in. You can also sort by different categories in case you have other information to add as well.

When you need to find out whether a place you’re planning to visit has any of these accessibility features, just find the place on Google Maps (desktop, mobile) or Search (mobile), open the business listing, tap the two-line description, and then scroll down to the accessibility section. From here, you can also add your accessibility and other local knowledge by tapping “Know what features this place has?”

The accessibility attributes you can choose from include: wheelchair-accessible entrances, wheelchair-accessible elevators, wheelchair-accessible seating, and wheelchair-accessible parking. Unsure of how to answer these questions? Here’s a handy guide. If you want to find other Google Maps users who are equally passionate about sharing their knowledge of the world, join the Local Guides program.

With the help of users, we’ve been able to add accessibility information to nearly 7 million places around the world. By sharing your local knowledge, you’re helping us get even closer to enabling everyone, everywhere to easily discover and explore the places that best suit their individual needs.

More than EUR 21 million in funding from Round 3 of the Digital News Initiative Fund

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 14:00:00 +0000

Two years ago, we established the Digital News Initiative (DNI), a partnership between Google and news publishers in Europe to support high-quality journalism through technology and innovation. As well as investing in product development, research and training, we also launched the DNI Innovation Fund, committing €150 million to innovation projects across the European news industry. Today, we’re announcing the recipients of our third round of funding, with 107 projects in 27 countries being offered funding worth €21,968,154 in total.

In this third round, we received more than 988 project submissions from 27 countries. Of the 107 projects funded today, 49 are prototypes (early stage projects requiring up to €50k of funding), 31 are medium-sized projects (requiring up to €300k of funding) and 27 are large projects (requiring up to €1m of funding).

What’s new in this round? First and foremost,there is growing interest in fact checking experiments, with 29 percent more applications in that field in comparison to the previous rounds. We’ve also seen a rise in projects including artificial intelligence (+23 percent more applications than last round), investigative reporting (+20 percent more) and immersive approaches through virtual and augmented reality (+20 percent more). Last but not least, this round was also about collaboration between organisations and across borders, with 47 percent of all the applications selected for funding having a collaborative dimension. Here’s a sample of some of the projects funded in this round:

[Prototype] The Open State Foundation - Netherlands

The Open State Foundation promotes transparency through the use of open data and innovative and creative applications. It will receive €50k to prototype a real-time database of what politicians say and do, drawn from a wide range of sources. The goal is to increase transparency and give journalists better access to political information, in particular on niche topics, local politics, backbenchers and alternative local parties.

[Medium] Publico.es - Spain

With its Transparent Journalism Tool (TJ Tool) and funding of €208,500 from the DNI Innovation Fund, Publico.es will offer an open source application that gives readers behind-the-scenes access citizens to the newspaper’s editorial process, so they can trace the newsgathering and editing work in a radically transparent way. It will also provide the publisher with data about the cost of producing each story, with a view to monetizing more content via formats like micropayments.

[Large] Deutsche Welle - Germany

Deutsche Welle reports in 30 languages and reaches more than 135 million listeners around the world. Doing so cost-effectively is a major challenge. But with €437,500 from the DNI Innovation Fund, the German public broadcaster is building “news.bridge - Bridge the Language Barrier for News” a platform that integrates and enhances a mix of off-the-shelf tools for automated transcription, translation, voiceover and summarising of video and audio content in virtually any language.

[Large] WikiTribune - UK

WikiTribune, a news platform launched by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has been awarded €385,000 to scale its operations. It seeks to counter the proliferation of low quality news sources with fact-based, transparently sourced articles that are written by professional journalists and verified and improved by a community of volunteers. Like Wikipedia, it’s free, and ad free, but funded by supporters.

Since February 2016, we’ve evaluated more than 3,000 applications, carried out 748 interviews with project leaders, and offered 359 recipients in 29 countries a total of €73m. To mark this milestone, we’re hosting our first DNI Innovation Fund event today in Amsterdam, where 24 project teams that received funding in Round 1 or 2 will share details of their work and results to date.

We’re also publishing the Fund’s first annual report, which outlines the early impact of the projects funded so far. From startups to large newsrooms, at national and local news outlets, DNI-funded projects are embracing the opportunities of big data, blockchain technology and machine learning, evolving and reinventing everything from subscriptions and fact checking to video production and reader engagement. These projects are helping shape the future of high-quality journalism—and some of them are already directly benefiting the European public today too.

Finally, we’re excited to announce that the application window for Round 4 of the DNI Innovation Fund will open in early September and will run for 30 days. Based on feedback from Round 3, we’ll be making a few changes to the application process, and we’ll be posting details to the digitalnewsinitiative.com website in the coming weeks.

How Virtru for G Suite lets you share sensitive business information and stay compliant

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 17:00:00 +0000

If you work in a regulated industry like healthcare, legal or finance, you might be familiar with regulations relating to HIPAA, CJIS and CFPB, and understand how important it is to protect sensitive data. In order to help you meet your obligations, you might need specific tools.

Gmail already offers world-class security protections like encryption through Transport Layer Security (TLS), but Virtru for G Suite is a simple way to help dually secure proprietary information included in your email communications. Virtru integrates client-side encryption directly into Gmail and G Suite, so you don’t have to worry about your emails or attachments falling into the wrong hands.

Using G Suite and Virtru, you can:

More securely send proprietary information via Gmail.
Create custom data loss prevention rules to detect and encrypt users’ sensitive information before it leaves your inbox.
Manage who can access what content and for how long (including third-parties), set expiration dates for emails and attachments and control forwarding on all messages.
Help your business meet regulatory requirements for email encryption, data security, privacy and data residency.

Why Premier Healthcare Services chose Virtru for G Suite

Premier Healthcare Services is a provider of skilled and unskilled in-home health services. The company uses Virtru for G Suite to securely send sensitive client information, and chose the encryption service because it was easy to install and intuitive to use for anyone familiar with Gmail.

Using Virtru for G Suite, Premier Health administrators can revoke access, manage forwarding and watermarking of attachments, and control access to documents and their expiration. Premier Health IT administrators can also set data loss prevention (DLP) rules to encrypt data to help employees remain HIPAA compliant, even when they share information with parties outside of their domain.

To stay on top of their data security, they can also monitor a variety of activities within the Virtru Admin Dashboard, like when and where emails are forwarded and when DLP rules are triggered.

To learn how your business can use Virtru for G Suite to protect sensitive information in Gmail, register to attend this free webinar on July 11, 2017 at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET.

Google Earth Live: Explore.org invites you to hang out with Alaskan Brown Bears

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Watch bears at Brooks Falls LIVE in Google Earth.

Spring comes quickly to Alaska. The snowpack melts, rivers swell with crisp water, delicate blue forget-me-nots bloom near the water’s edge, and brown bears emerge from a six or seven month hibernation in the Katmai National Park. On their annual migration from the ocean to their spawning grounds, sockeye salmon rush up the Brooks River until they meet the falls. Waiting for them there are the bears, who eagerly paw the air, striking for some fresh protein as they jump out of the water.

Beginning today, we’re bringing live content to Google Earth’s storytelling platform, Voyager. In a story by Explore.org you can journey into Katmai National Park — watch the hungry bears dine out at Brooks Falls or salmon darting towards the underwater livecam.

Experience five livecams in Google Earth Voyager.

Hear a personal perspective from the founder of Explore.org, Charles Annenberg, in which he shares his motivations for putting the Explore.org livecam network together, including the Katmai bear livecams.

Ready, Set, Explore!

Measuring the impact of our digital skills training

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 10:00:00 +0000

Because everyone deserves the benefits of the best digital technology to help them grow their business, but not everyone has the skills they need, Google launched an ambitious training programme across Europe. We've now reached over 3m Europeans, the EU recognised our contribution with the EU Digital Skills Award, and many of those who spent time on the training are seeing real impact.

Here's a typical example:

Giuseppe Di Pasquale’s is the owner of Le Zagare di Vendicari, an agriturismo business in Sicily. Giuseppe wanted to grow his business online but lacked the skills to make that happen. He took up training through Eccellenze in Digitale, our Italian digital skills platform, and has now applied what he learned to his business. He’s seen visits to his site increase by 40% and doubled his bookings.

Giuseppe’s story is just one of over 3 million European graduates of our programme. Our training aimed to help those who could put it to work immediately to make a difference - students, small business owners, people who were not in education, employment or other training - because we know that businesses with the right digital skills are growing faster, creating more jobs and exports and making an important contribution to their countries.

The EU identified a digital skills gap - 500,000 jobs needing skills that people don’t have. That’s why we launched the Digital Workshop programme

Over the last 2.5 years, we have worked with partners across Europe to achieve scale and impact, from the Ministry of Labour and other partners to train young unemployed people through Crescere in Digitale in Italy, partnering with Bertelsmann and Udacity to deliver 13,000 Android nanodegree scholarships, to developing new curriculum with The Good Things Foundation in the UK, and many dedicated Training partners who deliver the course content week after week. Training ran online and in hundreds of 'in person' sessions, and was tailored to the most pressing needs in each country, youth unemployment in Spain, digital exports in Germany, small businesses and youth in Italy.

We commissioned Ipsos to survey our training alumni to see how the training has helped them to grow their careers and businesses and found fantastic results.

Ipsos found that 79% of SMBs trained were more confident using digital tools to run their business. And half the students trained feel more confident in their professional future.

69% of small businesses trained changed at least one aspect of how they run their business online. The top five included optimising websites for mobile, for search and for social media, as well as using website analytics and developing better site content. In fact, 49% of SMEs felt the training helped them get ahead of the competition.

Sylwia Kempa raised her confidence and got a promotion as a result of the training she received through Internetowe Rewolucje, our Polish digital skills program. She was promoted to Content Marketing Manager at the agency where she worked - responsible for overseeing online campaigns and the agency’s expansion in local and international markets. “Taking part in Internetowe Rewolucje assured me that choosing to develop my digital skills was the best decision I could make,” says Sylwia. “I now have the qualification to turn my passion into a career.”

So people and businesses are improving their confidence, boosting their skills and making changes that grow careers and businesses faster and create new jobs. Over a half of SMEs noticed a positive change in business results within 14 weeks after the training. They’re winning new customers, increasing sales and profits. And vitally, particularly in countries where youth unemployment is a big issue, 18% of students trained found a job, started their own business or started to work freelance.

You can read more stories of European graduates of our training programs and how they are applying the skills they acquired to their careers. And if you want to raise your own skills, it’s not too late to get started - visit our Growth Engine for Digital Skills site today!

How Singapore’s QLIPP is taking tennis to the next level, globally

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 08:08:00 +0000

Editor’s note: This one's just in time for Wimbledon fans. As part of our series of interviews with entrepreneurs across Asia Pacific who use the internet to grow, we spoke with Dr. Donny Soh, co-founder and CEO of QLIPP, whose six-person startup developed a tennis sensor and mobile app to help players track and improve their performance in real time.

Tell us, what inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
I’ve always wanted to build my own products—products that people would find useful. That’s what drove my decision to leave my job as an engineer in another company.

I come from a very traditional family with a humble financial background, so my relatives were surprised when I told them about my plans to start my own business. I’ll admit being an entrepreneur does have its financial ups and downs, and one can’t expect success to come easily. I believe the key is to always press on regardless of whatever difficulties one faces.

What does a tennis performance sensor actually do and how does it help your users?
QLIPP fits on any racquet and measures every part of your stroke, analyzing the spin, speed and sweet spot accuracy of each shot. It syncs to your phone, so you can easily access the data to track your game and improve over time.

We currently have over 7,000 users, most of whom are in the Americas and Europe. While many tell us it’s the best tennis sensor they’ve ever used, we’ve also had negative feedback. We welcome all feedback and whenever we see negative comments, we use them as suggestions to improve. Over this past year, the feedback has helped us create a much better product.

What difference has the Internet made for your business?
We’re a small startup with limited resources, but we have big dreams to reach out to tennis players all over the world. Using Google Search ads and YouTube video ads, we’re able to bring our products to life and reach the right customers overseas—this has really magnified our potential customer base beyond those living in Singapore.

For example, we worked with Google to target the top 10 tennis-playing states in the United States, resulting in a ten-fold increase in web traffic and a 30% increase in sales in just three months! Since we adopted digital tools, 90% of our company’s sales now come from overseas.

What are some of the biggest challenges for a startup in the Internet age?
“How can you get your message out?” That’s one of the big challenges. There’s so much information out there. This is where Google’s tools help us a lot. We conduct user surveys using Google Forms.

We also use another tool known as Firebase, which helps people build better mobile apps and run them as a business. That’s how we’re able to identify the features users love and understand how they interact with the QLIPP app. We also use Google AdWords to drive both traffic, downloads, and sales too.

What’s next for your business?
We’re aggressively moving into other sports. I would say in two years, we would have to have a strong brand presence on at least three sports. Ultimately, we aim to be the go-to company for all sports wearables.

Who’s your Asian Internet hero?
Jack Ma. He has a great quote: “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.” What really inspires me is his persistence. But it doesn’t take much to find heroes all around us.

One of my early inspirations was my neighbor. She lost the use of her legs and had to move around in a mobility vehicle. Yet everyday, she brought her three kids to school and went to the market. In the evenings she would sell newspapers. Whenever I think of her, I’m inspired. No matter what situation I am in, there will always be a way forward.