Daily Archives: July 15, 2020

True to Googles penchant for just announcing things right after theyve leaked, the company has unveiled a grand redesign of Gmail for G Suite business users ahead of next weeks Google Cloud conference. The app isnt so much Gmail anymore as it is a unified app for all of Googles communication platforms: Gmail, Chat, Rooms, and Meet.

It will be available as an early access preview to G Suite customers this week and roll out to all G Suite customers later this year. As for the consumer version of Gmail, it seems as though little will change in the short term. Google says that it is actively thinking through how and when to bring this experience to the consumers who might want it.

Javier Soltero, who rolled in to Google last November with the mission of cleaning all of this up, characterizes it as an integrated workspace that should make it easier for workers to shift between these different modes of communication without feeling lost. So, for example, someday the chat box that already appears in a Google Doc or a Google Meet window wouldnt be a random extra box, but instead be integrated with your other chats or rooms.

Right now, however, the main change is simply putting these tools into the same app (on your phone) or window (on your desktop). It should be less bouncing around between browser tabs and apps. In one example, users on the desktop will be able to get a view with a chat in one column, a doc in another, and a Google Meet video chat hovering over both.

While there are some links in Gmail right now to these other products, this is more of a wholesale integration. Its the next logical step for Google after it already pushed Google Meet into Gmail this past May.

Putting all these different communication vectors into a single app has an additional benefit: setting a Do Not Disturb status across all of them as well as muting their notifications in a single place. You will also be able to search chats as easily as you can search Gmail. Google says that these integrations enable users to quickly join a video call from a chat, forward a chat message to your inbox, [or] create a task from a chat message.

Google is also trying to make certain collaboration tasks a little easier. The distinction between Chat and Rooms, for example, is a little fuzzy until you realize Rooms are meant to be more persistent spaces to discuss projects. Google is adding lightweight versions of other G Suite products to Rooms: each will have its own areas for assigned tasks and files.

Just as Microsoft is leveraging its Office 365 dominance to get its users to adopt Teams, Google is clearly leveraging Gmails popularity to push its own collaboration tools. For G Suite customers who want to fully live inside Googles ecosystem of tools, the new integrations could make it easier to organize their shared work. For everybody else, it might end up being a set of unwanted add-ons that are increasingly hard to avoid.

The changes pivot G Suite to being primarily about Google Docs, and they pivot Sheets to being primarily about Googles collaboration tools. G Suite has a bunch of products with overlapping features: Docs, Sheets, Chat, Meet, Tasks, Keep, Drive, and Gmail all have little pieces of each other integrated, but its all too easy to get lost.

The history of these products is that they were all built individually, Soltero says, and they all had a core set of opinions that were obvious to everyone: multi-user, user collaboration, etc. ... They all had the same set of shared ideas but they were not necessarily driving toward a shared end goal.

That goal is now much clearer: make G Suites communication apps the central point and organizing principle for all those other products. Outlooks tabs are mail, search / files, and calendar. For Gmail, all the tabs are about communication tools. Its a move thats clearly directed at heading off both Microsoft Teams and Slack. Googles intent is to be at the forefront of a new definition of what a productivity suite is but those other companies are essentially doing the same thing.

See the original post here:

Gmail is integrating Google Chat, Rooms, and Meet to take on Microsoft and Slack - The Verge

07/15 Update below. This post was originally published on July 12

While Chrome has had a rocky recent run, an ambitious rival has been quick to capitalize. But now Google has given potential defectors a great reason to stick with its browser.

Google Chrome is about to get a lot faster and more efficient

Having attained internal Google documents TheWindowsClub, has revealed that Chrome is going to become dramatically more power efficient. And it looks set to result in hours of additional battery life for laptop and smartphone users.

07/14 Update: Google has announced it will be making further battery saving improvements to the Chrome browser. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Max Christoff, director ofChromebrowser engineering, revealed that Google is now actively focused on making the browser less power hungry with three new initiatives. These are tab throttling (detailed below) which he states will have a "dramatic impact on battery and performance", reducing the power drain of ads and new optimization changes to the core of the browser. Interestingly, Christoff spoke to the WSJ as part of a highly critical editorial from the site which attacked the performance of the browser in comparison to rivals - something I have discussed recently. If Chrome is to retain its overwhelming lead in the browser market, Google now needs to follow through on these initiatives.

07/15 Update: worrying news for Chrome users because Google has announced a U-turn over its support for 'Segment Heap, a potentially major breakthrough for memory consumption by Chromium browsers in Windows 10. "Disable the segment heap by default and add a GN flag to control it," the company commented. "Theres some concern that the cost of the Segment heap doesnt justify its cost (see crbug.com/1102281). This CL disable it by default and put this feature behind a GN flag to let us keep experimenting with it." Segment Heap creator Microsoft had tried to defend the technology, saying "More often its increased memory usage for reduced CPU usage. In this case its increased CPU usage for dramatically reduced memory usage" but Google hasn't bought into the trade-off. This is bad news for millions of Chrome users on Windows 10 because it was seen as the best way for Chrome to reduce its infamous RAM consumption on the platform. Google has not given up on Segment Heap completely, but it looks like we will all be waiting a lot longer than expected for Chrome to become more memory efficient on Windows 10.

TheWindowsClub explains that Google will achieve this by throttling the use of non-essential Javascript tasks in background tabs. These tasks include things like reporting logs, ad interactions, monitoring scroll position and more and Google has discovered they are a major source of battery drain. In a test attained by TheWindowsClub, Google limited Javascript checks to once per minute and opened 36 tabs in the background. The result was a 28% boost to battery life resulting in another two hours of usage (graph below).

Google Chrome testing shows dramatically improved battery life with the new Javascript changes

In a second test, Google also found that even when running an intensive process in a foreground tab (in this case YouTube videos), limiting Javascript checks in background tabs still resulted in a 13% battery increase. Moreover, this isnt something for the far flung future. TheWindowsClub found this feature is already available to test thanks to a hidden setting in Chrome Canary. Heres how Chrome Canary users can enable it now:

While Chromium based browsers will receive the same functionality, the key for Google is to keep Chrome itself as lean as possible, given the rise of more privacy focused and ad hostile Chromium browsers like Brave and Vivaldi.

Interestingly. Microsoft recently gave Chrome a helping hand here with its new Segment Heap memory optimization software, introduced in the Windows 10 May 2020 update. Early tests show this could reduce Chromes infamous memory consumption by up to a third. In return, Google has piled the pressure on Windows by announcing its ambitious plan to run Windows programs (including Office) natively on Chrome OS.

The browser wars are back.

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Google Just Gave Millions Of Users A Reason To Keep Chrome - Forbes

Google has become the latest high-profile firm to back Indias Reliance Jio Platforms. The search giant is investing $4.5 billion for a 7.73% stake in the top Indian telecom network, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Wednesday.

The investment today from Google is one of the rare instances when the Android-maker has joined its global rival Facebook in backing a firm. Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, which has amassed more than 400 million subscribers in less than four years of its existence, in April this year for a 9.99% stake in it. Facebook is the largest minority stakeholder in Jio Platforms.

Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries (Indias most valued firm) has raised about $20.2 billion in the past four months from 13 investors by selling about 33% stake in the firm. (For some context, the entire Indian startup ecosystem raised $14.5 billion last year.)

Googles new investment gives Jio Platforms an equity valuation of $58 billion the same valuation implied by Facebook. Other investors, including General Atlantic, Silver Lake, Qualcomm, Intel and Vista, have paid a 12.5% premium for their stake in Jio Platforms.

As part of Wednesdays strategic announcement, Google and Reliance Jio Platforms will work on a customized-version of Android operating system to develop low-cost, entry-level smartphones to serve the next hundreds of millions of users, said Ambani. These phones will support Google Play and future wireless standard 5G, he said.

Getting technology into the hands of more people is a big part of Googles mission, said Sundar Pichai, chief executive at Google, via a video chat on Wednesday. Together we are excited to rethink, from the ground up, how millions of users in India can become owners of smartphones. This effort will unlock new opportunities, further power the vibrant ecosystem of applications and push innovation to drive growth for the new Indian economy, he said.

The new deal further illustrates the opportunities foreign investors see in Jio Platforms that has upended the telecommunications market in India with cut-rate voice calls and mobile data tariffs. This is not the first time Jio Platforms has expressed interest in mobile operating system or handsets. The company has shipped at least 40 million JioPhone powered by KaiOS. These smart feature phones support a handful of apps, including Facebooks WhatsApp. Google is an investor in KaiOS eponymous developer.

Analysts at Bernstein said last month that they expect Jio Platforms which competes with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, a joint venture between British giant Vodafone and Indian tycoon Kumar Mangalam Birlas Aditya Birla Group, in India to reach 500 million customers by 2023, and control half of the market by 2025.

Google, which like Facebook reaches nearly every online user in India, announced a new fund on Monday through which it said it plans to invest $10 billion in Asias third largest economy over the next five to seven years. Its investment in Jio Platforms today is the first investment from the Google For India Digitization Fund.

Jio Platforms also operates a range of digital services, including a music streaming player and a video conferencing app. On Wednesday, Jio Platforms unveiled its newest offering: the Jio Glass.

Jio Platforms executives said Jio Glass wearers will be able to perform video calls and access more than two dozen apps. They did not disclose when Jio Platforms plans to make this new gadget available to consumers and what it would cost. Jio Platforms has unveiled devices in the past that sometimes take years to reach consumers and sometimes they are quietly abandoned. Jio unveiled a similar pair of spectacles last year.

Image Credits: Jio Platforms via YouTube

Some investors have told TechCrunch in recent months that Reliance Jio Platforms owner Indias richest man, Mukesh Ambani and his closeness to the ruling political party in India are also crucial to why the digital unit of Reliance Industries is so attractive to many.

They believe that buying a stake in Jio Platforms would lower the regulatory burden they and their portfolio firms currently face in India. The investors requested anonymity as they did not wish to talk about the political tie-ups publicly.

A person familiar with the matter at one of the 13 firms that has backed Reliance Jio Platforms said that the Indian firm is also enticing as globally companies are trying to cut down their reliance and exposure on China.

India, and the U.S., in recent months have taken actions to limit their reliance on Chinese firms. New Delhi last month banned 59 apps and services including TikTok that are developed by Chinese firms. Reliance Jio Platforms has interestingly yet to raise capital from any Chinese investor.

Jio, for its part, has made an extraordinary contribution to Indias technological progress over the past decade. Its investments to expand telecommunications infrastructure, low-cost phones and affordable internet have changed the way its hundreds of millions of subscribers find news and information, communicate with one another, use services and run businesses. Today, Jio is increasing its focus on the development of areas like digital services, education, healthcare and entertainment that can support economic growth and social inclusion at a critical time in the countrys history, said Pichai.

Reliance Industries, whose core businesses are in petrochemicals, has said in recent months that it plans to list Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail, another subsidiary of the firm, within five years. Its a big week for firms in India. On Tuesday, Walmart led a $1.2 billion financing round in Flipkartto increase its majority stake in the 13-year-old Indian e-commerce firm.

Link:

Google invests $4.5 billion in Indias Reliance Jio Platforms - TechCrunch

Presentations and classes without gatecrashers are promised with the latest Google Meet upgrade.

Google Meet has just announced an update which will mean that Zoombombing is history. Its been confirmed that it will be rolled out to G Suite for Education customers and was announced in the G Suite Updates blog and picked up by Damien Wilde at 9to5Google.

Zoombombing, youll know, is that phenomenon which first appeared early in the Covid-19 pandemic and wreaked havoc for a while. It happened because Zoom, in the early days at least, had a somewhat relaxed relationship with security. This meant that strangers with frankly very little information, were able to gatecrash video calls. The results were that pranksters or those with more sinister intent could burst into private meetings. Though some of these crashes were surprising and comical, others were more serious and had ramifications such as causing a meeting to end or delivering inappropriate content to schoolchildren, say.

Its significant that Google has focused todays announcement on its education users, since lessons were definitely heavily impacted by Zoombombing.

More features are coming to Google Meet as it tries to take on Zoom and Teams.

However, the fact that its coming to education customers and has been announced on the education blog does not indicate it will stay only there. Plenty of other Google Meet features which were announced first for education, arrived for other users soon after.

Google points out that anonymous users can be very disruptive, being distracting or worse by sharing content, making noise and so on.

So this upgrade uses a simple mechanism which will make a big difference. Heres how Google described the change:

To increase the privacy of education meetings in Google Meet, anonymous users (users not signed into a Google account) can no longer join meetings organized by anyone with a G Suite for Education or G Suite Enterprise for Education license. This prevents participants from sharing a link publicly to encourage anonymous users to request access.

If youre not invited, youre not coming in. The new security settings will be put in place by default, which means there are no extra things for an administrator to do, though they can be removed if a customer contacts G Suite Support.

The new feature is being rolled out gradually, over the next 15 days, beginning from July 13, 2020. Initially its just for G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers, but check back for more details when every Google Meet customer is protected from unwelcome gatecrashing.

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Excerpt from:

Google Meet Upgrade Aims To Make Zoombombing A Thing Of The Past - Forbes

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the coronavirus pandemic has reaffirmed what the technology giant has believed since its early days: Employees dont have to be at their desks to get work done, and work is not defined by a physical place.

It can happen anywhere, Pichai said, noting that, in a recent survey of U.S. chief financial officers, most said the coronavirus will have a lasting impact on improving their work flexibility.

As we adapt to new models of working, it will be important to create moments for serendipitous encounters, Pichai said during the keynote of Google Cloud Next 20: OnAir, a nine-week digital event that started today in lieu of the cloud providers annual in-person Next conference that was cancelled due to the pandemic.

Knowing that some of the best innovations start from a conversation over lunch or while making coffee in the break room, as work becomes more digital collaborative and flexible, customers will turn to the cloud to innovate for future growth and to navigate economic shifts, he said. They'll need a technology partner who can deliver security, flexibility and solutions. We are tried and tested for this moment.

Google Clouds growth reflects that, according to Pichai. Its revenue increased more than 50 percent year-over-year to $2.77 billion in the first quarter that ended March 31, giving it an annual revenue run rate that exceeds $11 billion.

Additional work flexibility is one of three technology trends that Pichai sees emerging and having a lasting effect as economies start to reopen amid the coronavirus. The others are the long-term acceleration of businesses moving to digital services, and work of the future also becoming even more collaborative.

As economies start to reopen, it's clear we are returning to a world much different than the one we left, Pichai said.

The future of work will be more digital, and Google Cloud already is seeing the long-term acceleration of businesses moving to digital services, including increased online work, education, medicine, shopping and entertainment, Pichai said.

These changes will be significant and lasting, he said. More than 75 percent of companies say they plan to accelerate their digital transformations. That means more investments in cloud. Recent estimates show public cloud penetration increasing to 20 percent by 2022.

The future of work also will become more collaborative, and companies are now investing to keep their teams connected and create community virtually.

As large teams and organizations know, collaboration is key to success, Pichai said. Using tools like cloud productivity suites and video conferencing, we've all been able to successfully transition to work from home. But we are still working from a foundation that was made around conference tables just a few months ago. The next phase will be more unstructured, requiring us all to invest in creative solutions and evolve our tools to facilitate collaboration.

Like its partners and customers, Google has been trying to figure out how to be helpful amid these changing times, Pichai said.

The pandemic, combined with the racial justice moment happening all around us, has made us look at the world with new eyes, he said. It's been an opportunity to challenge our established ways of working and chart new paths. This is something we've experienced over the last few months at Google.

While building products across distributed teams wasnt new for Google, doing it during a pandemic, with teams working from home, brought additional challenges, allowing Google to put its own tools to the test and make good use of its infrastructure investment, according to Pichai.

In the process, we gain deeper insights into what tools will be helpful to others -- from building exposure notification technology and helping public health authorities monitor and allocate critical resources, to deploying Chromebooks to underserved populations to help bridge the digital divide, to making our Meet video conferencing available to everyone, he said. I'm proud of how Google and Google Cloud have stepped up in these moments. I'm equally proud of how our customers have met the moment, and I'm honored that he could assist.

Google Cloud helped customers including Colgate, Twitter and Netflix make the work-from-home transition easier for their thousands of employees; retailers such as Lowe's and Target scale to meet increased demand; and hospital systems such as HCL Healthcare take better care of patients, according to Pichai. It also helped millions of children -- from Italy to Indonesia to Indiana -- learn online, and assisted governments delivering a range of social services, from processing millions of unemployment inquiries in Illinois and New York, to keeping the judicial system running in Peru, he said.

The world may be changing, but our commitment to helping you innovate for the future is stronger than ever, Pichai said.

Read more from the original source:

Google's Sundar Pichai: 'The Future Of Work Will Be More Digital' - CRN: Technology news for channel partners and solution providers