Category Archives: Google

Googles Economic Impact Report for Utah also shows that the company provided $5.6 million in free advertising to Utah nonprofits

(Google) Cameron and Jacquelyn Muir, founders of The Baby Cubby in American Fork, have used Google tools to help them achieve a 300% increase in online sales since 2019.

| May 10, 2022, 12:42 p.m.

| Updated: 6:04 p.m.

A report released in April shows Google provided $9.67 billion of economic activity in Utah during 2021.

Googles Economic Impact Report for Utah shows that more than 192,000 Utah businesses received requests for directions, phone calls, bookings, reviews and other direct connections to their customers through Google.

Additionally, it shows that Google provided $5.6 million in free advertising to Utah nonprofits through the Google Ad Grants program.

The company has had Google Fiber offices in Provo and Salt Lake City for over five years, according to a news release.

Samantha Heyrich, a public affairs spokesperson for Google, said the Economic Impact Report for Utah was calculated by estimating the economic activity provided to businesses, publishers, nonprofits, creators and developers by Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, Google Cloud and Google advertising.

Our estimate is conservative in this regard and we dont include the economic impact of our employees in the state or other Google products, she said.

Googles full methodology report is available at bit.ly/3vHCrlx.

Heyrich also said Googles economic impact varies depending on the state and how businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators and developers are using Google tools.

For instance, Google provided $1.1 billion in economic activity to Idaho, $10.06 billion to Arizona, $9.23 billion to Colorado and $5.4 billion to Nevada.

The U.S. Impact Report also shows that Google invested over $7 billion nationally into data centers and offices, and donated $263 million to local nonprofits.

Economic impact reports for other states are available at bit.ly/3scfViA.

Googles Economic Impact Report for Utah highlighted several local businesses who have benefitted from using Google tools, including The Baby Cubby in American Fork.

Founders Cameron and Jacquelyn Muir began the business in 2013 when they felt unsatisfied with their experience shopping for their kids.

Their brick-and-mortar store (586 N. 900 W., American Fork) plus their e-commerce site aims to make baby gear decisions and shopping easier.

With help from tools like Google Ads and a Google Business Profile, theyve achieved a 300% increase in online sales since 2019.

The Muirs have also created over 500 YouTube videos that offer product reviews and how-to guides for parents.

Cameron said they use a variety of Google tools in their business, from Google Analytics to Google Docs and Sheets.

Jacquelyn added that Google tools are extremely seamless and easy to use.

Cameron said the unique value in The Baby Cubby is found in creating a shopping experience that mirrors the huge life transitions parents go through when they have a child.

With so many baby products out there, choosing which ones to buy can be overwhelming, he said. Thats why The Baby Cubby tries to be a resource for parents navigating the baby products market for the first time.

Ive talked to lots of moms who have legitimately had panic attacks when they started shopping for their kids, Cameron said. So we want to create that experience where instead of being discouraged or overwhelmed, parents can be excited about that step in their lives.

Google has been a big part of marketing that type of experience to their customers, Jacuelyn said.

For instance, their YouTube channel, which theyve been running for about five years, has over 23,000 subscribers and gets 185,000 views a month. The channel has a total of over 11 million views.

Jacquelyn also gave some advice to aspiring business owners: make sure your heart is in what youre doing.

Make sure youre passionate about it, she said. If your main goal is to make a quick buck here or there, then youre not going to find joy in what youre doing.

Editors note This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

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Google provided $9.67 billion of economic activity in Utah during 2021 - Salt Lake Tribune

One thing that attracts many entrepreneurial-minded spirits to the SEO industry is its dynamic design.

Strategies are changing continuously based on each clients focus and industry, preventing proverbial cookie-cutter practices.

This is especially true when approaching keyword research.

There are many keyword research tools available, and each requires a unique creative focus to produce the best search opportunities.

For this article, Ill home in on one tool from the internet Mothership that sometimes gets sidelined for SEO due to its ad-based focus: Google Keyword Planner.

Here, youll find nine Keyword Planner research tips that can help you target more profitable terms in organic and paid campaigns.

First and foremost, you want to know which products, services, and keywords deliver the most profit.

With this information, you can create a list of seed keywords to launch your first plan of attack.

Generally, I focus on quality over quantity, which typically equates to low volume over high volume.

For example, one of our clients is an environmental consulting company, so getting someone to convert an organic piece of content for an SWPPP Plan could yield that company thousands of dollars in one sale.

As you can see, search competition for many of these keywords is low, and volumes are rising for many relevant keywords in that space.

Due to increasing environmental concerns, keywords like these will continue to grow and make money for whoever captures their organic share.

Bonus Tip: If youre looking for more accurate keyword volumes, use another keyword planner like Semrush or create a high bid using the max CPC on a keyword to better understand its total volume and monthly impressions.

Next, compile a list of keywords for each campaign and sort by intent.

Unfortunately, Googles Keyword Planner doesnt provide any filters for intent, such as commercial, informative, or navigational intent.

However, we can glean commercial intent from other keyword phrases by filtering keywords by Top of Page Bid in ascending or descending order.

For example, pages with higher Top of Page Bids typically have highly competitive commercial intent and imply relatively good conversion rates if advertisers are willing to bid so highly on these terms.

LinkedIn content marketing is a highly sought-after term with lots of competition based on this research.

However, you can flip this list in ascending order to discover keyword terms with greater informational intent.

Using our previous example of SWPPP Plans, we find informational keywords with low bids in ascending order.

Bonus Tip: Using phrases like buy, coupon, sale, etc., will help you separate keywords by commercial intent.

On the other hand, terms like best practices, top, and question phrases will signify informational intent.

While several competitive research tools are available, including Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic, etc., you can conduct competitive keyword research right in Googles Keyword Planner.

In fact, right when you log onto Keyword Planner, they offer options to search for keywords using a seed keyword or a competitor website.

Google will provide a list of all keywords this website ranks for, and you can filter out keywords by brand name to get a good list of keywords a website is ranking for.

Bonus Tip: Click Organic Average Position in Custom Columns to see where this website ranks for specific keywords to generate ideas for success.

You may notice that Google Keywords Planner provides a keyword overview of your competitors website and page-specific content in the image above.

If you were searching for topics and keywords for top or mid-funnel content that drives traffic to your website, you could use any of your favorite competitor research tools to see which pages are driving traffic to a website.

Of course, you could also manually input any webpage that your competitor outranks you for and discover other keyword ideas and variations.

For example, using Semrush, I found that this article on alternative search engines pulls in the highest annual traffic for Search Engine Journal.

I can see the most relevant keywords driving traffic to that web page by copying and pasting the link in Keyword Planner.

You could even bid on these keywords if youre so inclined, whether youre marketing an alternative search engine or an awesome piece of content.

Bonus Tip: Conducting page-by-page keyword research, you can discover other keyword variations Google ranks that page for that you otherwise would not have inputted in your content.

Informative content answers as many user questions as possible.

This provides several advantages for your SEO and content strategy, including:

Fortunately, Googles Keyword Planner provides easy filters to input question phrases, such as what, when, where, why, and how to help create stellar content that satisfies user intent and educates users.

Bonus Tip: AnswerthePublic is a free tool that provides common user questions in an easily visualized format to help you answer as many questions as possible.

In addition, Googles answer box and commonly searched results at the bottom provide good indicators of what questions users are researching.

Another great feature of Googles Keyword Planner is the ability to filter ads and impression shares to specific locations.

Google even lets you filter keyword search volumes down to the city level.

In addition, you can access search volume data by state or region to find out where most of your traffic and customers originate in Googles Forecast tab.

For example, below, I looked up the search volume for SWPPP plans.

Using this data, you could create location-specific landing pages for SWPPP plans for California, Texas, Florida, etc.

Bonus Tip: Filtering searches by location also provides a good baseline for the amount of reach local ads on Facebook and other networks will garner.

For example, if most searches are regionally specific, this could help you avoid wasteful spending across all ad platforms.

In addition to location and intent, optimizing web pages for different devices is also critical.

I created an ad campaign targeting roof repair in the Dallas metro area in the example below.

Not so surprisingly, most of these searches occur on mobile devices and are most likely done as near me searches.

Based on this evidence, optimizing landing pages for mobile devices, inserting a click-to-call CTA, curating a strong brand presence on local directories, and optimizing the Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) with clear contact information will net the most conversions for most ad campaigns.

Bonus Tip: Understanding which device users search for products allows you to target users on those devices with retargeting ad-based campaigns across social media and other websites.

Advertisers mostly use this strategy, but it provides a rich information resource for SEOs and content marketers.

By searching for keywords in Grouped View, instead of Keyword View, Google organizes keywords directly for you by category.

For example, by using the seed phrase homemade kombucha and best kombucha, you can see the number of keywords and topic ideas generated with two simple keywords.

By grouping these keywords by category, you could create page-specific content for each group, utilizing each keyword in the group to help optimize your content.

Bonus Tip: If you notice up top, Google provides relevant keyword and topic ideas to expand your marketing efforts further.

Finally, one converting strategy for advertisers is if youve run out of keyword ideas, consider bidding on the branded keywords and redirecting user searches to your website.

You can use this strategy genuinely if you sell brand-name products on your website, such as Nike shoes, if you sell apparel, or if you want to gain more clicks for your own branded keywords.

There are several advantages to bidding on branded keywords, including:

Bonus Tip: You could also bid on competitors keywords to be competitive. While this strategy is not foolproof, sometimes its a good way to steal away traffic and clicks from competitors.

However, this plan could always backfire, and your competitor could do the same to you.

Googles Keyword Planner is free to use with a Google Ads account and provides users with most of the tools needed to start keyword research and begin a multi-faceted digital campaign.

Furthermore, what Keyword Planner lacks in functionality can be made up for in third-party tools and a bit of creativity.

More resources:

Featured Image: Nikolay Klimenko/Shutterstock

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9 Creative Ways To Use Google's Keyword Planner Tool - Search Engine Journal

Thomas Kurian, chief executive officer of cloud services at Google LLC, speaks during the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco on April 9, 2019.

Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google's cloud unit is forming a team to build services for developers running blockchain applications as the company tries to capitalize on the surging popularity of crypto and related projects.

Amit Zavery, a vice president at Google Cloud, told employees in an email Friday that the idea is to make the Google Cloud Platform the first choice for developers in the field.

"While the world is still early in its embrace of Web3, it is a market that is already demonstrating tremendous potential with many customers asking us to increase our support for Web3 and Crypto related technologies," he wrote.

Pioneers of Web3 have created a set of decentralized and peer-to-peer systems that they hope will form the next generation of the internet. It's a philosophy that challenges the current state of the web, controlled by massive corporations like Amazon, Google and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.

Google wants to offer back-end services to developers interested in composing their own Web3 software as the company battles for market share in cloud infrastructure against Alibaba, Amazon and Microsoft.

"We're not trying to be part of that cryptocurrency wave directly," Zavery told CNBC in an interview. "We're providing technologies for companies to use and take advantage of the distributed nature of Web3 in their current businesses and enterprises."

Zavery, a former Oracle executive, joined Google's cloud group in 2019, months after Google tapped Thomas Kurian, Oracle's president of product development, to be the next head of its cloud unit.

In building an in-house team for Web3 tools, Google is taking its next step to prove its commitment to the market. In January, Google's cloud unit revealed plans for a Digital Assets Team to work with customers, following the emerging growth of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. The company said it was looking at how customers could make payments with cryptocurrencies.

Going forward, Google could devise a system other companies could employ to make blockchain data easy for people to explore, while simplifying the process of building and running blockchain nodes for validating and recording transactions, Zavery said. He added that Google's tools can work in other computing environments, such as Amazon Web Services.

Enthusiasm around bitcoin, the most established cryptocurrency, has tapered off this year as investors have turned away from risky assets. As of late Thursday, bitcoin was down 21% so far in 2022, underperforming the S&P 500, which has dropped about 13%.

But blockchain applications continue to find their way into the mainstream and have increasing relevance in industries such as financial services and retail, said Zavery.

Nike CEO John Donahoe told analysts on a conference call in March that the shoe company plans to build Web3 products and experiences. Warner Music Group is also interested.

"From collectibles to music royalties, Web3 represents an exciting future for the music industry that will help our artists reach millions upon millions of new fans in interesting and innovative ways," CEO Steve Cooper said on the company's first-quarter earnings call.

James Tromans, a former Citigroup executive who arrived at Google in 2019, will lead the product and engineering group and report to Zavery. The team will bring together employees who have been peripherally involved in Web3 internally and on their own, Zavery said.

Google trails Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing, but the business is growing faster than its core advertising unit. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said last week that the fastest growth in head count is inside the cloud division.

WATCH: Crypto-based web3 remains in 'dial-up' phase, says Unstoppable Domains' Sandy Carter

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Google's cloud group forms Web3 team to capitalize on booming popularity of crypto - CNBC

Google Maps has become a fixture of 21st-century lifebut typically, one doesnt use it to plan transcontinental journeys. But in 2010, when Yu-Wen Wu couldnt afford the airfare from Boston to Taipei to visit her sick grandmother, she typed in the addresses to their respective homes and asked for walking directions.

It actually gave me instructions for 155 days to Taipei City, Wu told Artnet News.

It was an impossible tripthe directions included kayaking across the Pacific ocean for some three months, with a stop in Hawaii. It was also the beginning of an epic art project that would take Wu a decade, transforming the outlandish journey into a 20-foot long collage in the tradition of a Chinese landscape scroll, stored in a traditional wooden box.

Its a trip of longings in some ways, Wu said. Only in my mind have I followed these directions.

To transform a Google glitch into a work of art, Wu first printed out the directions, which she had saved as a PDF, on rice and mulberry paper. That proved a fortunate decision, as she was never able to get Google to suggest the fantastical journey again.

Yu-Wen Wu, Walking to Taipei (2021). Photo by Dan Watkins, courtesy of Praise Shadows Art Gallery, Boston.

It was gone within seconds, she said.

Wu cut each of the 2,052 steps of the directions into strips, and pasted them onto a 20-foot scroll. To fully experience the piece, the viewer has to be ready to stretch their legs, as each line stretches the full length of the artwork.

I wanted you the viewer to walk the distance if you were to read it, Wu said. I was thinking about it as a contemporary landscape and also a data structure.

Yu-Wen Wu, Walking to Taipei (2021). Photo by Dan Watkins, courtesy of Praise Shadows Art Gallery, Boston.

The work, titled Walking to Taipei (2021) and on view with Boston gallery and first-time Independent exhibitor Praise Shadows at the New York art fair, is priced at $50,000. The hope is to attract an institutional buyer for the piece, which includes a custom-built table on which to display the scroll, and a large panel of acrylic to keep the portion on display lying flat.

Fortunately, some months after her fateful Google Maps querymade on April 10, 2010, according to the PDFWu was able to visit her grandmother, who died not long after. But the image of a transcontinental journey made on foot, crossing the ocean in a solitary vessel, would stay with her for years to come, even as she struggled to complete the painstaking cutting and pasting that the project required.

Yu-Wen Wu, Intentions II, III ,IV (2022). Photo courtesy of Praise Shadows Art Gallery, Boston.

Its presented at the fair with a suite of sculptures and works on paper by Wu, including her series Intentions, chains ofBuddhist meditation beads made from bundles of gilded Taiwanese tea leaves wrapped with red thread, hanging from the ceiling to the floor. Other works on paper are embellished with gold leaf.

All of this is based on my immigrant story, said Wu. When I came, I thought the streets would be paved in gold. I was sevenwhat did I know?

But even if they were, it probably still wouldnt be possible to use them to walk back to Taipei.

Read more from the original source:

Yu-Wen Wu Asked Google How to Walk From Boston to Taipei. She Spent the Next 10 Years Turning the Directions Into an Incredible Artwork - artnet News

Before Google jumped on the boring bandwagon of numerical nomenclature for its annual Android releases, it stood out from the pack of three by giving its annual OS updates "sweet" names, such as Pie, KitKat, Oreo, etc.

The practice started in 2009 with the release of Android 1.5, or Android Cupcake. Since then, Google's Android releases have sported the names of popular sweetmeats, in alphabetical order. For the first few years, Google's release schedule was a mishmash, with new versions replete with new names releasing every few months. Eight major versions of Android were released in a 40-month period between April 2009 and July 2012 before settling into an annual pattern.

All that stopped in 2019 with the release of Android 10. Since then, Google has stuck to numbers for its yearly releases, but it appears someone at Google has a sweet tooth, as the practice of using dessert-based internal codenames for Android-in-development has continued. Android 10 was internally referred to as Quince Tart, Android 11 was "Red Velvet Cake", Android 12 had the codename of "Snow Cone", while Android 13, which will be unveiled tomorrow at the Google I/O conference at Mountain View in California, was nicknamed "Tiramisu".

Google has yet serve Android "Tiramisu" as it will no doubt be popularly referred to its customers, but reports suggest that the tech giant has already started cooking up the next, sweet version of its operating system. Or at least, someone at Google already has a name for it.

According to 9to5Google, an eagle-eyed observer has spotted the name "Upside Down Cake" in the codebase of Android 14 (or Android U, if you prefer). An upside down cake is exactly what it sounds like a cake baked upside down. Now, I can't bake to save my life, so I had to look up the method online. According to the all-knowing internet, an upside down cake is baked "in a single pan, with its toppings at the bottom of the pan. When removed from the oven, the finished upside-down preparation is flipped over and de-panned onto a serving plate, served 'right side up'."

Looks like a coder at Google not only has a sweet tooth, but also a sense of humour by reverting to numerical releases, Google flipped its naming scheme on its head.

Dessert-based Android releases till date

The release date of Android 13 "Tiramisu" is likely to be announced at Google I/O tomorrow and should be between August and October this year. As has been the case every year since the Pixel lineup made its debut in 2016, Google's own smartphones will be the first to get Android 13, followed by other manufacturers over the course of the next several months. Google has already released the list of eligible Pixel smartphones Pixel 4, 4 XL, 4a, 4a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 5a, Pixel 6, and Pixel 6 Pro.

Flagship smartphones released since 2021 by Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo and Vivo will get the latest Android iteration, whileChinese smartphone makers Xiaomi, its Redmi brand, and POCO too released a list of their smartphones that will be eligible for Android 13.

(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)

First Published:May 10, 2022, 03:45 PM IST

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Android Tiramisu yet to be served but the next version of Google OS already has a name - CNBCTV18

PHOTO:Greg Bulla on Unsplash

In case you haven't heard, a decision by the Austrian data protection authority, DSB, ruled that the use of Google Analytics in all circumstances violates the GDPR.

While many Universal Analytics (the previous generation of Google Analytics) users debated whether they should switch to the platforms newest iteration, Google Analytics 4, Google decided for them.

As of July 1st, 2023, UA properties will stop collecting data and historic data will be deleted six months later.

One might ask why everyones making a big deal about the transition to GA4. The biggest issues for UA users include:

Additionally, there is a big difference between GA4s and UAs interfaces, meaning a learning curve while teams adjust.

Google started talking about upcoming changes to GA in its Marketing Platform blog back in Oct. 2020, referring specifically to the privacy issues that eventually forced the issue. In short, a violation of the European GDPR laws forced Google to make changes sooner rather than later.

Here is what they said in a blog post about GA4:

Because the technology landscape continues to evolve, the new Analytics is designed to adapt to a future with or without cookies or identifiers. It uses a flexible approach to measurement, and in the future, will include modeling to fill in the gaps where the data may be incomplete. Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM Buying, Analytics and Measurement, Google Ads.

Srinivasan added that with major shifts in consumer behavior and privacy-driven changes to longtime industry standards, current approaches to analytics arent keeping pace. [GA4 is] privacy-centric by design, so you can rely on Analytics even as industry changescreate gaps in your data.

While these changes were already in discussion, things came to a head on Dec. 22, 2021, with the decision by DSB. The data protection agency decided that the medical news company, NetDoktor, violated GDPR by using Google Analytics on its website, resulting in the transfer of personal information. How so?

Because the data from GA is processed by Google on US servers, meaning the data is being "exported" to the US. And since Google is legally a "provider of electronic communications services," it is subject to oversight by various United States intelligence agencies. Although its very unlikely, Google may be required to disclose European citizens' data including IP addresses, user IDs and browser parameters to these intelligence agencies.

Related Article: The GDPR Consequences We Haven't Talked About

Brian Clifton, co-founder of Verified Data, author and former head of analytics EMEA for Google, spoke with CMSWire about GA4 and explained why Google is encouraging UA users to make the switch now rather than later.

They want people to use GA4 now, so that they have at least 12 months worth of historical data for when Universal gets switched off. This way, users can continue using GA without interruption.

There is no way of migrating or importing from Universal Analytics to GA4. It's a completely different data model, explained Clifton.

For many brands, the transition isnt going to be easy, as it likely involves many properties. An enterprise may struggle, said Clifton. They generally have more than one website and multiple product websites. There's a lot to move over but the challenge is if you're an agency and youre maybe looking after 20 enterprise clients and you've got to do this all ASAP, because they all want 12 months worth of data.

As reported by CMSWires Dom Nicastro in Oct. 2020, GA4 provides several distinct advantages:

GA4 also brings together app and web data, allowing marketers to view it side-by-side in the same reports, and it gathers data thats not currently collected by UA.

UAs data collection is based on user sessions, the interactions a user has with a website in a specific amount of time. GA4, on the other hand, records the interactions a user has with a website as events. These interactions can include data not found in a session model, allowing for more metrics to be compared against one another.

Previously in Universal, if you were collecting page views, you only have two parameters available to you, said Clifton. There were some custom dimensions you could use, but essentially, you only had two parameters: one was the URL of the page and one was the page titleinteresting information, but not that useful on its own. Now you have up to 25 parameters.

GA4 has dramatically improved the data model used. However, it also makes it harder for users to find the information they need.

Clifton said about the new data model, If you're a user or an implementer like me, it's very important. But users don't really care about that. They just want to find their data.

Thats where the problem comes in. How do you find your data? he asked. How do you understand what's going on? How do you build your story and find your insights in GA4 it is, quite frankly, horrendous.

These user interface issues may become the reason why people use GA4 as part of a larger suite of tools instead of a sole solution.

BigQuery, [a cloud data warehouse], is a big upsell for this product, it's provided by Google for free, said Clifton, referring to GA4s ability to export data to BigQuery at no cost. It can then push the data into data visualization tools such as Google Data Studio. BigQuery has a free pricing tier and paid plans for additional functionality.

Clifton sees GA4 becoming more like a data warehouse with the data exported into a tool like Google Data Studio. There, marketers could create purpose-built reports. I can't see [Google] replacing the [GA4] user interface. They've invested so much in it but it just does not work. And I think people are turned off by that.

Still, he doesnt believe these issues will lead to businesses abandoning Google the ecosystem is too intertwined with digital advertising. But I think that people won't be using the interface. I think they'll be building reports with Data Studio or some other tool.

Related Article: How to Prepare for the Switch to Google Analytics 4

Regardless of the benefits or losses that come with GA4, what it comes down to is that users dont have a choice when it comes to upgrading unless they move to another analytics platform.

By 2023, brands must choose: upgrade or stop relying on Google Analytics.

Original post:

Google Is Forcing the Switch to GA4 and Many Brands Arent Happy - CMSWire

Deep in the Sahara, far from any towns, roads, or other signs of life, is a row of markings in the sand. There are dozens of them stretching for miles in a straight line in central Algeria, each consisting of a central point surrounded by a circle of 12 nodes, like numbers on a clock. And when we started making this video, no one seemed to know what they were.

We first saw the circles back in September 2021, after finding a Reddit post on r/WhatIsThis with coordinates asking what the circles could be. With just two upvotes and two commenters, it wasnt exactly a lively discussion. But seeing the circles themselves on Google Earth was fascinating: They were eerily perfect in their shape and regularity, but so deeply isolated in the desert. We were hooked on finding an answer.

So we decided to make a video out of trying to solve the mystery, no matter where it took us. We documented every step of the process from Zoom calls and web browser screen recordings to vlogs and field shoots to show the reporting process from the inside out. We talked to historians, geographers, and professors. And when we maxed out what we could learn on the internet, we handed over this story to a team in Algeria to take it all the way.

You can find the entire library of Voxs videos on our YouTube channel.

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Who left these circles in the Sahara, visible from Google Earth? - Vox.com

Google Docs is one of the most widely used text editors because of its accessibility, ability to backup your documents in real-time to the cloud and much more. However, there are a bunch of features that Google Docs makes available to all its users that could make your experience more intuitive, time saving and perhaps, more efficient.

Check out the five tips below.

If you have ever simply wanted to use your voice to type out longer text documents, know that Google Docs enables you to do this pretty easily.

If youre using Google Docs on Chrome and have a microphone ready to go, simply go to Tools/ Voice Typing in the menu bar on top. You can also bring up the voice typing enabler by hitting Ctrl+Shift+S.

You can then click on the microphone to begin speaking and your text will be captured automatically. You can enter punctuation manually by saying words like period and comma. You can also also go to a new line or new paragraph by saying so.

If you use Google Docs a lot for typing college assignments, office reports or other kinds of long-format text, you may want to keep an eye on the word count. Programs like Microsoft Word will show you a real-time count of the number of words you have used. While Google Docs can also do this, the feature is hidden by default.

To enable it, go to Tools/ Word Count and in the small box that appears on the next screen, choose Display Word Count while typing. This will give you a live word counter on the bottom left of your document.

You can also tap on the drop-down arrow next to this word counter to change the count to the number of pages, characters or characters excluding spaces.

Google Docs can automatically detect bad spellings and typos and correct them for you in real-time. However, if you wish to be in more control as to what is changed in the document, you can do that with Suggestion Mode. In this mode, Docs will only suggest changes where needed and you can decide for yourself if you want to implement them.

To change from Editing Mode to Suggestion Mode, you can go to the right side of the main toolbar on top of the screen. Find the Editing option here with a dropdown arrow on the right. Click on this arrow and from the options that appear, choose Suggesting.

If you have shared your document with a teammate who has made some changes, Google Docs lets you view the document with the changes, or revisions highlighted. These could be differences in spellings of words to entire sections including multiple paragraphs.

Once your edited document is back, you can check your edit history by heading to File/ Version History.

Google Docs lets you define quick keyboard shortcuts which can transform to particular characters like or . To define these custom characters, simply head to Tools/ Preferences and head to the Substitutions tab on the right.

Here you can define your custom shortcuts by adding your own characters on the left and what they turn into, on the right.

Original post:

ExpressBasics: 5 Google Docs tips that you should know about - The Indian Express

A recent Canadian Order on news intermediaries like Google has come as a big boost to Indian newspapers and their digital platforms in their fight against the monopolist exploitation of their news content by Google. Prominent Indian newspapers and their digital editions have been representing against the said abuse of its monopoly and position by the tech giant.

Google earns a huge amount of advertising revenue from the content generated by the digital editions of these newspapers. However, there is no fair payback or sharing of revenues by Google in this regard, causing huge financial losses to the news publishers in India.

Publishers and governments across many parts of the democratic world are waking up to this exploitation by Google and taking proactive measures to ensure fair play. Judgement in Canada is a step in that direction which is finding resonance in India and many other parts of the world. Google is under the scanner for anti-competitive practices in Australia, France, Canada and the EU.

Such orders would encourage and empower Indian lawmakers and CCI to implement fair play and also support the growth of media and real news in India at a time when Global search Engines can be manipulated to create negative perceptions about India through fake news as well as an inherent bias.

According to the Canadian Order, an Online News Act has been created with the intention to regulate digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace. The Act applies to those digital news intermediaries and giants like Google who have a significant bargaining power imbalance over news businesses, depending on certain factors, such as whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position. The order envisages provisions of fair compensation to the news businesses for the news that is made available by the intermediary.

The proposed rule would ensure that platforms like Facebook and Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers fairly for their content. It may be noted that Australia had also passed a ground-breaking law last year. The law would make it mandatory for Google and Facebook to pay original news publishers for content on their platforms.

Top Indian newspapers and their digital editions are being represented by DNPA in India, in its similar fight against Google for fair play in India. The order in Canada has come at a time when CCI has issued notice to Google on the basis of a complaint registered by DNPA at CCI in this regard

The "Online News Act," of Canada will require digital platforms that have a bargaining imbalance to make fair deals with news publishers, which would then be subject to scrutinised or assessed by a regulator and if such deals do not materialise, the platforms would have to go through final offer arbitration processes overseen by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications regulator.

It may be noted that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered an inquiry against Google for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the digital advertising market on a complaint filed by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA). DNPAs members include Jagran New Media ( Dainik Jagaran Group), Amar Ujala, Dainik Bhaskar, India Today, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Times of India, Eenadu, Malayalam Manorama, ABP Network, Zee Media, Mathrabhumi, Hindu, NDTV, Lokmat, Express Network etc .

In an order dated January 7, the commission had directed the Director General (DG) to cause an investigation into the matter under the provisions of Section 26(1) of the Act. The commission has also directed the DG to complete the investigation and submit the investigation report within a period of 60 days from the date of receipt of this order.

"The commission is of prima facie view that Google has violated the provisions of Section 4(2)(a) of the Act, which merits investigation. Further, the Informant has also alleged that above-mentioned conduct of Google results in violation of the provisions of Section 4(2)(b)(ii) as well as Section 4(2)(c) of the Act. The DG can appropriately examine these allegations as well during investigation," the CCI said in an order.

DNPA has filed a complaint against Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google India Private Limited and Google Ireland Limited (Google/OPs) under Section 19(1)(a) of the Competition Act, 2002 alleging violation of Section 4 of the Act.

The association believes that more than 50% of the total traffic on the news websites is routed through Google and, being the dominant player in this field, Google, by way of its algorithms, determines which news website gets discovered via search. It further averred that the content produced by news media companies create the context for the audience to interface with the advertiser; however, online search engines (Google) end up leveraging the revenue/returns much more than publishers.

It may be noted that Google is the major stakeholder in the digital advertising space, and it unilaterally decides the amount to be paid to the publishers for the content created by them, as well as the terms on which the aforesaid amounts have to be paid. Sources said that DNPA believes that Google has abused its dominant position in the market and violated various Sections of the Competition Act, 2002.

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Proposed Canadian Act on news intermediaries big boost to Indian digital media - Hindustan Times

Google employees returned to the office this week after more than two years of remote work and changing plans about when and how to bring people back.

The tech behemoth joins a growing list of companies bringing workers back on-site this spring that includes Meta, American Express and Apple. Google's new hybrid work arrangement requires most employees to be in the office at least three days per week, with the other two days spent working remotely.

Javier Soltero, the vice president and general manager of Google Workspace, has been looking forward to the return for months. "I've missed working alongside people," he tells CNBC Make It. "There's a certain joy and sense of optimism I feel coming back."

There's the practical benefits of returning to the office, too: Soltero joined Google in October 2019, five months before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Between the holidays and business travel, I didn't have the chance to really meet and build strong connections with the people on my team," he says. "I hardly even know where the bathroom was!"

Soltero is planning to be in the office at least two days a week and while he's excited about Google's hybrid work arrangement, he notes that companies can get "a lot wrong" while initiating their return to the office.

Here are the three "biggest mistakes" Soltero recommends leaders avoid:

While some jobs need to be done in person, others can be accomplished anywhere with a strong internet connection and companies' return-to-office strategies should take these nuances into serious consideration.

Conversations about hybrid work so often focus on where people are working instead of when or how, often leaving front-line workers, whose jobs largely require in-person work, out of the equation.

"Managers should think more about how they can provide flexible, hybrid work arrangements even to people whose jobs require them to be on-site," Soltero says.

That means empowering on-site employees with flexible hours and tools like apps that help them see schedule changes in real-time, connect faster with corporate headquarters and meet with customers over video.

Soltero adds that his team is constantly working to improve the functionalities of the Google Workplace products including Gmail, Google Meet and Google Calendar to meet these needs.

Some companies are quick to blame failed experiments of working from home on tech problems whether it's a slow internet connection, outdated software or a lack of in-person IT support.

"A lot of people are still uncomfortable with video conferencing and other tech programs, and neglecting to learn how to use it to their advantage until it becomes a serious problem," he adds.

Instead of throwing their hands up and forcing employees to return to the familiar routine of being in an office 5 days a week, Soltero says companies need to embrace technology and include clear instructions as to how it fits into their return-to-office plans.

Managers should communicate with employees about which methods work best for communication, video meetings and sharing documents and establish guidelines for how to use each.

As more companies adopt hybrid work models, managers and HR leaders have raised concerns about proximity bias, or leaders favoring employees who are in the office more often for promotions and pay raises.

In an effort to solve this problem, some companies have become fixated on how to better engage employees through meetings, often adding more, or longer, meetings onto employees' calendars, so people get equal opportunities for face time with their bosses no matter where they're located.

While Soltero recognizes that proximity bias is a "real, pertinent issue" that companies will have to grapple with in the months ahead, "there's a lot more to work than meetings and client calls," he says.

Leaders should instead focus on re-vamping the social contracts, or expectations, within their organization: keeping meetings shorter, setting clear "off-hours" for communication and being deliberate about where, and how, creative brainstorms take place.

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The 3 biggest mistakes companies make with return to office, according to Googles head of Workspace - CNBC