News

With a little help from the Google News Lab, take a peek at a few of this week’s most-searched trends:

Signed, sniffed, delivered, I’m yours

Just in time for summer, the U.S. Postal Service announced their first-ever scratch-n-sniff stamps, and they’re popsicle-scented. “Scratch and sniff stickers” and “scratch and sniff books” stunk up the top searched scratch and sniff items this week. Alaska was pretty interested in the U.S. Postal Service, while Iowa was more concerned with getting their scratch and sniff on.

What will the new name “b”?

The International House of Pancakes, better known as IHOP, shocked breakfast lovers everywhere by revealing their plans to change their name to IHOb. But on search and elsewhere, the question remains: “what does IHOb stand for?” Folks across Maryland, Texas, Georgia and Kansas were particularly interested in IHOP, which hit a Grand Slam everywhere except for North Dakota, where search interest between Denny’s and IHOP was split 50/50. What was the top searched pancake flavor this week? Banana pancakes stacked up higher than the rest.

Gooooooooal

The World Cup kicks off on June 14 and fans around the globe are warming up to cheer on their favorite teams. Some of the top trending questions include “how to watch World Cup online?” and “who will win the World Cup 2018?” Newcomers and superfans can use this cool data visualization toolto see how the world is searching for the World Cup. And if you find yourself asking “what is offsides in soccer” or want to know “how to become a soccer referee,” Google Trends has you covered throughout the entire journey to victory.

Everybody get your float on

More than 2 million people are expected to attend the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, taking place this weekend in New York City. Search interest in Puerto Rican actress (and Parade Queen!) Zuleyka Rivera spiked by nearly 4,000 percent this week in the U.S. As participants get ready to walk and float down Fifth Avenue, people are asking “how long is the Puerto Rican Day parade?” Don’t forget your flags, high energy and comfortable shoes.  

Saying goodbye

On a much sadder note, we lost icons this week when handbag designer Kate Spade and food idol Anthony Bourdain passed away in tragic suicides. Known for her bright colors and encouraging words, people searched for quotes by the designer: “Kate Spade she’s a dreamer, doer, thinker quote” and “Kate Spade she is quick, curious, playful and strong.” And remembered for his taste for the unknown, people looked for: “Anthony Bourdain quotes on life” and “Anthony Bourdain quotes food.”

We’ve also seen a large increase in searches related to suicide prevention, like “how to help someone who is depressed.” On Search, we have systems in place to help people find information from trusted organizations, such as national hotlines, that can provide help and support for those who may need it.

To support ongoing relief efforts in Puerto Rico, Google is now matching donations up to $2 million to the Hispanic Federation and Mercy Corps. We asked ”Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda to share his thoughts on why this is important. Read his story below, and donate now at g.co/supportPR.

Puerto Rico is 35 by 100 miles—an archipelago with a main island and two adjacent island-municipalities, Culebra and Vieques. But this tiny paradise has made an outsized impression on the world stage...artists…musicians…major league shortstops…and five Miss Universes. A territory of the United States since 1898, Puerto Ricans, by birth, are U.S. citizens. Right now, there are more Puerto Ricans in the continental United States (over 4.5 million) than on the island, 3.3 million. It’s not surprising that when the island is in trouble, the diaspora says, “presente.” 

Puerto Rico is my second home. It’s where my parents were born. My mom lived there until she was a toddler, and my dad grew up there until he was about 18 and came to New York for graduate school. I had the incredible privilege and good fortune of having them send me to Puerto Rico every summer. My sister and I lived with my grandparents in Vega Alta, a humble town on the northern coast of the island. I used to work at my aunt’s school supply store on the frozen slushie machine.

And Puerto Rico is where Hurricane Maria made landfall on September 20, 2017—the largest hurricane to hit the Caribbean in modern history. The devastation was widespread: most estimates put the damage costs at over $90 billion, the third most costly hurricane ever. In less than 48 hours, 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s agriculture was destroyed and 85 percent of above-ground telephone and internet cables were knocked out.

After Maria made landfall, there was a terrible silence from the island that lasted for days. We looked for any news or pictures on social media. We texted over and over again, hoping our loved ones could find a way to get a message through. For me, it was five days until we heard from any family members; we found a picture of our uncle helping in a supply line in Vega Alta.

Never before has a hurricane done this much damage to the island—to its already fragile power grid, to the way of life, to the land itself. I’ll never forget when we flew to Puerto Rico a month after Maria; seeing bare mountains for the first time was terrifying. 

Nature is already making a comeback—those islands that were brown in the wake of Maria are green again. But due to the unpreparedness for this crisis and the halting attempts to restore power, Puerto Ricans in many parts of the island are still struggling. Power is still not fully restored. And this year’s hurricane season has just begun.

In the nine months since Hurricane Maria, people all over the world have opened their piggy banks and opened their hearts to help. Across the country, many have made their voices heard, demanding action from Congress. It has meant so much. Progress has been made, but there is still work to be done.

Now I ask that you join us once again in supporting economic recovery efforts on the island. Google will be matching donations up to $2 million to the Hispanic Federation and Mercy Corps—two organizations that have been helping people on the ground throughout the relief effort. You can donate now at g.co/supportPR.

I wake up every morning and I’m grateful that my family is from Puerto Rico. I feel an incredible connection to the island, to the people, to the culture, to our spirit, to our resilience. I know many others feel this connection, because you have chosen to help Puerto Rico and ease this crisis. Thank you for joining this effort, and thank you Google for your $2 million challenge grant.

Siempre,

Lin-Manuel

At its heart, AI is computer programming that learns and adapts. It can’t solve every problem, but its potential to improve our lives is profound. At Google, we use AI to make products more useful—from email that’s spam-free and easier to compose, to a digital assistant you can speak to naturally, to photos that pop the fun stuff out for you to enjoy.

Beyond our products, we’re using AI to help people tackle urgent problems. A pair of high school students are building AI-powered sensors to predict the risk of wildfires. Farmers are using it to monitor the health of their herds. Doctors are starting to use AI to help diagnose cancer and prevent blindness. These clear benefits are why Google invests heavily in AI research and development, and makes AI technologies widely available to others via our tools and open-source code.

We recognize that such powerful technology raises equally powerful questions about its use. How AI is developed and used will have a significant impact on society for many years to come. As a leader in AI, we feel a deep responsibility to get this right. So today, we’re announcing seven principles to guide our work going forward. These are not theoretical concepts; they are concrete standards that will actively govern our research and product development and will impact our business decisions.

We acknowledge that this area is dynamic and evolving, and we will approach our work with humility, a commitment to internal and external engagement, and a willingness to adapt our approach as we learn over time.

Objectives for AI applications

We will assess AI applications in view of the following objectives. We believe that AI should:

1. Be socially beneficial. 

The expanded reach of new technologies increasingly touches society as a whole. Advances in AI will have transformative impacts in a wide range of fields, including healthcare, security, energy, transportation, manufacturing, and entertainment. As we consider potential development and uses of AI technologies, we will take into account a broad range of social and economic factors, and will proceed where we believe that the overall likely benefits substantially exceed the foreseeable risks and downsides.  

AI also enhances our ability to understand the meaning of content at scale. We will strive to make high-quality and accurate information readily available using AI, while continuing to respect cultural, social, and legal norms in the countries where we operate. And we will continue to thoughtfully evaluate when to make our technologies available on a non-commercial basis.

2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.

AI algorithms and datasets can reflect, reinforce, or reduce unfair biases.  We recognize that distinguishing fair from unfair biases is not always simple, and differs across cultures and societies. We will seek to avoid unjust impacts on people, particularly those related to sensitive characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, income, sexual orientation, ability, and political or religious belief.

3. Be built and tested for safety.

We will continue to develop and apply strong safety and security practices to avoid unintended results that create risks of harm.  We will design our AI systems to be appropriately cautious, and seek to develop them in accordance with best practices in AI safety research. In appropriate cases, we will test AI technologies in constrained environments and monitor their operation after deployment.

4. Be accountable to people.

We will design AI systems that provide appropriate opportunities for feedback, relevant explanations, and appeal. Our AI technologies will be subject to appropriate human direction and control.

5. Incorporate privacy design principles.

We will incorporate our privacy principles in the development and use of our AI technologies. We will give opportunity for notice and consent, encourage architectures with privacy safeguards, and provide appropriate transparency and control over the use of data.

6. Uphold high standards of scientific excellence.

Technological innovation is rooted in the scientific method and a commitment to open inquiry, intellectual rigor, integrity, and collaboration. AI tools have the potential to unlock new realms of scientific research and knowledge in critical domains like biology, chemistry, medicine, and environmental sciences. We aspire to high standards of scientific excellence as we work to progress AI development.

We will work with a range of stakeholders to promote thoughtful leadership in this area, drawing on scientifically rigorous and multidisciplinary approaches. And we will responsibly share AI knowledge by publishing educational materials, best practices, and research that enable more people to develop useful AI applications.  

7. Be made available for uses that accord with these principles.  

Many technologies have multiple uses. We will work to limit potentially harmful or abusive applications. As we develop and deploy AI technologies, we will evaluate likely uses in light of the following factors:

• Primary purpose and use:the primary purpose and likely use of a technology and application, including how closely the solution is related to or adaptable to a harmful use

• Nature and uniqueness:whether we are making available technology that is unique or more generally available

• Scale:whether the use of this technology will have significant impact

• Nature of Google’s involvement:whether we are providing general-purpose tools, integrating tools for customers, or developing custom solutions

AI applications we will not pursue

In addition to the above objectives, we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm.  Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.

2. Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.

3. Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.

4. Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.

We want to be clear that while we are not developing AI for use in weapons, we will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas. These include cybersecurity, training, military recruitment, veterans’ healthcare, and search and rescue. These collaborations are important and we’ll actively look for more ways to augment the critical work of these organizations and keep service members and civilians safe.

AI for the long term

While this is how we’re choosing to approach AI, we understand there is room for many voices in this conversation. As AI technologies progress, we’ll work with a range of stakeholders to promote thoughtful leadership in this area, drawing on scientifically rigorous and multidisciplinary approaches. And we will continue to share what we’ve learned to improve AI technologies and practices.

We believe these principles are the right foundation for our company and the future development of AI. This approach is consistent with the values laid out in our original Founders’ Letter back in 2004. There we made clear our intention to take a long-term perspective, even if it means making short-term tradeoffs. We said it then, and we believe it now.

Earlier today Google released a set of AI principles designed to provide clarity about the use of Google AI technology. As part of that, we announced that Google, including Google Cloud, will not support the use of AI for weaponized systems. We have been working closely with our leading AI researchers to guide these principles.  We hope that our customers and partners can understand and respect this decision.

While this means that we will not pursue certain types of government contracts, we want to assure our customers and partners that we are still doing everything we can within these guidelines to support our government, the military and our veterans.  For example, we will continue to work with government organizations on cybersecurity, productivity tools, healthcare, and other forms of cloud initiatives.

There has been public focus on a limited contract we entered into in September 2017 that fell under the U.S. Department of Defense’s Maven initiative. This contract involved drone video footage and low-res object identification using AI, saving lives was the overarching intent.

Some of Google Cloud’s initiatives around AI are relatively new and since AI is a disruptive technology that allows for unprecedented uses, at the start of considering the contract, we saw the need for a set of principles that clarified how our cloud and our AI could be used. We do believe that the uses of our cloud and AI will prove to be overwhelmingly positive for the world and we also recognize that we can not control all downstream uses of our technology.

There have been calls for Google to cancel the September 2017 contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. I would like to be unequivocal that Google Cloud honors its contracts. We will not be pursuing follow on contracts for the Maven project and because of that, we are now working with our customer to responsibly fulfill our obligations in a way that works long-term for them and is also consistent with our AI principles.

Google Cloud is bringing tremendous value to organizations and enterprises worldwide. Our extraordinary engineers and researchers are excited to see the increasingly broad and positive impact of our differentiated infrastructure, data analytics and AI, security, and G Suite. Google Cloud’s commitments to our customers and partners, including all of the government, are critically important to creating this value and we hope that our increased clarity will help us to continue with excellence.

A lot has happened at Google Cloud in the past couple of years. We’ve announced hundreds of new product features, improved our geographic footprint, forged new partnerships, received lots of certifications, and of course, welcomed a lot of new customers. One of the less talked-about moves came two years ago, when we formed the Office of the CTO, or OCTO, a team made up of senior Google technology experts and former enterprise CTOs. But—at least from my admittedly biased vantage point—it’s been one of the most significant.

Before OCTO, if a prospective customer wanted to know how our technology could translate into business value, we had lots of interesting information, but it was very product-centric, and the customer had to synthesize it into practical next steps themselves. And customers aren’t just curious about specific Google Cloud products—they also want to understand how we fit with the rest of Alphabet. For example, an aerospace company wants to hear about Cloud, but also Project Loon, machine learning, Glass for enterprise, Geo and Chrome. Our perspective needs to be inclusive of the full breadth of innovation that Alphabet offers, especially as we continually add new features and educate our customers.

We also met CTOs from outside Google who had a wealth of experience in specific industries, and who wanted to share that expertise more broadly, to increase their impact beyond what they could achieve in a single company. By inviting them to join the Google Cloud Office of the CTO, they would get a seat at the Google engineering table, where all of Google’s technologies converge. That way, they could bring their knowledge and experience to help us think about how to apply those technologies to problems they had faced in their prior industries. For example, how could Google’s data tools help transform call centers and the retail customer support experience? Could the Internet of Things and edge computing improve outcomes for healthcare patients?   

Meanwhile, senior engineers from within Google wanted to join OCTO to get first-hand feedback on their products from their peers and customers in the outside world—and bring insights from those interactions back to shape the future direction of our products.

Initially, we thought OCTO would consist largely of former CTOs from large enterprises. What we learned from our customers in the first year of operations was that it’s good to have a blend of experiences from both outside and inside Google to balance our approach. We also initially thought that one person from our team would pair up with each customer in a 1:1 relationship. But we discovered that no one person can adequately cover and connect all the topics that a customer wants to explore. So we moved from a model centered on individuals to more of a team model. This creates an environment where senior technologists and engineers with diverse backgrounds (high-performance computing, security, AI, containers, productivity, collaboration) can each contribute directly and meaningfully to complex customer challenges. We’ve found that this model makes for much richer collaboration and builds trust faster.

Now, meetings with customers that start out as explorations of feature sets and certifications quickly move to heart-to-heart discussions about where they really want to take their business, and how we can collaborate in a true partnership—an outsourced CTO function, as it were. That’s the magic of OCTO: We’re a safe space for customers to share their hopes and aspirations, have their reality shape our actions, challenge our mutual perspectives, and build their future—without diving into a sales pitch.

Already, OCTO has had a huge impact on Google Cloud, and on the products and services it offers. By working closely with customers, we see their needs and bring that information back to product and engineering, showing them things that they wouldn’t necessarily see. Sometimes we’ll be the ones to push people into the future, for example with our data platforms, or Kubernetes or TensorFlow. But increasingly, it’s our customers pushing us into the future.

We still have a lot of work to do though. Customers are really curious about Google Cloud, but it’s hard for them to keep up with all the new features—how they can use them now and in the future. We spend a ton of time on education, making sure they understand the performance of our platform, the opportunity to mix and match and compose with our tools, and with open source.

One way we hope to expand our reach as a team is by sharing some of the common questions we hear in the field. Watch this space in the coming weeks to hear from other OCTO team members on everything from digital transformation, next-generation identity management, and AI, to industrial computing and serverless architectures.

If you’ve been dreaming of pool floats, warm sandy beaches and balmy days, you’re in luck—the long-awaited summer months are finally here. And for many of us, summer means one thing—a chance to get away for some much needed rest and relaxation. For vacation inspiration, we’ve used historical Google Maps data to identify examples of the top mobile searches for places to visit in the U.S. this season. Read on for tips to make sure your trip is smooth sailing from start to finish.

Seek the great outdoors

Taking a hike, setting up camp or stargazing under the open sky at national parks can be a great way to unplug from the world and reconnect with nature. Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon top our list as the most popular U.S. parks to visit this time of year.

Tap into your inner history buff

School’s out but there’s no reason that the learning needs to stop. Whether your wanderlust takes you to Mount Rushmore or the Hollywood Sign, our listof trending historical landmarks can help you keep your history game strong.

Seas the day

There’s nothing like lounging on the beach and watching the waves roll in and out. Check out our list of top trending beaches—from Coney Island to Hawaii, you’ll be sure to find a spot to lay out, catch a wave or snorkel with a school of fish. And it never hurts to have a nice cocktail (or mocktail!) in hand for the ultimate summer experience.

Once you’ve decided on a place to go, here are six ways you can use Google Maps to keep your summer vacation stress free:

• Search for hotels right in Google Maps to see everything you need to know to decide where to stay. You’ll see photos, descriptions, reviews and more—and you can even book a room directly from Google Maps.

• If you’re road tripping, use Google Maps to find your nearest rest stop so you can rest, eat, and refuel during a long drive.

• Flying to a new city? Orient yourself around an airport with Google Maps. A quick search for an airport terminal, say DTW Terminal 2, will show you the lay of the land, including nearby gates, lounges, restaurants and stores.

• Taking local transit is a great way to instantly feel immersed in a new city. Use Google Maps to get navigation times, ETAs and a notification that tells you when to transfer or get off your bus or train, so you can stop worrying about missing your stop and start enjoying the sights.

• If you’re traveling to a place where you don’t have Wi-Fi or a data plan, don’t panic. With Google Maps, you can download a region of the map to access it offline—so you can still search for places, get directions and use turn-by-turn navigation even without connectivity.

• It can be easy to lose your bearings in a new place and spend hours (or what feels like hours!) of precious vacay time searching for where you parked your car. Save your parking location so you can spend less time wondering if your car is parked at D4 or E17.

Summer is here—use Google Maps to help you make the most of it. 🏖☀️

Since announcing our partnership with SAP over a year ago, we’ve done everything from dramatically expanding our certifications to accelerating our co-development efforts with SAP. But integrating Google Cloud with the best of SAP’s enterprise applications is only part of the story. Another development in our partnership with SAP we’re excited about is the range of co-innovation projects we’re working on to help our customers address their biggest business challenges.

Fashion retailer Tory Burch has told us they’re particularly excited about what our partnership with SAP has to offer:

“To support a thriving online presence and more than 150 retail stores around the world, our IT team works closely with industry-leading partners to address our technology needs,” says Serge Minassian, Vice President of Infrastructure and Shared Services, Tory Burch. "Working with SAP and Google Cloud on our global applications and systems infrastructure allows us to serve our customers in exciting new ways as well as take advantage of Google Cloud’s machine learning capabilities to gather insights from our data.”

This work with SAP began last year with the introduction of the Data Custodian model, offering customers more visibility and control over how their data is handled when stored on Google Cloud Platform. SAP Data Custodian is now generally available, using Google Cloud Access Transparency and other capabilities to provide insight into where a customer’s data is stored in the cloud, as well as when and where it’s being moved, processed and accessed.

Data Custodian is the first of many collaborations we’ve been working on with SAP.

At SAPPHIRE this week, we’re showcasing how machine learning is unlocking the next generation of apps and infrastructures. For example, we’re working with SAP on solutions for retailers that use Google Cloud machine learning to search images within SAP’s Product Information Network solution to make it faster and easier to procure products from suppliers.

Assortment planning is another area of collaboration with SAP. Together, we’re looking at ways to create a unified decision-making platform by augmenting SAP’s existing assortment planning solution with insights from Google that are based on aggregated search and shopping trends by product category. The Google Shopping Product Suggestions report found in Google Merchant Center shows popular products and reference pricing, and our demo at SAP SAPPHIRE this week shows how this data could be incorporated directly into SAP's MAP solution. We’ll share more on these initiatives in the coming months.

In addition to these efforts, we’re sharing a number of critical updates and announcements at SAPPHIRE.

Managed service offerings for SAP, including larger SAP HANA instances

We’ve heard from many large enterprise customers that they would like managed service capabilities for SAP on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Many of these customers also run extremely large SAP HANA instances on bare metal hosts. Today, we’re announcing that we’re collaborating with our strategic partners to create a managed service offering for SAP that includes SAP HANA instances that can be as large as any certified SAP HANA hardware available in the market today.

4TB VMs now certified for SAP HANA

Many enterprises rely on SAP HANA as their underlying in-memory database for critical tasks like optimizing supply chains, managing real-time inventories, or ensuring that manufacturing lines are running smoothly. For large enterprises, virtual machine instances with large amounts of memory are a requirement for SAP HANA, and we’ve been rapidly scaling our VM sizes to meet this requirement. Today, we’re announcing the certification of the 4TB VMs for SAP HANA. By making these large-scale instances immediately available, and at a low cost, customers get on-demand flexibility alongside GCP’s high availability and performance. This means you can immediately experiment, test and plan your long term roadmap—all while managing costs.

4TB VMs are now certified for HANA OLTP and OLAP workloads, with 2TB and 1TB VMs certified for HANA also available in the coming months. For a closer, more technical look at the SAP HANA ecosystem on GCP, read our post on the GCP blog. And be sure to keep an eye out for more news at Google Cloud Next in July.

SAP Cloud Platform on GCP now generally available

SAP Cloud Platform helps enterprise developers build new applications in the cloud and integrate data and business services from core SAP applications into their applications. SAP Cloud Platform is now generally available on GCP, initially focused on a few GCP regions, and will be expanded based on customer feedback. This release also introduces the availability of SAP Cloud Platform SAP HANA service, a managed database-as-a-service for developers to be deployed via SAP Cloud Platform.

Early access of Android SDK for SAP Cloud Platform

The availability of SAP Cloud Platform on GCP opens up a world of opportunities for mobile developers. With Android SDK for SAP Cloud Platform, Android developers get a robust new toolset that helps them create native mobile applications directly in Android Studio.

To build Android SDK for SAP Cloud Platform, we collaborated closely to align SAP’s design patterns with our Material Design, bringing the Android experience to enterprise developers through the Fiori Design Language for Android. And to make it easy to get started, a plug-in for Android Studio called the SAP SDK Wizard offers a complete reference UI based on SAP Fiori for Android, along with the necessary wiring to connect Android apps to the customers’ system of record. Learn more in this article on Android Enterprise.

New G Suite integration: Export from SAP into Google Sheets

Many organizations use Google Sheets for real-time collaboration, and to take advantage of tools like natural language querying to quickly find insights from their data. In an upcoming SAP release, employees will be able to discover additional insights from their ERP content by exporting data from the SAP GUI (used by ECC 6.0) directly into Sheets. This way, they don’t have to manually export data to CSVs and upload to Drive.

Eighty Cloud Appliance Library solutions now available

The SAP Cloud Appliance Library helps you kick-start projects via a library of SAP business solutions. We’ve collaborated with SAP to add more than 80 solutions to this library as a way for our customers and partners to quickly spin up pre-configured SAP applications on GCP.

Learn more at Google Cloud Next

At Google Cloud Next we’ll share more of our knowledge and best practices integrating SAP applications with GCP. Here’s a little more on what we’ll cover:

• Integrating SAP HANA with Google Cloud Platform—We’ll guide you through hands-on labs which will help you deploy SAP HANA on GCP and build integrated solutions with GCP services.

• Best Practices for SAP Deployments in GCP—We’ll review reference architectures and share best practices for implementing SAP solutions on GCP.

• Lift and Modernize your SAP ECC to SAP Business Suite on HANA and Google Cloud—Migrating SAP ECC applications to the cloud lets you simultaneously modernize your underlying databases and switch to SAP HANA DB. This session will present a simplified approach regardless of how big, data-rich or active the database is.

• Digitize and Automate Vendor Invoice Management by Harnessing Google Machine Learning—Manually processing invoices is a time-consuming and error-prone process. Using SAP and Google Machine Learning technologies, customers can implement automated invoice processing in their SAP system landscape.

You can find more information on our partnership with SAP on our website. And if you plan on joining us at SAP SAPPHIRE, we’ll have plenty of detailed demos that provide a hands-on look at integrating GCP with SAP technology. Please stop by booth 370 to say hello, and be sure to check out the SAP and Google ML Showcase as well. See you in Orlando!