As a result of our review, we implemented new policies across Gmail and Android to better protect your data. For example, with changes to SMS and Call Log permissions for Android apps, the number of apps with access to this sensitive information has decreased by more than 98 percent. These apps are still able to deliver core services to people just by switching to permissions that access less sensitive data, or by eliminating minor functionality in their apps.
Today, we’re announcing additional changes as a result of Project Strobe, including new policies for Chrome extensions and the Drive API. Here’s what’s new:
Trustworthy Chrome Extensions
There are more than 180,000 extensions in the Chrome Web Store, and nearly half of all Chrome desktop users actively use extensions to customize Chrome and their experience on the web—helping them keep track of to-dos or find shopping deals online. This ability to improve and personalize online experiences depends on a vibrant community of Chrome browser developers.
Last October, we shared our intention to ensure that all Chrome extensions are trustworthy by default. Today, as part of Project Strobe, we’re continuing that effort with additional Chrome Web Store policies. Specifically:

  1. We’re requiring extensions to only request access to the appropriate data needed to implement their features. If there is more than one permission that could be used to implement a feature, developers must use the permission with access to the least amount of data. While this has always been encouraged of developers, now we’re making this a requirement for all extensions.
  2. We’re requiring more extensions to post privacy policies, including extensions that handle personal communications and user-provided content. Our policies have previously required any extension that handles personal and sensitive user data to post a privacy policy and handle that data securely. Now, we’re expanding this category to include extensions that handle user-provided content and personal communications. Of course, extensions must continue to be transparent in how they handle user data, disclosing the collection, use and sharing of that data.
We’re announcing these changes in advance of the official policy rollout this summer to give developers the time needed to ensure their extensions will be in compliance. Developers can learn more about these changes in our FAQ.
Tightening the Drive API
Last fall we updated our user data policy to provide additional guidelines and restrictions for apps seeking to access your Gmail data. Today we’re announcing plans to extend the same policy to Google Drive, which will give you more control over what data third-party apps can access in Drive.
When you connect third-party apps, Drive gives you one central place to keep all your files and helps you easily collaborate with others. With this updated policy, we’ll limit apps that use Google Drive APIs from broadly accessing content or data in Drive. This means we’ll restrict third-party access to specific files and be verifying public apps that require broader access, such as backup services.
These changes will go into effect early next year. Visit the Cloud blog for more details.

Our top priority is to protect user data and keep it safe, while continuing to enable developers to build features that people want and need. As we continue the work of Project Strobe, we’ll also work with our developer partners to give them appropriate time to adjust and update their apps and services

By Ben Smith, Google Fellow and Vice President of Engineering
Last year, we went to 11 cities with our Google Search Conference and engaged with over 700 content creators who joined us from across the length and breadth of the country. Looking at the overwhelmingly positive response from the publishers, we are now excited to bring back this conference, fresh and rebranded to Webmaster Conference.

This year, Webmaster Conference will be held in 15 cities and in five Indian languages -- Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu, besides English.
Webmaster Conference series schedule:
City
Date
Primary Language
New Delhi
June 17
Hindi
Chandigarh
June 19
Hindi
Ahmedabad
June 21
Hindi
Patna
June 24
Hindi
Lucknow
June 26
Hindi
Indore
July 15
Hindi
Kolkata
July 17
Bengali
Mumbai
(for women only)
July 19
English
Pune
July 22
Marathi
Coimbatore
July 29
Tamil
Chennai
July 31
Tamil
Bangalore, for women only
August 2
English
Hyderabad
August 5
Telugu
Vijayawada
August 7
Telugu
Visakhapatnam
August 9
Telugu
Agenda and Topics
The conference aims to help you better understand industry best practices for building great websites, creating high-quality content that is safe for users and making content easily accessible and visible on Google Search to the growing number of local language Internet users.
It includes talks on what’s latest on Google Search, the new Google Search Console and various other tools, as well as Google’s underlying principles and policies for Search as well as AdSense. The topics will be selected based on community needs and requests.
We believe it’ll also serve as a great platform for the participants to connect with Googlers from the Search and AdSense teams as well as industry experts and influencers engaged in building the local language web ecosystem.
Who can participate
The conference is open to everyone who creates content on the web. If you create content online, run or own a website, are a publisher or a webmaster, manage SEO or are aspiring to start your online presence in one of the India local languages, then you shouldn't miss this conference!
Register your interest!
If you are interested in participating, please register here!
Registration for each city event closes 10 days before the respective event date.
Once you are shortlisted, you will receive an invitation email from us confirming the venue details. Please note that this is an invite-only event and filling out the form does not guarantee your spot at the conference.
We hope to see you at one of the events! If you have any questions, please go through the FAQs here.

Posted by Syed Malik Mairaj, Trust & Safety Outreach Lead South Asia
Artificial Intelligence is helping solve many challenging problems for the society.  Google has put AI to use to solve some of the most pressing problems to society, from helping predict early blindness to giving timely updates on floods in India. We are therefore introducing a special Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Track for Class 9 - 12 students to work on Google Cloud AutoML where they use our existing Machine Learning models to create interesting applications, using a problem statement and data set of their choice. Students define a problem they want to work on, select any open dataset or create their own (Images or Text) and train a pre-trained machine learning model to create their own Machine Learning application. Students will be judged on their ability to identify problems suitable for Machine Learning and how they apply data to find a solution. We are especially excited to see how young minds use this impactful technology to solve problems around them.
Over the years, Computer Science and Programming has evolved and become one of the strongest means of solving real-life problems. Our 2018 winners have created powerful applications including an app to help dispose of electronic waste, a chat app for mental health wellness, and even a learning app that makes language learning fun.
The Code to Learn competition is a platform for students to learn the basics of coding and build a strong foundation in Computer Science. Children are exposed to technology much earlier than ever before, and we believe that these foundational years are the best time to start nurturing their scientific inquisitiveness and curiosity. Through a fun and engaging way, we aim to teach students how to use technology to solve problems around them.
In line with this objective, we have been running the Code to Learn competition for school students in India for the last 6 years. The program has also been adopted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India under the Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan.  
The contest registrations are now open and students from across India can submit their projects by August 31, 2019. There are links to online tutorials for Scratch, App Inventor and Google Cloud AutoML on the contest site and are very easy to learn.


We are excited about this year's contest, and are looking forward to seeing the innovation and creativity that students will present to us via their projects.
Code to Learn is co-organized by Google Cloud, ACM India, CS Pathshala, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), IIIT Bangalore. ACM is the worldwide society for scientific and educational computing with an aim to advance Computer Science both as a science (through CS Pathshala) and as a profession. IISc and IIIT Bangalore are research-oriented universities based in Bangalore.
By Divy Thakkar, Education Program Manager, Google India
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We are showing live election results, sourced from Election Commission of India through Nielsen, on Search and on the Assistant [across Android, iOS and KaiOS]. You can find national level results (for example by searching for 'India election results') as well as constituency level results (for example by searching for 'East Delhi election results’).

On YouTube, over 150 news channels are bringing live election results coverage through the day. These include NDTV, AajTak, ABP Majha, ABP Ananda, TV9 Telugu Live, Puthiyathalaimurai TV, Public TV, Asianet News, OTV News and News18 Urdu, among others.


For the 2019 Indian Elections, Doordarshan is bringing inclusive live result experience to users on YouTube. Audiences in India can tune into the DD News YouTube Channel for the live video stream in 12 languages [English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Urdu, Assamese and Oriya], as well as sign language. Live audio news will be available on News on AIR YouTube Channel.


If you are in India, you can also catch all the counting day action live on our homepage.



By Chetan Krishnaswamy, Director Public Policy, Google India and South Asia
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Soon after, in 2002, we launched Google News to solve this problem. We built Google News’ homepage to help users discover diverse perspectives from multiple news outlets about the news of the day, prompting them to dive deeper into individual articles and making it easier to compare different views.
Over the past 17 years, we have integrated that thinking into the news products and features we have built for Google Search, YouTube, the Assistant, Discover and more. During this same time, the online news ecosystem has become richer, more diverse and more complex. The modern news industry creates opportunities for everyone to explore more of the world than we ever could before, and to be exposed to perspectives we may not have encountered otherwise. That said, it can also make it difficult to stay informed and to understand which sources to trust.
In response to these changes, we continue to evolve our news experiences in Google products. While we’ve already done a lot to explain How Google Search Works, people often ask us how we go about building news experiences in Google Search, Google News, Discover, YouTube or the Assistant. So today, we are launching a How News Works website to do just that. It outlines the objectives of our work, the principles we follow and the approaches we take in the design of news experiences in Google products.

Supporting the news ecosystem, and its readers

Google aims to help everyone better understand the world by connecting them with high quality news from a variety of perspectives. We do this in real-time for Google News editions around the world. The algorithms used for our news experiences analyze hundreds of different factors to identify and organize the stories journalists are covering, in order to elevate diverse, trustworthy information.
Google does not make editorial decisions about which stories to show, except for the infrequent case of designated topical experiences. In these cases, we may want to make sure that there is a dedicated topic in Google News for a significant event, such as the Oscars or World Cup. We make it clear to users when these topical experiences take place.

News experiences rely on the sustainability of high-quality journalism, so we strive to help journalism flourish by bringing new audiences to publishers. Google’s news products and features send web traffic to news sources all around the world, helping them expand their reach. In addition, we develop tools to help publishers turn their readers into subscribers, and the Google News Initiative offers programs to help address industry-wide challenges and fuel innovation in journalism.

How we build news experiences

Everyone has different expectations and preferences when it comes to exploring news. Over the course of one day, we might want to know the stories that are on top of the day’s agenda, get the latest on topics that we personally care about or get more context about a story we want to explore further. That’s why Google provides three distinct but interconnected ways to discover news across our products and devices:




New features need to pass a rigorous evaluation process that involves both live tests and thousands of trained external Search quality raters around the world. We also seek user feedback before and after product launches to understand how to further improve the services we provide.
You will find more information about these topics on our How News Works website, including some of the signals our ranking systems look at and more details about the news experiences currently available on Google

Posted by Richard Gingras, VP News
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