Warhol & Basquiat. Buñuel & Dalí. Rauschenberg & Johns. There are countless examples of artists collaborating to bring a shared creative vision to life. So we wondered: Could technology help bring together two artists who might not otherwise meet? What would they create…if their canvas was a spreadsheet? And how could we celebrate and share their work of art with the world?

In partnership with Refinery29, a lifestyle digital media company, we linked up with renowned illustrators Marina Esmeraldo in Barcelona, and Mallory Heyer in NYC. We gave them a simple creative assignment—to “break the grid”—which literally can mean pushing the “grid” of Google Sheets to its limits, but also taps into the idea of supporting and celebrating women globally who break free of confined roles and ways of thinking, which is core to Refinery29's mission.


Marina and Mallory connected a handful of times on Google Hangouts to plan and sketch out ideas, and creatively “hack” Sheets in order to make art: resizing cells into thousands of pixel-like squares, merging cells to create color blocks, creating vibrant color gradients with conditional formatting and cell values, and other cool things we had no idea you could do with Sheets.

The result was a bright, beautiful design that celebrates the diversity and strength of women, and we wanted to share their finished project in a BIG way.

The final step was to convert Marina and Mallory’s final piece from the cells of a spreadsheet to the bricks of a giant wall—to go from Sheets to the streets. So, we turned to Colossal Media, a Brooklyn-based company that hand-paints murals all over the world.


After hand-mixing each of the colors and prepping the artwork for large-scale painting, Colossal spent five days painting each cell, letter, and gradient by hand, to create a 13’ x 34’ mural of the spreadsheet.

And that’s how art was #madewithGoogleSheets.

To see it for yourself, check out Marina & Mallory’s spreadsheet or head to Bogart & Thames in Brooklyn to visit the wall in person (until August 14). We're delighted by the creativity and imagination brought about by artistic collaboration, and proud to be associated with the work’s inspirational message supporting strong women everywhere.

Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vRe-ft-r0iY/V46Ozzy8odI/AAAAAAAAStQ/DPYSe13mMeEQ5mT0YbTqiGHl9st864NowCLcB/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-07-19%2Bat%2B1.33.29%2BPM.png Michael Bolognino Product Marketing Manager Google

Just as the world’s precious artworks and monuments need a touch-up to look their best, the home we’ve built to host the world’s cultural treasures online needs a lick of paint every now and then. We’re ready to pull off the dust sheets and introduce the new Google Arts & Culture website and app, by the Google Cultural Institute. The app lets you explore anything from cats in art since 200 BCE to the color red in Abstract Expressionism, and everything in between.

Our new tools will help you discover works and artifacts, allowing you to immerse yourself in cultural experiences across art, history and wonders of the world—from more than a thousand museums across 70 countries:
• Search for anything, from shoes to all things gold
• Scroll through art by time—see how Van Gogh’s works went from gloomy to vivid
• Browse by color and learn about Monet’s 50 shades of gray
• Find a new fascinating story to discover every day—today, it’s nine powerful men in heels



With a virtual reality viewer like Google Cardboard, you can use the Google Arts & Culture app on iOS and Android to take a virtual tour of the street art scene in Rome; step inside a creation by famous street artist, Insa; or even travel 2,500 years back in time and look around the ancient Greek temple of Zeus.

You can also subscribe to the new Google Arts & Culture YouTube channel. Find out what Kandinsky and Kanye West have in common and meet the New York-based “cyborg artist” Neil Harbisson.



We’re sure you’ll want to see some of the artworks in real life too—and the Google Arts & Culture app is there to help. Click “Visit” on a museum’s page to get opening times, find out what’s on that day and navigate there in one click. We’ve also been experimenting with a new feature. The Art Recognizer is now available in London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Just pull up the app, point your phone’s camera to a painting on display and find all the information you want to know about the artwork. We’re planning to roll this out to museums around the world—so stay tuned.


There’s much to learn about our shared cultural heritage. Download the app for iOS and Android to unlock a world of experiences, every day.


Posted by Duncan Osborn, Product Manager, Google Cultural Institute https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i-NlpIDu4cU/V41iDtvxXwI/AAAAAAAASss/nUeudu0ftYAvYiQCqCfseyUUyLG9sEH5ACLcB/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-07-18%2Bat%2B4.10.35%2BPM.png Duncan Osborn Product Manager Google Cultural Institute

Every election matters and every vote counts. The American democracy relies on everyone’s participation in the political process. This November, Americans all across the country will line up at the polls to cast their ballots for the President of the United States. With states’ varied deadlines and methods, the voter registration process can be tricky. So starting on Monday, we're introducing a new tool in Search to simplify the voter registration process to make it easier for you to have your voice heard.

Now when you search for “register to vote” or similar queries, Google will display a detailed state-by-state guide providing information on how to register, general requirements, and deadlines.


No matter which state you’re in or how you plan to cast your ballot, you can find the step-by-step information you need to register correctly and on time—right at the top of your Search page and in the Google app.

And for the kickoff of the Republican National Convention next week (and coming in time for the Democratic National Convention the following week), when you search for these events on the Google app, you’ll find a summary of the event, nominees and the lineup of speakers. You’ll also find a livestream video from YouTube, and relevant social media posts, so you can stay up-to-date with both the political parties and the public.

We hope these new features in Search will help keep you informed this election season and make it easier for you to make it to the ballot box in November.


Posted by Jacob Schonberg, Product Manager https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w6HLf-zWS8o/V4koXZyA7GI/AAAAAAAASsY/GSdKGgAxABw3GJ7X77XwIJFsj1bA9Ha-ACLcB/s200/registerConvention.gif

More than 90 percent of the world's online population use emoji. But while there's a huge range of emoji, there aren't a lot that highlight the diversity of women's careers, or empower young girls. There are emoji like these for men:
but with options like these for women:
… the emoji representing women aren’t exactly, well, representative. So we've been working to make things better.

In May, we proposed a set of new emoji to the Unicode Technical Committee that represent a wider range of professions for women (as well as men), and reflect the pivotal roles that women play in the world. Since then, we've worked closely with members of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee to bring the proposal to life.

Today, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee has agreed to add 11 new professional emoji, in both male and female options and with all the skin tones. That’s more than 100 new emoji to choose from!


Unicode is also adding male and female versions to 33 existing emoji. For example, you'll be able to pick both a female runner emoji and a male runner emoji, or a man or woman getting a haircut:
These additions can be included in future versions of Android and other platforms—because Unicode helps make sure that people with different phones can send and receive the same emoji.

These new emoji are one of several efforts we’re making to better represent women in technology, and to connect girls with the education and resources they need to pursue careers in STEM. One such effort is Made with Code, which helps girls pursue and express their passions using computer science. Ahead of World Emoji Day this weekend, Made with Code is releasing a new project that teaches coding skills through the creation of emoji-inspired stickers.
We hope these updates help make emoji just a little more representative of the millions of people around the ? who use them.

Posted by Nicole Bleuel, Marketing Lead & Diversity Champion, Emoji https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uEzz2dZuHkk/V4cNj059kSI/AAAAAAAASqs/5Q5cY0u7euEgpBtfAaZshbCYpguOd0C8ACLcB/s200/Skintones.gif

It’s been two years since we first shared our workforce demographics and helped spark a conversation about the need to improve diversity at Google and across the tech industry. Today we’re updating google.com/diversity with our 2015 demographics, and sharing some areas where we’ve seen progress in building a more diverse and inclusive Google.

More women in technical and leadership roles
Women now comprise 31 percent of all Googlers, and we’ve seen strong growth of women in technical and leadership roles. Similar to last year, one in five of our technical hires in 2015 were women, helping bring the total number of women in technical roles from 18 to 19 percent. Additionally, women now hold 24 percent of leadership roles across Google—up from 22 percent.

Overall hiring progress
For the first time this year, we’re sharing the percentage of our hires who are Black and Hispanic. In 2015, our hiring for Black, Hispanic, and female Googlers grew faster than our current demographic representation for each of these groups. And our Hispanic Googlers in technical roles increased from 2 to 3 percent.
This data reflects the gender composition of Google’s global technical workforce and the race & ethnicity composition of Google’s U.S. workforce as of January 1, 2016. For more stats, visit google.com/diversity.

Building an Inclusive Culture
Hiring is important, but it’s equally important to make workplaces inclusive, fair and supportive for all employees. We’re continuing to build a culture where Googlers can grow, thrive and want to stay. We want to build a place where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas and opinions—and empowered to grow their careers.

We check and recheck processes like promotion and performance reviews to make sure they’re producing equitable outcomes, and address any gaps we find. For example, Googlers in engineering or product management roles are able to nominate themselves for promotion, and in 2010 we discovered that women in technical roles were less likely than men to self-nominate. We found that with a small nudge—emailing these findings to all technical Googlers—the rate of women self-nominating went up and now the gap between men and women has closed.

Compensation is another example. We’ve long had gender pay equity in our workforce, and we recently shared our approach to compensation with the hope that other companies will adopt similar fair pay practices.

We also continue to invest in our unconscious bias trainings. Over 65 percent of Googlers have participated in our unbiasing workshops, and all new Googlers take the workshop as part of their orientation. We’ve shared these materials and research on our platform re:Work with Google so anyone from any industry can create unbiasing trainings for their team.

We saw encouraging signs of progress in 2015, but we’re still far from where we need to be. To learn more about our diversity and inclusion efforts, hear from leaders across Google:



Posted by Nancy Lee, Vice President, People Operations https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w4RtABY6dbc/V3WNnFhnj2I/AAAAAAAASok/KPijqMQIqVYuZ3ojklt4wVnjGwwnAxDhwCLcB/s1600/Diversity.jpg

“How many homeless people are in San Francisco?” “How do people become homeless?” “How can I help homeless people?”

These are just some of the questions people ask Google about homelessness in San Francisco, according to Google Trends. Many of these questions don’t have simple answers, and decades of efforts have not significantly moved the needle. There are more than 6,600 homeless people in the city, many of whom are children. People who experience homelessness often struggle from chronic stress, trauma, and frequent moves, and are unable to take advantage of many educational or economic opportunities.

We want to do our part in tackling this complex issue. Since 2014, Google.org has invested more than $5 million in Bay Area nonprofits who are working to combat homelessness, and today we’re committing an additional $1.2 million for these efforts. The Google News Lab is also joining the San Francisco Chronicle and 70+ news outlets across the country to help raise awareness as part of the Beyond Homelessness initiative, launching today.

The organizations we’re supporting are tackling the issue of homelessness in new ways and from multiple angles, and include Hamilton Family Center, Larkin Street Youth Services, HandUp, First Place for Youth, Lava Mae, LifeMoves, Abode Services - Project Welcome Home, GLIDE, Downtown Streets Team and Destination: Home.


In San Francisco and across the Bay area, these 10 organizations provide a range of services and programs focused on rapid re-housing and prevention, basic services, job training and more. Our newest grantee, Destination: Home, plans to use their $1 million grant to build a rapid re-housing system for homeless families in Mountain View and Sunnyvale in the form of security deposits, motel stays, time-limited rental assistance, move-in assistance, and a support system to make sure individuals and families find stable housing.

HandUp has helped both homeless and low-income individuals and families overcome poverty via a giving platform that connects donors directly with neighbors who are struggling to meet basic needs. The Downtown Streets Team provides a work experience program for homeless men and women through beautification projects in San Francisco’s Civic Center/Mid-Market neighborhoods. And Lava Mae is expanding their mobile showers for the homeless to Los Angeles with an additional $200K in Google.org grant funding.
The Downtown Streets Team helps people like Norman “Will” Williams gain work experience. Learn more on their website.

One in 25 kids in San Francisco Unified School District are homeless, and many families face at least a nine-month wait list for temporary shelter. In 2015, we supported the Hamilton Family Center (HFC) with a $1 million grant aimed to reduce the homeless family wait list for shelter by creating direct lines of communication with SFUSD teachers and staff to report and respond to new and potential cases of homelessness. HFC has already seen a 25 percent reduction in the family wait list, and hopes to continue that momentum.
Homelessness in our cities is a challenge decades in the making—and will require continued innovation and dedication to solve. We’re committed to helping, through financial support, volunteering and raising awareness. Find out more about this issue on our Google Trends site and join us in finding solutions by visiting Beyond Homelessness or contributing to any of our grantee organizations.

Posted by Justin Steele, Bay Area Giving Lead, Google.org

Great teachers inspire us, listen to us and learn from us; they bring the most mundane subjects to life. Technology can help great teachers do what they do best—stimulating minds and fostering skills in the next generation—and make learning even more rewarding for students. So we’re excited by the updates and improvements to our tools for the classroom we’re announcing this week at the ISTE conference, one of the largest education technology gatherings in the world.

Expeditions for all
Since we launched the Expeditions Pioneer Program last September, more than a million students from 11 countries have taken one of our 200+ virtual reality trips—from the Great Barrier Reef, to the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu. Today, we’re making Expeditions available to everyone. To get started, all teachers need to do is download the Expeditions app onto a set of devices and choose where in the world they want to take their class. The app is available today for Android and will be available for iPhones and iPads soon.

While Expeditions can be used with many of the devices schools or students already have, Best Buy Education will also be making Expeditions kits available for schools to purchase. These kits will contain everything teachers need to bring their classes on amazing Expeditions: a tablet, virtual reality viewers and a router to connect them all.
Google Cast for Education
Sharing information on the classroom’s big screen helps students learn from one another. But today, students have to physically connect their computers to the projector to share their screens with the class. To open classroom collaboration and bring projecting into the 21st century, we’re announcing Google Cast for Education, a free Chrome app that lets students and teachers share their screens wirelessly from everywhere in the classroom, no new hardware required. Cast for Education carries video and audio across complex school networks, has built-in controls for teachers, and is integrated with Google Classroom.

Quizzes in Google Forms
Getting feedback helps students learn and teachers teach. But grading tests and quizzes is time-consuming; teachers often have to take time away from other tasks to do it, and if it’s not done promptly, everyone misses out on the opportunity to learn from the things students got wrong. Starting today, Quizzes in Google Forms will grade multiple choice and checkbox questions automatically—so teachers can spend less time grading work and more time teaching.

Teachers can set correct answers in Forms and even add review materials in the form of explanations, supplemental websites, or review videos—so students can get quick, informative feedback on how to improve. Plus, teachers can get an instant snapshot on what their students understand, so they know which lessons need more explanation or what to teach next.
Creative apps on Chromebooks
Teachers tell us educational apps on Chromebooks help them improve skills like problem-solving, teamwork, communication and creativity. In collaboration with teachers at EdTechTeacher, we’re announcing a collection of creative apps on Chromebooks that schools can now purchase at a discount: Explain Everything, Soundtrap, and WeVideo. These apps let students demonstrate their understanding of curriculum in their own way by creating unique animations, music, and videos.


As technology becomes an integral component of our classrooms, we also want it to be so easy to use that it fades into background, allowing teachers to spend their time doing what they love: engaging and inspiring students.

Posted by Bram Bout, Director, Google for Education Bram Bout Director Google for Education

Everyone has the fundamental right to express who they are, yet all too often we bear witness to hatred and violence directed at people who peacefully and lovingly pursue happiness. The mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, earlier this month is a horrifying example.

Google’s mission has always been to make information universally accessible. And within that mission lies the belief that the more knowledge we have, the more tolerant, inclusive and respectful the world ultimately will be.

Pride is a time when those who have access to vibrant LGBTQ communities take to the streets to celebrate the freedom to live and love. Yet there are still multitudes of lesbian, gay, bi, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in the U.S. and around the world who are lonely and ostracized—who cannot participate in Pride due to strict anti-LGBTQ laws or social stigma.

To bridge this gap, we've created #prideforeveryone—a virtual reality Pride experience that anyone can access. For the past several weeks, Googlers from 25 countries have been marching in their local Pride parades to document the truly global face of the LGBTQ community in 360 degrees. This VR montage, available via YouTube 360 and Google Cardboard, is the result.

Google has a long track record of leadership in LGBTQ rights, including taking a stand against discrimination in sports at the Sochi Olympic games, becoming one of the first companies to provide full coverage of transgender employee healthcare, and standing up for same-sex and domestic partner rights and benefits in places around the world where they may not otherwise exist.

Even in the U.S., where we’ve achieved greater levels of equality, only 52 percent of the LGBTQ population have ever participated in a parade. Transgender people face legislation that effectively dehumanizes them. In Orlando, the LGBTQ community bore the brunt of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. This is simply wrong.

With #prideforeveryone, we stand prouder than ever in our embrace of the LGBTQ community. As always, we invite others to stand with us.
A 360 camera is anchored on a moving float in the São Paulo Pride parade. The trans flag and a crowd of more than 2 million people can be seen in the background.

Posted by Arjan Dijk, VP Growth Marketing and Executive Sponsor of Gayglers Arjan Dijk VP Growth Marketing and Executive Sponsor of Gayglers