Creating a secure-by-default experience based on robust defenses has always been a core design principle for Gmail. That’s why we’ve established a strong baseline of security in Gmail, with built-in protections to help automatically filter out potentially malicious messages. While these defenses help keep Gmail users safe, email functions as part of a large, complex, interconnected ecosystem that we continually invest in and work to protect. After first announcing Gmail’s Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) pilot last year, today we’re announcing that over the coming weeks we’re rolling out Gmail’s general support of BIMI, an industry standard that aims to drive adoption of strong sender authentication for the entire email ecosystem. BIMI provides email recipients and email security systems increased confidence in the source of emails, and enables senders to provide their audience with a more immersive experience.

“Bank of America has a wide range of security measures in place to support our customers, and we constantly evolve our program to deliver best in class protection. Part of this effort is our partnership with Google on BIMI, which provides an easy way to validate if correspondence is from us.” — Bank of America

BIMI enables organizations that authenticate their emails using Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)—a standard for providing strong sender authentication that allows security systems to perform better filtering, separating legitimate messages from potentially spoofed ones—to validate ownership of their logos and securely transmit them to Google. BIMI is designed to be easy: for organizations with DMARC in place, validated logos display on authenticated emails from their domains and subdomains.

Here’s how it works: Organizations who authenticate their emails using Sender Policy Framework (SPF) or Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) and deploy DMARC can provide their validated trademarked logos to Google via a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC). BIMI leverages Mark Verifying Authorities, like Certification Authorities, to verify logo ownership and provide proof of verification in a VMC. Once these authenticated emails pass our other anti-abuse checks, Gmail will start displaying the logo in the existing avatar slot.  

“Gmail’s support of BIMI is a win for email authentication, brand trust, and consumers alike. BIMI gives organizations the opportunity to provide their customers with a more immersive email experience, strengthening email sender authentication across the entire email ecosystem.” — Seth Blank, Chair of the AuthIndicators Working Group

This is just the start for BIMI. The standard expects to expand support across logo types and validators. For logo validation, BIMI is starting by supporting the validation of trademarked logos, since they are a common target of impersonation. Today, Entrust and DigiCert support BIMI as Certification Authorities, and in the future the BIMI working group expects this list of supporting validation authorities to expand further. To learn more about BIMI and see the latest news, visit the working group’s website.

To take advantage of BIMI, ensure that your organization has adopted DMARC, and that you have validated your logo with a VMC. For Gmail users, no action is required. We’re proud to be one of the leading members in both establishing and supporting the BIMI standard and will continue to support efforts that contribute to security for the entire email ecosystem.

Expectations for both consumer and commercial products have changed. Consumers want products that evolve with their needs, adapt to their preferences, and stay up-to-date over time. Manufacturers, in turn, need to create products that provide engaging customer experiences not only to better compete in the marketplace, but also to provide new monetization opportunities. 

However, embedding intelligence into new and existing products is challenging. Updating hardware is costly, and existing connected products do not have the capability to add new features. Furthermore, manufacturers do not have sufficient customer insights due to product telemetry and customer data silos, and may lack the AI expertise to quickly develop and deploy these features. 

That’s why today we’re launching Intelligent Products Essentials, a solution that allows manufacturers to rapidly deliver products that adapt to their owners, update features over-the-air using AI at the edge, and provide customer insights using analytics in the cloud. The solution is designed to assist manufacturers in their product development journeys—whether developing a new product or enhancing existing ones. 

With Intelligent Products Essentials, manufacturers can:

• Personalize customer experiences: Provide a compelling ownership experience that evolves over the lifetime of the product. For example, a chatbot that contextualizes responses based on product status and customer profile.
• Manage and update products over-the-air: Deploy updates to products in the field,  gather performance insights and evolve capabilities over time with monetization opportunities.
• Predict parts and service issues: Detect operating thresholds, anomalies and predict failures to proactively recommend service using AI, reducing warranty claims, decreasing parts shortages and increasing customer satisfaction.

In order to help manufacturers quickly deploy these use cases and many more, Intelligent Products Essentials provides the following:

• Edge connections: Connect and ingest raw or time-series product telemetry from various device platforms utilizing IoT Core or Pub/Sub and enable deployment and management of firmware over-the-air and machine learning models with Vertex AI at the edge.
• Ownership App Template: Easily build connected product companion apps that work on smartphones, tablets, and computers. Use a pre-built API and accompanying sample app that can incorporate product or device registration, identity management, and provide application behavior analytics using Firebase.
• Product fleet management: Manage, update and analyze fleets of connected products via APIs, Google Kubernetes Engine, and Looker.
• AI services: Create new features or capabilities for your products using AI and machine learning products such as DialogFlow, Vision AI, AutoML, all from Vertex AI.

Enterprise data integration: Integrate data sources such as Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and others using Dataflow and BigQuery.

Intelligent Products Essentials helps manufacturers build new features across consumer, industrial, enterprise, and transportation products. Manufacturers can implement the solution in-house, or work with one of our certified solution integration partners like Quantifi and Softserve. 

“The focus on intelligent products that Google Cloud is deploying provides a digital option for manufacturers and users. At its heart, systems like Intelligent Product Essentials are all about decision making. IDC sees faster and more effective decision-making as the fundamental reason for the drive to digitize products and processes. It’s how you can make faster and more effective decisions to meet heightened customer expectations, generate faster cash flow, and better revenue realization,” said Kevin Prouty, Group Vice President at IDC. “Digital offerings like Google’s Intelligent Product Essentials potentially go the last mile with the ability to connect the digital thread all the way through to the final user.”

Customers adopting Intelligent Products Essentials

GE Appliances, a Haier company, are enhancing their appliances using new AI-powered intelligent features to enable:

• Intelligent cooking: Help cook the perfect meal to personal preferences, regardless of your expertise and abilities in the kitchen.
• Frictionless service: Build smart appliances that know when they need maintenance and make it simple to take action or schedule services.
• Integrated digital lifestyle: Make appliances useful at every step of the way by integrating them with digital lifestyle services – for example, automating appliance behaviors according to customer calendars, such as oven preheating or scheduling the dishwasher to run in the late evening.

“Intelligent Products Essentials enhances our smart appliances ecosystem, offering richer consumer habit insights. This enables us to develop and offer new features and experiences to integrate with their digital lifestyle.“ —Shawn Stover, Vice-president Smart Home Solutions at GE Appliances.https://www.youtube.com/embed/zaWAJN8aKOw?enablejsapi=1&

Serial 1, Powered by Harley-Davidson, is using Intelligent Product Essentials to manage and update its next generation eBicycles, and personalize its customers’ digital ownership experiences. 

“At Serial 1, we are dedicated to creating the easiest and most intuitive way to experience the fun, freedom, and adventure of riding a pedal-assist electric bicycle. Connectivity is a key component of delivering that mission, and working together to integrate Intelligent Product Essentials into our eBicycles will ensure that our customers enjoy the best possible user experience.”— Jason Huntsman, President, Serial 1. 

Magic Leap, an augmented reality pioneer with industry-leading hardware and software, is building field service solutions with Intelligent Products Essentials with the goal of connecting manufacturers, dealers, and customers to more proactive and intelligent service.

“We look forward to using Intelligent Products Essentials to enable us to rapidly integrate manufacturers’ product data with dealer service partners into our field service solution. We’re excited to partner with Google Cloud as we continue to push the boundaries of physical interaction with the digital world.” — Walter Delph, Chief Business Officer, Magic Leap

Intelligent Product Essentials is available today. To learn more, visit our website.

What does “accessibility” mean to businesses? It’s not just about making sure that your office or retail space is accessible to workers and customers who have mobility challenges, it’s also about making sure that your apps, digital tools and content are also more accessible to everyone. 

Our product teams work every day to ensure that tools like G Suite have built-in accessibility features. As a Program Manager, I help create those features and use many of them myself, as I’m blind. I would like to give an overview of product accessibility features that have been available for some time, as well as some new ones. 

Listen to content with help from screen readers. 
A screen reader is a helpful tool for people who are blind or have low vision. It provides methods to interact and control applications and also converts content on screen into spoken text. With a screen reader and keyboard shortcuts, you can read, edit, and comment on files. Getting started is easy: In Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets, go to the Tools menu, and in “Accessibility settings,” check the “Turn on screen reader support” box. Learn how to turn on screen reader support in Docs.

G Suite supports several screen readers, including ChromeVox, Google’s own screen reader. ChromeVox is automatically built into Chrome devices, like Chromebooks. You just have to enable it. There are many other screen readers you can use with G Suite too; this support guide explains which screen readers work best with which web browsers.

Another way to listen to content is with Select-to-speak, a feature that reads content aloud to you using text-to speech (TTS) to verbalize highlighted content. To try it out, highlight text and activate the select-to-speak button. An example of a select-to-speak tool is the one built into ChromeOS.

See a summary of changes to your documents.
To make it easier for people to keep track of collaborators’ contributions in Google Docs (without having to actively watch every single change), we recently added a feature called Live Edits. Helpful if you use a screen reader or magnification, Live Edits periodically summarizes changes made to a document by collaborators within the sidebar. Learn how to comment and collaborate in Docs using a screen reader.

And for people who are sensitive to visual crowding, we also introduced eight different Lexend font families that have varied widths and spacing to accommodate different reading speeds. Read more details about these font options.

Use voice typing to “write” by speaking. 
Voice typing is a powerful productivity tool for everyone, including those who do not use a keyboard. It’s especially useful for people with low vision or with motor disabilities that may prevent them from using keyboards, mice or trackpads. When you speak into the computer’s microphone, voice typing uses artificial intelligence (AI) to convert your voice into text. In Docs, you can even use voice commands to select and edit text—for example, bolding words or cutting and pasting text.

Flexible ways of working have become second nature for people everywhere, especially for the more than 8 million customers that use Google Workspace in their offices, homes, or on mobile devices.

However, the rise of hybrid work has also demonstrated the importance of choice. People don’t want to be locked into a single app or in a closed environment. They want to use productivity tools like email, video conferencing, and chat in a seamless way with other critical apps that perform functions like helping to stay in touch with customers, visualizing data, managing projects, building creative designs, and much more.

Enabling all of those products to work well together — without boundaries or walled gardens — is essential to helping teams and organizations maximize hybrid work. This week at Google Cloud Next, we’re taking significant steps towards making Google Workspace the most open and extensible productivity platform for users worldwide.

Today, we’re launching third-party smart chips in Docs, along with new integrations and enhanced API capabilities for Meet, Chat and Spaces, delivering entirely new ways to use third-party applications within or alongside Google Workspace, allowing organizations to get more value from the solutions they’ve already invested in. The new integrations are with some of the most popular enterprise applications in use today — AO Docs, Asana, Atlassian, Figma, LumApps, Miro, Tableau, and Zendesk — and will help transform the way people work every day.

Together, with our partners, we’re enabling an open ecosystem for hybrid work and ensuring that Google Workspace’s most helpful features don’t stay proprietary.

Bringing smart chips to popular third-party applications

When we launched smart canvas, we gave Google Workspace users the ability to bring the people and information they needed into Docs through simple @-mentions, creating interactive mentions of people, files, meetings, templates, and more. Today, we’re expanding smart chips to our ecosystem of partners, allowing our users to add even more rich data, more context, and critical information right into the flow of their work.

With these new third-party smart chips, you will be able to tag and see critical information from partner applications using @-mentions, and easily insert interactive information and previews from third-party apps directly into a Google Doc.

Several of our partners including AO Docs, Atlassian, Asana, Figma, Miro, Tableau, and ZenDesk, are now developing third-party smart chips to add more value to your Google Docs experience:

• AODocs, a fast-growing content services platform, is creating a smart chip that will allow you to link to and interact with controlled documents using AODocs’ content management capabilities within Google Docs.
• Asana, the leading work management platform, is creating smart chips that will enable you to see and manage your tasks and projects easily within a Doc.
• Atlassian, a leading provider of team collaboration and productivity software, is creating smart chips for both its Jira and Confluence apps, enabling you to visualize key details for your project plans directly in a Doc.
• Figma, a design platform for teams who build products together, is using smart chips to embed helpful information about brainstorms, diagrams, and prototypes that are foundational to a product design project into Docs. The chips provide a visual thumbnail of the project so you can easily tell what you’re clicking into.
• Tableau, the analytics platform, is building a new smart chip that will enable Google Docs users to see a live preview of data visualizations and related dashboard metadata.
• Miro, the leading visual collaboration platform, is creating smart chips that will enable you to transform a Miro link into a useful, visual frame of reference that gives preview, title, and other information needed to get a quick summary of your work in a visual format.
• Zendesk, the popular customer service platform, is building smart chips to show users all the relevant and pertinent information for a given Zendesk ticket without leaving Google Docs.

These new smart chip experiences from our partners are examples of the value and innovation we can provide to users and organizations by committing to openness and extensibility.

Smart chips will be available to developers to build out their app integrations in the coming weeks, and will be available to all users in Docs starting January 2023.

Adding third-party capabilities to Google Meet

Google Meet is more than just a video conferencing tool — it’s a hub for collaboration. Earlier this year, we rolled out the capability to join meetings and present directly from Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to make it easier for people to work together in real-time. We also built an integration with Miro, allowing you to initiate collaboration on Miro whiteboards directly from a Meet call. Now, we’re extending that capability to more third-party applications.

Two new tools for developers — the Google Meet API and Google Meet add-on SDK — will enable our partners to bring their apps together with Google Meet, providing new seamless ways for our customers to use their favorite tools with Google Meet.

With our new Meet add-on SDK, partners can bring the power and functionality of their apps into Meet, where users can then collaborate using other products without leaving the meeting space. For example, Figma is utilizing this SDK to bring its popular design and whiteboarding capabilities into Google Meet. Our shared customers will now be able to collaborate within Figma in real time during Google Meet video calls.

We’re also announcing new Meet API that will enable users to schedule and launch meetings directly from third-party applications. These APIs will also enable users to see whether a meeting is currently live and who is currently in the meeting — all without leaving the application of their choice.

Asana is working to bring the new Meet API together with Drive APIs to create or link to an existing Google Meet meeting directly from a task in Asana. In addition, we’re working with Asana to explore functionality that would allow users to add tasks to a meeting, create a clear agenda for the team, and assign pre-work so teams arrive prepared for a purposeful meeting. We believe that together, Asana and Google Meet can make meetings more actionable by helping users prepare and host results-focused meetings.

Figma is working on bringing Figma and Figjam files right into Meet with this new Meet integration, giving teams the ability to brainstorm and build designs together right in the flow of a meeting. All participants can contribute and engage through Meet, so more voices are heard and projects move forward faster.

We’re also making it easy for people to find and launch partner applications within Google Meet. Joint partner and Workspace customers will be able to discover and install Meet add-ons directly within the Meet UI — even during a live meeting. And of course, partners can register their apps in the Google Workspace Marketplace, helping them reach millions of Workspace users.

The Google Meet API will be available for early access later this year, and the Meet add-on SDK will be available for early access by the end of 2022.

Bringing partner applications into Google Chat and Spaces

Developers already use our Chat and Spaces APIs to add new experiences to Google Workspace. For instance, they are enabling third-party applications to automatically add people to Chat Spaces in time-sensitive, critical scenarios like incident response.

Now, we’re expanding the Chat and Spaces APIs to enable more functionality between Google Chat and our partners’ applications. Soon, these apps will be able to automatically create 1:1 direct messages or group chats programmatically. These apps will also be able to read and write Chat messages without requiring a user to launch an app, further extending the capabilities to allow for contextual understanding of conversations.

For example, imagine you’re discussing an upcoming project with your team in a space, and when you start working on the project in a given app, the app suggests adding a related link or Doc based on the Chat conversation. An app could also automatically copy all messages from one space to another to ensure important messages are shared as broadly as possible with your team.

These are just a few ways partner apps using the Chat and Spaces APIs will be able to enhance user experiences in Chat. Several of our partners are already leveraging these Chat and Spaces APIs to create unique Chat experiences:

Asana is currently using the new Chat and Spaces APIs to notify users and act on Asana tasks right from Google Chat, including actions such as marking a task complete, reassigning a task or even creating an entirely new task, all without leaving Google Chat.

LumApps, the widely-used employee experience platform, is building a new integration with Chat that will enable our joint users to launch a private Google Chat with another employee, directly from their LumApps user directory. Bringing together these two common use cases — finding a coworker and initiating a conversation — helping Google Workspace and LumApps customers communicate more seamlessly and quickly.

Some capabilities for the Chat and Spaces APIs are already available in the Developer Preview Program, with more APIs launching in the next few weeks. Make sure you check out the Developer Preview Program for more details.

The power of an ecosystem

We’re committed to making Google Workspace the most capable, open, and extensible platform for users, and delivering a product that reflects reality for workers today: work doesn’t get done in a single application or a legacy suite of programs anymore.

Together with our partners, we can deliver more helpful, flexible tools, create best in class capabilities for hybrid work, and enable entirely new ways of communicating and collaborating.

You can learn more about Google Workspace add-ons and integrations here, our partner applications here, and read more about the benefits of modernizing legacy office programs here. You can also express interest in partnering with Google Workspace here.

FM Logistic provides its international customers with complete logistics solutions that cover everything from warehousing and handling, to transport and distribution, co-packing and co-manufacturing, and supply chain optimization. Operating in 14 countries including France, Russia, Poland, India, Vietnam, Brazil, and China, FM Logistic supports its clients by offering specialized services across a number of markets including consumer goods, retail, cosmetics, and health.

“We are in the process of transforming all our tools and integrating new solutions to be able to work faster and more efficiently. Two main IT priorities are mobility and openness, in terms of working from anywhere and being able to interact with other information systems.”

– Communication Manager, FM Logistic

As a business that has existed since 1967 and in 2018 achieved a turnover of €1.178 billion with 9.5% annual growth, FM Logistic is always looking to help secure the company’s position within an evolving sector. To better serve its customers, FM Logistic decided to launch an innovation project in 2017 to transform the internal digital tools of the company and replace its intranet, email, and productivity software. The company looked for an integrated solution that would enable more collaborative ways of working and bring its international operations closer together. The company found that implementing G Suite and LumApps social intranet was the perfect combination.

“We are in the process of transforming all our tools and integrating new solutions to be able to work faster and more efficiently,” says the Communication Manager at FM Logistic. “Two main IT priorities are mobility and openness, in terms of working from anywhere and being able to interact with other information systems.”

A global transformation

For large international companies with global operations, implementing a single integrated solution to enable collaboration across regions while respecting regional variations can be a real challenge.

“We have 26,000 employees spread across a broad geography, with a variation in cultures and technological maturity. There was an aspiration to work in collaboration, but the necessary tools were not in place,” says FM Logistic’s Communication Manager. FM Logistic looked for a solution to enable new, more collaborative work practices, which were flexible in terms of usage and that, most importantly, would work as part of an integrated solution.

To do that, FM Logistic worked with Google Partner Devoteam G Cloud to implement G Suite alongside the LumApps intranet portal. It took six months to complete the migration of 7,000 accounts, with employees accessing the Business or Basic G Suite edition according to their needs. “Before, with our physical infrastructure we found ourselves buying additional hard drives as we ran out of storage,” says the Technical Project Manager at FM Logistic. “That’s no longer a problem, and we can tailor access depending on whether or not employees need unlimited storage .”

“It’s a real advantage to be able to access your account from any device and work from anywhere. Hangouts Meet has been really transformational in that respect: it has reduced the need for travel significantly, even in the few months we’ve been using it so far.”

– Communication Manager, FM Logistic

“We followed Google’s G Suite migration advice and had early adopter ambassadors in every country. By the time we got around to the final country, very little input was needed as they were ready to go!” says the Technical Project Manager. “Many of them were already familiar with the product, so it was very intuitive. Our feedback surveys gave a satisfaction rating of almost 4.5 out of 5 in relation to the transition. We also had significant executive support, with two members of the executive committee on the steering board. That really helped the project to move quickly.”

As a result, employees were quick to understand the benefits of the new system. “It’s a real advantage to be able to access your account from any device and work from anywhere. That was clear from the start,” says the Communication Manager. “Hangouts Meet has been really transformational in that respect: it has reduced the need for travel significantly, even in the few months we’ve been using it so far.”

LumApps: a fully-integrated enterprise hub

One of FM Logistic’s main reasons for choosing G Suite was the seamless integration with LumApps’ intranet portal. LumApps adds value to G Suite, thereby boosting and sustaining employee adoption. FM Logistic chose LumApps to create a hub for its enterprise, where everything is centralized from internal communications to business apps.

“We didn’t want a patchwork of solutions, we needed a platform that worked as an integral whole,” says the Technical Project Manager. “With LumApps, employees access the intranet using their Google authentication and can access all their G Suite tools through the intranet. Moreover, LumApps is Google native, so the integration is seamless and we know that it will evolve to accommodate any changes that might take place.”

“The main advantages we see are communication and knowledge sharing,” says the Communication Manager. “With LumApps, all 26,000 of our employees are now able to access the portal in their own language and access local news.”

For the next step, FM Logistic is considering integrating social communities so that employees can express themselves and be more engaged in the corporate culture.

Supporting digital maturity

Thanks to Drive, employees can now work from wherever they are, and are able to work more efficiently and more collaboratively. “From an administrative point of view, users can benefit from automatic updates, so there is less pressure on the IT department,” says the Technical Project Manager. “And we’re seeing many innovative uses of the tools to work in more efficient ways: many services have gone paperless with Forms, so less time is wasted; commercial agents are using Drive to work together on tenders simultaneously; and with Sheets, tasks are automatically sent from the team manager’s file to employee’s Calendar.”

“G Suite and LumApps are the first step of our digital transformation, in terms of collaboration and moving into the cloud. We have real confidence in our partners LumApps and Google, and we’re investing in those relationships for the long-term benefit of the company.”

– Communication Manager, FM Logistic

Now, FM Logistic wants to further support its employees in exploring all the tools G Suite has to offer. “We are embarking on a second phase to give our employees the skills they need for advanced uses of Docs, Sheets, and Forms,” says the Communication Manager. “It’s a learning curve, but it’s key to our goal of transforming our everyday processes.”

“G Suite and LumApps are the first step of our digital transformation, in terms of collaboration and moving into the cloud. We have real confidence in our partners LumApps and Google, and we’re investing in those relationships for the long-term benefit of the company.”