One of the hopeful signs of a return to normalcy is seeing many of our customers make plans to come back into their offices. And they’re asking for strategies that will make hybrid work a more equitable and productive experience for everyone. At Google, we’re also beginning our own transition to hybrid work in early April. As we gear up for that, it feels like a time of optimism for new ways of working together and the potential for hybrid models to become the sustainable norm. When designed well, a hybrid model gives employees the flexibility to deliver their best from anywhere, while bringing them together thoughtfully for the power of in-person collaboration.

Today, Google Workspace is announcing new features that can help teams of all sizes stay better connected and engaged, whether they’re working from home, the office, or anywhere in between.

More inclusive and secure hybrid meetings

For most companies working in a hybrid model, meetings typically include in-person and remote attendees, and it’s essential that each hybrid meeting experience is unified and productive for all. In light of this, we continue to make enhancements to Google Meet to help ensure that all video meetings are secure and inclusive no matter the location or device preference.

Coming next month, in-meeting reactions will let attendees visually express themselves with 👍 ❤️ 😆 and more, bringing energy into the meeting and giving immediate feedback to speakers and other attendees. These reactions will appear in a participant’s video tile, or overflow alongside their name if their video tile isn’t visible.

Being able to see and hear each other during hybrid collaboration is essential. To address this, we’re bringing Meet directly to Docs, Sheets, and Slides in the coming weeks. Users will be able to quickly start a meeting and bring it to a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, and they can present this content to all the meeting attendees. This enables everyone in the meeting to collaborate in real-time while having a conversation—all from the same tab.

Additionally, to help presenters and multitaskers see their audience while navigating different tabs and windows, we’re bringing picture-in-picture to Meet running on Chrome browsers. Next month, you’ll be able to see up to four video tiles of meeting attendees in a floating window on top of other applications as you share content or send a message in Gmail. Clicking on picture-in-picture quickly takes you back to the full Meet session.

With our recent rollout of Companion mode for Meet, we gave in-room meeting attendees a way to stay engaged using their personal devices while leveraging in-room audio and video. To improve the in-room experience, we’ve started rolling out automatic noise cancellation on all Google Meet hardware, including Logitech, Acer and Asus hardware.* This will help remove background noises—from loud typing in a conference room to the neighbor’s lawn mower. In the coming months, people in conference rooms will also be able to add their own personal video tile from Companion mode and their laptop camera, making it easier for other attendees to see their expressions and gestures.

We’re also improving the livestream experience, strengthening an organization’s ability to broadcast a message and deepening its engagement with audiences. Today, Google Meet users can host meetings of up to 500 active attendees with the ability to livestream to audiences of up to 100,000 across trusted Google Workspace domains. Coming later this year, livestream attendees will be able to participate in Q&A and polls, matching the experience that Meet attendees enjoy today. Customers have also requested the ability to reach a broader audience by livestreaming through other platforms. Later this year we’ll enable meeting hosts to do just that by streaming meetings directly to YouTube from the Meet activities tab. Our integration with YouTube means a Google account can be used for authentication, simplifying the livestreaming process.

Lastly, to help keep your most sensitive communications protected and private, in May we’re rolling out optional client-side encryption in Google Meet (currently in beta). This feature gives our customers direct control of the encryption keys and identity provider used to access those keys. And later this year we’ll introduce optional end-to-end encryption for all meetings.

Together, these enhancements strengthen the foundation of security that help make secure, hybrid collaboration happen at scale.

Anytime collaboration for teams large and small

While live meetings can be a great way to collaborate and make decisions in real time as a team, most communication and information sharing doesn’t need to happen in real time. How do high performing teams stay connected with the right information, at the right time, without the need for the back-to-back meetings that were a hallmark for many during the pandemic?

Spaces in Google Workspace offers an integrated, effective solution for anytime collaboration, where teams can share ideas and knowledge, discuss topics, collaborate on documents, and manage tasks within a single, persistent location.

We are improving how conversations are displayed in Spaces with inline threading, a top request from enterprise customers. With inline threading, members of a space will be able to respond to specific comments and create side conversations, while keeping the dialogue organized and contextual. Every teammate can easily browse a space and catch up on topics that are important to them, at a time that works for their schedule.

To further support collaboration and transparency, last week we enabled users to invite others to join a Space via a shared link, and later this year we will enable users to search and join Spaces across an organization. We’re also improving search within Chat and Spaces to surface the most relevant files and conversations, and bringing filter chips to chat search results later this year.

And to bring the power of Spaces to organizations of all sizes, we are increasing team size limits to 8,000, and we’ll increase this to 25,000 by the end of this year to support communities as they grow. This will improve knowledge sharing and collaboration in larger organizations and unlock key scenarios, including team, department and organizational announcements.

Strong team cultures are built on trust and psychological safety. That’s why we’re adding features that improve content moderation, the ability to designate managers and guidelines for specific Spaces, and new admin capabilities to delete Spaces.

Bringing Google Voice to more customers

With the move to a hybrid workplace, we’ve seen renewed interest in cloud-based phone systems that untether people from legacy deskphones. Google Voice keeps colleagues and customers connected with an intuitive calling experience across devices (web, mobile, and certified deskphones) while leveraging Google’s AI to help save time by blocking spam, transcribing voicemails, and guiding callers. Google Voice has over a decade of cloud telephony experience and seamlessly integrates with Google Workspace.

To help our European customers adopt Google Voice, we recently announced that calls from European Google Voice numbers to mobile and landline numbers in many European countries will be included in their Google Voice license. Later this year, we’ll introduce SIP link, which will allow customers to connect SIP trunks from their chosen telecommunications carrier via certified session border controllers from Audiocodes, Cisco, Oracle, and Ribbon. This will enable customers with operations outside our current coverage areas to move holistically to Google Voice. Admins will be able to easily manage these carrier-provided numbers alongside Google-provisioned numbers directly in the Google Admin Console.

We’ll also begin rolling out on-demand call recording to Google Voice Standard and Premier subscribers next month. Premier subscribers will have the additional benefit of automated call recordings, which is a top request from customers in regulated industries. We encourage you to learn more about Google Voice and talk with your Google account rep about trying it today.

Benefits of a modern hybrid work strategy

As work continues to evolve, Google Workspace will continuously look for ways to help your teams better connect, create, and collaborate, no matter where and how they work together. By bringing together Google Workspace innovations in voice, video meetings, and the collaboration spaces that support hybrid work, your organization can benefit from a strategy that removes friction, streamlines costs, and reduces the security risks associated with maintaining multiple platforms. With a unified approach to communications and collaboration, you can build a sustainable hybrid work model that gives employees the ability to deliver their best from anywhere.

Learn best practices from Google in our hybrid work handbook.

Environmental sustainability is a key priority for TELUS, a world-leading communications technology company. It continues to rank in the top 100 most sustainably managed companies in the world, and seeks to make a healthier planet for all by leveraging its global-leading technology, compassion to drive social change and reduce our collective carbon footprint through innovative technologies and sustainable business practices.

TELUS surpassed its sustainability objectives in 2019 and is now on a journey to procure all of its electricity from renewable or low-emitting sources by 2025. Next, it aims to achieve net carbon neutrality for its operations by 2030. TELUS has also been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 21 consecutive years, a feat unmatched by any other North American telecom or cable company. In 2021, it became the first company in Canada to release a Sustainability-linked bond (SLB) framework and complete an SLB offering, formally linking TELUS financing to its environmental performance.

“We’ve spent the last decade becoming a global leader in sustainability, helping make the planet healthier by ensuring that our operations are as environmentally responsible as possible,” said Geoff Pegg, Head of Sustainability and Environment at TELUS.

In part, TELUS’ strategy is focused on three key areas:

1. Seek the best renewable energy options available
2. Focus on migrating workloads to the cloud
3. Embrace a multiplier effect through the use of sustainable partners

Renewable energy impact

Part of this environmental responsibility involves investing heavily in renewable energy sources through power purchase agreements (PPAs) that help renewable energy providers like wind farms and solar companies develop their infrastructure. TELUS executed PPAs with four Alberta-based solar and wind facilities to provide 100 per cent of its electricity load demand in a province where one-third of the grid is powered by coal.

As a technology company, electricity represents a large portion of TELUS’ energy needs: 80 percent of the operational carbon footprint comes from the power requirements for TELUS’ network and administrative buildings, Pegg explains. While TELUS is using renewable energy sources and low-emitting energy grids to power its buildings and network, there’s also the often-forgotten part of the carbon emissions equation: the energy it takes to power data centers. As the International Energy Agency recently reported, data centers represent 1 percent of the global electricity demand and that figure is expected to keep rising as the world increases usage of data-heavy technologies.

“It’s probably no surprise that everyone, whether you’re a business or a consumer, is concerned about reducing carbon emissions,” said Chris Talbott, the Google Cloud Sustainability Lead. “A lot of us think about the carbon emissions associated with our cars or with the electricity that powers our homes, but oftentimes we forget about the carbon emissions that come from the digital services that we use or the networks required to deliver that data.”

As a leader in sustainability, how can TELUS meet the energy demands of its customers while also protecting the environment? One way is through the company’s previously announced collaboration with Google Cloud. The two companies are working together to build a more sustainable world through technology and reduce TELUS’ carbon footprint, create value along the entire supply chain, and optimize industry solutions for social impact through data analytics and machine learning.

Taking a cloud first approach — reducing carbon emissions with green cloud computing

Google became carbon neutral in 2007 and has achieved 100 per cent renewable energy matching every year since 2017. Google has invested in renewable energy to match the electricity we use across our entire operations, including Google Cloud, meaning every workload that TELUS runs on Google Cloud has been matched with renewable energy purchases.

“The operational carbon footprint of running anything on Google Cloud is zero,” Talbott said. Also, by working with Google, TELUS gets the benefit of economies of scale using less electricity. Not only is TELUS leveraging Google data centers, it’s also relying on the digital collaboration made possible by Google Workspace to reduce the amount of travel required by employees attending meetings in different offices. Collaboration tools like Google Meet can reduce the carbon footprint of in-person conferences by 94 percent.

Google compensates for the environmental footprint of any electricity used in the data center and out to the edge network. “You can feel pretty good about using Google Meet because it’s carbon-neutral,” Talbott said.

Multiplier through sustainable partnerships — green cloud computing radiates out

By supporting TELUS in its environmental sustainability efforts, Google Cloud is also enabling TELUS to do the same for its various partnerships. For example, powered by Google Cloud’s infrastructure and data analytics capabilities, TELUS is partnering with Picacity (formerly NXN Digital) and Google Cloud to deliver an ecosystem of integrated smart technologies that enable cities to improve the lives of their residents.

From dynamic traffic signaling that reduces congestion and emissions, to data analytics that create smarter, more efficient city planning, the partnership is transforming the way municipalities operate in our increasingly digital world.The partnership is built on four foundational pillars of infrastructure and environmental sustainability, intelligent transportation, public safety and security, and health. In the case of intelligent transportation, this means sensors, cameras, and other devices are built into or near roads, sidewalks, and bike paths to provide data for innovative software to improve traffic flow in real time. The data can then foster informed decisions about infrastructure, city planning, fleet optimization, and public safety.

All of these environmental measures may seem small when compared with the enormity of the problem that is climate change, but as Talbott said, “Change begins with the small decisions we make every day such as paying attention to the practices of companies that we’ve come to rely on daily in the modern world. They may seem small and in the margins, but at scale, this is how we can make a real impact.”

Reboot your Startup with our technical guided series

At Google Cloud, we want to provide you with the access to all the tools you need to grow your business. Through the Google Cloud Technical Guides for Startups, leverage industry leading solutions with how-to video guides and resources curated for startups. 

This multi-series contains 3 chapters: Start, Build and Grow, which matches your startup’s  journey:

• The Start Series: Begin by building, deploying and managing new applications on Google Cloud from start to finish.
• The Build Series: Optimize and scale existing deployments to reach your target audiences.
• The Grow Series: Grow and attain scale with deployments on Google Cloud.

Additionally, at Google we have the Google for Startups Cloud Program, which is designed to help your business get off the ground and enable a sustainable growth plan for the future. The start of the Build Series delineates the benefits of the program, the application process, and more to help your business get started on Google Cloud.

A quick recap of the Build Series

Once you have applied for the Google for Startups Cloud Program, there’s so much to explore and try out on Google Cloud. 

Figuring out a rapid but solid application development process can be key to many businesses in reducing time to market. Furthermore, learning what database to use to handle application data can be tricky. Deep dive into our Firestore video which walks through how Firestore can help you unlock application innovation with simplicity and speed.

We then move on to a deep dive into BigQuery and how it can help businesses. BigQuery is designed to support analysis over petabytes of data regardless of whether it’s structured or unstructured. This video is the goto video for getting started on BigQuery!If you are someone looking to run your Spark and Hadoop jobs faster and on the cloud, look to Dataproc. To learn more about Dataproc and how this has helped other customers with their Hadoop clusters, click the video below to learn all things Dataproc related.

Next, we find out what Dataflow can bring to your business; some advantages, sample architectures, demos on the console, and how other customers are using Dataflow. 

We also talked about Machine Learning, starting from selecting the right ML solution to Machine Learning APIs on cloud to exploring Vertex AI. Following that we look into API management in Google Cloud and how Apigee helps operate your APIs with enhanced scale, security, and automation.

We ended the series with the last two episodes focusing around security deep-dive and using Cloud Tasks and Cloud Scheduler.

Coming up next – The Grow Series

Dive into the next chapter of this multi-series, with our upcoming Grow Series, where we will be focusing on growing and attaining scale with deployments on Google Cloud.

Check out our website and join us by checking out the video series on the Google Cloud Tech channel, and subscribe to stay up to date. 

See you in the cloud!