Google Product Helping Blog

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 represent...

�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 o...

This week our Google for Education team will be joining thousands of educators at the annual ISTE conference . Follow along on their blog and Twitter for the latest news and updates. -Ed. 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 ne...

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, ...

All around the world, entrepreneurs are creating thriving businesses. In London, Josh Babarinde created Cracked It , a social enterprise that trains at-risk youth to repair cracked smartphone screens, giving them an alternative to crime. In Seoul, Yeram Kwon is transforming the CPR training experience with improved, smarter manikins through HeartiSense . And in Israel, Oded Ben-Dov created Sesame Enable , the first touch-free smartphone designed for people who have limited or no use of their hands due to disabilities. As a company created by two graduate students in a garage, we know just how powerful an entrepreneur with an idea can be. We also know there�s more that companies, governments, and communities can do to help those entrepreneurs succeed. That�s why we created Google for Entrepreneurs nearly four years ago�to support startup communities around the world and connect entrepreneurs to resources and to each other. This week, we�re excited to participate in and sponsor the Glo...

Picture this: you woke up today with a headache. It�s been getting worse all day, and you aren�t sure if you should be worried or not. So you open the Google app and start searching for your symptoms. After 20 minutes digging through health forums, chances are you're overwhelmed by all the complicated medical terms and breaking out in a sweat�whether that�s related to the headache or the overdose of info is unclear! You�re not alone. Roughly 1 percent of searches on Google (think: millions! ) are symptom-related. But health content on the web can be difficult to navigate, and tends to lead people from mild symptoms to scary and unlikely conditions, which can cause unnecessary anxiety and stress. So starting in the coming days, when you ask Google about symptoms like � headache on one side ,� we�ll show you a list of related conditions (�headache,� �migraine,� �tension headache,� �cluster headache,� �sinusitis,� and �common cold�). For individual symptoms like � headache ,� we�ll a...

When Walaa posted a picture on social media that spoke out against violence in his hometown of Jairoud, Syria, it earned him three months of violent detention. He fled the country with his family through Turkey and into Greece, where they now live in a refugee camp near the Macedonian border. Though the Internet played a role in his flight from Syria, connectivity has played a crucial role in helping him rebuild his life in Greece. While living in Greek refugee camps, Walaa used YouTube to learn English, and his language skills are now so good that he�s served as a community advocate and translator. He says he�s far from done: next, he hopes to learn Greek. As refugees across Europe adapt to new contexts, access to information and education are crucial to help them develop the skills they need. Last fall we encouraged you to donate to a public matching campaign to help refugees access not only basic humanitarian aid, but also resources to create a bridge to their new communities. Since...

This past Mother's Day, we shared #LoveLetters , a partnership among nonprofits to give the children of incarcerated parents a chance to have their voices heard. Today, in celebration of Father�s Day, you can watch Love Letters for incarcerated fathers. This work is part of our continued commitment to raising awareness about racial injustice , and to bearing witness to the human costs of mass incarceration. The costs of mass incarceration have disproportionately affected the lives of Black men. From 1980 to 2007, about one in three of the 25.4 million adults arrested for drugs was African-American. And if that current trend continues, one in three Black boys born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. All in all, we�re now at a point where there are more African-American men incarcerated in the U.S. than the total prison populations of India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Germany, Finland, Israel and England combined. Children share digital �Love Letters� fo...

Your phone can help you navigate from one side of the country to the other, help you share memories with friends, or even identify the song that's playing right now. But it can�t answer basic (and important) questions like, �Where�s the nearest building exit?� or �Will this couch actually fit in my apartment?� That�s because while your phone may know where you are in the world, it doesn�t know where you are in the room. But, for the past three years, the Project Tango team has been working to help devices understand physical space and motion more like people do. Today we�re taking the next step with the first Tango-enabled phone (Lenovo�s PHAB2 Pro ). We�re also graduating the effort from Project Tango to, simply, Tango. Tango helps you answer a new set of questions about your world through specialized hardware and apps. Some of the coolest apps that work with Tango are the ones that overlay digital objects on top of your surroundings. For example if you�re shopping for a new bed, ...

A year ago today , we launched My Account , a hub that gives you quick access to controls for safeguarding your data and protecting your privacy on Google. My Account puts privacy and security tools in one place, including long-standing features like Ads Settings and newer ones like the Privacy and Security Checkups. Collectively, these tools make it easy for you to control your privacy and security from any device. In the past year, more than one billion people around the world have used My Account. Now, on the first anniversary of its launch, we're excited to introduce three new features to easily access your controls and protect your data. A helping hand when you lose your phone We entrust our phones with some of our most personal data: texts from loved ones, family photos, work emails, bank account information, and more. In the wrong hands, that data could cause trouble. Unfortunately, millions of phones are stolen every year in the U.S. alone, and countless more are lost in...