December 2023 Summaries

A series of #WeArePlay stories highlights diverse app and game developers from around the world, showcasing their unique journeys and innovations. In the United States, Geraldo, inspired by his mother's computer engineering background, founded Moises, an app that uses AI to separate vocals and instruments in music, aiming to democratize audio tools. In Indonesia, colleagues Diori and Agung launched Minimo Studio, achieving great success with Mini Racing Adventures and now venturing into a new shooter game. In Uruguay, the founders of Ironhide Game Studio, Pablo, Gonzalo, and Alvaro, turned their passion for gaming into a thriving business with their popular strategy game Kingdom Rush: Tower Defence, with plans to expand into multiplayer games. In Türkiye, Rina, inspired by her private equity background and the booming gaming industry, founded a successful game studio, Spyke Games, with her brother and friends, creating popular titles like Tile Busters and soon to release Blitz Busters. These stories illustrate the creativity and determination of developers across different regions, each contributing to the diverse landscape of global gaming and app development.

Rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) present transformative opportunities but also raise concerns about risks such as privacy and bias, necessitating responsible development and deployment. Technology leaders, particularly CTOs and Heads of Engineering and AI, must proactively ensure AI is used safely and ethically, even in the absence of comprehensive regulations. This article, the first in a series, proposes four key strategies for integrating AI safety and compliance into product development: establishing a robust AI governance framework, embedding AI safety principles into the design phase, implementing continuous monitoring and auditing, and fostering a culture of transparency and explainability. These strategies aim to ensure AI systems operate fairly and responsibly, ultimately building trust among users and stakeholders as AI becomes integral to critical systems.

Developer Journey is a monthly series that highlights diverse developers worldwide, focusing on the challenges, opportunities, and successes they encounter, as well as the Google tools they use to build innovative products. This month's edition features Google Developer Experts like Juan Lombana from Mexico, Jirawat Karanwittayakarn from Thailand, and Laura Morinigo from the UK, who share their experiences with tools such as Firebase, Google Analytics, and Bard AI. Lombana emphasizes the role of Google Ads and Bard in scaling his educational business, Mercatitlán, while Karanwittayakarn discusses using Firebase to develop popular apps like TrueMoney and chatbots for LINE. Morinigo highlights her work with Firebase in a project with the United Nations to promote global goals. Each developer offers advice to newcomers in the field, emphasizing the importance of action, continuous learning, and community engagement to drive impactful technological solutions.

Earlier this year, Google announced the general availability of third-party smart chips in Google Docs, allowing users to embed and interact with information from other apps directly within their documents. Several partners, such as Asana, Atlassian, and Figma, have already developed smart chips for their apps, enhancing the integration experience. Sourabh Choraria, a Google Developer Expert, released a solution called "Link Previews" that integrates multiple SaaS tools into Google Docs through smart chips. These smart chips, powered by Google Workspace Add-ons, can be created and published to the Google Workspace Marketplace, where they can detect service links and provide users with content previews. Developers can use Google Apps Script for rapid prototyping or alternate runtimes for deploying their smart chips, utilizing various programming languages and hosting options. The smart chips offer a card interface that displays additional information when hovered over and can be customized with widgets and actions. Developers can publish their add-ons privately within their organization or publicly for all Google Account users via the Google Workspace Marketplace.

Developer Journey is a monthly series that features diverse developers from around the world, highlighting their challenges, opportunities, and successes, as well as the Google tools they utilize and the products they create. This installment includes profiles of Miguel Ángel Durán Garcí from Spain, Marian Villa from Colombia, and Rubens de Almeida Zimbres from Brazil, each of whom is a Google Developer Expert. They share insights into their favorite Google tools, such as Firebase, Google Cloud Platform, Chrome DevTools, and Vertex AI, and discuss projects they've developed, ranging from an Advent calendar for developers to a recruiting solution deployed across Latin America. Each developer also offers advice for those beginning their own journeys, emphasizing the importance of patience, curiosity, community engagement, and mastering foundational skills in coding and machine learning. The series underscores the role of inclusive design and the impact of Google technologies in empowering developers to serve diverse communities globally.

As 2023 draws to a close, the final #WeArePlay blog post of the year celebrates app creators from various regions who have made significant impacts on their communities. In Indonesia, Steven developed Super to offer affordable goods to rural areas, enhancing local supply chains and living standards, driven by a mission for social impact. In Singapore, twins Jeromy and Kenny launched Journey, a journaling app that promotes self-care and mental wellness through guided prompts and coaching, with plans to expand their support network. In Dubai, Chris and Rene created Hayi, a platform fostering community connections among residents, with initiatives to encourage interaction and sustainability through projects like city clean-ups. Meanwhile, in Lisbon, Rita, João, and Martim found success with Super Save, an app that compares supermarket prices to help users save money amid rising inflation, and they are developing a barcode scanner to further assist shoppers. Each story highlights the transformative power of technology in addressing local challenges and enhancing quality of life.

Google's Immersive Geospatial Challenge, launched on Devpost, invited developers worldwide to create AR experiences using Geospatial Creator or virtual 3D immersive experiences with Photorealistic 3D Tiles, drawing participation from over 2,700 individuals across more than 100 countries. Submissions were evaluated based on functionality, purpose, creativity, user experience, and technical execution, resulting in a range of innovative projects showcasing the use of Google's technologies. Winners were recognized across various categories, such as entertainment and events, commerce, travel and local discovery, productivity and business, and sustainability, with standout projects including World Ensemble, Realistic Event Showcaser, navigAtoR, Sutro Baths AR Tour, and Geospatial Solar. The challenge highlighted the potential of AR and 3D technology to solve problems and enhance user experiences, while also celebrating the creativity and technical skills of the global developer community.

Google has introduced Gemini, its most advanced AI model, in three sizes: Ultra, Pro, and Nano, with Gemini Pro now available for developers and enterprises through the Gemini API. This AI model, which supports 38 languages in over 180 countries, features a 32K context window and capabilities such as function calling, embeddings, and semantic retrieval, and is free to use within certain limits. Developers can utilize Gemini Pro to build applications using SDKs for various programming languages, and Google AI Studio offers a web-based tool for prompt development. Additionally, the model can be transitioned to Vertex AI on Google Cloud for enhanced data control, security, and customization, allowing for the development of AI-powered search and conversational agents. The launch also includes Gemini Pro Vision, a multimodal endpoint, and Google plans to release the more advanced Gemini Ultra model next year after further refinement and testing.

Bazel 7 is the latest major release of Google's open-source build system, designed to facilitate fast and accurate software builds, particularly for Android and iOS platforms, while supporting both client and server software. This release introduces several key features, including Bzlmod, a new modular external dependency management system now enabled by default, which allows for improved project organization alongside the traditional WORKSPACE mechanism. Another feature, Build without the Bytes (BwoB), enhances remote build performance by downloading only the outputs of top-level targets rather than all intermediate outputs. Additionally, the Skymeld project merges the analysis and execution phases for better multi-target build performance, and platform-based toolchain resolution is streamlined for Android and C++ to unify the toolchain resolution API across rulesets. Users are encouraged to explore the full release notes for Bazel 7 and engage with the development community as work progresses towards Bazel 8.

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing industries, but the startup ecosystem reveals a significant gender disparity, with women-founded AI startups receiving only 2.1% of venture capital deals and all-women founding teams securing just 3% of total investments in 2023. In response, Google has launched the Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders program for AI startups in Europe and Israel, offering mentorship, technical support, and workshops to empower women entrepreneurs and foster innovation. This program aims to create a more inclusive tech community by supporting women-led startups. Simultaneously, in North America, applications are open for the fifth iterations of Google’s Women Founders and Black Founders accelerator programs, providing 10-week equity-free support for Seed to Series A startups led by women and Black entrepreneurs. These initiatives are part of Google’s broader efforts to champion diversity and address the funding gap faced by underrepresented founders in the tech industry.

Gemini, a multimodal AI model, is designed to process and respond to various combinations of text and images, showcasing its capabilities through a series of interactive experiments. It can identify objects and actions in images, reason through patterns, and engage in complex tasks like providing logical explanations, solving puzzles, and even generating creative ideas. The model effectively alternates between different modalities, such as recognizing images from charades, deciphering a magic trick, and deducing the sequence of a cup-and-ball game. Moreover, it can synthesize information from these inputs to create interactive applications, such as a geography guessing game, and even implement simple coding tasks like a countdown timer. Gemini's ability to generate interleaved text and image outputs offers a glimpse into its potential for creative inspiration, such as suggesting crochet projects based on yarn colors. This capability highlights the model's advancement beyond traditional text-to-image models by deeply integrating multimodal reasoning. The post invites users to explore these functionalities further through Google AI Studio, promising future enhancements, including the ability to generate combined text and image responses.