Catching up with Google services for developers

As companies diverge their portfolios, it is difficult to catch up with all of the latest happenings in one single shot. Google offers a variety of technologies and tools for developers to excel. We talk about being full-stack developers, leads, architects, consultants, etc as we move ahead in our career. It’s not just the tech stack that we aim to be full-stack, but also domain cohesiveness with it. Google’s portfolio of services and offerings range from different tech to different domains. So it is important to understand how all these tools work together and what can be leveraged to build solid, long-lasting, available, scalable, and fault-tolerant solutions. Compiled some of the offerings from Google to help the developer community.

1. Ads –

A. Google Ad’s editor — By the time of this writing, Google has released the new version of the google ads editor — https://support.google.com/google-ads/editor/answer/9780516. Managing local campaigns, editing the combined audiences and assigning location groups are some of the latest additions to the editor

B. Managing through COVID-19 — Google has created a single destination with product guidance and business consideration considering the unique situation faced by digital campaigners — https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9790909

2. Mobility –

1. Android — Even though Google IO was canceled this year, Google announced Android 11 beta and made all resources available for the developers in the form of blogs and youtube videos. Some exciting features in the new android 11 include improved conversations, bubbles, crash management, permissions management, package visibility, data access auditing, 5G capabilities and so on — https://developer.android.com/android11
2. Flutter — Flutter is emerging as one of the popular ways to build applications by the developer community. In may, flutter announced the new edition titled ‘Work-From-Home Edition’ mainly focussing on performance and memory improvements. To follow on flutter — https://flutter.dev/docs/whats-new-archive
3. Augmented reality — New depth API make virtual objects accurately appear in front of or behind real-world objects, enabling immersive and realistic user experiences — https://developers.google.com/ar/whatsnew-arcore#
4. Assistant — Google assistant SDK now supports additional languages, show visual responses using HTML 5 and so on — https://developers.google.com/assistant/sdk/release-notes
5. Firebase — New firebase local emulator UI lets the developers run services locally on their machines via a web app with a distinguishable UI. Also, the new firebase crashlytics SDK is publicly available — https://firebase.googleblog.com/

3. Google Play — New google play console was launched in mid-June and since then, that has been a topic of discussion among developers. Google has revamped the entire design, navigation, and publishing of the apps much simpler with clean UI components and proper organizations of the functionalities to meet the developer goals — https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/06/introducing-new-google-play-console-beta.html

4. Web — App icon shortcuts in PWA help the user to start a common task in the app, content indexing API lets the user discover the content even when the network is not there, wake lock API can request a wake lock to prevent the screen from dimming and locking and the new way to use custom tabs in android 11 — https://developers.google.com/web/updates/

5. Design — One of Google’s goals is to develop apps with inclusivity and accessibility. This has been emphasized by Google leaders on many platforms. Design is a core area where we can ensure that the applications are developed keeping every user in mind in an inclusive way. This has been emphasized in some of the latest news from google design forums as well — https://design.google/news/

• Web tool — https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse
• Android tool — https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.accessibility.auditor&hl=en_US
• iOS tool — https://opensource.googleblog.com/2019/03/ios-accessibility-scanner-framework.html

6. Location and Maps — As many small businesses are trying to come back to their business, Google has released some guiding points that may help small businesses to come back and start serving their local community (https://blog.google/products/maps/). Some of the points include –

1. Report a place as re-opened and edit other helpful information
2. Try booking online right from the maps if the business offers any online booking
3. Buy a gift card or leave a donation
4. Order delivery or takeout from your favorite local restaurant

7. Payments — Google pay launched a plugin for Magento 2. This is completely free and can be installed from Magento Marketplace — https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/07/google-pay-plugin-for-magento-2.html

8. Search — Features like enabling web stories in search, support for .svg and .webp to the list of supported image file formats for Logo structured data, support native lazy loading for images and iframes are some of the latest features in google search for developers — https://developers.google.com/search/updates

9. Cloud — With an ongoing cloud next, Google has launched the next paradigm of looking at the cloud by announcing some new features (https://cloud.google.com/)

1. Infrastructure enhancements — Active assist, a portfolio of intelligent tools and capabilities to help in managing the complexity of cloud operations
2. Multi-cloud application modernization — Anthos support for multi-cloud is generally available
3. Multi-cloud analytics- BigQuery Omni for Multi-Cloud Analytics
4. More control over data — Confidential Computing with Confidential VMs
5. Industry-specific solutions — Mobile Edge Cloud strategy for accelerating 5G monetization and 5G edge computing solutions

10. GSuite — A simple to use productivity tool from google is getting powerful with the different interactions between products that can be achieved using Google App scripts (.gs files). Latest updates include beta for a new API to manage company-owned and personal mobile devices and desktop devices — https://gsuite.google.com/whatsnew/product-updates/

11. Certifications and training — As the unemployment rate increases, Google has launched new training and certification programs for everyone to find a new way to gain insights on new techs and skills. The current certifications stack includes — Data Analyst, Project Manager, UX Designer, IT Support Specialist. These courses will be enabled through Coursera — https://grow.google/certificates/

Google services for developers

Share your thoughts on how you are keeping up with your learning during these unprecedented times.

Happy learning and stay safe!