May 15th, 2014 | by Google Public Policy Blog | published in Google Public Policy
Posted by Aparna Sridhar, Google Policy Counsel
Today, the Federal Communications Commission took an important step toward powering tomorrow’s wireless broadband. The FCC adopted new rules that will designate some spectrum–resources that, under the FCC’s plan, would not in any event be auctioned for wireless carriers’ broadband services–for unlicensed devices and applications on a shared basis.
Unlicensed uses of spectrum are an important complement to carriers’ mobile broadband services. For example, the Wi-Fi networks in homes, businesses, and coffee shops allow users to take data off the wireless carriers’ licensed networks, which enables faster service and reduces congestion on cellular systems. For smartphones and tablets in particular, Cisco has found that daily data consumption over Wi-Fi is four times that of cellular. Offloading data from cellular networks to Wi-Fi has saved mobile network operators billions of dollars in network deployment costs. Faster and cheaper access to online services drives usage of those services and thus demand for all forms of network access, creating a virtuous cycle of investment. Access to new, lower-frequency TV band spectrum could accelerate this process and create more unlicensed service options, allowing better indoor coverage and service in rural and underserved areas.
The FCC’s plan allows television broadcasters to sell their spectrum rights voluntarily so they can be purchased by mobile operators. This will enable more efficient spectrum use and spur economic growth.
The FCC had a challenge in designing its plan for an auction of TV broadcast spectrum, and we’re pleased that it is supporting both licensed and unlicensed uses. While the plan doesn’t provide as much unlicensed spectrum as we recommended, it should provide just enough unlicensed spectrum to attract investments in equipment and operations in the new band. Google will do its part to ensure that our Spectrum Database supports sharing of the newly allocated spectrum.
We’re grateful that Congressional supporters of unlicensed spectrum use have continued to back the FCC’s progress on this front. While there’s still a lot of work ahead to get the final details of the auction right, we look forward to working with all stakeholders to build the next generation of wireless technologies and see them deployed across America.
May 15th, 2014 | by Mary Radomile | published in Google Open Source
Every year around this time — just after students are accepted into Google Summer of Code (GSoC) — we at the Open Source Programs Office get a ton of questions like, “How many students from my country were accepted?”, “Am I the only undergraduate?”, “How many women are participating in GSoC this year?” and so on. Once we have a chance to crunch the numbers, we can use the statistics to answer at least some of these questions for you.
For this first post, we’ll start with “What countries are the accepted students from?” and “How many students were accepted from “X” country?” In years past we’ve listed the 10+ countries with the largest number of accepted students, but this year we’re going to share the whole list.
Here we go! In alphabetical order:
| Algeria |
1 |
| Argentina |
9 |
| Armenia |
1 |
| Austria |
21 |
| Azerbaijan |
1 |
| Bangladesh |
1 |
| Belarus |
2 |
| Belgium |
7 |
| Bosnia-Herzegovina |
1 |
| Brazil |
21 |
| Bulgaria |
6 |
| Cameroon |
3 |
| Canada |
37 |
| Chile |
1 |
| China |
48 |
| Colombia |
2 |
| Croatia |
3 |
| Czech Republic |
8 |
| Denmark |
1 |
| Egypt |
6 |
| Estonia |
2 |
| Ethiopia |
1 |
| Finland |
7 |
| France |
28 |
| Georgia |
1 |
| Germany |
78 |
| Greece |
13 |
| Guatemala |
1 |
| Honduras |
1 |
| Hong Kong |
2 |
| Hungary |
21 |
| India |
401 |
| Ireland |
4 |
| Italy |
31 |
| Japan |
6 |
| Kazakhstan |
3 |
| Kenya |
3 |
| Latvia |
1 |
| Lithuania |
3 |
| Luxembourg |
2 |
| Malawi |
1 |
| Malaysia |
2 |
| Mexico |
1 |
| Moldavia |
3 |
| Netherlands |
13 |
| New Zealand |
2 |
| Nigeria |
1 |
| Norway |
1 |
| Pakistan |
3 |
| Paraguay |
1 |
| Peru |
4 |
| Philippines |
2 |
| Poland |
40 |
| Portugal |
9 |
| Romania |
36 |
| Russian Federation |
51 |
| Saudi Arabia |
3 |
| Serbia |
5 |
| Singapore |
14 |
| Slovak Republic |
4 |
| Slovenia |
4 |
| South Korea |
5 |
| Spain |
32 |
| Sri Lanka |
54 |
| Sweden |
4 |
| Switzerland |
5 |
| Taiwan |
2 |
| Turkey |
9 |
| Uganda |
1 |
| Ukraine |
13 |
| United Kingdom |
29 |
| United States |
161 |
| Vietnam |
3 |
| TOTAL |
1307 |
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, five countries are highlighted in blue. This is the first year that students from Ethiopia, Honduras, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda have been accepted. We are very pleased to welcome them to the GSoC family!
We will be doing additional posts about the statistics for GSoC 2014 in the next few weeks. If you have questions, please drop us a comment and we’ll do what we can to answer in an upcoming post.
By Cat Allman, Open Source Programs
May 15th, 2014 | by Android Developers | published in Google Android
By Ibrahim Elbouchikhi, Google Play Product Manager
Sales of apps and games on Google Play are up by more than 300 percent over the past year. And today, two-thirds of Google Play purchases happen outside of the United States, with international sales continuing to climb. We’re hoping to fuel this momentum by making Google Play payments easier and more convenient for people around the world.
PayPal support
Starting today, we’re making it possible for people to choose PayPal for their Google Play purchases in 12 countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Canada. When you make a purchase on Google Play in these countries, you’ll find PayPal as an option in your Google Wallet; just enter your PayPal account login and you’ll easily be able to make purchases. Our goal is to provide users with a frictionless payment experience, and this new integration is another example of how we work with partners from across the payments industry to deliver this to the user.
Carrier billing and Google Play gift cards in more countries
Carrier billing—which lets people charge purchases in Google Play directly to their phone bill—continues to be a popular way to pay. We’ve just expanded coverage to seven more countries for a total of 24, including Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. That means almost half of all Google Play users have this option when making their purchases.
We’ve also made Google Play gift cards available to a total of 13 countries, including Japan and Germany.
Support for developer sales in more countries
Developers based in 13 new countries can now sell apps on Google Play (with new additions such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey), bringing the total to 45 countries with support for local developers. We’ve also increased our buyer currency support to 28 new countries, making it even easier for you to tailor your pricing in 60 countries.
Nothing for you to do!
Of course, as developers, when it comes to payments, there’s nothing for you to do; we process all payments, reconcile all currencies globally, and make a monthly deposit in your designated bank account. This means you get to focus on what you do best: creating beautiful and engaging apps and games.
Visit developer.android.com for more information.
Per-country availability of forms of payment is summarized here.
Join the discussion on
+Android Developers
May 15th, 2014 | by Sarah H | published in Google Student Blog
As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to advancing computing and technology, we are pleased to provide scholarships to encourage students to excel in their studies and become active role models and leaders. We are excited to announce this year’s scholarship recipients from the Google Lime Scholarship (in partnership with Lime Connect) and Google SVA Scholarship (in partnership with Student Veterans of America). All scholars have been selected based on their passion for computer science, academic achievement, leadership, and technical accomplishments.
 |
| Photo by Robert Fischer, Google Engineer |
Below are the list of recipients, along with the universities they attend:
Google Lime Scholarship
- Aneesh Pasricha, Amherst College
- Eva Schlinger, Carnegie Mellon University
- Morgan Ulinski, Columbia University in the City of New York
- Trevor Haskell, Fordham University
- Dianna Hu, Harvard University
- Julien Gascon-Samson, McGill University
- Charles Hill, Oregon State University
- Kody Dillman, University Of Calgary
- Ivan Brugere, University of Illinois at Chicago
- Hamid Hamraz, University of Kentucky
- William Grussenmeyer, University of Nevada, Reno
- Charlie Magnuson, University Of Victoria
- Imran Khan, University of Virginia
Google SVA Scholarship
- Katheryn Farris, Dartmouth College
- William Perry, Norwich University
- Peter Zimmerman, Princeton University
- David Patrzeba, Rutgers University
- Sherry Shi, Stony Brook University
- Andrew Gray, University of Florida
- Joseph Raetano, University of Tennessee
- Gabriel de la Cruz, Washington State University
All scholars will receive a $10,000 (USD) or $5,000 (CAD) award and will attend the Google Scholars’ Retreat at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Scholars will have an opportunity to attend tech talks, network with other scholars and Googlers, participate in developmental activities and sessions, and attend social activities. Scholars will also participate in a hackathon to create projects related to STEM education and collaborate on ways to actively promote computer science to other underrepresented students in technology.
Congratulations to this year’s Lime and SVA scholars, and stay tuned for announcements of our other scholarship recipients in the coming weeks! If you’re interested in learning more about our scholarship programs, please visit our Google Scholarships page.
Posted by Azusa Liu, Student Development Programs Specialist
May 15th, 2014 | by John A.Smith | published in Google Adsense
Today we’re happy to launch a new display-only format that we call magazine ads. To optimize revenue, we normally recommend that you enable both text and display for your ad units, however we recognize that the type of ads you feature on your site is also influenced by your own style preferences. To that end, we’ve created a new format allowing text advertisers to increase competition on your display-only ad units while maintaining a design aesthetic suitable for display.
If a text advertiser is the winning bidder for your ad unit, their ad will appear in the magazine ad format. This format has been designed with print magazine ads in mind, putting a big emphasis on space and typography and displaying a new look distinctive from our regular text ads. Take a look at the examples below to see how magazine ads will look in your display ad units.
If you currently have display-only enabled ads on your site, magazine ads will automatically be set up for these ad units. If you’d prefer not to show magazine ads, you can disable them through the Enhanced display option in the My ads tab in your account.
For now, when magazine ads are enabled for your display ad units, the Ad Review Center will still show you the original text ad provided by the advertiser and not the the newly-styled magazine ad. Check out our Help Center for more information. We’d love to hear if you’re using magazine ads already — share your experience and feedback over on the AdSense +page.
Posted by Yuheng Kuang – AdSense Software Engineer
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