2021

From split-screen multitasking with the power of Google Workspace apps to hands-free Duo calls in Flex mode, Google and Samsung continue to work together to create more helpful experiences on Android foldables. When we combine the helpfulness of Google’s apps and services with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold3 5G and Galaxy Z Flip3 5G devices, a world of new possibilities unfolds.

Here are six great ways to experience the best of Google on Samsung’s latest Galaxy Z devices.

1. Enjoy entertainment with a bigger, better and bolder YouTube experience

With accessibility features on Chromebooks, we want everyone to have a good experience on their computer – so people can get things done, families can play together, students and teachers can learn together, and employees can work productively and efficiently, wherever they are. October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, so we wanted to share a few recent and new Chromebook features that help people access information in a way that works for them.

New enhanced voices for Select-to-speak

People spend a lot of time reading on their laptop, doing things like reading news articles or reviewing school textbooks. Reading on a screen can be less than ideal for many, including people with dyslexia (an estimated 10-20% of the population), low vision, those learning a new language or people who have a hard time focusing on busy text.

With a few clicks, Select-to-speak on Chromebooks allows you to hear selected text on your screen spoken out loud. Earlier this year we added new features like controls to speed up, slow down or pause the reading voice, and to easily jump to different parts of text. Plus, you can choose to highlight the words being spoken while shading background text to help focus your attention.

As a Technical Writer for Google Cloud who’s worked in this industry for more than 20 years, technology has had a big impact on my life. It led me to a job that I love, and it keeps me connected to co-workers, friends and family scattered around the world.

But it also helps me to accomplish everyday tasks in ways many people might not realize. I have aniridia, a rare eye condition where the eyes are underdeveloped. Among other things, I’m light sensitive, have about 20/200 vision that isn’t correctable with lenses or surgery, and my eyes move around involuntarily.

Most people don’t realize the extent of my disability because I’m largely independent. The challenges I face on a regular basis are little things that most people take for granted — for example, I don’t experience eye contact, which means I often miss non-verbal cues. And for me, crossing the street is like a real world game of Frogger. Reading menus and shopping can be difficult. Navigating airports or locating my rideshare car can be stressful.

But I’ve used tech to create my own set of “life hacks.” I adjust the magnification of my view of a Google Doc during a meeting, which doesn’t change anyone else’s view of it. I zoom in on instructors during virtual dance classes. I regularly use keyboard shortcuts and predefined text snippets to work more productively. I do lots of planning before trips and save key navigational info in Google Maps. I take photos of menus and labels so I can read them more closely on my phone.

The technologies that help to mitigate the kinds of challenges I face don’t just benefit me, though — they benefit everyone. Features like Dark mode, Assistant, Live Caption — these benefit everyone and make their individual experiences using certain products better. And they can also support people with permanent, situational, or temporary disabilities.

The positive effect of disability-friendly design on a wider population is known as the curb-cut effect. A curb cut is a ramp built into a sidewalk that slopes down to a street. Their primary purpose is to provide access for wheelchairs, but curb cuts actually help many others, including people riding bikes, skateboards or scooters, people pushing strollers or pulling wheeled luggage, and people walking with canes or crutches. So while they were made to help people with disabilities, they actually help so many others.

There’s an important lesson to learn from the curb-cut effect, one that I think about when we are creating new technologies here at Google: If you are involved in designing, creating, selling, or supporting products and services, I challenge you to reframe accessibility as customization. Many people typically view accessibility as an extra feature of a product that is specifically for someone with a disability. But features like Dark mode or captions are really a way to customize your user experience, and these customizations are beneficial to everyone. We all find ourselves in different contexts where we need to adjust how we interact with our devices and the people around us. Design that provides a range of ways to interact with people and our world results in products and services that are more usable — by everyone.

At Google, we’re always exploring new ways to help people find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Earlier this year, we launched a redesign of the Search results page on mobile for a more modern experience that’s easier to scan and navigate. Today, we’re making browsing search results more seamless and intuitive with the introduction of continuous scrolling on mobile devices. Now, when you reach the bottom of a search results page on your phone, the next set of results will automatically load with relevant information.

While you can often find what you’re looking for in the first few results, sometimes you want to keep looking. In fact, most people who want additional information tend to browse up to four pages of search results. With this update, people can now seamlessly do this, browsing through many different results, before needing to click the “See more” button.

For example, for broader, more open-ended questions like “What can I do with pumpkins?” you may want to consider more results and inspiration before deciding how to move forward. Scrolling through a wider range of results may show you tons of options you hadn’t considered, like no-carve pumpkin decor ideas for Halloween, pumpkin seed recipes that make your pumpkin worth carving and more ideas for how to make the most out of your gourd.

So for everyone with a little extra curiosity, this new Search experience is starting to gradually roll out today for most English searches on mobile in the U.S.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group tracks actors involved in disinformation campaigns, government backed hacking, and financially motivated abuse. We have a long-standing policy to send you a warning if we detect that your account is a target of government-backed phishing or malware attempts. So far in 2021, we’ve sent over 50,000 warnings, a nearly 33% increase from this time in 2020. This spike is largely due to blocking an unusually large campaign from a Russian actor known as APT28 or Fancy Bear.

We intentionally send these warnings in batches to all users who may be at risk, rather than at the moment we detect the threat itself, so that attackers cannot track our defense strategies. On any given day, TAG is tracking more than 270 targeted or government-backed attacker groups from more than 50 countries. This means that there is typically more than one threat actor behind the warnings.

In this blog, we explore some of the most notable campaigns we’ve disrupted this year from a different government-backed attacker: APT35, an Iranian group, which regularly conducts phishing campaigns targeting high risk users. This is the one of the groups we disrupted during the 2020 US election cycle for its targeting of campaign staffers. For years, this group has hijacked accounts, deployed malware, and used novel techniques to conduct espionage aligned with the interests of the Iranian government.

Hijacked websites used for credential phishing attacks

In early 2021, APT35 compromised a website affiliated with a UK university to host a phishing kit. Attackers sent email messages with links to this website to harvest credentials for platforms such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. Users were instructed to activate an invitation to a (fake) webinar by logging in. The phishing kit will also ask for second-factor authentication codes sent to devices.

APT35 has relied on this technique since 2017 — targeting high-value accounts in government, academia, journalism, NGOs, foreign policy, and national security. Credential phishing through a compromised website demonstrates these attackers will go to great lengths to appear legitimate – as they know it’s difficult for users to detect this kind of attack.