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Engineer Darren Smith remembers the day that Google Drive launched in 2012. “We were all in a conference room, sort of like a war room,” he says. “We all cheered when the first user was live with Drive!” And just like that, Drive was…well, alive. (Fun fact: The team who launched it actually had “It exists” shirts made.)

1. Drive was originally available via invite only when it was first rolling out. “We were all given tokens — sort of like digital passes — that we could share with family and friends,” says Darren. “It was really fun to see people finally using this thing we’d been working on for so long.”
2. It’s hard to remember a time before you could save files from Gmail directly to Drive, but it was only a short while ago: Attachments in Gmail were introduced in 2013, saving us all from that agonizing experience of downloading file after file after file.
3. You can store a lot in Google Drive — but maybe you don’t know how much. Ahem, a few numbers that may surprise you! You can store up to:
   • 1.02 million characters in a Google Doc
   • 10 million cells or 18,278 columns in a Google Sheet
   • 100 MB of data in a Google Slide presentation

Check out this Help Center article for more impressive storage stats.

4. The icon for Google Drive went through many, many iterations. Eventually, the team settled on the one we know and love — except it used to be rotated slightly differently so that it looked a little like a “D.” Eventually the team realized it looked too similar to the Google Play icon, so they rotated it . “Now it points up, sort of suggesting you’re uploading something to the cloud,” Drive Product Manager Scott Limbird says.

5. Accessibility is a major priority for Drive and all Google products — everyone should be able to use Drive, and get the most out of it. A huge step toward making this happen was the launch of screen reader compatibility in 2014, an update specifically designed for blind and low-vision users.

6. Google’s productivity expert Laura Mae Martin regularly shares her Drive tips with other Googlers — here’s a handy one for handling advanced images in Drive: In Drive, select New + and then Google Drawings (or type drawing.new into your browser!). From there, copy/paste, drag, upload or import your image file; then you can edit it, download it in any format and share the image like you would any other Drive file. Of course you can also use Google Drawings to make your own image entirely and import it into a Doc or Slide, or save it in various file formats.

7. If you’re one of the many people with way too many things in your Drive, then search chips are your friend. We introduced this feature in February of this year, and it helps you find what you’re looking for based on what kind of file it is, who else is working on it with you…the list goes on and on.

8. Keeping users and their Drive content safe is important, which is why we’ve introduced features like suspicious file warnings, labels for sensitive files and more secure ways to share to broad audiences.

9. In 2017, we introduced Backup and Sync to make it easy for folks to control how their photos and files were backed up to Google services — and then in 2021, Drive for desktop replaced Backup and Sync, which made it even easier to access files from any device, anywhere. (Not to mention it made file and photo management simpler and faster!)

10. Darren says one of his favorite Drive memories actually happened outside the office. “When my daughter was getting married, her wedding planner was sharing all these files and folders with us,” he says. “And of course, she did that with Drive!”

Happy 10 years, Google Drive! You’re an excellent home for our Docs, Sheets, Slides…and everything else.

Editor’s Note from Ludovic Blecher, Head of Google News Initiative Innovation: The GNI Innovation Challengeprogram is designed to stimulate forward-thinking ideas for the news industry. The story below by Gabriel Kahn, professor at USC Annenberg School of Journalism, is part of an innovator seriessharing inspiring stories and lessons from funded projects.

One year ago, our team at the University of Southern California started the Crosstown Neighborhood Data Project. Rapidly expanding news deserts – areas that receive no regular news coverage – can be seen across the US. Small town newspapers are drying up, and toxic “pink-slime” pseudo journalism is seeping in. These news deserts are growing even in big cities. Los Angeles has lost four local papers recently, and so many neighborhoods are overlooked by the news outlets that remain. That is why we started covering every corner of Los Angeles with a four-person editorial team.

It sounds impossible, but it’s not. Here’s how we did it, and what we learned. 

Each week, Crosstown sends out 110 unique email newsletters, one for each neighborhood in this city of four million. The newsletter features brief news stories that hit people where they live: charts and graphics on the number of new COVID infections and vaccination rates, plus pieces about housing, crime and traffic in each neighborhood. 

How do we do this? Through data. We’ve been collecting a trove of information on how Los Angeles lives, works and gets around. All this data is free, but much of it is hard to read and is stored on clunky local government websites. We scrape the data and organize it by neighborhood. That way we can quickly tell how many homes were burglarized in Hollywood last month, or figure out the neighborhood where the most new buildings are going up.

We then write one template for our newsletter, and our custom-built software creates 110 different versions, each with the proper data, visualizations and context for that neighborhood. This wasn’t easy. Our software engineering team spent a year building it, funded by the Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge. We’ve now sent out more than 60 sets of weekly newsletters and learned a great deal. 

Increased engagement

Our biggest takeaway is that people truly engage with news when it’s about their neighborhood. The open rates on our newsletter are over 70%. Most weeks they exceed 80%. The lowest we ever recorded was 55%. This compares to the industry standard for news-related newsletter opening rates (22% according to MailChimp or just under 24% according to CampaignMonitor).

Why? People can’t get this news anywhere else. No other news organizations deliver this level of hyper-localized data. Second, it’s news people want. Currently, there is a widespread impression that Los Angeles is in the midst of a crime wave. Giving people verified stats about their neighborhood and explaining the broader context, such as whether a particular type of crime is rising or falling and how their area compares to others in the city, is a vital public service. 

One example of this is that in one of our newsletters we included the number of building demolitions that had taken place in each neighborhood. A reader then had hard data for her Hollywood neighborhood, which she took to city planners and made a public testimony to convey endangered and historic sites.

Our newsletter also hits the inbox with an appealing subject line, such as “Omicron’s impact on Koreatown,” or, “How much illegal dumping is happening in Venice?” When you live in a big city, it can be difficult to get a read on your own neighborhood. A weekly email with some basic information can be invaluable. 

We’ve found it’s also a great way to engage the audience. Some neighborhoods are battling pressing issues such as traffic congestion or rapidly rising rents. When we cover that in a story, they write back wanting to know more. This allows us to figure out who cares about what across an entire city. In the year since we launched, traffic to the website has increased by 30%.

More importantly, we have a tenfold increase in our audience reaching back out to us. We now know what neighborhoods these audience members live in, because they respond to us directly from their neighborhood email account. This helps us understand which issues are most important to people in different parts of the city.

We’re only at the beginning of understanding what kind of hyperlocal stories we can tell. But our goals for this year lie beyond Los Angeles. We’re now piloting our project with three other newsrooms and we’re hoping to find even more that want to try this technology and approach. We believe using data in this way can be a powerful tool to help newsrooms reach and engage new audiences without raising costs.

We work hard to keep Google Play a safe, trusted space for people to enjoy the latest Android apps. Today, we’re launching a new feature, the Data safety section, where developers will be required to give people more information about how apps collect, share and secure users’ data. Users will start seeing the Data safety section in Google Play today, and developers are required to complete this section for their apps by July 20th. As app developers update their functionality or change their data handling practices, they will show the latest in the apps’ Data safety section.

A unified view of app safety in Google Play

We heard from users and app developers that displaying the data an app collects, without additional context, is not enough. Users want to know for what purpose their data is being collected and whether the developer is sharing user data with third parties. In addition, users want to understand how app developers are securing user data after an app is downloaded. That’s why we designed the Data safety section to allow developers to clearly mark what data is being collected and for what purpose it’s being used. Users can also see whether the app needs this data to function or if this data collection is optional.

Here are the information developers can show in the Data safety section:

• Whether the developer is collecting data and for what purpose.
• Whether the developer is sharing data with third parties.
• The app’s security practices, like encryption of data in transit and whether users can ask for data to be deleted.
• Whether a qualifying app has committed to following Google Play’s Families Policy to better protect children in the Play store.
• Whether the developer has validated their security practices against a global security standard (more specifically, the MASVS).

Putting users in control, before and after you download

Giving users more visibility into how apps collect, share and secure their data through the Data safety section is just one way we’re keeping the Android users and ecosystem safe.

We’ve also worked hard to give users control of installed apps through simple permissions features. For example, when an app asks to access “your location”, users can quickly and easily decide whether they want to grant that permission – for one time use, only while using the app, or all the time. For sensitive permissions like camera, microphone, or location data, people can go to the Android Privacy dashboard to review data access by apps.

Apps should help users explore the world, connect with loved ones, do work, learn something new, and more without compromising user safety. The new Data safety section, in addition to Google Play’s existing safety features, gives people the visibility and control they need to enjoy their apps.

To learn more about Google Play’s Data safety section, check out this guide.

Two years ago, as many of us were thrown into remote work, I wrote a blog post about tips for working from home. Now, as many of us find ourselves returning to the office or preparing to do so soon, I wanted to talk about a few ways we can transition productively to (yet another) new (er, maybe old?) working environment where some of us are in the office, some aren’t…or some combination of the above.

Here are my top 10 tips for being productive in a hybrid work environment:

1. Make sure people know where you are. Nothing screams inefficiency more than hundreds of emails and calendar invites (and invite changes) where everyone is trying to figure out who is where, when and on what days. Take the guesswork out of it by setting yourworking location and yourworking hours in Calendar, and RSVP to meetings with your location.
2. Add other responsibilities to Google Calendar. Do you have commute time? School drop off? Moving to a different office campus mid-day? Add it to your Calendar now; consider making theseOOO events so they auto decline if they are scheduled over.
3. Optimize your calendar for connection and focus. Chances are good that you either find it easier to focus at home or in the workplace. As you consider the hybrid work options available to you, think about where you want to get your best focused work done and build it into your calendar. Wherever it happens, minimize distractions (mute notifications, use noise-canceling headphones) and schedule Focus Time in your calendar so colleagues know that you’re heads down.
4. Keep your “hot spots” and your “not spots.” Our brain makes associations with the sights, sounds and smells of places and when we do an activity in the same place regularly, it makes it easier to “get in the zone” each time we go back to that same spot. Keep “hot spots” in your house and at work where you do certain things. “I always code at my desk,” “I always answer customer emails from this cafe in my building,” “I always sit on my front porch to read industry news.” Your brain will associate those spots with those things and make switching between tasks easier. Similarly, safeguard your “not spots” — places you NEVER work. If you’ve never worked in a spot, like your bedroom, it’s easy to relax there because your brain only associates it with relaxation.
5. Group meetings by type, content and location wherever possible. Many people think of their schedule like a puzzle: “Sure, wherever you find a 30-minute slot, throw a meeting in there!” But your energy and focus are changing (and challenged) when you bounce from a one one one meeting to a brainstorm to a project check-in…the list goes on and on . Be intentional about when you place meetings as much as possible. Group meetings of similar type and topic, especially given the new variety in location. Theme your days and minimize switching topics and types of meeting. Call Tuesday your “Project A” day, and place work time and meetings for that project on that day. If Wednesday morning is your manager’s staff meeting, block time afterwards to digest updates and trickle down information to your team as needed.

6. Build in some things that happen every day. To give yourself some consistency, try finding 1-3 things that you do every day, no matter where you’re working. If you commute from 8:15 a.m.-9 a.m. into the office and listen to an audiobook, go on a walk and listen to your book during the same time period. If you always take a walk at home after lunch, do it at work, too. Always get an afternoon coffee at the office? Make yourself a latte at home. These signals help you keep your flow and make it a consistent “work day” no matter where you are.

7. Make adaily planevery night. At the beginning of the pandemic, I saw a surge in the use of the planning resources. People had gotten used to “showing up” in an office every morning, then deciding what to do with their time. Working from home required people to figure out exactly what they were doing and when. This type of planning is still important as you bounce back and forth to different work environments with different types of schedules. Fill out daily plan *the night before* to make the most of the following day. What you intend to do will marinate while you sleep and you’ll approach the day focused and intentional.

8. A new “season” of work calls for spring cleaning . A new schedule at the office, much like the New Year or a new job, is a great time for a “spring cleaning” of your work life. Do you need to keep that recurring meeting you set up two years ago to keep in touch with people you’ll now see in the office? Should your team be meeting in-person on a different day given everyone’s locations? Do you need to lighten up your schedule to make more time for travel?

9. Write down three things you learned from working from home and take them with you. Working from home was a time of discovery for many of us. Let’s not lose those insights as we head back to the office. Maybe you realized you work best after a mid-morning workout, or that you get burnt out if you start work before 9 a.m. Take a moment to write down three things you learned and build them into your new schedule.

10. Take time to adjust. Two years ago, no one had any idea we’d be at home for so long. And during that time, many of us became great at being productive while working remotely. Others realized they definitely wanted to go back to the office. Whatever your preference, we gave each other grace. Let’s do the same this time as many of us transition yet again, and continue extending it to those who will remain remote.