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yesAnna KramerNone
December 9, 2020
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai apologized for the firing of leading AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru in a companywide memo, following days of mounting anger at Gebru's forced departure from thousands of Google employees and leaders in the AI ethics community.
Pichai pledged to investigate the circumstances of Gebru's departure and accepted responsibility for the fact that a well-respected Black woman left the company "unhappily." Google plans to begin a review of Gebru's firing and consider whether changes should be made to prevent the incidents surrounding her departure from happening again, according to his note. "The events of the last week are a painful but important reminder of the progress we still need to make," he wrote.
"Don't paint me as an 'angry Black woman' for whom you need 'de-escalation strategies' for," Gebru wrote on Twitter in response to the apology. Pichai's memo "does not say 'I'm sorry for what we did to her and it was wrong.' What it DOES say is 'it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google.' So I see this as 'I'm sorry for how it played out but I'm not sorry for what we did to her yet," she added.
Gebru announced last week that she had been fired from Google because she refused to accept the company's demands that she remove her name from a research paper and because of an email she wrote decrying Google's diversity efforts, setting off a firestorm of protest. More than 1,500 Google workers signed a petition in support of her work, and members of her own former AI ethics team wrote a public letter challenging Google's claims that Gebru had resigned.
Update: This article was updated at 12:35 p.m. PT with Gebru's response.
Anna Kramer
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
Big Tech benefits from Biden’s sweeping immigration actions
Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai praised President Biden's immigration actions, which read like a tech industry wishlist.
Newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden signed two immigration-related executive orders on Wednesday.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
January 20, 2021
Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
January 20, 2021
Immediately after being sworn in as president Wednesday, Joe Biden signed two pro-immigration executive orders and delivered an immigration bill to Congress that reads like a tech industry wishlist. The move drew enthusiastic praise from tech leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
President Biden nullified several of former-President Trump's most hawkish immigration policies. His executive orders reversed the so-called "Muslim ban" and instructed the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which the Trump administration had sought to end. He also sent an expansive immigration reform bill to Congress that would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented individuals and make it easier for foreign U.S. graduates with STEM degrees to stay in the United States, among other provisions.
<p>Biden's Day One moves suggest that immigration reform will be one of the key areas for allyship between Silicon Valley and the Biden administration over the next several years. The industry is sorely in need of common ground as Democrats pledge to use their power over Congress and the White House to crack down on Big Tech. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>"We welcome President Biden's commitment to pursuing comprehensive immigration reform that reflects the American values of justice, fairness and dignity," said Cook in a statement to Protocol. "This effort will strengthen American communities and the pathways to opportunity this country has long fostered." </p><p>Cook, who is the chair of Business Roundtable's immigration committee, said he looked forward to working with Democrats and Republicans on a "permanent solution for Dreamers that includes a path to citizenship."</p><p>"We applaud @POTUS's quick action on COVID relief, the Paris Climate Accord, and immigration reform," Pichai <a href="https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1352021111479832576?s=21" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> Wednesday. "Google has supported action on these important issues & we look forward to working with the new administration to help the US recover from the pandemic + grow our economy."</p><p>An Uber spokesperson also affirmed the company's support for President Biden's actions. "At Uber, we have long supported positive immigration reform and an effective system that upholds core American values," the spokesperson said. "Uber will continue to support Dreamers, and we welcome the new Administration's effort to reform our nation's immigration system."</p><p>The tech industry, which relies heavily on foreign workers, has spent the last four years <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/08/31/tech-industry-prepares-new-trump-fight-over-daca-dreamer-protection-program/622897001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">battling with the Trump administration</a> over efforts to shut down vital talent pipelines from countries including India, China and Iran. Over the last four years, tech giants have filed <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/dreamers-embody-apples-innovation-strategy-apple-ceo-tim/story?id=66030999" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">amicus briefs</a> in high-profile <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/16/21069827/twitter-microsoft-linkedin-public-charge-trump-immigration-tech-companies" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">court cases</a> and lobbied in favor of opening up U.S. borders to high-skilled workers. Despite protestations from Silicon Valley leaders, the Trump administration continually added uncertainty to the H-1B visa application process, resulting in significant backlogs. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Biden's immigration bill would put money towards clearing visa backlogs, eliminate visa caps on certain countries and make it easier for people on temporary work visas to get green cards. Perhaps most significantly, it would immediately give the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. a pathway to become citizens. </p><p>The executive orders on DACA and the Muslim ban will immediately appease immigration advocates, including those inside the tech industry, but the toughest battle still lies ahead: rallying support in Congress for immigration reform, which has failed for years. Still, there may be some in the Republican party who are willing to work with the Biden administration on key pillars of the proposal. On Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was a leading player in immigration talks during the Obama years and a top Trump ally, told CBS he is open to creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.</p><p>"What we are really looking for is making sure there is congressional action and there is a legislative solution," said Karolina Filipiak, senior director of government affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council, a tech trade group. "We don't want to be in the same position four years from now or eight years from now [with] a new administration that could rescind the program." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Companies including Facebook and Google are hoping to work with lawmakers in Congress to create bipartisan support for reform, particularly as they face regulatory headwinds of their own. </p>
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Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
The current state-of-the-art quantum computers are a tangle of wires. And that can't be the case in the future.
Photo: IBM Research
January 15, 2021
Dan Garisto is a freelance science journalist who specializes in the physical sciences, with an emphasis on particle physics. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and is based in New York.
January 15, 2021
The iconic image of quantum computing is the "Google chandelier," with its hundreds of intricately arranged copper wires descending like the tendrils of a metallic jellyfish. It's a grand and impressive device, but in that tangle of wires lurks a big problem.
"If you're thinking about the long-term prospects of quantum computing, that image should be just terrifying," Jim Clarke, the director of quantum hardware at Intel, told Protocol.
<p>The problem is scale. When your quantum computer is <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/noisy-intermediate-scale-nisq" target="_self">based on just a few dozen qubits</a>, it's fine to designate one or more wires to each qubit in order to send and receive signals. But quantum computers are growing, and they will need to reach <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/next-steps-advances-in-quantum-computing" target="_self">thousands, if not millions, of qubits to truly be useful</a> for <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/machine-learning-ai-quantum-computing-move-beyond-hype" target="_blank">companies and organizations</a> — at which point, using wires is going to become a literal knotty problem. </p><p>"It's no longer sufficient to just be able to make a qubit device and talk about the properties of a qubit," said David Reilly, a quantum researcher at Microsoft. "It's all about scale. And it's all about the infrastructure that you need to get there."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Multiple companies investing in quantum computers are now looking toward this future, and trying to develop better methods of controlling their qubits. These quantum control chips are similar to the silicon wafers produced using CMOS technology, with a few alterations to make them work at ultracold temperatures and with qubits. </p><p>In December, <a href="https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-debuts-2nd-gen-horse-ridge-cryogenic-quantum-control-chip/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Intel announced</a> its Horse Ridge 2 control chip, which builds off its predecessor to perform more specific applications, such as manipulating and reading qubits. Research <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01299" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">soon to be published</a> in Nature Electronics looks at Microsoft's quantum control chip, which operates at the coldest temperatures yet: a tenth of a degree above absolute zero. But Microsoft and Intel aren't alone; other companies have also been developing quantum control chips. In 2019, Google debuted <a href="https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/on-path-to-cryogenic-control-of-quantum.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">its own</a>.</p><p>The goal is to help build the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/next-steps-advances-in-quantum-computing" target="_self">infrastructure required for a future quantum computer</a> that has actual applications for corporations and research institutes, not just one that can <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/supremacy-google-debatable-milestone" target="_self">out-speed classical supercomputers in proof-of-principle tests</a>. </p><h3>Going wireless
</h3><p>Quantum computers rely on unsettling properties of the quantum world, such as superposition: the combination of states exemplified famously by Schrödinger's feline, which can be neither dead nor alive, but exists in some superposition of both states. Quantum effects like superposition are fragile, and tend to collapse out in our noisy, warm, macroscopic world. To preserve the qubits' delicate quantum states, they are kept extremely cold, usually below 1 Kelvin (about -457 degrees Fahrenheit)</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>To achieve those temperatures, qubits are kept in dilution fridges, which use liquid helium to keep their contents ultracold. Those devices have limited internal space and limited cooling power, both of which are hampered by a nest of wires. To explain the impetus for better quantum control, Clarke uses an analogy. </p><p>"Imagine that you are in charge of 100 dogs, and you have to take them for a walk," Clarke says. "Do you take them on 100 separate leashes? Or do you have one leash that fans out and do it more efficiently?" </p><p>In classical computers, control chips are small silicon wafers with some input and output pins that connect to billions of transistors. This CMOS technology is well-known, so it's tempting to slap a classical control chip onto a quantum computer, but it's not feasible. There are two main problems: First, quantum control chips have to operate at extremely low temperatures, so circuits must be designed to dissipate far less heat. Second, quantum control chips require alterations to interface with qubits, which are far more finicky than their classical counterparts. </p><p>Solving both problems entails reworking control chips: though hopefully not so much that they can't still be fabricated at scale, with traditional silicon manufacturing techniques.</p><p>Intel claims its Horse Ridge series (named for Horse Ridge, one of the coldest places in Oregon) operates at 4 K — above the temperature of the qubits it can control — and seeks to build on the company's preexisting expertise with semiconductor technology. While Horse Ridge 1 was designed for a wide variety of qubits, the recently unveiled Horse Ridge 2 focuses on expanded applications for spin qubits, Intel's preferred choice in <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/nobody-agrees-on-how-to-build-quantum-computer" target="_self">the qubit wars</a>. The goal, according to Clarke, is to "customize these low-temperature control chips for different applications." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Google's control chip is similar, operating at 3 K, but is designed for yet another type of qubit, called a transmon. The chip has been tested on a few qubits, but not the 53-qubit Sycamore device that <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/supremacy-google-debatable-milestone" target="_self">made headlines</a> in 2019. <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8865458" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Research from Google</a> has focused on reducing heat dissipation from the quantum control chip. Where a classical control chip outputs about one watt of heat, Google's dissipates less than two thousandths of a watt. "Getting power down is going to be very important for any of these approaches," Joseph Bardin, an engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a researcher at Google, wrote in an email to Protocol. </p><p>Microsoft's quantum control chip relies on similar semiconductor technology, but it is designed to work with topological qubits, though it can be adapted for other qubit architectures. (Worth noting: Topological qubits are theoretical, and have not actually been demonstrated.) </p><p>Where it really departs from Intel's and Google's designs is temperature. Microsoft's quantum control chip can dissipate less than a millionth of a watt, allowing it to stay at a chilly 0.1 K, about the same temperature as the qubits themselves.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><h3>Is it hot in here?</h3><p>The companies insist on the advantages of their own approaches.</p><p>"What is really unique is that our signals are generated at low temperature," Intel's Clarke said. By putting its classical CPU — which sends signals to the control chip — with the control chip at these temperatures, Intel hopes to avoid the noisiness inherent to signals generated by CPUs at high temperatures. Microsoft's Reilly disputes this claim of uniqueness, and notes that Microsoft has generated its signals at temperatures as low as 1 K. </p><p>For Reilly, running the control chip at 3 or 4 K — as Google and Intel do — is much too hot: Though the difference between 0.1 K and 4 K may sound small, it's also the difference between the quantum world and the classical world. By operating the quantum control chip at the same temperature as the qubits, Reilly hopes to avoid the bottleneck between shuffling information from quantum to classical or vice versa. </p><p>"If their control system is at 4 Kelvin, then you still have this I/O bottleneck," Reilly said. "You still have a bird's nest of cables that run from four Kelvin to the millikelvin stage where the qubits are." One possible solution to that would be to bring the qubits up to 4 K — and there is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2170-7" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">some progress</a> in that direction.</p><p>All three companies will be presenting updates at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, which will be <a href="http://isscc.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">held virtually</a> Feb. 13 through Feb. 22.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>For now, though, no one has remotely enough qubits to necessitate these quantum control chips, let alone determine which of those compromises is preferable. Testing is still done on a few qubits, or devices that model qubit behaviors — not even the full ensemble of dozens of qubits that make up the current cutting-edge of quantum computers.</p><p>At any rate, quantum computing is still in its heady early days, where firsts are being made, and — despite some corporate jousting about progress — demonstrating the possibility of the technology often takes precedence over long-term plans to make it practical. And at this stage, we don't even know what all those roadblocks might be.</p><p>"Wouldn't it be ironic if it turned out that making the qubits turned out to be a little bit of a challenge?" Reilly asked. "And the real roadblocks were in the systems integration and the construction of cryogenic control at scale?"</p>
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Dan Garisto is a freelance science journalist who specializes in the physical sciences, with an emphasis on particle physics. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and is based in New York.
Election 2020
Google says it’s fighting election lies, but its ads fund them
A new report finds that more than 1,600 brands, from Disney to Procter & Gamble, have advertisements running on sites that push pro-Trump conspiracy theories. The majority of those ads are served by Google.
Google is the most dominant player in programmatic advertising, but it has a spotty record enforcing rules for publishers.
Photo: Alex Tai/Getty Images
January 14, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 14, 2021
Shortly after November's presidential election, a story appeared on the website of far-right personality Charlie Kirk, claiming that 10,000 dead people had returned mail-in ballots in Michigan. But after publishing, a correction appeared at the top of the story, completely debunking the misleading headline, which remains, months later, unchanged.
"We are not aware of a single confirmed case showing that a ballot was actually cast on behalf of a deceased individual," the correction, which quoted Michigan election officials, read.
<p>The note was a clear bait-and-switch on a story that boldly pushed a false conspiracy theory about the election. But just as striking as the editor's note is what sits at the top of this story, and every story on Kirk's site: a Google ad.</p><p>Since the 2016 election, endless attention has been paid to the way election misinformation can spread through targeted ads on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. But an equally insidious and less-discussed problem is how programmatic advertising, a field dominated by Google, has become the lifeblood of misinformation sites. With or without social platforms, these ads allow misinformation sites to exist and even thrive all on their own by providing a source of revenue, and companies like Google have a shoddy record of policing them. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>In a new <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-report-advertising-on-election-misinformation/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">report</a> released Thursday by the news rating company NewsGuard, researchers found ads for more than 1,600 mainstream brands, from Disney to Procter & Gamble, running on <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/election-misinformation-tracker/" target="_blank">160 sites</a> (including Kirk's) that have openly pushed election conspiracies. Google was responsible for ads on a whopping 80 percent of those sites. Another ad exchange, The Trade Desk, was running ads on roughly half.</p><p>Among the examples NewsGuard lists: ads for Harvard University appearing on One America News Network's website, ads for AARP appearing on sites like The Gateway Pundit and ZeroHedge, and Walmart ads appearing on NOQ Report, a site that recently argued Satan uses Democrats to do his bidding, including stealing the election.</p><p>In some cases, the ads create discordant messaging between publisher and advertiser. While reporting this story, Protocol found ads for Planned Parenthood on Kirk's site, despite Kirk's frequent <a href="https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1263209491581018114?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">calls</a> for Planned Parenthood to be defunded. Thanks to these ads, Planned Parenthood is effectively funding Kirk.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1MDA1Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNTY4MDEwOH0.qplQOYcTtVCBgeOXCbDihtGMd6uAjeg-XL39oaEr8Bw/img.png?width=980" id="f1e64" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="42c21c19889922502d0fba8fec366b71" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2226" data-height="712">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">A Planned Parenthood fundraising ad appears on a story containing election misinformation at the top of Charlie Kirk's website.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Screenshot: Protocol</small></p><p><br></p><p>Google has <a href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9335564?hl=en&visit_id=637461598271119369-2898334728&rd=1" target="_blank">policies</a> forbidding publishers who post demonstrably false election misinformation and other types of content from placing Google ads on their websites. "Claims that voter fraud was widespread or that the election was stolen are all prohibited by our policies. When we find content that violates our policies we remove its ability to monetize," a Google spokesperson said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The company demonetizes individual stories first, reserving site-wide demonetization for egregious, persistent offenders (The company recently demonetized a far-right militia site following the Capitol riot). In 2019, the company removed ads from 21 million individual pages, the Google spokesperson said. The problem: Google serves billions of ads every day. </p><p>It's not that the company is unaware it's serving ads on the sites NewsGuard noted in its report. In August, a group of philanthropists <a href="https://www.protocol.com/google-ads-charities-disinformation-sites" target="_self">wrote</a> to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai after reports showed that ads for groups like the Red Cross and Save the Children were appearing alongside COVID-19 misinformation on TheGatewayPundit and elsewhere. The philanthropists urged Google to institute a new model that "does not put [advertisers] into unwanted and damaging associations that undermine their good works and values." </p><p>Since then, the company has taken action on individual Gateway Pundit articles, but five months later, Google has yet to fully demonetize the site despite repeated violations, enabling it to continue growing and spreading misinformation. </p><p>The power programmatic advertising has in sustaining these sites is particularly relevant now as social media giants begin to more forcefully crack down on accounts, including the president's, that regularly post dangerous conspiracy theories or incitements to violence. For many of these companies, last week's riot in the U.S. Capitol was a wake-up call, showing them the disastrous real-world consequences of allowing people to believe lies about the election being stolen. But chasing the accounts that peddle those lies off of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is only part of the solution. As long as the people behind those accounts have a way to make money on their falsehoods, why would they ever stop?</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
People
Google’s productivity guru has some advice for you
Here's how Laura Mae Martin helps Google's top execs work smarter.
Laura Mae Martin, Google's executive productivity adviser, works one-on-one with the company's top brass.
Image: Google
January 9, 2021
Kevin McAllister ( @k__mcallister) is an associate editor at Protocol, leading the development of Braintrust. Prior to joining the team, he was a rankings data reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw structured data projects for the Journal's strategy team.
January 8, 2021
If productivity were a product at Google, then Laura Mae Martin would be its product manager.
She's Google's executive productivity adviser, a job she created following a successful 20% project about managing inboxes that she debuted while working in keyword sales. As the company's top expert on productivity, her remit seems simple enough: Make Googlers more efficient in their day-to-day work lives. But in practice, that means working directly with the top executives of a trillion-dollar company to make some of tech's most sought-after talent better at what they do.
<p>For Martin, cooking up ways to phase out inefficiencies didn't begin at the tech giant, but in her childhood kitchen. While making cupcakes with her sister she realized that rather than frosting and adding sprinkles to each cupcake one-by-one, a frost-first, sprinkle-second method saved time. Martin now advocates for similar concepts at Google — even if the processes have more to do with Python than pastries these days.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>While Google's executive team has been taking advantage of some of Google's best tips and tricks internally for years, the company recently made a lot of them public. Just a couple of months ago, in October, Google transitioned G Suite into Google Workspace, and in the process rolled out many of the tried-and-true hacks to its over 2 billion users. </p><p>While the revamp may have caused you to mistake Calendar for Drive this fall, Google sees the criticism of its homogenous icons as a feature, not a bug. Each Workspace app is still distinct in its purpose, it argues, but a focus on integration means each one can now do a little bit of what the others do too.</p><p>We spoke to Martin to find out how she helps Google's execs boost their productivity and how to make best use of some of Workspace's feature integrations. Here are some of the highlights.</p><p><em><a href="http://protocol.com/nine-favorite-tricks-from-googles-productivity-guru" target="_blank">Read nine of Martin's favorite productivity tricks here.</a></em></p><h3>Know who you are</h3><p>Martin's approach starts with a diagnosis. There's a spectrum Martin sees among the people she works with: On one side are the executives who need to approach productivity with a different mindset altogether to reclaim large stretches of time, and on the other are the executives who need to fine-tune their use of products and repurpose shorter chunks of time. She likens it to finding ways to eat better.</p><p>"You pick up a book about healthy eating, and you want to hear all the things about why you should eat that way or what's healthy about fruits and vegetables," she said. "But you also want the recipes. You need both."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>In Google's case, that journey to a healthy work diet begins with a questionnaire Martin prepares for any of her one-on-one meetings with the company's C-suite. Martin says in her years of working with executives, she's developed archetypes of executives at the company that serve as frameworks for how she begins coaching. For global executives, for example, she needs to find time in the middle of the day, since international calls consume mornings and nights. When working with senior engineers, she often needs to look for tips that will keep them in a single product to limit the time spent switching back and forth and breaking their concentration.</p><p>"I have a couple of profiles of types of executives, and nobody fits perfectly, but it helps me guide through what my tips or thoughts would be," Martin said. "Some people prefer in-person communication, some people really need downtime or really need an agenda. I've seen enough of those profiles that I can now guide my advice instead of saying this is what works because it works for me."</p><h3>Learn how you work</h3><p>In a recent session with an executive who was overseeing product reviews that were eating up his days, with hour-long demos and subsequent time for feedback, she saw someone who needed more time back than product hacks alone could offer.</p><p>"We took the radical approach, saying, 'Let's just shave 30 minutes off those meetings,'" she said. "What if we cut that in half and challenged the teams to make the most of that time? It forced them to send a lot of material ahead of time, and we started blocking pre-read time so that he could review things that didn't need to be presented" </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Martin said the transition for the team, like most changes, made people uncomfortable at the start. But the payoff came when the meetings were more engaging and helpful to the employees presenting, since questions could be more specific following the pre-reads.</p><h3>Stop switching context<br></h3><p>Though Martin occasionally gets to use an axe to reshape an executive's schedule, her work is more often done with the precision of a scalpel. That's typically where she leans into product tips that can additively save a few minutes each day. One of Martin's favorite tricks: a calendar invite from an email.</p><p>"You have an email going, people are talking and you're like, 'let's just meet about this,'" she said. "You click a button and it makes a calendar invite with the description and all those people, instead of backing out, opening Google Calendar and copying all those people in. That one tip could save you minutes multiple times a day, and that really adds up."</p><p>Another small hack she advocates for is tab grouping in Chrome. Instead of wading through a sea of tiny tabs at the top of the browser, the grouping feature allows users to put multiple tabs under a heading for easy navigation. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>Both illustrate how Google is trying to cut down on the amount of time between thinking something in a business context and actually doing it.</p><h3>Become a super user</h3><p>Those instances of integrating one product with another just scratch the surface of what the company sees Workspace allowing users (and its own employees) to do.</p><p>Already, Google has rolled out new preview features in Docs that don't require users to go to a new tab to scroll through a document. In the "<a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/workspace/introducing-google-workspace" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">coming months</a>," Google plans to introduce picture-in-picture video via Meet into Docs and Slides, which will allow users to create on-demand, instant meetings with the other people editing a document simultaneously.</p><p>So much of productivity is thought of as getting from point A to point B faster, but Google's approach is increasingly about getting people in and out of each point between the beginning and the end more quickly. For Martin, the minutes shaved off of switching from task to task and the resulting focus are what can actually help cut down the total time needed to complete a project.</p><p>"Those are the types of things that our products are developing more and more of as far as collaboration across teams," she said. "We're really at an exciting place right now with Workspace, seeing how those are now all coming together."</p><h3>Work how your brain works</h3><p>Perhaps unsurprisingly at the company that revolutionized the search engine, search can also play a key role in productivity as well. For Martin, that means advocating for executives to employ the infrastructure that makes a search effective in their own file management — whatever their file management style is. It's a strategy she says is particularly effective when someone is trying to work even at times when their setup is inconvenient. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>In a recent productivity session, she aimed to address that exact challenge with a marketing executive who most often found himself having ideas outside of the office. Trading extemporaneous notes for a platform that was searchable and organized allowed him to take notes the way he naturally wanted to. When he'd see an image, an ad or just a visual that he thought might be useful for future campaigns while he was out in the world, he would take a picture and hashtag it with a keyword that would populate a folder of ideas for quick reference later on.</p><p>"He then had a bulletin board in Google Keep that was just ideas, and he had an organization system that wasn't how I would organize, but it was how his brain worked," Martin said. "Because he could color-code all of these things, it was where he went for his ideas later."</p><h3>Think of email like laundry</h3><p>Introducing order where there is none is a big part of how Martin works. In fact, it was the thesis of one of her first initiatives around managing an inbox effectively, particularly through multiple inboxes. A standard feature on Gmail now, it was originally just an add-on that Martin began teaching in her internal course on productivity. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>"I think about email like laundry. Your inbox is your dryer, but then you need to take everything out and make tiles like you're folding and you're hanging clothes," she said. "It can't just be all in the dryer all the time."</p><p>Teaching employees at Google about how to properly organize emails between inboxes led Martin to conversations with the Gmail team directly, and her feedback about how people were using the product catalyzed the feature's implementation.</p><p>"That was one cool feature that I feel like I saw from like a little baby add-on to a full-blown adult product," she said. "That's probably my favorite part of my job: Not just teaching the products, but helping shape them in the long run."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>In launching Workspace late last year, Google laid out its products in such a way that each tool becomes slightly more reliant on the features that work well in its sister applications over time. Similarly, Martin's work has led her to try to get Google employees to do the same. </p><p>In a weekly email, she highlights to more than half the company the use cases for product features she's observed, and gives tips on how those same hacks could be replicated across different company processes and teams.</p><p>We can't all enjoy that kind of bespoke advice. But we can probably all find a cupcake trick or two somewhere in Martin's tips.</p>
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Kevin McAllister ( @k__mcallister) is an associate editor at Protocol, leading the development of Braintrust. Prior to joining the team, he was a rankings data reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw structured data projects for the Journal's strategy team.
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Nine tricks from Google’s productivity guru
These productivity tips were voted as some of the best by Google employees. Now they're yours.
Google Workspace, G Suite's successor, has plenty of integrations to take advantage of.
Image: Google
January 9, 2021
Kevin McAllister ( @k__mcallister) is an associate editor at Protocol, leading the development of Braintrust. Prior to joining the team, he was a rankings data reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw structured data projects for the Journal's strategy team.
January 8, 2021
Each Friday, Google's top productivity expert, Laura Mae Martin, sends a note to more than half the company globally describing ways that different departments are using their own tools to be more efficient. Here's a list of the favorites, as upvoted by Googlers themselves.
Read more about how Martin coaches Google's top execs to work smarter.
<ol class="ee-ol"><li><strong>Group your tabs in Chrome.</strong> <a href="https://blog.google/products/chrome/manage-tabs-with-google-chrome/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tab grouping</a>, a feature available in Google Chrome, allows you to color-code and collate tabs at the top of your browser. By right-clicking, you can name tab categories and make sure you don't accidentally click on a tab of sports scores when you're trying to pull up a spreadsheet on a video call.<br></li><li><strong>Swipe-to-switch in Gmail mobile.</strong> For those managing multiple Google accounts, Martin advocates taking advantage of the <a href="https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2405894?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">account-switching features</a> Gmail offers on your phone. On an iPhone, by clicking your email address in the hamburger menu in the top left corner, you can jump from alias to personal and back.<br></li><li><strong>Change your default reminder time in Calendar.</strong> Tired of being reminded for events 15 minutes ahead of time? Martin suggests catering <a href="https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37242?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Calendar event notifications</a> to fit the way you work instead of only relying on the default settings. When editing a calendar event, you can click the pencil icon and add an additional notification as well as remove any other notification preferences.<br></li><li><strong>Spice up Slides with a virtual laser pointer.</strong> If your forearm is tired from using your cursor to circle figures in a slide deck, Martin suggests taking advantage of the laser pointer in Slides. In the app's present mode, the toolbar at the bottom has a pointer button between notes and captions that can draw attention to a part of the screen without the workout.<br></li><li><strong>Watch your audience when presenting.</strong> "Anyone? Anyone?" During a presentation, you might want to know that you're coming off better than Ferris Bueller's teacher. Martin highlights that it's possible to <a href="https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9308856?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en&oco=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">share your screen</a> on Google Meet while still looking at your colleagues around the "room." As with Zoom, you can reposition the gallery to whichever view best suits you.<br></li><li><strong>Open attachments while video conferencing.</strong> A common theme in the features Martin points to most are ones that cut down on context switching. With Google Meet, you can <a href="https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2018/12/view-google-calendar-attachments-in-meet.html#:~:text=Attachments%20are%20available%20on%20the,%2C%20Google%20Drive%2C%20etc)." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">open attachments</a> that are shared within the app so people don't need to hunt through an email thread to find a relevant document. By attaching materials to a calendar invite, the relevant Sheets, Docs or Slides will be available to the meeting's participants if they hover over the bottom left corner of their screen.<br></li><li><strong>Integrate everything.</strong> Google's broader focus on integrating its products means that, in each app, you can do a little bit of everything else too. The slim right rail that now can be found in Google Workspace products lets you <a href="https://support.google.com/keep/answer/106237?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">access some of the basic functionality of the entire product suite</a> to save you from switching tabs. If you're writing an email and are reminded that you need to schedule a meeting, you can do it right there. Same goes for making notes in Keep when you're in a Calendar tab, or really any other permutation.<br></li><li><strong>Test your Gmail links</strong><strong>.</strong> Another favorite of Martin's is testing Gmail links without taking the time to click out to every site while you proofread; if you hover over the link, you can see the preview instead. In link-rich environments, like a company-wide newsletter, Google sees this as a time-saver where the seconds really add up.<br></li><li><strong>The .new shortcut.</strong> Lastly, creating a document, presentation or spreadsheet Is a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QsDg-WNcc&list=PLU8ezI8GYqs5zUuo096bI4_FFgeWAR1ug&index=1&fbclid=IwAR1SN1ToUZ0pIQ3-2YL1SwgzmKdsC5tMyoUznukWimR7IRkLkSryiBVVyoM" target="_blank">one-step process</a> In a Chrome browser. Instead of opening a blank document through Drive, Martin just types one of the following: "doc.new," "sheet.new," or "slides.new."<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></li></ol>
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Kevin McAllister ( @k__mcallister) is an associate editor at Protocol, leading the development of Braintrust. Prior to joining the team, he was a rankings data reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw structured data projects for the Journal's strategy team.
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