Introduction to Google’s redesigned Labs

Google recently revealed a revamped design for Labs, featuring 12 innovative artificial intelligence (AI) experiments, tools, and projects. This move highlights the company’s dedication to advancing AI technology and revolutionizing its usage throughout organizations and workflows. These AI experiments, which span search and productivity applications, can now be accessed or signed up for on the updated website. By showcasing these cutting-edge AI experiments, Google aims to inspire creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving among developers, researchers, and users alike. The redesigned Labs platform not only promotes accessibility and user engagement but also strives to continually push the boundaries of AI capabilities, demonstrating Google’s commitment to be at the forefront of technological advancements.

AI experiments and integration

The 12 AI-centered experiments showcased on Google’s new site have been integrated into widely-used products like Search, Workspace, and YouTube. They include: The experiments focus on demonstrating AI’s capabilities in enhancing user experience, improving accessibility, and offering creative solutions across various digital platforms. Users can explore these innovative AI-driven features such as improved language understanding, real-time translations, and smart video filters, witnessing firsthand how these technologies have enriched Google’s flagship products.

Search Generative Experience

Search Generative Experience (SGE) revolutionizes information retrieval by employing AI to rapidly summarize topics, generate innovative ideas, and aid in follow-up research. Harnessing the power of advanced algorithms, SGE provides users with concise and relevant information by filtering through vast amounts of data with unparalleled efficiency. With its capacity to bring forth novel concepts and catalyze deeper understanding, SGE serves as a valuable tool for researchers, students, and professionals in various fields, ultimately revolutionizing the way knowledge is acquired and shared.

TextFX for AI Writing Assistance

Accessible through Google’s AI Test Kitchen, TextFX aids the creative writing process by utilizing PaLM 2 and incorporating artistic insights to enrich creative expression. By analyzing the context and understanding the subject, TextFX generates suggestions and recommendations that complement an author’s intent and writing style. This AI-powered text augmentation allows writers to explore a variety of ideas and perspectives, ultimately enhancing their storytelling and written communication skills.

Google Bard with Extensions

Google Bard now supports English, Japanese, and Korean languages and seamlessly integrates with Google services like Gmail and Maps. Additionally, Google Bard offers real-time translations, making communication effortless for users across different languages. Its compatibility with Google services further enhances user experience, providing efficient functionality while navigating emails and maps with ease in multiple languages.

NotebookLM for Research

Powered by Google AI, NotebookLM transforms users’ reading, note-taking, questioning, and organizational experience, providing research assistance, sourcing, and idea generation in potentially customizable formats, such as meeting transcripts, book quotes, novel chapters, or corporate documents. As a versatile and innovative AI companion, this tool not only streamlines the research process, but also paves the way for enhanced output quality, ensuring that users harness the most pertinent and up-to-date information in their respective fields. By utilizing NotebookLM, users can effectively enhance knowledge absorption, stimulate creative thinking, and elevate their academic or professional work to new heights.

Duet AI for Google Workspace

This tool allows AI-assisted writing, visualization, and organizational collaboration, significantly boosting creative workflows. Duet AI streamlines routine tasks in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet. Users with an eligible account can use Duet AI, while newcomers can sign up for Workspace to get started. With Duet AI’s seamless integration, teams can efficiently work together and leverage the power of artificial intelligence to generate content, crunch numbers, and create visually engaging presentations. Additionally, Duet AI enhances communication in Google Meet by offering real-time suggestions for responses, ensuring that meetings are more focused and productive.

A Game to Enhance Image Prompting Skills

The latest addition to Google’s AI experiments is an interactive game aimed at improving users’ skills in image prompting. This fun and engaging game assists users in understanding the nuances of providing image descriptions and prompts that help AI models produce relevant results. By participating in this game, users can not only contribute to Google’s AI research but also advance their own abilities in crafting effective image prompts.

Impact of Google’s AI advancements

These groundbreaking AI tools exemplify Google’s continuous commitment to developing and promoting state-of-the-art AI technology, with the potential to dramatically alter how AI is employed in a variety of sectors and organizations worldwide. As a leading company in the AI industry, Google’s innovations are opening up new possibilities for businesses and individuals alike, paving the way for unprecedented growth and efficiency. This rapid advancement in AI capabilities not only sparks excitement among tech enthusiasts, but also raises important ethical and social considerations to ensure its responsible implementation across global markets.
First Reported on: searchenginejournal.com

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Google’s redesigned Labs?

Google’s redesigned Labs is a platform featuring 12 innovative artificial intelligence (AI) experiments, tools, and projects aimed at advancing AI technology and revolutionizing its usage throughout organizations and workflows. The platform aims to inspire creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving among developers, researchers, and users alike.

Which Google products have AI experiments integrated?

The AI experiments showcased on Google’s new site are integrated into widely-used products like Search, Workspace, and YouTube. These experiments focus on enhancing user experience, improving accessibility, and offering creative solutions across various digital platforms.

What is Search Generative Experience (SGE)?

Search Generative Experience (SGE) is an AI-powered tool that revolutionizes information retrieval by summarizing topics, generating innovative ideas, and aiding in follow-up research. It employs advanced algorithms to provide users with concise and relevant information by filtering through vast amounts of data with unparalleled efficiency.

What is TextFX for AI Writing Assistance?

TextFX is an AI-powered tool accessible through Google’s AI Test Kitchen that aids the creative writing process by utilizing PaLM 2 and incorporating artistic insights to enrich creative expression. It analyzes context and subject matter to generate suggestions and recommendations that complement an author’s intent and writing style.

What is Google Bard with Extensions?

Google Bard is a multilingual tool that now supports English, Japanese, and Korean languages and seamlessly integrates with Google services like Gmail and Maps. It offers real-time translations, making communication effortless for users across different languages while also enhancing user experience across Google services.

What is NotebookLM for Research?

NotebookLM is an AI-powered tool that transforms users’ reading, note-taking, questioning, and organizational experience. It provides research assistance, sourcing, and idea generation in potentially customizable formats. The tool not only streamlines the research process but also paves the way for enhanced output quality.

What is Duet AI for Google Workspace?

Duet AI is a tool that allows AI-assisted writing, visualization, and organizational collaboration in Google Workspace. It streamlines routine tasks in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet and enables teams to work together more efficiently, leveraging the power of artificial intelligence for content generation, data analysis, and visually engaging presentations.

What is the game to enhance image prompting skills?

The game is an interactive AI experiment designed to Boost users’ skills in image prompting. It assists users in understanding the nuances of providing image descriptions and prompts that help AI models produce relevant results. By participating in this game, users contribute to Google’s AI research and advance their own abilities in crafting effective image prompts.

What is the impact of Google’s AI advancements?

Google’s AI advancements have the potential to dramatically alter how AI is employed in various sectors and organizations worldwide. As a leading company in the AI industry, Google’s innovations pave the way for unprecedented growth and efficiency but also raise important ethical and social considerations to ensure responsible implementation across global markets.

On Thursday, CareCloud, Inc. announced a landmark collaboration with Google Cloud to enable revolutionary generative AI technology and capabilities to benefit small and medium sized healthcare practices and outpatient providers.

Needless to say, Google Cloud is an industry titan and has made significant strides in not only the AI space, but has also achieved compelling progress in its healthcare work. CareCloud is known for its extensive work with small and medium sized healthcare organizations and its significant experience with technology based revenue cycle management, digital health, and provider services. Given its work in the industry for nearly two decades, CareCloud has collected extensive clinical and financial data sets— which now, by harnessing Google Cloud’s generative AI stack and capabilities, can be brought to life and be used in meaningful ways via search and recommendation generation.

Integration of this technology will enable practices that use CareCloud’s services to unlock a new realm of value: “For example, when a patient comes into a clinic using CareCloud, the generative AI-based solution will surface relevant information and assist clinicians and doctors as they recommend a plan of care, including medications, lab orders, diagnoses, and procedures based on their previous clinical history and current symptoms. Based on the recommended diagnoses, patient insurance, and other information, the solution will be able to show the clinic and patient what costs would be paid by the insurance and what amount would be owed by the patient.”

Aashima Gupta, Global Director of Healthcare Strategy and Solutions at Google Cloud, explains how the technology provides unique value: “Organizations need more than just large language models (LLMs). There is a huge concern in the healthcare setting about hallucinations [which, per Google Cloud, refers to “when a generative AI model outputs nonsense or invented information in response to a prompt”] The technology uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG) combined with LLMs, which powers and enhances our enterprise search functions to the next level […] this is where the use cases become more promising and the results become more grounded and fact based.”

Enterprise Search (via Gen App Builder) is Google Cloud’s revolutionary technology which allows organizations to quickly build generative AI powered search engines to make use of their structured or unstructured data sets. Just last month, Google Cloud announced a groundbreaking partnership to bring Enterprise Search to renowned healthcare organization, Mayo Clinic.

Hadi Chaudhry, CEO and President of CareCloud, is enthusiastic about the collaboration: “The vision for all of this technology is to use it to better the clinical experience for the patient and the physicians; we can leverage Google Cloud’s generative AI to take [our extensive data sets] further [and] use this data in a meaningful way…together, using Google’s technology, the right models can be trained for useful purposes.”

Adeel Sarwar, CTO of CareCloud, described potential use cases for the technology, starting from improving the pre-visit patient check-in process with smarter intake questions, to the system providing tailored recommendations and evidence-based guidelines curated to the patient’s need during the clinic visit, and finally, concluding with the system providing billing and financial information post-visit.

Importantly, Google Cloud has made it a top priority to develop its capabilities with strict adherence to Responsible AI guidelines: “Since 2018, Google’s AI Principles have served as a living constitution, keeping us motivated by a common purpose. Our center of excellence, the Responsible Innovation team, guides how we put these principles to work company-wide, and informs Google Cloud’s approach to building advanced technologies, conducting research, and drafting our policies.” Congruently, the company has placed meaningful guardrails to prioritize privacy, prevent bias, and enforce ethical development.

Overall, this venture is an incredible boon to ambulatory healthcare practices. While the majority of technology giants have thus far focused on providing AI capabilities primarily to large organizations, Google Cloud and CareCloud’s work in providing access to an often overlooked yet critically important sector of the healthcare infrastructure is a key step in improving healthcare outcomes for generations to come. Indeed, a commitment to continued innovation and meaningful collaborations such as this, premised by a steadfast goal of improving quality of care, display great promise for the future of healthcare.

Google says Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft’s new suite of office productivity applications, lacks the cloud collaboration chops that Google has honed over the last four years with its cloud-based Google Docs offerings.

The claims that Office 2010 falls short when it comes to cloud collaboration come as the cloud computing competition between Google and Microsoft boils over.

The mud-slinging reached its crescendo last week, when Microsoft officially unveiled Office 2010, its updated suite of productivity applications that for the first time ties in cloud-based versions of its popular software like Outlook, Office, Excel and PowerPoint in its Web Apps component. Microsoft also added a host of new features to Microsoft Office 2010 the company said foster collaboration and make work easier.

Google, however, has made it clear that Microsoft is late to the cloud party with Office 2010 and Web Apps, according to a accurate interview Google’s enterprise president David Girouard gave Computerworld .

Girouard’s most accurate jab comes as the pair powerhouses continue to exchange blows in the battle for cloud computing control.

Microsoft has chided Google for urging potential Office 2010 users to hold off and to use Google Apps, and namely its Google Docs office productivity applications instead.

Google fired back, highlighting its acquisition of DocVerse earlier this year, one of nine acquisitions Google has made so far in 2010. DocVerse makes a plug-in that enables Web-based collaboration within Microsoft Office desktop applications. Google has said DocVerse enables ’true collaboration right within Microsoft Office.’

According to Chris Vander Mey, senior product manager of Google Apps for Enterprise, collaboration is the true value in the marriage between cloud computing and office productivity applications. And collaboration is where Google Docs outshines Microsoft Office 2010.

’Both Microsoft and Google agree that collaboration is the cornerstone of 2010. [With Google Docs] you get real time collaboration that’s simple to deploy at a very low cost,’ Vander Mey said in an interview with CRN. ’I don’t think you get any of that with Office 2010. You don’t get low cost. It’s not easy to deploy. And you don’t get real-time collaboration.’

NEXT: Looking At The Costs And Collaboration Capabilities

According to Vander Mey, Google Apps Enterprise Edition runs $50 per user per year and includes all Google Docs offerings. Google contends that Office Professional 2010 would run a business about $499 with a host of other costs including SharePoint 2010 software, client access licenses and other hardware, according to a chart Google posted last week.

’It’s been really hard to figure out how much [Microsoft Office 2010] costs. It’s so complicated,’ Vander Mey said, calling the pricing ’obtuse.’ Microsoft representatives could not provide per-user pricing for an enterprise deployment of Office 2010 by press time.

Pricing aside, Vander Mey said some of the real-time collaboration features touted in Microsoft Office 2010 are limited to the desktop versions and not in the Web Apps portion. For example Office 2010 offers Web-based collaboration in Excel, but users of Microsoft Word 2010 can’t collaborate in real time while working on a document; instead, one user can edit and work in a document at one time. Essentially, documents in Word are viewable by other users, but locked until one user releases it and to let another user contribute. Google, on the other-hand, offers real-time collaboration in all of its Docs offerings, Vander Mey.

Microsoft did not respond by deadline to requests for more specifics around the real-time cloud collaboration capabilities of Office 2010.

’We’ve been working on real-time collaboration for four years,’ Vander Mey said, adding that character-by-character real-time collaboration and chat in Google editors were recently included during a accurate Google Docs update. ’It allows you to get the job done more quickly and more efficiently. You can get to a consensus much more quickly.’

"We’re able to provide true multi-tenancy, synchronous replication, globally distributed cloud computing to our users,’ Vander Mey continued. ’We really have built a cloud solution from the ground up that runs in the browser.’

And while DocVerse does not yet have an expected release date, Vander Mey said it will add more capabilities into the Google cloud offerings and provide Microsoft Office users more collaboration capabilities from Office 2007, or even Office 2003, than Office 2010 offers.

The pending release of DocVerse is one of the main reasons Google is urging Microsoft Office users to hold off on upgrading to Office 2010. Vander Mey said using DocVerse a Word 2007 user can collaborate with other Word users in real-time.

’For the first time, users really have a choice,’ Vander Mey said. ’You have a choice now and you should really look at your options. Do you want to upgrade your Office 2007 with Office 2010 or with Google Docs?’

Japanese game developer Ateam has proven that a simple Google Drive configuration mistake can result in the potential but unlikely exposure of sensitive information for nearly one million people over a period of six years and eight months.

The Japanese firm is a mobile games and content creator, encompassing Ateam Entertainment, which has multiple games on Google Play like War of Legions, Dark Summoner, Hatsune Miku – Tap Wonder, and tools like Memory Clear | Game Boost Master, and Good Night's Sleep Alarm.

Earlier this month, Ateam informed users of its apps and services, employees, and business partners that on November 21, 2023, it discovered that it had incorrectly set a Google Drive cloud storage instance to "Anyone on the internet with the link can view" since March 2017.

The insecurely configured Google Drive instance contained 1,369 files with personal information on Ateam customers, Ateam business partners, former and current employees, and even interns and people who applied for a position at the company.

Ateam has confirmed that 935,779 individuals had their data exposed, with 98.9% being customers. For Ateam Entertainment specifically, 735,710 people have been exposed.

The data exposed by this misconfiguration varies depending on the type of relationship each individual had with the company and may include the following:

• Full names
• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Customer management numbers
• Terminal (device) identification numbers

The company says it has seen no concrete evidence of threat actors having stolen the exposed information but urges people to remain vigilant for unsolicited and suspicious communications.

Setting Google Drive to "Anyone with the link can view" makes it viewable only to those with the exact URL, typically reserved for collaboration between people working with non-sensitive data.

If an employee, or someone else with the link, mistakenly exposed it publicly, it could get indexed by search engines and become broadly accessible.

While it's unlikely that anyone found an exposed Google Drive URL on their own, this notification demonstrates a need for companies to properly secure their cloud services to prevent data from being mistakenly exposed.

It is very common for threat actors and researchers to find exposed cloud services, such as databases and storage buckets, and get the data contained in them.

While researchers usually responsibly disclose the exposed data, if threat actors find it, it can lead to bigger problems as they use it to extort companies or sell it to other hackers to use in their own attacks.

In 2017, security researcher Chris Vickery found misconfigured Amazon S3 buckets exposing databases containing 1.8 billion social and forum posts made by users worldwide.

Ten days later, the same researcher discovered another misconfigured S3 bucket that exposed what appeared to be classified information from INSCOM.

While those breaches were responsibly disclosed, other cloud service misconfigurations have led to the data being leaked or sold on hacker forums.

Misconfigured Amazon S3 buckets have become a big enough problem that researchers have released tools that scan for exposed buckets.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has also released guidance for companies on how to properly secure cloud services.

Google

Wrapping Salesforce Chatter, which lets users collaborate and communicate within Salesforce, into Google Apps, the search giant's cloud computing collaboration and communication suite, enables users of Salesforce and Google Apps to collaborate more effectively using the cloud, said Ryan Nichols, head of product management and marketing for San Mateo, Calif.-based Appirio.

Salesforce Chatter capabilities will now be part of Appirio's cross-cloud SalesWorks application, technology that Appirio launched in September that connects once-disparate SaaS applications including Google Apps, Salesforce and Workday. Adding Chatter to the mix lets users communicate via Chatter through any Google Apps offerings, including Gmail, Calendar and others.

Boiled down to its simplest form, the addition of Salesforce Chatter "makes SalesWorks social," Nichols said. "You can Chatter in your inbox, in your calendar, in your start page. Wherever."

Nichols added that Chatter and SalesWorks broadens the scope of Salesforce, making it a more robust and useful offering for cloud computing collaboration and communication.

"If you think of all the things you want access to in Salesforce, it's not just contacts, accounts and opportunities," he said. "The more information we can get out of Salesforce and into Google, the more interest there will be."

The deeper integration between once disparate cloud computing collaboration applications also works to fuel SaaS use and let users take advantage of the benefits of SaaS. Appirio, which was traditionally a Google Apps reseller, has made the evolution to what it calls "CloudSourcing," meaning it now helps customers move fully to the cloud.

"Companies are adopting SaaS apps and up until this point you don't get all of the incremental benefit from adopting just another cloud app," he said, adding that integrating those apps changes SaaS deployments from a 1+1+1=3 scenario to a 1+1+1=5 situation.

Appirio has said that SalesWorks is expected to run $4 per-user, per-month for casual users and up to $25 per-user, per-month for full multicloud applications.

Also at DreamForce, Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff unveiled a new free version of Salesforce Chatter, aptly named Chatter Free.

The premiere of BharatGPT, a domestic AI marvel created by CoRover.ai in collaboration with Google Cloud, brightens India’s tech horizon. By supporting over 14 Indian languages for text, audio, and video, this revolutionary technology breaks down language barriers.

What you should know: BharatGPT is a digital monument to India’s cultural past, underpinned by Google Cloud’s robust infrastructure. It’s on track to become a well-known and reputable name in artificial intelligence.

BharatGPT aims to “Make AI in India, for India” and touts capabilities such as unique knowledge bases, seamless ERP/CRM connections, and an integrated payment mechanism.

Bikram Singh Bedi, Managing Director of Google Cloud India, expressed enthusiasm for this collaboration, emphasising the transformative power of technology and its ability to democratise AI use in India, cementing the country’s position as an AI pioneer.

Here’s why Google Cloud has partnered with BharatGPT

Market Expansion: India is one of the fastest-growing internet markets in the world, and Google Cloud wants to capitalise on this potential. By partnering with BharatGPT, Google gains access to a broader audience within India, particularly those needing to be more comfortable with English-dominated platforms like ChatGPT.

Language Expertise: BharatGPT’s strength lies in its understanding of Indian languages, which Google Cloud may lack. This partnership allows Google Cloud to integrate BharatGPT’s capabilities into its existing services, enriching its offerings for Indian users and businesses.

Product Differentiation: In a crowded LLM market, Google Cloud needs to distinguish itself. BharatGPT’s focus on Indian languages provides a unique selling point, differentiating Google Cloud from its competitors and attracting customers who require localized AI solutions.

Technological Advancement: Google Cloud is a leader in cloud computing and AI technologies. By partnering with BharatGPT, both companies can collaborate on research and development, potentially leading to breakthroughs in natural language processing and AI tailored explicitly for the Indian context.

Economic Opportunities: The collaboration between Google Cloud and BharatGPT has the potential to create new job opportunities in India, particularly in the AI and technology sectors. This aligns with Google’s commitment to empowering local communities through technology.

What exactly is BharatGPT?

BharatGPT, founded in 2019 by a group of seasoned AI developers, aims to revolutionise the chat AI assistant industry. They wanted to create an intelligent virtual assistant capable of managing various activities via natural, conversational interactions with people. This drive spurred BharatGPT to tremendous expansion, quickly establishing it as a leader in chat AI technology.

Melody Meckfessel, ex-VP of Engineering at Google and Co-founder and CEO of Observable, sat down with Advancing Women in Tech (AWIT) to share her perspectives. Observable is a collaborative web-based platform that empowers data scientists, data analysts, developers and decision makers to uncover new insights and make better data-driven decisions.

Melody began her career as a software engineer for OpenOrders, transitioned to working for Sapient as their Director of Technology and then began a 15 year career at Google which would eventually lead her to become the Vice President of Engineering prior to departing to launch Observable. Melody has taken her extensive background working in tech and with data to inform the mission and work of Observable, a cloud-based platform for visualizing and analyzing data that has raised $46M in funding from notable funds including Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Acrew Capital (founded by women VC luminaries Theresia Gouw and Lauren Kolodny).

In this founders-focused conversation with Sydney Umeri of Advancing Women in Tech (AWIT), Melody shares what’s on her mind as she builds a business, her experience fundraising during a pandemic, and where she believes the future of data visibility is headed.

Umeri: In doing the research for this interview, I saw a slide you used that said, "more developers and more collaboration, more complexity." Can you please speak to how Observable solves that problem?

Meckfessel: There are more developers in the world than there were last year and the year before. The current predictions are 70 million developers in the world. It's one of the top jobs in terms of career paths, meaning the complexity is increasing. Companies are using more open-source software. I saw an estimate that 50% of the world's software has some connection or dependency on open-source software. Those are more developers working together to collaborate out in the world and then reusing each other's code. That's a great thing to be able to have a starting point or to not write something yourself, but that complexity starts to amplify. The same is true for data. Companies have to juggle multiple formats, multiple environments, multiple data infrastructures in their workflow, and you can see how the software and the data complexity start to compound.

How can we help developers work together effectively? How can we help them see where there are dependencies in the applications that they're writing? How can we help them see those insights in their data faster by doing it together? How can we include them to collaborate in writing code, analyzing data, and using visualizations to help see those surprises and work with each other more effectively?

That's what we're trying to do at Observable. We're trying to create a place where people can come together and reuse code, so you can import an example that you find on the platform, but you can also collaborate, and through that collaboration, we think we're more powerful together.

Umeri: Many founders come to this idea of wanting to start or launch a business, and sometimes there's an acute pain point for them, and it was a moment where they're like, "We cannot move on without what I want to build." Or sometimes it's over the course of years. Was there an acute moment for you? Or was it just, "No, I've done this long enough, and I just know we need it?"

Meckfessel: That's a great question because pain is real. When I was at Google, I had a tremendous opportunity to work in multiple areas of the infrastructure. One of the things that I saw was we were really focused on how to help Google engineers, and also engineers using Google Cloud, be productive. This is the advent of DevOps. If you think about the tools, the processes, the culture that brings people together to write software and to maintain it effectively, I really believe in that, but I kind of saw data being left out in the cold a bit. I would work with data analysts, data scientists and developers within Google, but there really wasn't a way to bring people together. There were individual tools for tasks that a data scientist had to do. Then you had developers that were working with them to build data apps, essentially dashboards and reports to surface data. I just kept seeing them left out of the picture. I wasn't seeing something come together around how to help them collaborate.

I continue to be inspired by what GitHub did for open-source software development. So for me, I kept seeing that, and then I looked out in the market, and I thought there's a lot of pain that these analysts, scientists, developers, decision-makers, collaborators, feel from not being able to work together. For example, if you've ever been in a meeting where you've been looking at data, and someone has a question, typically, you have to write that question down, and someone has to figure out the answer. What if you could do that exploration in real-time together? That's what we do in Observable.

Umeri: That's filling a huge need in the market. I want to pivot a little bit and talk about scaling the business. It's one thing to have an idea. It's one thing to start building it. But scaling is something completely different. I would love to get your thoughts on what has been the most fun part about scaling. What you've really enjoyed.

Meckfessel: I love to be part of a team that's building things. I use the word “things” in an inclusive general way. Building technology that's in service of helping people. Building places where people can come together and share what they know, it could be code, it could be a great, interesting, new visualization. Building and growing a team of people that are in service of that mission. This idea of building and creating together is where I have the most fun. We are a data collaboration platform, and we collaborate a lot internally. We pair programs; we collaborate on dashboards using Observable. We're always working together.

Especially in the pandemic, this idea of how do you have fun in your work, especially working with data, is present. Most people wouldn't describe working with data as a fun experience. But what if you did bring fun to it? Visualization plays such a critical role because it taps into our human visual system, and the intuitive parts of our brain, to be able to ask questions and see things in a way that we can't, working with numbers on a screen. That has been the most fun, and I would also share that I am grateful for the community at Observable. The community is creating such expressive work and sharing it with the world. That's what gets me up every day. Being able to build and create with the team at Observable and in collaboration with the community.

Umeri: Many founders who fundraised during the pandemic have their own stories to share on the process. You recently completed a $35M raise - can you share your experience in fundraising during this time?

Meckfessel: It was an interesting journey to navigate. We closed on our Series A at the end of 2019, and the pandemic hit. We definitely adapted throughout the pandemic. Then, we were looking at growth in the platform and the community, and I was very intentional about the folks we were meeting with that could be new partners. I was looking for what we're going to need next. I was trying to identify investors and their value systems that matched our mission and where we were going. It is about matching your company's values and mission with who you will be talking with every other day. Investors are not just members of your board. They're members of your team. In fact "Menlo Venture's team-based approach matches with our collaborative culture and is just the help needed as we continue growth in our customer community."

Our board members mentor leaders within the company, and they're available to talk through challenging issues. They are in it with us. Having that match in terms of values of really believing in the possibilities of our mission, not just for the next year or two years, but five to 10 years from now, was really important. There were a lot of investors that I talked to that I really wanted to ensure they bought into our company culture and how we were trying to show up in the world, our ethics, our values, the fact that we want the company to represent the world that we're trying to create, which is data practitioners from all backgrounds, all educational levels, all role definitions, and you need to match that to be successful.

Umeri: Is there anything that stood out to you from a gender perspective regarding fundraising?

Meckfessel: Yes, I was very intentional about finding partners that were going to be supportive. Jim Goetz at Sequoia is an incredible partner, and the network within Sequoia is extremely supportive. I was also looking for a member of the board who was a woman and was in the space that we were in. I met Theresia Gouw, who leads Acrew Capital. She's incredible. She's been a tremendous mentor. Her work to diversify cap tables and support diverse founders with her organization is really an inspiration for all of us. I was very intentional about wanting that on the board. I wanted someone who was going to challenge me to go big, and Theresia goes big.

As I was evaluating other investors for the company, it was really important to me that their teams were diverse and that the folks that our team was going to work with were kind of a mirror representing us as much as possible. There were folks I met with that were incredible venture firms, but when I asked very direct questions about how much of your portfolio is led by women or underrepresented founders, I didn't get an answer. Not a great sign.

Umeri: I want to pivot and talk about how you guys diversified internally early. When people think of startups, it's kind of like, everyone wears all these hats. But you ended up putting people into silos internally, and it ended up working well for you. Why did you decide to do that early on?

Meckfessel: I learned through my experiences, often just mistakes that I made at Google, of not investing in product education, advocacy, early design, and engineering collaboration; we missed on several really important features, important engagement with the community. When I was looking at what we needed to build and create, a data collaboration platform, it was really important to me to bring that cross-functional, cross-domain perspective in from the beginning. I didn't go out and hire 25 software engineers. I hired designers, user experience researchers, and product educators. I grew a community team to invest in community programs. You have to think about what humans need. If we're going to build features that are user-centric, we need to have design and engineering working together from the beginning, and we need research to listen to the community.

Umeri: I'd love to know where you think data visibility will be in the next five to 10 years and the role that Observable will play in championing that.

Meckfessel: I don't have a crystal ball; I wish I could predict what's going to happen. I will say that what we see at Observable and in the data community is an ever-present role of interactive, real-time visualizations. When I say real-time, I mean those visualizations are connected to live versus static data.

That means that you can have confidence in it. You have confidence that you're looking at something, that when you have that insight or that “aha moment,” you can count on it. Interactivity is important. If we're all different and have different expertise, we want to explore and interact with the data in different ways. The ability to have a slider to explore, a search field, or different filters that you can walk through the data with, that's supporting our exploration and our collaborative approach, and we can then build on it. Data observability will continue to be a standard across the industry in everything because of the richness of the exploration that we have. It's just different from a standard static report.

Citing a person with knowledge of the situation, The Information reported that a big part of its 30,000-person will be restructured. Sean Downey, who oversees ad sales to big customers in the Americas, notified the company employees at a department-wide meeting last week without specifying whether the move would include layoffs.

Job cuts at Google

“In order to create a better, more seamless long-term experience for Waze advertisers, we've begun transitioning Waze's existing advertising system to Google Ads technology. As part of this update, we've reduced those roles focused on Waze Ads monetization,” Google said. The company acquired Waze for about $1.3 billion in 2013.

Last year in December, Google said that it would merge Waze and Google Maps teams to consolidate processes, making it a part of the Google Geo division. This is a portfolio of real-world mapping products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.

“By bringing the Waze team into Geo's portfolio of real-world mapping products, the teams will benefit from further increased technical collaboration,” a spokesperson said at that time.

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