As threat actors have increasingly focused on the browser attack surface, the threat to browsers has outpaced traditional protections from cyber-attacks, exposing users and enterprises. The Menlo Secure Enterprise Browser works with all local browsers to prevent and detect known and unknown browser threats. In partnership with Google Cloud, the Menlo Security browser security solution now includes major new capabilities to:

• Manage local policies for browsers
• Protect enterprise users from evasive ransomware and phishing attacks
• Secure access to applications and corporate data

Mandiant will also strengthen its browser security expertise through training provided by Menlo threat research. The strengthened security partnership allows mutual customers to take advantage of integrated products, such as Google Chronicle Security Operations and VirusTotal Threat Intelligence.

“Partnering with Google Cloud enhances our AI capabilities, expands our global reach through the Google Cloud platform, and strengthens Mandiant’s browser security expertise,” said Amir Ben-Efraim, CEO of Menlo Security. “The new capabilities bring added depth to browser security for enterprises without adding user or management complexity. With Google Cloud and Menlo Security, enterprises can focus on securing the application edge without the need for replacement browsers.”

“Google Cloud’s trusted infrastructure enables organizations to safely build, scale, and manage critical workloads globally,” said Sunil Potti, Vice President and General Manager of Security at Google Cloud. “We’re pleased to partner with Menlo Security and provide the secure platform for the browser security needs of enterprise and public sector customers.”

The Menlo Secure Enterprise Browser Solution

The Menlo Secure Enterprise Browser Solution enables the workspace of tomorrow. Menlo delivers browser security to desktops and mobile work, protecting users, applications, and data and delivering advanced enterprise security capabilities to Chromium-based browsers. It is available now for all Chromium-based browsers and available in Google Cloud Marketplace later in 2024.

Learn more about how Menlo Security protects users against zero-hour phishing attacks and evasive ransomware droppers or to see how you can simplify zero-trust access, replace outdated VDI deployments, or enable hybrid workforces to adopt new tools, such as GenAI services safely. Go to the website here to learn more about the Menlo Secure Enterprise Browser Solution.

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By delving into the dynamics of cloud data economics and highlighting the disparities between data ingress and egress costs we can see that they have profound implications for market competition and technological advancement. From regulatory scrutiny to strategic shifts in pricing models, the path to a more competitive cloud landscape will help businesses truly harness the power of cloud technology to drive innovation and growth.

The Competitive Landscape: Innovation, Pricing, and Market Power

Competition stands as the cornerstone of value creation in product markets, driving innovation, technological advancements, and favorable pricing structures. In IT, where cloud services hold sway, the dynamics of competition are equally vital. However, recent trends have shown a concerning shift away from healthy competition, paving the way for market concentrations that prioritize corporate interests over customer needs.

Imbalance in Cloud Data Costs: A Barrier to Competition

One glaring example of this phenomenon is the disparity between ingress and egress costs for data in cloud computing. While public cloud providers often offer data ingress at no charge, they impose significant fees for egress, effectively creating a financial disincentive for users to switch providers. This practice stifles competition among cloud platforms, particularly concerning systems reliant on large data volumes.

Implications for Technological Advancement

The repercussions of this imbalance extend far beyond mere financial concerns. Technologies such as analytics, generative AI, and foundational model tuning rely heavily on access to extensive datasets. Any constraints on data availability directly impede the progress and potential applications of these cutting-edge technologies, impacting organizations’ ability to harness their full potential.

Industry Response and Regulatory Scrutiny

Recognizing the detrimental effects of such practices, regulatory bodies and industry players have begun to take action. Investigations by organizations like the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and initiatives such as the Cloudflare Bandwidth Alliance underscore a growing commitment to minimizing constraints on data mobility within cloud environments.

Google’s Proactive Step: Removing Data Transfer Fees

In a recent development, Google announced the removal of data transfer fees for customers migrating away from Google Cloud. This proactive measure aligns with the evolving landscape of customer demands and signifies a constructive response to the challenges posed by imbalanced cost structures. By eliminating financial barriers, Google not only enhances its competitive positioning but also empowers organizations to leverage cloud services more effectively.

Embracing Data Freedom

Technology providers, such as Cirata, that are leading advocates for data freedom, echo the importance of unrestricted data mobility in driving technological innovation. Their vision aligns with the evolving trends in cloud computing, emphasizing the need for seamless data integration and accessibility across platforms. By embracing such data integration platforms, organizations can mitigate risks, maximize efficiency, and capitalize on the evolving capabilities of cloud technology.

Looking Ahead: Towards a More Competitive Cloud Landscape

As cloud providers continue to respond to customer demands for fairer pricing and enhanced data mobility, the landscape of cloud computing will undergo significant transformation. Businesses evaluating cloud service providers stand to benefit from these shifts, gaining greater flexibility and value in their IT strategies.

The imperative to address imbalanced cost structures in cloud data management is clear. By fostering a more competitive environment, where customer needs take precedence, stakeholders across the IT industry can unlock the full potential of cloud technology and drive innovation at scale.

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Deloitte also announced its recognition as the first global systems integrator with the Google Cloud Ready (GCR) – Sustainability designation, a program that validates Google Cloud-aligned organizations with business-ready technology to help customers achieve their sustainability goals. As part of the program, Deloitte is harnessing the power of its vast industry and domain knowledge, combined with Google Cloud’s market-leading technology and platforms, to help public and private organizations transition to a sustainable future.

Accelerating the transition to zero emission vehicles

Deloitte and Google Cloud are working with clients around the world to help create an economic pathway to zero emissions.

Deloitte’s Electrified Fleet solution, the first of many offerings soon to be available on Google Cloud, helps companies with the end-to-end electrification of their vehicular fleets. Joint customers will be able to utilize an interactive dashboard to help easily map out their entire electrification journey — encompassing the integration of global fleet telematics data, resource optimization and ongoing impact monitoring.

The Electrified Fleet Solution has already helped Purolator, a leading integrated freight, package and logistics solutions provider in Canada, to become a leader in net-zero transportation. In 2022, the company set a goal to reduce its absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions by 42% by 2030 and put Purolator on a path to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. In order to achieve these goals, Deloitte developed a strategic roadmap, assessing vehicle types and usage patterns, and energy and infrastructure options. As a result, Purolator is on track to meet its emissions reduction goals and electrify 60% of its last-mile delivery vehicles by 2030.

“Deloitte’s Electrified Fleet solution has been a tremendous asset to Purolator as we identify ways to reduce our emissions in the near-term and fuel our long-term success by contributing to a better and more sustainable tomorrow,” said Cindy Bailey, corporate sustainability officer at Purolator.

Mitigating climate risk in financial services

Deloitte and Google Cloud have also joined forces to leverage Google Earth Engine and their ecosystem relationships to support financial services companies around the world in using the power of geospatial analytics to bring improved visibility and new insights to climate risks across lending and investment portfolios.

National Westminster Bank (NatWest), a major bank in the United Kingdom, recently worked with Google Cloud, Deloitte and Climate Engine to utilize Google Earth Engine and help NatWest leverage geospatial data to capture climate-related data points across its commercial banking portfolio — with the first use-case focused on agriculture customers. For example, geospatial technology provided new data points and insights to assist NatWest with its climate reporting obligations — e.g., the EU Taxonomy and Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) — as well as support for their customers’ own climate and nature data collection. This information will also allow farmers to build a tailored picture of the challenges facing them, such as flood, drought, fire and biodiversity risks, all at a field-specific level.

Tackling the biggest climate challenges

Moving forward, Deloitte and Google Cloud’s sustainability, climate and equity-focused global initiative will help clients tackle major challenges. These include transitioning to zero emission energy sources, tapping into sustainable capital markets, scaling sustainable products and services, accelerating regenerative agriculture, decarbonizing digital business models and building sustainable and equitable communities.

“We are excited to be working with Google to take purposeful action to help mitigate climate risks, unlock the value of sustainable products and services, build green communities and green jobs and accelerate our progress toward a global net-zero future,” said Jamie Sawchuk, partner and global sustainability leader for the Alphabet Google alliance, Deloitte Canada.

“Through this program, Deloitte and Google Cloud can leverage our unique roles to help bolster the momentum to address climate change with cloud-based technologies and AI,” said Justin Keeble, managing director for global sustainability, Google Cloud. “We’re eager to work alongside Deloitte and our clients to accelerate action on climate in this urgent decade of delivery.”

For more information visit the website here.

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Money laundering is a complex problem with a growing global impact. The amount of money laundered each year is estimated to be 2-5% of global GDP, or up to $2 trillion annually. Money laundering proceeds are connected to illegal activities, ranging from drug and human trafficking to terrorist financing. Today, anti-money laundering programs consume significant resources for financial institutions, many of which operate across a variety of global and regional regulatory bodies. In fact, large financial institutions report monitoring four billion transactions or more a year for increasingly sophisticated illicit behavior.

Most legacy AML monitoring products are reliant on manually defined rules, which yield low rates of identifying suspicious activities. Even in the most advanced implementations of rules-based systems, money launderers can learn and work around these rules to avoid detection. In fact, more than 95% of system-generated alerts turn out to be “false positives” in the first phase of review, with approximately 98% never culminating in a suspicious activity report (SAR). High rates of false positives require manual reviews, which costs the industry billions of dollars in wasted investigation time each year and distract institutions from true suspicious activity.

AML AI helps global financial institutions increase risk detection and lower operational cost

Google Cloud’s AML AI provides a consolidated machine learning (ML)-generated customer risk score as an alternative to rules-based transaction alerting. The risk score is based on the bank’s data including transactional patterns, network behavior, and Know Your Customer (KYC) data to identify instances and groups of high-risk retail and commercial customers. The product can adapt to changes in underlying data, delivering more accurate results, which increases overall program effectiveness and improves operational efficiency.

Google Cloud’s AML AI is using proprietary ML technology as well as Google Cloud technologies, such as Vertex AI and BigQuery. The product handles the complexities of running ML at scale, while also providing enriched explanations of the outputs to enable financial institutions to expedite the investigation workflow and improve the customer experience. To date, the solution has been put in production across several geographical regulatory jurisdictions.

“Google is a pioneer in AI, and now we’re making our tools, technologies, and expertise available to solve one of the biggest and most costly challenges in the financial services industry,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Building on our commitment to bring AI-powered innovation to the financial services industry, we are launching Google Cloud’s AML AI to help financial institutions more accurately and efficiently identify AML risk while enhancing business operations and governance.”

Google Cloud’s AML AI product delivers the following benefits:

• Increased risk detection: AML AI can outperform current systems in detecting financial crime risk. Google Cloud customer HSBC found that they can now detect two to four times more true positive risk, enhancing their ability to identify and prevent money laundering activities.
• Lower operational costs: AML AI minimizes wasted investigator time by reducing alert volumes and providing explainable outputs that speed up individual investigations. In fact, HSBC saw alert volumes decrease by more than 60%.
• Improved governance and defensibility: AML AI provides financial institutions with auditable and explainable outputs to support internal risk management. This approach is now in production in several geographies, each with their own regulatory requirements.
• Improved customer experience: By increasing precision and significantly reducing false positives, AML AI minimizes the need to engage with customers for additional compliance verification checks.

HSBC, Bradesco, and Lunar find significant value in an AI-based approach to AML 

Using Google Cloud’s AML AI as its core, HSBC adopted a cloud-based AI-first approach as its primary AML transaction monitoring system in its key markets. Google Cloud’s AML AI helped HSBC improve detection capability, deliver more accurate results, and significantly reduce batch processing times for its large customer base. As a result, HSBC was awarded the Celent Model Risk Manager of the Year 2023.

“Google Cloud’s AML AI has significantly improved HSBC’s AML detection capability. Google’s models are already demonstrating the tremendous potential of machine learning to transform anti-financial crime efforts in the industry at large,” said Jennifer Calvery, Group Head of Financial Crime Risk and Compliance at HSBC. “By enhancing our customer monitoring framework with Google Cloud’s sophisticated AI-based product, we have been able to improve the precision of our financial crime detection and reduce alert volumes meaning less investigation time is spent chasing false leads. We have also reduced the processing time required to analyze billions of transactions across millions of accounts from several weeks to a few days.”

“As threats become more sophisticated globally and the challenges in fighting money laundering become increasingly complex, we believe in the combination of AI and decision science as the best strategy to detect suspicious activity with more accuracy and efficiency,” said Rafael Cavalcanti, SVP Data & Analytics, Bradesco. “As one of the largest banks in Brazil with more than 70 million customers, we see the value of Google Cloud’s AML AI product for the financial industry and have greatly enjoyed working with Google Cloud in advancing the industry’s approach to anti-money laundering.”

“Transforming the traditional AML approach with AI technology can help the financial industry keep pace with rapidly evolving money laundering techniques and the increasing volume of financial transactions,” said Jonas Leed, Group General Counsel & Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO), Lunar. “As a digital bank, Lunar prides itself on embracing transformational technology that creates efficiencies so we can focus on delivering the best banking experience to our customers. We are encouraged and inspired by Google Cloud’s AML AI ability to more accurately detect money laundering.”

AML AI can help customers reduce their operational costs while simultaneously improving the strength of their AML program. In the future, Google Cloud plans to provide Generative AI foundations for the financial services industry with the goal of boosting employee productivity, for example, to reduce the time needed for an analyst to investigate potential suspicious activity.

To learn more about Google Cloud, visit the website HERE.

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Data is the cornerstone of digital transformation and AI development. Organizations spend significant resources building complex open data integrations, custom analytics engines, and generative AI and natural language processing (NLP) models before they start to realize value from their data investments. Data originating from SAP systems, in particular, are among organizations’ most valuable assets and can contain critical information on supply chains, financial forecasting, human resources records, omnichannel retail, and more. SAP Datasphere combines this mission-critical data with data from across the enterprise landscape, regardless of its origin. Being able to easily combine SAP software data and non-SAP data on Google Cloud, from virtually any other data source, means organizations can dramatically accelerate their digital transformation with a fully-defined data foundation that retains complete business context.

“Bringing together SAP systems and data with Google’s data cloud introduces entirely new opportunities for enterprises to derive more value from their full data footprints,” said Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “SAP and Google Cloud share a commitment to open data and our extended partnership will help break down barriers between data stored in disparate systems, databases, and environments. Our customers not only benefit from the business AI already built into our systems, but also from a unified data foundation.”

“SAP and Google Cloud now offer an incredibly comprehensive and open data cloud, providing a foundation for the future of enterprise AI,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud. “Few resources are as important to digital transformation as data. By deeply integrating SAP data and systems with our data cloud, customers will be able to utilize our analytics capabilities, as well as advanced AI tools and large language models to find new insights from their data.”

SAP and Google Cloud’s new open data offering compliments the RISE with SAP solution and will enable customers to:

• Access business-critical data in real-time: The integration between SAP Datasphere and Google Cloud BigQuery allows customers to easily access their most critical data in real time without data duplication. This joint offering can unify data from SAP software systems, such as SAP S/4HANA® and SAP HANA® Cloud, providing organizations with a comprehensive view of their most important data on Google’s data cloud.
• Simplify data landscapes: SAP and Google Cloud co-engineered powerful data replication and federation technologies, which allow businesses to easily integrate SAP software data with BigQuery environments and leverage SAP and Google Cloud’s leading data analytics capabilities. Now, customers can federate queries across SAP Datasphere and BigQuery to blend data from SAP and non-SAP software. This eliminates common data silos from sources that span marketing, sales, finance, supply chain, and more. For example, customers with wholesale business distribution models can now have full visibility into their products as they go through the sales pipeline and reach customers.
• Create trusted insights with Google Cloud’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models: Businesses will be able to use Google Cloud’s AI and ML services to train models on data from SAP and non-SAP systems.
• Perform advanced analysis: Organizations can utilize the analytics capabilities of the SAP Analytics Cloud solution in Google Cloud to analyze financial and business outcomes while improving the accuracy of models. With a simple integration to data in BigQuery with SAP Datasphere, customers can plan with a single, comprehensive view of their businesses.
• Utilize joint solutions for sustainability: SAP and Google Cloud are exploring ways to combine SAP Datasphere with broader ESG data sets and insights powered by Google Cloud to accelerate sustainability journeys with actionable insights.
• Use SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) on Google Cloud globally: SAP will advance its multi-cloud offerings by expanding regional support of SAP BTP and SAP HANA Cloud on Google Cloud, which includes support for SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere. SAP and Google Cloud intend to launch SAP BTP in five new regions this year, building to a total of eight regions supported by 2025.

The companies also plan to partner on joint go-to-market initiatives for enterprises’ largest data projects, enabling customers to adopt data products from both SAP and Google Cloud.

For more information, visit Google Cloud HERE and SAP HERE.

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Google Workspace comes with industry-leading security built into its cloud-native, zero trust architecture. These capabilities combine threat defenses powered by Google AI, client-side encryption, data privacy controls, and simple access to Google Cloud cybersecurity products like BeyondCorp Enterprise and Chronicle Security Operations, to automatically stop the vast majority of online threats before they emerge—while also supporting customers’ regulatory and sovereignty needs. Through its ecosystem of cybersecurity partners, Google Workspace can extend these capabilities further by combining them with tools from the industry’s leading security companies, enabling customers to adopt comprehensive, secure collaboration solutions to meet their specific security needs as part of a single Google Workspace offering.

“Global enterprises want to provide their workforces with more effective and secure ways of collaborating, with tools that increase productivity and avoid the vulnerabilities of legacy productivity solutions,” said Sunil Potti, VP and GM of cloud security, Google Cloud. “Through its growing ecosystem of security partners, Google Workspace offers the most enterprise-ready platform for hybrid work, providing organizations with confidence and flexibility to work securely.”

Securing Enterprise Workforces with Okta and VMware
Today, Google Cloud is extending the built-in identity, device, and access management capabilities of Google Workspace through new alliances with Okta and VMware, enabling large-scale businesses and public sector organizations to provide their workforces with FedRAMP-authorized collaboration and communication tools. Google Workspace works seamlessly with the enterprise-grade identity and access management capabilities in Okta Workforce Identity Cloud and the device and application management capabilities in VMware Workspace ONE, providing organizations with more choice and flexibility in how they enable safer collaboration for their workforce.

• Okta’s Workforce Identity Cloud brings Okta’s leading identity and access management capabilities to Google Workspace customers, securely connecting employees, contractors, and business partners from any device and any location. Workforce Identity Cloud’s flexible rules and policies ensure employees have just the right level of access they need to get their work done. With Okta, employees can use their Google Workspace credentials across more than 7,000 pre-built apps in the Okta Integration Network to reduce password sprawl for increased security.
• VMware Workspace ONE extends VMware’s industry-leading unified endpoint management and zero trust access capabilities to Google Workspace. IT teams can manage all Google Workspace apps through VMware’s comprehensive platform, which provides users with quick and easy access to business applications and makes it simple for administrators to onboard devices, change configurations, push automated OS updates, and more, without requiring a combination of disjointed third-party solutions. Workspace ONE administrators can also access a collection of device-health dashboards and reports, along with multi-tenancy for management across geographies, organizations, and use cases.

“Identity is the connective tissue between a business’s ecosystem of people and the technologies they need to be successful in hybrid and remote work,” said Arnab Bose, chief product officer, Workforce Identity Cloud at Okta. “This partnership allows us to bring identity-powered security to Google Workspace customers while giving them an easy button to optimize their employee experiences and increase operational efficiency.”

“The rapid shift to hybrid work has highlighted the need for IT teams to do more with less, while simultaneously balancing the increasing demands of security and productivity,” said Renu Upadhyay, VP of product marketing, End-User Computing, VMware. “This VMware and Google Cloud partnership unlocks a transformative approach to end-user computing by creating an automated, unified, and secure experience across all endpoints, apps, and enterprise services, no matter where employees work.”

Helping Small and Midsize Organizations Replace Legacy Directory Services with JumpCloud
JumpCloud Open Directory Platform provides customers with an alternative directory service to replace aging Microsoft Active Directory servers that is a modern, cloud-based solution. The platform works seamlessly with Google Workspace, enabling identity workflows and synchronization to thousands of applications, HRIS systems, and cloud infrastructure. It also combines these features with desktop and mobile device fleet management capabilities to ensure secure, frictionless access to applications and other resources from any operating system or location an employee chooses to work from.

“IT teams are looking for solutions that centralize access, device, and identity management. They need easier and more effective ways to secure how work happens,” said Greg Keller, CTO and co-founder, JumpCloud. “The Google Cloud and JumpCloud solution gives IT teams a modern and affordable option to securely manage today’s work on-prem, in the cloud or on the go. This offering provides IT teams, and channel IT solution providers, a more affordable, best in class alternative to expensive, legacy Microsoft packages.”

Google Workspace’s Flexible, Secure Ecosystem
Google Workspace is committed to offering more choice by providing organizations of any size with the ability to combine purpose-built security tools from its ecosystem of cybersecurity partners. New updates with JumpCloud, Okta, and VMware will build on existing offerings with CrowdStrike, which extends endpoint protection and Zero Trust through the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, and Palo Alto Networks, which extends endpoint protection and Zero Trust through Prisma Access and Cortex XDR. Over the coming year, deeper technical integrations with these partners will expand the joint capabilities available to Google Workspace customers, making it even easier to adopt Google Workspace for organizations with the most rigorous security and regulatory requirements.

Google Workspace security and trust interested customers can learn more HERE.

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A new shelf checking AI solution, built on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Vision, utilizes Google’s database of facts about people, places and things, giving retailers the ability to recognize billions of products to ensure in-store shelves are right-sized and well-stocked. Furthermore, in an update to its Discovery AI solutions, Google Cloud introduced a new personalization AI capability and new AI-powered browse feature to help retailers upgrade their digital storefronts with more dynamic and intuitive shopping experiences. Finally, Google Cloud’s Recommendations AI solution launched new machine learning capabilities that empower retailers to dynamically optimize product ordering and recommendations panels on their ecommerce pages and deliver personalized suggestions for repeat purchases.

“Upheavals over the last few years have reshaped the retail landscape and the tools retailers need to be more efficient, more compelling to their customers, and less exposed to future shocks,” said Carrie Tharp, VP of Retail and Consumer, Google Cloud. “Despite uncertainty, the retail industry has enormous opportunity. The leaders of tomorrow will be those who address today’s most pressing in-store and online challenges with the newest technology tools, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

The problem of low or no inventory on in-store shelves is a troubling one for retailers. According to a NielsenIQ analysis of on-shelf availability, empty shelves cost U.S. retailers $82 billion in missed sales in 2021 alone. While retailers have tried different shelf-checking technologies for years, their effectiveness has often been limited by the resources needed to create reliable AI models to detect and differentiate products—from the different flavors of jam and jelly, to the dozens of types of toothbrushes.

Now available in preview globally, Google Cloud’s new AI-powered shelf checking solution can help retailers improve on-shelf product availability, provide better visibility into what their shelves actually look like, and help them understand where restocks are needed. Built on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Vision and powered by two machine learning models—a product recognizer and tag recognizer—the shelf checking AI enables retailers to solve a very difficult problem: how to identify products of all types, at scale, based solely on the visual and text features of a product, and then translate that data into actionable insights.

Retailers don’t have to expend time, effort, and investment into data collection and training their own AI models. Leveraging Google’s database of billions of unique entities, Google Cloud’s shelf checking AI can identify products from a variety of image types taken at different angles and vantage points—an especially difficult task. Retailers will have a high degree of flexibility in the types of imagery they can supply to the shelf checking AI. For example, a retailer can use imagery from a ceiling-mounted camera, an associate’s mobile phone, or a store-roaming robot on shelf-checking duty.

Now in preview, this technology is expected to be generally available to retailers globally in the coming months. Importantly, a retailer’s imagery and data remains their own and the AI can only be used for the identification of products and price tags.

People don’t always know what they want. That’s why they window shop or browse through websites, looking for inspiration.

To help retailers make the online browsing and product discovery experience more modern, faster, intuitive, and fulfilling for shoppers, Google Cloud today introduced a new AI-powered browse feature in its Discovery AI solutions for retailers. The capability uses machine learning to select the optimal ordering of products on a retailer’s ecommerce site once shoppers choose a category, like “women’s jackets” or “kitchenware.”

Over time, the AI learns the ideal product ordering for each page on an ecommerce site using historical data, optimizing how and what products are shown for accuracy, relevance, and likelihood of making a sale. The feature can be used on a variety of ecommerce site pages, from browse, brand, and landing pages, to navigation and collection pages.

Historically, ecommerce sites have sorted product results based on either category bestseller lists or human-written rules, like manually determining what clothing to highlight based on seasonality. This browse technology takes a whole new approach, self-curating, learning from experience, and requiring no manual intervention. In addition to driving significant improvements in revenue per visit, it can also save retailers the time and expense of manually curating multiple ecommerce pages. The new tool is now generally available to retailers worldwide supporting 72 languages.

Research commissioned by Google Cloud found that 75% of shoppers prefer brands that personalize interactions and outreach to them, and 86% want a brand that understands their interests and preferences.

To help retailers create more fluid and intuitive online shopping experiences, Google Cloud today introduced a new AI-driven personalization capability that customizes the results a customer gets when they search and browse a retailer’s website. The technology turbo-charges the capabilities of Google Cloud’s new browse  offering and existing Retail Search solution.

The AI underpinning the new personalization capability is a product-pattern recognizer that uses a customer’s behavior on an ecommerce site, such as their clicks, cart, purchases, and other information, to determine shopper taste and preferences. The AI then moves products that match those preferences up in search and browse rankings for a personalized result. A shopper’s personalized search and browse results are based solely on their interactions on that specific retailer’s ecommerce site, and are not linked to their Google account activity. The shopper is identified either through an account they have created with the retailer’s site, or by a first-party cookie on the website.

As with all Google Cloud solutions, customers own and control their data—information on customer preferences stays with the retailer. This technology is now generally available to retailers worldwide.

Product recommendation systems are now a critical component of any retailer’s ecommerce strategy for good reason: online retail sales are expected to reach more than $8 trillion by 2026. However, retailers have long had difficulty determining which panels to display on their websites, how to effectively arrange them, and how to coordinate content that is both relevant and personalized. Google Cloud’s Recommendations AI solution uses machine learning to help retailers bring product recommendations to their shoppers.

New upgrades to Recommendations AI, announced today, can make a retailer’s ecommerce properties even more personalized, dynamic and helpful for individual customers. For example, a new page-level optimization feature now enables an ecommerce site to dynamically decide what product recommendation panels to uniquely show to a shopper. Page-level optimization also minimizes the need for resource intensive user experience testing, and can improve user engagement and conversion rates.

In addition, a recently added revenue optimization feature uses machine learning to offer better product recommendations that can lift revenue per user session on any ecommerce site. A machine learning model, built in collaboration with DeepMind, combines an  ecommerce site’s product categories, item prices, and customer clicks and conversions to find the right balance between long-term satisfaction for shoppers and revenue lift for retailers. Finally, a new buy-it-again model leverages a customer’s shopping history to provide personalized recommendations for potential repeat purchases.

Compared to baseline recommendation systems used by Google Cloud customers, Recommendations AI has shown double digit uplift in conversion and clickthrough rates in experiments controlled by retailers using the technology. The new page-level optimization, revenue optimization and buy-it-again models are now globally available to retailers.

Google Cloud’s shelf checking AI tool is now in preview globally. The new ecommerce technologies, including the personalization AI capability, browse feature, and updates to Recommendations AI (page level optimization machine learning model, revenue optimization model, and buy-it-again model) are all now globally available to retailers. NRF event attendees can learn more about the latest, AI-driven innovations for retailers at Google’s event booth. To learn more visit Google Cloud’s website here.

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As T-Mobile continues to offer amazing value and a leading 5G network, and its wireless customer base continues to grow, delivering personalized and engaging customer experiences at scale is critical. Aligning with T-Mobile’s “customer obsessed” approach, Google Cloud’s products and global infrastructure will enable the companies to co-create innovative ways to better connect and deliver personalized services for customers wherever they are in the world.

“At T-Mobile, creating frictionless, simplified, and personalized experiences is key to our relationship with customers,” said Marcus East, executive vice president and chief digital officer, T-Mobile. “We’re thrilled to work with Google Cloud to address trends in consumer behavior, drive deeper relationships, and evaluate our customer-first approach.”

This partnership will see T-Mobile and Google Cloud focus on the following areas:

• Deepened Relationships with Customers: Google Cloud’s solutions will help T-Mobile unlock powerful analyses to better understand its customers’ needs. From actionable customer insights to improved experiences across various customer touch points, Google Cloud solutions can help meet people where they are and with what they need.
  
  
  
• Accelerated Innovation and Understanding: T-Mobile will work with Google Cloud to accelerate innovative and intelligence-powered customer experiences. Using Google Cloud’s BigQuery and BigQuery ML for powerful insights, T-Mobile can better predict usage trends, identify and respond to consumer sentiment, and accelerate its analytics of consumer and product data to drive new business outcomes. Google Cloud’s Dialogflow and Contact Center AI offer natural interactions that redefine the possibilities of AI-powered conversation. This enables faster customer engagements and faster issue resolution.

“T-Mobile’s customer centric commitment has continued to raise the bar for how communication service providers understand and engage with their customers,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud. “We look forward to partnering with T-Mobile to drive enhanced digital-first customer experiences through data, AI, ML, and more.”

For more information please visit: https://www.t-mobile.com.

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“This year’s event takes place at an inflection point in the cloud industry,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Data and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming everything around us, and open, connected ecosystems are essential to everything we do. This week, we are proud to announce cloud innovations that help businesses embrace openness and interoperability, in addition to celebrating the incredible achievements of our customers and partners.”

Customer momentum across every geography and industry
Many of the world’s biggest brands are choosing Google Cloud to digitally transform and innovate, including 9 of the top 10 retailers, 8 of the top 10 banks, and 8 of the top 10 automotive companies. Building upon recent momentum with leading organizations like MLB, H&M Group, Banco BV, and ASX; public sector institutions like the New York State, Central Dutch Government, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Army; and new emerging companies like AppLovin, Arize.ai, Rent the Runway, Rightmove, and Tokopedia, Google Cloud today announced new or expanded relationships with Coinbase, Prudential plc, Rite Aid, Snap, T-Mobile, Toyota, and Wayfair.

New innovations and partnerships to define the future of cloud
At Next ’22, Google Cloud is announcing hundreds of new innovations and partnerships across its portfolio, which includes a data cloud so organizations can better understand their data and automate core processes; an open infrastructure cloud to help modernize legacy information systems and build new applications that are reliable and scalable; a trusted cloud to protect users, applications, and data from growing cyber threats; and a collaboration cloud to enable modern, secure communication and collaboration.

An open data cloud
Customers want to be able to utilize their data from all sources, in all storage formats, and across multiple styles of analysis. Today, Google Cloud announced significant steps to provide the most open, extensible, and powerful data cloud in the industry, along with new applications and services to put powerful, applied Google AI technology in the hands of more data specialists. Innovations announced today include:

• Big Query support for unstructured data, a new capability that will significantly expand the ability for people to analyze all types of data.
• Support for new data formats, including Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, and Apache Hudi, as well as a new integrated experience in BigQuery for Apache Spark.
• Looker Studio, a complete enterprise business intelligence suite based on the unification of Looker and Google Data Studio. Google Cloud is also introducing Looker Studio Pro to provide organizations support and key governance capabilities.
• Translation Hub, a new enterprise-scale translation AI Agent for self-serve document translation, which lets organizations cost effectively localize content in more than 135 languages.
• Vertex AI Vision, a new service that makes powerful computer vision and image recognition AI more accessible to data practitioners. It also reduces the time to create computer vision applications from days to minutes at one-tenth the cost of current offerings.
• Expanded integrations with many of the most popular enterprise data platforms, including Collibra, Elastic, MongoDB, Palantir Foundry, and ServiceNow—to help remove barriers between data, give customers more choice, and prevent data lock-in.

Easy, transformative, open infrastructure
To better help organizations of all types and sizes run on Google Cloud, at the edge, or in their data centers, the company is announcing a series of infrastructure and migration updates, including:

• Five new Google Cloud regions coming to Austria, Greece, Norway, South Africa, and Sweden.
• Infrastructure enhancements tailored to customers’ workloads, including the C3 machine series powered by the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor and Google’s custom Intel Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU), and general availability of TPU v4, which runs large-scale training workloads up to 80% faster and up to 50% cheaper.
• Anthos enhancements, including a more robust user interface, an upgraded fleet management experience, and the general availability of virtual machine support on Anthos clusters for retail edge environments.
• Dual Run, which will help remove the most common roadblocks from migrating 20+ year old mainframes into the cloud.
• Migration Center, which brings assessment, planning, migration, and modernization tooling together in one location so organizations can progress faster through their migration journey.
• OpenXLA Project, a new open-source ecosystem of ML technologies developed by Google, AMD, Arm, Intel, Meta, NVIDIA, and more.

An integrated, AI-powered collaboration hub
To help hybrid teams communicate and collaborate, create and share ideas, and get work done safely from anywhere, Google Cloud today announced new innovations in Google Workspace and its partner ecosystem that will help organizations transform the way they work, including:

• New capabilities in Google Meet, such as speaker spotlight, which enables presenters to embed their video directly in Google Slides, and adaptive framing with AI-powered cameras from Huddly and Logitech that let everyone in a conference room be seen clearly.
• Smart canvas enhancements with custom building blocks in Google Docs, enabling companies to build their own templates that can be easily accessed by all users, and smart chips for third-party applications, including AODocs, Atlassian, Asana, Figma, Miro, Tableau, and ZenDesk, so people can view and engage with rich third-party data without switching tabs or context.
• New security enhancements, including data loss prevention (DLP) rules for Chat and the extension of Client Side Encryption to Gmail and Calendar to help keep people and data safe across more of the apps teams use on a day-to-day basis.
• New APIs for Meet and Chat, giving programmatic access to common functions like creating and starting meetings or initiating messages directly from a third-party app. Asana, Lumapps, and ZenDesk will be the first partners to leverage these in their apps. Developers can also embed their app directly into the Meet experience with a new Meet add-on SDK.

Advanced security tools to protect what’s important
The rise of cybersecurity threats has every company rethinking their security posture. With the recent acquisition of Mandiant, Google Cloud is extending its cybersecurity leadership and expertise to help customers stay protected at every stage of the security lifecycle. This week, the company is announcing new products, partnerships, and solutions to build the most open and extensible trusted cloud offering, including:

• Chronicle Security Operations, a modern, cloud-born software suite that better enables cybersecurity teams to detect, investigate, and respond to threats with the speed, scale, and intelligence of Google.
• Confidential Space, a new solution in the Confidential Computing portfolio, that allows organizations to perform tasks such as joint data analysis and machine learning (ML) model training while ensuring the data they own can stay protected from their partners.
• Google Cloud Ready – Sovereign Cloud, a new program for partners and customers to advance digital sovereignty and address growing demand for cloud solutions with the highest levels of control, transparency, and sovereignty.
• Software Delivery Shield, a fully managed, end-to-end software supply chain security solution to help customers better protect the integrity of the software that underpins their business.
• A significant expansion of the company’s trusted cloud ecosystem, featuring new integrations and offerings with more than 20 partners focused on digital sovereignty and cybersecurity.

Delivering next-generation computing to enterprises
The combination of Google’s technical strengths, backed by its unique scale and deep experience in connecting that technology with consumer products and ecosystems, enables Google Cloud to put the tools of tomorrow in the hands of organizations today. New developments announced at Next include:

• Project Starline, which creates a 3D model of a person, making it feel like they are sitting in the same room, will enter its next phase of testing with an early access program with enterprise partners. Starting this year, Google Cloud will deploy units in select partner offices for regular testing to see how Project Starline can help people form strong ties with one another, no matter where they are in the world.
• A strategic partnership with Coinbase will help serve the growing Web3 ecosystem and its developers. Google’s partnership with Coinbase will make it easier for customers to take advantage of Google Cloud’s scalability, reliability, security, and data services, so Web3 founders and developers can focus on innovation. It also builds on recent Web3 announcements with Nansen, BNB Chain, Sky Mavis, and NEAR Protocol.

Powerful new ways for organizations to develop sustainably
Google Cloud operates the cleanest cloud in the industry—and is committed to helping customers by making lasting change through products and services that minimize environmental impact. Today, the company announced that Google Cloud Carbon Footprint is now Generally Available, and provided at no cost for every customer in the cloud console. In addition, eco-friendly routing is coming soon to the Google Maps Platform for developers, to help ridesharing and delivery companies embed eco-friendly routes into their driver applications.

And, earlier this year, Google announced the Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability designation to better scale its efforts and help global businesses and governments accelerate their sustainability programs. Since that announcement, more than 20 partners have achieved the designation.

For more on Google Cloud announcements during Next, please visit the Google Cloud blog website here or press corner and the Google Cloud Next Event Site.

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