Tag: Google

With Google Assistant expanding to Android Marshmallow and Nougat devices, it only makes sense that Google Home start expanding too.  News has come from Google that starting next quarter (March-May) the smart speaker with Google Assistant embedded is going to make its way to the United Kingdom.  The news came from the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones who reported on a conversation he had with Google’s Rick Osterloh who indicated Home was on its way to the UK.

Google’s Rick Osterloh tells BBC that Google Home is coming to UK in Q2, claims its AI skills and vast data will help it beat Amazon Echo pic.twitter.com/qs3oZabak0

— Rory Cellan-Jones (@BBCRoryCJ) February 28, 2017

This will certainly be good news for readers in the UK.  Home, to this point, has been exclusively US-based but that hasn’t stopped some from buying them and having them shipped to the UK even though it isn’t support.  That, of course, has created some problems in that some of the services won’t work.

After being exclusive to the Google Pixel phone lineup, Google Assistant is making its way to Android Marshmallow and Nougat devices starting this week.  The news is certainly welcome.  Google Assistant has expanded to being in Google Home, Android Wear 2.0 and Google Allo but for adoption to really take off, it needs to be on phones and not just the latest Google flagship.  Google made it pretty clear which devices are going to see Assistant.  First, it has to be running Android Marshmallow or Android Nougat.  If you are running Lollipop or earlier, you are not going to get the update.  Second, your phone has to be running Google Play Services.  The vast majority of devices out there do run Play Services but you can check on your phone by going to Settings>Apps then tap the Show Systems option in the menu then scroll down and it (they are in alphabetical order).

Assuming your phone meets these two criteria, Google Assistant will automatically be pushed to your phone via Play Services.

In the latest update to the Google+ app for Android, Google has quietly removed the menu link to Google Spaces.  It could be the first indicator that the carcass of yet another social networking attempt by Google is about to be thrown on the pile.  And frankly, it wouldn’t be all that shocking.  The change can be found in the 9.6.0 build of Google+ for Android and if you open up the menu using the hamburger menu or a swipe from the left side of your screen, you’ll see that there is no link to Spaces.

The idea behind Spaces was never fully articulated.  It was somewhat like Circles in the original Google+ but it was also aimed to allow you to create a “space”, invite friends so that you could discuss the space’s defined topic.  You could also share videos, images, texts and other media.  In theory, a pretty cool idea but Spaces never really took off.

Google has quietly added a new 2TB storage tier to Google Drive.  The new storage level is $19.99 per month and fills the wide gap that was between the 1TB and the 10TB offering Drive offer previously.  The new tier can be added to your account via the Drive Android app or on the website.  If you already pay for Google Drive storage, you can upgrade your account via the app or web and you will be partially charged for the remaining time on your billing cycle.  The access to the extra storage however goes into immediate effect.  The new tier is available now and you should see it on both the app and the site to sign up.

The addition of the new tier will certainly help those users who need more than 1TB but not the massive – and expensive – 10TB option.  Price wise, the 2TB plan is competitive with other cloud storage solutions and, of course, since Drive ties in nicely with other Google apps, it is convenient.

Remember that if you store Google G Suite files (Docs, Sheets and Slides) and uses High Quality on your Google Photos uploads, those don’t count against your storage quota.  Things like Gmail attachments, PDFs and Microsoft files do count against it.

The Google Drive team is rolling out an update to the web that allows you to preview password protected Microsoft Office documents.  The update is rolling out to everyone and should get to your account over the course of the next few days.  Once you have it, if you attempt to open a password protected file, you will be prompted for the password and can then preview the file.  The key word here is preview.  You won’t be able to edit the document nor will you be able to open it up in Google Docs, Sheets or Slides.  It is a read-only preview.

While it is limited, this is a nice edition to Google Drive.  Many users store Microsoft files on Drive so being able to at least preview a document before going through the process of opening it up in the apps could potentially save some time.  Interestingly, the ability to open or preview password protected files is something that even Microsoft does not offer with Office 365 online.

Big changes are coming in the latest update to Google Sheets for Android, web and iOS.  There are some nice formatting options that are coming to the app but probably the bigger news is that the Android app will have mouse support for the new breed of Chromebooks that run Android apps.

From a formatting perspective, Sheets will now have the ability to rotate text (this is found under Format>Text rotation) to make your spreadsheet cleaner and more visually appealing.  For example, you could rotate column headers 90-degrees so that they are vertical instead of wide across the column top.  This means you can make those columns more narrow.  Add to that, finally, the ability to format numbers in Accounting style.  This is one of those “why wasn’t it there before?” features but hey, it’s here now.  Under Format>Number>Accounting, you can change your numbers into this format for easier and more consistent reports on budgets and other financial spreadsheets.

Rounding out the formatting updates are new border styles.  There are several new border styles in the app that have various thicknesses and double borders.  These are all found under Toolbar>Borders>Border styles.

The big changes though and probably the more exciting ones for most are the changes to the Android (and iOS app) app for Sheets.