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GOOGLE TELLS HOW THE ONLINE BUSINESSES SHOULD RESPONSE IN THIS PANDEMIC

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a worldwide crisis. Apart from the shutdown of offline businesses, educational institutions, etc, it has also successfully created trauma within us. Every nation will find it very hard to economically recover after this deadly virus is eradicated once and for all. While every small enterprise is shutting down temporarily, here is a hope for the online businesses. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, some of the online businesses are also planning to shut down. But, Google says it is a very idea for a business. A website can be less active, but it should still be on the run. Because, once it shuts down permanently, it is very difficult to be back online. Due to the shutdown ranking falls sharply.

The minimalistic approach behind the online business

John Mueller, Google’s senior webmaster trend analyst has given a set of guidelines for those who are planning a shutdown. He said that instead of turning off your business permanently, it is better if you stick to minimal functionalities. This explains what Flipkart and other e-commerce sites are doing. You might show out of stock for the time being or allow your customers to add in wishlist or cart for later. This will save your business once you are back online. Also, you don’t lose you, customers, as they will be visiting the website. Everything except receiving orders should remain active.

Another thing that Muller suggested is to display some important message or notice about the temporary inconvenience. He also said to use Google’s Search Console Tool for re-indexing.

Customers are the first priority

The online sites that are engaged with the service of online ordering and delivery are facing most difficulties. Other websites which provide online solution and the entire procedure is done over the net won’t feel the heat. So, for those e-commerce websites, closing it will be the biggest mistake. You should keep in mind that though your company is not able to deliver, customers visit the website. So, to not have a negative attitude towards your customers, the website should be online. This will help to tackle your problems in a better way once everything is back to normal.

What if you need to shut down?

Shutting down should be the option when you hit rock bottom. If there is no other way then you have to shut down. But, it shouldn’t be more than a few days maximum. If you are shutting down your website you should do thorough research about what are the dos and don’ts. Google also says that the company should display an error page with a 503 HTTP result code. That is the best thing to go for.

And, in case you are planning to shut it down for more than just a few days, here are some tips. One should provide an indexable homepage as a placeholder. This gives the user a way to find it through a search by using 200 HTTP status code. And, if you are planning to hide your website, you can temporarily remove it from search. But, always remember these are very risky. Your business might have a major setback once it is back.

Effects of shutdown

It’s better that your customers know there’s a temporary glitch than not knowing anything at all. This is why a whole vanishing-the-website-idea is not recommended. Always keep your customers updated about the website. There’s not much work in just keeping it active with a notice. And, once you lock the website, users cannot find relevant information about products, services, past orders, reviews, etc. Moreover, if you shut down the website for once, their high chances to lose the contact number and your company’s logo as well.

All these will lead to a company sinking down in the search engine. In other words, Search Control Verification will fail as the company’s information is lost.

The helping hands

It’s hard to make the right decision when you are panicking. So, here’s a small help from domain registrars like GoDaddy and Namecheap. One can continue paying the hosting fee to keep it online. And, these registrars are also helping the small companies survive this. Because entire disabling is very harmful to a company’s future.

Stadia Makers

Google Extending Its Support to Indie Developers by Launching Stadia Makers Program

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Google Has recently announced that it will be launching the Stadia Makers Program in collaboration with Unity. There are many independent game developers out there making the game development community stronger day by day. Many people are very much interested in game development but opportunities and time are the greatest issues. With Google announcing in this period of quarantine, game developers would certainly not take their eyes off the computer.

The Big Announcement 

On 23rd March 2020, Google announced the launch of the new Stadia Makers Program for attracting the independent game developers. The company announced at the Google for Game Developer Summit. Google made this strategic move in collaboration with Unity to help attract the best game developers around. Through this program, Google will be looking for developers using Unity 2019.3 for developing games. It is especially those who are trying to launch their games by 2021.

What are Stadia Makers?

Google has launched the Stadia Makers program as an initiative to support independent game developers. Many independent game developers are excelling at their skill for a long time. But, they cannot come up to the surface due to lack of funding or technical assistance. Moreover, though the gaming industry is having an embarking turnover, many people don’t support it. Young students who have shown interest in game development might also be suppressed due to orthodoxy.

So, Google has made this inspiring program to give gamers a little push. And, it will help Google finding the creamy layer of the best game developers for its team. Google has released Stadia Makers in November 2019. Since then it has the game developers has created and launched 30 games and double updates. Google has also announced that 120 games will be shipping in one year.

Stadia Makers’ partnership with Unity

Stadia Makers has come into a joint venture with Unity for releasing this new program and expansion as well. To attract more game developers into the site what can be better than partnering with one of the largest game developing platforms. Even a beginner in this field uses the Unity game developing software and pro as well.

Unity, since 2005 has created a rich and ethical history in the book of game developers. In 15 years Unity has successfully established a very strong relationship with the developer community. It also provides new platforms and gaming services in a regular interval. Today, it is not only providing support to Stadia Markers but twenty-five other such platforms as well.

Advantages of Stadia Makers program

The program as well the partnership will have numerous benefits for the indie game developers. Initially, when a game developer makes a prototype that is nothing but the skeleton of the actual game. It needs numerous testing and technical supports. Stadia Makers will be providing the game developers with this technical support to launch his or her game. From alpha testing to making it certified, Stadia will take care of everything.

Technicality is not the only issue for any virtual application. Money is also a big factor along with tech support. Funding is a very crucial and sensitive part especially when it comes to launching and developing across a cross-platform. Stadia Makers has declared to offset some of these costs.

Last but not the least, this program will also provide free development hardware. The participants of this program will also be given the varying number of physical development kits depending on the size of the team. But, one most important thing is that the game should be developed using the platform of Unity 2019.3.

Other steps were taken by Stadia

Stadia Makers apart from just establishing a partnership with Unity did many other things. Since the launch of the Stadia didn’t go so smoothly in November, it tried hard to excel afterward. Stadia has declared the acquisition of Typhoon Studio and hiring of Shannon Studstill to focus on exclusive content. Google has also said that this is just the first step to something bigger for the gaming community in the future.

Moreover, in this pandemic of COVID-19, the users have increased not only in Stadia but participation in many other programs. Stadia has not announced any detailed news about the funding to date.

coursera

Coursera Is Taking Massive Open Online Courses To New Heights

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Have you ever realized that after the advent of online education, millions of students have been benefited? Extra knowledge has become a pre-requisite for landing either a lucrative job or making it into one of the finest institutions around the globe. But, everyone can’t pay for extra courses when basic education seems far-fetched. Especially in a developing country like India, e-learning is the need of the hour. Because most of the population belongs to middle-class society and they need the privilege to acquire proper education. Learning the crucial need to educate the world, especially the young minds in an affordable way, MOOCs are needed. In 2012, two professors from Stanford University, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera. Coursera has become one of the largest and successful websites for MOOCs. And, this platform mainly focusses on making people learn about the emerging demanding topics like AI and ML.

About the Founders of Coursera

Daphne Koller’s research area is mainly based on the application of artificial intelligence in biomedical sciences. She is an Israeli-American professor in the department of computer science. In 1985, she graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the age of seventeen and received her master’s degree at the age of eighteen. Daphne went to Stanford to acquire her Ph.D.

She received the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in 2008 which came with a cash prize of $150,000. In 2012, she along with another Standard professor, Andrew Ng, co-founded Coursera. She served as the co-CEO of the company and later as the President. Daphne left the company in 2016 and joined Calico as the Chief Computing Officer. Later, she left Calico to start her company, Insitro, a drug discovery start-up. Daphne is also the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

Image Source: Google

Apart from being one of the most famous and successful computer scientists, Andrew is also an investor, writer, and businessman. His parents were immigrants from Hong Kong and thus he grew up in London. He went to Carnegie Mellon University and acquired his bachelor’s in three subjects in 1997. He majored in computer science, economics, and statistics. Later, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of technology and acquired his master’s degree in 1998.

Andrew joined Stanford University in 2002 and co-founded Coursera in 2012. He is also the co-founder of Google Brain and the former Vice President and Chief Scientist at Baidu. He was listed in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2012. Andrew has also founded AI Fund that financially backs the AI-based start-ups.

The Beginning

Both Andrew and Daphne were inspired by the online courses of Stanford in the fall of 2011. They were driven by the idea of how an online learning platform is advantageous to millions of students out there who cannot afford to take coaching classes. Moreover, through this platform people can learn from the best professors in the world.

When they founded the website, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania joined their hands to contribute. It included many specialization courses as well. The content of Coursera eventually became very elaborate.

Growth, Funding, and Investors

The first funding that Coursera raised was an amount of $16 million. It was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers and New Enterprise Associates. The series B funding took place in 2013 where Coursera raised $63 million from World Bank Group. The amount of funding raised shows how fast it was gaining popularity. In the next round of funding, the start-up raised around $60 million from EDB Investment. After a few more rounds of funding, Coursera’s valuation crossed $1 billion at the end of 2019.

To date, Coursera has established a relationship with 200 partners across twenty-nine countries. Apart from college and other educational institutions, Coursera has also come into partnership with many government agencies.

Strategies and Business Model

Within one year of its product going public, Coursera made an annual revenue of $1 million. Students from all over the world signed up for the courses especially because of the valid certificate provided after the completion. After a couple of years, Coursera decided to provide financial aid to the students who cannot pay the course fee.

After this, more students started enrolling and learning new skills. The students were highly benefited as the certificates were only given after passing the assignments with 80% gradation. This is one of the best features of Coursera that they are genuinely interested in educating people and not just making money.

Currently, Coursera has 47 million users around the world. The company has 450 employees and the headquarters is situated in California.

Ispace

Takeshi Hakamada’s Ispace Dreams About Landing A Rover On The Moon

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Japanese are known for their highly ambitious nature. They are making significant growth in the field of technology, opening new start-ups and providing their services across the world. But, recent times have also witnessed their great enthusiasm in the space industry. For example, Astroscale, a Japanese start-up has aimed to clean out the space debris. Similarly, a Japanese start-up, ispace has shown keen interest in developing robotic spacecraft technologies. Robotic spacecraft is best defined as a spacecraft without a crew. The mission is under the surveillance of telerobotic control. Takeshi Hakamada, an aerospace engineer founded the company in 2013. Currently, the headquarters of the company is based in Tokyo, Japan.

The company has big dreams which might seem to be slipping off at times. The high expenditure is a very big factor that the company is still trying to overcome.

Takeshi Hakamada

Since his childhood, Takeshi was very much into learning about space. He watched all the Star Wars movies as well. But, the real thrill for making a big contribution to space passed his mind when a pilot form SpaceShipOne visited his university. He received inspiration and determination to build his career in the space industry.

Takeshi went to Nagoya University and acquired his bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering. He graduated in the year 2004 and went to Georgia Institute of Technology to complete his master’s in the same. While pursuing his master’s, Takeshi worked at the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory as an Assistant.

In 2006, Takeshi joined Lowendal Group as a Consultant and got promoted to Project Leader in 2009. He worked for the company for more than six years. In 2010, he became the CEO of the company, White Label Space Japan, LLC. After three years, he founded his start-up in the space industry.

The Founding Story

ispace is a private space company that has now become an independent entity. White Label Space, a European organisation where Takeshi serves as the CEO is the predecessor of ispace. White Label Space was founded in 2008 with the purpose to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize. The company comprised of space engineers from across the world.

For the Google Lunar X Prize, mainly two teams were working among themselves in WLS. The European team was building the lunar lander while the Japanese team was developing a rover. The winning prize was $20 million and the winning team was given a chance to land a spacecraft on the Moon’s surface.

In 2010, Takeshi established White Label Space Japan to manage both technical and commercial aspects of the company in Japan. While the team was working for GLXP, the Europeans stepped out of it. So, Takeshi decided to continue the work and the entire project since then is continued by the Japanese members. After the Europeans sabotaged in 2013, Takeshi changed the company’s name to ispace and the team name for GLXP became “Hakuto”. Though the mission wasn’t successful, the project continues under the name of ispace.

The Journey

ispace is a team of experienced space engineers since they developed a lunar rover for the GLXP. From 2017, they started the development of lunar lander as well. In 2018, the company signed an agreement with Draper for the designing purpose of the team. This has brought a lot of changes in ispace which led to restructuring their lunar program and also renaming it as Hakuto-R.

After the partnership with Draper, the orbit mission of 2020 for demonstrating the landing capabilities has been called off. But, the companies have a lot of future plans which include Hakuto-R Mission 1. The launch is going to take place in October 2021 on a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket. The next mission, Hakuto-R Mission 2 will include a lunar lander and rover planning to take off in March 2023.

In the space industry, a small development also takes a very long time. Constant testings and failures are all part of the journey. Most of the time, finance also becomes a huge obstacle but to date ispace has been successful in raising $90 million.

The Big Plan

Researches and developments of ispace till today are just baby steps for the dream of living in space. Takeshi wants to expand the realm of the human empire where commercial transportation to space will relatively become cheaper. He also wants to start mining operations in space once he successfully establishes soft landing on the moon.

Nikesh Arora – A Man from being jobless to lead Palo Alto Networks

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There are very fewer people in the world who steps down from a higher position. Most of the successful people run behind more power and fame. In this world, it’s rare to find someone who quits and not chooses to compete.

Nikesh Arora is one such legendary figure who stepped down twice from an honorable position. He chose to leave Google and joined SoftBank. He resigned from SoftBank as well. Last year, Arora became the Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks.

Childhood

Born on 9th February 1968, Arora became a worldwide significant figure. He was born into a family in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. Arora is the son of an Indian Air Force officer and he also has a sister.

Education

Arora did his schooling from The Air Force School, Delhi. After completing his high school Arora pursued engineering. He picked up the common choice of all the Indian youngsters. But, it worked out differently for him.

Arora went to IIT Varanasi (IIT BHU) which is one of the best Indian institutes for engineering. He graduated with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 1989. After graduating he started working at Wipro.

Higher Studies

Arora quit his job shortly as he wanted to pursue higher education. In 1990, he left for Boston. He joined Northeastern University and acquired an MBA degree in 1992.

After completing his MBA in Marketing, Arora joined Fidelity Investments as an analyst. But, he wanted to continue his studies. So, he joined Boston College in the same year and attended classes at night. He went to a job and side by side studied for Master’s. He topped the class.

In 1994, he acquired a Master’s degree in Finance and became CFA. He struggled a lot during these two years. Arora’s job was going well. He received promotions several times. His last post in Fidelity was Vice President, Finance.

Early Career

After completing his Masters, he decided to leave Fidelity Investments. Arora joined Putnam Investments but left shortly. After this, he joined Deutsche Telekom.

In 2000, Arora founded a company, T-Motion PLC. He built the company mainly to provide services to the newly launched 3G products of Deutsche Telecom. After two years, these two companies merged. Arora stayed as a Board Member.

For the next couple of years, Arora didn’t take any big steps. In 2004, he came to know that Google was hiring. The company went public and it was hiring for its European office.

The Big Decision

When Nikesh joined Google it was a young company. So, this decision was life-changing. Arora chose to join Google over founding a new company.

He started managing the operations in Europe and continued for three years. Under his leadership, the success of Google in the European market grew rapidly. In 2007, he started managing the Middle East and European markets as well.

Promotions

Nikesh Arora got a big promotion in 2009. He became the President of Global Sales Operations and Business Development. In 2011, he got promoted to Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Google. And this year he became the highest-paid executive of the company.

SoftBank

After working in Google for almost a decade, Arora resigned in 2014. He immediately joined SoftBank, a Japanese multinational company.

Nikesh Arora stepped up as the President and Chief Operating Officer of the company. Under Arora’s supervision, SoftBank grew bigger. Arora suggested the company to invest in start-ups. SoftBank invested in Ola, Grofers and etc.

Arora became the third highest-paid executive around the world after he received $73 million from SoftBank in 2016. This became very big news for the business world.

Palo Alto Networks

After achieving one of the most dignified positions in SoftBank, Nikesh Arora chose to resign. He joined Palo Alto Networks in June 2018 and currently serves as the CEO and Chairman of the company.

Palo Alto is a Santa Clara based company founded in 2005. The main products of the company are cybersecurity and cloud computing.

After Arora joined the company, it made the biggest acquisitions in its history. In 2018, Palo Alto ranked 8th in Forbes Digital 100. The company acquired Demisto for $560 million, Twistlock for $410 million and recently Aporeto for $150 million in 2019.

Nikesh Arora is a great leader. Under his leadership, Palo Alto is doing excellent. He has proved himself as a truly skilled individual.

Personal Life

Nikesh Arora’s first marriage didn’t work out. He later married Ayesha Thapar in 2014 who is a businesswoman. Arora has a daughter.

Google Maps

Google Maps for iPhone will Now Let You Report Incidents Like Traffic Jams and Crashes

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Despite being the biggest player in the smartphone industry, the iPhone users still rely on Google Maps when it comes to finding direction to a location or see for the traffic on the way, instead Apple having its own map app. This is only because of the high tech methods, Google has been using to provide the mapping services to the users. Now, the company has brought another set of updates to improve its services on Google Maps for the iPhone.

Among the new updates, the company has announced a new feature that will allow the iPhone users to report the incidents from the road to Google Maps, like any road blockage, construction, accident, traffic or any other driving hazards, which will reflect on the screens of other people when commuting on the same route.

The feature is inspired by Google’s navigation app Waze, which the company bought five years ago paying 1.1 billion. On Waze, people are already able to track and report the mentioned incidents, and we can see that Google is trying to slowly migrate those features to its Google Maps app. In fact, Google has already added similar features to its Android Google Maps App and people has received it quite well.

Google Maps

In recent months, the company has been making new changes to the app to improve its functionalities. Also, in May this year, 40 countries received the speed limits and speed trap alerts feature on the Android Google Maps app. The company even introduced features that would allow the users to add stoppage in between their route while using the navigation on the map.

To use the latest feature on the iPhone’s Google Maps app, one while following the navigations on the map can tap on a button under the compass on the map. The app will list various options, like Crash, Speed Trap, Slowdown, Construction, Lane Closure, Disabled vehicle and Object on Road, and the user will need to select one of the options to report the incident.

The new feature though will help the other users to track the traffic or blockage on the road due to any of the reasons, and change their route, but it will be more beneficial for Google in terms of collecting data and improving its services.