#Workspace
Free G Suite legacy accounts will be required to pay starting July
9To5Google

Google Workspace earlier used to be known as G Suite, and it provides custom domain for schools and businesses using Google services. There used to be a free tier of the service but now Google has officially killed it.

G Suite legacy free edition, also known as “Google Apps” for businesses and schools is launched back in 2006, with Google discontinuing the service for new customers in 2012. Those who have registered for the service are still able to use it till today, but Google has sent out email notification to inform administrators that Google is fully discontinuing the service by July 1.

To make the transition smoother, Google is offering discounts for the first 12 months to those customers. Accounts will be suspend if no billing details is added before the deadline.

#ChromeOS
Chrome OS Calculator web app is available as PWAs
9To5Google

Chrome OS Calculator app is now publicly available for every device to use.

Visiting calculator.apps.chrome on a Chromium browser will give you option to install it as a Progressive Web App, though you can visit it with any browser regardless of which platform. The calculator can do basic calculation, complex functions are also available. The design of the calculator looks quite classic as it is using the older Material Design.

*Not sure who is going to use it on other platforms as nowadays we have built-in calculator on phones & computers. Better alternative suggestion: Microsoft Math Solver & Wolfram Alpha

#GooglePlay
Google Play Games arrived on Windows computer, available today in selected countries
Official Website | Developer Site | Introduction Video

A month ago, Google announced they are bringing Android games over to Windows computer, and Google has officially released in the form of beta today.

The beta program of Google Play Games is currently available for sign-up in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, with the program expanding to more regions soon. Your PC will need to meet these minimum specs requirements in order to run it:
• Windows 10 (v2004)
• Solid state drive (SSD)
• Gaming-class GPU
• 8 logical cores of CPU
• 8 GB of RAM
• 20 GB of available storage space
• Windows admin account
• Hardware virtualization must be turned on
• Compatible PC device and configuration

You can learn all the info of the Google Play Games beta program on PC in this support page.

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#News #Pixel6
Pixel 6 owners on Verizon network won't be able to enjoy C-Band 5G just yet
9To5Google

5G still isn't available in many regions but some countries already got it covered. We know there are several variants of 5G, and US carrier Verizon has make C-Band 5G available to users with supported devices, but Pixel 6 series is out of luck for now.

The only Google Pixel devices that support C-Band 5G will be Pixel 6 & Pixel 6 Pro units that are sold in the US. Unfotunately, those who own it will still need to wait as Verizon listed as "coming soon" as reported by The Verge, while AT&T haven't mention anything about it.

C-Band 5G speed is somewhere between sub-6GHz and mmWave, while the coverage is wider than mmWave. Users would be able to enjoy a much faster network experience in more areas at least.

#News #Pay
Google Pay to evolve into a ‘comprehensive digital wallet’
9To5Google

Bill Ready, Google's president of commerce told Bloomberg that Google wants to "become the connective tissue for the entire consumer finance industry,” which suggests that they are planning to partner with more banks, including Coinbase and BitPay to “store crypto assets in digital cards.”

“Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to,” he said. “As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it.” Users can already store crypto but can't do any transaction with it for now, but Google might add such features soon as hinted above.

Besides, Google Pay could also make managing vaccine passports, tickets and airline passes easier to access soon probably, as this is a few examples they cited that the “comprehensive” Google Pay will offer. For your information, Google Pay preceded Google Wallet in 2018.

#ChromeOS #MY
Chrome OS is gaining Android 12's Material You element soon
9To5Google

Google introduced Material You with Android 12, which personalise your device for "you," and now they are bringing this similar stuff over to Chrome OS.

A recently merged commit shows that Google seems to be working on bringing Material You over to Chrome OS with a slightly different approach. The top part of the app window frame will be semi-transparent instead of solid-colored, with the four corners set to gain rounded corners.

What you currently see is just a mockup by 9To5Google of what Google might be doing, also things are subject to change since it is still in early development.

#YouTube
YouTube is preparing feature to let users watch video chapters repeatedly
XDA Developers

YouTube earlier has already rolled out loop functionality to mobile and desktop platform, and recently they have also do it for the TV platform too. Things doesn't stop here, YouTube might soon let users loop video chapters.

XDA Developers has done an APK teardown to the YouTube for Android app version 17.01.36, and they found out strings which hinted that YouTube is currently preparing functionality to repeat video chapters:

<string name="chapter_repeat_on">Chapter repeat is on</string>
<string name="chapter_repeat_turn_off">Turn Off</string>

Soon you will be able to repeat just parts of the video, you no longer need to scroll back manually, this is especially useful for tutorial guide videos. At the time of writing, the feature is currently hidden and haven't start to roll out yet. We will keep you updated on the feature availability though.

#News #YTMusic
YouTube Music is slowly growing bigger in the West
Android Police

Nowadays majority of the people just can't live without music, they listened it when they are resting, sleeping, walking on the street... Talking about this, YouTube Music is growing rapidly and has become the fastest-growing music streaming service in the Western markets.

A research from Midia Research via Variety, reported that the music streaming subnoscriptions across the world has grew up by 26.4% YoY, which means out of the 523.9 million people, 109.5 million has joined during the past year.

Impressively, YouTube Music has gained most of the new subscribers in the past 12 months, recorded over 50% YoY growth, other popular services like Spotify and Apple Music only managed to grow 20% and 25% respectively. Although YouTube Music only captured about 8% of the music streaming service market share, which is a far cry over Spotify 31% throne, but it is nice to see that the service is slowly catching up.

#News
Google Cameos say goodbye to everyone
Android Police

Some probably didn't even heard of the name before, but the service that is meant for celebrities or other high-profile people to answer their fans' questions by recording videos is ready to enter the graveyard, it is Google Cameos.

All celebrities won't be able to record new videos starting February 17, existing records won't appear on search results after that date too. Those celebrities who want to take a backup of their records can do so over at Google Takeout.

Launching way back in 2019, the service hasn't gain much popularity yet, as not many celebrities joined in over the past few years, also majority people didn't use it before too.

#Pixel
Google enabled fitness & bedtime tracking on Pixel's At A Glance
Android Police

Google Pixel's At A Glance is getting a little more useful as it gains more app integrations to show statistics directly on your home screen without the need to scroll your notification panel. Just recently, Google has enabled fitness & bedtime tracking for it.

Now you can check out your fitness data on At A Glance with supported apps like Adidas Running and Strava, weirdly Google's own Fit app isn't working for now. Also you can get reminded of your bedtime schedule, At A Glance will do that for you when it's 15 minutes before your set time.

There are many more to come in the future, see what has Google has prepared for At A Glance over here.

#News #Pixel4
Google sued over false Pixel 4 radio ads
Android Authority

Google Pixel 4 series is released back in late 2019, but why suddenly talked about it again? Oh, it because Google is getting sued for misleading advertisement of the Pixel 4, here's the details.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filled in a lawsuit, which allege that Google forced eight of the radio DJs to say out the Pixel 4 in positive review from a first-person perspective. It includes phrases like “I’ve been taking studio-like photos of everything… my son’s football game… a meteor shower… a rare spotted owl that landed in my backyard…” At that time, the DJs asked whether they can some of the wordings, Google refused their request.

In early 2020, Google wants to run Pixel 4 ads again. and this time the DJs asked whether they can get the phone on hand or not, Google once again refused until they attempted to buy on their own.

In a statement, Google spokesperson José Castañeda said:
"We will review the complaint but the AG’s allegations appear to misrepresent what occurred here. We take compliance with advertising laws seriously and have policies in place designed to help ensure we follow relevant regulations and industry standards."

If Google found to be doing it, Google would need to pay up to $10,000 for each of the 2,405 broadcasts of the ads, which will be over $24 million of fine.

#Pixel #PixelWatch
Google Pixel Watch might launch on May 26
Jon Prosser

The long rumored Pixel Watch could make it appearance to everyone on May 26th, which is somewhere around Google I/O event date.

Besides that, we know that the Pixel Watch might come with new Assistant and likely Tensor chipset, also Jon Prosser earlier has provided leaked marketing images of the Pixel Watch, giving us an early look of how the watch will look like.

#Workspace #Chat
Google Chat finally support rich text formatting on the web
Google Workspace Updates

Rich text formatting helps make some words stand out from the rest, so that readers can catch the attention immediately, and after a long time, Google Chat is finally adding rich text formatting support, at least on the web for now.

Just like any other platforms, you can use keyboard shortcuts, markdown formatting or manual select to apply bold, italic, underline (no markdown format) and strikethrough to texts. Interestingly, you can also change text color which is something not other messaging platforms has offered yet.

The feature is rolling to all Google Workspace customers over the next two weeks.

#Workspace #Drive
Google Drive will warn you when you open up 'sus' files
Google Workspace Updates

To protect users' online safety, Google is rolling out warning banners to suspicious files that are uploaded to Google Drive.

Google will warn you files that might steal your personal information, this includes PDF documents, images... you name it. A minor update but kind of something useful so that people won't fall into the traps.

These type of warnings have already existed on Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawing, now it is making its way over to Google Drive. It will take up to 2 week times to make it appearance for everyone.

#Google #EasterEgg
Google hop on the Wordle trend with Easter Egg
Recently Wordle went viral, it is a daily word puzzle game that you need to find out the five-letter word under six guesses or less. Once you used a guess, it will tell you whether you have place the letter in the correct place or whether the letter is part of the words but in the wrong place.

Talking about this, Google has joined the fun and created an Easter Egg to that. There are six boxes in this Easter Egg instead, and the animation first showed "Column" as an example of simply guessing out a word. Later, it progressed to "Goalie" then lastly "Google" is the correct answer.

You can see the Easter Egg when searching for "Wordle" on the web, for now it doesn't in the Google app. The first result is the correct website to play the Wordle game. If you want to improve your English vocabulary, this game will definitely help you with that.

Follow @PixelHubUpdates

#ChromeOS
If you have multiple Chromebooks, the experience is about to get much more seamless to use
9To5Google

The Chrome OS team is seeking ways to make the experience seamless for customers who use multiple Chromebooks.

9To5Google found out an a hidden feature under-development, given the name “Floating Workspace Demo,” this feature have the capability of syncing your Chrome windows and tabs automatically between multiple Chromebooks. For example, you are working in your office and after work time is up, you went back home and open up your personal Chromebook, all your windows and tabs will be restored just like how you left it earlier on the other Chromebook.

The feature isn't live yet for anyone, as it is still in early stage of development, it will be nice to see such feature launching soon one day.

#News
Google is working on an AR headset, codenamed 'Project Iris' and hope to ship by 2024
The Verge

More and more big companies are joining the metaverse, and Google is not excluded too. Apparently Google is working on their own AR headset.

The project is codenamed as "Project Iris." The headset will be running an unspecified “custom Google processor” which could be probably Tensor. Google planned to launch it as early as in 2024.

Here we just sum up a very short brief of story on what's Google is working with their AR headset, learn more over in the original article.

#News #Apps #Camera
Google Camera QR code scanner send people to the wrong site, issue has been fixed
Android Police

Google has installed their own Camera app in their own Google Pixel devices and it has the ability to scan QR codes, you need to first enable Google Lens suggestions in the camera settings though. If you have a Pixel device running Android 12, using the camera app to scan specific QR codes with special URLs might bring you to a different website.

First reported by a German site Heise, Google Camera has at least three distinct errors. These three are related to country-code top level domains, top-level domains that are longer than two letters and umbers in the subdomain. Seems like Google implemented something that is kind of like autocorrect but end up creating more issues than solutions.

These are only happening on Pixel device that are running Android 12, but later Google has rolled out an update through the Play Store which fixes the issue.

Download (8.4.400):
Play Store | APKMirror

#Pixel #Pixel6a
Google Pixel 6a might debut this May
9To5Google

By this point, after Google released its Pixel 6 series in last October, the next Pixel device they are likely to release is their mid-range Pixel 6a device.

Tipster Max Jambor said that the Pixel 6a is scheduled to be announce and release sometimes around this May. The device might launch on Google I/O event, which is going to be similar as how the Pixel 3a was first launched back in 2019.

There isn't any new leak of the Pixel 6a, but for now, we know that the design of the device is identical to Pixel 6 and it could possibly run Google Tensor. By the way, the long rumored Pixel Watch could also make it appearance at the event too.