Google Maps is partially down this morning with the outage particularly impacting its website and APIs for third-party applications that use Google’s location services.

Chrome on desktop has long offered the nifty ability to directly search other sites from the address bar. Google is making a pair of changes to Chrome Site search, including how you have to manually “activate” these shortcuts.

Last year, Google announced that app ratings in the Play Store will be specific to each device type. The company is now continuing that work of improving the large screen experience by surfacing high-quality apps and warning about unoptimized ones .

Google wants to leverage AI to help kids get a more “personal learning experience.” In the coming months, Google Classroom is getting a “practice sets” feature that surfaces assistance and other suggestions as students do the work.

At this point, Google’s biggest Android apps have been updated with Material You. Redesigns are widely rolled out, but widget availability varies depending on whether you have a Pixel or Samsung device running Android 12. The following is our running tally of which Google app Material You widgets are available where.

As previewed in February, Google Docs on the web is getting a rather nifty template for drafting emails that features Gmail integration. This is part of Google’s @-menu and Smart Canvas push.

I want to use a tablet. In that fantasy, I’d use a large screen to quickly go through tweets, email, news, and other torrents of information during more laid back periods of the day (breakfast, lunch, etc). With the launch of Android 12L and the impending launch of updates and/or new devices, I tried to live that dream. The entire time I was conscious of Google’s track record, but I was not ready for its first-party apps to disappoint me as much as it did.

The majority of Google’s apps today feature a bottom bar and Contacts for Android is now the latest to add it as part of a redesign that retains a modified navigation drawer.

Following new widgets for YouTube Music and Google Photos in December, Digital Wellbeing will soon get a screen time widget that shows how much you’ve been on your phone and the top Android apps being used.

Google has informed Android developers that Play Store users in Russia have lost the ability to purchase apps, games, IAPs, and subscriptions.

Following Gmail at the start of this year, Google Drive is the latest iOS app to get new work-focused widgets, while there are also updates for Translate and Chat on iOS in the coming weeks.

The Chromium underpinnings of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge have seen more in-the-wild “zero day” bugs as of late. Google today explained what’s behind that browser trend, as well as what security features Chrome has in place to counter it.

Nearby Sharing, Google’s answer to AirDrop, is gaining the ability to send files and more to more than one Android or Chrome OS device at the same time.

Google TV was a big redesign that replaced the Play Movies & TV app on Android, and it’s now adding a “Highlights” tab that serves as “personalized feed of entertainment news” and getting some Material You flourishes.

In recent weeks, Google has been testing and slowly rolling out a number of new features for Messages on Android. The company announced today that iMessage reactions, Google Photos integration, and several other capabilities will soon widely launch.

The latest project from Area 120, Google’s house incubator, is called “Aloud,” and it lets YouTube creators “quickly and easily dub their videos into multiple languages.”

Back in December, Google announced new widgets for Photos and YouTube Music. An updated widget featuring Material You for Play Books was also previewed and is now widely rolled out.

Google rolled out a Material You redesign for the Play Store in October, but it really only applied to the homescreen. The Play Store will soon get new Material You buttons throughout the app.

YouTube’s interest in the podcasting space is quite explicit at this point, and the latest effort is offering grants to make video podcasts that are more native to the network.

The first indication that YouTube Music might be able to share songs to Instagram and Snapchat emerged in November of 2020. Snapchat sharing finally launched for YouTube Music on iOS in October and it’s now coming to Android.

Alongside other responses, Google announced this evening that its Voice VoIP service and Fi MVNO are waiving calling fees to Ukraine. The company also provided an update on Project Shield protections.