Posted by Sarah Clark, Program Manager, Google Developer Training

What do you need to stand out from the crowd of web developers, and ultimately, land that perfect job?

We asked ourselves that same question and decided to help by introducing the Senior Web Developer Nanodegree. Built in collaboration with Udacity, this online program is designed to teach you the tools, frameworks, and techniques needed to write robust code for progressive web applications that are secure and easy to use. Spending about 10 hours a week, most students can earn this Nanodegree credential in 9-12 months at a cost of $200 per month with 50% returned upon completion.

Along the way, you will also learn how to integrate new technologies, such as Service Worker and Web Components, and work extensively with Gulp and other tools. You’ll hear from Google experts, such as Ido Green, Jake Archibald (co-author of the Service Worker spec), Luke Wroblewski (author and strategist), Paul Bakaus (Studio 5 CTO, Zynga) and Alice Boxhall (author of the Chrome accessibility developer tools).

How can you get started? There are two different ways to participate. One option is the paid Nanodegree program, which includes code-level project reviews and feedback, coaching, support from a cohort of peers, building a portfolio of work, and career support services. The second option is entirely free and includes the same instructional courses, quizzes and projects individually, which you can take at your own pace.

For more details, and to be notified when enrollment opens, check out udacity.com/googlewebdev.

Posted by Shanea King-Roberson, Program Manager

As a developer, writing your app is important. But even more important is getting it into the hands of users. Ideally millions of users. To that end, you can now learn what it takes to design, validate, prototype, monetize, and market app ideas from the ground up and grow them into a scalable business with the new Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree.

Designed by Google in partnership with Udacity, the Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree, takes 4-7 months to complete. We have teamed up with most successful thought leaders in this space to provide students with a unique and battle-tested perspective. You’ll meet Geoffrey Moore, author of “Crossing the Chasm”, Pete Koomen, co-founder of Optimizely; Aaron Harris and Kevin Hale, Partners at Y-Combinator; Nir Eyal, author of the book “Hooked: How to build habit forming products” and co-founder of Product Hunt; Steve Chen, Co-Founder of YouTube, rapid prototyping company InVision and many more.

All of the content that make up this nanodegree is available online for free at udacity.com/google. In addition, Udacity provides paid services, including access to coaches, guidance on your project, help staying on track, career counseling, and a certificate when you complete the nanodegree.

The Tech Entrepreneur offering will consist of the following courses:

• Product Design: Learn Google’s Design Sprint methodology, Ideation & Validation, UI/UX design and gathering the right metrics.
• Prototyping: Experiment with rapid-low and high-fidelity prototyping on mobile and the web using online tools.
• Monetization: Learn how to monetize your app and how to set up an effective payment funnel.
• App Marketing: Understand your market, analyze competition, position your product, prepare for launch, acquire customers and learn growth hacks.
• How to get your startup started: Find out whether you really need venture capital funding, evaluate build vs. buy, and learn simple ways to monitor and maintain your startup business effectively.

Pitch your ideas in front of Venture Capitalists

Upon completion, students will receive a joint certificate from Udacity and Google. The top graduates will also be invited to an exclusive pitch event, where they will have the opportunity to pitch their final product to venture capitalists at Google.

Posted by Jason Titus, Senior Director of Engineering

This morning, we kicked off our 8th annual Google I/O conference, joined by 5,600 developers at Moscone Center, 530 I/O Extended communities around the world, and millions via the I/O Live stream. This year’s event is focused on delivering incredible experiences on mobile and helping developers build successful businesses through these key themes: Develop, Engage, and Earn.

During the keynote, we had a number of announcements that covered the evolution of the mobile platform, tools for Android, iOS, and Web developers, and the push towards more immersive mobile experiences with VR. Here’s a closer look at the news:

Develop

• Android M Developer Preview — Get an early look at the next version of Android.
• Google Play services 7.5 — Check out new features like Smart Lock for Passwords, new APIs for Google Cloud Messaging and
• Google Cast, and the Google Maps API on Android Wear devices.
• Android Studio 1.3 — Preview Android Studio v1.3, now with improved Gradle build speed, a new memory profiler, and full editing and debugging support for C/C++.
• Polymer 1.0 — As the first production-ready release for the web components library, we’re also adding new product lines of elements. Features range from toolbars and menus to offline caching.
• iOS & CocoaPods — Access your favorite libraries via CocoaPods, the official distribution channel for Google SDKs on iOS.
• Cloud Test Lab — Building on the technology from our acquisition of Appurify, cloud Test Lab automates the testing of your mobile apps.
• Firebase — Firebase makes it easy to build apps quickly, without spinning up servers or writing server-side code.

Engage

• App Indexing — Index your app’s content into Google Search, just like you would with a website. Available for Android, and now piloting on iOS.
• Google Cloud Messaging — As one of the most popular ways to send messages from the cloud to user's devices on Android and Chrome, GCM is now also available on iOS.
• Engagement on the Web — Access previously unavailable native functionality on the web with push notifications from your mobile website and add to homescreen.
• Empowering successful global businesses on Google Play — Get new and powerful tools to help you further grow your business, improve decision making based on smarter insights, and engage and retain a valuable user base.
• Universal App Campaigns coming soon — Set up app install ads with just a few inputs like your budget and the cost you’re willing to pay per user--we take care of the rest.
• Measure App Installs Ads with Google Analytics — Measure app install campaigns based on engagement and lifetime value. On iOS, Google Analytics is now integrated with 20+ ad networks making it easy to understand how to spend your acquisition budget.

Earn

• AdMob — Monetize your apps intelligently on a single platform, so you can gain insights about your users, drive more in-app purchases and maximize your ad revenue.

What’s Next

• Android Nanodegree — Enroll in the industry's first Android Nanodegree, developed in collaboration with Udacity. The curriculum was built from the ground up s to meet the high standard we have for Android development. The Nanodegree covers everything from fundamentals to advanced development skills, as well as Google Play services and Material Design.
• Cardboard SDK — The Cardboard SDK for Unity now supports both Android and iOS.