Newsletter - June 2020

Android / Google Play

• Thanks for feedback on the developer previews since February. Android 11 Beta is now available. Read the recap and discover the latest about People, Controls, and Safety.
• Dive deep into different areas of new Android developer content over the next 11 weeks. Each week brings a new focus, everything from UI to Android Jetpack to Machine Learning, and more.
• Get the latest updates from Android gaming: New tools for game developers, including the Android Performance Tuner and ADB Incremental launches, new features, developer previews, and more.
• Introducing the Google Play beta console. Redesigned to help you achieve what you want faster, with new and improved features to help you maximize your success on Google Play. Discover new ways to get important information faster, better acquisition insights, enhanced team management, and improved publishing options. 
• Read guidelines for building safer apps for kids. Learn about potential risky features, in-app chat, and user-generated content. 
• Get started learning a new Play Academy path to help optimize your game’s economy. Understand how player motivations affect monetization of your game, control the flow of assets, and more. 
• Announcing Play Asset Delivery. Optimize your app delivery and reduce CDN costs by packaging your game into a single artifact that can lead to improved user experience and retention.
• The Go team has made pkg.go.dev open source. Find and discover Go packages: Explore the site, share your feedback, and consider contributing to the codebase.
• Check out improvements on the core platform and development tools from Google Assistant. Discover the new Actions Builder and Actions SDK , additional functionality to create interactive voice actions, and AMP framework to smart displays.
  

Firebase / Google Cloud

• Announcing Firebase Crashlytics SDK. Upgrade now available. Read a case study on how Gameloft used Crashlytics to lower crash rates and increase engagement.   
• Discover new improvements and tools on Firestore Security Rules. Review the latest documentation.
• Explore the learning opportunities available during Google Cloud Next ’20: OnAir . Expand your knowledge with a different theme each week. In July, learn about industry, collaboration, productivity, and infrastructure to help bring teams together and maximize your cloud’s efficiency.
• Register now for six-week learning paths to get certified. Get prepared for your journey for the Associate Cloud Engineer, Professional Data Engineer, or the Professional Cloud Architect certifications. 
• Earn badges and enhance your career. Demonstrate your growing Google Cloud-recognized skillset to employers and share your progress with your network through exclusive digital Google Cloud skill badges. 
• Check out the latest puzzle. Every month, you have a chance to solve data puzzles on BigQuery for a chance to win $500 in Cloud credits.

Flutter

• Announcing tech preview of null safety in the Dart language. Dart’s null safety feature helps you avoid null errors that are often hard to spot. Learn more on Medium .

Google Maps Platform

• Take a look back: Fifteen years ago, what was then known as Google Maps APIs made Google's knowledge of the real world available to developers. You used it to build amazing things and never stopped. See how far it’s come and what's new to help you keep building.
• Create, customize, and manage maps from the Google Cloud Console with a new set of Maps customization features now in open beta. This release also brings vector maps to the Maps JS API.
• Integrate local information into your maps with new Local Context, now in open beta as a library for Maps JavaScript API. Add a rich, customizable interactive experience that includes photos, reviews, directions, and more with a few lines of code.
• Learn how to write concise and idiomatic Kotlin with Maps KTX extensions while using the Maps SDK and Utility Library for Android. The KTX libraries are open source and available on GitHub.
• Now available : Support for Carthage to install the Maps and Places SDKs for iOS. Carthage gives you control over your project files and improves build times while allowing you to easily get new version updates.
• Build games with Google’s 3D geometries of buildings, roads, and more as objects in Unity, using the Maps SDK for Unity and Playable Locations API. Google Maps Platform gaming services is now generally available to all game developers.

Web

• Support for JSON-RPC and global HTTP batch endpoints is being deprecated. Support has been extended until Aug 12, 2020. Read more .

Developer Community

• Mobile game company Peak is Turkey's first unicorn and Zynga's biggest acquisition for 1.8 Billion USD. Peak is an avid supporter of developer communities in Turkey and was the leading sponsor of Google Developer Groups Istanbul's DevFest in 2019.
• Read about Henna and her new life, journey, and career as a developer with the community support of Google Developer Groups Dublin.  
• DevParty by Google Developer Groups Europe collaboratively launched online conferences organized by GDGs in the same country or region. First, DevParty events went live in Italy, UK and Ireland. Next up are sessions from Russia and France. Read more on Medium.
• Join First Fridays by Google for Startups on July 10. Next month’s topic is Building High Performing Businesses and Productive Teams in a Digital and Distributed World . Event includes on-demand talks by Googlers, Founders, and VCs, strategy support for scaling remote business operations, technical engineering productivity, and early-stage business development and fundraising.
• Find an #Android11Meetup community event to discuss what's new in #Android11 and to learn more about the essentials and best practices of modern Android development.
• Read  about Noah, a Google  Developer Student Clubs lead at University of Windsor, Ontario. Noah organized WinHacks for his community and the 400 students who were given 36 hours to come up with their greatest hack on the theme of mobility.  
• Tune in to the Google Developers Experts Series  presented virtually by MENA communities. Each week , discover new talks and workshops featuring leadership, technologies, and programs from Google Developer Ecosystem MENA Digital Days.

Misc

• Take five minutes to fill out this anonymous survey about your development practices to build better developer tools for you. Responses will help improve the services and features that we offer to the developer community.