Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Product Manager, Chrome for Business

With easy personalization and built-in security, Chrome devices were made for sharing. The new Managed Public Sessions feature delivers a highly customizable experience for both customers and employees without requiring a login.


Because Chromebooks are low cost, easy to set up and manage, and require virtually no maintenance, Chromebooks with Managed Public Sessions make perfect shared kiosks. You could use a Chromebook with Managed Public Sessions to:

• Order out-of-stock items online while at a retail store 
• Search for books and browse the web at the library 
• Update machine and inventory info from the manufacturing floor 
• Access the company portal and update HR info from the employee break room 
• Catch up on work in a hotel business center

Administrators can easily customize any Chrome device to be a public session device using the web-based management console. The features that you'll find in the console include the ability to set the default sites and apps a user sees at login, custom brand the homepage, block sites and apps that shouldn't be accessed, configure device inputs and outputs, and set timed log-out sessions. For security reasons, public session data is cleared on logout so the next user starts fresh.

We’ve tested public sessions with a few customers and here’s the initial feedback:

• Dillards, Inc. - “We have many more employees than computers at our retail stores, so being able to share devices is key. With Managed Public Sessions, employees can walk up to any machine and get immediate access to their corporate email and important internal systems. And since Managed Public Sessions wipes all data at logout, it supports our PCI compliance requirements.”
  - Woody Chin, CIO, Dillard’s

• Multnomah County Library - “Our Community Chromebooks program was funded by a grant from the Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission. We have about 160 Chromebooks in 19 neighborhood libraries that patrons can check out for 2 hours of in-library use. The program’s been hugely popular - in the last year, we’ve loaned Chromebooks over 30,000 times. With Managed Public Sessions, we can get patrons online and productive faster, by pre-configuring the devices with a terms of service agreement, the library homepage, and popular apps like Google Maps, Evernote, and the Kindle Cloud Reader. Public Sessions also makes the program easier for library staff to support, as the session count-down timer will help get Chromebooks turned in on time, and preinstalling the most popular apps will reduce setup questions.”
  - Lucien Kress, Project Manager, Multnomah County Library

• Hyatt San Francisco - “I’ve been running Chromeboxes with Managed Public Sessions in employee break areas. We really like Chromeboxes’ speedy browsing, easy management and security. Employees use Chromeboxes to access Hyatt payroll system, request time off, and stay up to date on internal news. They can also access personal email and social sites during breaks and I don’t need to worry about viruses and malware infecting Chromeboxes.”
  - Victor Povzner, Sr. IT Director, Hyatt Regency San Francisco

Learn more on the Chromebook site or contact us if you have any follow up questions.

Posted by Tom Muraca, Director of Marketing at Katz Americas

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Tom Muraca, Director of Marketing at Katz Americas, the largest manufacturer of beverage coasters in North and South America. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Katz Americas may not be a household name, but when you put a drink down at a tavern or restaurant, our product is probably under your glass. We’re one of the biggest manufacturers of drink coasters in the United States, with over 100 employees across our two facilities in Buffalo, New York and Johnson City, Tennessee.

We weren't always such a large company - we grew quickly through a handful of mergers over the last few years - and when we finally had a chance to come up for air, we realized our technology hadn’t kept up with us. We were stumbling along with a fractured email and collaboration platform built around Microsoft Exchange 2003 and a few file-sharing servers. It was expensive and unreliable, especially for a company without a dedicated IT department. Upgrading our hosted system didn’t make financial sense, and Microsoft Office 365 didn’t win our team over. Google Apps did both, and its stability and security features were especially attractive. We decided to make the switch to Google Apps in September of 2011, and with help from Dito, our Google Apps Reseller, we were up and running by January of 2012.

Google Apps has helped us streamline and modernize our day-to-day work. By using Google Drive, we’ve cut the average time it takes to deliver an estimate and mocks to a customer from one week to just three days. Instead of sending different versions of huge files around by email, we create a single shared folder on Drive and house each proof there. That way, we can easily share, edit and collaborate on our work as a team in less than half the time it took before.

The Gmail and Google Drive mobile apps have changed how we interact with potential customers and sell our product when we’re on the road. Now, I can pull up a design on my phone while I’m speaking to a customer at an industry event or even create a rough prototype on the spot. I can also add their information to my contacts, get a quote started for them immediately, and follow up via email within minutes of finishing our conversation. Google Apps lets us give our customers on-the-spot, personal service, and that gives us a huge advantage over the competition.

Google Apps has been the keystone of our revamped company strategy at a time of significant change. The way I see it, it’s also just the beginning: our employees are constantly finding new features and sharing their favorite use cases, so I can only imagine the benefits we’ll see a year from now. In the meantime, we’ll get back to focusing on our core business - protecting tabletops from condensation and spills with surfboard-shaped coasters (and some normal shaped coasters, too).

Posted by Eric Zhang, Drive Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Google Drive blog.)

More often than not, you need to work with others to get things done. Today, working together in Drive is getting even easier with new profile pictures and one-click group chat.

Now when you open a file in Drive, you’ll see the profile pictures of other viewers at the top instead of just their names, making it easy for you to do a quick scan of who else is in the file. You can hover over a photo to see details about the viewer and add them to your circles on Google+ — all without ever leaving Drive.


In addition, you can now start a group chat with just one click. Simply select the new chat button at the top right and a chat box will appear, making it easy for you to quickly message everyone in the file. 

These new features will roll out over the next few days to Rapid Release domains, and we’ll be adding support for more file types (like Google Sheets) soon, so stay tuned. 

Posted by Chris Behling, President at Mollen

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Chris Behling, President at Mollen, a national healthcare services company specializing in the delivery of remote and local healthcare services. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.


Mollen enables clients and patients to access and deliver healthcare services in the most convenient and cost effective ways possible. We do this by leveraging a network of over 200,000 healthcare professionals to deliver services wherever people live, work, play, worship and shop. Mollen is also the largest independent mass-immunizer in the country and last year we conducted over 100,000 healthcare events across all fifty states.

The healthcare services we provide typically require a lot of physical documents: in 2011, we used 20 million pieces of paper for everything from patient records to insurance verification to credit card processing. Paper gave everyone problems. It was an imposition on our patients, who had to spend time manually filling out forms, our nurses, because it slowed them down, and finance, because it delayed billing. It was also a drain on the environment.

We knew we needed to move away from paper and go digital, so we explored a number of different avenues - tablets, laptops and smartphones, among others. Ultimately we decided to go with Chromebooks with 3G, for a number of reasons. The first is security - with the Chrome Management Console, we could centrally configure the devices so they gave users access to just those sites and apps necessary for them to provide services. Second, Chromebooks enabled us to reduce our paper consumption by 80%, while providing our customers better service through a faster digital experience. And third, they’ve speed up our internal processes. Our nurses can now look up a patient’s medical history and determine if they’re eligible and covered for a given procedure, a process that previously would have taken days. And we’re able to accept credit cards and handle insurance billing onsite, ensuring that we’ll get paid for our services.


While security and paper reduction were the primary reasons we chose Chromebooks, we realized quickly there were additional benefits. Chromebooks have helped us more easily adhere to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by using 3G instead of WiFi. Using WiFi would have required us to audit each of the thousands of networks we would have been operating on. Whereas, since 3G’s built in to each Chromebook and communicates with our cellular carrier, Verizon, directly, we didn’t have an additional local area network we needed to audit, saving us time and resources.

By moving to Chromebooks, not only are we able to increase the number of people we’re able to serve, but we’re able to do so better, more securely and at a reduced cost. And by reducing our reliance on paper, we’re happy that we’re helping reduce our environmental impact, as well.

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Maps for Business

With Google Earth, you can see just about any location in the world (or even locations outside our world, like galaxies in outer space). Three-dimensional imagery and satellite maps allow you to virtually trek the globe from the comfort of your computer, bringing the world's geography to your fingertips. Today we’re announcing new features for Google Earth Pro that let organizations easily edit maps and accurately measure complex site views.

As a premium edition of Google Earth, Google Earth Pro 7.1 lets you visualize, analyze and share 3D map data and imagery. Using Earth Pro, you can make smart decisions about a location without physically being there. For example, a construction company could calculate the site area and slope of a potential property using Earth Pro’s advanced measurement tools.

With version 7.1, Earth Pro offers two new capabilities:

• Map-Making: Create legends and scales and add titles to a map, directly from Google Earth Pro. You can also print your customized map or save it as an image. To conduct an environmental survey, for example, enhanced map-making tools let you highlight changes to land mass over time and document those changes directly in the map by adding a legend. 

• Viewshed: Identify and calculate viewpoints, measuring distances and visualizing potential views. For example, an architecture firm could use the viewshed tool to measure a view from a building or window without being physically on-site.

Posted by Dan Beecham, CIO at Woolworths Limited

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Dan Beecham, CIO at Woolworths Limited. Woolworths is an Australian company that was founded in 1924 in Sydney. Today Woolworths has more than 3,000 stores across Australia and New Zealand that span food, liquor, petrol, general merchandise, home improvement and hotels.

As one of Australia and New Zealand’s most innovative retailers, we’re always looking for ways we can use technology to give our customers more convenient ways to shop — whether that’s in store, from the comfort of their computer at home, or on the move via our smartphone apps.

This innovative approach does not stop with our customers. As Australia’s largest retailer with more than 3,000 stores across Australia and New Zealand, our staff of 200,000 need intuitive technology that enables them to work more efficiently, collaboratively and effectively. To do this, they need to be able to access the right applications and information, from any location, using any device.

This is why we’ve decided to move to Google Apps and Chrome. Changing to a cloud based suite of tools is a key part of our strategy to use technology to promote greater collaboration, productivity and effectiveness. Over the next 12 months we will be rolling out Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk to the 26,000 staff in our national and state offices. This is the first phase of what we hope will be a company-wide transformation of our workplace technology.


We are also actively looking at how we can innovate with Google+, Google Drive and Google Sites to transform the way we approach other aspects of our business.

The move to Google Apps and Chrome builds on the successful roll out of Gmail and our ‘Tap to Support’ App on iPads to Woolworths supermarket store managers last year. The custom-made application, built on Google App Engine, helps our managers stay on the shop floor and focused on customers by allowing them to log a support ticket with our national support office in just one click rather than being tied to a PC in the back office.

Soon more of our staff will be able to experience the productive and collaborative benefits of being able to work from any device, anywhere. Geographically dispersed teams, like our merchandising or state based workers, will be able to use Docs to collaborate in real-time.

Going Google will transform the way our employees interact with technology and collaborate with each other at every level of the organisation. We’re looking forward to providing our staff access to intuitive consumer technology at work and see the move to Google as the beginning of our journey towards a more efficient and innovative style of working.

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Senior Product Manager, Chrome for Business & Education

Just like in our personal lives, work increasingly means accessing useful information, staying connected with people, and using web apps -- all of which are powered by the browser. Today, we’re announcing two new Chrome for Business features that make it easier to use Chrome at work.

First, we’re launching Legacy Browser Support for companies that want to use Chrome but rely on custom web applications built for older browsers. When companies use browsers that are two or more versions old, employees and developers are unable to benefit from the incredible web innovations of the past four, or even ten years. Deploying a modern browser can help IT bolster security, reduce support costs, and improve browser speed and usability for employees.

With Legacy Browser Support, employees on Chrome are automatically switched to a legacy browser when they begin using an older app. IT managers simply define which sites should launch from Chrome into an alternate browser, and then set this Chrome policy for all employees. And while Chrome Frame helps developers build apps for older browsers, Legacy Browser Support lets IT admins of organizations embrace the modern web.

More than ever, employees are requesting to use their personal computers or devices for work. We’re also introducing cloud-based management of Chrome for Google Apps for Business and Education customers. Now, whether employees are working from the company’s desktop or their personal laptop, they will be able to access default applications, custom themes, or a curated app web store when they sign-in to Chrome with their work account. With cloud-based management, IT administrators can customize more than 100 Chrome policies and preferences for their employees from the Google Admin panel. Non-Google Apps customers who are interested can sign up here.

The web and browser have come a long way in the last 20 years. As Chrome continues to push the boundary of what’s possible on the modern web, these innovations should be available for everyone, everywhere -- especially at work. Learn more about Chrome for Business.

Posted by Phil Soper, Royal LePage Real Estate Services

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Phil Soper, President & CEO, Royal LePage.

Buying a home is typically the largest purchase a family will make in their lifetime. It is no wonder that prospective buyers approach the task of finding their perfect place with such fervour. Today’s house-shoppers seek detailed, current and useful information on prospective properties and neighbourhoods. They are sophisticated users of search technology, but have traditionally been frustrated by the tools available to them. It is with this as a challenge in mind that we tackled a major redesign and rebuild of our popular real estate website, www.royallepage.ca, using Google technology.

The website integrates a new service from the Canadian Real Estate Association called Data Distribution Facility or DDF. Utilizing DDF, which our firm played a significant role in bringing to market, we will more than double the number of home-sale listings on www.royallepage.ca. For the first time, our website will showcase home listings from multiple property brokerage companies, not just Royal LePage, providing consumers with their one-stop real estate resource.

A good part of the magic behind the new www.royallepage.ca is hidden in the site’s architecture. While many real estate websites use Google Maps and Google Places, Royal LePage went a step further by constructing the website with Google Cloud Platform using Google App Engine and Google Cloud Storage. Real estate websites tend to store a large number of property records and photos, and require a large amount of location-based processing to render consumer search results. Utilizing Google Cloud Platform allows us to deliver that critical consumer information quickly and accurately. It will also allow us to scale our performance and our costs effectively as our real estate data and consumer base grows.

Uniquely, the site also employs cutting edge search technology from Google Cloud Platform, which enables consumers to go beyond traditional search to hunt for homes near local landmarks. For example, consumers can search for homes near the CN Tower, near Stanley Park or near Olympic Stadium. This innovative technology brings industry-leading search to the real estate consumer.

Relying heavily on a number of Google technologies, we were able to create an online experience unlike anything previously seen in Canadian real estate. The revamped website utilizes Google Maps and Street View for map-based search with visual assist. Many properties will display a Walkscore® ranking, which helps families understand what can be easily accomplished on foot in the area they are investigating. Additionally, tailored information is available for property listings, including Wikipedia neighbourhood photos and information, agent-produced video and descriptions, an overview of local amenities via Google Places and a list of other properties for sale in the area.

We are thrilled to unveil the new www.royallepage.ca in this, Royal LePage’s centennial year. Our website, powered by Google tools, will enable Canadians to explore their real estate dreams as never before. It will provide quick and efficient delivery of more listings, fresh neighbourhood insights, and extensive property details. It’s all there. Happy home searching!

Posted by Shinichi Abe, Managing Director, Enterprise Business Japan

Since launching Google Apps for Business in Japan in 2007, we’ve seen some of the country’s best known companies embrace the simplicity and freedom of working in the cloud. The likes of Casio, Benesse and Kewpie Corporation are now using Google Apps for Business products, to work more collaboratively and efficiently.

Today, two of Japan's most venerable companies Kubota and FUJIFILM are making the leap to the cloud too. This news comes just a month after ANA announced that its 43,000 staff across 40 company divisions will soon use Google Apps for Business and Nikkei ranked Google as the nation’s number one cloud service provider.

Established in 1890, Kubota is an international leader in agricultural machinery manufacturing, with more than 20,000 staff across 20 countries. Overseas sales make up more than 50% of its business. As Kubota looks to increase its business abroad to 70% in the next five years, it will adopt Google Apps as an IT and communications solution. Google Apps will help Kubota facilitate a smooth overseas expansion by enabling employees to connect and collaborate real time across borders.


FUJIFILM is also on a path of international expansion. A household name in photography and imaging, FUJIFILM is now applying its world-class technology to the medical systems and life sciences sectors. As their business evolves they want an IT platform that is its fast and flexible so plan to move their 30,000-strong workforce to the cloud, Gmail and Google Drive.


Kubota and FUJIFILM join over 5 million businesses worldwide that have moved to Google Apps for Business. Enhanced with the features and controls that businesses need to be productive, innovative and successful, Google’s workplace tools are giving some of the world’s oldest and most established businesses a 21st century edge.

Posted by Felix Lin, Director of Product Management

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and Google Chrome Blog.)

As a parent of three kids, I have the same aspirations as many other parents and educators—to provide them with the best opportunities to learn and discover their passions. For many students, the web has become an incredible resource for the classroom, offering tools to work collaboratively, share and research. School systems of all sizes—from a single primary school to an entire country such as the Philippines—have “Gone Google” in their schools and embraced the web to transform education.

Today the country of Malaysia is going a step further by adopting Google Apps for 10 million students, teachers and parents. As part of this initiative they are also deploying Chromebooks to primary and secondary schools nationwide. These efforts to integrate the web are a central part of a national plan (PDF) to reform its educational system.


To deploy technology across a nationwide school system, computers need to be simple, manageable and secure. Chromebooks are ideal for learning and sharing in the classroom—there’s nothing complicated to learn, they boot up in seconds and have virus protection built in. They also offer easy setup and deployment, which means they’re ready to go the moment a student opens the lid and logs in. And with reduced overhead costs, Chromebooks are a cost-efficient option* to deploy technology at scale.

To date, more than 3,000 schools worldwide, from Edina, Minnesota to Point England, New Zealand, have deployed Chromebooks to improve attendance and graduation rates, make learning more fun and enable students to take more ownership for their learning.

The web gives our children and students new opportunities to access the world’s information and work collaboratively. We look forward to working with national and regional leaders to make the most of the web with Google Apps and Chromebooks and help them provide the best opportunities to every student.

*In research sponsored by Google, research firm IDC found that Chromebooks yield three-year cost of ownership savings of $1,135 per device compared to traditional PCs or tablets, require 69% fewer hours to deploy and 92% fewer hours to manage. Learn more.