Training Google's AI to Send You Customers

What Is the World's Most Multilingual Website?

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John Yunker – web globalization geek at Byte Level Research and also a prolific author of books, plays and short stories – always does his thorough research and has the answer to the question:  What is the world's most multilingual website? 

He says, "One might assume that tech leaders like Facebook and Google lead the internet in languages."

He goes on to say, "Yet according to recent analysis, the two most linguistically fluent websites on the internet are managed by not-for-profit organizations: The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Wikipedia."

Read on to discover the world's most multilingual website.

RIP the Almighty Susan Wojcicki

©2024 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

An early Googler and former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki dies from lung cancer on August 9, 2024 at the age of 56.  She had sent a note to employees and the world about stepping down as YouTube CEO on February 16, 2023.

Read the note sent by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai to employees mourning the passing of Susan.

She was a force and will be missed in our world.  Condolences to her family during such a sad time.  

(Butterflies symbolize freedom, lightness, and joy, reminding us to let go of burdens and embrace a sense of liberation. They can also serve as messengers of spiritual evolution and connection with the divine, representing the soul's journey towards enlightenment and higher consciousness.)

Today in Global Small Business: How Small Business Owners Make It Happen

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• How small business owners make it happen.  Impact in action.
• Small business owners spot opportunities to boost productivity.
• Quote of the week:  "Supporting small businesses is not just about commerce, it's about community." – Michael Dell, Founder of Dell Technologies
• Global Small Business Study surveyed the owners and IT decision makers at small businesses across six countries to discover their thoughts and behavior around cybersecurity.
• Trade directly benefits small- and medium-sized businesses according to FedEx study. 
• Google favors e-commerce sites and user-generated content, study finds.

Think With Google and Move Your Business Into International Markets

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With more than half the world’s population now online, the opportunities for businesses to reach new customers abroad have never looked brighter. But how should companies prepare for international expansion? And just how easy is it?

Google guides you by looking at your potential customers. 

Should You Have a Google YouTube Channel For the World to Watch?

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YouTube is a global video platform that can get your business in front of millions of potential new customers. Additionally, meaningful video content can attract and engage your target audience and strengthen your marketing efforts.

In this article, the author explains why YouTube is a must-have marketing strategy, how the video platform can help your brand and how to create a YouTube channel with compelling, engaging content.

Google Considers Going Global with YouTube TV

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Riding a wave of success brought by NFL Sunday Ticket, Google executives have considered opening YouTube TV to a market outside the U.S. 

“It is something we are closely looking at,” said Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler. “There’s nothing specific I have to add at this moment in time on this one.” 

 “YouTube TV is doing well,” added Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai. “They’ve had great consumer feedback on the experience. [NFL Sunday Ticket] has found its perfect home on YouTube.”

Today in Global Small Business: Recap of Warren Buffett’s Comments at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2024

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• Full report on the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2024.
• US campus protests:  Final memories for some students.
• A quick view of what Lumiere is capable of (Google AI generating video service).
• Quote of the week:  "If you are lucky in life, make sure a bunch of other people are lucky too." – Warren Buffett (2024) 
• Look out Shopify and say hello to Swap, for DTC players in e-commerce.
• Economic outlook from OECD: Steady global growth expected for 2024 and 2025.

Intrapreneurs Changed Corporations From Within

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What do these examples have in common?  Sony’s Playstation, Google's Gmail and 3M’s Post-it notes.  They all have intrapreneurship in common which was first coined in the 1970s in the context of corporate organizations.

Intrapreneurship was first coined in the 1970s – principally in the context of corporate organizations in a paper titled Intra-Corporate-Entrepreneurship. While entrepreneurs were creating start-ups, intrapreneurs were changing corporations from within. Intrapreneurs were corporate changemakers.

Smaller organizations have never been considered as being suitable places for intrapreneurs – where the need for organizational survival is tempered in mature organizations, the opposite is true in an SME context. 

Find out why here.

The Next AI-Fueled Challenger to Google: Perplexity.ai

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A resource I shared during my "Laurel Delaney's Global Trade Trends Report 2024," which you can watch now free of charge, is called Perplexity.ai.

Perplexity, a startup going after Google’s dominant position in web search, has won backing from Jeff Bezos and venture capitalists betting that artificial intelligence will upend the way people find information online.

Perplexity was started less than two years ago, has fewer than 40 employees, and is based out of a San Francisco co-working space. The company’s product, which it calls an answer engine, is used by about 10 million people monthly.

And let us not forget about other up and coming AI resources:  Anthropic, the AI startup behind the chatbot Claude.

Make sure you have an AI strategy in 2024.

Today in Global Small Business: The New ChatGPT Challenger

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• The new ChatGPT challenger.
• Meta launches new AI tools for Facebook.
• The future of AI through the lens of the recent OpenAI debacle.
• Quote of the week:  "No one technology [OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard] has ever surpassed everything else."– iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks
• The promise and potential pitfalls of increasingly powerful AI tools.
• The North star for the future of AI (requires subscription).

Small Global Companies Are Hidden Champions

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Smaller technology companies are Europe’s “hidden champions” that need to be connected to develop alternative solutions to the big tech companies, Secretary General of the European DIGITAL SME Alliance Sebastiano Toffaletti told Euractiv.

For Toffaletti, there is a misconception that everything is owned and invented by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other Big Tech companies. But “the reality is that, if not all but many of the innovations do not come from those companies.  

Read on to learn how Europe has thousands of hidden champions, smaller companies, which are at the top of innovation in their small niches.  Something you can achieve too whether you are located in Europe, USA or Latin America. for example.

Today in Global Small Business: AR Translation Glasses Will Widen Your Global Reach

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• Google AR (augmented reality) translation glasses: why it's finally time for them to become reality.
• Expanding your e-commerce business globally.
• Top 10 10 most in-demand job skills right now, according to the World Economic Forum.
• Quote of the week: "I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day. It will become that much a part of you." —Tim Cook
• Country guides by DHL.
• The rise of the fandom business, making it a key aspect of the global economy.

A Full Stack Global HR Platform

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Easing the HR burdens that come with running any business, let alone those with employees outside of the U.S., is critical in a time when budgets and well-being are top of mind. On-boarding is a crucial area for employers to consolidate technology, especially when hiring a mixed population of contractors and full-time hires. The Deel HR platform, considered a full stack global HR platform, streamlines this process by utilizing Google Suite.  

Learn how to simplify tech tools for global businesses.

Today in Global Small Business: TikTok Shop Launched Invite Only In-App Ecommerce Feature

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• In addition to its most recent shopping features, TikTok has just launched TikTok Shop, where users can now make purchases directly through the app.
• Volkswagen hires Google exec to head global marketing.
• Quote of the week:  "E-commerce is a powerful means to connect the unconnected to global trade." – Arancha Gonzalez
• Globalize your online sales.
• Using AI to translate speech for a primarily oral language.
• Shipping industry is facing a new problem – too many containers!

India Is Shaping the Future of E-commerce

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This month, retail giants and government regulators around the world will be watching closely as India rolls out the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) in 100 major cities. 

ONDC is a government-backed initiative that was conceived by non-profit think tanks. The project, championed by Indian billionaire and Infosys founder Nandan Nilekani, aims to create a level playing field in online commerce by putting tens of millions of kiranas (Indian family businesses) on an even footing with online giants such as Amazon, Google, and India’s Flipkart(a Walmart subsidiary).

Read on to see how India is shaping the future of e-commerce, at least for the summer of 2022.

Today in Global Small Business: A Federal Program That Encourages Small Businesses to Enter Global Export Market

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• A federal program that encourages small businesses (in PA) to enter global export market.
• Open, the Google and Tiger Global-backed neobank, is planning to onboard about 10 million small businesses in 3 years as it aims to solve a series of challenges faced by SMEs for managing their business finances, using technology.
• Small businesses hanging by thread?
• Quote of the week:  "Blitzscaling is what you do when you need to grow really, really quickly. It's the science and art of rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal of becoming the first mover at scale. This is high-impact entrepreneurship." – Reid Hoffman
• Some tips on taking your business global.
• How businesses can use video translation to grow their global influence.

Today in Global Small Business: Global Entrepreneurs Share Common Traits

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• Global entrepreneurs share common traits (jump to No. 3).
• Small merchants and sole proprietors are the ideal laboratory for Google and its strategic partner Global Payments as they experiment with creating new digital shopping experiences, according to executives from the two companies.
• To reach the global climate goal of halving emissions by 2030, we can’t leave behind global small-to-medium-sized enterprises (GSMEs). But helping them will require collaboration and support from the large corporations that are often GSME’s most important clients.
• Quote of the week: “When you need to innovate, you need collaboration." – Marissa Mayer
• What it takes for small and growing global small businesses to transition to Net Zero.
• When planning global campaigns, the answer is redefining key customers and using global tools to understand and target them.

Today in Global Small Business: What You Didn't Know About Easter

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• The cotton-tailed creature that leaves us chocolate and eggs (Easter) has a longer tale.
• 14 best books of the year according to BBC culture critics.
• How Easter became a holiday of symbolism.
• Quote of the week: “Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life." – Janine di Giovanni
• Google opens its first retail store in New York City this summer (2022).
• The global economy:  recession is the backdrop.

Google Has Begun Beta Testing Live Caption Translations

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Starting now, Google Workspace users can beta test the new live caption translations, which takes Google's accessibility feature to the next level with auto-translation across languages.  Google Meet could improve meetings for teams that collaborate globally.

The beta is relatively limited and will only translate English meetings in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German.  It may not have the highest translation quality.  

Read on:  Google Meet tests live translated captions for more inclusive collaboration.