Pichai unveils $100 mn Google Career Certificates Fund
Darpan News Desk IANS, 18 Feb, 2022 11:12 AM
New Delhi, Feb 18 (IANS) Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced a new $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund to prepare a skilled workforce for high-paying, high-growth jobs in fields like data analytics, IT support, project management and user experience design.
The goal, he said, is to enable 'Social Finance' to reach more than 20,000 American workers.
"This investment in America's future has the potential to drive $1 billion in wage gains," Pichai said in a statement late on Thursday.
Nearly 70,000 Americans have completed Google Career Certificates to date.
"They are available to anyone, no college degree required. Seventy-five percent of graduates report seeing a positive impact on their career within six months, including a raise or a new job," Pichai added.
He announced the fund at an event with US Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, Alejandra Castillo, and the CEOs of Social Finance, Merit America and Year Up.
"A sense of purpose and optimism is what brought me to America nearly 30 years ago. And it's what drew me to Google and its mission to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," said Pichai.
Google's digital skills programme has also helped train 8 million Americans in all 50 states in the US.
"We'll invest Google capital and Google.org grants and provide our Career Certificate programme. We'll connect students to an employer consortium of more than 150 companies who are looking to hire workers with these skills," Pichai noted.
It's all designed around student success and they will receive all of this at no upfront cost, "and will only pay it back once they find a job earning at least $40,000 a year".
Researchers have developed a smartphone application that allows a user to easily programme any robot to perform a task, dramatically bringing down the costs of building and programming mobile robots.
The WhatsApp Business app, used by businesses to support customers, grow their businesses and serve their communities all over the world, was launched for Android in January 2018.
In yet another bold statement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that the company's full self-driving feature will be completed by the end of this year.
Scientists are using humans' gait, body symmetry and foot placement to teach self-driving cars to recognise and predict pedestrian movements with greater precision than current technologies.
Offering its over two billion monthly users new ways to express themselves, Facebook has introduced new music features, including an option to add a song to photos and videos they share to Facebook Stories.
