Ana Weaver
Good things happen in the garage. At the end of the day, Google, Apple, Amazon, HP… are technology giants that once started in garages. Of course, these are just a small number of them.
So Google has decided to create a new service that should motivate the entrepreneur in you, and it is called “Google Digital Garage”. It is a place where you will be able to learn valuable digital skills that could come in handy in life. So let’s take a look at what Google Digital Garage (GDG) is.
What’s Google Digital Garage?
Have you thought about starting to get knowledge about machine learning, but do not know where to start? Have you ever watched your friends get jobs easily as developers, so you would like to give it a try too? Are you even interested in learning new digital skills? If you answered yes, you have come to the right place. So, think about devoting your free time after finishing obligations regarding your full-time job to GDG instead of spending it in front of the TV, aimlessly surfing online, or gambling online at top casinos by the link (which are all not bad habits per se but can be reduced to a moderate level).
Interestingly, Google launched this service back in 2015, as a non-profit program designed to help people acquire certain digital skills. GDG has numerous courses with a variety of topics many of which are very useful and highly sought after in today’s world.
When you register for a particular course, you can learn at a pace and a time that suits you. Whether it will be half an hour a day or 2 hours a day, it is up to you. The courses do not have any deadline in which you have to complete them but we advise you that when you start learning something, be consistent and learn regularly.
The great thing is that these courses are free and offer digital certificates when you successfully complete the course.
How and Where to Start?
To start attending the course of your choice, you must first register on the Google Digital Garage website. You can sign in with an existing Google Account, which you probably have. After that, Google will ask you to enter your name (enter it correctly because it is the name that will appear on the certificates when you complete the course), and whether you want to receive email notifications about new courses and the like or not.
You will then come to the “My learning plan” page where you can search for available courses and add them to your plan. Let’s say you are interested in machine learning (ML). You can find all the courses and choose a few that you find interesting and add them to your plan. This plan will be a “reminder“ and a motivator to learn and complete the selected courses.
If you do not know what to study and what interests you, Google will recommend some of the most popular courses, so you can choose one of them if you are interested in the topic. If not – you have a catalog with a bunch of courses, and you can also filter them by duration, by category, by certificate, by level of difficulty, etc.
What Types of Courses Does Google Offer?
Google Digital Garage groups all courses into three categories:
- Digital Marketing
- Career Development
- Data and Tech
If you are interested in digital marketing, you can choose courses such as “Fundamentals of Digital Marketing”, “Expand a Business to Other Countries”, “Marketing in a Digital World”, and the like. These courses teach you about SEO, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and similar useful topics.
If you need to boost your career a bit, there are courses on public speaking, effective networking with other professionals, how to find a new job that will suit your skills…
You should not shy away from the fact that today’s world is technology-based and that technology is what pushes the world forward. That is why you also have a bunch of courses directly related to technology. Here we are talking about data processing, the basics of programming, the basics of AI… We cannot list everything in this text, but you understand where we are going with this.
What is great is that Google does not record all of these courses alone, but rather has partnerships with very strong universities around the world that support them and provide materials.
Where’s the ‘catch’ In This Story?
You may be wondering why Google offers all these courses for free and if there is a bad side to all of this or not. As some would say – where is the ‘catch’ in this story? The biggest downside is that these courses are designed to keep you close to the Google ecosystem.
Google is a business and its primary goal is to generate profit. That is why many courses are tied to the use of Google services and push you to one day become a user who pays for their premium services. Of course, you do not have to, but if you want to use some of their products to the end, you will have to pay.
In addition, the more you use Google products, including GDG, the more information Google has about you. But aside from all this, GDG is a great place to learn some things and you should definitely look to see if there are any courses that interest you.