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Quantum computing comes to Google Cloud

GCP becomes the latest cloud platform to offer IonQ’s quantum computer

Google Cloud has tied up with quantum computing startup IonQ to make its quantum hardware accessible through its cloud computing platform.

The company’s 11-qubit quantum hardware is available to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers, and the company expects to make its 32-qubit system available later this year.

Explaining the significance of the announcement in a conversation with Google Cloud, IonQ CEO & President, Peter Chapman suggests that the offering will ensure “democratized access to quantum systems.”
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“Making quantum computers easily available to anyone via the cloud demonstrates that quantum is real because now anyone can run a quantum program with a few minutes and a credit card,” says Chapman.

IonQ’s quantum computers are available in the GCP Marketplace and can be immediately provisioned by users.

IonQ shares that developers, researchers, and business can access IonQ’s platform with just a few clicks, just like any other platform available on GCP.

The company adds that GCP users will be able to program IonQ’s systems using a number of software development kits (SDK), including Cirq, Qiskit, Penny Lane, and tket, or through a custom integration with IonQ’s APIs.

Notably, IonQ’s quantum hardware is also available on Microsoft Azure and AWS.

IonQ’s release also notes that the company announced its 32-qubit system in October 2020 and hopes to build on its expertise to develop small modular quantum computers in 2023, that can be networked together inside of a datacenter.

Lost Android devices could soon be as easy to locate as iPhones

If you’ve ever lost your Android phone you’ve probably turned to Google’s Find My Device service, and this can be a slick way to locate your handset – as long as it’s signed into your Google account and has an internet connection. But soon, you might be able to use a crowdsourced network of Android devices to locate your missing gadgets without that.

That’s because XDA Developers has found reference to a 'Find My Device network' in code for the latest Google Play Services beta. There was also a string that reads 'Allows your phone to help locate your and other people’s devices.'
It sounds then like Google is building a Find My Device network that would allow other Android devices out in the world to locate your device if it’s nearby – probably over Bluetooth – and send the location to you.
From the wording it sounds like you’d need to opt in, but that it would be an all or nothing situation, in that you wouldn’t be able to leverage this device network to track your device if you didn’t also agree to allowing your phone to help locate other lost devices, and vice versa.
In any case, this crowdsourced network sounds a lot like what Apple is doing with its Find My iPhone service, and with AirTags, which rely almost entirely on being nearby to an iDevice. It would also allow Google to launch a rival device to the AirTag if it chose to, so you'd be able to locate anything the tracker was attached to.

But there are even more Android devices out in the world than there are iPhones, so Google has the potential to build the most powerful and robust device finding network yet. Of course, whether it will remains to be seen, as while the presence of this code likely means Google is exploring the idea, it doesn’t guarantee the Find My Device network will ever see the light of day.

If it does though, perhaps we’ll get some official news about it in upcoming Android 12 betas, or in the final Android 12 release, which is expected in or around September.

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