A year ago today, we launched My Account, a hub that gives you quick access to controls for safeguarding your data and protecting your privacy on Google. My Account puts privacy and security tools in one place, including long-standing features like Ads Settings and newer ones like the Privacy and Security Checkups. Collectively, these tools make it easy for you to control your privacy and security from any device.
In the past year, more than one billion people around the world have used My Account. Now, on the first anniversary of its launch, we're excited to introduce three new features to easily access your controls and protect your data.
A helping hand when you lose your phone
We entrust our phones with some of our most personal data: texts from loved ones, family photos, work emails, bank account information, and more. In the wrong hands, that data could cause trouble. Unfortunately, millions of phones are stolen every year in the U.S. alone, and countless more are lost in taxis, cafes, and couch cushions around the world. But when your phone goes missing, it’s not always easy to figure out where to start, who to call, or how to keep your information safe.
Find your phone is a new feature that will help you if your phone is ever lost or stolen. In a few simple steps, you can not only locate your phone, but also lock and call it, secure your account, leave a callback number on the screen, and more. The feature can be used to find lost Android and iOS devices, and soon, you’ll also be able to access it by searching Google for “I lost my phone.”
New ways to access My Account People are increasingly using their voices to navigate apps and services—for example, mobile voice searches on Google have tripled in the past two years. So, we’re making it easier to get to My Account just by using your voice. In the latest Google app you can simply say, “Ok Google, show me my Google account,” and we’ll take you right there. This is available today in English, with other languages coming soon.
We’re also making it easier than ever to find My Account by searching Google. Coming soon, you’ll be able to simply search for your own name, and if you’re signed in, you’ll see a shortcut to My Account.
When you entrust your data to Google, you should expect powerful security and privacy controls. These features are just the latest in our ongoing efforts to protect you and your personal information. We'll continue to make updates based on your feedback.
Posted by Guemmy Kim, Product Manager, Account Controls and Settings
Whether you want to make a rainbow Skittles cake, perfect your morning routine, have a singalong or learn to whip/nae nae — YouTube has you covered. With more than 400 hours of video uploaded every minute, we want to make it easier for you to find your favourite videos and give you more choice about how you watch them.
Today in New Zealand, we’re launching YouTube Red, a paid membership designed to provide the ultimate YouTube experience across all your devices. We are also launching a new YouTube Music app, designed to make discovering, watching, and listening to music easier than ever. YouTube Red — Ad-free & Offline Video, Premium Music, and Original Shows all for $9.99* a month A YouTube Red membership lets you enjoy ad-free videos across all of YouTube and a premium music experience with the world’s largest catalogue. You can save videos to watch offline and play videos in the background on your phone or tablet.
Your membership works anywhere you sign into YouTube, including the new YouTube Music app and the recently launched Gaming app. YouTube Red also gives members exclusive access to new original series and movies starring some of your favourite YouTube creators, such as Lilly Singh and Rooster Teeth.
As a special introductory offer, if you sign up before June 6 you get all of these new features, a premium music service, and access to YouTube Red Originals for $9.99* a month. After June 6, the standard price will be $12.99* a month. By signing up to YouTube Red you’ll also be supporting your favourite YouTube creators as the majority of the membership fee goes to them, just like with YouTube advertising revenue.
As a special bonus, YouTube Red comes with premium access to Google Play Music, so subscribe to one and automatically get access to the other for free. If you're already a Play Music subscriber, don't worry, you'll also get this new low price, and you don't need to sign up again to benefit from YouTube Red.
Unlock a premium music experience with the YouTube Music app The new YouTube Music app gives you access to one of the richest music catalogues on earth and makes discovering new music easier than ever.
You’ll be able to quickly re-discover your favourite music videos, tracks, artists and albums, and you’ll also see all the remixes, covers, lyric videos, and concert footage that YouTube has to offer. You’ll see your personal station with recommendations based on your tastes, and trending lists with the most popular music on YouTube each day.
The YouTube Music app gets even better when you’re a YouTube Red member. You’ll have the ability to listen to music seamlessly without ads, play videos offline, and easily switch between video or audio-only. You’ll get background playing, meaning you’ll be able to continue playing the video, even when you’re in another app or have your screen turned off. The YouTube Music app will also automatically create an offline mixtape for you, so you’re never left without something to listen to. Download it today from the Google Play store or the App Store.
Try YouTube Red free for 30 days
And just to give you a feel for the uninterrupted YouTube experience YouTube Red can bring, if you’ve never had a Google Play Music subscription, we're offering new users of YouTube Red in Australia a free 30-day trial. Don’t forget, if you sign up before June 6, you can access the $9.99 introductory offer too. Learn more at youtube.com/Red.
And don’t worry—the free, ad-supported version of YouTube we all know and love isn’t going anywhere. You’ll still be able to enjoy YouTube, along with the YouTube Kids, YouTube Gaming, and YouTube Music apps, free of charge. We’re just giving you more choice about how you watch YouTube. Soon, we hope you’ll be watching what you want, when you want, on any device you want, uninterrupted.
*The prices are higher when signing up through the YouTube iOS app. After June 6th, the standard price on Android and through your browser will be $12.99.
Posted by: Matthew Leske, Group Product Manager, YouTube Red T Jay Fowler, Product Management Director, Music, YouTube Gautam Anand, Director of YouTube Content and Operations, Asia Pacific Who recently watched Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's Apology Video - Making Of
At YouTube, one of our core values is a belief in the freedom of opportunity. We believe anyone should have the opportunity to earn money from the videos they create and turn their channels into successful businesses. That’s why we opened up the YouTube Partner Program nine years ago and why we remain the only platform where anyone with an idea and a camera can turn their videos into full time jobs.
We understand just how important revenue is to our creator community, and we’ve been listening closely to concerns about the loss of monetization during the Content ID dispute process. Currently videos that are claimed and disputed don’t earn revenue for anyone, which is an especially frustrating experience for creators if that claim ends up being incorrect while a video racks up views in its first few days.
Today, we’re announcing a major step to help fix that frustrating experience. We’re developing a new solution that will allow videos to earn revenue while a Content ID claim is being disputed. Here’s how it will work: when both a creator and someone making a claim choose to monetize a video, we will continue to run ads on that video and hold the resulting revenue separately. Once the Content ID claim or dispute is resolved, we’ll pay out that revenue to the appropriate party.
We’re working on this new system now and hope to roll it out to all YouTube partners in the coming months. Here’s a closer look at how it’ll work once it’s live:
We strongly believe in fair use and believe that this improvement to Content ID will make a real difference. In addition to our work on the Content ID dispute process, we’re also paying close attention to creators’ concerns about copyright claims on videos they believe may be fair use. We want to help both the YouTube community and copyright owners alike better understand what fair use looks like online, which is why we launched our fair use protection program last year and recently introduced new Help Center pages on this topic.
Even though Content ID claims are disputed less than 1% of the time, we agree that this process could be better. Making sure our Content ID tools are being used properly is deeply important to us, so we’ve built a dedicated team to monitor this. Using a combination of algorithms and manual review, this team has resolved millions of invalid claims in the last year alone, and acted on millions more before they impacted creators. The team also restricts feature access and even terminates a partner’s access to Content ID tools if we find they are repeatedly abusing these tools.
We will continue to invest in both people and technology to make sure that Content ID keeps working for creators and rightsholders. We want to thank everyone who’s shared their concerns about unintended effects from Content ID claims. It’s allowed us to create a better system for everyone and we hope to share more updates soon.
All parents dream about what their children will grow up to do. Will they be a nurse? A farmer? A scientist or a performer?
Increasingly, they are asking themselves if their children will one day work in one of the countless career paths that are being transformed by technology.
Computer science, or CS, is helping people to innovate in an increasing number of professions, from hospitality to hospitals. You don't have to become a computer scientist, but having skills in computational thinking and coding it and combining it with your passion will open up a world of opportunities.
Research shows that 75% of the fastest growing occupations require skills in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), which are the building blocks for a career in CS.
We believe New Zealand's innovation, growth and future prosperity depends on developing critical skills in STEM.
A career in CS begins in the classroom. Teachers are the key to both educating and inspiring the next generation of innovators in the classroom and we’re delighted to continue supporting their development through our Computer Science for High Schools (CS4HS) program.
Teachers participating in a robotics workshop at Google
CS4HS provides teachers with the skills and resources they need to teach computational thinking and computer science concepts in fun and engaging ways. To date, CS4HS has trained more than 20,000 teachers, reaching an estimated 1 million students in more than 400 locations worldwide. Closer to home, we are supporting four organisations in New Zealand that will provide this important training to K-12 school teachers (the full list is below). This year, we hope to reach around 3,500 high school, primary school and pre-service Aussie and Kiwi teachers.
If you want to know where computer science can take kids, have a look at Careers with Code. In the future, young New Zealanders will use computer science to do great things. And it will all have started with a great teacher.
We’re pleased to announce this year’s recipients of the CS4HS grants in New Zealand.
Super Mario may be an oldie but a goodie—but the new Super Mario Maker has won me over. As a relatively new fan, I’ve been eager to watch let’s plays, walkthroughs, and speedruns on YouTube to dig deeper and learn from others. (Oh, and I’m loving the fan-made music tributes too.) As the top video destination for gaming content, YouTube is a place where I can connect with and learn from an incredible and innovative community around my favourite games.
YouTube Gaming in New Zealand Today, we’re making the YouTube Gaming mobile app available on iOS and Android in New Zealand. YouTube Gaming is an app that keeps you connected to the games, players, and culture that matter to you, with videos, live streams, and the biggest community of gamers on the web—all in one place. We launched YouTube Gaming in the U.S. and U.K. last August, and today we’re inviting new players in Australia and New Zealand to join us.
Finding videos of the games you love YouTube Gaming helps you find your favourite games and gamers, with more videos than anywhere else. We automatically pull in all gaming-related videos and live streams from YouTube to YouTube Gaming. From “Asteroids” to “Zelda,” more than 25,000 games will each have their own page, a single place for all the best videos and live streams about that title. You’ll also find channels from a wide array of game publishers and YouTube creators.
Keeping up with these games and channels is super easy, too. Add a game to your collection for quick access whenever you want to check up on the latest videos, or subscribe to a channel to get a notification as soon as they start a live stream.
Uncover new favourites with recommendations based on the games and channels you love. And when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing “call” will show you “Call of Duty” and not “Call Me Maybe.” Top gamer Lachlan - Minecraft & More’s channel and the live chat feature on the YouTube Gaming app on mobile, tablet, and desktop Live streams and mobile gameplay We know live streams bring the gaming community closer together, so we’ve created a dedicated destination for them within YouTube Gaming. On Android, we’ve also made it simpler to broadcast your gameplay to YouTube. You can now record and live stream mobile gameplay on-the-go directly from Android devices using Mobile Capture in YouTube Gaming. You don’t need any additional hardware or software—just tap Go Live in the YouTube Gaming app, turn on your selfie cam and record your commentary with your phone’s microphone.
We hope you enjoy trying out the new YouTube Gaming app, and look forward to watching and playing more together.
Posted by Ines Cha, Head of YouTube Gaming Content & Partnerships, Asia Pacific, who recently watched 10 Crazy Hidden Details in Gaming.
“Get your hands dirty, start early, fail as fast as you can, and take risks.”
Words from a sage old entrepreneur? No—that’s advice from 17-year-old Singaporean Girish Kumar, one of the winners of last year’s Google Science Fair, dishing out tips for anyone thinking of submitting their science or engineering projects that could change the world and win some pretty amazing prizes.
Girish’s invention—a web-based study tool that automatically generates multiple-choice questions from educational texts online—won him the Google Technologist Award. Girish told us that participating in the competition helped bring his work that spans artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing from theory to the next level, and really bring it to life. It was also a way for him to make new friends who share a passion for taking research and putting it in the hands of everyday people.
If that inspires you, and if you have an awesome idea that you think can help make the world a better place, then it’s time to sign up for the 2016 competition.
Girish wasn’t the only winner representing Asia at last year’s Science Fair. 13-year old Lalita Srisai from Odisha in India showed us how corn cobs can be used to filter water. She was inspired to a find a way to build a cheap but efficient water filtration system using a part of the corn that usually goes to waste.
These are just some of the innovative ideas that young people around Asia have to help solve problems—big and small. If you’re between 13 and 18 years old, now’s the time to submit your project to show how scientific enquiry and problem solving can change the world. And if you’re looking for advice on how to get ahead, or possibly even win, just remember what Girish said. :)
Posted by Andrea Cohan, Google Science Fair Program Manager
Saying “talofa” online just got a little easier with the addition of Samoan to Google Translate today. The first Pasifika language to be added to the tool, Google Translate gives you a way to translate information from one language using your phone, tablet or computer.
Using the Translate app on your Android or iOS phone you can type or handwrite a word or phrase in Samoan and it will be instantly translated into English, or vice versa. The feature also work for Maori which was added in 2013. To make it easy to translate information across the web, Google Translate is also integrated into Google products like Chrome, Search, Gmail and YouTube.
Bringing a new language online takes a mix of machine translation, authoritative content, and the help of passionate language speakers with tools like Translate Community. If you’d like to contribute to helping improving the quality and accuracy of Samoan online, you can use the Translate Community tool to generate and rate translations of words and phrases. Log in with your Google account, tell us the languages you speak and you’ll be ready to go. Every contribution you make to the Google Translate Community helps improve the quality of translation over time.
Posted by Sveta Kelman, Senior Program Manager, Google Translate
Since Chromecast first launched in New Zealand in 2014, Kiwis have enjoyed the ease of casting movies, shows and music from their phones straight to their TVs. Today, the new Chromecast and Chromecast Audio are launching across the ditch.
The new Chromecast has a fresh design and is easier to plug into TVs with crowded HDMI ports. It supports the latest Wi-Fi standards and adapts more easily to changing Wi-Fi conditions in your home, so you get higher quality video with less buffering. We added two new colors so you can cast in style while watching content from your favourite entertainment apps including Netflix, Lightbox, Fanpass, Neon TV and YouTube.
Chromecast Audio is a small device that plugs into your existing speakers, so you can stream your favourite music, radio and podcasts over Wi-Fi. It works with tons of apps, including Spotify, Pandora and Google Play Music. Just like Chromecast, it works from anywhere in your home with your favourite devices, including Android, iOS, and laptops.
We’ve also updated the Chromecast app to make it easier for you to find great things to watch or listen to—available through the Cast-enabled apps already installed on your phone. We’ll also suggest more Cast-enabled apps and games that you might like to try out. With thousand of Cast-enabled apps to choose from, we’re sure that you’ll find a new favourite TV series to binge on in no time.
Posted by Mickey Kim, Head of Asia Pacific Partnerships, Chromecast and TV
Today is Safer Internet Day, and to mark the occasion we’re rolling out some new tools, research and useful reminders to help you keep safer online.
1. Keep security settings simple The Security Checkup gives you a quick way to control the security settings for your Google Account. You can add a recovery phone number so we can get in touch if you’re ever locked out of your account, strengthen your password settings, and see which devices are connected to your account.
If you complete the Security Checkup by February 11 you’ll get 2GB of extra Google Drive storage, which can be used across Google Drive, Gmail, and Photos.
Safer Internet Day is a great time to do it, but you can—and should!—take a Security Checkup on a regular basis - start your checkup by visiting My Account.
2. Informing you about unsafe email messages When you exchange messages with your Gmail-using Grandmother, your connections are encrypted and authenticated. That means no peering eyes can read those emails as they zoom across the web in transit, and you can be confident that the message from your Grandma in size 48 font is really from her ;-)
However, as our Safer Email Report explains, that's not always the case when Gmail interacts with other mail services. Today, we’re introducing changes in Gmail on the web to let people know when a received message was not encrypted, or when the sender’s domain couldn’t be authenticated. Gmail also will warn you if you are composing a message to a recipient whose email service doesn’t support TLS encryption.
Here’s the notice you’ll see in Gmail before you send a message to a source that doesn’t support TLS encryption. You’ll also see the broken lock icon if you receive a message from a non-encrypted source.
If you receive a message which can’t be authenticated, you’ll see a question mark avatar in place of the regular profile photo, logo, or generated avatar:
Not all affected email will necessarily be dangerous. But we encourage you to be extra careful about replying to, or clicking on links in messages that you’re not sure about. And with these updates, you’ll have the tools to make these kinds of decisions.
3. Parents, take a moment to chat with your kids It’s important that parents chat regularly with their kids about how to safely use the internet. You don’t need to be an expert to have these conversations and Safer Internet Day is a great excuse to start this ongoing dialogue.
There are also a number of Google tools like SafeSearch, Safety Mode in YouTube, two-factor authentication and the YouTube Kids app that you can set up for your kids to help them stay safer online. In particular, the YouTube Kids app offers family-focused content with a number of parental controls — including a timer, the ability to turn off search, and more — to provide a safer version of YouTube for younger children. To find out more about these tools visit Google’s Family Safety Centre.
Posted by Ross Young, Public Policy and Government Relations Manager, Google New Zealand
It’s almost 5 p.m. Wednesday—time for that daily game of traffic roulette. The likelihood of stop and go traffic looms in front of you, yet at the same time the latest episode of Downton Abbey and the comfort of your couch are calling.
Well, Google Maps has good news for you. Now with just one tap on Android, you can find out whether you should hit the road or put in some gym time while you wait out the gridlock. Get information like ETAs, traffic updates, nearby gas prices and quickest routes to familiar places–like home, work and recently searched destinations–all without entering a destination.
To add a driving shortcut, press on your homescreen until Android widgets appear, then select the Google Maps driving shortcut icon.
You can also access this feature through the sidebar menu in Google Maps. Tap the sidebar menu and select the “Start Driving” option.
If you’ve preset home and work in Google Maps, you’ll see ETAs at times when you’re likely to be heading to these destinations. If you have location history enabled, we base these suggestions on location data, time of day and day of week. And if you’re logged in, we’ll suggest destinations based on recent Google Maps and Google searches when you open driving mode. Why join the masses in bumper-to-bumper chaos when your time could be spent doing something else? With quick access to traffic info, it's now easier to make the call.
Posted by Brian Ferris, Google Maps Software Engineer
