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Weekly Update - September 1, 2018: YouTube Giving, Google India, Blogger

This week was full of positive updates, including tools for YouTube creators to raise money for charities, YouTube app updates to improve your digital wellbeing, making content and Google services more accessible in India, Google Assistant is bilingual and Google One is rolling out to more countries.
  • Google announced the YouTube Giving initiative, which provides Creators with tools to support charitable giving to US non-profits. In addition to adding Donation Cards, YouTube Partners can now use Super Chat for Good for donations during their live streams and Premieres. And now select creators and non-profits can run Fundraisers with a Donate button on their channel, or team up with other channels for Community Fundraisers. Currently only Donation Cards and Super Chat for Good are broadly available to Creators.
  • YouTube also posted desktop web release notes, with an overview of recent updates and bug fixes. Check it out on the YouTube Help Forum and give YouTube some positive feedback about it to encourage more regular updates.
  • YouTube Music and YouTube Premium are now available in the Benelux Countries and Denmark.
  • Do you think you are watching too much YouTube? Now, as part of the Digital Wellbeing initiative announced at Google I/O you can see how much time you’ve been watching videos, plus schedule a Take a Break reminder.
  • Blogger is sending out confirmation email messages for email subscriptions for comments, comment moderation messages, and new posts. If you want to continue to get those emails, be sure to click the “Maintain Subscription” link. Blogger won’t send you any more of those emails without that confirmation. Note that if you subscribed to new posts by email by clicking a link on a blog, you have already confirmed your email address, so you should not get a new notice.
  • This week Google announced a number of updates focused on making content and Google Services more accessible to users in India. They are starting with the providing more high-quality internet access with Google Station and partnering with hardware manufacturers to create affordable Android (Go edition) phones. And once users have an internet connected device, they want to make content more accessible, by letting people using the Google Go browser to listen to web pages out loud, and the new Navlekhā initiative is designed to help get get offline content fully online and monetized, starting with Hindi publications. And finally the Indian payment app Tez has been renamed Google Pay, and some of its features will be brought to Google Pay in other countries. Google Pay in India will also offer minimal paperwork loans from major banks. 
  •  The Google Assistant and Google Home are now bilingual, letting people switch between languages. Assistant is also getting built into more hardware and can control more connected devices and appliances.
  •  Google One is coming to Australia, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, with more countries coming soon. If you are already paying for additional Google Drive storage, you’ll be upgraded to Google One automatically over the next few weeks. Look for an email. In addition to Drive storage that can be shared with your family, Google One offers direct support for Google products, and special perks. 
  • Google is working to support US military service members make the transition to civilian life, including making it easier to identify veteran-led business in Google My Business and providing tools to help veterans find civilian jobs.
  • Monday is Labor Day in the US and Labour Day in Canada. While it’s meant to be a celebration of worker achievements and the labor movement, it seems to be mostly focused on end-of-summer barbecues and sales. Have a great weekend, and keep your eye out for online deals :) 
Plus there are more tips and updates for live streamers, business owners, webmasters, Wear OS watch wearers and more. Read on for details.

 Image: Detail from “Girls - are you interested in a job?”, a poster for Illinois branch of the National Youth Administration promoting educational opportunities for young women seeking training for employment. (No known restrictions on publication).

Upcoming 

YouTube and Video Creation

Go Live

  • Super Chat for Good and more charitable giving tools from YouTube (YouTube Creators)
  • Vimeo Premium now lets you go live with your webcam, no encoder required (Vimeo)
  • Get loot drops from FACEIT by linking your YouTube channel and watching ECS live (FACEIT)

Google+

  • Google+ Community Moderator tip: know when to remove a post in your community (Google+ Moderators Community)

Other social media

Google for businesses

Bloggers and Webmasters

AdSense and advertising

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Updated March 2019 to remove Google+ links
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