- Twenty years ago this week Blogger was born. I took a look back and talk about why Blogger is my chosen blogging platform.
- Starting this month Google Photos is rolling out the ability to search your photos by the text in them. You can use built-in Google Lens to copy the text once you find it.
- Engadget reports that Google Photos face grouping is finally rolling out across Europe. It’s not clear where exactly this feature is available. Check your account to see if the option to enable face grouping is available.
- YouTube has updated their policy to start removing “mature” content that targets younger children and families, including videos with sexual themes, obscene content, and violence. Previously such videos were age-restricted. Similar content that does not explicitly target younger kids will continue to be age-restricted.
- YouTube Direct Messaging will be going away September 18. You can download an archive of your chats using Google Takeout.
- YouTube has filed a lawsuit against a copyright troll, who allegedly used at least 15 different identities to submit fraudulent copyright claims to harass and extort money from users.
- Classic Google Hangouts will be around until late 2020. All G Suite users will be migrated from classic Hangouts to Hangouts Chat in June, and consumer users not until sometime after that. Originally G Suite user migration was scheduled for October of this year.
- Google Duo video calling has a new low light mode, to make it easier for callers to see each other under poor lighting conditions.
- AdSense and AdMob announced they are improving invalid activity detection. If you are a Publisher and your account is affected, you can check your account’s Policy Center to see more information to help you understand why there is reduced ad serving to your site, and information about the steps you can take to resolve any issues. Note that the Policy Center does not include actions taken on YouTube.
- Google announced their plan to “work with the web community to develop new standards that advance privacy, while continuing to support free access to content”. And by “supporting free access to content” they mostly mean not negatively impacting advertising. They want to prevent user tracking by “fingerprinting”, which uses “tiny bits of information that vary between users”, like your device or the fonts you have installed.
The better alternative is … cookies. Google argues that cookies are better privacy-wise because users are aware they are being set and can clear them. And, they argue, wide-scale blocking of cookie just encourages fingerprinting (which is bad because it invades your privacy) and serving relevant ads (which decreases publisher revenue). I’m not sure whether Google is more concerned with the former or the latter. - Pie 🥧 is the last sweet Android treat. The Android logo was updated to coincide with the public release of Android Q, which will have the official name … Android 10. Android will no longer name new versions after desserts, in part because they don’t translate globally and aren’t meaningful to new users.
- Be sure to take a look at my playlist of the videos I suggest in my weekly roundup link list and follow it in your YouTube account.
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Image: Balloons by Pexels on Pixabay (free for commercial use)
Upcoming
- August 25: Deadline to apply for YouTube Nextup Special Edition #womentowatch in Cairo (creators based in the Middle East and North Africa including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Iraq only)
- August 25: Deadline to apply for YouTube NextUp for EduTubers in Berlin, Germany
- August 25: Deadline for Adobe Spark Sea.Hear.Now creative challenge
- September 1: Google retiring “unsupported and unpublished rules” (such as noindex, nofollow and crawl-delay) in robots.txt
- September 9: Deadline to apply for YouTube NextUp Conhecimento Criativo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
YouTube and Video Creation
- YouTube removing “mature” content targeting children
- Expanding our child safety policies (YouTube)
- YouTube DMs are going away - savy a copy of your chats!
- YouTube is experimenting with video appeals for YouTube Partner Program suspensions (Creator Insider)
- Bugs, Thumbnail A/B Testing, Improvements to Classifiers, and More! (Creator Insider)
- YouTube sues alleged copyright troll over extortion of multiple YouTubers (The Verge)
- Google Agrees To Meet With The YouTubers Union, But Says It Won’t “Negotiate Their Demands” (TubeFilter)
- Google plays politics with China as it quietly bans state-sponsored YouTube accounts (The Next Web)
YouTube Music, Premium, and TV
- YouTube Music's “revolutionary” new feature allows you to sort albums and playlists by name (Android Police)
- Take your tunes on the road: YouTube Music comes to Waze (YouTube)
- Report: PBS coming to YouTube TV in November, local stations worried about cost (9to5Google)
- YouTube TV To Sell Add-Ons For AMC-Owned Acorn TV, Urban Movie Channel (TubeFilter)
- YouTube Originals become ad-supported and free after September 24 (TechCrunch)
- YouTube No Longer Commissioning Scripted Originals In EMEA, Orders 3 Education-Focused Projects (TubeFilter)
Go Live
- Reddit launched five-day live-streaming test (The Verge)
- Reddit Now Lets You Livestream. What Could Go Wrong? (Wired)
Social Media: Facebook and Instagram
- Many Are Abandoning Facebook. These People Have the Opposite Problem. (New York Times)
- Now You Can See and Control the Data That Apps and Websites Share With Facebook (Facebook)
- Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior From China (Facebook)
Social Media: Twitter
- Amazon's Online Bezos Brigade Unleashed On Twitter (bellingcat)
- Twitter Trust and Safety Advisers Say They’re Being Ignored (Wired)
Google Photos and Photo Sharing
- Google Photos lets you search for text in images (Google Photos)
- Google Photos' face-grouping feature comes to Europe (Engadget)
Google for Businesses
- Does Using Unicode Help Click-Through-Rate? (Sterling Sky)
- Local Services by Google: Book local jobs and grow your business (Google Small Business)
Bloggers and Webmasters
- Blogger turns 20
- Blogger 20 years; 20 tips (Soraya Lambrechts)
- English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from 23.08.2019 (Google Webmasters)
- Mobile-first Indexing: Is Google Planning Opt-in/Opt-out? #AskGoogleWebmasters (Google Webmasters)
- Chrome will soon remove support for FTP connections (Android Police)
- Bing Webmaster Tools simplifies site verification using Domain Connect (Bing)
AdSense and Advertising
- AdSense improving invalid activity detection; adding action notifications to your Policy Center
- Additional safeguards to protect the quality of our ad network (AdMob)
- Next steps to ensure transparency, choice and control in digital advertising (Google Ads)
- The mobile advertising challenge, and how to measure it (Google Marketing Platform)
Hangouts, Meetings and Messaging
- G Suite users will be migrated to Hangouts Chat in June 2020 (G Suite Updates)
- By day and by night: video call, no matter the lighting (Google)
- Google Duo v60 brings low light mode, pin to homescreen, and call history deletion (Android Police)
Made by Google, Android, Google Fi
- A pop of color and more: updates to Android’s brand (Google)
- “Lite” but packs a punch: Google Go comes to Android everywhere (Google)
- The Google Play store’s visual refresh (Android Developers)
- It’s time: Nest users can now switch to Google Accounts (Google)
Productivity
- Complete basic PDF forms directly in Google Drive on mobile (G Suite Updates)
- Improved as-you-type spelling and grammar correction in Gmail (G Suite Updates)
- Improving real-time collaboration in Google Docs for assistive technology users (G Suite Updates)
- Slack can now sync your status with Google Calendar (95to5Google)
Privacy and Security
- Google: Maintaining the integrity of our platforms (Google)
- Protecting Chrome users in Kazakhstan (Google)
- Firefox takes action to protect users in Kazakhstan (Mozilla)
- Building a more private web (Google Chrome)
- Potential uses for the Privacy Sandbox (Google Chrome)
- Deconstructing Google’s excuses on tracking protection (Freedom to Tinker)
- Google kills service for carriers that mapped coverage and performance with anonymous user data (Android Police)
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Spam and personal attacks are not allowed. Any comment may be removed at my own discretion ~ Peggy