Weekly Update - July 3, 2021: YouTube, Zoom, Google Workspace

I hope you are all staying cool! Even tech companies go on holiday in the summer, so there aren’t many updates this week.

Top news

• YouTube has expanded their policy prohibiting animal abuse. In particular they now explicitly forbid staged animal rescue videos that put the animals in harm’s way. There are exceptions for “standard” or “traditional” practices around food preparation and hunting, as well as for educational or fictional content.
• Meet group video calls hosted by personal Google accounts may now be cut off at 60 minutes. Users in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Japan and Australia can pay for Google Workspace Individual, which offers advanced Google Meet and Calendar features. You can sign up for a free trial, with your current Gmail address and Google account. Note that personal accounts can still make 1:1 calls up to 24 hours long.
• Zoom has launched a new Progressive Web App (PWA) for Chromebooks. This offers features not available on the web, including customizable Gallery View, self-select Breakout Rooms, live transcription, live translation (with assigned interpreters), background masking for privacy, hand raising and meeting reactions. The background masking crops your video feed to an adjustable circle, square or heart, then replaces the rest of your background with a pre-selected image.

Read on for more updates for online meetings, YouTube creators and more.

You Tube

• There is a new explainer for YouTube’s advertiser-friendly content guidelines with the focus on recreational drug and tobacco content.
• YouTube is launching a creator mention card. If another channel is mentioned in the video description the new card (on mobile) will let people view that channel information without clicking away from your video.

Photos

• Learn how Google Photos’ new “sharpen” and “denoise” editing options work.

Publishers

• If you used AdSense fixed-size link units, those have now been removed from your ad unit list. Fixed-size link units have not served ads since March, so this should not have any impact on your account.
• AdSense known issue: if you are getting an error message when trying to add a new bank account for payments, Google is aware of the problem and working on a fix. In the meantime you can get assistance through Google Pay support.

Communication

• Google Meet is rolling out two updates for its built-in live streaming feature. First, administrators can enable the option to live stream to other trusted Google Workspace domains. And now the live stream has the option to show live automatic captions in English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Note that there is no option for public live streams or streaming to YouTube or other platforms.
• Google Chat will automatically suggest group chats (in addition to 1:1 conversations) based on your meetings scheduled in Google Calendar.
• If you are a Google Fi customer using an iPhone, you can now use Fi’s built-in VPN. That gives you a secure internet connection even when using an insecure network.
• Telegram launched group video calling.
• Skype for Business Online will be retired July 31. Microsoft wants to help with the migration to Microsoft Teams.

Social Media

• Facebook launched Bulletin in the US. This is a platform for email publications with long-form articles. Facebook is starting with a small group of writers, and are letting them keep 100% of subscription revenue. You can find the list of Bulletin publications here.
• Pinterest is the first major platform to ban advertising with weight loss language or imagery..
• Slack launched “Huddles”, which let you have short audio calls with screen sharing.

That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.

Image: July 4 is US independence day. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I like to think we are working towards this goal, even though the US has often been far from this in practice. Photo by ViTalko from Pexels.