Author Archives: A Googler

Announcing new courses from Google News Initiative to help newsrooms continue innovating

In 2018 we launched the Google News Initiative India Training Network, an affirmation of our deep commitment to supporting trusted, authoritative journalism. Along with the Google News Lab, this network has helped train over 35,000 journalists across India to date, to efficiently use free digital tools and resources that help elevate quality journalism, get empowered for sustainable growth, and drive newsroom innovation using cutting-edge technology.


These courses have imparted skills such as the effective use of Google search operators; using reporting-friendly tools such as site-archiving and audio transcription, using web monitoring via Trends and Alerts, and tips on how to verify content through reverse visual searches and geolocating images.


To kick off our work this year, we are pleased to offer the following Google News Initiative training courses as part of our roster of offerings:


Data journalism and visualization | Data GIF Maker, Flourish, Sheets, Earth, Maps, Timelapse: Learn how to find and visualize data easily – no special graphic designing or coding skills needed! By accessing open data and using free tools, pick up skills on collating information and turning that into simple graphs, charts or marker maps. Create richly visual projects with Google Earth and Earth Studio for more compelling storytelling. 


Fundamentals | Google Search Operators, Trends, Alerts, Website Analysis: This series will help equip you with the basic tools needed to work more efficiently. From making the best out of Google Drive to smartly using search operators to scour for information, this training looks to arm journalists and editors with handy free tools that can drive deeper reporting. 


Digital verification | Reverse Visual Search, Factcheck Explorer, Geolocation, Earth, Street View: One of the biggest challenges facing news organisations today is distinguishing what is real from what isn’t. From identifying altered imagery and manipulated video to identifying and stopping the spread of falsehoods, this session will help you identify the full range of misinformation, disinformation and outright falsehoods that are so often circulated. 


Specialized courses | Podcasting, Pinpoint, Environmental journalism tools, digital security, mobile journalism: Explore the beginner’s guide to podcasting, and mobile journalism or sharpen your investigative skills on environmental journalism by toggling with tools that show forest fires, land reclamation, illegal fishing or receding shorelines. Pick up simple ways to safeguard your device and accounts, protecting yourself as a journalist. Upload and collaborate on Pinpoint for reporting projects with large volumes of documents, audio files - enabling seamless editorial teamwork.


To start, our webinars on the topic of Data journalism and visualization will commence on 1st March, 2021. Registrations are now open – we invite newsrooms to sign up here.


For more information on other courses and training material, newsrooms are also welcome to visit g.co/newstraining , or email here to submit a request for training in English. For accessing verification workshops in 10 languages across India, newsrooms can reach out here.


The importance of quality journalism can never be overstated -- especially in these times of healing and recovery for people as well as businesses – where readers continue to depend on the vital role that newsrooms across the country play in delivering authoritative, timely, and trusted news.


Posted by Irene Jay Liu, News Lab Lead, APAC

Progress from a year of AI for Social Good at Google Research India

Almost a year and a half ago, we announced Google Research India, an AI Lab in Bangalore. Along with advancing fundamental research in AI, we sought  to support nonprofits and universities to solve big challenges in the field of Public Health, Conservation, Agriculture and Education using AI. 

In 2020, we announced AI for Social Good would be supporting six projects from NGOs and Academic collaborations to utilize the application of AI to assist underserved communities that have not traditionally benefited from the prowess of AI. Google provided scientific and technical contributions for each project, as well as  funding from Google Research and Google.org. 

Today, we are pleased to provide an update on some of these projects, and highlight successes and challenges in AI for Social Good. 

Maternal Healthcare

India accounts for 11 percent of global maternal mortality, and a woman in India dies in childbirth every fifteen minutes. However, almost 90 percent of maternal deaths are avoidable if women receive timely intervention. Access to timely, accurate health information is a significant challenge among women in rural areas and urban slums. ARMMAN runs mMitra, a free mobile voice call service that sends timely and targeted preventive care information to expectant and new mothers. Adherence to such public health programs is a big challenge but timely intervention to retain people is beneficial to improve maternal health outcomes. Researchers from Google Research and IIT Madras worked with ARMMAN to design an AI technology that could provide an indication of women who were at risk of dropping out from the health information program. The early targeted identification helps ARMMAN to personalise interventions and retain these people, improving maternal health outcomes. Test results demonstrated that use of AI technology was able to bring down the risk of drop-offs by up to 32% for women at high risk of dropping out. The team is currently working towards scaling this to 300,000+ women in mMitra and we are excited to continue to support ARMMAN as the project team increases the reach of this technology to 1M+ mothers and children in 2021. To support ARMMAN’s growing efforts, Google.org is committing another USD $530,000 to ARMMAN to scale the use of AI for social good to reach underserved women and children. 

The importance of targeted interventions to improve health outcomes cannot be overstated. AI can help play a critical role in its advancement, however the lack of availability of high-quality public health data is a significant challenge. Frequently, data collection is enabled through the labour and expertise of frontline health workers and yet Khushibaby discovered various challenges in the field that inhibited the collection of the high-quality data required. Researchers from Singapore Management University and Google Research collaborated with Khushibaby to develop AI algorithms with over 90 percent accuracy that provided timely predictions about the drop in health workers’ data quality. These timely predictions help Khushibaby provide assistance to the health worker to enable them to record high-quality data. The project team is currently planning to deploy and safely test this technology with 250+ healthcare workers who serve over 15,000 people. 

Wildlife Conservation

India is home to some of the most biodiverse regions, where human settlements and wildlife co-exist in forests. However, interactions between local communities and wildlife can result in conflicts, leading to loss of crops, cattle, and even human life. Wildlife Conservation Trust needed help to proactively predict human-wildlife conflict to enable them to take timely steps to protect local communities, wildlife, and the forest. With technical and scientific contributions from Google Research and Singapore Management University, Wildlife Conservation Trust designed AI models that help predict human-wildlife conflict in Bramhapuri Forest Division in Tadoba, Maharashtra. These novel AI techniques provide over 80 percent accuracy in predicting human-wildlife conflict in the Bramhapuri Forest Division in the test results. This work is currently being field-tested in Chandrapur district, Madhya Pradesh, to ensure safe deployment. 

Local Language Adoption

Six out of ten children globally do not achieve minimum proficiency levels in reading, despite attending school. Lack of access to reading content in one’s local language is a significant challenge in addressing this problem. Storyweaver, an open-licence driven organization, works towards bridging that gap by developing and curating story books in a multitude of local languages to help children learn new concepts, new ideas and open up their imagination.  Storyweaver needed help to enable access to creation tools in low-resource languages. Creation tools in low-resource languages suffer from very low accuracy, adding barriers to content creation. The team at AI4Bharat & IIT Madras, with support from Google, developed state-of-the-art Natural Language Understanding tools to develop open-language models for two low-resource languages (Konkani, Maithal), making story reading easier for 70,000+ children. 

We are humbled to see the progress in the development and deployment of AI technologies for social good in a short period of time. We are confident in our development and support of a collaborative model that involves experts from Academia and NGOs, as well as contributions from Google, to advance AI for social good. Continuing our scientific, technical, and financial support of organizations working in this space, we are excited to announce an expanded follow-up program to initiate collaborative AI for Social Good projects in Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

We recognize that AI is not a magic wand to solve all the world’s challenges, it is however a powerful tool to help experts and social-impact organisations to explore and address hard, unanswered questions. 

Posted by Milind Tambe, Director of AI for Social Good, Google Research India, and Manish Gupta, Director, Google Research India

A new choice for parents of pre-teens and teens on YouTube

This generation of pre-teens and teens has grown up online, and it’s where they go to learn, laugh, and connect. Every family has a different approach to how they use technology, access the internet and set digital ground rules. Over the years, we’ve made investments to protect families and kids on YouTube, such as launching a dedicated kids app, better protecting their privacy, restricting features and improving age restrictions. Today, we are announcing a new choice for parents who have decided their pre-teens and teens are ready to explore YouTube with a supervised account. 


Supervised experiences on YouTube


From our earliest days, YouTube has been a platform for people over 13, and we’ve always recommended that parents co-watch with their kids if they choose to watch YouTube. In 2015, we created YouTube Kids, a safer destination for kids to explore their interests while providing parental controls. But since then, we’ve heard from parents and older children that pre-teens and teens have different needs, which weren’t being fully met by our products. As children grow up, they have insatiable curiosity and need to gain independence and find new ways to learn, create, and belong.


Over the last year, we've worked with parents and experts across the globe in areas related to child safety, child development, and digital literacy to develop a solution for parents of pre-teens and teens. In the coming months, we’ll launch a new experience in beta for parents to allow their children to access YouTube through a supervised Google Account. This supervised experience will come with content settings and limited features. We’ll start with an early beta for families with kids under the age of consent to test and provide feedback, as we continue to expand and improve the experience. 


Giving parents content options on YouTube


We know that every parent has a different parenting style and that every child is unique and reaches different developmental stages at different times. That’s why we’ll give parents the ability to choose from 3 different content settings on YouTube.


  • Explore: For children ready to move on from YouTube Kids and explore content on YouTube, this setting will feature a broad range of videos generally suitable for viewers ages 9+, including vlogs, tutorials, gaming videos, music clips, news, educational content and more.

  • Explore More: With content generally suitable for viewers ages 13+, this setting will include an even larger set of videos, and also live streams in the same categories as “Explore.”

  • Most of YouTube: This setting will contain almost all videos on YouTube, except for age-restricted content, and it includes sensitive topics that may only be appropriate for older teens.



This option was designed for parents who think their children are ready to explore the vast universe of YouTube videos. We will use a mix of user input, machine learning and human review to determine which videos are included. We know that our systems will make mistakes and will continue to evolve over time.


We recommend parents continue to be involved in guiding and supporting their child’s experience on YouTube. To help parents get started, we’ve developed a guide in partnership with National PTA, Parent Zone and Be Internet Awesome. We’ll also launch an ongoing campaign that features creators discussing themes like bullying and harassment, misinformation, digital well-being and more. 



New features for families


We understand the importance of striking a balance between empowering pre-teens and teens to more safely gain independence, while offering parents ways to set controls. In addition to choosing the content setting, parents will be able to manage watch and search history from within their child's account settings. Parents can also use other controls offered by Google’s Family Link, including screen timers. We’ll continue adding new parental controls over time, such as blocking content. 


When a parent grants access to YouTube, their child’s experience will feel much like regular YouTube, but certain features will be disabled to protect younger audiences. For example, we won't serve personalized ads or ads in certain categories. At launch, we'll also disable in-app purchases, as well as creation and comments features. Since self-expression and community are integral parts of YouTube and children's development, over time we'll work with parents and experts to add some of these features through an age-appropriate and parent controlled approach.


Investing in YouTube Kids


We’re building this new supervised experience for parents who think their older kids are ready to use YouTube, but we still recommend YouTube Kids for younger kids to watch independently and have a more contained viewing experience. Extending this offering further in India, we are happy to announce the rollout of the YouTube Kids Hindi app, over the coming few days. The app will feature hundreds of hours of children’s entertainment and infotainment in Hindi by creators like Jugnu Kids, Peekaboo Kidz and Infobells.


With availability in over 80 countries, now over 35 million viewers use YouTube Kids every week. We’ll continue expanding product availability, adding new features, and offering several new parental tools, such as a highly-requested option for parents to select specific videos and channels from the main YouTube platform that they’d like their child to explore on YouTube Kids.



We know that we have a long journey ahead of us as we design this experience for parents of pre-teens and teens. Over the long term, we hope this will provide a safer environment for older children to explore their interests, learn new skills, connect with communities that share their passions, while giving parents more ways to support their kids' online experience.


Posted by James Beser, Director of Product Management, Kids and Family

How anonymized data helps fight against disease

Data has always been a vital tool in understanding and fighting disease — from Florence Nightingale’s 1800s hand drawn illustrations that showed how poor sanitation contributed to preventable diseases to the first open source repository of data developed in response to the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa. When the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan, data again became one of the most critical tools to combat the pandemic. 

A group of researchers, who documented the initial outbreak, quickly joined forces and started collecting data that could help epidemiologists around the world model the trajectory of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The researchers came from University of Oxford, Tsinghua University, Northeastern University and Boston Children’s Hospital, among others. 

However, their initial workflow was not designed for the exponential rise in cases. The researchers turned to Google.org for help. As part of Google’s $100 million contribution to COVID relief, Google.org granted $1.25 million in funding and provided a team of 10 fulltime Google.org Fellows and 7 part-time Google volunteers to assist with the project.  

Google volunteers worked with the researchers to create Global.health, a scalable and open-access platform that pulls together millions of anonymized COVID-19 cases from over 100 countries. This platform helps epidemiologists around the world model the trajectory of COVID-19, and track its variants and future infectious diseases. 

The need for trusted and anonymized case data

When an outbreak occurs, timely access to organized, trustworthy and anonymized data is critical for public health leaders to inform early policy decisions, medical interventions, and allocations of resources — all of which can slow disease spread and save lives. The insights derived from “line-list” data (e.g. anonymized case level information), as opposed to aggregated data such as case counts, are essential for epidemiologists to perform more detailed statistical analyses and model the effectiveness of interventions. 

Volunteers at the University of Oxford started manually curating this data, but it was spread over hundreds of websites, in dozens of formats, in multiple languages. The HealthMap team at Boston Children’s Hospital also identified early reports of COVID-19 through automated indexing of news sites and official sources. These two teams joined forces, shared the data, and published peer-reviewed findings to create a trusted resource for the global community.

Enter the Google.org Fellowship

To help the global community of researchers in this meaningful endeavour, Google.org decided to offer the support of 10 Google.org Fellows who spent 6 months working full-time on Global.health, in addition to $1.25M in grant funding. Working hand in hand with the University of Oxford and Boston Children’s Hospital, the Google.org team spoke to researchers and public health officials working on the frontline to understand real-life challenges they faced when finding and using high-quality trusted data — a tedious and manual process that often takes hours. 

Upholding data privacy is key to the platform’s design. The anonymized data used at Global.health comes from open-access authoritative public health sources, and a panel of data experts rigorously checks it to make sure it meets strict anonymity requirements. The Google.org Fellows assisted the Global.health team to design the data ingestion flow to implement best practices for data verification and quality checks to make sure that no personal data made its way into the platform. (All line-list data added to the platform is stored and hosted in Boston Children’s Hospital’s secure data infrastructure, not Google’s.)

Looking to the future

With the support of Google.org and The Rockefeller Foundation, Global.health has grown into an international consortium of researchers at leading universities curating the most comprehensive line-list COVID-19 database in the world.  It includes millions of anonymized records from trusted sources spanning over 100 countries, including India.

Today, Global.health helps researchers across the globe access data in a matter of minutes and a series of clicks. The flexibility of the Global.health platform means that it can be adapted to any infectious disease data and local context as new outbreaks occur. Global.health lays a foundation for researchers and public health officials to access this data no matter their location, be it New York, São Paulo, Munich, Kyoto or Nairobi.

Posted by Stephen Ratcliffe, Google.org Fellow and the Global.health team

Solving for the Indian Public Sector with Google Cloud


At Google Cloud, our mission is to help enterprises digitally transform so they can better serve their customers, empower their employees, and build what’s next for their businesses. Businesses depend on Google Cloud to stay connected and get work done. No matter where they are on their cloud journey, we strive to accelerate every organisation’s ability to transform through data-powered innovation with leading infrastructure, industry solutions, and expertise. 

Today, many of the largest organisations in India trust Google Cloud, including Wipro, Sharechat,, TVS ASL, ICICI Prudential, Nobroker.com, Cleartrip and many others. We are also gearing up to launch our GCP region in Delhi this year, which will be our second cloud region in India since our technical infrastructure in Mumbai was launched in 2017. 

The next phase of our commitment to customers in India sees us working to deliver on the needs of public sector organisations. And so it gives me great pleasure to announce our achieving a full Cloud Service Provider (CSP) empanelment, successfully completing the STQC (Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification) audit from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). This empanelment will enable the Indian Public Sector to deploy on Google Cloud, including government agencies at the Central and state level, and PSUs across sectors like Power, BFSI, Transportation, Oil & Gas, Public Finance, etc.

Google Cloud is designed, built, and operated with security at its core. Government and Enterprises want to work with us because we’re focused on the best service and technology—not because they don’t have choice or agility. As we continue to invest in further evolving our infrastructure and expanding our reach into regulated industries; public sector organisations in India can now leverage the power of the cloud to accelerate digital services and to drive innovation.

-Bikram SIngh Bedi, Managing Director, Google Cloud India


DigiPivot, a Google-sponsored program for up-skilling women, announces its second batch

Following the success of the program’s inaugural run in 2020, Google has partnered with Avtar Group, India’s pioneers in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Solutions and India’s premier business school - Centre for Executive Education at Indian School of business (ISB) to announce the second cohort of DigiPivot, a curated skilling program in digital marketing, exclusively for women. Developed in association with Avtar & ISB, this free skill development initiative is aimed at creating a future ready workforce of women leaders in digital marketing. 

The second edition of the program will be a 22-week virtual learning engagement that will enable participants with digital marketing knowledge as well as mentorship on strategic leadership skills. This program is designed to build equity for everyone, and all intersectionalities of women are invited to apply for this program including, and not restricted to, those with disabilities as well as from the LGBTQ+ community. This program aims to bring together a diverse and talented cohort of participants who want to pivot their careers into digital marketing. 

“The urban women’s workforce participation rate in India is a meagre 12%, one of the lowest in the world. National estimates suggest that there are at least 11 million women in India seeking viable career returns. Successful career pivots/re-entries for women often become difficult because of a paucity of market relevant skills – both technical and strategic.” - Dr Saundarya Rajesh, Founder – President of Avtar Group. 

ILO research indicates that the skill deficit in India is growing and is likely to get to 29 million by 2030. 53% of businesses in India find it difficult to identify people with the right set of skills. In the absence of indigenous, industry-led skill development programs for talent, this can prove to be a significant deterrent to economic growth. 

As per data from the CMIE, the impact of COVID-induced job losses has been disproportionately skewed towards women. This accentuates the need for specially curated skilling programs for women to gain equitable access to job opportunities. 


The inaugural run of DigiPivot had 40 women professionals from across India who were selected from among thousands of applicants , through a very rigorous selection process. The cohort went through an intensive 18 week-long virtual program and were trained on key technical and leadership skills needed to make a career pivot by Google leaders, ISB faculty and thought leaders from Avtar. The average growth rate of skills in this inaugural cohort was established to be 65%. 

"To build diverse organizations in India, we need to first focus on improving representation. We want to do our part at Google - through our products, resources, and people - to inspire and offer women and girls opportunities to learn and feel empowered while developing skills vital in the modern digital world. DigiPivot is one example, and we're incredibly proud to see our past DigiPivot attendees benefiting from this program, some of whom have even found exciting opportunities with us at Google. Together with like-minded partners like Avtar and ISB, we look forward to making the second edition of DigiPivot an even greater success." - Arijit Sarker, Vice President of gTech and DigiPivot’s Executive Sponsor. 

DigiPivot, through its inaugural run, has established an up-skilling model that can be adapted by a cross-section of industries. Built on the foundation of industry-academia partnership, this upskilling framework is constituted by the triage of domain skills, strategic leadership skills and mentorship. When replicated at scale, this holds the promise of enhancing employability and creating career opportunities for over 11 million women professionals in India. 

Applications for DigiPivot 2021 are open from February 19th 2021 and the last date for registration is 12th March 2021. Interested applicants can register, here: dp.myavtar.com 


Posted by Team DigiPivot

Investing to empower the YouTube experience for the next generation of video

We're kicking off a new series that takes you inside our ongoing efforts to redefine how the world experiences video.

Ever wonder what went into the development of YouTube’s mobile tool for shooting short videos? Or what it takes to support millions of people watching a concert live in HDR? That’s what I hope to do with this new blog series—explore how we transform innovative ideas into cutting-edge reality for viewers and creators. Building off our earlier series on YouTube’s responsibility work, we’ll take you inside our ongoing efforts to open a new chapter for video.

Chapters feature

Reinventing how viewers experience video

Today, with video becoming an even more important part of our daily lives, the needs of viewers are evolving faster than ever. To meet these demands in the year ahead, we’re looking to redefine how the world experiences video. You can think of YouTube as a global stage for video: Like any good stage manager, our job is to create the best setting for our creators and the best viewing experience for our audience. 

  • Easier navigation:  In the last few years alone, we’ve introduced a new desktop design, new mobile features and a new look for the watch page. This year, we’ll bring more updates across devices to help connect viewers with their favorite creators and content. Last year, we launched video chapters to help viewers more easily navigate within a video. Since then, we’ve seen more and more creators adding chapters to their videos—more than 20,000 videos a day. Creator Marques Brownlee uses the feature on his popular tech reviews. If you want to learn which phone earned the “Best Battery Award” in his 2020 Smartphone Awards, one click will take you straight there. We’ll soon expand this feature to automatically add video chapters to relevant videos. We'll also be making the watch experience feel more intuitive, like modernizing our design for tablet.


  • Supporting emerging formats: YouTube has long invested proactively in the latest visual technologies. We now support a combination of SD, HD, 4K, VR, HDR, and live video on nearly every device with an internet connection—from desktops to mobile, and gaming consoles to VR headsets. During a year when so many of us stayed home, channels like AirPano VR allowed us to experience the wonders of the world in immersive new ways. Later this year, we’ll launch a redesign of the YouTube VR app homepage to improve navigation, accessibility, and search functionality.

With a global audience of over two billion logged in users coming to YouTube every month—more than ever, we know we have to build custom experiences and apps that respond to each person’s unique needs. 


  • Expanding our stage to TV: While the majority of YouTube videos are watched on mobile, our fastest area of growth is the TV. That’s why we’ve brought that same spirit of YouTube’s experience to TV content with YouTube TV. After just a few years, YouTube TV now has more than 3 million paid subscribers, 85+ networks, and offers unlimited DVR. Sports fans can even enjoy their favorite games with the ability to view key plays, hide spoilers, and check out real-time stats. And there’s more to come, including a new add-on option that lets viewers watch available shows in 4K or download them to their DVR to watch later offline. Plus, this option will add unlimited concurrent streams at home, so the whole family can enjoy YouTube TV on different screens at once.

Music Mix

  • Creating lasting musical moments: YouTube Music has over 70 million official tracks, plus playlists, remixes, music videos, live performances, covers, and rare tracks that aren’t found anywhere else. As the landscape of music continues to shift in dynamic ways, we’re launching more personalized mixes centered around the everyday activities and moods enjoyed with music, whether you’re trying to work out, focus, relax, or commute to work. Music fans who love creating their own playlists will have even more features at hand, and we’ll also make user-created playlists more discoverable to others on the platform.

YouTube Kids Takeaway

  • Bringing a safer experience to children: Children need a safer environment to explore their interests, feed their curiosity, and spark their creativity. In 2015, we launched YouTube Kids to give them that opportunity, while also empowering parents with tools to customize their kids’ viewing experience. Parents can choose what content children can watch, limit screen time, and block videos. There are now over 35 million weekly viewers across more than 80 countries who use YouTube Kids, engaging in content like fun family projects through Art for Kids Hub or helpful lessons about nutrition by Omari Goes Wild. This year, we’ll also offer new parental tools, including a highly-requested option that lets parents add specific videos and channels from the main YouTube platform to their children’s viewing choices on YouTube Kids.

Expanding opportunities for creators


Every single creator I’ve met has their own story about what led them to make their first YouTube video or how they turned their passion for video into an enterprise. We’re committed to both helping creators get started and providing more ways to succeed. 


  • Putting creativity in your hand: Every year, increasing numbers of people come to YouTube to launch their own channel. But we know there’s still a huge amount of people who find the bar for creation too high. That’s why we’re working on Shorts, our new short-form video tool that lets creators and artists shoot snappy videos with nothing but their mobile phones. Currently, Shorts is available in beta in India. Since the beginning of December, the number of Indian channels using Shorts creation tools has more than tripled, and the YouTube Shorts player is now receiving more than 3.5 billion daily views globally. In the coming weeks, we'll begin expanding the beta to the US, unlocking our tools to even more creators so they can get started with Shorts.

Applause image

  • Helping creators build businesses: In order to support creators and their next-generation media companies, over a decade ago we introduced the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), the first-of-its kind. Over the last three years, we’ve paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies. Today, creators on YPP can make money from their YouTube content in about ten different ways, from running ads to selling merchandise. Anna Yakimenko, a Russian fashion consultant based in Milan, uses channel memberships to offer her audience discounts on merch, exclusive live streams, and tailored fashion advice for members. Since launching her channel membership, she’s doubled her YouTube earnings. 


  • We’ll continue strengthening our existing monetization products, but also find even more ways to help creators diversify their revenue streams. Inspired by the success of Super Chat and Super Stickers for livestreams, we’ve been testing a new applause feature that allows fans to show support for their favorite YouTube channels. This feature unlocks new monetization opportunities for creators’ uploads, and we’re looking forward to launching this more broadly to creators this year.

Shopping UI Image

  • Shopping for the next generation: We also want to build on this full suite of monetization opportunities through commerce. As consumer shopping habits increasingly shift to digital, we have an opportunity to meet the growing demand for e-commerce. We’re beta testing a new integrated shopping experience that allows viewers to tap into the credibility and knowledge of trusted creators to make informed purchases directly on YouTube. Keep an eye out for this to expand later in 2021. 


  • Together, this group of products will further fuel the ambitions of today’s pioneers in the creative economy and their next-generation media companies. Creators turned entrepreneurs include Daisy Marquez, a YouTube beauty & lifestyle creator, who recently expanded her business to include her own brand of wine, custom merchandise, and makeup palette with BH Cosmetics. 


  • Another of these remarkable companies is led by lifelong friends Rhett & Link, who began making comedy videos on YouTube in 2006. Those early efforts became the foundation for the creators’ highly successful media business, Mythical Entertainment, whose YouTube channels—including the popular talk show Good Mythical Morning and the sketch comedy of Smosh—have over 75 million subscribers and 25 billion lifetime views. What started out in a garage now occupies a 17,000 square-foot studio in LA, and employs over 100 people who also support the company’s expansion into branded content, ecommerce, podcasts, books, live events, a subscription fan club, and more.

An insider’s look behind the scenes


In this blog series, we’ll hear directly from YouTube engineers, product managers, and designers, as they give a firsthand look into pushing forward the boundaries of online video. 


We’re excited to share how YouTube’s mission to “Give everyone a voice and show them the world” drives our work to improve the platform. I often tell my teams and colleagues, “We’re just getting started.” And I can’t wait to show you our world through their voices. 


Posted by Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer, YouTube


Introducing over 50 helpful new product features for students and educators

Every day, more than a billion people come to Google to find answers or discover something new. Our Learning & Education team works to fuel that curiosity and help people build knowledge by connecting them to great learning experiences through our products — whether it's Search or YouTube, Google Classroom or Chromebooks.


During the pandemic, people turned to technology more than ever to help them learn and teach from anywhere, and this accelerated our desire to do even more with our technology to help. Just this past year, COVID-19 led school closures disrupted the continuity of education for over 320 million students across India. This past year, the education community has inspired us with their creativity and resilience -- this ability to learn, and teach, from anywhere is more important now than ever, and won’t end when the pandemic does. During these months, we have been honored to launch several initiatives to help educators and students to better make this transition, and are glad to recap a few key milestones.


After launching our Teach from Anywhere hub in April last year, we have since extended it to eight Indian languages (including English,) and it has helped more than 9 Lakh people to get started with remote teaching. Apart from these web-based training resources, we also believed it important to help impart hands-on training. So when CBSE, Kendriya Vidyalaya and the education ministries of Maharashtra and Delhi State Governments embarked on large-scale digital capacity building efforts, we worked with them to provide knowledge and access to Google for Education tools like Google Classroom, Google Meet and more. Till date, over 5 lakh teachers have attended these webinars that teach the use of digital tools for pedagogy and skills development.


But nothing has been more heartening than seeing teachers from rural areas reporting higher levels of satisfaction, peer recognition, and comfort with technology after these training sessions. One such example is Azmat, an English teacher from Shirdi Urdu High School in Maharashtra, among the many schools that had to shut down in-person teaching last year. Watch the inspiring story of how he and his students continued to keep the education momentum going, even in these challenging times.



The next era of our education products


Today, during our Learning with Google event, we shared our commitment to this community and provided a glimpse into some of the 50+ new, upcoming features across our education products that we hope will support even more learning. We want to enable every leader to bring innovation to their schools and universities, and give them the peace of mind that they’re investing in products that are secure and flexible to their needs.


We are glad to announce the next era of G Suite for Education — Google Workspace for Education – which offers educators and teachers even more choice and control. Google Workspace for Education includes all the products you already use, like Classroom, Meet, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and many more. Our free edition G Suite for Education will be renamed to Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals. If you’re currently using this edition, you won't see any changes besides a new name and new features. 


For institutions that require more powerful security tools or want to expand the teaching and learning tools available to their instructors, we are introducing three new paid editions: Google Workspace for Education Standard, The Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Google Workspace for Education Plus (formerly G Suite Enterprise for Education).


More than 170 million students and educators worldwide rely on our suite of tools, and we are bringing many new helpful features to Google Classroom and Google Meet. Let’s take a look at some of these:


Google Classroom

  • Offline mode: We’re making the Classroom Android app work offline, or with intermittent connections. Students will be able to start their work offline, review their assignments, open Drive attachments, and write assignments in Google Docs — all without an internet connection.

  • Improved mobile grading: We're improving how educators can grade in the Classroom Android app. We’ve seen more and more teachers around the world using mobile devices for giving feedback on the go, and these improvements will make it much easier for instructors to switch between student submissions, grade work while viewing an assignment, and share feedback.

  • Classroom add-ons: Having tools that work well together is so important. Coming later this year to teachers using Education Plus or Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Classroom add-ons let teachers integrate their favourite third-party EdTech tools and content directly into the Classroom interface, all without any extra log-ins.


Google Meet

  • Multiple moderators: Later this year, meetings will support multiple hosts, making it easier to partner with others helping facilitate the class. All hosts will have access to moderation controls, so they can share the load of managing who can join, controlling who can use the chat or present their screen, and more.

  • End meeting for all: Teachers will have the option to "End meeting for all", so they have complete control, and can prevent students from staying on a call after the teacher has left — including in breakout rooms.

  • Mute all: To make it easier to teach without interruption, educators will be able to easily mute all participants at once, and decide whether students can unmute themselves or not.


These and many other features will be rolling out in the coming months and over the course of this year. To get the full scoop on these announcements, check out Learning with Google, our global event that streamed in 15 languages, where you can hear a lot more directly from our team. For more details also see the new tools coming to Classroom and the new features coming to Meet.


Despite unforeseen obstacles, teaching and learning continued over the past year, all thanks to the heroic dedication of teachers like Azmat, of education leaders, as well as students and their families. We look forward to working together to reimagine learning and push the boundaries of what is possible, so that everyone has access to the quality learning experiences they deserve.


Posted by Bani Dhawan, Head of Education - South Asia

Tips for upping online safety this Safer Internet Day

Parenting was especially challenging in 2020. Our families needed to learn new habits like social distancing, wearing masks and frequently washing our hands. As a large part of our everyday lives moved online, with online learning becoming the main mode of schooling for many, it was necessary to teach our children to take extra precautions as well.


I am part of a team at Google that teaches online safety habits to people from all walks of life. Parents have always been concerned for the digital safety of their families. Recent research that we did alongside our Trust Research team in Asia-Pacific (Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam) and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico) found that parents with children attending school online were more concerned about online safety than ones whose children attended school in-person.


As a father of three kids who use the internet in very different ways, instilling safe habits can be a challenge. So today, on Safer Internet Day, I would like to share some tips to address the top three parental concerns when it comes to keeping our children safe online. 


  1. Protect their digital identities.
    The privacy and security of their children’s information was the top concern of parents we surveyed. Parents cited concerns around scams or hacking of their child’s accounts. Here are some simple ways to safeguard your kids’ information: 


  • Teach your children how to choose strong passwords that cannot be easily guessed. Avoid simple passwords that use names, birthdates, or even favourite cartoon characters. And don’t forget to check your own passwords!

  • It is also useful to stick to platforms that have a strong reputation for user safety. For instance, using an email service like Gmail comes with built-in safety filters to detect phishing emails, blocking 99.9% of phishing attacks from ever reaching your inbox.


  1. Know who they talk to.
    Social isolation is a difficult outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our children connect with their friends online, whether through messaging apps or voice chat while playing games. It is important for parents to be aware that these channels can also be used by ill-intentioned strangers to reach out to our children. Just as in real life, it is important to be aware of who our children talk to online. 


  • Try to talk to your kids about the games they play or the videos they watch, and also the people they play with online. I always remind my kids to come to me immediately if they face any situation online that makes them feel uncomfortable. In India, 74% of parents with children attending school online during the Covid-19 pandemic expressed increased concern about online safety. But interestingly, 34% or more than a third of parents interviewed have never spoken to their children about online safety. We need to work hard to reassure our children that we are here to guide and protect them. 

  • When assessing if a game is suitable for your child, it is important to check not only the content of the game, but also whether the app allows online communications with others. Some multiplayer games allow only a few options for social interaction, like a thumbs up rather than a text chat. This reduces risks of unwanted social interactions by quite a lot.

  1. Offer appropriate content at the appropriate age.
    The fear of children encountering inappropriate content has long been among the top concerns of parents in surveys. There are family safety features that parents can use to help guard their children from content that may not be suitable for their age. In India, our survey showed  that 71% of parents are currently using online family safety features. Here are some features that you can start using today: 


  • Turning on SafeSearch on Google helps filter out explicit content in Google’s search results for all searches, including images, videos and websites. SafeSearch is designed to help block explicit results like pornography from Google search results.

  • Manage your child’s device by creating a Google account for your child and using Family Link. This allows you to add filters on Google Search, block websites or only give access to the ones you allow or track the location of your child if they have their own device.

  • Many parental controls are available on YouTube Kids. You are able to limit screen time, only show videos that you approve or select suitable content based on the age of your child.


Some other time-tested tips include allowing children to use the internet only in common areas in the home such as the living room. But the tough part is leading by example!

At the end of the day, the core of our parenting journey lies in the relationships we build with our children. They require our guidance on the internet as much as they do in the real world. Tiring as 2020, and now 2021, has been, I am grateful that I have had more time with my family and to appreciate what each of them brings to my life.


Let’s work together to make the internet a safe place for our children to learn, create and explore.


Posted by Lucian Teo, Online Safety Education Lead

Simplifying our Play Store policies on gamified loyalty programs

Google Play is a vibrant platform where developers are constantly innovating to delight users and address emerging needs. Striking the right balance between developer creativity and user trust is critical to building a thriving ecosystem that enables these innovative solutions to become successful businesses. We accomplish this balance through a set of policies that are regularly reviewed and revised, to ensure that we do right by both developers and users.

App developers in India are actively building uniquely Indian features and services.  One example is the use of mini games, quizzes and other gamification techniques to delight users and convert them into loyal customers. These experiences are often launched during important festivals and sporting events, and getting it right within the specific time window is critically important. This is one of the things we discussed when we spoke to several startup CEOs in India and around the world in the past few months. And, as part of the very first policy update of 2021 we are clarifying and simplifying the policies around loyalty programs and features. 

Based on feedback from developers globally, we have updated our policy guidance on gamified loyalty programs that are based on a qualified monetary transaction in the app and offer prizes of cash or other real-world value. 

The update provides more clarity on policy requirements for loyalty program disclosures and features. It is designed to safeguard users and optimize the developer experience. For example, the policy provides updated guidance on the use of features such as a spin-the-wheel experience, a guessing game, or a 1:1 points redemption to drive loyalty. See the Play Policy Center for more details.

While we do not allow Real Money Gambling apps on the Play Store in India, we remain committed to engaging with industry and government bodies as they deliberate on measures that will best support this industry.

Today we are also launching a web resource called How Google Play Works – a repository of useful information and best practices to enable developers to continue delivering innovative and secure apps and games to people around the world. It also contains India-specific details on programs that local developers can leverage to find success and scale. For users, this site helps to demystify key aspects of the Google Play platform, and explains how user security and protection remains at the heart of everything we do.

As India’s digital ecosystem continues its exponential growth, we consider ourselves fortunate to play a part in its success. We are committed to enabling a trusted ecosystem and being responsive to the needs of India’s entrepreneurs as they build innovative and engaging experiences for consumers around the world.

Posted by Suzanne Frey, Vice President, Product, Android Security and Privacy