Author Archives: Johnny Luu

YouTube Rewind: Aussies loved skits, tricks and Superwog in 2017

From Donald Trump to ping pong trick shots, 2017 was a year of marvelous mashups, clever tricks and homegrown comedic skits. As we wind down the year, it’s time to hit rewind and celebrate the videos that made Aussies laugh, sing – and scratch their heads. #YouTubeRewind is our annual roundup of the YouTube videos that trended over the last 12 months, according to time spent watching, sharing, commenting, liking and more.


Australia’s Top Trending Videos

Among the mix of educational tips and eccentric talents, 2017 was the time for Aussie creators to shine. With their irreverent skits, comedic duo Superwog took centerstage in the Top Trending videos – landing first, second and sixth places.


Aussies also tuned into global trends, including karaoke, talent shows and viral memes. We made light of mean celebrity tweets, poked fun at a political mashup – and sang along with Ed Sheeran on Carpool Karaoke. We also shared in an extraordinary ping pong victory, cheered on a 12 year old ventriloquist – and explored existential questions with Bill Wurtz’s quirky illustration of the history of the world.

  1. Superwog Series Pilot
  2. If Superwog was a Teacher
  3. "INAUGURATION DAY" — A Bad Lip Reading of Donald Trump's Inauguration
  4. Celebrities Read Mean Tweets #11
  5. Ping Pong Trick Shots 3 | Dude Perfect
  6. Border Security (Superwog)
  7. Ed Sheeran Carpool Karaoke
  8. history of the entire world, i guess
  9. Darci Lynne: 12-Year-Old Singing Ventriloquist Gets Golden Buzzer - America's Got Talent 2017
  10. Content Cop - Jake Paul



Australia’s Top Music Videos

In 2017, we were hooked on Ed Sheeran’s dulcet tunes, with ‘Shape of You’ making two appearances in Australia’s top trending music list. Unsurprisingly, party tracks kept us grooving, with DJ Khaled, The Chainsmokers, Justin Bieber, Jason Derulo drawing an online crowd. And despite only being released in late August, Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated comeback saw ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ come in at sixth.


  1. Ed Sheeran - Shape of You [Official Video]
  2. DJ Khaled - I'm the One ft. Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, Lil Wayne
  3. Bruno Mars - That’s What I Like [Official Video]
  4. Luis Fonsi - Despacito ft. Daddy Yankee
  5. The Chainsmokers & Coldplay - Something Just Like This (Lyric)
  6. Taylor Swift - Look What You Made Me Do
  7. Kendrick Lamar - HUMBLE.
  8. DJ Khaled - Wild Thoughts ft. Rihanna, Bryson Tiller
  9. Ed Sheeran - Shape Of You [Official Lyric Video]
  10. Jason Derulo - Swalla (feat. Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign) (Official Music Video)


Top Emerging Australian Creators

For the first time, #YouTubeRewind also examined the growth of local channels to unearth the top 10 Trending Aussie YouTube Creators for 2017. Five out of ten of the top channels are in the gaming and animation category – with ‘Wolfychu’ landing the number one spot. We also tuned into make-up tips and tricks from BEAUTY NEWS, which came in second.

  1. Wolfychu
  2. BEAUTY NEWS
  3. XtremeGamez
  4. Zeus
  5. Freya Haley
  6. But Without
  7. Ollie Ritchie
  8. Eystreem
  9. Robot Army
  10. CultureCrash



Stay tuned to see the YouTube’s Rewind video, celebrating the top memes and moments of the year from around the world!  


Posted by Camilla Ibrahim, Communications & Public Affairs Manager, YouTube Australia and New Zealand

Expanding our work against abuse of our platform

As the CEO of YouTube, I’ve seen how our open platform has been a force for creativity, learning and access to information. I’ve seen how activists have used it to advocate for social change, mobilize protests, and document war crimes. I’ve seen how it serves as both an entertainment destination and a video library for the world. I’ve seen how it has expanded economic opportunity, allowing small businesses to market and sell their goods across borders. And I’ve seen how it has helped enlighten my children, giving them a bigger, broader understanding of our world and the billions who inhabit it.

But I’ve also seen up-close that there can be another, more troubling, side of YouTube’s openness. I’ve seen how some bad actors are exploiting our openness to mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm.

In the last year, we took actions to protect our community against violent or extremist content, testing new systems to combat emerging and evolving threats. We tightened our policies on what content can appear on our platform, or earn revenue for creators. We increased our enforcement teams. And we invested in powerful new machine learning technology to scale the efforts of our human moderators to take down videos and comments that violate our policies.

Now, we are applying the lessons we’ve learned from our work fighting violent extremism content over the last year in order to tackle other problematic content. Our goal is to stay one step ahead of bad actors, making it harder for policy-violating content to surface or remain on YouTube.

More people reviewing more content
Human reviewers remain essential to both removing content and training machine learning systems because human judgment is critical to making contextualized decisions on content. Since June, our trust and safety teams have manually reviewed nearly 2 million videos for violent extremist content, helping train our machine-learning technology to identify similar videos in the future. We are also taking aggressive action on comments, launching new comment moderation tools and in some cases shutting down comments altogether. In the last few weeks we’ve used machine learning to help human reviewers find and terminate hundreds of accounts and shut down hundreds of thousands of comments. Our teams also work closely with NCMEC, the IWF, and other child safety organizations around the world to report predatory behavior and accounts to the correct law enforcement agencies.

We will continue the significant growth of our teams into next year, with the goal of bringing the total number of people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies to over 10,000 in 2018.

At the same time, we are expanding the network of academics, industry groups and subject matter experts who we can learn from and support to help us better understand emerging issues.

Tackling issues at scale
We will use our cutting-edge machine learning more widely to allow us to quickly and efficiently remove content that violates our guidelines. In June we deployed this technology to flag violent extremist content for human review and we’ve seen tremendous progress.

  • Since June we have removed over 150,000 videos for violent extremism.
  • Machine learning is helping our human reviewers remove nearly five times as many videos than they were previously.
  • Today, 98 percent of the videos we remove for violent extremism are flagged by our machine-learning algorithms.
  • Our advances in machine learning let us now take down nearly 70 percent of violent extremist content within eight hours of upload and nearly half of it in two hours and we continue to accelerate that speed.
  • Since we started using machine learning to flag violent and extremist content in June, the technology has reviewed and flagged content that would have taken 180,000 people working 40 hours a week to assess.

Because we have seen these positive results, we have begun training machine-learning technology across other challenging content areas, including child safety and hate speech.

Greater transparency
We understand that people want a clearer view of how we’re tackling problematic content. Our Community Guidelines give users notice about what we do not allow on our platforms and we want to share more information about how these are enforced. That’s why in 2018 we will be creating a regular report where we will provide more aggregate data about the flags we receive and the actions we take to remove videos and comments that violate our content policies. We are looking into developing additional tools to help bring even more transparency around flagged content.

A new approach to advertising on YouTube
We’re also taking actions to protect advertisers and creators from inappropriate content. We want advertisers to have peace of mind that their ads are running alongside content that reflects their brand’s values. Equally, we want to give creators confidence that their revenue won’t be hurt by the actions of bad actors.

We believe this requires a new approach to advertising on YouTube, carefully considering which channels and videos are eligible for advertising. We are planning to apply stricter criteria, conduct more manual curation, while also significantly ramping up our team of ad reviewers to ensure ads are only running where they should. This will also help vetted creators see more stability around their revenue. It’s important we get this right for both advertisers and creators, and over the next few weeks, we’ll be speaking with both to hone this approach.

We are taking these actions because it’s the right thing to do. Creators make incredible content that builds global fan bases. Fans come to YouTube to watch, share, and engage with this content. Advertisers, who want to reach those people, fund this creator economy. Each of these groups is essential to YouTube’s creative ecosystem—none can thrive on YouTube without the other—and all three deserve our best efforts.

As challenges to our platform evolve and change, our enforcement methods must and will evolve to respond to them. But no matter what challenges emerge, our commitment to combat them will be sustained and unwavering. We will take the steps necessary to protect our community and ensure that YouTube continues to be a place where creators, advertisers, and viewers can thrive.

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube

Expanding our work against abuse of our platform

As the CEO of YouTube, I’ve seen how our open platform has been a force for creativity, learning and access to information. I’ve seen how activists have used it to advocate for social change, mobilize protests, and document war crimes. I’ve seen how it serves as both an entertainment destination and a video library for the world. I’ve seen how it has expanded economic opportunity, allowing small businesses to market and sell their goods across borders. And I’ve seen how it has helped enlighten my children, giving them a bigger, broader understanding of our world and the billions who inhabit it.

But I’ve also seen up-close that there can be another, more troubling, side of YouTube’s openness. I’ve seen how some bad actors are exploiting our openness to mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm.

In the last year, we took actions to protect our community against violent or extremist content, testing new systems to combat emerging and evolving threats. We tightened our policies on what content can appear on our platform, or earn revenue for creators. We increased our enforcement teams. And we invested in powerful new machine learning technology to scale the efforts of our human moderators to take down videos and comments that violate our policies.

Now, we are applying the lessons we’ve learned from our work fighting violent extremism content over the last year in order to tackle other problematic content. Our goal is to stay one step ahead of bad actors, making it harder for policy-violating content to surface or remain on YouTube.

More people reviewing more content 
Human reviewers remain essential to both removing content and training machine learning systems because human judgment is critical to making contextualized decisions on content. Since June, our trust and safety teams have manually reviewed nearly 2 million videos for violent extremist content, helping train our machine-learning technology to identify similar videos in the future. We are also taking aggressive action on comments, launching new comment moderation tools and in some cases shutting down comments altogether. In the last few weeks we’ve used machine learning to help human reviewers find and terminate hundreds of accounts and shut down hundreds of thousands of comments. Our teams also work closely with NCMEC, the IWF, and other child safety organizations around the world to report predatory behavior and accounts to the correct law enforcement agencies.

We will continue the significant growth of our teams into next year, with the goal of bringing the total number of people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies to over 10,000 in 2018.

At the same time, we are expanding the network of academics, industry groups and subject matter experts who we can learn from and support to help us better understand emerging issues.

Tackling issues at scale 
We will use our cutting-edge machine learning more widely to allow us to quickly and efficiently remove content that violates our guidelines. In June we deployed this technology to flag violent extremist content for human review and we’ve seen tremendous progress.

  • Since June we have removed over 150,000 videos for violent extremism. 
  • Machine learning is helping our human reviewers remove nearly five times as many videos than they were previously. 
  • Today, 98 percent of the videos we remove for violent extremism are flagged by our machine-learning algorithms. 
  • Our advances in machine learning let us now take down nearly 70 percent of violent extremist content within eight hours of upload and nearly half of it in two hours and we continue to accelerate that speed. 
  • Since we started using machine learning to flag violent and extremist content in June, the technology has reviewed and flagged content that would have taken 180,000 people working 40 hours a week to assess. 
Because we have seen these positive results, we have begun training machine-learning technology across other challenging content areas, including child safety and hate speech.


Greater transparency 

We understand that people want a clearer view of how we’re tackling problematic content. Our Community Guidelines give users notice about what we do not allow on our platforms and we want to share more information about how these are enforced. That’s why in 2018 we will be creating a regular report where we will provide more aggregate data about the flags we receive and the actions we take to remove videos and comments that violate our content policies. We are looking into developing additional tools to help bring even more transparency around flagged content. 


A new approach to advertising on YouTube 

We’re also taking actions to protect advertisers and creators from inappropriate content. We want advertisers to have peace of mind that their ads are running alongside content that reflects their brand’s values. Equally, we want to give creators confidence that their revenue won’t be hurt by the actions of bad actors. 

We believe this requires a new approach to advertising on YouTube, carefully considering which channels and videos are eligible for advertising. We are planning to apply stricter criteria, conduct more manual curation, while also significantly ramping up our team of ad reviewers to ensure ads are only running where they should. This will also help vetted creators see more stability around their revenue. It’s important we get this right for both advertisers and creators, and over the next few weeks, we’ll be speaking with both to hone this approach. 

We are taking these actions because it’s the right thing to do. Creators make incredible content that builds global fan bases. Fans come to YouTube to watch, share, and engage with this content. Advertisers, who want to reach those people, fund this creator economy. Each of these groups is essential to YouTube’s creative ecosystem—none can thrive on YouTube without the other—and all three deserve our best efforts. 

As challenges to our platform evolve and change, our enforcement methods must and will evolve to respond to them. But no matter what challenges emerge, our commitment to combat them will be sustained and unwavering. We will take the steps necessary to protect our community and ensure that YouTube continues to be a place where creators, advertisers, and viewers can thrive. 

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube

Celebrating Australia’s most innovative regional businesses in 2017

A gourmet garlic producer in regional New South Wales, an indigenous textile designer from the Northern Territory and a luxury tourism operator on Tasmania’s Bruny Island… This year’s Regional Online Heroes are leading the way in using the web to innovate and grow.

Australian businesses are realising the benefits of getting online, using the internet to reach customers near and far. Research shows that digitally engaged small businesses are more likely to be growing, which is great news for jobs and local communities.

Businesses in regional Australia have much to gain from getting online and many are already using the web in innovative ways. That’s why, for the third year in a row, we’ve teamed up with the Regional Australia Institute to find SMBs that are doing great things online.

In November, we announced the ten Regional Online Heroes finalists:

  • The Bruny Island Long Weekend - a boutique tourism provider supporting sustainable tourism on Bruny Island; 
  • Birth Beat - a midwife using the internet to bring childbirth education to expectant parents across the country; 
  • Erilan Mastectomy Collection - a unique clothing retailer fitting and supplying prostheses, lingerie and clothing for women who have undergone breast surgery; 
  • Garlicious Grown - friends producing and selling black garlic products, from paddock to plate across Australia and overseas; 
  • Graziher - a magazine publisher sharing the stories of women living in rural and remote parts of Australia; 
  • The Lake House Denmark - a family-owned winery, cellar door, restaurant and café promoting and selling their gourmet products online; 
  • Magpie Goose - a social enterprise showcasing and celebrating Indigenous culture through its clothing range, designed and created in remote Aboriginal communities; 
  • One Hour Out - an online travel guide sharing the hidden gems of regional Victoria; 
  • Pointer Remote Roles - an online platform helping connect businesses with the best person to fill a vacant role regardless of location; and 
  • VetShop Australia - a one-stop pet and vet shop, stocking a range of products and creating educational videos to help pet owners locally and overseas. 


On Friday, these business owners came together for an exclusive masterclass at the Google office in Sydney, where they had the chance to share their stories and develop new digital skills.



Our panel of esteemed judges included The Hon Michael McCormack MP, Minister for Small Business; Jack Archer, CEO of the Regional Australia Institute; Jane Cay, Founder of Birdsnest; David Koch, TV host and business advocate; and Dr Sandra Phillips, Leading Indigenous Scholar at QUT.

We were delighted to announce Magpie Goose as the 2017 Regional Online Hero. Magpie Goose is a social enterprise from the Northern Territory creating bright, bold, statement clothing from fabric designed and hand screen printed in remote Aboriginal communities.



Minister for Small Business, the Hon Michael McCormack MP said Magpie Goose is a great example of how businesses can succeed in regional Australia.

“This year’s entries really demonstrate how small businesses are embracing technological advances and online connectivity in regional and rural Australia to target new and emerging markets,” Mr McCormack said.

More than 100 businesses from across Australia applied, with fantastic examples of how the internet is helping their business grow and prosper.

For more information check out the Regional Online Heroes visit the website. Congratulations again to our amazing online heroes!

Posted by John Ball, Director of Small Business, Google Australia

An eye fit for Liberty



Fourteen weeks into my wife Ashleigh’s pregnancy, she woke up one night and said, “we are having a girl, and we are going to name her Liberty.” A few months later, she turned out to be right—as she often is.

Ashleigh’s pregnancy was without complication. However, at only one week old, Liberty was diagnosed with Bilateral Microphthalmia, a rare eye condition. She needed a prosthetic eye to assist with facial growth, which meant we needed to find an ocularist, someone who specializes in the crafting and fitting of prosthetic eyes. What ensued was two years of ups and downs for Liberty and eventual hopelessness for us, as the eyes Liberty got after the first year weren’t fitting properly, and caused her extreme pain. During one dreadful appointment, Liberty was fitted with a mismatched eye that was bulging out of her head. After a silent four-hour drive back home with Ashleigh in tears and myself full of anger and determination, I decided I was going to start making Liberty's eye for her.

That night, I started searching on Google for tools and supplies I would need, and videos from people in the field to study. Eventually I found the most useful tool in my training—YouTube—and a video posted by John Pacey-Lowrie, a renowned ocularist from the U.K. He had posted a couple of clips from his clinic detailing his unique method of eye-making, which borrowed techniques dentists use to make prosthetic teeth. John used YouTube to broadcast his technique and attract more talent into the ocularist field. It was his videos, and later apprenticeship, that took my training to the next level.

Late one night, I walked in from the garage and presented Ashleigh with “the eye,” the best one I’d made a year of attempting John’s technique. Ashleigh was my only quality control at the time, and she examined the eye closely before finally giving me the greenlight to try it on Liberty the next day. 

Sure enough, the eye not only fit, but looked great.

The more I worked on Liberty’s eyes, the more I thought about helping other people in need. I didn’t want anyone to go through the pain our family did. Learning this craft went from being a necessity to a passion to an entirely new career.

Which is what we’re doing now. Ashleigh and I have recently opened our own clinic, Oculus Prosthetics, where our patients are young children and adults alike. We treat those with Liberty’s condition, as well as patients with retinoblastoma and other eye traumas. I’m also borrowing a page from John’s playbook and sharing what I’ve learned on YouTube, to help other patients and parents of children in need.

As a parent, you want your kids to look and feel as normal as possible. Liberty remains an extraordinarily empathetic little girl who blows us away daily with her strength and enthusiasm for life, despite all the challenges she has faced. Liberty loves meeting friends just like her, and especially loves bragging about the eye her father made her.

Posted by Dwayne Collins, Occularist https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/images/171011_House_2228_1.width-1000.jpg

No shame when you Ask Izzy

Finding help for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who make up almost a quarter of those supported by Australia’s homeless services, is often a struggle.
That’s all about to change with the release of the redesigned Ask Izzy mobile website that now allows users to search for dedicated housing, health, food services and much more.
Lucy Turnbull and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull launching Ask Izzy in January, 2016.
 Since it was launched in January 2016 by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Ask Izzy has had more than 500 000 searches for help with over 10 percent of users identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
Ask Izzy was built using funds and support from Google, through the Google.org Impact Challenge, as well as REA Group and News Corporation Australia. Its designers included people who have lived through being homeless, and the frontline workers who support them.
Infoxchange CEO David Spriggs (centre) with Google Australia managing director Jason Pellegrino and Google.org director Jacqueline Fuller.
With almost 80 percent of people who are homeless owning a smartphone, Infoxchange CEO David Spriggs says mobile technology provides an easy way to help people find support:
“We believe Ask Izzy is a vital tool for individuals and organisations working with Aboriginal communities. It will help to find the right services to support people facing challenges.”
The redesigned website aims to break down the barriers of people sometimes feeling ashamed and overwhelmed when seeking support, and instead helps them to feel welcome and included. Dan Laws, Coordinator of the Aboriginal Homelessness Network at Ngwala Willumbong, has assisted Infoxchange in reaching out to local communities and says this project has been a long time coming:
“Feedback from community has been one of ‘at last’ in terms of Ask Izzy’s helpfulness. As an Aboriginal person and one who works in the homelessness and family violence sectors, I have found the website to be beneficial to me as a reference guide, but more importantly to the people we support.”
Changes affecting indigenous people across Ask Izzy include:

  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service listings can now be prioritised across a number of categories, including housing, health, support and counselling, legal and finding work.
  • More than 1500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services have been added or updated this year and there are now over 16,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services on Ask Izzy. 

Posted by Nic Hopkins, public affairs manager, Google Australia https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9Wx3k4vYEKo/WBg27bTCnNI/AAAAAAAAA_M/OJj6ETxPpgIszlJe__CW1JRi7Uv40OcTwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/GoogleImpactChallenge-2195.jpgNic HopkinsManager, public affairsGoogle Australia

Marriage equality will make us feel safer, more included

Today I’m a step closer to being able to call my wife my wife!
Earlier this year my father-in-law Professor Graeme Stewart, AO, stated in his wedding speech to my wife and I: “As a physician and scientist I know that same sex attraction is a simple biological variant. One doesn’t choose it any more than one chooses one’s blood group or to be tall or short or to be right or left-handed. It just happens.”
Tara (right) and her wife Jess on their wedding day in Hawaii.
Being gay is not a lifestyle I chose, it is who I am. My wife and I have had to create a world within society to feel like we belong. We have created a gay friendly bubble to protect ourselves from outside prejudice that might exist. Whenever we choose to leave our bubble we have to assess how ‘safe’ an area or situation is, and we change simple behaviours accordingly, we often have to be conscious of how we address each other, and how we show affection to each other.
Unfortunately this is the way most LGBTQI people have to live in modern society to protect themselves and avoid potential harm and unwanted attention. The danger however of living like this, restricting your social circles, and retreating into gay friendly communities is you can forget the reality that exists in the ‘real world’, you forget about the discrimination that members of the LGBTQI community face who live under different circumstances.
What this “yes” result means for the gay community is acceptance. Knowing that the majority of Australians agree with same sex marriage makes us feel safer, more included, and we feel less segregated, and most importantly we can openly celebrate our love, commitment and relationships with our family and friends like the rest of the Australian population.
I hope one day (soon!) to unashamedly, call my wife my wife, without having to awkwardly explain our marriage is legal in the state of Hawaii and every country that has legalised gay marriage, and not have to feel ashamed and accept sympathy glances when we attend our friends weddings and the words ‘marriage is between a man and a women with exclusion of all others’ are read aloud.
Today, the survey results show most Australians recognise the LGBTQI community as equal, and now we are just simply...normal.
Posted by Tara Mckenty, creative director at Google in Sydney

YouTube – The Australian Story

As the world’s most popular video site, YouTube is helping to build a new creative ecosystem by supporting Australian content creators. Today we released our first ever report on how YouTube is helping those creators: YouTube - The Australian Story.
While we all know Australians love to watch YouTube, less well known are the stories of the Australian YouTube creators who are making uniquely Aussie content for both local and global audiences. Australian content on YouTube is wildly popular among overseas audiences, with more than 90% of views coming from overseas in 2016. This provides Australian YouTube creators with access to a global audience. In the process, they are building real businesses around their YouTube channels, which have become central to their ongoing success.
Josiah Brooks from Draw with Jazza
In 2016 alone, Australian YouTube creators earned significant incomes from advertising on YouTube, with more than 100 channels earning more than $100,000 and more than 2000 channels earning between $1,000 and $100,000. This money is generated from the advertising that is displayed against creators’ content on YouTube. Creators are also earning money by leveraging their channels in other ways including through fan meet-ups, merchandise sales and sponsorships.
This has allowed talented YouTube creators like Josiah Brooks (aka Draw with Jazza) to earn a living from his art content. Josiah started his YouTube channel in 2012 hoping that it would one day help to pay his bills. Five years later he has two million subscribers, and his videos have been viewed more than 220 million times.

In his words: "YouTube has made it possible for me to run an art entertainment channel from regional Victoria, which reaches a large global audience and provides a substantial income. My channel began within a 'niche', producing specialized content, although over time I've have been able to shift towards the mainstream and compete with some of the world's top YouTube channels."
As well as Josiah’s video content, which is sponsored by major brands like Adobe and Disney, Josiah has also been able to monetise his YouTube success through his best selling App, ‘Jazza’s Arty Games’, and an online store hosted on his website.
Here he’s been able to sell artwork, games, reference packs and e-books. He’s even selling his ‘signature photoshop brushes’ allowing viewers on his YouTube channel to develop advanced skills in digital art.
Brothers Danny and Michael Philippou from The Racka Racka

This type of success is only possible because of the high quality and engaging content Australian creators are producing on YouTube. Danny and Michael Philippou, the twin brothers from Adelaide behind The Racka Racka, have built a fanbase of more than four million subscribers on YouTube and their content has been viewed more than 500 million times. They have been described by the CEO of Screen Australia as the “most successful content creators in the country”.
The Racka Racka features in the top ten most subscribed channels in Australia and is reaching a global audience through YouTube.
As they say: “Without YouTube we wouldn't be anywhere. Before it we were struggling to be noticed or seen. YouTube gave us access to millions of people and the opportunities it has provided us are incredible!”
Being able to reach a global audience is a massive advantage for Australian content creators. And this is leading to an explosion in the amount of Australian content being produced. In 2016, more than 550,000 hours of video was uploaded by Australian creators to YouTube.
Put another way, every minute more than one hour of content is uploaded to Australian YouTube channels. With YouTube’s global reach the possibilities for Australian creators are endless!
Posted by Daniel Stephenson, content partnerships manager for YouTube

Communicate around the house with the Google Assistant



Cross-posted from the Google Keyword blog

From dinner bells to shouting, attempting to gather the family from around the house is nothing new. And now, your Google Assistant is getting in on the game.
Starting today, you can broadcast your voice from your Assistant on your phone or voice-activated speakers, like Google Home. So when you need to round up the family in the morning, just say “Ok Google, broadcast it’s time for school!” and your message will broadcast to all Assistant enabled speakers in your home.
For certain everyday things like waking up, dinnertime or settling down for bed, the Assistant can send a playful message on your behalf. Just say “Ok Google, broadcast it’s dinner time” and a dinner bell will ring on all your Google Homes. ? Now you don't have to wear out your voice shouting up the stairs.
And if you’re just leaving the office, you can let your family know you’re coming with a simple “Ok Google, broadcast I’m on my way home!” to the Assistant on your phone, and it will broadcast to your Google Homes. To ensure that broadcasting works across all your devices, make sure you’re signed in with the same Google Account. See our help center to learn more.
Broadcasting starts rolling out today to the Assistant on phones and speakers set to English language in the U.S., Australia, Canada and the U.K., with more languages coming soon.

Posted by Alex Duong, Product Manager, Google Home and Nam Do, Software Engineer, Google Assistant

Family Link arrives in Australia

Every year, more and more Aussie children are using mobile devices, and according to our research, 50% of kids in Australia between the ages of 2-12 now have their own phone or tablet. Managing a child’s use of these devices can be a challenge. Parents have concerns about stuff like screen time and the apps their children are using, just like they have concerns about protecting their little ones in the real world. Parents want to help guide their child’s experience online, while also allowing them to explore and be inspired. Starting this week, parents in Australia will be able to use Family Link to help them manage their child’s Android device, including apps their child can use, keeping an eye on screen time, setting a bedtime for their child’s device, and more.  

Here’s how it works: First, your child will need a new or factory reset Android device (see which devices work with Family Link). When setting up your child’s device, we’ll ask you to create an account. Enter your child’s birthday, and if they’re under 13, you can set up a Google Account for them that you can manage. When you’re finished, Family Link will automatically be downloaded to your child’s device, and you can choose the apps and settings that you want for your child. You can then use Family Link to:

Manage the apps your child can use

Approve or block the apps your child wants to download from the Google Play Store.
Keep an eye on screen time

See how much time your child spends on their favorite apps with weekly or monthly activity reports, and set daily screen time limits for their device.


Set a device bedtime

Remotely lock your child’s device when it’s time to play, study, or sleep.


While no app can make apps or services that were designed for adults "child-safe," Family Link can help parents stay in the loop and set certain ground rules around how children use their devices. As we continue to develop Family Link, we’d love to hear feedback from Australian parents on how we can make the Family Link experience even better. Share your feedback right in the Family Link app from the Help menu. You can learn more at our website, and if you have questions about setting up an account for your child or using Family Link, check out our Help Center.

Posted by Charles Zaffaroni, Product Manager, Kids and Families