Author Archives: Johnny Luu

Google Pixel Buds — wireless headphones that help you do more





What if your headphones could do more than let you listen to your favourite music? What if they could help you get things done without having to look at your phone? What if they could help you answer (almost!) any question just by asking, or even help you understand someone speaking a different language?

We wanted to make a more helpful pair of headphones. Today, we’re introducing Google Pixel Buds. They’re wireless headphones that not only sound great, but are seamless to use and charge, offer help from the Google Assistant, and have a few extra smarts so you can get the answers you need while keeping your eyes up.



Fit them, charge them, pair them—made simple

From getting the right fit, to keeping them charged, Pixel Buds are really simple to use. They’ve got a unique fabric loop, making them comfortable, secure, and quick to adjust without having to swap out pieces. We put all the audio controls into a touchpad on the right earbud, so there aren’t any buttons hanging on the cord. Just swipe forward or backward to control volume and tap to play or pause your music. Charging and storing them is easy - they nestle right into a pocket-sized charging case that gives you up to 24 hours of listening time. And, pairing them is a cinch. Just open the charging case near your Pixel or Android phone running Android 7.0 Nougat or higher with the Assistant, and your phone will automatically detect them and ask you if you want to connect.

Get help from the Google Assistant with just a touch

Pixel Buds bring Google smarts right to your ears, with answers and intel that would make James Bond jealous. Touch and hold the right earbud to ask your Assistant to play music, make a phone call, or get directions, all without pulling out your phone. If you have an upcoming meeting or you’re waiting on a text from a friend, the Assistant can alert you to a calendar event or incoming message, and even read it to you if you can’t look at your phone at that moment.

Be multilingual with Google Translate and Pixel

And, they can even act as your translator in real-time using Google Translate on Pixel. It’s like you’ve got your own personal translator with you everywhere you go. Say you’re on a trip to Melbourne’s Little Italy , and you want to order your pasta like a pro. All you have to do is hold down on the right earbud and say, “Help me speak Italian.” As you talk, your Pixel phone’s speaker will play the translation in Italian out loud. When the waiter responds in Italian, you’ll hear the translation through your Pixel Buds. If you’re more of a sushi or French comfort food fan, no need to worry, it works in 40 languages.
Pixel Buds come in three colors—Just Black, Clearly White, and Kinda Blue to match your Pixel 2 (sold separately). They’ll be available from the Google Store and select Telstra and JB Hi-Fi stores soon for $249 (RRP).


With Pixel Buds, we’re excited to put all the power of the Google Assistant into a pair of headphones you can take with you everywhere, so you can easily control your tunes, get walking directions to the nearest coffee spot or have a conversation with someone from another country without ever pulling out your phone.

Posted by Adam Champy,  Product Manager for Pixel Buds

Kayaking, cheese and digital skills.. Welcome to Tassie

More than 1 million people visit Tasmania each year. They go for the rugged landscape, great food and wine, historic sites and world-class cultural institutions. Many of these trips are researched and booked online, and that means there’s a great opportunity for digitally savvy local businesses to connect with consumers.

With this in mind, more than 120 business owners came together in Hobart last Thursday for a free digital skills training event, hosted by Google Australia and the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The workshop aimed to help small business owners gain new digital skills and make the most of the web. Tasmanian Minister for Information Technology and Innovation, Michael Ferguson joined the event and spoke about the great digital opportunity for Tasmanian businesses.



Research from Deloitte found that digitally engaged small businesses are 1.5 times more likely to be growing and 7 times more likely to be exporting, but many businesses are not taking full advantage of today’s digital tools.



Guests heard from local business owner Robert Knight on how he uses Google tools to promote his tourism enterprise The Bruny Island Long Weekend.

The Bruny Island Long Weekend is a family-owned and run business offering three-days of coastal walks, luxury camping and gourmet meals. Robert spoke about how he uses Google AdWords to reach new customers and shared tips for other businesses looking to engage online.

Images courtesy of The Bruny Island Long Weekend


Every month, Google drives tens of millions of direct connections between businesses and their customers in Australia including calls, online reservations and direction requests.

The opportunity for businesses in Tasmania and beyond is huge. Want to find out more about how to get your business online? Check out The Digital Garage online and find upcoming Digital Garage events - next stop Darwin!

Posted by John Ball, Country Manager, Google Marketing Solutions, Google Australia and New Zealand

Driving the future of digital subscriptions

Journalism provides accurate and timely information when it matters most, shaping our understanding of important issues and pushing us to learn more in search of the truth. People come to Google looking for high-quality content, and our job is to help them find it. However, sometimes that content is behind a paywall.
While research has shown that people are becoming more accustomed to paying for news, the sometimes painful process of signing up for a subscription can be a turn off. That’s not great for users or for news publishers who see subscriptions as an increasingly important source of revenue.
To address these problems we’ve been talking to news publishers about how to support their subscription businesses with a focus on the following:

  • First, Flexible Sampling will replace First Click Free. Publishers are in the best position to determine what level of free sampling works best for them. So as of this week, we are ending the First Click Free policy, which required publishers to provide a minimum of three free articles per day via Google Search and Google News before people were shown a paywall. 
  • Longer term, we are building a suite of products and services to help news publishers reach new audiences, drive subscriptions and grow revenue. 
  • We are also looking at how we can simplify the purchase process and make it easy for Google users to get the full value of their subscriptions across Google’s platforms. 

Our goal is to make subscriptions work seamlessly everywhere, for everyone.
First Click Free 
We will end our First Click Free policy in favour of a Flexible Sampling model where publishers will decide how many, if any, free articles they want to provide to potential subscribers based on their own business strategies. This move is informed by our own research, publisher feedback, and months-long experiments with the New York Times and the Financial Times, both of which operate successful subscription services.
"Google's decision to let publishers determine how much content readers can sample from search is a positive development,” said Kinsey Wilson, an adviser to New York Times CEO Mark Thompson. "We're encouraged as well by Google's willingness to consider other ways of supporting subscription business models and we are looking forward to continuing to work with them to craft smart solutions."
Publishers generally recognise that giving people access to some free content is the way to persuade people to buy their product. The typical approach to sampling is a model called metering, which lets people see a pre-determined number of free stories before a paywall kicks in. We recommend the following approach:

  • Monthly, rather than daily, metering allows publishers more flexibility to experiment with the number of free stories to offer people and to target those more likely to subscribe.
  • For most publishers, 10 articles per month is a good starting point.
  • Please see our Webmaster blog and our guide on Flexible Sampling for more detail on these approaches.

“Try before you buy” underlines what many publishers already know—they need to provide some form of free sampling to be successful on the internet. If it’s too little, then fewer users will click on links to that content or share it, which could have an effect on brand discovery and subsequently may affect traffic over time.
Subscription support
Subscribing to great content should not be as hard as it is today. Registering on a site, creating and remembering multiple passwords, and entering credit card information—these are all hassles we hope to solve.
As a first step we’re taking advantage of our existing identity and payment technologies to help people subscribe on a publication’s website with a single click, and then seamlessly access that content anywhere— whether it’s on that publisher site or mobile app, or on Google Newsstand, Google Search or Google News.
And since news products and subscription models vary widely, we’re collaborating with publishers around the world on how to build a subscription mechanism that can meet the needs of a diverse array of approaches—to the benefit of the news industry and consumers alike.
We’re also exploring how Google’s machine learning capabilities can help publishers recognise potential subscribers and present the right offer to the right audience at the right time.
“It's extremely clear that advertising alone can no longer pay for the production and distribution of high quality journalism—and at the same time the societal need for sustainable independent journalism has never been greater. Reader-based revenue, aka paid-content, or subscription services, are therefore not just a nice-to-have, but an essential component of a publisher's revenue composition,” said Jon Slade, FT Chief Commercial Officer. “The Financial Times is welcoming of Google's input and actions to help this critical sector of the media industry, and we've worked very closely with Google to aid understanding of the needs that publishers have and how Google can help. That mutual understanding includes the ability to set controls over the amount of free content given to readers, a level playing field for content discovery, optimised promotion and payment processes. It is important that we now build and accelerate on the discussions and actions to date.”
We are just getting started and want to get as much input from publishers—large, small, national, local, international—to make sure we build solutions together that work for everyone.
Richard Gingras, VP News, Google

Working together to combat terrorists online

Last week Google hosted a regional event in Jakarta exploring how ‘counter narratives’ can be used to prevent extremism.  Counter narratives can be described as responses to extremist ideas or propaganda and can take many forms.  The discussions extended to far right extremism and experiences using counter narratives within this community as well as the definition of extremism.
At the event there was strong representation from Australia with YouTube content creators, civil society groups, academics and policy makers joining the conversation. There was an unanimous agreement that none of us can address this challenge on our own - we need to come together in fora such as the one in Jakarta to share information and ideas; and explore opportunities where we can actively collaborate or support each other’s activities.  We look forward to continuing these conversations over the coming months, including within the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism that Kent Walker, our Global General Counsel, describes below.
Samantha Yorke, Policy Policy Manager, Google Australia

 [Editor’s note: This is a revised and abbreviated version of a speech Kent delivered at the United Nations in New York City, NY, on behalf of the members of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.]

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism is a group of four technology companies—Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube—that are committed to working together and with governments and civil society to address the problem of online terrorist content.
For our companies, terrorism isn’t just a business concern or a technical challenge. These are deeply personal threats. We are citizens of London, Paris, Jakarta, and New York. And in the wake of each terrorist attack we too frantically check in on our families and co-workers to make sure they are safe. We’ve all had to do this far too often.
The products that our companies build lower barriers to innovation and empower billions of people around the world. But we recognize that the internet and other tools have also been abused by terrorists in their efforts to recruit, fundraise, and organize. And we are committed to doing everything in our power to ensure that our platforms aren't used to distribute terrorist material.
The Forum’s efforts are focused on three areas: leveraging technology, conducting research on patterns of radicalization and misuse of online platforms, and sharing best practices to accelerate our joint efforts against dangerous radicalization. Let me say more about each pillar.
First, when it comes to technology, you should know that our companies are putting our best talent and technology against the task of getting terrorist content off our services. There is no silver bullet when it comes to finding and removing this content, but we’re getting much better.
One early success in collaboration has been our “hash sharing” database, which allows a company that discovers terrorist content on one of their sites to create a digital fingerprint and share it with the other companies in the coalition, who can then more easily detect and review similar content for removal.
We have to deal with these problems at tremendous scale. The haystacks are unimaginably large and the needles are both very small and constantly changing. People upload over 400 hours of content to YouTube every minute. Our software engineers have spent years developing technology that can spot certain telltale cues and markers. In recent months we have more than doubled the number of videos we've removed for violent extremism and have located these videos twice as fast. And what’s more, 75 percent of the violent extremism videos we’ve removed in recent months were found using technology before they received a single human flag.
These efforts are working. Between August 2015 and June 2017, Twitter suspended more than 935,000 accounts for the promotion of terrorism. During the first half of 2017, over 95 percent of the accounts it removed were detected using its in-house technology. Facebook is using new advances in artificial intelligence to root out "terrorist clusters" by mapping out the pages, posts, and profiles with terrorist material and then shutting them down.
Despite this recent progress, machines are simply not at the stage where they can replace human judgment. For example, portions of a terrorist video in a news broadcast might be entirely legitimate, but a computer program will have difficulty distinguishing documentary coverage from incitement.
The Forum’s second pillar is focused on conducting and sharing research about how terrorists use the internet to influence their audiences so that we can stay one step ahead.
Today, the members of the Forum are pleased to announce that we are making a multi-million dollar commitment to support research on terrorist abuse of the internet and how governments, tech companies, and civil society can fight back against online radicalization.
The Forum has also set a goal of working with 50 smaller tech companies to help them better tackle terrorist content on their platforms. On Monday, we hosted dozens of companies for a workshop with our partners under the UN Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate. There will be a workshop in Brussels in December and another in Indonesia in the coming months. And we are also working to expand the hash-sharing database to smaller companies.
The Forum’s final pillar is working together to find powerful messages and avenues to reach out to those at greatest risk of radicalization.
Members of the forum are doing a better job of sharing breakthroughs with each other. One success we’ve seen is with the Redirect Method developed at Alphabet’s Jigsaw group. Redirect uses targeted advertising to reach people searching for terrorist content and presents videos that undermine extremist recruiting efforts. During a recent eight-week study more than 300,000 users clicked on our targeted ads and watched more than 500,000 minutes of video. This past April, Microsoft started a similar program on Bing. And Jigsaw and Bing are now exploring a partnership to share best practices and expertise.
At the same time, we’re elevating the voices that are most credible in speaking out against terrorism, hate, and violence. YouTube’s Creators for Change program highlights online stars taking a stand against xenophobia and extremism. And Facebook's P2P program has brought together more than 5,000 students from 68 countries to create campaigns to combat hate speech. And together the companies have participated in hundreds of meetings and trainings to counter violent extremism including events in Beirut, Bosnia, and Brussels and summits at the White House, here at the United Nations, London, and Sydney to empower credible non-governmental voices against violent extremism.
There is no magic computer program that will eliminate online terrorist content, but we are committed to working with everyone in this room as we continue to ramp up our own efforts to stop terrorists’ abuse of our services. This forum is an important step in the right direction. We look forward to working with national and local governments, and civil society, to prevent extremist ideology from spreading in communities and online.
- Kent Walker, Global General Counsel, Google

Working together to combat terrorists online

Last week Google hosted a regional event in Jakarta exploring how ‘counter narratives’ can be used to prevent extremism. Counter narratives can be described as responses to extremist ideas or propaganda and can take many forms. The discussions extended to far right extremism and experiences using counter narratives within this community as well as the definition of extremism.
At the event there was strong representation from Australia and New Zealand with YouTube content creators, civil society groups, academics and policy makers joining the conversation. There was an unanimous agreement that none of us can address this challenge on our own - we need to come together in fora such as the one in Jakarta to share information and ideas; and explore opportunities where we can actively collaborate or support each other’s activities. We look forward to continuing these conversations over the coming months, including within the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism that Kent Walker, our Global General Counsel, describes below.
Samantha Yorke, Policy Policy Manager, Google Australia

 [Editor’s note: This is a revised and abbreviated version of a speech Kent delivered at the United Nations in New York City, NY, on behalf of the members of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.]
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism is a group of four technology companies—Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube—that are committed to working together and with governments and civil society to address the problem of online terrorist content.
For our companies, terrorism isn’t just a business concern or a technical challenge. These are deeply personal threats. We are citizens of London, Paris, Jakarta, and New York. And in the wake of each terrorist attack we too frantically check in on our families and co-workers to make sure they are safe. We’ve all had to do this far too often.
The products that our companies build lower barriers to innovation and empower billions of people around the world. But we recognize that the internet and other tools have also been abused by terrorists in their efforts to recruit, fundraise, and organize. And we are committed to doing everything in our power to ensure that our platforms aren't used to distribute terrorist material.
The Forum’s efforts are focused on three areas: leveraging technology, conducting research on patterns of radicalization and misuse of online platforms, and sharing best practices to accelerate our joint efforts against dangerous radicalization. Let me say more about each pillar.
First, when it comes to technology, you should know that our companies are putting our best talent and technology against the task of getting terrorist content off our services. There is no silver bullet when it comes to finding and removing this content, but we’re getting much better.
One early success in collaboration has been our “hash sharing” database, which allows a company that discovers terrorist content on one of their sites to create a digital fingerprint and share it with the other companies in the coalition, who can then more easily detect and review similar content for removal.
We have to deal with these problems at tremendous scale. The haystacks are unimaginably large and the needles are both very small and constantly changing. People upload over 400 hours of content to YouTube every minute. Our software engineers have spent years developing technology that can spot certain telltale cues and markers. In recent months we have more than doubled the number of videos we've removed for violent extremism and have located these videos twice as fast. And what’s more, 75 percent of the violent extremism videos we’ve removed in recent months were found using technology before they received a single human flag.
These efforts are working. Between August 2015 and June 2017, Twitter suspended more than 935,000 accounts for the promotion of terrorism. During the first half of 2017, over 95 percent of the accounts it removed were detected using its in-house technology. Facebook is using new advances in artificial intelligence to root out "terrorist clusters" by mapping out the pages, posts, and profiles with terrorist material and then shutting them down.
Despite this recent progress, machines are simply not at the stage where they can replace human judgment. For example, portions of a terrorist video in a news broadcast might be entirely legitimate, but a computer program will have difficulty distinguishing documentary coverage from incitement.
The Forum’s second pillar is focused on conducting and sharing research about how terrorists use the internet to influence their audiences so that we can stay one step ahead.
Today, the members of the Forum are pleased to announce that we are making a multi-million dollar commitment to support research on terrorist abuse of the internet and how governments, tech companies, and civil society can fight back against online radicalization.
The Forum has also set a goal of working with 50 smaller tech companies to help them better tackle terrorist content on their platforms. On Monday, we hosted dozens of companies for a workshop with our partners under the UN Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate. There will be a workshop in Brussels in December and another in Indonesia in the coming months. And we are also working to expand the hash-sharing database to smaller companies.
The Forum’s final pillar is working together to find powerful messages and avenues to reach out to those at greatest risk of radicalization.
Members of the forum are doing a better job of sharing breakthroughs with each other. One success we’ve seen is with the Redirect Method developed at Alphabet’s Jigsaw group. Redirect uses targeted advertising to reach people searching for terrorist content and presents videos that undermine extremist recruiting efforts. During a recent eight-week study more than 300,000 users clicked on our targeted ads and watched more than 500,000 minutes of video. This past April, Microsoft started a similar program on Bing. And Jigsaw and Bing are now exploring a partnership to share best practices and expertise.
At the same time, we’re elevating the voices that are most credible in speaking out against terrorism, hate, and violence. YouTube’s Creators for Change program highlights online stars taking a stand against xenophobia and extremism. And Facebook's P2P program has brought together more than 5,000 students from 68 countries to create campaigns to combat hate speech. And together the companies have participated in hundreds of meetings and trainings to counter violent extremism including events in Beirut, Bosnia, and Brussels and summits at the White House, here at the United Nations, London, and Sydney to empower credible non-governmental voices against violent extremism.
There is no magic computer program that will eliminate online terrorist content, but we are committed to working with everyone in this room as we continue to ramp up our own efforts to stop terrorists’ abuse of our services. This forum is an important step in the right direction. We look forward to working with national and local governments, and civil society, to prevent extremist ideology from spreading in communities and online.
- Kent Walker, Global General Counsel, Google

Headphones optimized for your Aussie Google Assistant

Your Assistant is already available to help on phones, Google Home and more. But sometimes you need something a bit more personal, just for you, on your headphones. Like when you’re commuting on the train and want some time to yourself. Or reading at home and looking for some peace and quiet.
To help with those “in between” moments, together with Bose, we’re announcing headphones that are optimized for the Assistant, starting with the QC35. So now, you can keep up to date on your messages, music and more—using your eligible Android phone or iPhone.


To get started, connect your QC 35 II headphones to your phone via Bluetooth, open your Google Assistant and follow the instructions. From there, your Assistant is just a button away—push (and hold) the Action button to easily and quickly talk to your Assistant.


  • Stay connected to what matters: Hear your incoming messages, events and more, automatically, right from your headphones. So if you’re listening to your favorite song and you get a text, your Assistant can read it to you, no extra steps.
  • Listen to news and more: Now it’s easy to keep up with news while you walk to the bus, hop on the train or go for a run. Just ask your Assistant to “play the news” and you’ll get a read-out of the current hot topics. You can choose from a variety of news sources, like ABC News, The Australian and more.
  • Keep in touch with friends: With your Assistant on headphones, you can make a call with just a few simple words—“Call dad”—take the call from your headphones and continue on your way. No stopping or dialing, just talking.


We’ve worked together with Bose to create a great Assistant experience on the QC35 II—whether you’re on a crowded street or squished on a train, Bose’s active noise cancellation will help eliminate unwanted sounds around you, so you’re able to hear your Assistant, your music and more. The Assistant on the QC35 II will be available in English to all Aussies as well as in the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Germany and France.

We’ll continue to add features, apps and more to your Assistant on headphones over the coming weeks.


Posted by Tomer Amarilio, Product Manager, Google Assistant 

At New Zealand schools, Chromebooks top the list of learning tools

New Zealand educators are changing their approach to teaching, building personalised learning pathways for every student. Technology plays a key part in this approach. New Zealand has joined the list of countries including Sweden and the United States where Chromebooks are the number one device used in schools, according to analysts at International Data Corporation (IDC).

“Chromebooks continue to be a top choice for schools,” says Arunachalam Muthiah, Senior Market Analyst, IDC NZ. “After Chromebooks’ strong performance in 2016, we see a similar trend in the first half of 2017 with Chromebooks gaining a total shipment market share of 46 percent, continuing to hold their position as the number-one selling device in schools across New Zealand.”

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Bombay School students learning about conductivity, electrical circuits and constructing a tune.

Technology is transforming education across the globe, and in New Zealand schools are using digital tools to help students learn, in the classroom and beyond.

At Bombay School, located in the rural foothills south of Auckland, students could only get an hour a week of computer access. Bombay School’s principal and board decided on a 1:1 “bring your own device” program with Chromebooks, along with secure device management using a Chrome Education license.

Teachers quickly realised that since each student was empowered with a Chromebook, access to learning opportunities increased daily, inspiring students to chart new learning paths. “Technology overcomes constraints,” says Paul Petersen, principal of Bombay School. “If I don’t understand multiplication today, I can learn about it online. I can look for help. I can practice at my own pace, anywhere I am.”

In 2014 Bombay School seniors collectively scored in the 78th percentile for reading; in 2016, they reached nearly the 90th percentile.


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Students at Point England School take a digital license quiz to learn about online behavior.


In the Manaiakalani Community of Learning in East Auckland, some students start school with lower achievement levels than students in other school regions. Manaiakalani chose Chromebooks to support its education program goals and manage budget challenges. By bringing Chromebooks to the Manaiakalani schools, “we broke apart the barriers of the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. school day,” says Dorothy Burt, head of the Manaiakalani Education Program and Digital Learning Coordinator, based at Point England School. Using G Suite for Education tools on their Chromebooks, students can work with other students, teachers, and parents on their lessons in the classroom, the library, or at home.

Dorothy Burt says “we’re seeing not only engagement, but actual literacy outcomes improve—it’s made a huge difference to the opportunities students will have in the future.”

We look forward to supporting more countries and schools as they redefine teaching and make learning even more accessible for every student, anywhere.

Posted by Suan Yeo, Head of Education Australia and New Zealand, Google for Education

Introducing apps for the Aussie Google Assistant


Whether you’re planning a BBQ, mapping your travels or helping the kids with their homework, your Google Assistant is always ready to help. You can ask about your day or your commute, explore your favorite topics,  switch on appliances, and get answers to hundreds of small and big questions during your day. But to be truly successful, your Google Assistant should be able to connect you across the apps and services in your life. So starting today, developers and companies can build apps to engage with Aussies through Actions on Google, the developer platform for the Google Assistant. And as a user, you’ll be able to access more of your favourite services and content straight through your Google Assistant.


For anyone who wants to build for the Assistant, resources such as developer tools, documentation and a simulator are available on the Actions on Google developer website, making it easy to create, test and deploy apps. Developers can read more here.

Now that we’re making apps available, Aussies have easy and fast access to all types of apps. Once an app works with the Assistant, you can just tell your Assistant to connect you with the app with a simple voice command – whether it’s on Google Home, Pixel, Android phones or iPhones. And the best thing? You don’t need to install anything extra, we’ll connect you straight with the app you’d like to interact with.

Stay tuned as local Aussie apps rollout soon, and dive in today by trying one of the many apps already available. To explore the latter, just launch the Google Assistant on your phone or check out the Google Home app.

We hope that this growing platform will give more Aussies the help they need, at home or on-the-go – from the morning rush hour to the weekend unwind.  With our partners, we look forward to exploring and delivering these new possibilities for the Australian Google Assistant.


Posted by Brad Abrams, Group Product Manager, Google Assistant

A New Way To Discover Up-And-Coming YouTube Creators


More great videos are uploaded to YouTube today than ever before. New formats are being created and new stars and artists are being born every moment. With more than 1,000 creators crossing the 1,000 subscriber threshold every single day, new talent is constantly emerging. We want to celebrate these up-and-coming creators and help them build a bigger audience.

Starting today, we’ll highlight creators who are “On The Rise” in a new section of our Trending Tab in the Australia. Each week, one creator will be highlighted and featured for a full day on Trending with the following badge: Creator on the Rise.



Today we’re kicking off by celebrating rising comedy Creator Christian Hull, who started making hilarious on-the-money parody videos 3 years ago, quickly amassing a strong following of 19,000 fans on his channel. Our favourite is his take on the (often tedious) world of retail.

Any creator with over 1,000 subscribers is eligible to be featured. On The Rise creators will be highlighted based on a bunch of factors including viewcount, watchtime and subscriber growth. Our team is also involved in the process to help select which eligible creators will be featured.

One creator will be highlighted each week; we’ll let them know when they are featured so they can share the moment with their fans, old and new! We hope this will help the world discover inspirational new creators.

Posted by Daniel Stephenson, Content Partnerships Manager, YouTube Australia & New Zealand

Feed your need to know

Aussies have long turned to Google for answers, to learn about the world, and dig deeper on topics they’re passionate about – whether that’s the footy scores, recipes, the surf report, or the latest news headlines. Today, we are announcing a new feed experience in the Google app (Android | iOS), making it easier than ever to discover, explore and stay connected to what matters to you — even when you don’t have a query in mind.


A smart feed that changes with you

Last December, we introduced the feed––an ongoing and updated look at things you care about, like sports, news, and entertainment; available on the home screen of the Google App. Since then, we’ve advanced our machine learning algorithms to better anticipate what’s interesting and important to you. You’ll now see cards with things like sports highlights, top news, engaging videos, new music, stories to read and more. And now, your feed will not only be based on your interactions with Google, but also factor in what’s trending in your area and around the world. The more you use Google, the better your feed will be.

As the world and your interests change, your feed will continue to grow and evolve along with you. You’ll notice that your feed will also reflect your interest level for various topics—for example, if you’re a photography enthusiast but just casually interested in fitness, your feed will show that. But if you see something that isn’t up your alley, unfollowing topics is easy too. Just tap on a given card in your feed or visit your Google app settings.


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Follow your favorites

While we’ve been getting better at understanding your interests, it hasn’t always been easy for you to choose new topics for your feed. To help you keep up with exactly what you care about, you’ll now be able to follow topics, right from Search results. Look out for a new “Follow” button next to certain types of search results—including movies, sports teams, your favorite bands or music artists, famous people, and more. A quick tap of the the follow button and you’ll start getting updates and stories about that topic in your feed.


Broader context and deeper exploration

To provide information from diverse perspectives, news stories may have multiple viewpoints from a variety of sources, as well as other related information and articles. And when available, you’ll be able to fact check and see other relevant information to help get a more holistic understanding about the topics in your feed.

We’re also making it easier to dive deeper into any of the topics you see in your feed. At the top of every card, you’ll see a header that puts your interests front and center, letting you search that topic on Google with one tap.


Get more of the stuff you care about
With these updates to the feed, it’s easier than ever to stay in the know about exactly the things you care about and see more content to inform, inspire and entertain you. You’ll spend less time and energy trying to keep up with your interests and more time enjoying and cultivating them. Whether you’re a pet-loving, May Gibbs-reading, cricket fanatic; a surfer, camper or anything in between, your feed should fit your fancy.

The new feed experience is available in the Google app for Android (including the Pixel Launcher) and iOS, launching today in Australia. Just open the Google app and scroll up to get started with the new feed experience.