Official Google Australia Blog: august 2020

13 things you need to know about the News Media Bargaining Code

mandag 24. august 2020

open letter

Question #1: Why is Google against this proposed law? We are not against a law that governs the relationships between news businesses and digital platforms. But the current draft Code is unworkable. Our concerns include:

An obligation to share details about our algorithm changes that would provide an unfair advantage to large news businesses and help them feature more prominently in organic search results at the expense of other businesses, creators and website owners.
An obligation to tell news media businesses what user data Google collects, what data it supplies to them, and how they “can gain access to the data” which Google does not supply to them, with a lack of detail on safeguards for demands from news businesses for access to sensitive data.
An unfair arbitration process that ignores the real-world value Google provides to news publishers and opens up to enormous and unreasonable demands.

Question #2: If this law is just about news, why are you talking about Search? The proposed law is not limited to Google News, or the news results tab. It covers “every digital platform service” of Google and Facebook that makes available news content of registered news businesses (s52B, s52L). This means it directly impacts Google Search itself.

Question #3: Is YouTube included in the proposed law? Yes. The Code covers “every digital platform service” Google and Facebook provide that make available news content of registered news businesses (s52B, s52L). Australian media companies upload content to YouTube, which means YouTube will be impacted by the Code. The ACCC Chairman has also said so.

Question #4: Why shouldn’t Google give notice of changes to your rankings and algorithms? We share general tips on ranking with all website owners already, but this new law would require us to give special notice and explanations to news businesses. This would dramatically worsen how you experience Google Search and YouTube:

If we are required to give one group special advice about how to get a higher ranking, they’d be able to game the system at the expense of other website owners, businesses and creators, even if that doesn’t provide the best result to you. If we want to keep our algorithms fair for everyone, we would have to stop making any changes in Australia. This would leave Australians with a dramatically worse Search and YouTube experience.
Additionally, 28-day advance notice is really a 28-day waiting period before we can make important changes to our systems. That’s 28 days before we can roll out defences against new kinds of spam or fraud. 28 days of extra delay before we can launch new features that are already available to the rest of the world. And 28 days before we can fix things that break. To illustrate: in order to give you the most relevant results when you use Search, last year, we launched 3,620 algorithm updates.

Question #5: Will Google have to share my Search and YouTube data with news businesses? The Code requires us to tell a registered news business how it can “gain access to” data (s52M(2)(e)). This is data that we do not supply to them at the moment. As a reminder, you currently have control over your personal data thanks to easy-to-access tools in your Google Account. If we are required to hand that data over to news organisations, there’s no way to know what controls they will give you, nor how your data will be protected—or how it might be used by news businesses.

Question #6: Why the sudden move to speak out publicly against this? We have been engaged with the Government, the ACCC and news businesses in good faith since a publisher code was first brought up last year. You can read more about the key issues we raised in our submission to the ACCC concept paper and blog posts here and here.
Initially this new law was going to be a voluntary code of conduct, and we were making good progress on discussions with news publishers. But in April the Government shifted the goal posts and moved to a proposed mandatory Code. On July 31, the ACCC released an exposure draft of the proposed law. We have continued to raise our concerns and make submissions, but unfortunately these have not been reflected in this proposed law. In addition, we thought it’s important to let you know directly about the draft Code and potential harm this would cause to the services you love and rely on - including Search and YouTube. We’ve since heard from thousands of Australians who share our concerns.

Question #7: Doesn’t the Code contain a negotiation and arbitration process to sort this out? Put simply, it's extremely one-sided and unfair––so unfair that no company should be asked to accept it. Just before this law was proposed we had reached agreements with several Australian news organisations to pay them to license their content.
We're happy to pay more to license content, and want to support journalism as it transitions to a digital future, but a fair negotiation or arbitration should factor in the value both parties provide.
Under this law the arbitrator is not required to take into account the value we provide news businesses (s52ZP(2)). Google Search referred more than 3 billion visits to news businesses’ websites last year, which is estimated to be worth around $218 million—and this doesn’t include the many other ways we support publishers. The arbitrator is also not required to look at the significant costs we incur in providing our services, or the value of comparable deals, which would be the starting point for any standard arbitration.
All it looks at is the news organisation’s costs, its content’s value to Google, and whether the payment would put an undue burden on the digital platform. That means bigger news organisations with higher costs and more content will get paid more. Because of all this, the law is set up to encourage enormous and unreasonable demands.

Question #8: Are you going to charge for your services? No. We never said that the proposed law would require us to charge Australians for Search and YouTube. What we did say is that Search and YouTube, which are free services, are at risk in Australia.

Question #9: Why are you saying your services are at risk? First, the very nature of our search engine and YouTube is to surface the best information. If one group is given special information and notice, and can game the rankings at the expense of others, we can’t provide the best service. Having to disclose information about ranking would harm our services in Australia and around the world.
Second, the proposed law contains provisions that are difficult to comply with while providing a useful service, and if we can’t, the law imposes ruinous fines and liability - up to 10 percent of our turnover for each breach of the law.
Third, the arbitration is set up to encourage news businesses to make unreasonable and exorbitant financial demands. News queries account for just over 1% of our total search queries in Australia. We have news partners in other countries, as well as countless other categories of websites and content that people search for. It simply isn’t viable for us, or any digital platform, to pay unreasonable and exorbitant amounts to one group in one country.

Question #10: Why won’t you just shut down Google News like you did in Spain, or remove Australian news websites? This proposed law is written extremely broadly. If we show Australians any content from any “news publisher” (defined to include any “website”) in the world, we must also show all news content of news businesses registered under the Code. For this purpose, "news" is defined very broadly - way beyond what most of us would consider “news”. This includes covering issues that are of ‘interest to Australians’, including foreign news and citizen journalism - which go well beyond traditional journalism to capture all kinds of information, blogs, videos and websites. That means we’d have to undertake a mass cull of content globally to stop them being visible to Australians - we’d have to remove all foreign newspapers, bloggers, YouTube citizen reporters, but also sports reporting, discussions of global health issues, tweets about current events, and literally endless other types of content from all sources around the world.

Question #11: Shouldn’t news businesses get a say on how their content is used? Of course. All websites can opt out of appearing in Search results, including news media sites, and we share guidance on how to do this. But we find not many news businesses take that step because they value the free referral traffic they get which they can then monetise through ads and new subscribers. If they want to be featured in Search, they can customise how they show up - decide the length of the short summary (called a snippet) of their content, add or remove images or videos. The snippet is then automatically generated from the content, designed to emphasise and preview the page content that best relates to a user's specific search. We've also been working on a new product in which we would pay news publishers for content that they would curate, while still driving traffic to their websites.

Question #12: What next? We help more than 20 million Australians and over one million businesses in Australia. Our engineering teams here contribute to global product innovation––in fact, Google Maps has its origin in Australia. We have invested significantly in this country. We are proud to work with the Government and others to contribute to our economic recovery and a growing digital economy. So we want to make the law workable. At the moment it’s simply not, for the reasons we outlined in our Open Letter and above. We’ll keep working to impress this upon the Government and will keep raising our concerns so Australians know where we stand.

Question #13: Where can I read more? It’s good that there’s now a robust public discussion about this important issue. As a start, here is the ACCC’s Draft Legislation. And here is a thorough article by an independent media analyst.

Google Supports Scams Awareness Week

fredag 21. august 2020

This year, #scamsweek2020 comes at a time where many of us are spending more time at home, and are using a plethora of new apps and communications tools to work, learn, access information, and stay connected with loved ones. We are joining the ACCC Scamwatch team this week to promote the importance of identifying and managing online security risks - some of which we do on your behalf without you even realising and some of which we ask you to make an informed decision about.

When people first started staying home due to COVID-19 earlier this year, our advanced, machine-learning classifiers saw 18 million daily malware and phishing attempts related to COVID-19, in addition to more than 240 million COVID-related spam messages globally. Our security systems have detected a range of new scams circulating, such as phishing emails posing as messages from charities and NGOs, directions from “administrators” to employees working from home, and even notices spoofing healthcare providers. Our systems have also spotted malware-laden sites that pose as sign-in pages for popular social media accounts, health organisations, or even official coronavirus maps.

To protect you from these risks, we've built advanced security protections into many Google products to automatically identify and stop threats before they ever reach you. Our machine learning models in Gmail already detect and block more than 99.9 percent of spam, phishing and malware. Our built-in security also protects you by alerting you before you enter fraudulent websites, by scanning apps in Google Play before you download, and more. But we want to help you stay secure everywhere online, not just on our products, so we’re providing these simple tips, tools and resources.

Know how to spot and avoid COVID-19 scamsWith many of the COVID-19 related scams coming in the form of phishing emails, it’s important to pause and evaluate any COVID-19 email before clicking any links or taking other action. Be wary of requests for personal information such as your home address or bank details. Fake links often imitate established websites by adding extra words or letters to them—check the URL’s validity by hovering over it (on desktop) or with a long press (on mobile).
Tips to Avoid Common Scams

Use your company’s enterprise email account for anything work-relatedWorking with our enterprise customers, we see how employees can put their company’s business at risk when using their personal accounts or devices. Even when working from home, it’s important to keep your work and personal email separate. Enterprise accounts offer additional security features that keep your company’s private information private. If you’re unsure about your company’s online security safeguards, check with your IT professionals to ensure the right security features are enabled, like two-factor authentication.

Secure your video calls on video conferencing appsThe security controls built into Google Meet are turned on by default, so that in most cases, organisations and users are automatically protected. But there are steps you can take on any video conferencing app to make your call more secure:

Consider adding an extra layer of verification to help ensure only invited attendees gain access to the meeting.
When sharing a meeting invite publicly, be sure to enable the “knocking” feature so that the meeting organiser can personally vet and accept new attendees before they enter the meeting.
If you receive a meeting invite that requires installing a new video-conferencing app, always be sure to verify the invitation—paying special attention to potential imposters—before installing.

Install security updates when notifiedWhen working from home, your work computer may not automatically update your security technology as it would when in the office and connected to your corporate network. It’s important to take immediate action on any security update prompts. These updates solve for known security vulnerabilities, which attackers are actively seeking out and exploiting.

Use a password manager to create and store strong passwordsWith all the new applications and services you might be using for work and school purposes, it can be tempting to use just one password for all. In fact, 69% of Aussies admit to using the same password across multiple accounts, despite 90% knowing that this presents a security risk. To keep your private information private, always use unique, hard-to-guess passwords. A password manager, like the one built into Android, Chrome, and your Google Account can help make this easier.

Protect your Google AccountIf you use a Google Account, you can easily review any recent security issues and get personalised recommendations to help protect your data and devices with the Security Checkup. Within this tool, you can also run a Password Checkup to learn if any of your saved passwords for third party sites or accounts have been compromised and then easily change them if needed.

You should also consider adding two-steps verification (also known as two-factor authentication), which you likely already have in place for online banking and other similar services, to provide an extra layer of security. This helps keep out anyone who shouldn't have access to your accounts by requiring a secondary factor on top of your username and password to sign in. To set this up for your Google Account, go to g.co/2SV.

Posted by Samantha Yorke, Government Affairs and Public Policy Senior Manager, Google Australia

Boost your bass and share your sounds, with Pixel Buds

fredag 21. august 2020

Personalise your audio experience

When Pixel Buds launched earlier this year, we heard people wanted more control and customisation over their audio experience. So today, we’re introducing bass boost1 and sharing detection1 to give you more options to use Pixel Buds in a way that’s unique to you. You can enhance your bass directly in the Pixel Buds settings, and if you decide to share one of your earbuds with someone, you no longer have to sacrifice your volume preferences thanks to sharing detection. When on, sharing detection automatically detects when you're sharing an earbud with someone and you can both individually swipe on your respective earbud to control your own volume. So whether you’re listening to music or watching a movie with a friend, you can seamlessly share your Pixel Buds.

Translate, transcribe and transform your conversations

Building on the helpfulness of Pixel Buds’ conversation mode translate feature, which helps when you’re talking back and forth with another person, the new transcribe mode lets you follow along by reading the translated speech directly into your ear, helping you understand the gist of what’s being said during longer listening experiences. Launching initially for French, German, Italian and Spanish speakers to translate English speech, transcribe mode can help you stay present in the moment and focus on the person speaking. Transcribe mode works best in a quiet environment where one person is speaking at a time. For example, simply say “Hey Google, aiutami a capire l’inglese”2 to start listening, and optionally follow along on your phone screen to see the translated transcript.

More helpful features

If your dog barks, baby cries or an emergency vehicle drives by with sirens ringing, Attention Alerts3—an experimental feature that notifies you of important things happening around you—lowers the volume of your content momentarily to alert you to what’s going on.

We launched ring my earbuds earlier this year so you can hear where your Pixel Buds are if you’ve misplaced them. Now, you can see them too. We’ve added an update to Find My Device4 that will show you the last known location of your Pixel Buds on a map even when they’re no longer connected to your Android phone.

Ask Google Assistant

Google Assistant on Pixel Buds is becoming even more helpful by allowing you to do more with your earbuds while on the go. Now, you can ask Google to turn touch controls on and off, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally triggering them. Just say, “Hey Google, turn off touch controls”5 or adjust settings in the Pixel Buds app. And you can now ask Google Assistant to help check your battery life by saying "Hey Google, what's the battery level on my earbuds?”5

All of this begins rolling out today to Pixel Buds users. To learn more, head to the help center.

1 Requires a device running Android 6.0 or newer.

2 Requires an Assistant-enabled Android 6.0+ device, a Google Account and an Internet connection. Data rates may apply. Transcribe mode translates from English to Spanish, German, French and Italian. Translation is not instantaneous. For available languages and minimum requirements, go to g.co/pixelbuds/help.

3 Requires a device running Android 6.0 or newer. Attention Alerts may not detect all instances of supported alerts, and similar sounds may be mistaken for alerts. Attention Alerts should not be relied upon in circumstances that have potentially serious consequences, such as when personal injury or property damage may result.

4 Requires Google Pixel Buds paired with Fast Pair to a phone running Android 6.0 or newer, with location history enabled.

5 Requires an Assistant-enabled Android 6.0+ device, a Google Account and an Internet connection. Data rates may apply. For available languages and minimum requirements, go to g.co/pixelbuds/help.

Posted by Tricia Fu, Product Manager, Google

New Australian regulation will have negative consequences for the YouTube Community: what you need to know

mandag 17. august 2020

YouTube may be obligated to give large news publishers confidential information about our systems that they could use to try to appear higher in rankings on YouTube, disadvantaging all other creators. This would mean you could receive fewer views and earn less.
It will create an uneven playing field when it comes to who makes money on YouTube. Through the YouTube Partner Programme, we already share revenues with partners who monetise on YouTube, including news publishers—and we are proud to support quality journalism. But through this law, big news businesses can demand large amounts of money above and beyond what they earn on the platform, leaving fewer funds to invest in you, our creators, and the programmes to help you develop your audience in Australia and around the globe.
Under this law, big news businesses can seek access to data about viewers’ use of our products. YouTube believes user data protection is paramount and we should not be required to hand this data over.

The imbalances created by this proposed law could potentially affect all types of Australian creators, far beyond those who focus on news: from vloggers, to educational creators, to music artists and beyond. We are doing everything we can to push for changes and make sure YouTube in Australia remains a place where anyone can connect to an audience or build a business, not just a few large media companies.

In the coming days, you’ll hear more from us about how you can get involved. But for now, I’d ask you to read the open letter to Australians from Mel Silva, Managing Director, on behalf of Google Australia.Update, August 20: We understand this process has been fast moving and you have questions. You can now find out more about the next steps, how you can get involved as well as an FAQs section on the Creator Hub.

Thanks again for everything you do.

Posted by Gautam Anand, Head of YouTube APAC

An update regarding the proposed News Media Bargaining Code

mandag 17. august 2020

here
Posted by Google Australia

How not-for-profits can use Google Trends to better help Australians in need

onsdag 12. august 2020

This is a guest blog post from David Spriggs, CEO of Infoxchange. Infoxchange is a not-for-profit social enterprise that has been delivering technology for social justice for over 30 years. They tackle the biggest social challenges through the smart and creative use of technology.

At Infoxchange, we’re constantly using data throughout our organisation to help tell our stories, inform our decision-making, and support our pitches for funding. One tool that’s been helpful for us is Google Trends.

With over 3.5 billion searches on Google globally each day, if there’s a particular issue or topic on people's minds, it’s going to show up in Google Trends and oftentimes, can be used as a barometer for what Australians are thinking and feeling. That’s some pretty powerful information for a not-for-profit organisation to have! By knowing more about the issues and needs people in the community have, we can better tailor our support, tweak our messaging for the greatest impact, and make strong cases for funding and grant applications.

Here are some examples of how we’ve used Google Trends at Infoxchange to help us continue to make an impact.

Designing Ask Izzy to connect with the public

Ask Izzy is a website that connects people with over 370,000 support services. When we were designing Ask Izzy, which was developed in partnership with Google, we looked at Google Trends data to help us understand the terms and phrases people used most around the issue of homelessness.

Ask Izzy is a website that connects people in need with support services nearby including food, financial help and housing.

Although we’d conducted extensive face-to-face co-design with people with lived experience of homelessness and who worked in the sector, we used Google Trends to match the wording we used on our site with what people across Australia were searching, to make our site resonate with the largest number of people possible.

Demonstrating the needs of the community to potential funders

More recently, we used Google Trends data on family and domestic violence support to show potential funders the increased need for the work we do. Sadly but somewhat unsurprisingly, data from Google told us that there had been a spike in searches for “domestic violence help” around the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used this information to help show potential funders that more people than ever would be needing to find help through Ask Izzy over the coming months (perhaps even years), as the social and economic fallout of the crisis was clearly already revealed through people’s Google searches.

Chart showing a peak in searches for “domestic violence help” around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia

Matching our own data with public trends to help tell our story

As the COVID-19 crisis began, we began to see huge increases in certain types of searches on Ask Izzy, as restrictions were introduced and businesses were forced to close. For example, during March the number of people using Ask Izzy’s Centrelink category to find locations near them nearly quadrupled in one week after the Australian Government announced its JobSeeker package.

It was helpful then for us to see that Google Trends also reflected what our own Ask Izzy data was telling us; namely that there were many people across Australia who were seeking support when it came to welfare payments.

For example, we can see below that there was a similar spike of people searching the term “Centrelink” on Google at the same time that we saw spikes in Ask Izzy. This helped us give context to our own data, and helped us understand why we’d seen such huge increases in the usage of our product. As a result, we were able to better plan for the months ahead and make sure that we continued to meet our users’ needs.

Chart showing large increase in searches for “Centrelink” around the time that JobSeeker payments were introduced.

There are of course many, many other applications for using Google Trends data, but these examples show how Infoxchange has used the tool to help us respond to the needs of the community as best we can.

New Pixels—and new prices—are here

tirsdag 4. august 2020

Pixel 4aPixel 4a (5G)Pixel 5

Meet Pixel 4a: The “everything you love about Google” phone Same great Pixel camera, new lower price Portrait ModeTop ShotNight Sight with Astrophotography
Sleek design

Help for those who need it RecorderPersonal SafetyLearn moreLive Caption
Google Assistant in more languages Introducedg.co/pixelassistant/languages
Pre-order Pixel 4a now Titan M security modulePixel 4a fabric casesGoogle Oneg.co/pixel/4aofferspre-orderGoogle Store

Sneak peek at Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 sign upPosted by Matt Gaskell, Director, Devices & Services, Google Australia

*Approximate battery life based on a mix of talk, data, standby, and use of other features, with always on display off. An active display and other usage factors will decrease battery life. Pixel 4a battery testing conducted in Mountain View, California in early 2020 on pre-production hardware and software. Actual results may vary.
*Requires a 5G data plan (sold separately). 5G service not available on all carrier networks or in all areas. Contact carrier for details. 5G service, speed and performance depend on many factors including, but not limited to, carrier network capabilities, device configuration and capabilities, network traffic, location, signal strength and signal obstruction. Actual results may vary. Some features not available in all areas. Data rates may apply. See g.co/pixel/networkinfo for info.

Australia Blog

13 things you need to know about the News Media Bargaining Code

Google Supports Scams Awareness Week

Boost your bass and share your sounds, with Pixel Buds

New Australian regulation will have negative consequences for the YouTube Community: what you need to know

An update regarding the proposed News Media Bargaining Code

How not-for-profits can use Google Trends to better help Australians in need

New Pixels—and new prices—are here

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