Official Google Africa Blog

How AI is making information more useful

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Today, there’s more information accessible at people’s fingertips than at any point in human history. And advances in artificial intelligence will radically transform the way we use that information, with the ability to uncover new insights that can help us both in our daily lives and in the ways we are able to tackle complex global challenges.

At our Search On livestream event today, we shared how we’re bringing the latest in AI to Google’s products, giving people new ways to search and explore information in more natural and intuitive ways.

Making multimodal search possible with MUMEarlier this year at Google I/O, we announced we’ve reached a critical milestone for understanding information with Multitask Unified Model, or MUM for short.

We’ve been experimenting with using MUM’s capabilities to make our products more helpful and enable entirely new ways to search. Today, we’re sharing an early look at what will be possible with MUM.

In the coming months, we’ll introduce a new way to search visually, with the ability to ask questions about what you see. Here are a couple of examples of what will be possible with MUM.

With this new capability, you can tap on the Lens icon when you’re looking at a picture of a shirt, and ask Google to find you the same pattern — but on another article of clothing, like socks. This helps when you’re looking for something that might be difficult to describe accurately with words alone. You could type “white floral Victorian socks,” but you might not find the exact pattern you’re looking for. By combining images and text into a single query, we’re making it easier to search visually and express your questions in more natural ways.

Some questions are even trickier: Your bike has a broken thingamajig, and you need some guidance on how to fix it. Instead of poring over catalogs of parts and then looking for a tutorial, the point-and-ask mode of searching will make it easier to find the exact moment in a video that can help.

Helping you explore with a redesigned Search page

We’re also announcing how we’re applying AI advances like MUM to redesign Google Search. These new features are the latest steps we’re taking to make searching more natural and intuitive.

First, we’re making it easier to explore and understand new topics with “Things to know.” Let’s say you want to decorate your apartment, and you’re interested in learning more about creating acrylic paintings.

If you search for “acrylic painting,” Google understands how people typically explore this topic, and shows the aspects people are likely to look at first. For example, we can identify more than 350 topics related to acrylic painting, and help you find the right path to take.

We’ll be launching this feature in the coming months. In the future, MUM will unlock deeper insights you might not have known to search for — like “how to make acrylic paintings with household items” — and connect you with content on the web that you wouldn’t have otherwise found.

Second, to help you further explore ideas, we’re making it easy to zoom in and out of a topic with new features to refine and broaden searches.

In this case, you can learn more about specific techniques, like puddle pouring, or art classes you can take. You can also broaden your search to see other related topics, like other painting methods and famous painters. These features will launch in the coming months.

Third, we’re making it easier to find visual inspiration with a newly designed, browsable results page. If puddle pouring caught your eye, just search for “pour painting ideas" to see a visually rich page full of ideas from across the web, with articles, images, videos and more that you can easily scroll through.

This new visual results page is designed for searches that are looking for inspiration, like “Halloween decorating ideas” or “indoor vertical garden ideas,” and you can try it today.

Get more from videos

We already use advanced AI systems to identify key moments in videos, like the winning shot in a basketball game, or steps in a recipe. Today, we’re taking this a step further, introducing a new experience that identifies related topics in a video, with links to easily dig deeper and learn more.

Using MUM, we can even show related topics that aren’t explicitly mentioned in the video, based on our advanced understanding of information in the video. In this example, while the video doesn’t say the words “macaroni penguin’s life story,” our systems understand that topics contained in the video relate to this topic, like how macaroni penguins find their family members and navigate predators. The first version of this feature will roll out in the coming weeks, and we’ll add more visual enhancements in the coming months.

Across all these MUM experiences, we look forward to helping people discover more web pages, videos, images and ideas that they may not have come across or otherwise searched for.

A more helpful Google

The updates we’re announcing today don’t end with MUM, though. We’re also making it easier to shop from the widest range of merchants, big and small, no matter what you’re looking for. And we’re helping people better evaluate the credibility of information they find online. Plus, for the moments that matter most, we’re finding new ways to help people get access to information and insights.

All this work not only helps people around the world, but creators, publishers and businesses as well. Every day, we send visitors to well over 100 million different websites, and every month, Google connects people with more than 120 million businesses that don't have websites, by enabling phone calls, driving directions and local foot traffic.

As we continue to build more useful products and push the boundaries of what it means to search, we look forward to helping people find the answers they’re looking for, and inspiring more questions along the way.

YouTube NextUp: Are you the next big thing on YouTube?

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Last year, creators on YouTube generated billions of views daily and earned millions of dollars via our revenue-sharing Partner Program. In addition to teaching individuals how to crochet flowers and apply the perfect lipstick, Africa's top creators also taught people how to have fun.

We believe that the next generation of successful singers, dancers, actors, producers, musicians, and make-up artists are already honing their skills on YouTube , and we want to see more of them take the next step in their YouTube careers and convert their video hobby into a profession or perhaps a small company.

YouTube NextUp was introduced in 2011 to help YouTube creators take their channel to the next level. Over 250 YouTube artists from 15 different countries have benefited from this initiative, which has helped them to enhance their channels and jumpstart a new stage of development on YouTube. From science enthusiasts like AsapSCIENCE , Marcus Butler, MegwinTV, to foodies like Laura Vitale, NextUp has continued to help selected creators become some of YouTube's brightest stars.

We’re thrilled to announce the expansion of the YouTube NextUp program to Sub Saharan Africa, beginning with Nigeria and South Africa. In 2021, 20 creators in Nigeria and South Africa will be selected for the development program, which offers:

A spot at a week-long YouTube creator Camp in which they’ll benefit from 1:1 mentoring and learn an array of production techniques from leading industry and YouTube experts
A $1,000 voucher for production equipment to help you make your video dreams a reality.
Personalized one-on-one support from the YouTube team until April 2022
Mentorship by YouTube NextUp grads, plus the opportunity to meet and work with other fast-rising creators.
The opportunity to become better connected with a special community of aspiring and talented content creators from around the world

https://events.withgoogle.com/nextup/

Posted by Addy Awofisayo, YouTube Content Partnerships, Sub Saharan Africa

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Celebrating our first YouTube Festival in Sub-Saharan Africa

Monday, August 23, 2021

The day's headline announcements included the introduction of YouTube Select and YouTube Audio Ads, which are designed to help marketers target individuals interested in particular content categories and those who use YouTube for ambient listening.

YouTube Select
YouTube Select allows advertisers to place their ads alongside curated content that is most relevant to their brand. Let’s say you manage a smartphone brand aimed at tech savvy millennials. You could have your ads play alongside tech review content, for example.

YouTube’s most popular and relevant content, based on topic, audience, or moment is curated into packages called Lineups. Lineups are designed to achieve popularity, with a focus on top categories and creators across sports, broadcast, beauty and fashion, and popular content.

Lineups give advertisers the confidence that the right people are seeing their ads at the right time. Coupled with the existing YouTube targeting capabilities that advertisers know and use every day, ads can be hyper-personalised.

Audio Ads
Audio is a content format on the rise with people spending 18 hours a week on average listening to music — and 89% of them do so through on-demand streaming. Now advertisers have a new way of reaching these audiences on YouTube, the most popular destination for streaming music.

YouTube Audio Ads is a new format that allows advertisers to reach people using YouTube in the background and those on the free version of YouTube Music. 15-second, non-skippable ads are currently available with more formats coming soon.

Advertisers who have tried it are already seeing great success. More than 75% of measured campaigns are driving a significant lift in brand awareness with an audience that is highly engaged.

This is My YouTubeTo shine a spotlight on creators, the festival featured an episode of This is My YouTube. The segment invites advertisers to experience YouTube through the eyes of YouTube creators. We find out what they laugh at, who they cry with, learn from, and escape to — and crucially, how they work with brands to bring relevant products and messaging to their followers.

Content creators play a significant role in influencing purchase behaviour. Research shows that conversions from interest to purchase increase 133% with positive reviews for South African consumers.

Watch our first episode of This is My YouTube with South African YouTube creators Kay Ngonyama and Snikiwe Mhlongo — who, combined, have over 250,000 subscribers.

YouTube + TV
Festival attendees also learned about how YouTube and TV work better together. Today, people watch video content across devices, through different platforms, any time, and anywhere. This change requires advertisers to reach their audiences beyond TV.

Planning on both TV and YouTube provides an opportunity for advertisers to extend their reach even further and drive incremental reach. This is because the consumer journey is not linear. It involves a multitude of touchpoints as a consumer considers a product or service.

While TV has a large reach, research shows that when brands combine both TV and digital as part of their marketing strategy, the return on investment is much larger than the sum of just one medium.

With this consideration, when advertisers craft messaging across both mediums, they’re able to be exactly where their consumers are as they navigate the non-linear consumer journey.

Interestingly, we have found that YouTube as an advertising medium allows advertisers to get TV’s large reach at a much lower cost. And as audiences in Africa, and around the world, consume more content on the platform, why not leverage this screentime as a brand?

A new era for advertising
As the go-to platform for video streaming, YouTube offers an array of curated content for diverse groups of people. Our audience solutions offer a variety of ways for advertisers to reach their valuable audiences.

If you would like to find out more about these YouTube offers, watch the full festival on-demand below.

Invitation to apply for the Developers for Africa event

Wednesday, August 11, 2021

CMS Africa first Developers For Africa event in April 2021 we got together with top open source CMS experts from Google, Joomla!, WordPress, Typo3, CMS Africa, and Drupal and developers from all over the continent. As a result, several project teams are already working with Google to fine tune their project proposals for funding applications. We invite you to read the post-event report to learn more.

CMS Africadfa.cmsafrica.org/apply#DFA2021

Posted by Andrey Lipattsev, CMS Partnerships EMEA lead

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New safety and digital wellbeing options for younger people on YouTube and YouTube Kids

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Today, we're announcing additional protections for people under 18 on YouTube and YouTube Kids.
Over the years, we’ve made investments to protect kids and families, such as launching a dedicated kids app, introducing new data practices for children’s content, providing more age-appropriate experiences, and giving families more choice with supervised accounts. Today, we're announcing additional protections for people under 18 on YouTube and YouTube Kids.

Updating default privacy settings for younger people
In the coming weeks, we’ll gradually start adjusting the default upload setting to the most private option available for users ages 13-17 on YouTube. With private uploads, content can only be seen by the user and whomever they choose. We want to help younger users make informed decisions about their online footprint and digital privacy, including encouraging them to make an intentional choice if they’d like to make their content public. If the user would like to make their content public, they can change the default upload visibility setting and we’ll provide reminders indicating who can see their video.
Making digital wellbeing features more prominent
We want to give younger users the tools they need to understand their use of technology. In addition to our suite of digital well-being tools, we’ll be turning take a break and bedtime reminders on by default for all users ages 13-17 on YouTube. We’ll also be turning autoplay off by default for these users. If a user decides these aren’t the right digital well-being features for them, they can change their default settings.

We’ll also be adding an autoplay option on YouTube Kids and turning autoplay off by default in the app. Whether you’re driving on a roadtrip with your kids or listening to nursery rhymes together while cooking dinner, we want to empower parents to be able to choose an autoplay setting that’s right for their family. In the coming months, we’ll also be launching additional parental controls in the YouTube Kids app, including the ability for a parent to choose a “locked” default autoplay setting.

Providing safeguards and education about commercial content
We’re also making changes to how we treat commercial content for kids and families. We've never allowed paid product placements in YouTube Kids, our destination for younger kids. In the coming weeks, we’ll also begin to remove overly commercial content from YouTube Kids, such as a video that only focuses on product packaging or directly encourages children to spend money.

On YouTube, we recently updated the disclosures that appear on “made for kids” content or supervised accounts on YouTube when a creator identifies that their video contains paid promotions. Developed in collaboration with child development experts, the disclosures appear in easy-to-understand text and link to a kid-friendly animated video, which provides additional information on paid product placements. We’ve also provided a parent guide which suggests ways for parents to help children understand content they may see on YouTube, including paid product promotions.

We’re introducing these new safety and digital wellbeing options as part of our ongoing efforts to create age-appropriate experiences for young people on YouTube and YouTube Kids. With young people watching online videos to broaden their horizons and expand their learning experiences, we're invested in being the best version of YouTube and YouTube Kids we can be. Young people are our future, and we want to empower them the best we can.

Posted by James Beser, Director of Product Management, Kids and FamilyRead on the official YouTube blog

Giving kids and teens a safer experience online

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Cross-posted from the Keyword blog
We're committed to building products that are secure by default, private by design, and that put people in control. And while our policies don’t allow kids under 13 to create a standard Google account, we’ve worked hard to design enriching product experiences specifically for them, teens, and families. Through Family Link, we allow parents to set up supervised accounts for their children, set screen time limits, and more. Our Be Internet Awesome digital literacy program helps kids learn how to be safe and engaged digital citizens; and our dedicated YouTube Kids app, Kids Space and teacher approved apps in Play offer experiences that are customized for younger audiences.

Technology has helped kids and teens during the pandemic stay in school through lockdowns and maintain connections with family and friends. As kids and teens spend more time online, parents, educators, child safety and privacy experts, and policy makers are rightly concerned about how to keep them safe. We engage with these groups regularly, and share these concerns.

Some countries are implementing regulations in this area, and as we comply with these regulations, we’re looking at ways to develop consistent product experiences and user controls for kids and teens globally. Today, we’re announcing a variety of new policies and updates:

Giving minors more control over their digital footprint
While we already provide a range of removal options for people using Google Search, children are at particular risk when it comes to controlling their imagery on the internet. In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce a new policy that enables anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, to request the removal of their images from Google Image results. Of course, removing an image from Search doesn’t remove it from the web, but we believe this change will help give young people more control of their images online.

Tailoring product experiences for kids and teens
Some of our most popular products help kids and teens explore their interests, learn more about the world, and connect with friends. We’re committed to constantly making these experiences safer for them. That’s why in the coming weeks and months we're going to make a number of changes to Google Accounts for people under 18:

YouTube: We’re going to change the default upload setting to the most private option available for teens ages 13-17. In addition we’ll more prominently surface digital wellbeing features, and provide safeguards and education about commercial content. Learn more about these changes here.
Search: We have a range of systems, tools, and policies that are designed to help people discover content from across the web while not surprising them with mature content they haven’t searched for. One of the protections we offer is SafeSearch, which helps filter out explicit results when enabled and is already on by default for all signed-in users under 13 who have accounts managed by Family Link. In the coming months, we’ll turn SafeSearch on for existing users under 18 and make this the default setting for teens setting up new accounts.
Assistant: We’re always working to prevent mature content from surfacing during a child’s experience with Google Assistant on shared devices, and in the coming months we’ll be introducing new default protections. For example, we will apply our SafeSearch technology to the web browser on smart displays.
Location History: Location History is a Google account setting that helps make our products more useful. It's already off by default for all accounts, and children with supervised accounts don’t have the option of turning Location History on. Taking this a step further, we’ll soon extend this to users under the age of 18 globally, meaning that Location History will remain off (without the option to turn it on).
Play: Building on efforts like content ratings, and our "Teacher-approved apps" for quality kids content, we're launching a new safety section that will let parents know which apps follow our Families policies. Apps will be required to disclose how they use the data they collect in greater detail, making it easier for parents to decide if the app is right for their child before they download it.
Google Workspace for Education: As we recently announced, we’re making it much easier for administrators to tailor experiences for their users based on age (such as restricting student activity on YouTube). And to make web browsing safer, K-12 institutions will have SafeSearch technology enabled by default, while switching to Guest Mode and Incognito Mode for web browsing will be turned off by default.

New advertising changes
We’ll be expanding safeguards to prevent age-sensitive ad categories from being shown to teens, and we will block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18. We’ll start rolling out these updates across our products globally over the coming months. Our goal is to ensure we’re providing additional protections and delivering age-appropriate experiences for ads on Google.

New digital wellbeing tools
In Family Link, parents can set screen time limits and reminders for their kids’ supervised devices. And, on Assistant-enabled smart devices, we give parents control through Digital Wellbeing tools available in the Google Home app. In the coming months, we’ll roll out new Digital Wellbeing filters that allow people to block news, podcasts, and access to webpages on Assistant-enabled smart devices.

On YouTube, we’ll turn on take a break and bedtime reminders and turn off autoplay for users under 18. And, on YouTube Kids we’ll add an autoplay option and turn it off by default to empower parents to make the right choice for their families.
Improving how we communicate our data practices to kids and teens
Data plays an important role in making our products functional and helpful. It’s our job to make it easy for kids and teens to understand what data is being collected, why, and how it is used. Based on research, we’re developing engaging, easy-to-understand materials for young people and their parents to help them better understand our data practices. These resources will begin to roll out globally in the coming months.

Transparency Resources: The Family Link Privacy Guide for Children and Teens and the Teen Privacy Guide

Ongoing work and engagement

Posted by Mindy Brooks, General Manager, Kids and Families

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Meet the 22 news innovators selected from the 2021 GNI Middle East, Turkey and Africa challenge

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

During a 14-year career as a journalist, Dina Aboughazala reported on issues impacting people's lives across the Middle East. But she found that many existing news services concentrated on what was happening in big cities, while lesser-known areas were often ignored. To highlight undiscovered voices with interesting stories to tell, last year Aboughazala started the journalism platform Egab.

Egab, which connects journalists from the Middle East and Africa to international media outlets, is one of 22 successful recipients for the Google News Initiative’s second Middle East, Turkey and Africa Innovation Challenge.

It will use the funding to build a platform for contributions. “This means we can empower more local journalists across the Middle East and Africa to tell diverse stories about their communities to global audiences: stories that defy stereotypes, represent our part of the world more fairly and engage more audiences,” Aboughazala says. “We will now be able to do that at a larger scale through the online platform we will be building.”

We launched an open call for applications in February and received 329 applications from 35 countries. A rigorous review, a round of interviews and a final jury selection process followed.

Today, we’re announcing $2.1 million in funding to projects and initiatives in 14 different countries. Recipients include startups and online-only media platforms alongside some of the bigger names in news across the region, and cover topics ranging from audience development to virtual reality storytelling. We placed an emphasis on projects that reflect and demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in the news industry.
Here are just a few of the recipients (you can find the full list on our website):

Messenger Reader Revenue: The Standard Group in Kenya is going to integrate bots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) onto a WhatsApp number so that its audience can prompt and interact with it to access news. Via a subscription, the uniquely curated content will feature categories such as farming and investigations.
The Citizen Bulletin: Zimbabwe Centre for Media and Information Literacy is building a loyal audience around hyperlocal journalism. The project is an open-source WhatsApp bot for news distribution and audience engagement.
Habari RDC: Habari Streaming is a mobile application in the Democratic Republic of Congo that offers subscriptions to videos and podcasts. In a plan to diversify their source of income, Habari RDC created a user experience platform that provides paid content to its users.
263Chat: Radio is the most accessible medium for Zimbabweans. To reach new audiences, 263Chat has established a podcast network to provide an alternative media source.Eco-Nai+: Nigeria’s first digital geo-journalism platform providing access to interactive geo-data through web and mobile applications.
Eco-Nai+: developed by Richmond Hill Media Limited (Ripples Nigeria), will host environmental data such as on drought, rainfall and erosion, while carefully tracking and making changes to environmental phenomena to help track climate change.

We’ll be following their progress alongside the previous recipients who are already impacting the news ecosystem with initiatives that increase reader engagement and make for a more sustainable future of news.

Africa Blog

How AI is making information more useful

YouTube NextUp: Are you the next big thing on YouTube?

Celebrating our first YouTube Festival in Sub-Saharan Africa

Invitation to apply for the Developers for Africa event

New safety and digital wellbeing options for younger people on YouTube and YouTube Kids

Giving kids and teens a safer experience online

Meet the 22 news innovators selected from the 2021 GNI Middle East, Turkey and Africa challenge

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