Official Google India Blog: 2019

Putting you in control: our work in privacy this year

December 23, 2019

Every day, hundreds of people at Google work on building the best privacy protections into our products. In 2019, we made a renewed push around privacy tools, controls and engineering talent, an investment that is already making a difference—nearly 20 million people around the globe visit their Google Account daily, accessing security, privacy and ad settings. As a vice president of product for privacy, I look forward to supporting this work more in my new role leading Google's strategy on building world class privacy tools. Here’s a look at what we did in 2019 in this important area:

Keeping your data private and secure

We’re committed to ensuring that our products meet user expectations around data sharing and data security. This year, we used findings from Project Strobe—an internal review of how third parties can request access to your Google account and Android device data—to implement new policies across Gmail, Android, Chrome and Drive to better protect your data and give you improved controls over the third parties to whom you grant access. We built Password Checkup, which automatically checks the security of all of your saved passwords, tells you if they’ve been compromised, and offers personalized help. Password Checkup started as a standalone Chrome extension, but it was so useful—downloaded more than a million times—that we built it into your Google Account’s password manager. We also introduced the Titan M security chip in Pixel 3a and Pixel 4 to help secure the operating system and your most sensitive on-device data.

Simpler controls in Google products

We've built tools to give you control over your data, easily accessible directly in our various products. This year, we expanded incognito mode across our apps, including Google Maps on Android and iOS, and we launched various auto-delete tools. We also put privacy controls at the forefront of Android settings, and rolled out simple voice commands so you can manage your privacy settings while using the Assistant by saying something like “Hey Google, delete everything I said to you last week.” All these tools make it easier for you to control what information is saved in your Google Account, and for how long.

Investing in privacy engineering

Our significant investment in privacy engineering and research helps improve our own products, as well as everyone’s overall experience online. In May, we opened the Google Security Engineering Center, our engineering privacy hub, where teams are building tools to keep users’ data safe. And for years, our research teams have been building privacy-preserving technologies like federated learning and differential privacy. These technologies provide smart, helpful experiences—like showing you how busy a restaurant is in Maps without identifying the individuals that visited it. In 2019, we open sourced the differential privacy library that powers some of our core products and introduced Tensorflow Privacy, Tensorflow Federated and Private Join and Compute to help other organizations implement these kinds of technologies. And in August, Chrome introduced the Privacy Sandbox and committed to restricting secretive user-tracking efforts such as “fingerprinting,” with the goal of safeguarding user privacy while keeping ad-supported content accessible on the web.

The year ahead in privacy regulation

This is the second year of GDPR in Europe and we invested significantly ahead of its implementation to upgrade our systems and policies, to ensure that we and our partners can comply with its requirements.

In the U.S., we’ve continued to advocate for strong federal privacy legislation and published a regulatory framework drawn from various privacy frameworks around the world and our own experience. We continue to believe this is the best way to provide safeguards to U.S. users, give businesses clear rules of the road, and avoid a patchwork of conflicting requirements and exemptions.

Like many businesses, we’ve been working to comply with the requirements of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), coming into effect on January 1, 2020. The CCPA will require businesses to disclose how they use people’s data, offer opt-outs of data sales, and give individuals rights around accessing and deleting their data. We’re committed to putting its requirements into practice and have invested in our systems to make necessary changes.

We’ve offered a range of tools for users to access, manage and delete their data like Download your data and Google Account globally for years, so we’re encouraged to see these practices become more widely adopted and codified into law in California. And while we never sell your personal information to anyone, we do let you control how your information is used, including for personalized ads. As we did with GDPR, we’ve made our CCPA data controls and tools available to all users globally, not just in California. Last month, we also introduced Restricted Data Processing, which will allow advertisers, publishers, and partners to restrict how data is used on our advertising products, and help them as they work to comply with CCPA. Publisher partners can also easily implement this kind of limited processing for their users globally. Of course, we’ll continue to follow developments around CCPA and ensure we’re taking appropriate steps if new regulatory guidance emerges.

Rather than just talk about privacy, we’ve spent this year building real tools and protections—they’re already available and used by millions of people. I’m proud of all this, but I also know that our work to build the best privacy protections into the products you use is never done. I look forward to sharing even more with you in the coming months.

Posted by Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Vice President of Product, Privacy

YouTube Music makes discovery more personal with playlists mixed for you

December 18, 2019

YouTube Music is a dedicated music streaming service that guides you through the world of music. With official songs and albums as well as deep cuts, live performances, and remixes, you can listen to exactly what you want, when you want to. Or you can sit back and let us recommend music for you right on your home screen.

Rolling out today, we’re introducing a shelf of three personalized mixes -- the new Discover Mix, New Release Mix, and Your Mix -- to keep you up to date on what’s just been released and introduce you to a wider range of artists and sounds based on your personal taste. Updated regularly, these mixes will use your listening history to create a unique experience and guide your music exploration to exciting and fresh destinations week after week.

Check out what each of these new mixes is bringing to you:

Discover Mix: Whether introducing you to an entirely new artist you’ve never heard before, or unearthing hidden, lesser-known gems from artists you’re already familiar with, Discover Mix will give you 50 tracks every week that help you expand your musical horizons. With new updates every Wednesday, it’s your go-to playlist to discover music.

New Release Mix: This mix is your one-stop shop for a playlist of all the most recent releases by your favorite artists (and others we think you’ll like). Expect a big update every Friday (when most new releases drop) along with mid-week releases sprinkled in throughout the week to ensure you are always up-to-date on the latest releases.

Your Mix: Your Mix is the perfect playlist for those times when you don’t want to think and just want to play something you know you’ll like. It’s full of songs by artists you know and love, and also mixes in some songs and artists you’ve never heard before, but that we think you’ll love. Small updates are made regularly, so the music never gets stale and there’s always something new in rotation.

The more you listen to and like songs, the better your mixes will be. New to YouTube Music? Don’t worry, we can start delivering a personalized experience after you’ve selected a couple of artists you like during setup, or even after listening to just a few songs!

Discover Mix, New Release Mix, and Your Mix are now available globally for all YouTube Music listeners. To check out your personalized mixes, download the YouTube Music app for iOS or Android or visit the webplayer to dive in.

These new mixes are just the beginning of an even more personalized YouTube Music, so stay tuned for more music mixed just for you!

Posted by Nathan Lasche, Product Manager, YouTube Music

Nathan recently listened to Dance Monkey by Tones and I

Better password protections in Chrome

December 13, 2019

Many of us have encountered malware, heard of data breaches, or even been a victim of phishing, where a site tries to scam you into entering your passwords and other sensitive information. With all this considered, data security has become a top concern for many people worldwide. Chrome has safety protections built in, and now we're expanding those protections further.

Chrome warns when your password has been stolen

When you type your credentials into a website, Chrome will now warn you if your username and password have been compromised in a data breach on some site or app. It will suggest that you change them everywhere they were used.

If your credentials were compromised, we recommend to change them immediately.

Google first introduced this technology early this year as the Password Checkup extension. In October it became a part of the Password Checkup in your Google Account, where you can conduct a scan of your saved passwords anytime. And now it has evolved to offer warnings as you browse the web in Chrome.

You can control it in Chrome Settings under Sync and Google Services. For now, we’re gradually rolling this out for everyone signed in to Chrome as a part of our Safe Browsing protections.

Phishing protection in real time

Google’s Safe Browsing maintains an ever-growing list of unsafe sites on the web and shares this information with webmasters, or other browsers, to make the web more secure. The list refreshes every 30 minutes, protecting 4 billion devices every day against all kinds of security threats, including phishing.

Safe Browsing list has been capturing an increasing number of phishing sites.

However, some phishing sites slip through that 30-minute window, either by quickly switching domains or by hiding from our crawlers. Chrome now offers real-time phishing protections on desktop, which warn you when visiting malicious sites in 30 percent more cases. Initially we will roll out this protection to everyone with the “Make searches and browsing better” setting enabled in Chrome.

Expanding predictive phishing protections

If you're signed in to Chrome and have Sync enabled, predictive phishing protection warns you if you enter your Google Account password into a site that we suspect of phishing. This protection has been in place since 2017, and today we’re expanding the feature further.

Now we'll be protecting your Google Account password when you sign in to Chrome, even if Sync is not enabled. In addition, this feature will now work for all the passwords you store in Chrome’s password manager. Hundreds of millions more users will now benefit from the new warnings.

Chrome will show this warning when a user enters their Google Account password into a phishing page.

Sharing your device? Now it’s easier to tell whose Chrome profile you’re using

We realize that many people share their computers or use multiple profiles. To make sure you always know which profile you’re currently using—for example, when creating and saving passwords with Chrome’s password manager—we’ve improved the way your profile is featured.

On desktop, you’ll see a new visual representation of the profile you’re currently using, so you can be sure you are saving your passwords to the right profile. This is a visual update and won’t change your current Sync settings. We’ve also updated the look of the profile menu itself: it now allows for easier switching and clearly shows if you are signed in to Chrome or not.

The new sign-in indicator.

From Munich with love

Many of these technologies were developed at the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC), a hub of privacy and security product experts and engineers based in Munich, which opened last May. GSEC is home to the engineering teams who build many of the safety features into the Chrome browser. We’ll continue to invest in our teams worldwide to deliver the safest personal browser experience to everyone, and we look forward to bringing more new features to strengthen the privacy and security of Chrome in 2020.

All these features will be rolled out gradually over the next few weeks. Interested in how they work? You can learn more on Google Security blog.

Posted by AbdelKarim Mardini, Senior Product Manager, Chrome

An update to our harassment policy for YouTube

December 12, 2019

Over the last several years we have worked to improve the way we manage content on YouTube by quickly removing it when it violates our Community Guidelines, reducing the spread of borderline content, raising up authoritative voices when people are looking for breaking news and information and rewarding trusted creators and artists that make YouTube a special place. Today we are announcing a series of policy and product changes that update how we tackle harassment on YouTube. We systematically review all our policies to make sure the line between what we remove and what we allow is drawn in the right place, and recognized earlier this year that for harassment, there is more we can do to protect our creators and community.

Harassment hurts our community by making people less inclined to share their opinions and engage with each other. We heard this time and again from creators, including those who met with us during the development of this policy update. We also met with a number of experts who shared their perspective and informed our process, from organizations that study online bullying or advocate on behalf of journalists, to free speech proponents and policy organizations from all sides of the political spectrum.

We remain committed to our openness as a platform and to ensuring that spirited debate and a vigorous exchange of ideas continue to thrive here. However, we will not tolerate harassment and we believe the steps outlined below will contribute to our mission by making YouTube a better place for anyone to share their story or opinion.

A stronger stance against threats and personal attacks

We’ve always removed videos that explicitly threaten someone, reveal confidential personal information, or encourage people to harass someone else. Moving forward, our policies will go a step further and not only prohibit explicit threats, but also veiled or implied threats. This includes content simulating violence toward an individual or language suggesting physical violence may occur. No individual should be subject to harassment that suggests violence.

Beyond threatening someone, there is also demeaning language that goes too far. To establish a consistent criteria for what type of content is not allowed on YouTube, we’re building upon the framework we use for our hate speech policy. We will no longer allow content that maliciously insults someone based on protected attributes such as their race, gender expression, or sexual orientation. This applies to everyone, from private individuals, to YouTube creators, to public officials.

Consequences for a pattern of harassing behavior

Something we heard from our creators is that harassment sometimes takes the shape of a pattern of repeated behavior across multiple videos or comments, even if any individual video doesn’t cross our policy line. To address this, we're tightening our policies for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) to get even tougher on those who engage in harassing behavior and to ensure we reward only trusted creators. Channels that repeatedly brush up against our harassment policy will be suspended from YPP, eliminating their ability to make money on YouTube. We may also remove content from channels if they repeatedly harass someone. If this behavior continues, we’ll take more severe action including issuing strikes or terminating a channel altogether.

Addressing toxic comments

We know that the comment section is an important place for fans to engage with creators and each other. At the same time, we heard feedback that comments are often where creators and viewers encounter harassment. This behavior not only impacts the person targeted by the harassment, but can also have a chilling effect on the entire conversation.

To combat this we remove comments that clearly violate our policies – over 16 million in the third quarter of this year, specifically due to harassment.The policy updates we’ve outlined above will also apply to comments, so we expect this number to increase in future quarters.

Beyond comments that we remove, we also empower creators to further shape the conversation on their channels and have a variety of tools that help. When we're not sure a comment violates our policies, but it seems potentially inappropriate, we give creators the option to review it before it's posted on their channel. Results among early adopters were promising – channels that enabled the feature saw a 75% reduction in user flags on comments. Earlier this year, we began to turn this setting on by default for most creators.

We’ve continued to fine tune our systems to make sure we catch truly toxic comments, not just anything that’s negative or critical, and feedback from creators has been positive. Last week we began turning this feature on by default for YouTube’s largest channels with the site’s most active comment sections and will roll out to most channels by the end of the year. To be clear, creators can opt-out, and if they choose to leave the feature enabled they still have ultimate control over which held comments can appear on their videos. Alternatively, creators can also ignore held comments altogether if they prefer.

All of these updates represent another step towards making sure we protect the YouTube community. We expect there will continue to be healthy debates over some of the decisions and we have an appeals process in place if creators believe we've made the wrong call on a video.

As we make these changes, it's vitally important that YouTube remain a place where people can express a broad range of ideas, and we'll continue to protect discussion on matters of public interest and artistic expression. We also believe these discussions can be had in ways that invite participation, and never make someone fear for their safety. We’re committed to continue revisiting our policies regularly to ensure that they are preserving the magic of YouTube, while also living up to the expectations of our community.

Posted by Matt Halprin, Vice President, Global Head of Trust & Safety

Year in Search 2019: Of massive moonshots and mega movies

December 11, 2019

Recapping the many trends that stoked our users’ imagination in 2019, here are the standout moments in Search across news, sporting events, personalities, movies, songs and more -- presenting our 2019 Year in Search recap.

The top 10 overall list of trending search terms this year reflected the country's excitement around events like the Cricket World Cup, the Lok Sabha elections, and the buzzing interest that surrounded the launch of Chandrayaan 2. Movies like Kabir Singh, Joker, and a double entry of Marvel’s blockbusters -- Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel -- also featured in the overall list.

In movies, the ones that spiked this year included a mix of musicals and action flicks. The Indian movies here included Gully Boy, Mission Mangal, and War. On the international front the list included the critically-acclaimed Joker and the two Marvel movies, which also turned out to be among the most searched queries overall.

Personalities that stood out this year included Abhinandan Varthaman, Lata Mangeshkar, and Yuvraj Singh, and we even saw a unique entry with the singing sensation that is Ranu Mondal. Sporting searches were dominated by the Cricket World Cup followed by the Pro Kabaddi League. Other international sporting spectacles like the Wimbledon, Copa América, and the tennis tournaments (including the Australian, French and US Open) were also highly searched.

In general news queries, searches were understandably dominated by the Lok Sabha Elections, Chandrayaan 2, and Article 370. The Maharashtra and Haryana state assembly elections were also highly searched. Rounding up the list were a mix of both local and global news moments such as the Pulwama attack, Cyclone Fani, the Ayodhya verdict, and the Amazon forest fire.

Among our ‘How to…’ searches, we saw a wide variety of queries ranging from “How to vote“ to “How to get Fastag” and even “How to select channels as per TRAI”. When it came to users looking to learn more and asking ‘What is…’, the top query was “What is Article 370?’. Other trending searches also included “What is howdy Modi?”, “What is DLS method in cricket?”, and “What is Article 15?”. And on local searches around ‘Near me…’, the top query was “Dance classes near me” followed by “Salons near me”. Interestingly, a pertinent entry in this particular list in 2019 was “Air quality Index near me”.

View the complete 2019 India-specific lists and global trends in detail; and check out over a thousand global top-ten lists across pop culture, sports, music, politics, news, and more, from more than 75 countries.

India Blog

Putting you in control: our work in privacy this year

YouTube Music makes discovery more personal with playlists mixed for you

Better password protections in Chrome

An update to our harassment policy for YouTube

Year in Search 2019: Of massive moonshots and mega movies

Labels

Archive

More Information

Subscribe via Email