Back in February, Smart Compose and autocorrect for Google Docs entered general availability after several months of testing. These machine learning-powered features are now coming to G Suite for Education and Nonprofit customers.

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Google Assistant lets you build macros that invoke multiple actions with a single command. Over the past day, a bug when creating new Assistant Routines prevents you from easily adding Home control actions. Fortunately, the underlying capability remains functional and a workaround exists.

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Back in April, Australia set out to force Google (and Facebook) to pay local publishers for content that appears in products like Search and News. An AU$600 million to $1 billion yearly payment has recently been suggested, with Google Australia today offering a rebuttal and explaining how its business works.

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In January, we spotted YouTube testing a new Premium perk that gives subscribers one free channel membership every month. The Google video site is now making this new benefit official for a limited time in five countries.

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Earlier this year, Google introduced a quieter permissions UI for denying notification requests. Chrome 84 in July will automatically block intrusive notifications and other prompts on abusive sites.

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YouTube today is making it easier to navigate videos — especially long ones — with “Video Chapters.” This new feature goes beyond the timestamps that some creators list in descriptions by placing chapters right in the progress bar.

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Back in February, we spotted Voice appearing in Gmail’s side panel. Google Voice integration in Gmail on the web is now official for G Suite customers, along with call transfer capabilities.

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At the start of May, the Chrome team established metrics for building fast websites. Google today announced plans to incorporate “Core Web Vitals,” like page speed, when ranking how sites appear in Search next year.

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In 2014, Google launched the “Open Location Code” project as an alternative to street addresses that’s “easier to use than latitude and longitude.” Google Maps is now introducing a faster way to access and share “Plus Codes” on Android.

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G Suite’s productivity apps are seeing a pair of updates on Android and the web today. On the latter platform, there’s a Google Docs “document status” indicator, while the mobile apps pick up a new search field.

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Google’s enterprise communication tools have seen a flurry of changes in recent weeks. The latest is a Progressive Web App for Google Chat that replaces the existing Electron client.

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Local businesses are struggling amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic due to decreased foot traffic and sales. Many have turned to selling gift cards as a means for customers to offer additional support, with Google soon allowing affected businesses to link to such donation methods on their public listings.

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YouTube Kids is the child-friendly version of YouTube that adds pretty strong parental controls to help keep kids on specific types of content. Starting today, YouTube Kids is finally available for download on Apple TV.

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Google Groups is an email-based forum aimed at sharing information and other resources within an organization. The new Google Groups with Material Theme redesign is rolling out to enterprise customers next month.

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Accessibility on Android is set to get a massive boost, thanks to the recently released Action Blocks, an app that was released on Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

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In recent months, Google has added a number of privacy controlling features to Maps. The latest sees Incognito mode come to Google Maps for iOS, while Android picks up the ability to bulk delete logged locations in Timeline.

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In Google’s ambient computing future, voice commands are as capable as tapping away on a touchscreen. Google Assistant is now taking another step toward that with the ability to use Voice Match to authorize/confirm payments.

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YouTube Music has seen a flurry of new features in recent weeks from Play Music migration to a new “Related” tab. The latest is a new “Play My Station” homescreen shortcut for YouTube Music on Android.

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When Twitter rolls out new features for its mobile app, they usually hit iOS way earlier than Android, but the latest feature hasn’t seen too much of a gap. To close out this week, Twitter is rolling out support for quote retweet counts on Android, just over a week after iOS picked up the same feature.

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Since February, we’ve been tracking a redesign of Google Assistant settings on Android that greatly simplifies how to manage the sprawling, cross-device service. It’s now in testing for some users on the latest Google app beta.

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As part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google Maps is getting a new “Accessible Places” mode to explicitly highlight wheelchair accessibility information in the app.

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Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day and Google is marking the occasion with several mobile features. One-tap Assistant Action Blocks are launching today on Android, along with new features for Live Transcribe and Sound Amplifier.

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