YouTube

Last year, YouTube began displaying concert showtimes underneath music videos on the web and mobile. The Google video site is now expanding that ad extensions space to include movie showtimes, app installations, and more.

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Back in March, YouTube began testing picture-in-picture on the web for simultaneous watching and browsing. While the previous A/B test was limited in scope, a new YouTube Miniplayer appears to be widely rolling out this evening

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One of YouTube’s first standalone services was YouTube Gaming to capitalize on streaming games to a live audience. With the explosive rise of an Amazon-owned Twitch, Google is now integrating gaming into the main YouTube site and mobile apps.

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AV1 is an open, industry-backed codec that will allow for more efficient and better quality video streaming. YouTube is beginning to test AV1 through an initial beta with Chrome 70 and Firefox Nightly on desktops now supporting it.

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In light of YouTube’s algorithmic approach to finding appropriate videos for kids failing, the Google division turned to human curation in April. YouTube Kids is now launching the ability for parents to pre-approve every video and channel available their child, while adding a new experience geared towards older kids.

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Europe’s controversial Copyright Directive has been approved after a previous version was rejected back in July.

Although intended to protect the rights of copyright owners, it’s likely to prove a headache for both Google’s search engine and its YouTube video platform …

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Matching the desktop counterpart, YouTube in March announced a dark theme for its mobile apps. iOS received the update immediately, while YouTube for Android has been testing for the past several months. Today, it now appears to be rolling out to more users.

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With the prevalence of abnormal display aspect ratios lately, Google’s YouTube app has made a point of adding a “zoom to fill” mode to select phones. Now, that functionality has extended to the Essential Phone.

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Announced at I/O 2018, YouTube was one of the first products that launched Digital Wellbeing features like break reminders and notification management. Today, the Google video service is rolling out “Time watched” stats along with centralized controls for all the other options.

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At Samsung’s Unpacked event this morning, the company touted how the Galaxy Note 9 is a YouTube Signature Device, tuned to deliver a good video watching experience. This initiative is part of the Google video site’s new Device Report to test phones and work with manufacturers on creating a “best-in-class YouTube experience.”

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Not long after Apple kicked things off by pulling the plug on Alex Jones’ podcasts, Facebook followed suit with removing several of his brand pages. Now, YouTube has removed the Alex Jones channel from its site for “violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
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With YouTube Music now several weeks old and rolling out internationally, Google is ready to improve and regularly update the streaming service with new features. The music offering will see functionality updates every two weeks, with a number already on the product roadmap.

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After introducing a dark theme for Android last week, YouTube is now testing the ability to swipe through videos to quickly jump to the next one. This gesture is quite intuitive and faster than the current alternatives.

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Like it or not, vertical video is still a thing, and YouTube’s platform has a whole lot of it. While watching videos like this on the desktop, or in other aspect ratios, the video player adds some ugly black bars. Now, though, YouTube’s desktop player is adding a dynamic video player.

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