Luglio, 2021

Last month, we expanded journalist training in India to combat misinformation, invested in startups growth in Latin America, learned about innovative news projects around the world and more. Read on for June updates.

Combating misinformation in India

In India, DataLEADS, our Google News Initiative training network partner, completed a 35-day virtual roadshow to provide digital verification skills to over 4,000 people. More than 700 organizations took part in workshops focused on tackling misinformation related to COVID-19 vaccines.

Supporting news startups in Latin America

The Google News Initiative Startups Lab is expanding to Spanish-speaking Latin America, in partnership with SembraMedia. Through direct funding and an intensive six-month curriculum, the Lab will help a group of up to 12 early-stage digital news businesses develop financial sustainability and growth. This builds on lessons learned from the Startups Labs in Brazil and North America. 

Last month, we also released a Spanish version of the Google News Initiative Startups Playbook, a guide to building a successful digital news business from scratch.

Engaging with the global news community through Newsgeist

Together with other news industry leaders, we organized a virtual, week-long version of Newsgeist, an opportunity to connect with the global news community to discuss relevant topics, share projects and initiatives and tackle challenging problems facing the news industry together. The event brought together more than 600 journalists, business leaders, tech leaders, academics and others for a discussion about the state and future of the news industry

Collaborating on AI literacy

Over the next six months, 24 international news organizations will take part in acollaborative experiment across Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas. The program was developed  in partnership with Polis, the London School of Economics and Political Science’s journalism think tank, through JournalismAI, our efforts to strengthen AI literacy within newsrooms, and convene the industry around common challenges and opportunities.

Learning from Innovation Challenge recipients

Building on the Digital News Innovation Fund in Europe, Google News Initiative Innovation Challenges have supported more than 180 projects that inject new ideas into the news industry. Around the world, we’re learning from former Innovation Challenge recipients who are using their funding to drive innovation in news.

• Word in Black chose Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day the last slaves were freed in the U.S., to launch a new website and newsletter for Black communities in collaboration with theLocal Media Foundation. 

• AnyClip combines artificial intelligence and search tools to provide video analytics for content providers. The Israeli startup has raised an additional $47 million to build out its platform and expand business after seeing 600% growth in the last year.

• Socialbeat is an Italian startup developed through a collaboration between Accenture and Italian publisher SESAAB. With the help of a recent investment, they’ll continue to enhance their AI-powered software platform for aggregation and content selection.

• The Sicilian Post created the ARIA project, which allows journalists to automatically create illustrative graphics using data. This month, they hosted a workshop to introduce participants to the project at an Italian conference. 

Using AI to moderate content

The changing legal and political environment in Europe, as well as growing extremism and polarization in society, means that moderation tools are often inadequate for modern journalism. In light of these factors, Wirtualna Polaska built a moderation engine using Google Cloud tools to help ease the burden on content moderators and provide a safe platform for open discussion in Poland. 

Helping European publishers grow their digital revenue

In partnership withWAN-IFRA, we’re launching the 2021-2022 Table Stakes Europe program designed to help European publishers drive digital revenue growth by focusing on putting audiences first. Applications are now open and will operate on a rolling basis. The program is scheduled to begin in December 2021 and will run for nine months.

That’s a wrap for June. Follow along on social and sign up for our newsletter for more updates.

Every summer my family spends a week at a lake house, boating, barbecuing and reading books. My wife and I each choose a few books to share in our family library and read them at the same time on our devices. It gives us a chance to introduce each other to new genres and authors. I typically read thrillers and sci-fi, while my wife prefers a  mix of literary fiction and celebrity memoirs. 

This year, we used the Google Play Books Android app’s new features to discover and organize our vacation reading list. Here’s how we’re using Google Play Books for our very informal summer book club: 

Customize your bookshelves

One top request from Play Books readers was for customizable shelves.  With custom shelves, you can organize and sort your books into themed collections.  We made a shelf for our must-read ebooks for “Summer 2021.”  You can also designate your “All-time favorites” so you always  have a list of recommendations ready. Create a “Family listening” shelf for the audiobooks you’re saving for a family road trip. Custom shelves make it easy to find the right book at the right time.

Use filters to find your ideal read

Readers also told us that they wanted an easy way to find titles for specific reading needs. Now you can browse by filters like language (to find titles written in a specific language), price range (to see books in your budget) and price drop (to see discounted books).

Find deals on the books you want to read

Customized discount notifications in the Android app now help you find more deals. If you sample or wishlist a book, you’ll receive an email if that title is discounted in the future (just make sure you’re opted in to marketing emails from Google Play). Take advantage of this feature by wishlisting the titles that interest you when you come across them in the Play Books app.  

With custom shelves, store filtering and deal alerts, you have even more ways to find your next great read on Google Play Books. To get you started, here’s our “Summer 2021” shelf:

Zero-day vulnerabilities are unknown software flaws. Until they’re identified and fixed, they can be exploited by attackers. Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) actively works to detect hacking attempts and influence operations to protect users from digital attacks, this includes hunting for these types of vulnerabilities because they can be particularly dangerous when exploited and have a high rate of success.

In this blog, we’re sharing details about four in-the-wild 0-day campaigns targeting four separate vulnerabilities we’ve discovered so far this year: 

• CVE-2021-21166 and CVE-2021-30551 in Chrome,

• CVE-2021-33742 in Internet Explorer, and

• CVE-2021-1879 in WebKit (Safari).

The four exploits were used as a part of three different campaigns. As is our policy, after discovering these 0-days, we quickly reported to the vendor and patches were released to users to protect them from these attacks. We assess three of these exploits were developed by the same commercial surveillance company that sold these capabilities to two different government-backed actors. Google has also published root cause analyses (RCAs) on each of the 0-days.

In addition to the technical details, we’ll also provide our take on the large uptick of in-the-wild 0-day attacks the industry is seeing this year. Halfway into 2021, there have been 33 0-day exploits used in attacks that have been publicly disclosed this year — 11 more than the total number from 2020. While there is an increase in the number of 0-day exploits being used, we believe greater detection and disclosure efforts are also contributing to the upward trend.

This week, we hosted the Google for Games Developer Summit, a free digital event for game developers, publishers and advertisers to come together globally. Though we couldn’t meet in person, we’re grateful for the chance to share our latest solutions for developers to create immersive and memorable gaming experiences for players everywhere.

All keynotes and sessions from the summit are available on demand. Here are a few things we discussed during our keynote sessions:

Easier game development on Android

The new Android Game Development Kit can help make game development easier while Play as you download and the new Reach and devices data and insights tool can help get your games running on more screens and drive your launch success on Google Play.