After the success of many other ‘donation’ set-ups for video makers, it seems Google are finally following suit. Today they have released their new ‘tip jar’ function so that you can donate to Youtubers you particularly enjoy.

The tip box can be access through clicking a small box on the top left hand corner of the video screen on those Youtubers who have activated theirs. The viewer then chooses how much to donate and sends it off. Obviously Youtube/Google take a cut of the donation, and how much varies by country. For the US it’s 5% plus 21 cents, which seems to mean that a decent amount of the donation money will go to the video maker rather than Google.

The new feature was teased first at Vidcon in July and has now been rolled out in the US, Mexico, Australia and Japan with Youtube aiming to get the feature working in other countries soon. It remains to be seen if those video makers who previously used sites such as Patreon to help fund their video making will be swayed over to using Google’s new system or not.