Official Google Canada Blog: March 2016

Inviting more players to the game: YouTube Gaming comes to Canada

Thursday, March 10, 2016

For years Canadians have turned to YouTube to connect with their favourite gaming content, including content from top Canadian gaming creators like Vanoss, TypicalGamer and The Bajan Canadian. On YouTube, Canadians have found a community that is creating amazing content, including new collaborative and interactive formats that have reshaped the video game landscape, and pushed YouTube forward.
Now we’re inviting more players to the game. Starting today, we’re making the YouTube Gaming mobile app available on iOS and Android in Canada. YouTube Gaming is an app that keeps you connected to the games, players, and culture that matter to you, with videos, live streams, and the biggest community of gamers on the web—all in one place. We launched YouTube Gaming in the U.S. and U.K. last August, and we’re excited to invite new players to join us.

YouTube Gaming is built to be all about your favorite games and gamers, with more videos than anywhere else. We automatically pull in all gaming-related videos and live streams from YouTube to YouTube Gaming. From “Asteroids” to “Zelda,” more than 25,000 games will each have their own page, a single place for all the best videos and live streams about that title. You’ll also find channels from a wide array of game publishers and YouTube creators.
Keeping up with these games and channels is super easy, too. Add a game to your collection for quick access whenever you want to check up on the latest videos, or subscribe to a channel to get a notification as soon as they start a live stream. Uncover new favorites with recommendations based on the games and channels you love. And when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing “call” will show you “Call of Duty” and not “Call Me Maybe.”

We know live streams bring the gaming community closer together, so we’ve created a dedicated destination for them within YouTube Gaming. On Android, we’ve also made it simpler to broadcast your gameplay to YouTube. You can now record and live stream mobile gameplay on-the-go directly from Android devices using Mobile Capture in YouTube Gaming. You don’t need any additional hardware or software—just tap Go Live in the YouTube Gaming app, turn on your selfie cam and record your commentary with your phone’s microphone. We’re so excited to bring YouTube Gaming to Canada, and look forward to watching more together.
Posted by Alex Costa, Gaming Creator Partnerships, North America

New ways to plan your vacation while on the go

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

With spring around the corner, it’s time to look forward to sunnier skies—and summer getaways. And with more than half of Canadians saying they intend to vacation in 2016,* we see many Canadians turning to mobile phones to sneak in vacation dreaming and planning here and there—in line at the coffee shop, or on your way to a friend. In fact, Canadians spend an average of 30 days planning their trips, which last 8.6 days on average.**
But even as mobile travel planning grows, it can be hard to get all the right information in one place on a small screen. There are a dizzying number of questions to answer when planning a trip: What are the best places to visit? What time of year is good to go? What kind of prices can I expect?
Today we’re introducing something to make all this easier: Destinations on Google, which helps you discover and plan your next vacation, right from Google Search on your phone.
Search with Google on your mobile phone for the continent, country, or state you’d like to travel to and add the word “destination” to see an easy-to-browse collection of options. Destinations integrates a deep understanding of all the places in the world with Google Flights and Hotel search, so you can see available flight and hotel prices instantly. So instead of jumping between a dozen links or tabs to get the information you need, you can sit back and scroll—and leave the heavy lifting to us.

To find a vacation that’s just your style, search for a destination and something you’d like to do there, like “spain surfing,” “new zealand hiking,” or “colorado skiing.” We’ll suggest spots that fit with your hobbies and interests
Say you’re planning to take some time off in June or July, but you haven’t decided exactly when to go. The “Flexible Dates” filter lets you refine your results by month, so you can see when fares and rates are lowest within the time range you want, across multiple destinations.
Want to avoid crowds or bad weather? Select any destination and tap the “Explore” tab to see what the weather is like year-round and when your destination is most popular, based on historic visits from other travelers.
Once you've selected a destination, tap "Plan a trip" to see rates for hotels and flights. We show you highs and lows for the next six months, so you can find the right price tag for you. And as you slide left or right, the results instantly update with real-time fares and rates, pulling from the trillions of flight itineraries and hotels we price every day on Google Flights and Hotel search. You can also tap the pencil icon to customize results further with flight and hotel preferences, including number of stops, hotel class, and number of travelers. Whether you’ve got five days or 12, don’t fret about figuring out where to go first or which spots you can’t miss. Simply search for “Spain travel,” and click the blue arrow icon to browse the most frequently traveled itineraries. The suggested itineraries are based on historic visits by other travelers to those places, so you can use the wisdom of the crowd and save time researching.

And which destinations are Canadians interested in traveling this Spring? We looked at the cities and countries that have seen a spike in search interest in January and February compared to the preceding months, to determine the Trending Destinations in Canada for the upcoming travel season.

Whether you’re looking for a quick sunny getaway or planning an extensive trip overseas, we hope Destinations on Google make it smooth sailing to your next vacation. Bon voyage!
Posted by Jenn Kaiser, Communications Manager, Google Canada

*Google Consumer Survey, Canada, March 2016 ** Canada Travel Study. Google / Ipsos, November 2015

Moon Shot: A space story about life on Earth

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Right now, 16 private teams from around the world are in a race to the moon. They’re in a $30 million competition called the Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP), which challenges teams to design and build a rover, land it on the surface of the moon, drive it 500 meters across the lunar landscape, and send HD video and imagery back to Earth by the end of 2017. And soon, you’ll be able to learn their stories in a new digital documentary series from Google, Academy Award®-nominated director Orlando von Einsiedel, Executive Producer J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot, and Epic Digital.

The GLXP competition, which started in 2007, aims to kick off a new era of space exploration by enabling low-cost and efficient access to the moon. Not only is the moon our closest neighbor in space, it’s also the gateway to exploring the rest of the universe—and provides opportunities for discovery in the fields of science, technology, and human habitation.
The teams in the competition come from all walks of life, from Silicon Valley tech experts, to hackers in Germany, to IT specialists in India, to a father and son working out of their their Vancouver apartment. In a series of 9 digital documentaries, Moon Shot goes behind the scenes with each team, bringing to life their challenges, sacrifices, quirks, and most importantly, the reasons why they’re making the 238,900 mile journey to the moon.
The series will be available for free on Google Play on March 15 and on YouTube on March 17. Subscribe to the Google Lunar XPRIZE YouTube Channel to be one of the first to see it, and for more information, visit lunar.xprize.org.
Yasemin Denari Southworth, Marketing Manager, Google Brand Marketing

Official Canada Blog

Inviting more players to the game: YouTube Gaming comes to Canada

New ways to plan your vacation while on the go

Moon Shot: A space story about life on Earth

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