Official Google Canada Blog: December 2020

Digital tools and skills bring economic recovery in Canada

Thursday, December 17, 2020

When 2020 began, like so many others, I saw the opportunity for technology to help businesses grow, positively impact Canadians and address economic challenges. But I could have never imagined how the year would unfold and the profound impact digital technology would have on our daily lives.

Eight months into the pandemic, I made a purchase from 22 & Lou, where owner Laura Freel makes jams and marmalades out of her home kitchen in Toronto. Laura’s preserves had been flying off local market shelves, but with sudden store closures, she quickly realized that to keep her business alive, she’d have to start selling online. With no previous experience, she signed up for Digital Main Street’s ShopHERE powered by Google program, was paired with a Canadian student to build her website, and in a matter of weeks, her business was back up and running. Laura’s is just one of the many stories of resilience I’ve heard from business owners across the country. And it’s a story we’re proud to be a part of. Today I’m sharing an update on how our teams worked alongside Canadian businesses and local organizations to support our country’s economic recovery.

Helping Canadian businesses bounce back
We knew it was critical to get small businesses online quickly. That’s why in May, we invested $1 million to expand the ShopHERE program, and made a pledge to get 50,000 Canadian small businesses online. The program is currently operating in nearly 450 municipalities, and will continue to expand across the country, helping businesses like 22 & Lou start selling online.

More than 1.5 million Canadians have visited our Small Business Hub, which provides the tools needed to get online, connect with customers and build digital skills. We made it free for Canadian retailers to list their products on the Google Shopping tab. And to help businesses keep up with the demand for e-commerce, we delivered Google Ads training through Skillshop and Google Academy, and worked with partners like the Retail Council of Canada, Export Development Canada, Startup Canada and Business Development Bank of Canada to deliver free virtual training to over 20,000 Canadian entrepreneurs.

Giving back to local communities
But it’s not just about businesses, we are just as committed to helping the communities in which we live and work. As part of our COVID-19 local response, our Canadian sites donated over $800,000 in Community Grants through our philanthropic arm, Google.org. The organizations that received grants, such as Region Ready, Toronto Public Library Foundation, Kids Code Jeunesse and the Ottawa Food Bank, address critical areas of need, like food insecurity, connectivity, education and PPE for frontline health workers. Through the gift match program Google offers employees annually, Canadian Googlers have raised $1.6 million for organizations in their communities and around the world.

Digital skills training for the future of work
We need to better align the skills of the Canadian workforce with the jobs of the future. This year we transformed our free Grow with Google training to virtual formats and have trained more than 80,000 Canadians on digital skills. With school closures, we trained more than 10,000 Canadian teachers in G Suite for Education, to help them adapt to teaching from home. We also funded community organizations that do critical work to boost digital skills. Google.org announced a $2.5 million grant for NPower Canada, to go toward IT training for 1,700 young adults from underrepresented groups. The first cohort graduated in September, and over half of the graduates have already secured employment just three months post-training. Last week, Google.org announced a $250,000 grant to ComIT, to provide free IT training to 450 Indigenous learners across Canada.

Supporting tech in Canada
We’ll continue our expansion plans to build new offices in Toronto, Montreal and Waterloo. To strengthen our support for the broader tech ecosystem, we launched two accelerators for Canadian startups. Collectively, the Google for Startups Accelerator Canada and Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders have enrolled 14 Canadian startups. We’ve also renewed our commitment to Canada’s AI ecosystem with an additional $3.5+ million grant to Mila, the world’s largest deep learning research institute based in Québec.

In a year that has brought about many changes for us all, the pandemic is one thing we all have in common. And collaboration has been our strongest resource. As we all move increasingly online to find products and services, digitization is clearly the next driver of sustained growth for our country. But we can’t do it alone. We’ll continue to work alongside businesses, local organizations and nonprofits into 2021 and beyond.

Posted by Sabrina Geremia, VP & Country Manager, Google Canada

Meet the Canadian projects improving diversity in local news

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Google News Initiativeannouncedannouncing

Ryerson University’s JeRI: The Journalism Representation Index. JeRI is an AI-powered tool that scores the institutional power of sources cited in news stories. “In this time of great change it’s really important as journalists that we ensure the stories we report on reflect a diversity of voices,” says Asmaa Malik, Associate professor at Ryerson University. “With JERI our hope is that we can rebuild trust with readers and offer them transparency into the process.”
Winnipeg Free Press’s Reader Bridge: The Reader Bridge is designed to help diversify, engage, build and sustain our readership, in large part by delivering stories and potential readers from underserved communities. Readers will be able to participate in journalism in a direct way by offering perspectives and expertise.
Concordia’s Institute for Investigative Journalism: The IIJ Data Hub will serve as a knowledge base for students, researchers, journalists and members of the public, providing access to the documents, data, maps, responses to access-to-information requests and other materials acquired over the course of our award-winning national investigations and connecting to innovation hubs nationwide.

The Innovation Challenge received 215 applications from the US and Canada, and will fund 33 projects totaling $5.9 million.

You can read the full list of the successful recipients on our website. We extend our sincerest thanks to everyone who took the time to apply to this challenge.

Posted by Sabrina Geremia, Vice President, Google Canada

Toronto researchers build machine learning tool with Google Cloud to track COVID-19 genomic data

Monday, December 14, 2020

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit early in 2020, Vector Institute in Toronto had to close its labs and send its students and faculty to work at home. Dr. Bo Wang, Lead Artificial Intelligence Scientist at the University Health Network and Faculty Member at Vector, redirected his team to prioritize urgent COVID-19 research. Ph.D. student Hassaan Maan, who works in Dr. Wang's lab on machine learning for healthcare, wanted to help in the global efforts to combat the pandemic's impact, too. He had an idea: a web-based visualization tool to process public COVID-19 viral genome data. With Dr. Samira Mubareka of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center and Dr. Andrew McArthur, associate professor in the department of biochemistry and biomedical sciences and director of the biomedical discovery & commercialization program at McMaster University, Maan developed the COVID-19 Genotyping Tool (CGT ). The application provides insights into transmission pathways, outbreak epicenters, and key viral mutations. It allows users to upload viral genome data from patients anywhere in the world and analyze it in real-time. “In doing so,” says Wang, “they can determine the context of local events with respect to the global picture, and help shape local health policy and alert the community to any key changes in viral evolution.”Intuitive deployment within a week Maan started developing the app in the R-Shiny framework because he was already familiar with it. Still, he needed a place to deploy all the data, which would have to scale as the number of users and uploads grew — and genome sequences require massive data processing. His solution: Compute Engine on Google Cloud. “Google Cloud offers elastic deployment and is optimized for containers in Docker,” he says. “I had never developed a tool like this, but Google Cloud had intuitive guides and docs. I deployed the app within a week. ” Now the team is working on implementing larger batch uploads.

Maan sees two main benefits for researchers using CGT: “First, it helps track the evolution of the virus' mutations. Most mutations may be harmless or synonymous, but some variations in the genome could change how the disease is treated and transmitted. That kind of data surveillance is very important for predicting new outbreaks. Second, it's also important to track the virus' transmission backwards. By tracing a cluster of cases's origins, we know more about how it spreads. This tool lets us ask new questions in new ways. ”

Making COVID-19 data accessible through machine learning The Vector team made CGT publicly available on a website in June 2020, and the tool has averaged about 10,000 new genomes uploaded every week since. “With the total number of publicly posted SARS-CoV-2 genomes rapidly approaching 100,000, CGT is proving to be an invaluable resource for rapidly visualizing and tracking viral genomes worldwide,” says Dr. Terrance Snutch, professor at the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia and chair of the Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network. “As the pandemic progresses into autumn and schools begin to reopen, the tool can be a critical component of genotyping efforts, carried out in smaller communities dealing with localized outbreaks

For Maan, the project has exciting implications for responding to the global pandemic: “The app allows researchers to sift through genetic information and find potential patterns of transmission on a broad scale. For example, getting travel histories from every COVID-19 patient has been uneven. CGT can help guide public health policy and inform travel restrictions. When genomic sequencing of the virus picks up, it will be even more useful. ”

Both Maan and McArthur received Google Cloud research credits through Dr. Wang's lab for this COVID-19 related project. If you're interested in accessing complementary credits to drive your own research, Google is funding projects all the way from modeling the COVID-19 outbreak to predicting sepsis and discovering new planets. Click here to learn more.
Posted by the Google Cloud Team

Google Canada’s #YearInSearch: 2020

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

The latest features for Pixel owners are here

Monday, December 7, 2020

The latest and greatest, now on more Pixels
Pixel 5

Finally, we showed off a redesigned, more helpful editor in Google Photos with a new tab that gives you suggestions powered by machine learning that are tailored to the picture you’re editing. Now on Pixel, we’re rolling out new suggestions, including Dynamic, which enhances brightness, contrast and colour, and a set of sky suggestions, which help you create stunning sunset and sunrise images in just one tap.

Adapting to you, for you

Google devices are most helpful when they seamlessly assist you throughout the day—wherever you are. We call this ambient computing, and it drives our approach to how Pixel should adapt to your needs in real time.

For example, Adaptive Sound improves the sound quality of your phone speaker based on your surroundings. It uses the microphone to assess the acoustics near you, then adjusts the sound equalizer settings in certain apps. Bringing your Pixel from the bedroom to the bathroom while getting ready in the morning? Your audio will sound great wherever you are.

Speaking of where you’re going, the GPS on Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a (5G) is now more accurate when you’re on foot than previous generations. This means your rideshare service can find you more easily, and there’s no more guessing which side of the street you need to be on when you’re walking somewhere. (Requires an internet connection and Android 8.0 or later.)

Your Pixel can also now detect if you’re viewing a website or app in a different language and translate it using Google Lens. Just take a screenshot or swipe into App Overview, and tap the Lens chip to see the translation. For available Google Lens languages go to g.co/help/lens.

And for a little more help between charges, there are new context-aware battery features. Additional improvements to Adaptive Battery for Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a (5G) can automatically save even more power if a user is likely to miss their next charge, keeping the device powered even longer. Adaptive Charging helps preserve battery health over time by dynamically controlling how quickly a Pixel device charges. Just plug in your phone in the evening, set an alarm and the Adaptive Charging will work its magic.

And for Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a (5G) owners, our new Adaptive Connectivity feature helps you get the most out of your battery by automatically switching from 5G to 4G based on the app you’re using. It’ll choose 4G for things like browsing the web or sending texts, and switch to 5G when you’re watching movies or downloading large files. (Not available on all carriers or for all apps or features.)

Make your Pixel even more yours

Your phone should feel uniquely yours. Now you can personalize your home screen with new icons, grid views and app shapes, or even choose custom wallpapers of famous artworks provided by cultural institutions from around the world on Google Arts & Culture (wallpapers coming soon directly into the wallpaper categories in settings).

Plus, a special treat for Star Wars fans: Google, Disney and Lucasfilm worked together to launch “The Mandalorian” AR Experience, an augmented reality app available on Google Play for 5G Google Pixel devices and other select 5G Android phones. Now all Pixel 3 and newer devices can customize the home screen with original new Mandalorian wallpapers.

And something music lovers can appreciate: Your Pixel can already recognize songs that are playing around you if you enable Now Playing; all the tracks you hear are stored in your Now Playing History. Now you can select all the songs you heard while you were driving or watching TV and export them to a playlist in YouTube Music.

For those who use other Android devices, there's plenty of new things to get excited about: Check out our blog post on everything new for Android phones.

* Battery life depends upon many factors, and usage of certain features will decrease battery life. Actual battery life may be lower.

Posted by Harrison Lingren, Technical Program Manager

Made in Canada: Meet the Waterloo engineering team that’s transforming healthcare service

Friday, December 4, 2020

In a year like no other, our Google Cloud Healthcare and Life Sciences team has worked tirelessly with local and global partners to help them organize their healthcare information and make it secure, accessible, and useful in order to improve global healthcare service.
We sat down with Ilia Tulchinsky, engineering lead for Google Cloud Healthcare and Life Sciences, to tell us a bit more about the work his team has been doing this year.

Let’s start with you - tell us a little about your role at Google and what your team works on How has the pandemic impacted some of the work your team is doing?

We’ve helped to onboard many research groups onto Google Cloud in order to run disease spread modelling and viral genomics sequencing workloads, leveraging the Cloud Life Sciences API.

With the increased demand in telehealth, we’re working with partners like Amwell to help bring intelligent healthcare delivery to patients’ homes.

We’ve also released several offerings to help our customers manage their data and create models that support public health response and policy, including the Cloud Healthcare API, and the recently launched Healthcare Natural Language API.

Tell us about the Healthcare Natural Language API - how is that helpful for healthcare systems? What has been the biggest opportunity for the Google Cloud Healthcare team this year? You mentioned a lot of this work is happening in Canada. Does this work have a global impact for healthcare?Posted by The Google Canada Team

Shining a spotlight on the brilliant talent in Canada with Artist on the Rise

Thursday, December 3, 2020

Canada was once looked at as one of music's best kept secrets. But today it's no secret at all that Canadian artists have completely reshaped our global soundtrack. So many of these transcendent Canadian artists have found their audiences on YouTube. From Justin Bieber, Roxane Bruneau and Shawn Mendes, to Alessia Cara and The Weeknd, the list goes on. We're so proud to have connected these artists with the 2 billion monthly users we have on YouTube. And we're not done shining a spotlight on the brilliant talent in Canada. In fact, we're just getting started.Today, we're launching Artist on the Rise in Canada. This new feature will live on our explore tab and showcase the promising future of a new emerging artist every week to our Canadian users. It's also a companion feature to Creator on the Rise which launched in Canada in 2017.

Our first featured artist is Faouzia, a compelling vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Carman, Manitoba. She has a unique sound that's been described as cinematic pop with alternative and rhythmic elements. She continues to break through week after week, and is the perfect example of Canadian talent that's taking the world by storm.“In 2013, I started uploading my music to YouTube. Seven years and over a million subscribers later, I've seen how YouTube has been an important part of my growth journey as an artist, and connecting me with fans across the globe,” says Faouzia. "I'm honoured to be YouTube's first Artist on the Rise in Canada, and look forward to continuing to share my sound and new music on the platform." Canada has always been a powerhouse of talent - from Alanis Morissette, Nickelback and Sum41 to Drake, Tate McRae and Faouzia. It's critical for this talent to continue to be recognized and celebrated. We're thirsty to discover the next generation of Canadian stars through Artist on the Rise on YouTube. With respect, Lyor
Posted by Lyor Cohen, Global Head of Music, YouTube