Official Google Canada Blog: August 2021

Introducing the Google For Startups Accelerator: Women Founders Class of 2021

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Earlier this summer we shared details about how the Google for Startups Accelerator program is expanding its support for founders from underrepresented groups. In addition to our Black Founders accelerator program, the expansion included a second year of programming specifically designed for women-led startups in North America. We launched the inaugural Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders program in 2020, in order to address gender disparity in the startup ecosystem and provide high-quality mentorship opportunities and support for women founders. Studies showed that only 16% of small and medium sized businesses were owned by women, and that women often lack access to venture capitalist funding and accelerator programs to help launch and scale up their businesses.
This year, we have designed another great program for our women founders, and today we are thrilled to announce the 12 women-led startups joining our class of 2021. We’re also excited to share that four Canadian startups from across the country are part of this year’s cohort.
Without further ado, meet the Google For Startups Accelerator: Women Founders class of 2021!

Aquacycl (Escondido, California): Aquacycl makes energy-neutral wastewater treatment a reality, offering modular on-site systems to treat high-strength organic waste streams. The BioElectrochemical Treatment Technology (BETT) is the first commercially viable microbial fuel cell, which generates direct electricity from wastewater, treating untreatable streams and reducing wastewater management costs by 20-60%.
Braze Mobility (Toronto, Ontario): Braze Mobility provides affordable navigation solutions for wheelchair users. It developed the world's first blind spot sensor system that can be attached to any wheelchair, transforming it into a smart wheelchair that automatically detects obstacles and provides alerts to the user through intuitive lights, sounds, and vibrations.
Claira (Grand Rapids, Michigan): Claira is a competency analytics engine that helps organizations understand their people and hire better.
ImagoAI (Saint Paul, Minnesota): ImagoAI’s proprietary AI solution does real-time food safety and quality testing at food manufacturing facilities and on the farms. Its solutions help companies reduce production line hold times by more than 90%, delivering consistent quality products, and reduce waste by early inspection.
Journey Foods (Austin, Texas): Journey Foods solves food science and supply chain inefficiencies with software in order to help companies feed 8 billion people better. They build enterprise technology that improves product management, ingredient intelligence, and manufacturing insights for CPG companies, grocery stores, suppliers, and manufacturers.
Nyquist Data (Palo Alto, California): Nyquist Data helps companies around the world access critical data and insights, which maximizes efficiency, resources, and results for innovation.
Paperstack (Toronto, Ontario): Paperstack is an all-in-one platform that helps self-employed individuals with incorporation, bookkeeping, and taxes.
Pocketnest (Ann Arbor, Michigan): Pocketnest is a comprehensive financial planning tool targeting genX and millennials. The company licenses its software to financial institutions and employers, helping them connect with a younger audience and grow their business. Based on psychology, behavioral science and coaching, it leads users through all ten themes of personal finances, resulting in actionable items and recommendations customized for each user.
SAFETYDOCS Global (Vancouver, British Columbia): SAFETYDOCS Global is a document management solutions platform that streamlines and automates permitting and licensing documentation workflows.
Schoolytics (Washington, DC): Schoolytics, the Student Data Platform, enables schools to connect disparate student datasets, including the student information system (SIS), learning management systems (LMS), and assessments, to transform data into meaningful insights and action. Its web-based tool supports data-driven decision making through real-time analytics and reporting.
Tengiva (Montreal, Quebec): Tengiva is the first digital platform enabling real-time supply chain in the textile industry by optimizing the typical months-long procurement process into a single-click operation.
ThisWay (Austin, Texas): ThisWay matches all people to all jobs, fairly and without bias. The web platform accurately delivers qualified talent, while increasing diversity and inclusion so ROI is optimized.

Starting on September 27, the 10-week intensive virtual program will bring the best of Google's programs, products, people and technology to help these businesses reach their goals. Participating startups receive deep mentorship on technical challenges and machine learning, as well as connections to relevant teams across Google. The startups will also receive nontechnical programming to help address some of the unique barriers faced by women founders in the startup ecosystem.
We are excited to welcome these 12 women-led businesses to our Google for Startups Accelerator community, and look forward to working with them this fall!
Posted by Ashley Francisco,Head of Startup Developer Ecosystems, Google Canada

Responsibility is good for business and for the creator economy

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

removing violative contentaising authoritative voices and reducing borderline content

Over fourteen years ago, we launched the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), a first-of-its-kind open monetization program, where anyone who qualified could join and start making money. In fact, we share over half of the revenue generated with creators. And today, YPP continues to be one of the largest drivers of the creator economy in the world. Creators who are part of YPP can make money and earn a living from their content on YouTube with ten different monetization features (and we keep adding more), from advertiser revenue to selling merchandise. Over the last three years, we’ve paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies.
Now, more than two million creators participate in YPP globally, including many who might not otherwise have had a platform, from tech reviewers to entertainers. And many of these creators are generating jobs and contributing to local and global economies. In 2019 alone, YouTube’s creative ecosystem supported the equivalent of 345,000 full-time jobs, just in the US. This also means that quality content on everything from how to fix a garage door, to music videos, to lectures on advanced physics, are available for free, to audiences around the world.
Protecting the creative economy This unique business model only works when our viewers, creators and advertisers all have confidence that we are living up to our responsibility as a business. Over the past few years, we’ve been investing in the policies, resources and products needed to protect the community and the vast majority of creators who are producing incredible content, while cracking down on the tiny fraction of bad actors. In fact, in Q4 2020, YouTube’s violative view rate was at 0.16-0.18%, which means that out of every 10,000 views on YouTube, only 16-18 come from violative content. As a result, we’ve seen our focus on responsibility benefit creators and our overall business. In Q2 2021, revenues from YouTube ads crossed $7B and we paid more to YouTube creators and partners than in any quarter in our history.

In addition to our Community Guidelines, creators need to meet an even higher bar to join the YouTube Partner Program and make money on YouTube. Every channel applying to YPP undergoes review by a trained rater to make sure it meets our policies. We also regularly review and remove channels that don’t comply with our policies. For example, we’ve been removing channels from YPP that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech, harassment and misinformation policies.
Since advertising has been at the core of creators’ revenue, we need to ensure that advertisers have faith in our systems and feel comfortable with where their ads appear. Advertisers do not want their brands associated with problematic content and actors, and we’ve seen first-hand that they vote with their feet. When advertisers lack trust in our systems, they scale back their spend on YouTube. This affects the entire ecosystem, not just the very small number of bad actors.
We’ve partnered closely with advertisers to address their feedback, and today we're at least 99% effective at ensuring brand safety for advertisers. As a result, YouTube was the first digital platform to be accredited for content level brand safety by the Media Rating Council. YouTube was also one of the founding members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a multi-stakeholder initiative to improve digital and brand safety with advertisers. As part of this initiative, we’ve helped establish a set of industry standards to define content not suitable for advertising.
With improved systems and increased advertiser trust, we’re growing the pie and making channels in YPP more successful as a whole. The number of new channels joining YPP in 2020 more than doubled when compared to the year before. And the number of YouTube channels making 6 figures in revenue or more is up more than 35% year over year in the US.
Extending our trust in YPP Creators Creators in YPP have access to programs and products that give them more control over the monetization of their channel. With our Self-Certification program, they can rate their own videos against our advertiser-friendly guidelines. Our systems verify creators’ ratings, and the more accurate they are, the more our system uses their ratings over time. As a result, creators who accurately rate their content have seen a reduction in classifier mistakes by more than 50%.
We’ve also rolled out a new “Checks” process which automatically screens creators’ uploads for potential copyright claims and ad suitability restrictions. This helps creators understand how their videos will monetize and make edits before uploading if they want.
As a result of these efforts, the vast majority of content uploaded by channels in YPP meets the ad-friendly thresholds and is suitable for all advertisers. In fact, just a single digit percent of videos monetized by creators receive a yellow dollar sign icon (meaning they show limited or no ads). This is a win for advertisers and creators alike.
Helping Creators Expand their Business Over the past few years, we’ve been working to build a multi-faceted business that helps YouTube creators grow and diversify their revenue. We now offer ten different ways for creators to earn revenue, such as ads, subscriptions, branded content, merchandising, Paid Digital Goods and more.
We continue investing in new tools that help creators earn money while strengthening the relationship with their viewers, such as our new Super Thanks tool. And because we’re deeply committed to supporting the next generation of creators, we also offer other ways for creators (both on YPP and outside of YPP) to make money, such as the Shorts Fund.
Finding new ways to reward trusted creators financially and help them ramp up their businesses will always be a top priority for us.
YouTube is built on the premise of openness, which allows millions of creators to find a voice and a community. However, we set a higher bar for what channels can make money on our platform. We have every incentive to continue to tackle problematic content on our platform: it is not just the right thing for our viewers and creators, it’s also good for business. We’ll continue our responsibility work even as we continue to grow the YouTube Partner Program, and we consider these investments core to the future success of the creator economy at large.

How We’re Supporting the 2021 Federal Election

Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Given the importance of accurate election information, we recognize that Google and YouTube have a role to play in helping connect Canadians to authoritative information and reducing the spread of misinformation. That’s why Google and YouTube support the Declaration of Online Electoral Integrity, which aims to safeguard the digital accessibility of accurate, trusted and up-to-date election information, for all Canadians. Since our earliest days, we have been committed to supporting democratic processes around the world which is why we’ve had Community Guidelines on YouTube and Content Policies for Google Search, which govern what videos or content are allowed, or will be surfaced, on the platform, and which we rigorously enforce.

Google Search - Connecting Canadians to useful and authoritative information
We fundamentally design our Search systems to prioritize relevant information from credible sources. We see billions of search queries every day, so we take an unbiased approach to delivering information that is both relevant and reliable. We also provide useful features, which not only make authoritative information easily accessible, but also helps users understand the information they find in Google Search. In order to ensure we’re providing the most helpful information, we have a set of policies that apply to our Google Search features, such as featured snippets, Autocomplete and Knowledge Panels.
The quality of Google Search is safeguarded by evaluations from search quality raters, who train and test our systems. Search quality raters orient our rankings around delivering high-quality information, particularly for important topics relating to a user’s wellbeing and livelihood, such as health and civics information. We have definitions in our publicly-available Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which outline the characteristics of web pages that may aim to mislead users, promote hate, or otherwise deliver low-quality information; these guidelines define what constitutes high-quality information.
For topics regarding health, finance, or civics, where authoritative information is crucial, we place an even greater emphasis on the digital signals of expertise and authoritativeness. This way, we can have greater confidence that the information appearing at the top of the results page is trusted information.

YouTube - A platform for authoritative content
On YouTube, over the last couple years we’ve significantly increased our investments in the systems and processes that enable us to effectively remove violative videos, raise up authoritative content, and reduce the spread of borderline content, all while offering an open platform for healthy political discourse. Our Community Guidelines do not allow misleading claims about voting, nor do they allow any content that encourages interference in the democratic process. In addition, we have established policies prohibiting hate speech, harassment, deceptive practices and incitement to violence. For example, under our violent or graphic content policy, we remove content inciting others to commit violent acts against individuals, or a group of persons, at voting locations. Under our voter suppression policy, we remove content falsely claiming mail-in ballots have been manipulated to change the results of an election. We consistently enforce our policies regardless of political viewpoints, or whoever may express those viewpoints. Any content that provides sufficient educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context is allowed on YouTube.
The removal of violative content is just one of the ways we protect the YouTube community. Fast-moving events, like elections, may produce unverified claims, which can then lead to uncertainty. Providing viewers with accurate information is critical in moments like this, which is why we work to raise up authoritative election-related information and reduce the spread of harmful election-related misinformation.

Federal Election Information and the Canada Elections Act
To help you learn more about participating in the democratic process, we’ll continue to promote links to timely, relevant information. Prior to Election Day, Canadians will be able to watch live streams of the official federal leaders’ debates on YouTube. On Election Day, you’ll be able to find a link on the YouTube and Google.ca homepages directing you to information from Elections Canada on how and where to vote. Then, as polls close, on YouTube you’ll see a selection of live streams of election night coverage from authoritative news partners so that, as in previous elections, you can come to YouTube throughout the evening to watch Election Night unfold.
And we’ll continue to elevate authoritative sources, including news publishers like Global News and Radio-Canada, for election-related news and information queries, in Google Search results and YouTube’s Breaking News and Top News shelves. And our recommendations systems will also continue limiting the spread of harmful election-related misinformation and borderline content.
Per Google’s existing policy, we will not accept election advertising on our platforms during a federal election period regulated by the Canada Elections Act. We first implemented this policy following the changes put in place by Bill C-76 for the 2019 election.
Our teams will be working around the clock, to make sure we have the systems and policies in place to prevent any abuse of our systems, and to provide consistent access to authoritative information this election season. We remain vigilant and are committed to maintaining the important balance of openness and responsibility, on Election Day, and beyond.
See you at the polls, Canada!

New safety and digital wellbeing options for younger people on YouTube and YouTube Kids

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Today, we're announcing additional protections for people under 18 on YouTube and YouTube Kids.
Younger people use YouTube every day to discover new interests, learn about the world, and connect with the world through online video. But it's essential that as they do, they have the options and safeguards to create the experience that's right for them.
Over the years, we’ve made investments to protect kids and families, such as launching a dedicated kids app, introducing new data practices for children’s content, providing more age-appropriate experiences, and giving families more choice with supervised accounts. Today, we're announcing additional protections for people under 18 on YouTube and YouTube Kids.
Updating default privacy settings for younger people In the coming weeks, we’ll gradually start adjusting the default upload setting to the most private option available for users ages 13-17 on YouTube. With private uploads,content can only be seen by the user and whomever they choose. We want to help younger users make informed decisions about their online footprint and digital privacy, including encouraging them to make an intentional choice if they’d like to make their content public. If the user would like to make their content public, they can change the default upload visibility setting and we’ll provide reminders indicating who can see their video. Making digital wellbeing features more prominent We want to give younger users the tools they need to understand their use of technology. In addition to our suite of digital well-being tools, we’ll be turning take a break and bedtime reminders on by default for all users ages 13-17 on YouTube.
We’ll also be turning autoplay off by default for these users. If a user decides these aren’t the right digital well-being features for them, they can change their default settings. We’ll also be adding an autoplay option on YouTube Kids and turning autoplay off by default in the app. Whether you’re driving on a roadtrip with your kids or listening to nursery rhymes together while cooking dinner, we want to empower parents to be able to choose an autoplay setting that’s right for their family. In the coming months, we’ll also be launching additional parental controls in the YouTube Kids app, including the ability for a parent to choose a “locked” default autoplay setting.
Providing safeguards and education about commercial content We’re also making changes to how we treat commercial content for kids and families. We've never allowed paid product placements in YouTube Kids, our destination for younger kids. In the coming weeks, we’ll also begin to remove overly commercial content from YouTube Kids, such as a video that only focuses on product packaging or directly encourages children to spend money.
On YouTube, we recently updated the disclosures that appear on “made for kids” content or supervised accounts on YouTube when a creator identifies that their video contains paid promotions. Developed in collaboration with child development experts, the disclosures appear in easy-to-understand text and link to a kid-friendly animated video, which provides additional information on paid product placements. We’ve also provided a parent guide which suggests ways for parents to help children understand content they may see on YouTube, including paid product promotions.

We’re introducing these new safety and digital wellbeing options as part of our ongoing efforts to create age-appropriate experiences for young people on YouTube and YouTube Kids. With young people watching online videos to broaden their horizons and expand their learning experiences, we're invested in being the best version of YouTube and YouTube Kids we can be. Young people are our future, and we want to empower them the best we can.

Posted by James Beser, Director of Product Management

Giving kids and teens a safer experience online

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Family LinkBe Internet AwesomeYouTube Kids appKids Spaceteacher approved apps in Play
Technology has helped kids and teens during the pandemic stay in school through lockdowns and maintain connections with family and friends. As kids and teens spend more time online, parents, educators, child safety and privacy experts, and policy makers are rightly concerned about how to keep them safe. We engage with these groups regularly, and share these concerns.
Some countries are implementing regulations in this area, and as we comply with these regulations, we’re looking at ways to develop consistent product experiences and user controls for kids and teens globally. Today, we’re announcing a variety of new policies and updates:
Giving minors more control over their digital footprint While we already provide a range of removal options for people using Google Search, children are at particular risk when it comes to controlling their imagery on the internet. In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce a new policy that enables anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, to request the removal of their images from Google Image results. Of course, removing an image from Search doesn’t remove it from the web, but we believe this change will help give young people more control of their images online.
Tailoring product experiences for kids and teens Some of our most popular products help kids and teens explore their interests, learn more about the world, and connect with friends. We’re committed to constantly making these experiences safer for them. That’s why in the coming weeks and months we're going to make a number of changes to Google Accounts for people under 18:

YouTube: We’re going to change the default upload setting to the most private option available for teens ages 13-17. In addition we’ll more prominently surface digital wellbeing features, and provide safeguards and education about commercial content. Learn more about these changes here.
Search: We have a range of systems, tools, and policies that are designed to help people discover content from across the web while not surprising them with mature content they haven’t searched for. One of the protections we offer is SafeSearch, which helps filter out explicit results when enabled and is already on by default for all signed-in users under 13 who have accounts managed by Family Link. In the coming months, we’ll turn SafeSearch on for existing users under 18 and make this the default setting for teens setting up new accounts.
Assistant: We’re always working to prevent mature content from surfacing during a child’s experience with Google Assistant on shared devices, and in the coming months we’ll be introducing new default protections. For example, we will apply our SafeSearch technology to the web browser on smart displays.
Location History: Location History is a Google account setting that helps make our products more useful. It's already off by default for all accounts, and children with supervised accounts don’t have the option of turning Location History on. Taking this a step further, we’ll soon extend this to users under the age of 18 globally, meaning that Location History will remain off (without the option to turn it on).
Play: Building on efforts like content ratings, and our "Teacher-approved apps" for quality kids content, we're launching a new safety section that will let parents know which apps follow our Families policies. Apps will be required to disclose how they use the data they collect in greater detail, making it easier for parents to decide if the app is right for their child before they download it.
Google Workspace for Education: As we recently announced, we’re making it much easier for administrators to tailor experiences for their users based on age (such as restricting student activity on YouTube). And to make web browsing safer, K-12 institutions will have SafeSearch technology enabled by default, while switching to Guest Mode and Incognito Mode for web browsing will be turned off by default.

New advertising changes We’ll be expanding safeguards to prevent age-sensitive ad categories from being shown to teens, and we will block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18. We’ll start rolling out these updates across our products globally over the coming months. Our goal is to ensure we’re providing additional protections and delivering age-appropriate experiences for ads on Google.
New digital wellbeing tools In Family Link, parents can set screen time limits and reminders for their kids’ supervised devices. And, on Assistant-enabled smart devices, we give parents control through Digital Wellbeing tools available in the Google Home app. In the coming months, we’ll roll out new Digital Wellbeing filters that allow people to block news, podcasts, and access to webpages on Assistant-enabled smart devices. On YouTube, we’ll turn on take a break and bedtime reminders and turn off autoplay for users under 18. And, on YouTube Kids we’ll add an autoplay option and turn it off by default to empower parents to make the right choice for their families.
Improving how we communicate our data practices to kids and teens Data plays an important role in making our products functional and helpful. It’s our job to make it easy for kids and teens to understand what data is being collected, why, and how it is used. Based on research, we’re developing engaging, easy-to-understand materials for young people and their parents to help them better understand our data practices. These resources will begin to roll out globally in the coming months.

Ongoing work and engagement We regularly engage with kids and teens, parents, governments, industry leaders, and experts in the fields of privacy, child safety, wellbeing and education to design better, safer products for kids and teens. Having an accurate age for a user can be an important element in providing experiences tailored to their needs. Yet, knowing the accurate age of our users across multiple products and surfaces, while at the same time respecting their privacy and ensuring that our services remain accessible, is a complex challenge. It will require input from regulators, lawmakers, industry bodies, technology providers, and others to address it – and to ensure that we all build a safer internet for kids.

Posted by Mindy Brooks, General Manager, Kids and Families

11 things to love about the new Nest Cam and Doorbell

Thursday, August 5, 2021

1. Smarter alerts, right out of the box: Your new Nest Cam and Doorbell can do more right out of the box because we moved object detection on-device, allowing us to include features that are usually behind a subscription (like Activity Zones and smart alerts, including package, animal, vehicle and person detection) for no additional cost, plus three hours of event video history. Thanks to on-device processing, they can also record up to a week’s worth of events if power or Wi-Fi is out.

2. Made with Machine Learning: Building a camera that uses ML to recognize objects requires showing the ML model millions of images first. Our new Nest Cameras and Doorbells have been trained on 40 million images to accommodate lots of different environments and lighting conditions. Thanks to a cutting edge TPU chip, our new cameras run an ML model up to 7.5 times per second, so reliability and accuracy are even better.

3. Works in any home: Nest Cam and Doorbell’s wire-free designs, built-in rechargeable batteries and optional power connectors allow you to install where you want — not only where there’s a power outlet or pre-existing wiring.

4. Set up your way: Make sure to check out Google Store’s accessories. In addition to weatherproof cables, a tabletop stand with a power cord allows you to place your Nest Cam on an indoor surface, like a mantle. There’s also an anti-theft mount that tethers your Nest Cam to the magnetic mount for extra security. For Nest Doorbell, there’s a horizontal wedge and an AC adapter.

5. Works better, together: Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell seamlessly work with your Nest displays. Just say “Hey Google, show me the backyard” to see your Nest Cam feed. And you can set up your speakers and displays to chime when someone rings your Nest Doorbell, while using your display to see who’s at the door and take action from the screen.

6. All on the Google Home app: It’s easy to see all of your events quickly, and your 24/7 live feed at any time in the Google Home app. If you have more than one Nest camera, you can view all of them in one place, alongside your other connected home devices. You can even filter by event type — for example, you can pull up every package delivery.

7. See clearly in a variety of conditions: Both Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell have night vision and HDR so images are crisp in the dark or bright light. And we gave Nest Doorbell a taller field of view so you can see visitors from head to toe and packages as close as eight inches away from your door.

8. Extra secure with a Google account: Your devices are only as secure as your account. That’s why the new Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell require a Google account, which comes with added protections like suspicious activity detection, 2-step verification and password checkup. Read more about our commitment to privacy and security in Nest’s dedicated Safety Center.

9. Add a Nest Aware subscription: With a Nest Aware subscription (C$8 monthly), you’ll get familiar face detection and the ability to call 911 from the Google Home app (U.S. only) as well as 30 days of event video history. With a Nest Aware Plus subscription (C$16 monthly), you’ll get all of this with 60 days of event video history and the option for 10 days of continuous video recording when your Nest Cam is plugged in using weatherproof cables.

10. Made with care: Nest Cam and Doorbell are made with recycled materials and rigorously tested through drops and extreme weather like heavy rain and hurricane-strength winds.

11. Built for your life: Nest technology is designed to fit into your home, not distract from it. Nest Cam is sleek and white and fits in anywhere — indoors or outdoors. And Nest Doorbell’s design was inspired by clean, minimalist architecture. In the U.S., it comes in four different colors so your front door can make a great first impression.

The new battery-powered Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell are available for pre-order today for $239.99 — you can visit the Google Store to find out more, and if the Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell will be available in your country.

New from Google Nest: The latest Cams and Doorbells are here

Thursday, August 5, 2021

One of Nest’s first goals was to simplify home security, and it helped millions of people do this. So when we started dreaming up what our next generation of cameras and doorbells would be like, we wanted to incorporate the way the connected home — and your expectations — were heading. That included smarter alerts, wire-free options for installation flexibility, greater value and beautiful designs, plus enhanced privacy and security. We wanted our new line to give you the most comprehensive set of intelligent alerts right out of the box, and easily work with your other Nest products, like displays.
Today we’re introducing our next-generation Nest Cams and Doorbell: Google Nest Cam (battery) is our first outdoor/indoor battery-powered camera (C$239.99); Google Nest Doorbell (battery) is our first battery-powered doorbell (C$239.99). Then there’s Google Nest Cam with floodlight, our first connected floodlight camera (C$379.99) and finally the second-generation Google Nest Cam (wired), a wired indoor camera and our most affordable Nest Cam ever (C$129.99).
The new battery-powered Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell are available for preorder today and will go on sale on Aug. 24. Nest Cam with floodlight and the new wired indoor Nest Cam are coming soon.
Security with smarts Because we’re all overloaded with notifications every day, our next-generation cameras and doorbell are made to send you the most helpful alerts. They detect important events that happen in and around the home, including alerts for people, animals and vehicles — and in Nest Doorbell’s case, also packages. Our new cameras and doorbell can do this because they process what they see on-device, which means more relevant notifications and added privacy and security. On-device processing means that all of this works right out of the box, no subscription required.
More versatility for your home Nest’s new camera and doorbell line are truly made for every home. Battery technology allows you to install Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell nearly anywhere in your home — not just where there’s a power outlet or existing doorbell wires. The wire-free design makes installation even easier, too. And for those who prefer the option to wire their devices, we’ve added the ability to wire the battery-powered Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell. The Google Store is stocked with accessories for Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell so it’s easy to install them where you want.
Nest devices that work together Customers have told us how much they appreciate that their Nest products all work well together. These new devices are no different. With the new Nest Cams and a display, you can keep an eye on the backyard from your kitchen and get alerts when the doorbell rings. Our new cameras are also fully integrated with the Google Home app, giving you access to all your compatible home devices in one place. With a Nest Aware subscription, you can unlock even more: Extend your event video history from three hours to 30 or 60 days, gain advanced features like familiar face detection (not available in Illinois) and get continuous 24/7 video history on wired Nest Cams with Nest Aware Plus.
Reliability when you need it In case of a power or Wi-Fi outage, Nest Doorbell, both Nest Cam (battery) and Nest Cam with floodlight have local storage fallback, meaning they’ll record up to one hour of events on-device (about a week’s worth of events). Nest Cam (wired) also records on-device if your Wi-Fi is down. When service returns, the devices will upload your events to the cloud, so you can review what happened.
Made with care We believe that technology for the home should be welcoming, and complement your decor rather than distract from it. When designing our new products, we drew design inspiration from lighting and architecture to create products that look great together and in lots of different settings. In the U.S., the new indoor wired Nest Cam and battery-powered Nest Doorbell come in several colors inspired by nature, and all of the new devices are designed sustainably with recycled materials.
Learn more about the new battery-powered Nest Doorbell and Nest Cam. Canadians can preorder today at Best Buy, Walmart, Staples and The Source. On August 24, you can purchase at Best Buy, Walmart, Home Depot, The Source, Staples and Costco.

Supporting the news industry and next-generation journalists on YouTube

Thursday, August 5, 2021

Canadian journalists Anushree Dave and Muhammad Lila admitted into the Creator Program for Independent Journalists

Brandon Gonez joins the Sustainability Lab for Digital-First Newsrooms
Over the past few years, we’ve seen more and more people turn to YouTube every day to get their news. We want to connect our community to authoritative, trustworthy content, and believe we have a responsibility to support innovation and a sustainable ecosystem. That’s why we work alongside news organizations from around the world--both through our products that help news partners reach audiences and monetize their video content, as well as through grants and training programs as part of the Google News Initiative.
We’re committed to supporting the future of journalism, and that means continuing to create opportunities for the industry to harness the latest technology and techniques for growth on YouTube. In April, we opened applications for two new programs focused on supporting the next generation of reporters and newsrooms. We’re excited to announce today the selection of nearly 50 independent journalists from around the world and over 40 digital-first newsrooms across the programs.
Our Creator Program for Independent Journalists aims to give the growing number of reporters publishing independently the tools needed to succeed on YouTube. This year, two Canadian journalists were admitted into the inaugural program. Anushree Dave, a science reporter aspiring to create PopSci for YouTube, focusing on the intersection of science, technology, and society. Muhammad Lila is a former warzone correspondent who now specializes in finding stories of hope, courage and reslilience in places you least expect.
We are also thrilled to announce that The Brandon Gonez Show has joined the Sustainability Lab for Digital-First Newsrooms, which provides support for digital native newsrooms to start and expand their video operations.The Brandon Gonez Show is a weekly online platform that provides local and national news, and shares important untold stories with audiences of all backgrounds.
“Being an independent journalist allows me to set the editorial direction of our platform and focus on people who are left out of the conversation”, Brandon Gonez explained. “Starting The Brandon Gonez Show has allowed my team and me to fill that gap and ensure that more voices have a microphone to amplify their stories. Joining the Youtube program can really help to create a strong foundation and lead to massive growth. That growth can easily translate to more impact and greater results for the stories and people we cover.”
Altogether, the participants represent 25 countries, speak nearly 20 different languages, and report on a wide range of topics, spanning local news and national politics, to undertold stories about marginalized communities. You can read more about the selected participants for the Creator Program here and for the Sustainability Lab here.
Over the course of the next year, we’ll offer journalists in the Creator Program training in industry best practices, including comprehensive sessions on video production and editing, audience development, entrepreneurship, and achieving financial sustainability on the platform.
Participants will receive grants to help fuel their new video operations. They’ll also be connected with experts at YouTube to answer questions, and join groups of their peers to share insights and experiences. The digital newsrooms selected for our Sustainability Labs will receive grants, one-on-one support from YouTube, and have rich opportunities to learn from each other as they develop video news capabilities and business plans.
We also hope to learn from our first set of participants how we can further improve and iterate on these programs for future classes. Our goal is to work together with the industry and help journalists and newsrooms thrive on YouTube.
It remains an ongoing priority to build a more sustainable video news ecosystem as we continue to raise up authoritative content on our platform. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’re eager to increase access to credible, trustworthy information from a diversity of sources to everyone who comes to YouTube to learn more about what’s happening in the world.

Return to travel: Where Canadians are planning their next trip

Wednesday, August 4, 2021

government travel restrictions

We’re seeing more searches in Canada for travel-related destination information — like travel restrictions by country and where to travel, which both recently hit all-time highs. As Canadians start to re-engage with the travel industry, we were curious to see how their plans are coming along. Do Canadians want to plan a trip within the country, or are they ready to travel abroad? What are some of the top spots they want to visit? We took a look at what Canadians are searching for as they get back to planning their next trip.

Where Canadians are looking to travel

When it comes to travelling locally or abroad, search interest for both international and domestic travel is starting to climb, with a steady uptick starting in June. In fact, Canadian search interest for both international and domestic travel are reaching all-time highs.

And as many workplaces across the country switch to remote models, we’re also seeing a rise in a new type of travel - staycations and workcations. Over the last few months, searches in Canada for staycations and workcations have both hit all-time highs.

When it comes to vacation planning, we took a look at some of the top destinations Canadians are searching for.

Top searched domestic destinations Canadians are searching for in Travel, past month:

Toronto
Vancouver
Calgary
Montreal
Niagara Falls
Edmonton
Quebec City
Whistler
Banff
Ottawa

“One of the benefits of this pandemic is that Canadians have an increased appreciation for what their own communities and regions have to offer travellers,” says Gloria Loree, CMO, Destinations Canada. “With the recent news of the border reopening plan, our industry is not only excited to welcome back visitors, but we believe Canadians and their passion for what this country has to offer will have a positive impact in influencing decisions to travel to and within Canada. And our research shows that the diversity of our people, landscapes and experiences are just what curious travellers are seeking.”

Top searched international destinations Canadians are searching for in travel, past month:

Italy
United States
Mexico
India
France
Dubai
Greece
Japan
United Kingdom
Cuba

"As we transition into a period of significant recovery many of our assumptions on the rebuild are coming to fruition. Domestic flight demand has seen steady increases over the past few months and we're seeing strong demand for international travel, such as Europe and sun destinations, as travel restrictions are expected to decrease. We're excited to welcome back travellers in greater numbers" says Mark Nasr, SVP, Products, Marketing and eCommerce at Air Canada

As Canadians begin to plan, here are the top questions they’re searching for:

Who can travel to Canada?
When can Canadians travel to the US?
Where can Canadians travel?
Where to get a PCR test for travel?
What is considered essential travel?

International interest in travelling to Canada is on the rise

When you look at search interest to Canadian destinations, more and more international tourists are starting to consider travelling to Canada.

Top 10 Canadian destinations most searched by the world (excluding Canada) in Travel, past month:

Toronto
Vancouver
Banff
Niagara Falls
Montreal
Calgary
Ottawa
Victoria
Jasper
Edmonton

If you're ready to plan a trip, here are a few updates to keep you informed on the latest travel guidance and explore potential destinations.

Stay up to date on travel guidance

When you look for travel information like flights, hotels or things to do, Search will let you know if there are COVID-19 related travel advisories or restrictions for your destination. Now, we’re adding more travel restriction details, like whether you’ll need to quarantine upon arrival or provide proof of test results or immunization records.

You can now also track travel advisories or restrictions for your destination and get email updates. If you are signed into your Google account, you can toggle, “Receive an email if this guidance changes.” You'll be notified when restrictions are added, lifted or reduced.

If you use Maps to plan travel, you can use the COVID layer within the app to see how cases are trending in an area. You can also access quick links to trusted local resources so you’ll know at a glance if there are specific guidelines or restrictions you need to follow.

Get destination ideas for when you’re ready to travel

Where will you go on your first trip when you're ready to travel again? It's exciting to think about, and we've made some updates to Explore to help you get started. Google Flights fans may already be familiar with the Explore map, which shows flight prices for different destinations if you’re flexible on where and when you’re traveling.

Now, Explore has its own tab on Google.com/travel and has been redesigned so you can browse more than just flights. You’ll see more destinations on the map — including smaller cities and national parks — and if you have a certain type of trip in mind, you can filter destinations for interests like outdoors, beaches or skiing. If you only want to see cities with an airport, select flights only in "Travel Mode." When you pick a destination, we'll show you if there's a travel advisory or restriction and, in addition to the best flights, you’ll see other helpful information for planning your trip, like hotels, things to do, the best time to visit and more.

More choice for travellers with free hotel booking links

For many years, we’ve helped travellers choose the right hotel by providing a list of relevant properties, along with information like reviews, photos and hotel amenities. Hotel booking links have been offered via Hotel Ads, which display real-time pricing and availability for specific dates of travel. We've seen that users find these hotel booking links to be highly useful and partners find them to be a valuable source of potential customers.

We’ve now improved this experience by making it free for hotels and travel companies around the world to appear in hotel booking links, on google.com/travel. With full access to a wider range of hotel prices, users will have a more comprehensive set of options as they research their trip and ultimately decide where to book.

For all hotels and travel companies, this change brings a new, free way to reach potential customers. And our testing of this new feature shows that all partner types — from individual hotels to online travel agents — benefit from free booking links through increased booking traffic and user engagement.

Whatever type of trip you’re planning (or just starting to think about), we hope these tools will help you make travel decisions with confidence.

Helping you navigate crowds

Before you go, search for your destination on Google Maps, then scroll down on the Business Profile to see how busy a place typically is or how busy it is right now. With busyness information, you’ll know instantly you’re about to face a long line or a big crowd and can adjust your plans accordingly.

Also check to see how crowded your bus, train, or subway car is likely to be — so you’ll know if you’re likely to grab a seat or if you should wait for another train. You’ll be able to see transit crowdedness predictions for over 10,000 transit agencies in 100 countries around the world.

Posted by Marshall Self, Director of Travel and Natasha Walji, Director of Tourism, at Google Canada

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Return to travel: Where Canadians are planning their next trip

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