For the third year in a row, Google Kitchener-Waterloo hosted a Google I/O Extended event and welcomed about 300 from our local tech community to experience the magic of the Google I/O Conference in our own backyard. This year, we featured a full-day of live presentations, product demonstrations, streamed technical sessions live from San Francisco, and even an exclusive-to-I/O-extended game “Ship Wars: Reactor”.

“Ship Wars: Reactor” was a game where players graphically program a small crew of robots to provide fuel to run their space ship's power plant. The game was released exclusively to Google I/O Extended attendees, allowing players from all 8 Extended sites to compete against each other in real time. Getting the best score requires careful planning, timing and programming skills to make the robots as efficiently as possible! The talent and brain power in the Kitchener-Waterloo community really shone through in the competition when the overall winner was from KW itself. Well done!!

Our teams demonstrated a number of products and a real crowd pleaser was when we showcased Google’s new Pixel, which was developed in part by our engineers here in Kitchener-Waterloo. A testament to the impact that our small-yet-mighty engineering teams can have.

After the kickoff, we watched the live streamed keynote with our local audience participating in the excitement of all the announcements. After the keynote, and a quick “milk & cookies” break, attendees rotated through six blocks of technical sessions. A few of the noteworthy sessions included lightning talks on Chrome Apps and Chrome Mobile Apps, a deep-dive into the Pixel’s “point, touch & click” technology, and even a session on a lego robot programming organization!

We can only imagine what 2014’s I/O Extended at Kitchener-Waterloo will bring -- 2013 will be hard to beat!



Posted by Steven Woods, Engineering Director, Google

Since we first launched Street View in Google Maps, Canadians have been using the feature to get directions, find new restaurants and plan family vacations. As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to building the most comprehensive, accurate and usable map, the Street View team is working hard to share this country’s amazing geography with Canadians and the one billion people who use Google Maps every month.

Over the past year, the Google Maps Street View team has traveled to Canada’s Arctic, visited national historic sites like Fort Louisbourg and even toured Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, the seat of Canada's democracy. And this summer, Google's distinctive Street View fleet is once again driving roads across Canada. The result? Updated images of many communities and expanded coverage across Canada.

Where is the Street View Team today?

This page is updated daily and shows the regions where the Canadian Street View teams are working today. Because of weather, traffic and other logistical factors, we cannot be more precise about the schedule for refreshing the imagery in these communities - but the vehicles are among the most recognizable on the road.

Is Street View available in your community?

Find out where 360-degree street-level imagery is currently available, and where Street View cars will be driving in coming days. If you’re interested, find out about our cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology as well. Check out Google.ca/streetview to learn more.

When will you see the updated imagery?

If you’re like me, you can’t wait for new Street View images to be published. The images now being collected across Canada will be available later this year, and we can look forward to up-to-date views of our favourite neighbourhood haunts, future vacation destinations, and majestic Canadian vistas.

Remember, Street View images are not real time. We have developed face and license plate blurring technology that is applied to all Street View images before we make them available in Google Maps. If you asked us to blur an image or an address in the past, it will remain blurred in any new images.

If our technology has missed something, you can easily let us know. If you've found an image that you would like further blurred, or an image that you believe contains objectionable content, just follow these steps:

• Locate the image in Street View.
• Click "Report a problem" in the bottom-left of the image window.
• Complete the form and click "Submit."

Posted by Aaron Brindle, Google Canada

Canada has always been known for producing amazing comedic talent. Recently, YouTube announced their first ever Comedy Week, scheduled for May 19-25.  It’s no surprise there are a number of Canadians on the roster of comics that will take over YouTube, including Epic Meal Time, Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, and Norm Macdonald.

Comedy is extremely popular on YouTube, with 7 out of 10 of the most popular channels being comedy focused. Leading up to Comedy Week, take the time to discover some new Canadian comedic talent on YouTube, from pranksters, to sketch comedy troupes, to vloggers. Here are some of the top ten Canadian Comedy Channels on YouTube (in no particular order)

Kenny Hotz
IFockingHateThat
FlufeeTalks
Superwoman
Peter Chao
Mehdi Sadaghdar
Chengman
Just for Laughs
MattG124
Shimmycocopuffsss

YouTube creates opportunities for people to express themselves creatively, and Canadians from across the country are sharing their talent not only with other Canadians, but with audiences across the globe.

For one week, YouTube will be the ultimate comedy club; tune in May 19th as we kick off YouTube Comedy Week with a live, all-star comedy variety show with a global livestream on Sunday at 5pm PT/8pm ET at youtube.com/comedyweek for the week-long comedy lineup.

Posted by Wendy Bairos, Google Canada

Editor's Note: This post is part of our ongoing #MobileMonth series for May

Recently, we launched a tool to help marketers measure the Full Value of Mobile. Today, we’re highlighting why and how marketers need to think differently about measuring mobile.

Many marketers continue to evaluate mobile using traditional measurement metrics, such as last-click attribution. For example, if a consumer clicks on a mobile ad, visits your website and makes a purchase, the conversion would be directly attributed that mobile ad. However, marketers often don’t measure the other ways consumers on a mobile device are influenced to make purchases through other channels . Mobile frequently plays a role in leading consumers towards a purchase decision in five ways:

1. Phone Calls - Clicks on click-to-call ads, or on website “call” buttons
2. Store Visits - Clicks for directions in ads or on website “store locator” pages
3. Mobile Apps - In-app purchases or activities
4. Cross-Device Purchase - Research that starts on a smartphone, but is followed up by a purchase on another device, such as a desktop
5. Mobile Commerce - Purchases made directly from the mobile device

It is important to measure and assign value to each of these five types of conversions so you can truly understand the contribution mobile plays to your business. If you only consider mobile conversions as purchases made directly on your mobile site, you may be significantly underestimating the true return on investment from mobile advertising. Building an attribution model to account for a variety of different mobile conversions is essential to understanding the full value of mobile.

Once you are tracking mobile signals across the various paths to purchase, you can use our Full Value of Mobile calculator to help you estimate the contribution each conversion activity is making to your business. In about 30 minutes, you can follow the step-by-step wizard to upload data from AdWords and your mobile website, and make some key assumptions to create your Full Value of Mobile estimate. Through the exercise, you’ll see the total value, value per click, and ROI that mobile is driving for your business across all mobile customer paths, not just your mobile website.

If you would like to learn more about mobile measurement and attribution, watch our webinar on the Full Value of Mobile.

Posted by Fab Dolan, Product Marketing Manager, Google Canada

Editor’s Note: Our guest blogger this week is Jean-Martin Thibault, Senior Enterprise Architect at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada’s oldest broadcasting network and national broadcaster, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.



Deeply rooted in the regions, CBC/Radio-Canada is the only domestic broadcaster to offer diverse regional and cultural perspectives in English, French and eight Aboriginal languages. As Canada’s national broadcaster, we bring Canadians programming when, where and how they want it ― through a comprehensive range of radio, television, Internet, satellite-based services and mobile devices. Our team is stationed all over the world, which means real-time communication is key for up-to-date, consistent reporting.

Achieving this at such a large scale isn't always easy. For more than 10 years, we had been using an on-premise, corporate-wide system for email/calendar. We also had a separate system for collaboration, but neither solution was integrated and drove true inter-office collaboration.

With a company-wide goal to reduce infrastructure and a need for better messaging and collaboration, we decided to look at public cloud solutions such as Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365. It was clear that Google Apps was the right solution for us based on cost, proven service level and availability guarantee and the breath of tools the platform offered for collaboration. We also had great support from the media groups in our company (about 70% of our employees), as many of them had been using personal Google accounts to communicate already with external users. Once we decided to “go Google” we were able to complete a smooth 90-day deployment with the help of Google Apps reseller, Onix , by March 1, 2013.

Since we went live, adoption of the whole platform has well exceeded our expectations of email and calendaring. Google+ Hangouts has revolutionized the way that our employees interact with each other. Long conference calls are now becoming a thing of the past. We can now jump on a Hangout and have a face-to-face meeting with colleagues across the country via our smartphones, from home or the office, without getting on a plane. It’s cost-effective and more efficient without compromising our core business.

Additionally, Google Docs are helping our reporters become better and more efficient storytellers. For example, before, our writers and reporters in our newsroom brainstormed and drafted copy in separate Word documents, which inevitably led to version confusion and unnecessary time spent merging documents. Now, they use a single, shared Google Doc for all their stories, so the entire team can collaborate together, in real time, regardless of where they’re working. Our freelancers use Docs to make quick edits and communicate on the fly since it's simpler for them to share content and edit in real-time.

We are proud to bring the best tools to our company and see the cultural shift that is happening amongst our employees. We are moving away from managing IT and into improving our core business of content creation. We’re excited about what this means for the quality of our reporting and the happiness of our employees.

(Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog)

Posted by Jean-Martin Thibault, Senior Enterprise Architect at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Note: This post is part of our ongoing #MobileMonth series for May.

This week, Eric Morris, Head of Search and Direct Response Advertising at Google Canada, delivered a keynote at Mobile Day 2013, presented by the Canadian Marketing Association and Marketing magazine. Eric spoke about the technological shifts empowering the mobile revolution, the consumer behaviours defining it, and how marketers can seize the opportunity to engage with mobile effectively. Here are a few of his key takeaways:

1. Mobile is so big you can’t have specialists thinking about it, you need everyone thinking about it. Mobile plays a role at all stages of the purchase cycle, from research through consideration and purchase. Our recent multi-screen research has shown that 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal, whether that’s on smartphones, PCs, tablets or TV. As a result, marketers need to think about mobile as an integral component to their overall marketing plans, and not something to be considered separately.


2. Context is important. Think about what your customers are looking for in mobile and give them the right information. Signals like location, time of day, and the capabilities of the device people are using have become increasingly important. For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator). People want ads and information that are relevant for the context they are in.


3. Build your mobile sites for thumbs not mice. Did you know: 8 in 10 consumers instantly abandon a mobile site if the experience isn’t up to par?¹ Mobile consumers have high expectations from businesses today. With Google mobile searches growing 400% in the last two years, it’s increasingly important for businesses to satisfy the needs of a mobile user by building a mobile-friendly site. A great mobile site will help your business by allowing people visiting your website on mobile devices to easily complete what they intend to do, such as making a purchase or contacting you.


4. Don’t shoehorn traditional metrics onto digital. Build an attribution model and assign value to all mobile conversions. Mobile impacts many stages of the path to purchase. For example, a customer might purchase a product directly on their phone or they might simply look for directions to your local store. In both cases, mobile played a role in the sale. Understanding the full value of mobile means taking into consideration the contribution of mobile along the purchase journey. Editor’s Note: Check back next week for a comprehensive post on measuring the full value of mobile

Posted by Fab Dolan, Product Marketing Manager, Google Canada

Source (1) Limelight Networks, Inc. 2011

We’ve been building a YouTube partner program since 2007 that enables content creators to earn revenue for their creativity. We’ve watched them build amazing channels that have made YouTube into a news, education and entertainment destination one billion people around the world cannot do without.

Today, there are more than one million channels generating revenue on YouTube, and one of the most frequent requests we hear from these creators behind them is for more flexibility in monetizing and distributing content. We’ve been working on that and wanted to fill you in on what to expect.

Starting today, we’re launching a pilot program for a small group of partners that will offer paid channels on YouTube with subscription fees starting at $0.99 per month. Every channel has a 14-day free trial, and many offer discounted yearly rates. For example, Sesame Street will be offering full episodes on their paid channel when it launches. And UFC fans can see classic fights, like a full version of their first event from UFC’s new channel. You might run into more of these channels across YouTube, or look here for a list of pilot channels. Once you subscribe from a computer, you’ll be able to watch paid channels on your computer, phone, tablet and TV, and soon you’ll be able to subscribe to them from more devices.



This is just the beginning. We’ll be rolling paid channels out more broadly in the coming weeks as a self-service feature for qualifying partners. And as new channels appear, we'll be making sure you can discover them, just as we've been helping you find and subscribe to all the channels you love across YouTube. Just as the partner program empowered creators to take their channels to the next level, we look forward to seeing how this great community of creators moves ahead with a new way to reach the fan communities that made their channels a hit. You’ll be hearing more from us, and them, as we get creator and user feedback and build out this exciting offering.

If you’re a YouTube creator interested in building your own paid channel, you can learn more here.

Posted by YouTube Team,