Fact checkers are on the front line in the fight against mis and disinformation. Everyday, they use their verification and investigation skills to determine what can and can’t be trusted so that online browsers can avoid false claims. 

Every year, reliable facts become more important but every year, we continue to see bad actors spread false and misleading claims. We want to support fact checkers to address these claims as soon as possible and reach as many people as possible when they do. 

Building on our important work with a new partnership with AAP 

We are excited to announce we will be supercharging our partnership with the Australian Associated Press, a partner we’ve worked with since they launched their fact checking unit in 2019.

This new phase of the partnership will increase AAP’s speed and quantity of fact checks and put them on the screens of users in Australia and New Zealand along with their hundreds of news publisher subscribers. 

For the first time, AAP FactCheck will also analyse global misinformation trends and produce video explainers so people can understand how each claim fits into a broader picture. They will also translate fact-checks into different languages (Arabic, Simplified Chinese and Vietnamese) for distribution to local news outlets and social media. The more people that see and read AAP’s FactChecks, the stronger our online environment will be.

Partnering with Squiz Kids to build important digital literacy skills in schools

Education is also key to stopping the business model of misinformation - false claims germinate when they find an audience. We’ve worked with Squiz Kids on Newshounds, a media literacy module to help children “stop, think and check” before they believe, and potentially share, what they see online. 

More than 2000 classrooms in New Zealand and Australia use Newshounds to help teachers help their students decide what they should trust. Their work has shown to be invaluable in lifting teachers’ and parents’ confidence when discussing media literacy with children.

Our continued efforts in information literacy 

'About this image' gives people a quick way to check the background and context of images they see online. You can access it by clicking on the three dots on an image in Google Images results, or by clicking ‘more about this page’ in the About this result tool on search results. Launched last year in English globally, today the tool is live in 40 additional languages including Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese.

For over twenty years the Google News Initiative has worked to help local news organisations adapt to digital transformation, and 2023 was no different. Our goal, globally and here in Aotearoa, is to help  news media companies as they build sustainable businesses, connect with readers and engage audiences in a digital environment. 

In the past year, as outlined below, our programmes in New Zealand have engaged dozens of publishers and more than 100 journalists, providing critical information on how newsrooms can use digital technology to find and tell stories in new ways, reach larger audiences and generate more revenues. 

Google News Showcase, our curated online news experience and licensing program, launched in Aotearoa in 2022, provides news publishers with more opportunities to create connections with their readers. Across a range of large, small, regional and ethnically diverse publishers, 48 individual mastheads are now on News Showcase, representing the vast majority of news publishers in New Zealand. 

Most recently Newshub, New Zealand's independent broadcast and digital news service joined the program, with Sarah Bristow, Senior Director News, Warner Bros. Discovery ANZ noting: “This partnership is a significant step for Newshub, ensuring our brilliant reporting continues to reach audiences where they are, and helping to create a sustainable future for local journalism. We are very pleased to have reached an agreement with Google.”

Advancing quality journalism 

Training Kiwi journalists

We partnered with Telum Media to deliver eight open training sessions around the country, free of charge, to share the latest tools and processes to support digital reporting. In the last year more than 100 Kiwi journalists joined workshops run by local experts including training on Google’s research tool, Pinpoint, to support journalists’ reporting and creative data visualisation techniques. Journalists interested in future training sessions in 2024 can sign up here.

Supporting misinformation tracking & media literacy

It’s critical we can all differentiate quality information from misinformation in the moments that matter. New Zealand headed to the polls in October 2023, and with a wide range of political information sources readily available online, we partnered with CrossCheck at RMIT FactLab to launch immersive and interactive training events that help newsrooms and community media learn skills to analyse online information during the election period. More than 200 journalists, media executives, media community leaders and students took part in 12 sessions in New Zealand, with two of these facilitated in te reo Māori and one in Mandarin.

For the second consecutive year, Squiz Kids rolled out its media literacy module to give children of 8 to12 years the skills to decide which information sources are trustworthy, and which are not. The eight-part teaching resource, Newshounds, created in partnership with Google was aligned with the New Zealand curriculum and used by 72 Kiwi classrooms in 2023.

Supporting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 

At Ngā Kete Wānanga Marae marae, 12 Te Rito journalism cadets from diverse backgrounds participated in the second annual Te Rito Training Camp, a digital journalism camp founded on the Google News Initiative training curriculum. Cadets met with some of the leading journalists from New Zealand and Australia to learn investigative techniques, cultural history, digital skills and resilience training. For the first time, 8 Australian Indigenous journalists and three journalists from the Pacific joined the New Zealand based Pasifika and Māori cadets at the camp.

In July, Google hosted the inaugural Tagata Moana Media Fono at our offices in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, organised by Pacific Media Network, bringing together all parts of the Pasifika media community.

Strengthening and evolving publisher business models 

The GNI Advertising Lab Series 

The Google News Initiative's major training program for 2023- 2024 is the nine-month Advertising Lab. The Lab's aims to equip small and mid-sized news organisations with the latest information and support to improve their understanding, strategy, and infrastructure as it relates to digital advertising with a view to maximise their site performance and advertising revenue. Facilitated by Google and delivered by A&A Digital Services, a Google Certified Publishing Partner and Google Ad Manager 360 Platform Partner,  the lab supported more than 25 participants from 10 New Zealand news organisations, who will receive additional individual implementation support in 2024 to assist in their digital advertising performance.

The GNI Fundamentals Lab

The Fundamentals Lab is a collaborative three-month lab in which Google reviews news publishers’ sites and shares practical, easy-to-follow steps to grow their audience, expand their ad revenues and increase reader revenues. The Lab delivers learning sessions and working group sessions, as well as bespoke audits. In 2023, 13 participants from ten local news organisations participated in the Fundamentals Lab.

FT Strategies Program: Exec North Star & Digital Business Models Workshops

Kiwi news publishers participated in our Google News Initiative programmes facilitated by FT Strategies including:

• The Exec North Star Workshop Series, a two-month intensive programme aimed at publishers with a strong online presence, with participation from senior executives, aiming to define and accelerate progress towards a single ambitious organisation goal, using the FT’s proprietary North Star methodology to accelerate digital growth and strengthen commercial sustainability. 

• The Digital Business Models Workshop Series, a two-month program designed to help publishers at the beginning of their digital reader revenue journey understand and identify reader revenue models in evolving their digital businesses.

Empowering news organisations through technological innovation

Google is focused on partnering with news organisations on initiatives that further their digital transformation. One such partnership is with NZME and we’re pleased to share these examples of how we’ve supported their effort to promote original, trusted journalism across NZME’s digital titles. 

NZME launched a new enriched content subscription product, upgraded its core publishing content management system (CMS) to streamline workflows and improve performance, and enhances data maturity & audience targeting for new story formats. We also supported Stuff to realise the redesign of their stuff.co.nz platform which will enable an innovative approach to dynamic storytelling and exciting new advertising opportunities.

As we embark on 2024, we’re proud of the continued work to partner with the New Zealand news industry, to contribute to a thriving news ecosystem that seeks to benefit all New Zealanders.

Work out smarter and understand your body better with the new Fitbit Charge 6, available for pre-order today. (1)

Charge 6 helps you stay on track with your goals thanks to advanced health sensors that, combined with a new machine learning algorithm, bring you our most accurate heart rate tracking on a Fitbit tracker yet,(2) and the ability to connect to compatible gym equipment and fitness apps to see your real-time heart rate during workouts. Plus, it’s helpful when you’re on the go with its new haptic side button, 7 days of battery life (3), and the ability to do even more right from your wrist — like control YouTube music and use Google Maps and Wallet. 

Here’s a look at all the ways the Fitbit Charge 6 can take your health and fitness up a notch. 

Take a beat with improved heart rate tracking

Charge 6 debuts the most accurate heart rate on a Fitbit tracker yet, thanks to an improved machine learning algorithm that brings over innovation from the Pixel Watch and has been optimised for a tracker. Heart rate tracking during vigorous activities — like HIIT workouts, spinning and rowing — is up to 60% more accurate than before, giving you added confidence in your health stats.(4) Better heart rate accuracy means even more precise readings for you — from calories and Active Zone Minutes to your Daily Readiness Score (5) and Sleep Score. You can still assess your heart rhythm for atrial fibrillation on-wrist with the ECG app,(6) and get high and low heart rate notifications, keeping your beat in check at all times.

See your live heart-pumping progress and connect to fitness apps and machines

Connect your Charge 6 to compatible exercise apps and machines to stay motivated at home or at the gym. Easily and securely connect to compatible exercise equipment with encrypted Bluetooth — from partners like NordicTrack, Peloton and Concept2 (7) — to see your real-time heart rate displayed live during a workout. You can also connect to see your real-time heart rate within popular Android and iOS phone or tablet fitness apps such as Peloton. 

Fuel your fitness routine with more ways to track workouts and stay motivated

With even more personalised ways to track and stay motivated during workouts, you’re sure to get your movement in. Choose from more than 40 exercise modes — including 20 new options like HIIT, strength training and snowboarding— to get important workout stats. Need to track an outdoor workout? Leave your compatible phone(8) at home thanks to Charge 6’s built-in GPS that allows you to easily track your distance. 

With YouTube Music controls (9) (10) on Charge 6, you can be the DJ of your workouts as you start, stop and skip over 100 million songs right from your wrist. When you want to change things up, YouTube Music Premium can also recommend workout mixes based on your exercise.

Alt text: Woman in a wheelchair plays pickleball while wearing Charge 6 with a sport band.

Indigenous people are the first storytellers of any land - from Waitangi to Rakiura Stewart Island. It’s important that their stories are told to nurture communities and tell histories. This is critical too in our news ecosystem. Which is why Te Rito Journalism Project was set up to help address today’s shortage of Māori and Pasifika journalists and cultural awareness in newsrooms.

For the second year, the Google News Initiative has supported Te Rito with a digital skills training camp for its cadets, to bring the rich history of indigenous storytelling into the smartphones, laptops and desktops of news audiences across Aotearoa and beyond.

In August last year, we hosted the first Te Rito Journalism Training Camp which saw 23 cadets representing multiple ethnicities, languages, and the rainbow and disability communities from all over the motu participate in training focused on digital skilling and fundamental principles of digital tools and reporting. 

This year, for the first time Te Rito included young Indigenous journalists from Australia, supporting critical First Nation storytelling.

Te Rito was established by New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), Whakaata Māori, Warner Bros. Discovery ANZ and the Pacific Media Network, with support from NZ On Air's Public Interest Journalism Fund.

News is dependent on the people that tell the stories. The journalism and broadcast industry will have much to gain from voices across diverse backgrounds that are representative of all communities in Aotearoa and Australia.

Come October 2023, New Zealanders will take to the polls to vote in the General Election to decide who we want to represent us and our communities in Parliament. 

To support the democratic process, Google is bringing more openness to election advertising online, and helping connect people to useful and relevant election-related information. Here is how we will be providing support:

Helping voters find the information they need

In the build-up to elections, people need helpful and authoritative information to help them navigate the electoral process. For the New Zealand election in 2023, we will make electoral information from the Election Commission and other authoritative sources - such as how to vote and where to vote - easily discoverable on Search and YouTube.

Google News Lab will continue to publish the latest Search Trends related to the Election, across politicians, policies and parties, to support newsrooms with their coverage of the election period. In addition to the bespoke microsite, News Lab will be issuing weekly Trends Alerts from the beginning of September to highlight the areas that Kiwis are interested in, which anyone can sign up for here. 

Helping people better understand the election advertising they see

Google’s goal has always been to support election integrity by providing transparency into the political advertising spend on our platforms. For the second time during our local General Election a publicly accessible Transparency Report is live, showing election ads run by verified advertisers. Our goal is to make this information as accessible and useful as possible to citizens, practitioners, and researchers. We're working with political parties to help them understand digital best practices and will be sharing Google's ads policies with parties and candidates.

On YouTube, we have expanded information panels giving topical context in New Zealand and across the region. Now, when Kiwis search videos on certain topics prone to misinformation, they’ll see an information panel at the top of their search results or under a video they’re watching which includes links to additional info and context from authoritative third-party sources.

Helping to build media literacy with the Google News Initiative 

We help voters find reliable, useful election-related information online and we also work hard to prevent election interference by being on the front foot and educating stakeholders on how to spot disinformation through media literacy programmes.

As part of our ongoing commitment to the New Zealand media industry we partnered with CrossCheck at RMIT FactLab to launch RMIT Fact Lab Workshops. These immersive and interactive trainings help newsrooms and community media learn skills to analyse online information during the Election period.

In addition, we have partnered with Squiz Kids, a daily news podcast for school children, designed to teach students how to recognize online fact from fiction through a plug-and-play teaching resource. 

Our mission is to make the world’s information accessible and useful, and during this election period, we want to surface the facts and help audiences get more context on information they find online. We will continue to invest in initiatives that build further on our commitment towards election transparency, and we are grateful for our partners, and the work we do together in this space. 

Today, I’m proud to launch Google’s 2022 Economic Impact Report. 

The report by Access Partnership investigates how digital technologies can help New Zealand tackle two critical national challenges: the growing digital skills gap and the increasing risk of natural disasters. By addressing these we can build our resilience and gain up to $18 billion in 2030*.

The report also looks at the ways Google is supporting New Zealand households and businesses into the digital future — to the tune of $16.5 billion worth of economic benefits in 2022.

The research by Access Partnership looked at two critical challenges: the digital skills shortages in our labour market, and the risk of natural disasters exacerbated by climate change. 

It found that:

• Better using digital technologies to solve critical challenges can help New Zealand gain up to $18.2 billion in 2030. This includes:

1. Improving New Zealand’s digital competitiveness could unlock $8.4 billion of additional  Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2030 through improved labour productivity. For example:

• By streamlining the job search process through online job portals, upskilling workers through online digital skills training, and applying artificial intelligence (AI) on resume optimisation or insights on industry hiring and salary trends.

2. Helping New Zealand manage the impacts of natural disasters could eliminate $9.8 billion in property damage in 2030. This includes:

• Three key technologies include remote sensing, geospatial data analytics and satellite communication which can ensure better disaster preparedness and quicker response efforts.

Google is helping New Zealand’s resilience through community engagement, funding and partnerships. To provide digital skills and knowledge to New Zealand’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Google has played an active role in the MBIE’s ‘Digital Boost Alliance,’ including the development of a free tool Checkable, which is built on Google Cloud, and helps SMEs understand and improve their digital presence. 

Google’s economic impact in New Zealand

Google has been on the ground in New Zealand for over 15 years and has a team in both Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Pōneke Wellington across Cloud, Engineering, Education and Client Partnerships. 

Our digital tools like Google Ads and YouTube help support an additional 39,600 local jobs in 2022. For example, app developers use Google Play to generate revenue that supports a wide range of jobs including engineers, graphic designers and marketers. And over one in four New Zealand YouTube users say they use the platform to learn advanced digital skills, like software programming, AI and website development.

Through products and services including Google Search, Ads, AdSense, Play, YouTube, and Cloud, New Zealand businesses gained $10.9 billion worth of economic value in 2022. Of this value, over half (52%) went to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) - a total $5.7 billion. These products help businesses expand and grow revenue in domestic and international markets, and work more efficiently while strengthening resilience against economic shocks. In addition, Kiwi employees using Google Workspace each gain 18 days of time savings annually. This includes time saved by accessing, storing and sharing online documents for work, and from reduced meetings and more efficient collaborations. 

This includes the University of Canterbury which was struggling to attract international students when borders reopened post-pandemic. The Faculty of Science adopted a test and learn approach, and rolled out a full-funnel digital ads strategy across 40 countries, in the hope of generating enquiries, and ultimately applications, from international students. The campaign resulted in 58,000 new enquiries — a 10x return on export investment from their spend on Google Ads.

Many New Zealand businesses choose to partner with Google Cloud to support their digital transformation journey, providing them with an easy-to-use and always-on service that keeps them running smoothly and maximises efficiency and productivity. We recently announced plans to bring a Google Cloud region to Aotearoa, with an AccessPartnership study** finding:

• $4.2 billion in productivity benefits will be generated via the new Google Cloud region between 2025 and 2030; 

• 9,700 equivalent full-time jobs like cloud engineers and data scientists will be created through the Google Cloud region in 2030 alone;  and

• 78% improvement in energy efficiency*** could be achieved through the migration of on-premise data centres to cloud, enabling organisations to reduce energy consumption and associated emissions.

The Google Cloud region’s reliable, low-latency connectivity, as well as the highest security and compliance standards will help advance areas like New Zealand’s healthcare systems and scientific research through scalable, on-demand access to solutions.

Helping Kiwis save time and access important information

Many of our helpful products have become an important part of the everyday lives of millions of Kiwis. Through the use of Google's products, which include Google Search, Maps, Play, YouTube, Drive, Photos, Slides, Docs, and Sheets, in 2022, New Zealand households enjoy $5.6 billion worth of economic benefits — which represents the average New Zealand Internet user receiving $1,167 of value annually as a result of easier access to information, increased productivity and a variety of entertainment and enrichment benefits.

Digital technologies have played a vital role in supporting New Zealand’s resilience through the environment, economic shocks and other emerging challenges. This report shows us they will be critical to helping us better predict and respond to future challenges — and in achieving our potential. Google is committed to working alongside people, businesses and community to create a strong and inclusive digital future for all New Zealanders.