Category Archives: Google Canada Blog

News and notes from Google Canada

Improving Search for the next 20 years


Editor’s note: This blog is cross-posted from The Keyword 

Growing up in India, there was one good library in my town that I had access to—run by the British Council. It was modest by western standards, and I had to take two buses just to get there. But I was lucky, because for every child like me, there were many more who didn’t have access to the same information that I did. Access to information changed my life, bringing me to the U.S. to study computer science and opening up huge possibilities for me that would not have been available without the education I had.


The British Council Library in my hometown

When Google started 20 years ago, our mission was to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That seemed like an incredibly ambitious mission at the time—even considering that in 1998 the web consisted of just 25 million pages (roughly the equivalent of books in a small library).

Fast forward to today, and now we index hundreds of billions of pages in our index—more information than all the libraries in the world could hold. We’ve grown to serve people all over the world, offering Search in more than 150 languages and over 190 countries.

Through all of this, we’ve remained grounded in our mission. In fact, providing greater access to information is as core to our work today as it was when we first started. And while almost everything has changed about technology and the information available to us, the core principles of Search have stayed the same.

  • First and foremost, we focus on the user. Whether you’re looking for recipes, studying for an exam, or finding information on where to vote, we’re focused on serving your information needs. 
  • We strive to give you the most relevant, highest quality information as quickly as possible. This was true when Google started with the Page Rank algorithm—the foundational technology to Search. And it’s just as true today. 
  • We see billions of queries every day, and 15 percent of queries are ones we’ve never seen before. Given this scale, the only way to provide Search effectively is through an algorithmic approach. This helps us not just solve all the queries we’ve seen yesterday, but also all the ones we can’t anticipate for tomorrow. 
  • Finally, we rigorously test every change we make. A key part of this testing is the rater guidelines which define our goals in search, and which are publicly available for anyone to see. Every change to Search is evaluated by experimentation and by raters using these guidelines. Last year alone, we ran more than 200,000 experiments that resulted in 2,400+ changes to search. Search will serve you better today than it did yesterday, and even better tomorrow. 
As Google marks our 20th anniversary, I wanted to share a first look at the next chapter of Search, and how we’re working to make information more accessible and useful for people everywhere. This next chapter is driven by three fundamental shifts in how we think about Search:

Underpinning each of these are our advancements in AI, improving our ability to understand language in ways that weren’t possible when Google first started. This is incredibly exciting, because over 20 years ago when I studied neural nets at school, they didn’t actually work very well...at all!

But we’ve now reached the point where neural networks can help us take a major leap forward from understanding words to understanding concepts. Neural embeddings, an approach developed in the field of neural networks, allow us to transform words to fuzzier representations of the underlying concepts, and then match the concepts in the query with the concepts in the document. We call this technique neural matching. This can enable us to address queries like: “why does my TV look strange?” to surface the most relevant results for that question, even if the exact words aren’t contained in the page. (By the way, it turns out the reason is called the soap opera effect).

Finding the right information about my TV is helpful in the moment. But AI can have much more profound effects. Whether it’s predicting areas that might be affected in a flood, or helping you identify the best job opportunities for you, AI can dramatically improve our ability to make information more accessible and useful.

I’ve worked on Search at Google since the early days of its existence. One of the things that keeps me so inspired about Search all these years is our mission and how timeless it is. Providing greater access to information is fundamental to what we do, and there are always more ways we can help people access the information they need. That’s what pushes us forward to continue to make Search better for our users. And that’s why our work here is never done.

Posted by Ben Gomes, VP, Search, News and Assistant

Grow with Google provides opportunity for all Canadians


At Google, we are technology optimists. Not because we believe in technology, but because we believe in people. When people have access to technology, they have access to information, education and opportunity, and they are capable of achieving great things.

Last week, we released an Economic Impact Report showcasing the value of the open web for Canadian businesses. The report highlights businesses of all shapes and sizes across the country who are experiencing incredible growth thanks to the tools and reach available on the web. These inspiring stories all start with opportunity.

In order to provide that same opportunity for every Canadian, we need to begin with access. Access to the open web, access to digital education, and access to the digital skills needed to grow a business or work in the technology driven economy of tomorrow. Technology is an incredible platform for growth, but we need to provide all Canadians with the skills needed to use it and take it further.

In April, we announced a one million dollar grant in collaboration with MaRS to develop the Employment Pathway Platform, a data driven job opportunity and career guidance tool that is aimed at helping people make the right career transitions as the nature of work shifts alongside technology. We also launched Google For Jobs in Canada, a tool within Google Search that lets Canadians search for jobs that are accurate, relevant and personalized based on search queries.

Today we’re furthering our commitment to helping Canadians prepare for the future of work by launching Grow with Google, an initiative to help Canadians acquire the digital skills they need to grow their business or get a job. As part of that initiative, we’re announcing two million dollars in grants to ensure that our efforts reach Canadians in every community, big and small.

First, we’re partnering with Canada Learning Code to provide Canadians with free tools and training to advance their skills, grow their business or get a job. Through our partnership with CLC, individuals across the country will have access to our Applied Digital Skills Program. The video-based curriculum teaches learners about the basics of working with technology today: everything from spreadsheets to email is covered and available in guided, bite-sized lessons. To make sure those lessons are available to all Canadians, the entire Applied Digital Skills Training Program is offered in both French and English.

And for those looking to explore a career in technology, we’re bringing our Professional IT Support Certification Program to Canada. Developed by Google and hosted on Coursera, this program helps turn beginners into job candidates in just eight months - no experience or degree required. Completing the program is the first step, but we’re also be supporting learners in the next step - the job search. We’ve partnered with leading Canadian companies, like Walmart and RBC, and of course Google Canada, to get graduates information into the hands of HR departments. With over 64 hours of video lessons, hands-on labs and interactive assessments, our IT Support Professional Certificate is the perfect transition for adults looking to reskill and kickstart a new career in technology.

Finally, we’re bringing Grow with Google to a town near you. Googlers are teaming up with libraries and community organizations across the country to bring digital skills training to you. The free events will provide small business owners, entrepreneurs and job seekers with the skills they need to grow. We’ll host hands-on workshops, one-on-one training sessions, and demo stations staffed by Google volunteers. Our first stop is Surrey, British Columbia this Friday, September 21st. Find out where we’re headed next and secure your spot today by visiting our online hub - g.co/GrowCanada.

We hope that by making our resources available to every Canadian online, by supporting organizations committed to expanding access to digital education, and by bringing our training across the country, we will help individuals grow. Because when one has access to opportunity, they can achieve incredible things. There is one business in particular that really demonstrates the power of the web and the opportunity that lies within it.



Two years ago, the Hadhad family moved to Canada after fleeing their home in Damascus, Syria. They lost everything, including their business, a chocolate factory that had been in the family for 30 years. New beginnings can be hard, but the community of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, together with the opportunity provided by the web, the Hadhad family rebuilt their life and business in Canada. With digital tools like Google Search, YouTube and Google My Business, the Hadhad family launched a new chocolate business, Peace by Chocolate, that reaches customers far beyond Canada. In fact, 65% of their web traffic comes from outside of Canada. Today, Peace by Chocolate sells their product to over 400 vendors across Canada and produces over 1.5 million pieces of chocolate a year.

I’m optimistic about the future of work in Canada. We’ve seen firsthand how access to digital skills and opportunity can transform people’s businesses, careers and lives. Like the Hadhad family, we can open a new door by rebuilding our skill set and reaching new heights. With technology, anything is possible.

Sabrina Geremia, Managing Director, Google Canada

How Google is helping Canadians unlock the prosperity of the open web


Businesses across Canada are using the web to learn, build, connect, and grow. And Google is helping. The opportunities available to businesses today are endless thanks to digital tools, like Google Search and Maps. With the web, location and size is no longer a barrier to building a global business.

According to an Economic Impact Report produced by Deloitte, last year Google’s search and advertising tools helped create over $10.4 billion in economic activity for Canadian businesses, entrepreneurs, non-profits, developers, and creators. Thanks to the open web and the accessibility of our tools, Canadian businesses are reaching new heights, fueling growth, creating jobs and giving back to their communities.


Behind these numbers, are the amazing stories of Canadians unlocking the vast potential of the Internet. And I want to share just a few examples.

Peace by Chocolate 
Antigonish, Nova Scotia 
35 employees 

After more than three decades working as a chocolatier in Damascus, Syria, Isam Hadhad’s chocolate factory was destroyed, forcing his family to flee their country. In 2016, the Hadhad’s settled in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where they rebuilt their life and their business, Peace by Chocolate, with help from the web.

The Hadhad’s relied on Google Search to source local suppliers and vendors needed for chocolate production, and turned to Google My Business to drive traffic to their storefront and website. In just two short years since setting foot on Canadian soil, the Hadhad’s have built a brand with international recognition. So much so that 65% of their website traffic comes from consumers outside of Canada. “Our presence on Google has helped us reach audiences across the country and has given us the ability to share our story internationally,” said Tareq Hadhad, CEO at Peace by Chocolate.

Peace by Chocolate, Antigonish, NS 

Logojoy 
Toronto, Ontario 
24 employees 

Creating a business that helps entrepreneurs like himself was important to Dawson Whitfield, founder of Logojoy, an online logo company that uses machine learning to create personalized, affordable logos for small businesses and entrepreneurs around the world.

Two years after founding the business, Logojoy has served over 2.5 million entrepreneurs and startups, a milestone the team says wouldn’t be possible without the web. The company uses TensorFlow, Google’s open-source machine learning framework, to refine their logo maker, and Google Ads to reach a hyper-niche audience at the exact moment their product is needed. Today, Google Ads drives almost half of Logojoy’s overall website traffic. “Logojoy is in 188 countries, and Google Search Ads has been a huge part of that,” says Whitfield.

Logojoy, Toronto, ON 

ToursByLocals
Vancouver, British Columbia 
43 employees

The web creates opportunities for every individual, and Paul Melhus and Dave Vincent are proof of that. “Most of our friends and family thought starting an e-commerce company in our 50s was crazy,” says co-founder Paul Melhus. “We thought it would be a challenge.”

ToursByLocals pairs travellers looking for unique, flexible experiences with local tour guides all over the world. The idea was born 12 years ago after Melhus and Vincent found themselves struggling to find a suitable tour option during a trip to the Great Wall of China. Today, ToursByLocals has served almost one million travellers in 153 countries and counting. The ToursByLocals used Google Analytics to inform their online strategy and today Google Ads makes up the majority of their marketing efforts. “We struggled at first - until we embraced Google Ads,” Melhus adds. “Almost immediately, our sales started to grow and they’ve continued ever since.”

ToursByLocals, Vancouver, BC 

These are just a few inspiring examples of the way Canadian businesses, large and small, use the web to reach new heights. Check out more stories of how businesses and nonprofits are leveraging the open web and Google tools to grow and compete globally.

Posted by Sabrina Geremia, Managing Director, Google Canada

The MMVAs are coming to YouTube this Sunday!



For the first time ever, you can watch the iHeart Radio MMVAs live on YouTube this Sunday night.

Canada's favourite street party in celebration of the best music videos of the year will be available to fans both at home and around the world on YouTube via the CTV YouTube channel.



 And it promises to be an incredible party with performances and appearances from the hottest artists - from homegrown stars like Shawn Mendes, Alessia Cara and Brett Kissel to international favourites like Meghan Trainor, Marshmello, Anne-Marie, Halsey and 5 Seconds of Summer.

 Awkwafina, the breakout star of the box office smash Crazy Rich Asians, whose music and comedy career began on YouTube, will host the show. For a complete list of performers, presenters and all the nominees, please visit ctv.ca/mmva

 The party gets started with the pre-game at 7:30 PM ET, red carpet at 8:00 PM ET and the show at 9:00 PM ET!

  Posted by Nicole Bell, YouTube Canada

The world’s best programmers unite in Toronto for Code Jam


Google’s longest-running programming competition, Code Jam, is bringing their World Finals to Google Toronto for the first time ever in August.

Toronto will host 39 of the savviest programmers representing 15 different countries who’ve made it through four rounds of intense, algorithmic challenges to beat out over 60,000 registrants.

Toronto, and the wider Toronto-Waterloo corridor is a hub for technology and innovation, and we are so excited to be able to share this culture with some of the best programmers from around the world.

The finalists joining us next week have dedicated countless hours of hard work and determination in the online rounds to get to this very moment, and will come together in one room to compete for the championship title and grand prize of up to $15,000.

Leading up to the finals, we spoke with Samuel Huang, a software engineer at Google Canada's engineering headquarters in Waterloo, a former Code Jam participant, and a volunteer for this year’s competition about his Code Jam experience.

What was your favourite part about participating in Code Jam? 
Samuel Huang: Day-to-day programming work is like writing books, and solving contest problems is like writing poems. These require related but slightly different skill sets. It's educational and refreshing to solve Code Jam problems. I'm consistently amazed by the creativity of problem writers. Solving a challenging problem is rewarding, and anything I couldn’t solve pointed to a gap in my knowledge that I can improve on. Most of all - I enjoyed the camaraderie. It was nice to meet so many people with similar interests as me. 

Since you’re volunteering at this year’s finals, what are you looking forward to the most?
SH: I’m very excited to meet this year’s contestants and hear the perspectives of a new generation of coders. I can’t wait to be amazed by their skills, and learn from them as well.

What are your words of advice for this year’s finalists?
SH: Be flexible and adapt to the occasion, be it contests, or interviews, or hackathons, or production work. Software engineering is about managing complexity and making trade-offs -- so in addition to doing what you do best, it would be valuable to know to switch gears for different situations, and don't be afraid to ask questions whenever you're unsure. 

To follow along, tune into the Code Jam World Finals livestream on August 10th at 12:30 PM EST. Can’t wait another week? Submit your questions to be featured on the livestream by tagging your social media posts with #TalkToCodeJam and participating in the #CodeJamFinals conversations on Twitter, Facebook and G+.

Placing a bet on building a better world

A few years ago, Google.org was looking for a way to encourage innovation in the non-profit sector, especially when the need is urgent and overwhelming, or when the challenge is complex and daunting.

The result was the Google.org Impact Challenge, an open-call that travels to different parts of the world to identify and fund organizations that are looking to use technology in transformative ways. 

The first Canadian challenge took place last year, and ten projects were selected. Google.org provided five million dollars in grant money, and in partnership with our team at the LEAP | Pecaut Centre for Social Impact, we jointly provided a unique blend of support that includes mentorship, education and access to Google’s tech expertise. LEAP also leveraged the deep bench of experience from our sector partners, the Boston Consulting Group, EY, McCarthy Tétrault, Hill + Knowlton Strategies, and the Offord Group, which provided pro-bono services and worked closely with each of the selected organizations.

Over the past twelve months, we’ve seen up close that Canadian nonprofits can do tremendous things when they are given not only tools, but also the room to fail and the freedom to spend capital where they most need it in order to meet their bigger goals.

The lessons we have learned together over the past year are applicable to any business with tight budgets and a risk-averse culture:

  • Invest in great ideas and visionary leaders - there are lots of good ones, be selective and only choose to invest in the best. Similarly, look for the leaders with ambition who want to drive forward a project. We look for leaders who want open source their technology, who build models with the potential to scale, who will speak publicly about their successes and failures so that others can learn and benefit.
  • The right toolkit is so much more than money - we don’t want to fund projects that dry up as soon as our grant is spent. We help our partners scope their projects to make sure that they can sustain the work after our investment is complete. We empower them to use the technology themselves, we don’t just do it for them. We look to harness their existing talent and expertise, and accelerate their learning in new areas.
  • Learn from each other - all of the nonprofits participating in the Google.org Impact Challenge have an opportunity to connect and learn from each other. They share what’s working, what failed, and how they have overcome challenges. They have built a community to continually turn to.

The money Google.org invested in non-profit innovation in Canada is already paying dividends. The Impact Challenge participants have done everything from deploy drones to find safe routes through disaster zones to build a digital map of climate change impact on sea ice ecosystems in Hudson Bay. They have developed ways to create educational opportunity for kids living on indigenous reserves and ways to divert surplus food away from landfill and onto the plates of hungry people through Canada’s Food Bank network.

When innovation works, the smart investor re-invests. We’re proud to share that five organizations will be partnering with us for a second year, and have been granted an additional $100,000 each from Google.org to continue their work. This brings the total investment across the Google.org Impact Challenge Canada to $5.5M in grant money, and an additional $1.5M in pro bono investment across Google Canada, LEAP and our partners.

The projects that will participate in this second phase are:

  • The Rumie Initiative - Only 40% of students on indigenous reserves graduate from high school, compared to 90% of students in the rest of Canada. The LearnCloud Portal is an offline, tablet-based curriculum to help high school students learn about Indigenous culture, history and language while gaining employment skills and financial literacy.
  • World Wide Hearing Foundation International - Globally, 32 million children suffer from significant hearing loss, the majority of whom live in countries where access to hearing care can be a significant barrier. The Teleaudiology Cloud will connect children living in remote communities with audiologists and speech therapists who can assist with remote screening, hearing aid fitting, speech therapy and parent counselling.
  • Arctic Eider Society - With Arctic sea ice declining at over 13% per decade, changing conditions make navigation unpredictable and limits access to traditional foods for Arctic communities. The SIKU platform will provide a set of open-source tools that help Inuit communities map changing sea ice, and build a living archive of Inuit knowledge to help inform decision making for stewardship and sustainable development.
  • Food Banks Canada - Each year, close to $31 billion of food is wasted in Canada, yet nearly one in ten Canadian households have to worry about whether they have food on the table. The FoodAccess App diverts surplus quality food away from landfill by connecting farmers, manufacturers and restaurants with donation agencies and Canadian dinner tables that might otherwise go empty. 
  • Growing North - In Nunavut, nearly 70% of adults are food insecure - meaning they lack reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. Growing North addresses food insecurity issues by building greenhouses that will provide fresh produce all year round in latitudes above the Arctic Circle at about half of the present cost.

Posted by Narinder Dhami, Managing Director of LEAP | Pecaut Centre for Social Impact

Celebrating Pride 2018 with our Canadian tech family

As searches for LGBT-related terms, like “how to come out” and ‘LGBTQIA meaning”, increase year over year, it's clear that, now more than ever, we need to continue supporting Canada's growing LGBTQIA+ community and making sure we’re providing all members with equal opportunity and a voice.

That’s why, this Pride, Google is celebrating families big and small, chosen or inherited. Over 150 employees and their friends and family from our Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo offices will be marching in the Toronto Pride Parade as part of #ThisIsFamily.

For the second year in a row, we're also marching alongside other companies within the wider Canadian tech community, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, Indeed, Buzzfeed and more, as "TechProud".

Earlier this week, TechProud collaborated with local non-profit Venture Out to host a panel and workshop series at our Toronto office for more than 150 LGBTQIA+ tech professionals. At Google, we believe in the importance of storytelling as a tool to help connect like-minded individuals and our goal with this Venture Out series was to support and inspire our burgeoning homegrown LGTBQIA+ tech community.

Here are a few other ways we are working to be a resource for LGBTQIA+ Canadians and the wider community around Pride:
  • In Google Maps, this year's parade route is paved with ?rainbows?! 
  • We’re helping Canadian businesses declare their establishments "LGBTQ+ Friendly" or "Transgender Safe Space" on their business listings in Google Maps and Google Search. 
  • You'll also find rainbow "easter eggs" scattered through Google Search and G Suite, and you can join the fun from your desktop by switching your Gmail to a Pride theme for the month of June. 
  • On YouTube, we're celebrating the LGBTQ+ creators who are #ProudToCreate a better future with their imagination, creativity, talent, and truth through our YouTube Spotlight Channel, Twitter, and Instagram. 
  • Google Arts & Culture has a dedicated Pride collection celebrating LGBTQ+ history, with 20 exhibits and over 2,700 artifacts, part of which comes from the Stonewall Forever project. 
  • Google.org has pledged to match up to $100,000 in total in donations to PFLAG, It Gets Better and GLAAD during the month of June. 
Throughout 2018, we want to continue supporting and celebrating diversity in the Canadian tech scene by acting as a better resource for LGTBQIA+ Canadians via our products and programs, improving diversity and inclusion across our offices and uniting Canadian tech leaders in support of the LGTBQIA+ community.

From our family to yours, Happy Pride Canada!!

YouTube Music and YouTube Premium Launch in Canada: It’s All Here

The wait is over! Starting today, YouTube Music is available to everyone in Canada. Now Canadian fans can find more of the music they love and effortlessly discover new favourites.

YouTube Music is a new music streaming service built on top of all the music on YouTube that you can’t find anywhere else - personalized & all simply organized in one place.

Here’s how it all comes together:

  1. It’s ALL here. Not just music videos, but official albums, singles, remixes, live performances, covers and hard-to-find music you can only get on YouTube.
  2. Recommendations built for you. A home screen that dynamically adapts to provide recommendations based on the artists and songs you’ve played before, where you are and what you’re doing. Chilling at the beach? Need some motivation? The right music is right here, built just for you.
  3. Thousands of playlists across any genre, mood or activity. Try “A Dose of Sun” for brighter tunes on a cloudy day, “The Pop Hotlist” for the biggest hits around the world or Distrito Latino for Latin pop hits of the moment.
  4. Smart search so we’ll find the song, even if you can’t remember what it’s called. “That space-themed Spice Girls song in the desert.” Here you go. You can also search by lyrics (even if they’re wrong). It’s “Hold me closer, Tony Danza,” right?
  5. The hottest videos. We’ll keep you on top of what’s hot! The hottest videos in the world right now are right there, on their own dedicated Hotlist screen. So you can go check out that brand-new Degrassi-themed Drake video.
  6. Ad-free listening, downloads and more. Get YouTube Music Premium to listen ad-free, in the background and on-the-go with downloads. Plus, your Offline Mixtape automatically downloads songs you love just in case you forgot to. For a limited time, get three months free of YouTube Music Premium here, ($9.99 per month after, $14.99 per month for a Family Plan)*.

YouTube Premium also launches today
Starting today, YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red) will also be available in Canada, providing members with the benefits of Music Premium, plus ad-free, background, and downloads across all of YouTube. YouTube Premium members also get access to the full slate of YouTube Originals shows and movies including the hit series Cobra Kai, Impulse, F2 Finding Football and The Sidemen Show. For a limited time, get three months free of YouTube Premium here, ($11.99 per month after, $17.99 per month for a Family Plan)*.

Current Google Play Music subscribers in Canada will automatically receive access to YouTube Music Premium at their current price as it becomes available there. Nothing is changing with Google Play Music - you'll still be able to access all of your purchased music, uploads and playlists in Google Play Music just like always.
Try YouTube Music and YouTube Premium
Get the new YouTube Music from the Play Store and App Store today or check out the brand new web player at music.youtube.com. You can sign up for YouTube Premium at youtube.com/premium.

Posted by Nicole Bell, YouTube Canada 


*YouTube Music Premium is $9.99 per month and YouTube Premium is $11.99 per month for individual memberships in Canada. 

Greater transparency and control over your Google ad experience

Over the years, you’ve told us that transparency and control over your data and ad experience are important. That's why we've built products and tools to help you manage that experience. Back in 2009, we launched Ad Settings, providing you with a single place for your ad controls, and in 2011 and 2012 we introduced Why this ad? and Mute this ad, giving you more transparency and control over the ads that you see. In 2015 all of these were brought together in your Google Account, the all-in-one destination for managing your personal information, privacy and security settings.

Today, we’re launching the new Ad Settings, which makes it easier for you to understand and control how your ads are tailored to you. We’re also providing more transparency around why you see certain ads by expanding Why this ad? to all of our services that show Google ads (like Search and YouTube) and almost all websites and apps that partner with us to show ads.

Understand and control how your ads are tailored to you
The new Ad Settings shows all the different factors that determine how ads are tailored to you in one view. This way, it’s easier for you to see them at a glance, learn more about why you see ads related to these topics, and decide if there are any you want to remove.

There are a few different factors that can determine how your ads are tailored to you, including: estimations of your interests based on your activity while you’re signed in, information you’ve added to your Google Account, and information from advertisers that partner with us to show ads—like if you’ve visited their site or signed up for their newsletter.
For example, if you watched highlights from a recent soccer match on YouTube or searched “soccer fields near me” you might see an ad for a slick pair of soccer shorts. If you’ve told us you’re 40 years old, we would be less likely to show you ads about student study abroad programs. And if you visit the website of one of your favorite brands, you might see an ad from them.

This information helps make ads more relevant and useful to you. However, in the new Ad Settings, if you no longer want us to tailor your ads based on one of these factors you can choose to turn it off. Turning off a factor means you’ll no longer receive tailored ads related to it across our services, and on websites and apps that partner with us to show ads, as long as you’re signed in to your Google Account. The ads you see can still be based on general factors, like the subject of what you’re looking at or the time of day, or any other factor that is still turned on.

Why this ad? makes it easier to understand why you see certain ads 
Why this ad? is a feature which appears next to ads and both helps you learn why you are seeing a certain ad and gives you easy access to your Ad Settings. For example, if you want to know why you’re seeing an ad for a camera, Why this ad? might tell you it’s because you’ve searched for cameras, visited photography websites, or clicked on ads for cameras before. We’ve now significantly expanded coverage of this feature; starting today, you’ll see Why this ad? notices on all our services that show Google Ads, such as ads on YouTube (including the YouTube app on connected TVs), Google Play, Gmail, Maps and Search. We’ve also expanded it to include almost all of the websites and apps that partner with us to show ads.

The new Ad Settings and updates to Why this ad? provide you with more transparency and control over your Google ad experience than ever before. With these improvements, you can browse the web confidently knowing that you have the information and control to make Google work better for you.

Posted by Philippe de Lurand Pierre-Paul, Product Manager

Inspiring Canada’s future innovators at Go North Youth

Editor’s Note: Today’s blog is guest authored by Jennifer Flanagan, President and CEO of Actua. The University of Toronto is one of 36 Actua network members across Canada annually engaging 250,000 youth in hands-on STEM learning. 

Nicole, a Grade 4 student from Kew Beach Junior Public School, was excited to visit Go North Youth today. "My favourite subject is math, so I couldn't wait to learn all about science and tech at the University of Toronto! I learned that sound can travel through two people's bodies, how to build a future city, plus a bunch of other really cool stuff."

Today, for the third year in a row, Go North Youth gathered over 1200 students from grades three to eight in the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall. Students from schools across the GTA came together for Canada’s biggest and most exciting day of exploration, learning and fun with cutting-edge science and technology.
Students flocked to the University of Toronto for the third annual Go North Youth, a full day of hands-on activities, workshops and learning designed to ignite curiosity around science and technology
The day kicked off with a vibrant opening ceremony in U of T’s historic Convocation Hall that included performances by DJ Skratch, ActionPotential, and a special address from The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, who got to personally welcome students from her own riding of Etobicoke North.

Afterwards, students explored Innovate Alley, where they went hands-on with fun science and tech, from creating 3D printed objects with Inksmith and testing Google’s AI game Quick Draw to dancing to cool rhythmic light installations from U of T alumni Nanoleaf.

Students spent the remainder of the day participating in inspiring design and build workshops put on by the incredible team at U of T Engineering Outreach. As always, it is amazing to see students so engaged and excited to learn about the engineering that backs their favourite technologies.
The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, MInister of Science, chats with students at Go North Youth
The lead partner, the University of Toronto, worked with Google and Actua to bring this massive event to life for the third year because we believe that it is critical for youth to experience current innovations while seeing their peers excited about STEM. Whether students want to become doctors or game developers, STEM skills and computational thinking are, and will continue to be, important tools for their future.

For more than 20 years, Actua and our 36 university and college-based network members have worked to prepare young Canadians to be innovators and leaders by engaging them in exciting and accessible STEM experiences that build critical skills and confidence.

This includes our Codemakers program, supported by Google, which has engaged over 165,000 youth in computer science and digital skill building. Canadian youth from all over the country have participated in Codemakers whether through coding throat singing in Canada’s north or printing 3-D selfies in Vancouver or participating in events like today. With a recent renewal of $1.5M in funding from Google.org and $10 million in funding from the federal government through the CanCode program, we will continue to evolve the Codemakers program to reach a quarter of a million young Canadians.
Students got the chance to go hands-on with tech in Innovate Alley, from creating mini-ziplines to building their own 3D printed objects and much more. 

Together we can help students gain the skills and confidence they need to use technology to solve the world’s biggest problems.

Posted by Jennifer Flanagan, President and CEO of Actua.