Year in Search: Here’s what Kiwis searched for in 2022

Everything from COVID to Costco and guacamole to Globle, these are the moments, people and peculiarities that captured Kiwis’ attention this year.


Year in Search 2022 artwork by Kiwi artist Chippy Draws

Kiwis will remember that this year had its share of historic moments: from the traumatic war in Ukraine, to Tonga’s devastating eruption, and the passing of Queen Elizabeth. And yet we’ve seen lightness and optimism as we seek to find new ways to adapt and come together. We observed our first national public holiday for Matariki. We crowned our first ever medallists at the Winter Olympics. We marvelled at the unprecedented support for our Rugby World Cup champions, the Black Ferns. 



Google’s Year in Search helps us explore the year through the lens of the questions we asked. What is the meaning of Matariki, how do you play Wordle and how do you make an NFT? And as our trending searches indicate, it’s been a year of momentous milestones, fun online fancies and people that will go down in the history books. 



Let’s take a look at some key themes from our searches in New Zealand this year:



Going local and celebrating our culture

Alongside global moments, our searches show a keen interest in celebrating what is local. We looked for pottery, zumba and cooking classes nearby - maybe to learn how to whip up a pavlova! We wanted to find and define Matariki. Wayne Brown and Sam Uffindel piqued our interest in regional politics. And ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ put Waititi on the world stage.



Sports has our hearts, minds and searches

With sporting heroes, matches and league tables, Kiwis were spoilt for sporting choice this year. The Winter Olympics, Commonwealth Games and a plethora of - rugby, soccer, rugby league - world cups and matches kept us entertained. Well established sporting champs like Israel Adesanya, Joseph Parker and Lydia Ko loomed large. Other breakout stars like Ruby Tui and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott captured our attention.



Curiosity and quirks…alongside COVID

The number of COVID cases or the locations of interest were still very much top of mind this year. And we had to learn quickly how to do a rapid antigen test. But despite this, our searches show a desire for distraction and amusement. We delved into the story of Anna Delvey, welcomed the arrival of Costco to our shores and somehow found time to play Wordle, Quordle, Heardle, Globle and Octordle!



Back to basics in the kitchen

This year our recipe lists show our desire to make from scratch as we searched for ways to make condiments like tomato relish, plum jam, and teriyaki sauce. For the first time in years we deviated from our banana bread obsession and other indulgent bakes found their way into our hearts and stomachs. Sugary sweets like hot cross buns, cinnamon rolls and chocolate brownies complimented more classic bakes like shortbread. On the savoury side, we showed our unwavering love for guacamole, which topped the savoury recipe list for the second year running! And explored Italian fare with spaghetti bolognese, gnocchi, focaccia and…macaroni cheese.



To dive into the data, check out New Zealand’s full trending* lists for 2022:


Overall:

  1. Wordle
  2. Locations of interest
  3. Australian Open
  4. Covid cases today
  5. All Blacks vs Ireland
  6. Ukraine
  7. World Cup
  8. Quordle
  9. Matariki
  10. Queen Elizabeth


Global Figures:

  1. Johnny Depp
  2. Amber Heard
  3. Will Smith
  4. Novak Djokovic
  5. Andrew Tate
  6. Anna Delvey
  7. Chris Rock
  8. King Charles
  9. Elon Musk
  10. Meghan Markle

Kiwis:

  1. Clarke Gayford
  2. Ryan Fox
  3. Zoi Sadowski-Synnott
  4. Lydia Ko
  5. Israel Adesanya
  6. Jayden Meyer
  7. Wayne Brown
  8. Sam Uffindell
  9. Joseph Parker
  10. Ruby Tui

News:

  1. Covid cases today
  2. Ukraine
  3. Queen Elizabeth
  4. Costco
  5. Will Smith
  6. Tropical cyclone Dovi
  7. iPhone 14
  8. Russia
  9. Tonga
  10. Commonwealth Games medal table

Loss:

  1. Queen Elizabeth
  2. Shane Warne
  3. Betty White
  4. Olivia Newton John
  5. Anne Heche
  6. Taylor Hawkins
  7. Bob Saget
  8. Aaron Carter
  9. Technoblade
  10. Ray Liotta

Sporting Events:

  1. Australian Open
  2. All Blacks vs Ireland
  3. Rugby league world cup
  4. All Blacks vs South Africa
  5. Fifa World Cup
  6. Ipl
  7. Women’s rugby world cup
  8. All Blacks vs Argentina
  9. Commonwealth Games medal table
  10. Samoa vs Australia

Online Games:

  1. Wordle
  2. Quordle
  3. Heardle
  4. Blooket
  5. Snake
  6. Globle
  7. Poki
  8. Octordle
  9. Slope
  10. Nerdle

How to...?

  1. How to do a RAT test
  2. How to play Wordle
  3. How to screenshot on a Windows
  4. How to tie a tie
  5. How to find Matariki
  6. How to screenshot on a Mac
  7. How to spell askew Google joke
  8. How to solve a Rubik’s cube
  9. How to be single
  10. How to make self raising flour

Savoury Recipes:

  1. Guacamole
  2. Tomato relish
  3. Spaghetti bolognese
  4. Coleslaw
  5. Macaroni cheese
  6. Focaccia
  7. Quiche
  8. Corn fritter
  9. Gnocchi
  10. Teriyaki sauce

Sweet Recipes:

  1. Hot cross bun
  2. Apple crumble
  3. Plum jam
  4. Cinnamon rolls
  5. Overnight oats
  6. Pavlova 
  7. Shortbread
  8. Pikelet
  9. Chocolate brownie
  10. Tiramisu

*Trending Searches: What was hot in 2022? The "trending" queries are the searches that had the highest spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2022 as compared to 2021.


Post content Posted by Carrie Jones, Communications and Public Affairs Manager Google New Zealand

More ways to prevent data exfiltration on iOS devices

What’s changing 

In 2020, we released several data exfiltration protections for iOS devices. Today, we’re announcing the next set of enhancements for data exfiltration protections for iOS. We’re expanding these security controls to give admins more ways to protect sensitive company data on iOS devices. 


Admins can now turn the following actions on or off for Google Workspace data: 
  • Copying Google Workspace files and data to personal apps 
  • Sharing Google Workspace data to personal accounts via AirDrop and the iOS share sheet 
  • Air Printing Google Workspace files 
  • Saving Google Workspace items to files with the iOS share sheet 
  • Saving Google Workspace images/videos to iOS photos 
  • Assigning items from Google Workspace to Contacts with the iOS share sheet. 


Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 


Why it’s important 

This is the next step in ensuring we continue to enhance data protections for Google workspace data and how that information is stored, shared, and used across the iOS devices within your organization. Similar protections are already available on Android devices through Work Profiles. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: These settings can also apply to any OU level throughout the organization, to scale your policy settings to any iOS mobile device within your organization. These settings can be configured in the Admin console under Devices > Mobile and endpoints > iOS settings > Data Sharing. Visit the Help Center to learn more about data protection on iOS devices. 


  • End users: There is no end-user setting for this feature. Restricted actions are not shown or except for “Save to files”, in which case a dialog pops up notifying the user that this action is restricted. 

Rollout pace


Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise for Education, and Cloud Identity Premium customers. 

Resources 

How the American Underground Serves a Growing Community of Tech Startups

In this installment of our small business series, Tim Scales, Executive Director at the American Underground in Durham, North Carolina, shares how the organization is meeting the growing needs of their clients through cutting-edge technology and a whole lot of coffee.


It’s really hard to grasp the sheer depth of who we are and what we do until you’re within the walls of the American Underground. Sure, we can tell you we’re a Google for Startups Tech Hub, but it’s only really once you step inside our building that things become clear.


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When you visit our space, you’ll begin to understand the palpably energetic community within our walls. Most of our members consider themselves high growth technology startups, over half of which are POC and women-led.


Our clients also represent 39 different industries. Healthtech and medical device companies, B2B SaaS companies, nonprofits, VC firms, marketing agencies — there’s no lack of entrepreneurial spirit at the American Underground. And it’s our job to make sure that we’re providing these incredible businesses with the most effective services possible.


Especially because we’re a tech hub, it’s critical that we have best in class technology in order to attract and retain tech companies that work from American Underground. That’s why we have Google Fiber.


Even when we’re first touring with prospective clients and showing them our space, the fact that we have high-speed, fiber optic internet is one of the first things we bring up — and it’s of mass appeal. I can assure you that before we had Google Fiber, we were not mentioning our internet speeds as a selling point for being a part of our community. Now, it’s a bolstering talking point.



In order for our members to effectively run their businesses and work seamlessly with their teams to showcase the best of what they have to offer to customers and investors, they need high-quality, reliable internet running 24/7. 


We often say that the American Underground is powered by strong coffee and stronger internet. It’s no understatement. The strength, availability and uptime of our internet is possibly the highest priority to our members. (And on our side, we’ve actually saved 90% on internet costs for faster internet by making the switch to Google Fiber. Yes, 90%. I couldn’t believe it either.)


Without reliable internet, the American Underground isn’t a functioning business — and our clients’ wouldn’t be either. We’re happy that our internet connection is now one of our strengths.



Posted by Tim Scales, Executive Director, American Underground.

Enhanced Protection – The strongest level of Safe Browsing protection Google Chrome has to offer

Posted by Benjamin Ackerman (Chrome Security and Jonathan Li (Safe Browsing)

As a follow-up to a previous blog post about How Hash-Based Safe Browsing Works in Google Chrome, we wanted to provide more details about Safe Browsing’s Enhanced Protection mode in Chrome. Specifically, how it came about, the protections that are offered and what it means for your data.

Security and privacy have always been top of mind for Chrome. Our goal is to make security effortless for you while browsing the web, so that you can go about your day without having to worry about the links that you click on or the files that you download. This is why Safe Browsing’s phishing and malware protections have been a core part of Chrome since 2007. You may have seen these in action if you have ever come across one of our red warning pages.

We show these warnings whenever we believe a site that you are trying to visit or file that you are trying to download might put you at risk for an attack. To give you a better understanding of how the Enhanced Protection mode in Safe Browsing provides the strongest level of defense it’s useful to know what is offered in Standard Protection.

Standard Protection

Enabled by default in Chrome, Standard Protection was designed to be privacy preserving at its core by using hash-based checks. This has been effective at protecting users by warning millions of users about dangerous websites. However, hash-based checks are inherently limited as they rely on lookups to a list of known bad sites. We see malicious actors moving fast and constantly evolving their tactics to avoid detection using sophisticated techniques. To counter this, we created a stronger and more customized level of protection that we could offer to users. To this end, we launched Enhanced Protection in 2020, which builds upon the Standard Protection mode in Safe Browsing to keep you safer.

Enhanced Protection

This is the fastest and strongest level of protection against dangerous sites and downloads that Safe Browsing offers in Chrome. It enables more advanced detection techniques that adapt quickly as malicious activity evolves. As a result, Enhanced Protection users are phished 20-35% less than users on Standard Protection. A few of these features include:

  • Real time URL checks: By checking with Google Safe Browsing’s servers in real time before navigating to an uncommon site you’re visiting, Chrome provides the best protection against dangerous sites and uses advanced machine learning models to continuously stay up to date.
  • File checks before downloading: In addition to Chrome’s standard checks of downloaded files, Enhanced Protection users can choose to upload suspicious files to be scanned by Google Safe Browsing’s full suite of malware detection technology before opening the file. This helps catch brand new malware that Safe Browsing has not scanned before or dangerous files hosted on a brand new site.
  • More advanced vision-based phishing detection: To better detect phishing and dangerous sites for Enhanced Protection users, Chrome performs basic client-side checks on the web page to determine if it is suspicious. For pages deemed suspicious, Chrome sends a small set of visual features derived from the page to Google’s Safe Browsing servers for additional phishing classification using computer vision. This helps Chrome more accurately recognize dangerous sites, and can warn other users before they visit the site.

    User data privacy and security

    By opting into Enhanced Protection, you are sharing additional data with Safe Browsing systems that allow us to offer better and faster security both for you, and for all users online. Ensuring user privacy is of utmost importance for us and we go through great lengths to anonymize as much of the data as possible. This data is only used for security purposes and only retained for a short period of time. As threats evolve we will continuously add and improve our existing protections for Enhanced Protection users. These features go through extensive privacy reviews to ensure that your privacy continues to be prioritized while still providing you the highest level of security possible.

    How to enable

    Safe Browsing’s Enhanced Protection is currently available for all desktop platforms, Android devices and now iOS mobile devices. It can be enabled by navigating to the Privacy and Security option located in Chrome settings.

    For enterprise admins, you have the option of enabling Enhanced Safe Browsing on your managed devices using the SafeBrowsingProtectionLevel policy and in the Admin Console.

    For more details and updates about Safe Browsing and its Enhanced Protection mode, please visit our Google Safe Browsing website and follow the Google Security Blog for updates on new features.

Dev Library Letters: 15th Issue

Posted by Garima Mehra, Program Manager

Our monthly newsletter curates some of the best projects developed with Google tech that have been submitted to the Google Dev Library platform. We hope this brings you the inspiration you need for your next project!

Content of the month

Check out our shortlisted Content from Google Cloud, Angular, Android, & Flutter


Google Cloud
Solve the common question, “who parked their car in my spot?” with this clever tutorial.

Designing a data schema 

by Mustapha Adekunle

Better understand what aspects come into consideration when designing a data schema.

Learn how to set up aggregated logging in an organization that has VPC Service Controls and find a Terraform module that lets you automate the setup for your own Google Cloud infrastructure.

Explore how to generate accurate business forecasts at a large scale using state of the art ML capabilities on the Google Cloud Platform.

Angular


Understand how to implement the Compound Component Pattern in Angular using Dependency Injection and Content Projection to create an excellent API for your components.

Android


Design patterns and architecture: The Android Developer roadmap — Part 4 

by Jaewoong Eum

Check out the 2022 Android Developer Roadmap- a multi-part series covering important Android fundamentals like Languages, App Manifest, App Components, Android Jetpack, and more.

Geofencing:boost your digital campaign 

by Veronica Putri Anggraini

Read this fun application of geofencing to manage the dilemma of where to eat lunch based on which restaurant has the best deal.

Flutter


Data structures with Dart: Set 

by Daria Orlova

Get over your fear of data structures and algorithms with this helpful and snappy how-to focused on the Set.

Want to read more?
Check out the latest projects and community-authored content by visiting Google Dev Library.
Submit your projects to showcase your work and inspire developers!