The IT Nerd

As we head into a season of holiday cheer, Google Canada today announces applications are open for the 2023 Google for Startups Accelerator Canada – helping Canadian startups begin the new year strong. 

The intensive ten-week bootcamp is designed to bring the best of Google’s programs, products, people and technology to Canadian startups that leverage machine learning and AI in their company today or plan to in the future. Up to 12  Canadian technology startups will be selected to participate. 

Through the equity free program, Google wants to make it possible for startups to continue to thrive in Canada’s tech ecosystem. The accelerator provides technical training and strategic counsel through one-to-on mentorship opportunities with Google experts. 

Google has provided more infomation in a blog post that was posted today. Applications for the program are now open to startups across all sectors until February 1st with the program kicking off March 2023.  

As Canadians look forward to the 2022 holiday season, retailers can expect to see a more price-conscious shopper that’s focused on cost and convenience. 

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday around the corner, Google Canada is revealing new insights about how Canadians are changing their holiday shopping behaviours along with some of the top trending items Canadians are looking for this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

You can also check out Google’s blog post for more information.

Here’s how Canadians plan to shop for Black Friday/Cyber Monday this year: 

• Digital is here to stay and is now the gateway to all commerce
• While we expect to see a return in-store shopping this holiday season, shoppers will use digital to inform, inspire and enable their purchases. 
• 86% of shoppers discover brands/products while browsing online(1)
• 89% of holiday shoppers searched online first before a store visit(2)

Holiday shoppers are price-conscious about their spending this season

• 72% of surveyed Canadian holiday shoppers say they are concerned about the rising cost of items they need or want to buy(2)
• 60% of holiday shoppers say they plan to buy less because of the impact of inflation on their finances(2)
• Search interest for price sensitive terms have increased this year, with ‘discount code’ increasing 2x and ‘price match’ up 7x(3)
• 85% of Canadian holiday shoppers say they will shop at a store with discounts(2)
• 73% said they will shop with stores that offer free shipping(2)
• 41% of holiday shoppers said they are comparing prices and price matching(2)

Holiday shoppers are being strategic, making fewer impulsive purchases

• More than half (54%) of holiday shoppers said they will confirm an item is in stock before going into stores(2)
• 1 in 4 holiday shoppers say they are shopping for things now that they don’t need until later because they’re worried items will go out of stock(2)
• Nearly half of Canadian holiday shoppers say they’re taking inventory of what they have to determine what they need(2)
• 32% say they keep an eye out for new brands even if they’re not planning to buy right then(2)

Holiday shoppers are getting ahead of the season 

• Nearly 1 in 4 surveyed Canadian holiday shoppers had said they had already begun their holiday shopping by mid-September and 1 in 3 said they planned to start earlier this year than they had in 2021(2)
• Searches interest for “black friday” and “outdoor christmas lights” are already growing strongly compared to last year, with searches for ‘black Friday’ up 300%, and ‘christmas lights’ up 80%(3)

Here’s what Canadians are searching for leading into Black Friday/Cyber Monday:

Source

1. Google/Ipsos, “Holiday Study,” Shopping Period Oct 30 2021 –Dec 23 2021, Online survey, CA, 18+ who shopped in the past two days.1 n= 2669; Think with Google: How consumers discover brands online
2. Google commissioned Ipsos Consumer Continuous, US, CA, UK, FR, DE, IT, AU, JP, IN, CN, BR, MX, ES, ZA, KR, AR, CO, BE, CL, PE, SE, NL, DK, FI, NO ~n=235-489 online consumers 18+ per market that plan to shop for the holidays. Sep 8-11, 2022
3. Google trends data, Canada English

Today Google is announcing the launch of My Ad Center, which will start rolling out gradually to people globally. At Google I/O, they pre-announced My Ads Center, a new ads product that allows users to customize their ads and manage the information Google uses to personalize ads. 

In addition to the features announced at I/O, the new features in the product include:

• More controls for activities used to personalise ads: My Ad Center expands their privacy controls to allow users more direct control over which data sources, specifically Web & App Activity and YouTube History, are used to personalize your ads across Google Search, YouTube, and Discover
• Expanding user control for sensitive categories: In My Ad Center, users have the ability to see fewer ads in five sensitive categories, including alcohol, dating, gambling, pregnancy and parenting, and weight loss. Before, this feature affected ads shown on YouTube and Display. Now, it expands to ads shown on Search and Discover
• Advertiser pages: To give people even more transparency, Google is enhancing ad disclosures with new advertiser pages. Users can access these disclosures in the new My Ad Center panel and see the ads a specific verified advertiser has run over the past 30 days

The full blog with more details is available here.

Today at Google Cloud Next ‘22, Google announced several new customers, partners, and product offerings to further demonstrate how Google Cloud is the cloud of the future. 

Here’s the key news: 

• Google’s mission at Google Cloud is to accelerate the ability of every organization to digitally transform its business. Today, thave have a number of new global customer and partner announcements to demonstrate how they’re helping organizations in every industry accelerate their cloud journeys. 
• Today, Google is announcing the addition of several new customers including the Australian Securities Exchange, Coinbase, Prudential PLC, Rite Aid, Twiga Foods, and more, in addition to momentum and expanded partnerships with existing customers like Accenture, Ford, HCLTech, Snap, T-Mobile, Toyota, and Wayfair. 
• Google is also making a number of product announcements across 4 key pillars: 

Data Cloud: Through a series of deepened partnerships with data leaders like MongoDB, Elastic, and Palantir, Google confirms that Google Cloud offers the industry’s most open data cloud. Google is announcing support for major data formats including Apache Iceberg available now with Delta Lake, and Apache Hudi coming soon. Google is also offering a new integrated experience in BigQuery for Apache Spark and support in BigQuery for unstructured data. Additionally, Google is announcing new updates in Cloud BI, including Looker Studio, and brand new offerings from Cloud AI including Vertex AI Vision and Translation Hub. 

Open Infrastructure Cloud: Google is making a number of announcements across open infrastructure to deliver workload-optimized infrastructure, including enhancements to their Google Cloud Skills Boost learning offering for developers, Assured Open Source Software Service, and Open Source AI. To help IT teams build infrastructure for transformation, Google is also announcing a series of infrastructure and migration updates that include: the C3 machine series, and a new mainframe modernization solution called Dual Run, and plans to bring Google Cloud regions to five new countries.

Trusted Cloud: To provide Google’s customers with extensible cybersecurity solutions in the cloud, Google will advance partnerships with 20-plus software companies focused on digital sovereignty and cybersecurity. Google is also announcing Confidential Space, Chronicle Security Operations, Software Delivery Shield for end-to-end software supply chain security, and updates to their trusted cloud partner ecosystem with 20+ partners focused on cybersecurity and data controls. 

Collaboration Cloud: Google is taking the biggest steps yet in making Google Workspace the most open and extensible platform for users with new integrations, partnerships, and developer tools. Google is announcing several updates to Google Workspace, including new features that enable immersive connections, new smart canvas capabilities, and new ways to keep users and data safe across even more apps. Google is also announcing new integrations and developer tools to bring people closer together. 

You can read more from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian here about what’s next for digital transformation in the cloud, Google Cloud’s recent acquisition of Mandiant, and much more. 

Today, Google has announced that they’re welcoming Sam Sebastian as VP and Canada Country Manager for Google Cloud:

Sam comes to us from Pelmorex Corp, one of the world’s largest weather data and multi-platform media companies, where he was President & CEO. Prior to Pelmorex, Sam spent nearly 12 years in leadership positions across Google, with his most recent role as Vice President and Country Manager of Google Canada. During this time, he helped build and scale Canada’s Google Ads business, empowering small and large businesses with new ways to reach their customers. Sam brings a deep understanding of the role technology can play in enabling businesses and organizations to innovate, evolve and grow, and is ideally suited to help lead our Canadian business forward.

It will be interesting to see what Mr. Sebastian does with Google Cloud in Canada going forward.

Today, Google Canada is announcing $2.7 million in Google.org grants to empower Canadians to stay safe online and to build more inclusive economic opportunities for Indigenous communities in Canada. Alongside today’s news, research from Public First was released revealing Google’s impact on the Canadian economy.

To help close the significant skills and education gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in Canada, ComIT will receive a Google.org grant of over $1.3 million to continue their work to reskill Indigenous job seekers for new careers in technology. ComIT’s Recoding Futures program was created in 2020 with the support of Google.org to provide IT training to Indigenous learners across Canada. The program runs virtually and covers topics like Design Thinking, HTML, CSS, Javascript .NET, Python, React and Node.

Google is also announcing new grants from Google.org to support online safety and efforts to combat disinformation among underserved communities. According to research, Canadians under 25 years old spend an average of 7 hours online every day and 42% of Canadians experienced at least one cyber security incident during the pandemic, which has highlighted an increase in cyber threat actors and complexity for Canadians. Actua will receive a Google.org grant of over $670K to expand its Engage. Empower. Connect project that empowers youth from vulnerable groups with the skills, awareness and confidence to be cyber smart.

To help improve digital media literacy in Canada, MediaSmarts will receive a Google.org grant of over $670K to develop and implement a National Digital Media Literacy Education Training Program focused on supporting underrepresented communities. The program aims to help Canadians employ critical thinking skills when they use, create, and engage with content online.

Independent consultancy, Public First also released new research about Google’s impact on the Canadian economy today. Public First estimates that in 2021, Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, Google Cloud and Google Advertising tools helped provide $37B of economic activity for Canadian businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators and developers. That’s the equivalent of about 1.5% of Canada’s GDP, more than forestry and aviation combined.

Key report findings:

• In 2021, Google helped drive over 235M direct connections monthly, including phone calls, requests for directions, messages, bookings and reviews for Canadian businesses.
• In 2021, more than 1.9 million Canadian businesses and sole traders received phone calls, requests for directions, messages, bookings, reviews and other direct connections to their customers from Google.
• Public First estimates that in 2021, Google Search and Ads are supporting $1.7 billion in exports for the Canadian economy.

The report also looks at how Google’s products and services have helped Canadians find authoritative information, improve productivity, keep learning and find jobs. Full report can be found here.

Google LLC today announced the completion of its acquisition of Mandiant, Inc., a recognized leader in dynamic cyber defense, threat intelligence and incident response services. Mandiant will join Google Cloud and retain the Mandiant brand.

Google and Mandiant share a long commitment to industry-leading security. Over the past two decades, Google has innovated to build some of the most secure computing systems in the world. Google Cloud customers and partners benefit from these pioneering security capabilities including world-class threat intelligence, zero trust architecture, and planet-scale analytics for security operations. Mandiant, which is known for delivering unparalleled frontline expertise and industry-leading threat intelligence, is a proven first responder to the world’s largest cybersecurity incidents. Mandiant’s services, delivered by their team of security and intelligence individuals spread across 22 countries, are widely recognized for helping top enterprises and organizations prepare for and react to cybersecurity incidents.

With this acquisition, Google Cloud and Mandiant will deliver an end-to-end security operations suite with even greater capabilities to support customers across their cloud and on-premise environments.

Organizations today are facing cybersecurity challenges that have accelerated in frequency, severity and diversity, creating a global security imperative. Enterprises need to be able to detect and respond to malicious actors quickly, with actionable threat intelligence to continually protect their organizations against new attacks.

For more information, see the Google Cloud blog and Mandiant blog.

Building on Google’s support for underrepresented founders in the startup community, we’re pleased to announce that 12 Black-led North American startups will be joining our class of 2022 for the Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders program. This year’s cohort welcomes three incredible Canadian Black-led startups including Beam.city DNA, HumanSquad Inc. and Node App. This news comes off the heels of their recent announcement of the Google for Startups Accelerator: Womens Founders 2022 cohort last week.

Research highlights ongoing systemic challenges faced by Black-led businesses along the journey to grow their business including a lack of equitable access to funding, personal development and mentorship opportunities – with these barriers to entry perpetuating the lack of underrepresentation in the startup community. 

Now in its third year, the 10-week digital accelerator program is designed to provide access to vital resources including the best of Google’s programs, products, people and technology–fostering an inclusive environment to help black-led startups scale and grow their businesses.

Please see the full blog post with additional details here. Here’s more on the participating North American startups below. 

• Beam.city DNA (Toronto, Ontario): Beam.city DNA is a growth coordination AI Platform helping businesses maximize growth using ads, email and social. 

• Ed.Light (Melrose, Massachusetts): EdLight is a platform using AI to better read, interpret and digitize handwritten student work, reducing misconceptions and increasing equity amongst students, teachers and families. 

• HumanSquad Inc. (Toronto, Ontario): HumanSquad is an immigration technology company simplifying the immigration & study abroad system by empowering immigrants everywhere with the resources, products and personalized support to immigrate conveniently and affordably.

• Innovare (Chicago, Illinois): Innovare’s app aggregates and displays data from a variety of systems to empower education leaders to make data-driven decisions that positively impact students and communities.

• Mozaic (Chicago, Illinois): Mozaic is an API-first global payment platform built for co-creators on any project, anywhere. Mozaic provides smart contracts that automate split income among creative teams.

• Node App (Toronto, Ontario): Node is a gig marketplace that lets small businesses hire local influencers in their neighbourhood.

• Onramp (Oakland, California): Onramp is a workforce development platform helping companies build more diverse candidate pipelines by providing them with a mechanism to invest in skills development for current and future candidates. 

• Paerpay (Boston, Massachusetts): Paerpay is a contactless payment and loyalty experience for restaurants and their guests that doesn’t require a new POS system.

• SmartAlto (Brimingham, Alabama): Smart Alto is a conversational sales platform for local service providers, enabling them to set meetings with clients without cold calling.

• TurnSignl (Minneapolis, Minnesota): TurnSignl is a mobile platform that provides real-time, on-demand legal guidance from an attorney to drivers, all while their camera records the interaction.

• WearWorks (Brooklyn, New York): WearWorks is a company that uses the skin as a communications channel to deliver information. Their product, Wayband, is a Haptic navigation app and wristband that gently guides users to a destination using vibration. without visual or audio cues.

• XPressRun (Louisville, Kentucky): XpressRun is a platform that enables Same Day & Next Day delivery at competitive rates for Direct-to-Consumer brands who maintain their brand identity throughout.

Google has announced that 12 startups from across North America will be participating in the 2022 Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders program! With challenges of gender bias and systemic discrimination ongoing for women founders, the 10-week program is designed to give women founders technical support and mentorship opportunities to help scale their business. This year’s cohort features 12 women-led startups from Canada and the US. 

Among the cohort, Google is thrilled to share three Canadian women-led startups including MedEssist, Blossom Social and Emaww joining the program this year. 

Now in its third year, the accelerator program continues Google’s commitment to support women entrepreneurs by creating a more inclusive and equitable startup ecosystem for the incredible startup founders who are building great businesses, in spite of barriers to access and other systemic challenges. 

• Studies show that women owned businesses are less likely to receive venture capital or angel funding when compared to their male counterparts (32.6% vs. 38%), despite some women-led startups delivering higher revenue than male-led startups.
• A recent report found that women tech entrepreneurs travel longer routes from startup to scale-up, with women delivering more funding pitches than men and taking longer to raise Series A financing.

You can read the full blog post here with additional details on the participating North American startups below. 

Arinitra (Austin, Texas): Arinitra helps hospitals and clinics save time and maximize reimbursement by automating their medical coding.

Blossom Social (Vancouver, British Columbia): Blossom is building Canada’s first social brokerage, combining mobile-first stock trading with a social community for investors. On Blossom, users can see the portfolios and trades of friends and top investors and discover new investment ideas and insights – empowering people to not only make trades but learn from and discuss investments with the community.

CIRT (Athens, Georgia): CIRT builds software and uses AI to digitize the circularity of products and packaging for the modern world, helping customers go to zero waste. 

CyDeploy (Baltimore, Maryland): CyDeploy provides an intelligent, automated configuration and patch testing solution that positions customers to make security changes quickly and with confidence.

Emaww (Montreal, Quebec): Emaww provides the most advanced and least intrusive emotion analytics for websites to better user experience and improve their digital well-being with emotional intelligence.

Farm Generations (Germantown, New York): Farm Generations Cooperative builds fair technology for the future of small farms.

Hound (Denver, Colorado): Hound is building the future of work in veterinary medicine through verticalized and consolidated technology. Hound provides solutions for modern recruiting, veterinary employee engagement technology and distributing of at-home veterinary care.

Generable (New York, New York): Generable develops best-in-class Bayesian machine-learning models to improve efficiency of Oncology drug-development.

MedEssist (Toronto, Ontario): MedEssist is a healthcare delivery platform enabling digital health, diagnostic, and pharmaceutical companies to leverage a pharmacy’s physical space and trusted health professionals to scale innovative solutions.

NOTICENINJA (Fort Myers, Florida): NOTICENINJA is a Digital Notice Compliance Platform that is innovating the way companies manage and resolve agency notices. It converts paper notices and manual processes into automated digital workflows that provide resolution pathways for users to follow.

Zero5 (San Mateo, California): zero5 transforms parking garages from simple storage spaces into tech-enabled mobility service hubs through automation.