Google New Zealand Blog

Understand it, make it, survive it and do it. Here’s what Kiwis searched for in 2025

2025-12-04T00:30:00.002+13:00

Alt Text: Tablescape illustration of Google Year in Search 2025 for Aotearoa New Zealand by Kiwi artist Brogan Scott.

New Zealand’s 2025 Year in Search paints a picture of a population that is pragmatic, hyper-vigilant and digitally aware.

We’re deeply engaged in local matters, from weather warnings, engagement in political processes, to the sporting games, matches and tournaments. We’re still sports mad—the All Blacks are the most referenced search term of the past five years and our ‘Kiwis’ list is dominated by our star athletes.

Simultaneously, we kept an eye on the global stage—whether it was a CEO on a jumbotron, singing our hearts out to KPop Demon Hunters, or a fascination with Labubu. From spotted dick recipe to the pink salt trick, with a whitebait fritter for good measure, our culinary adventures were vast and surprising. We searched for conversation starters, commentators and controversial figures, in the likes of Charlie Kirk, Ed Gein and Belle Gibson. While mourning the loss of legends like Jane Goodall and Diane Keaton. And, what on earth is 6 7?

Every day Kiwis turn to Google Search to learn, discover and get stuff done. Here are the four themes that defined the year:

1. Searching for Safety

Search isn’t just a library anymore; it’s a real-time safety tool. Our desire for information about immediate weather hazards has never been more pronounced, with wind warning, rainfall warning and tsunami warning topping our local moments. We remained vigilant around natural disasters like Cyclones Tam and Alfred, and monitored health threats like the resurgence of measles.

2. Shift from spectator to participant

This year we moved from passive reading to active doing. Kiwis were looking for actionable paths to civic engagement, not just headlines, with how to make a submission to the Treaty Principles Bill and politicians piqued our interest.

3. The "Homesteading" and Self-Sufficiency Shift

Cost of living pressures brought us back to basics. We swapped convenience for kitchen skills, searching for how to make butter, buttermilk, sourdough starter, bread, and—surprisingly—soft boiled eggs from scratch. Searches for chicken breast and pink salt trick could be driven by broader health trends.

This "financial self-defense" extended to our wallets, with spikes in searches for the revenge saving financial trend, how to calculate tax refund, how to invest money in shares and how to make a YouTube channel.

4. From Feed to Reality: Culture, Generated

Viral trends dictated real-world habits in 2025, with global internet culture dictating consumption habits. Evidenced by our desire to make dubai chocolate, pistachio cream and matcha. We also swapped intellectual word games for generative AI. Mainstream adoption arrived as Kiwis embraced AI-driven aesthetics like Barbie AI and viral photo prompts.

Here’s the top trending lists:

Overall Searches

Charlie Kirk
COPD treatment
Osteoporosis treatment
Tom Phillips
All Blacks vs France
Ozzy Osbourne
Cyclone Alfred
Iran
Ed Gein
Club World Cup

Kiwis

Joseph Parker
Benjamin Doyle
Lorde
Liam Lawson
Daniel Hillier
Kai Kara France
David Nyika
Brooke Van Velden
Chris Wood
Stuart Nash

Loss

Charlie Kirk
Tom Phillips
Michelle Trachtenberg
Gene Hackman
Hulk Hogan
Diane Keaton
Val Kilmer
David Lynch
Robert Redford
Jane Goodall

People

Belle Gibson
D4vd
Diogo Jota
Pope
Andy Byron
Luke Combs
Jimmy Kimmel
Tyler Robinson
Kendrick Lamar
Prince Andrew

Local Moments

Wind warning
Rainfall warning
Tsunami warning
Thunderstorm warning
Cyclone Tam
Treaty Principles Bill Submission
Metallica Auckland
Tongariro Fire
Measles
Sail GP Auckland

Global Moments

Cyclone Alfred
Iran
Day of the Dead
LA Fires
Labubu
Russia Earthquake
KPop Demon Hunters
Bianca Censori Grammys
67
Air India Crash

How To…

How to make butter
How to invest money in shares
How to make buttermilk
How to get rid of bed bugs
How to screenshot on Macbook
How to watch All Blacks vs France
How to soft boil an egg
How to say Happy Matariki in te reo Maori
How to clear cache on Chrome
How to calculate a tax refund

Definitions:

Plancha
Taki
Parens
Loris
Hubris
Atria
Ziti
Ouroboros
Orgo
Seitan

Internet Trends/Memes

Viral Ice Cream
Action Figure Trend
Mango Ice Cream
Barbie AI Trend
Revenge Saving Financial Trend
Peach Ice Cream
What is the 6 7 Trend
Squishy Toy Trend
Polaroid Trend
Starter Pack Trend

Sports Events

All Blacks vs France
Club World Cup
India vs England
Auckland FC
India vs Australia
Champions Trophy
New Zealand vs Pakistan
Super Rugby Fantasy
All Blacks vs Australia
New Zealand vs West Indies

How to make…

How to make a submission on the treaty principles bill
How to make pistachio cream
How to make matcha
How to make sourdough starter
How to make bread
How to make a YouTube channel
How to make apple crumble
How to make hard boiled eggs
How to make green
How to make dubai chocolate
How to make hair grow faster

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

Create on-brand marketing content for your business with Pomelli

2025-10-30T15:14:00.001+13:00

We’re introducing Pomelli, a new AI experiment from Google Labs that helps small-to-medium-sized businesses easily generate scalable, on-brand social media campaigns.

Creating impactful, on-brand content can often require significant investment in time, budget, and design expertise. For small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), this can be a major obstacle. That’s where Pomelli, our newest experiment from Google Labs in partnership with Google DeepMind, comes in. Pomelli is an AI marketing tool designed to help SMBs more easily generate scalable, on-brand social media campaigns to help grow their businesses.

Pomelli uses AI to understand your unique business and generate effective, tailored campaigns in just three steps.

1. Build your business DNA

Enter your website, and Pomelli will analyze it and create a "Business DNA" profile for your brand. By analyzing your website and existing images, Pomelli is able to automatically extract and understand your business’ unique brand identity. This profile includes your tone of voice, custom fonts, images and color palette.

All content Pomelli generates is grounded in this DNA, ensuring your content feels more authentic and consistent across all channels.

2. Generate tailored campaign ideas

Once your Business DNA is established, Pomelli generates tailored campaign ideas specifically for your business. This feature tackles the common pain point of coming up with fresh, strategic ideas, allowing you to quickly pick a campaign focus. If you have your own idea, you can type in a prompt to create content tailored exactly to your vision.

3. Edit and create high-quality, branded creatives

Finally, Pomelli creates a set of high-quality, on-brand marketing assets designed to help grow your brand across various channels, like your social media, your site and your ads. Browse through the generations and select the assets that best fit your campaign goals. You're in full control to make edits to the text or images right inside the tool. All assets can be downloaded and are ready to be used across your channels.

3. Edit and create high-quality, branded creatives

Post content Posted by Daniel Adonai, Senior Product Manager, Google Labs & Bea Alessio, Senior Product Manager, Google DeepMind

Older Kiwis get new skills to fight back against scammers during this year’s Cyber Smart Week

2025-10-10T16:16:00.003+13:00

Image from L to R: Bec Turner, Government Affairs at Google; David Marshall, Malvina Major Retirement Village Chair of the RC; Caroline Rainsford, Country Director of Google New Zealand; Minister Scott Simpson; Mike Jagusch, NCSC's Director Mission Enablement.

A new initiative led by Google in partnership with Minister Scott Simpson and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and with support from the National Cyber Security Centre New Zealand (NCSC), is arming older New Zealanders with new tips and tools to protect themselves from online scams and improve their digital literacy.

Hosted at Malvina Major Retirement Village this week, the session teaches critical skills to spot and avoid increasingly sophisticated scams.

The initiative, named Project BRIDGE (Building Resilience, Inclusion and Digital Growth for Elders), directly addresses a worrying trend by providing scams awareness and digital literacy training. In Q2 2025, almost half of the cyber security incidents reported by individuals were ‘scams and fraud’, with those aged 55+ accounting for over one third of reports. [source]

Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson said Google’s partnership would help communities stay safe online. “In July, the Government launched New Zealand’s first-ever Anti-Scam Alliance, a cross-sector initiative to strengthen the country’s response to scams. Today’s work with Google builds on that momentum.

“There’s no single fix for scams, but when government, industry, and communities work together, we can disrupt scammers and reduce the risks for New Zealanders.” finished Minister Scott Simpson.

This Cyber Smart Week the NCSC is encouraging New Zealanders to take simple, but effective steps to protect themselves. NCSC’s Director Mission Enablement, Mike Jagusch said, “Scams and fraud continue to be the most reported incident by individuals. As we are living more of our lives online, we all have a digital footprint that could be exposed to scammers.

“We’ve created an online tool - www.howexposedami.co.nz - that shows New Zealanders what personal information of theirs might be exposed to scammers. This information could be used to access your account if they have a password, or to craft more personalised and believable scams. The good news is that there are simple steps people can take to better protect themselves,” said Mike Jagusch.

Malvina Major Retirement Village Chair of the RC, David Marshall said, “Ryman Healthcare and Malvina Major Village in Wellington are delighted to be chosen to launch the BRIDGE programme for scam awareness and prevention. The residents of MM are aware that they are a vulnerable age group for scamming and are grateful for training to avoid this problem.”

“We were delighted to host Minister Simpson, Google and the National Cyber Security Centre at Malvina Major Village for the Scams Awareness Training session they led as part of Project BRIDGE,” said Ryman Healthcare CEO Naomi James. “Helping residents to feel confident and secure online is an important part of our commitment to support their wellbeing and independence. Initiatives like this make a real difference, and it was wonderful to hear how much residents enjoyed the session and valued the practical advice.”

The session equipped attendees with practical skills, including how to:

Spot a scam: Recognise common tactics used across phone, email, and online platforms.
Develop 'scam sense': Build an instinct for warning signs and suspicious behaviour.
Improve digital security: Get practical tips to improve your online safety.
Take action: Know how to react if you suspect a scam and where to report it.

Top tips for protecting yourself from scammers include:

Always take a moment before giving your money or personal information to anyone. Scammers will create a sense of urgency to pressure you into acting quickly. Don’t rush to make decisions about money or sharing personal details.

What to do:

Say no, hang up, or delete suspicious messages
Take time to think before responding to unexpected requests
Don’t let anyone pressure you into immediate action
Trust your instincts if something feels wrong

Make sure you check if the person or organisation you’re dealing with is real. Scammers pretend to be from organisations you know and trust. Always verify who you’re really dealing with before taking any action.

What to do:

Contact the organisation directly using phone numbers or email addresses you find on their official website or app
Get a second opinion from family, friends, or professionals.

Act quickly to protect yourself if something feels wrong. The sooner you act, the better you can protect yourself and others from scammers.

What to do:

Contact your bank immediately if you think you’ve lost money or shared financial details
For cyber incidents these can be reported to NCSC at NCSC.govt.nz/report
SMS scam messages can be forwarded to DIA 7726
For where to report scams, or support for scam victims, visit Department of Internal Affairs
For free and confidential scam support, Kiwis can also report to Netsafe
Report to Police 105
Change passwords and security details if you think they’ve been compromised
Monitor your bank statements and credit reports for unusual activity
Report the scam to the impersonated organisation and platform where the scam is happening

Scammers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to target innocent people. We all have a role to play in knowing how to spot a scam and staying one step ahead of scammers, and this program is a vital part of that effort.

Post content Posted by Bec Turner, Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google

We’re investing in connectivity, products and skills for New Zealand’s AI future

2025-10-08T12:00:00.004+13:00

Image Alt Text: Graphic shows Honomoana Cable with branch into New Zealand

New Zealand is home to one of the world’s fastest Internet speeds and a tech-savvy, well-connected population. We stand ready to capture the power of AI to unlock innovative solutions, from helping to solve real world challenges, to improving productivity. The potential is vast.

Highlighting this potential for Kiwi businesses and economy, a Google-commissioned report by Public First shows AI could add $36 billion to the economy - the equivalent of the Waikato’s GDP - and boost productivity by over 10%, across industries like healthcare, education, and financial services.

To maximise the AI opportunity, there are some clear pathways New Zealand must take to ensure this opportunity is realised.

AI for Aotearoa

AI will drive New Zealand’s next stage of economic development. It will make our government and industry more efficient and help us tackle key social and economic challenges through science and technology. Managed well, AI could help to build a safer, healthier, and more productive Aotearoa, benefiting all New Zealanders.

Digital infrastructure must keep pace with new demands. Honomoana is a new subsea cable that will significantly strengthen New Zealand's digital resilience, capacity, and reach across the Pacific - a region deeply connected to our culture, economy and security. Delivered in partnership with several parties, this investment will provide new, resilient connections, including:

the first direct path between New Zealand and Melbourne, Australia,
the first direct connection from New Zealand to Polynesia and
the first Southern Pacific path to South America via Chile.

We are partnering with local organisations like EonFibre and CDC Data Centres, and engaging with local communities, iwi, and local government to land this connection.

Richard Mooney, CEO EonFibre said “We’re delighted to collaborate with Google to construct the new fiber infrastructure required for the Honomoana cable. This new subsea cable will bolster New Zealand’s digital infrastructure foundations and further strengthen our country’s connectivity beyond its shores, which is vital for us to harness the economic opportunities presented by AI and cloud computing adoption.”

Managing Director of New Zealand at CDC Data Centres, Andrew Kirker, said "We are delighted to support “Honomoana” and be the landing point for the submarine cable across the Pacific into New Zealand. Much like CDC’s data centres, this cable is a key piece of infrastructure and another essential component of our digital ecosystem. Together, submarine cables and data centres create the digital superhighways that connect the world and enable seamless connectivity and digital services. This new connection further positions New Zealand to capture the billions of dollars in economic and productivity value from advancements in cloud, AI and advanced computing. It has been a privilege for the CDC team to collaborate with Google on this significant project."

Image Alt Text: Logos of partners working with Google

The cable will also link New Zealand to the previously announced Pacific Connect Initiative, a trans-Pacific subsea network including connections to Fiji and French Polynesia. Honomoana is in advanced construction stages and is expected to land in Ōrewa, Auckland, in early 2026.

AI can also improve energy efficiency by managing smart grids and improving forecasting for renewable energy sources*. Google’s AI is already helping to improve Auckland’s electric grid, through a partnership between Tapestry, X’s moonshot for the electric grid and Vector Limited who are working to apply tools like AI, computer vision and machine learning to transform grid management, maintenance and planning. Inspections that once took Vector’s engineers 30-45 minutes per pole can now be accomplished in just 5 to 7 minutes—that’s 83% faster.

These projects build on existing initiatives that use AI to benefit New Zealanders, from improved prediction of river flooding, and fauna preservation to powering our most advanced AI Search experience yet — AI Mode.

AI For You

Only one third of Kiwis integrate AI into their daily routines. Widespread AI literacy is essential to capture the higher wages and more valuable jobs AI promises. Kiwis must upskill now.

We expect half of all New Zealanders to use AI regularly in the next five years
50% of workers want skills training to help them to better take advantage of AI

Google is meeting this demand with programmes like AI Essentials which offers practical AI skills, no prior experience needed. Our free Google Workspace for Education suite is in over 80% of Aotearoa’s schools. Gemini is built for education, acting as a teacher aide to reduce teacher workload and help prevent burnout. Google.org supports programs to help New Zealanders thrive in an AI-driven world:

Experience AI: Raspberry Pi Foundation (with implementation partners like Tōnui Collab) is launching this program, co-developed by Google Deepmind, to equip educators with tools to teach students (ages 11–14) about foundations of AI and machine learning.
Asia-Pacific Digital Transformation Programme: Netsafe will work with Tribal Aotearoa NZ to build an AI tool that alerts users to online scams and fraudulent websites.
AI Opportunity Fund: Adult Waitakere Literacy will support adult AI learning and skill development for workforce and jobseekers.

Transformative global models like our own Gemini 2.5 series - the world’s best model by leading independent benchmarks - help New Zealanders achieve more. Tools like Gemini Live provide a personal problem solver in your pocket that can see and hear your world with you, helping you get things done smarter, faster, and easier.

AI for Business

Kiwis are innovators; this mindset must now embrace AI in business. Our research shows that only 29% of current AI users were encouraged by their company leadership. New Zealand businesses must drive AI adoption for productivity, efficiency and profit. We see New Zealand businesses pushing boundaries with AI:

Starboard Maritime, has built its platform on Google Cloud from the outset, leveraging its scalability, robustness and reliability. The infrastructure allows Starboard to fuse multiple data sources and provide a comprehensive view of maritime activity—vital for protecting maritime borders, marine parks, submarine cables, offshore infrastructure, and for improving maritime safety.
Auckland Council is trialing 'Ask Auckland Council', an AI assistant leveraging Google Cloud AI solutions and Deloitte, to get residents information quickly and easily.

We’re proud to support these leading New Zealand businesses using our breakthroughs in AI models, agents, and purpose-built AI chips. Our AI-powered products and services, from Search to Cloud AI, supported an estimated NZ$8.8 billion in economic activity for businesses in 2024 alone.

AI is central to Google’s mission. As New Zealand enters the next phase of the AI era, we’re committing to ensuring all Kiwis have access to the knowledge and tools needed to drive this transformation.

Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director, Google New Zealand

YouTube Celebrates Aotearoa's Marketing Excellence

2025-09-04T13:36:00.004+12:00

Image: Caroline Rainsford welcomes guests

New Zealand's marketing excellence was on display last night at the 2025 YouTube New Zealand Marketing Awards. Aotearoa’s top marketers gathered at Spark Arena to celebrate exceptional strategies, campaigns and individuals of the past 12 months.

The event, a partnership between YouTube, NZ Marketing Magazine and the NZ Marketing Association, honours outstanding achievements in marketing that delivered real results for businesses and brands. With such high calibre of entrants, I’m proud to share that our partners ANZ Bank New Zealand, Zuru Group, Goodman Fielder, Spark NZ, One New Zealand, Westpac, Pak'n'Save, Kiwibank, Auckland Transport, Animates NZ Holdings, Sharesies, Tourism New Zealand all took home trophies for their marketing prowess.

Image: DY CYRIL performing

The party continued with DJ CYRIL, an artist that has harnessed the power of YouTube to connect directly with a global fandom, his incredible rise, fueled by millions of views and devoted subscribers. As YouTube ushers in a new era of creator led entertainment, artists and creators alike have discovered the power of authentic connection and the vibrant community that thrives on the platform.

At YouTube, we’re proud to play a small part in recognising the incredible work that comes out of our local marketing scene. As the largest channel for New Zealand audiences* YouTube is the home of the biggest moments in culture, the most trusted creators and the creative canvas of brands, businesses and individuals. One more round of congratulations to all the winners!

Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Google New Zealand

Keeping Kiwi Families Safe Online

2025-09-02T09:09:00.001+12:00

At Google and YouTube we're committed to creating a safer online experience for kids and teens. We know that while the internet is an incredible tool for learning, playing, and entertainment, it can also pose risks, especially for young people.

Over the years, we have invested heavily in building safety features and controls in our products that help keep New Zealand families safe online. We’ve built on this work by providing additional ways for parents to help their children build healthy habits and access enriching educational content and entertainment in safe and age-appropriate environments.

Putting Parents in Control across Google products

We’re working closely with experts and educators, such as YouTube’s Youth and Families Advisory Committee, to foster safer and age-appropriate environments for young people. We build safety features into our products to protect young people, without having to change any settings. For example, to make online searches safer and prevent accidental exposure to inappropriate content, SafeSearch is on by default for all signed-in users under 18 and filters explicit imagery in search results.

We also empower parents to secure and manage their kids' online experience - while helping them build healthy digital habits - by providing them with a range of tools.

Here are some of the most impactful features that are helping parents across Aotearoa:

Parental Controls for a Safe Experience: Family Link is an app we created to help you set up a supervised account for your child, allowing you to approve what apps and games they can download on their device, keep an eye on screen time - including setting School Time - and help set digital ground rules for your family. It also provides a way to manage the content your child can see, manage privacy settings and find the right balance for your family. You can set up Family Link here.

Safe and Enriching Apps Approved by Teachers: We help parents find quality content through a dedicated Kids Tab on Google Play that’s filled with teacher approved apps.
Manage Website Access in Chrome: You can manage your child’s access to specific websites when they are using the Chrome browser on their Android or Chrome OS device. You can choose to limit your child only to websites that you are comfortable with, or block specific sites that you don’t want them to visit. You can do this through the Family Link app by tapping on Manage Settings > Google Chrome and choosing the setting that’s right for your family.

Alt text:Family Link set up on Mobile

YouTube’s Ongoing Commitment to Kids and Teens

Last year, we announced a new teen supervised experience, shaped by a nuanced understanding of how the online behaviour of young people changes as they grow older. This builds on the other experiences we have for younger people, such as YouTube Kids and supervised experiences for pre-teens, designed to be safer spaces for young explorers, while empowering parents with intuitive tools to tailor the experience for their family's unique needs.

We aim to create great experiences for young people, which is why their privacy, safety, wellbeing and mental health is at the core of our service and policy development. All our work in this area is underpinned by a set of five principles when building services and features for kids and teens.

Additional Safeguards for Younger Users: We're building a digital environment where curiosity can flourish without constant worry. This means defaulting uploads to private, making default digital wellbeing protections like our Take a Break and Bedtime reminders more prominent, blocking personalised ad targeting and restricting sensitive ad content and categories, and limiting repeated recommendations of videos related to certain sensitive categories for teens. These aren't just technical account-level settings; they're our commitment to helping your child build healthy digital habits and feel secure exploring their interests.
A Library of Free, High-Quality Content: We take pride in the healthy and diverse creator ecosystem in New Zealand, with local creators producing high-quality content that reach young people all around the world. Kids content creators like TV personality Suzy Cato on TreehutTV entertain and educate through their catchy songs and fun videos, while education creators like Subash Chandar K have supported many young people in their home learning, and channels like Kea Kids News leverage YouTube to deliver high quality news content for the younger audience.
Leveraging Insights of Cross-Industry Experts: Beyond our close collaboration with the Youth and Families Advisory Council, we collaborate with third-party experts to create a parents’ guide for quality online time and a set of quality principles for kids and family content. We’re committed to positively shaping young users' online experiences by promoting healthy, enriching content that supports media literacy, digital citizenship, and learning while actively limiting low-quality content, for example, through the YouTube Digital Wellbeing Initiative. We're also collaborating with organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and Common Sense Networks to develop public, industry-wide educational resources related to teens and online wellbeing.

We're not just building platforms; we're building a future where young people can explore the online world with confidence, creativity, and a sense of wonder. This is an ongoing journey, and we're committed to continuously listening, learning, and improving to make Google and YouTube the best they can be for young people everywhere.

Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Google New Zealand Country Director

Google Search: Introducing AI Mode in Aotearoa New Zealand

2025-08-22T08:39:00.002+12:00

Image alt text: Mobile and Desktop UI of AI Mode

Imagine being able to ask a question that's very complex or multi-layered and in an instant, receive a comprehensive, AI-powered response that explains it well, complete with web links to explore.

As we dream of warmer months, for example, I asked: What are some campgrounds within a ten minute walk to a beach, offer powered sites and are dog friendly?

Today, you can experience this firsthand as we bring AI Mode - our most powerful AI search experience yet - to New Zealand in English. We first introduced AI Mode as an experiment in the US earlier this year and are now rolling it out to more users globally. It's already resonating with people who appreciate its speed, quality, and fresh responses.

Built for your most complex questions

Using a custom version of Gemini 2.5, AI Mode lets you ask longer, more complex questions that would have previously required multiple searches. In fact, early testers are already asking queries 2-3x the length of traditional searches, showing it’s perfect for your toughest questions. It’s particularly helpful for exploratory tasks like comparing products, planning a trip, or understanding complex how-tos.

For example, if you’re thinking about making a change in your health and wellness regime, you could ask: what's the difference in sleep tracking features between a smart ring, smartwatch and tracking mat?

Behind the scenes, AI Mode uses a query fan-out technique, breaking your question into subtopics and issuing a multitude of queries on your behalf. This enables Search to dive deeper into the web than ever before, helping you find incredible, hyper-relevant content. You can also easily ask follow-ups to dig even deeper.

What makes this experience unique is that it brings together advanced model capabilities with Google’s best-in-class information systems, and it’s built right into Search. You can access not only high-quality web content but also tap into fresh, real-time sources like the Knowledge Graph and shopping data for billions of products.

Multimodality in AI Mode

AI Mode is designed to be multimodal so you can ask questions in whatever way feels most natural: whether that's with text, your voice, or by taking or uploading an image. In AI Mode, simply tap the microphone icon and ask your query. You can also snap a photo or upload an image and ask your question, thanks to AI Mode’s rich multimodal capabilities.

Helping people explore the best of the web
Helping people discover content from across the web remains central to our mission. With AI Mode, you can express exactly what you are looking for, and get the right web content in a range of formats, with prominent links for people to click on. By expanding the types of questions people can ask, Google Search opens up new opportunities for content discovery.

AI Mode is rooted in our core quality and ranking systems, and we are using novel approaches to improve factuality. We aim to show an AI-powered response as much as possible, but in cases where we don’t have high confidence, you will see a set of web search results. As with any early-stage AI product, we won’t always get it right, but we are committed to continuous improvement.

We are very excited to see how this end-to-end AI search experience helps you explore your curiosity and understand the world around you.

Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Google New Zealand Country Director

How we’re helping New Zealand’s publishers succeed online in 2025

2025-08-14T10:00:00.017+12:00

Image: BusinessDesk utilised Subscribe with Google to boost paid subscribers

We’re sharing the programmes we’ve rolled out to support New Zealand’s news publishers succeed online.

As the New Zealand news industry continues to evolve, Google is working to support Kiwi journalists and news organisations of all sizes to respond to the changing way people are looking for and consuming information online.

Google Search and Google News helps our publishers connect with a local and global audience looking for news content, and the Google News Initiative (GNI) is our decades-long effort to help news publishers navigate this inflection point.

Whether it's by helping Kiwi publishers connect with audiences, build new business models on digital platforms, or improve productivity through innovative tools and products, many New Zealand publishers have participated in valuable Google-sponsored (free) programs.

Google News Showcase

Since our launch of Google News Showcase in 2022 we’re the only digital platform with commercial agreements, and over 95% of eligible news publishers have signed ongoing partnerships. Representing over 50 different publications, titles include Stuff, TVNZ, NZME, RNZ, Whakaata Māori, The Spinoff and Allied Press, as well as local and regional publishers like Times Online and The Ashburton Guardian.

AI Powering Journalism

Pinpoint, Google’s AI research tool, has enabled TVNZ to digitise its physical archive of over 700,000 newspaper clippings. Previously difficult to access, this collection of New Zealand history from the 1960s onward is now instantly searchable for all staff. With funding from Google, the articles were scanned and uploaded to Pinpoint, allowing journalists to easily fact-check and uncover new stories. Similarly, the digital publisher Crux used the tool to analyze a large volume of documents and uncover critical information for its investigation into the Queenstown Lakeview development.

Evolving Business Models

We have collaborated with news publishers to identify key business challenges and then applied strategic Google support to find solutions. Examples include:

We supported work to increase paid subscribers for BusinessDesk;
Help Stuff to redesign and rebuild their site with future-fit technology;
And personalise user experiences for NZME.

Our latest case studies underline our ongoing support for diverse audiences. We helped Whakaata Māori to rebuild the Te Ao Māori News App, NZME to enhance audience engagement on NZ Herald online and build subscription revenue, and Stuff to adopt a data lead user needs framework to guide content commissioning.

Google is delivering a tailored one to one consultation and implementation program in 2025 with the News Consumer Insights - Fundamentals/SHIFT. We’re helping nine of Aotearoa’s diverse news organisations generate more value from their readers by improving engagement and retention, as well as creating a pathway to digital subscriptions and increased advertising revenue.

Subscribing With Google

To diversify revenue streams and help news publishers improve financial sustainability beyond advertising, Subscribe with Google is a tool to identify likely subscribers and grow subscriber bases.

This simple way to subscribe to news publications and maintain access everywhere has helped two of New Zealand’s largest publishers:

Stuff, Joanna Norris, Managing Director - Stuff Masthead Publishing: “Over the past year, our partnership with Subscribe with Google has supported our digital subscriber acquisition strategy. We’ve been able to streamline our subscription journey and reduce friction, enabling more seamless, user-friendly subscription experiences across ThePost.co.nz, ThePress.co.nz, and WaikatoTimes.co.nz. Google’s technical expertise has helped us scale quickly and deliver digital growth. This collaboration accelerated our subscription growth, which is up approximately 628% year-on-year for users subscribing via the Google Play Store.”

NZME, Carolyn Luey, Chief Digital & Publishing Officer: “Subscribe with Google is available on the NZ Herald website as a quick, simple way for new subscribers to purchase the New Zealand Herald premium subscription. Funded by Google through our partnership, it was easy to implement on the site and gives us another way to make it easier for potential subscribers to pay for the content they want to read.”

Optimising for YouTube

The YouTube Audience Lab has been designed to equip small-to-medium news publishers, digital-first news channels and news creators/journalists producing public interest journalism with the information, tools and practical support to grow their audience and optimise their news content on YouTube. Facilitated by proven leaders in news programs for YouTube, Changer, this program has been offered free of charge to four NZ news organisations - The Ashburton Guardian, The Spinoff, Pacific Media Network and Pasifika TV.

Proven News Publisher Strategies

Partnering with the Financial Times Strategies, GNI rolled out three key programmes to provide business strategy support to New Zealand news organisations. Goals of these programmes were to help business leaders shape and begin to execute a compelling strategic ambition, help publishers at the beginning of their digital reader revenue journey (to identify diverse revenue models and to evolve digital businesses) and audits through the News Sustainability Project. The GNI and FT Strategies have collaborated to build a set of free tools to help publishers on their journey to long-term sustainability readiness.

Over the past 12 months, 18 New Zealand news organisations have participated in our free Google News Initiative Advertising Lab. The GA4 Accelerator Program empowered news publishers by providing data-driven tools and strategies to enhance content performance, boost subscriptions, and improve ad performance, ultimately driving business growth. In partnership with Monks, Google offered a series of five interactive webinars for 15 news publishers across New Zealand. Eligible news publishers also received free personalised one to one consultation sessions, receiving dedicated support.

With only half the year done, we’re looking forward to continuing to collaborate with Aotearoa’s news publishers to ensure they’re equipped with the tools and resources that are needed to succeed online.

Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director of Google New Zealand

Google’s commitment to keeping Kiwis safe from scams

2025-07-10T15:09:00.000+12:00

Image Alt Text: Minister Simpson and Caroline Rainsford

At Google, we recognise the importance of working together to create a safer online world for everyone. In addition to the work we do to improve our systems and protect you from scams, including using the latest advancements in AI, we’ve been partnering closely with industry, community groups and the Government to further our work to protect Kiwis from scams.

Today, I'm pleased to share that we're working as part of the new New Zealand Anti-Scam Alliance - a national effort that seeks to reduce the number of Kiwis falling victim to online financial scams. Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with Minister Scott Simpson (Commerce and Consumer Affairs) to share the news that we’re committing to the Australian Online Scams Code (AOSC) in New Zealand. This builds on our existing work, including last year’s launch of the Financial Services Verification to help combat scammers. To date, we are the only platform implementing financial services advertiser verification in New Zealand.

In an effort to keep Kiwis updated, we’re sharing three scams trends we’re tackling in addition to industry and government collaboration and how the latest AI is working to improve online safety. Through sharing tactics commonly used by scammers we can grow our collective understanding and become more vigilant in spotting and reporting threats:

Exploitation of major events: Scammers use AI to quickly adapt to topical moments, such as ‘end of financial year sales’ and breaking news, targeting everything from concerts and sporting events to natural disasters, when people feel pressured to act fast. Google strengthens our monitoring and enforcement during major events and crises, and has dedicated sensitive events policies that prohibit products or services that exploit, dismiss, or condone the sensitive event.

Safety tips: Be skeptical of “too good to be true” deals. Buy tickets and donate only through official channels. Verify charities and check URLs before clicking. Use the ‘About this result’ feature on Search for source information.

Malvertising: Increasingly our teams have observed scammers targeting more sophisticated users — those with valuable assets like crypto wallets or individuals with significant online influence. Scammers may use malvertising as an initial step in their attack cycle, often trying to convince users their software is safe, even urging them to ignore security warnings or turn off antivirus. Google actively works with trusted advertisers and partners to help prevent malware in ads through a combination of AI and human review. Accounts violating Google Ads malicious software policies are immediately suspended.

Safety tips: Download software from official sources and verify the URL. Be wary of offers of free versions of licensed software. Use Enhanced Safe Browsing to detect hidden risks when downloading encrypted files.

Package tracking & Toll Road Scams: These scams send fraudulent messages that appear to come from legitimate sources, tricking users into paying additional "fees" related to delivery of items or road tolls. In Google Messages we launched Scam Detection, which uses powerful on-device AI to detect suspicious patterns in SMS, MMS and RCS messages and warn users.

Safety tips: Check Website URLs before entering info, ensure the website address is legitimate (look for "https" and no typos). Be mindful of what you share online, especially personal and financial details.

We're committed to protecting people from these threats, and we want to empower Kiwis with the knowledge and tools to stay safe too.

Remember, staying safe online is a shared responsibility. For more information and resources on how to stay safe online, visit Google’s Safety Centre.

Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director of Google New Zealand.

Preparing Aotearoa’s workforce for the AI future

2025-05-05T12:00:00.002+12:00

Image: Literacy Waitākere adult learners

AI presents a significant opportunity for economic growth and workforce transformation in Asia-Pacific. But many people don’t have the skills they need to make the most of this opportunity. While people in the region are excited about AI — with 58% of people in Asia-Pacific excited about its potential — only 15% have received AI training and most are unaware this type of training exists, according to a new report from AVPN, a network of social investors. This illustrates the critical need for the Google.org AI Opportunity Fund: Asia-Pacific. Our goal is to help everyone in the region unlock the opportunities of AI.

Today, we’re introducing 49 social impact organisations that will receive funding from the first phase of the Fund, selected by AVPN through their open call and supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), including Literacy Waitākere of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, to provide contextualized and localized AI training and resources to those who need it most.

Literacy Waitākere provides accessible programs for adult learners to develop critical literacy and digital skills, promoting lifelong learning and enabling pathways to employment and independence.

Sue West, CEO of Literacy Waitākere said, "We see firsthand that many in our community risk being left behind as AI transforms our world. Our goal is to demystify AI for learners who are still building foundational digital literacy, and often have low or no formal qualifications and primarily use only their phones. This support from the Google.org AI Opportunity Fund: Asia-Pacific is crucial as it empowers us to extend our 'Digital Skills for Life' programme into essential AI literacy. We want to explicitly teach those in our community how to use AI tools effectively, how to craft good prompts, and, critically, how to evaluate AI outputs responsibly and safely.

Many employers will soon expect these skills, and AI is already impacting recruitment. We aim to equip our learners to not just find jobs or switch careers, but to thrive in them. By building their confidence and competence with AI, we’re fostering digital equity and preparing them to be assets in their workplaces. We believe this knowledge will create a ripple effect, as participants share their learning with families and communities, ensuring more people can navigate and benefit from the AI-powered future, leading to increased prosperity and inclusion for all."

To help even more people across Asia Pacific learn how to use AI, today Google.org is also announcing a $12M expansion of the Google.org AI Opportunity Fund: Asia Pacific, helping workers, small businesses and nonprofits make the most of technology in their communities. Interested organisations can find out more information here. Together with the first phase, the Fund aims to train 720,000 workers, 100,000 micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and reach 10,000 nonprofits in the region.

A shift towards an AI-powered economy needs to be fair and inclusive, so all workers have the necessary knowledge and tools to participate. Through the Google.org AI Opportunity Fund: Asia-Pacific and our ongoing collaborations, we're committed to making sure everyone can benefit from the potential of AI.

Post content Posted by Annie Lewin, Senior Director for Global Advocacy at Google.org

Celebrating Waitangi Day with a special Google Doodle

2025-02-06T05:00:00.000+13:00

Today, we're celebrating Waitangi Day in New Zealand with a special Google Doodle! Illustrated by guest artist Jordan Tuhura of Tuatahi Creative, the Doodle beautifully captures the essence of this important day.

It focuses on the themes of rangatiratanga (leadership) and partnership, reflecting the spirit of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) signed on February 6, 1840. It also symbolizes New Zealand's ongoing journey towards unity and understanding.

At Google, we recognize Waitangi Day's significance to Aotearoa’s history and its role as the foundation for the country's diverse landscape. We've been celebrating Waitangi Day through Google Doodles since 2018, with each year's artwork offering a unique interpretation of the positivity and unity that the Treaty represents.

At the heart of our 2025 Doodle, two figures representing Māori and the British Crown engage in a hongi, a traditional Māori greeting that signifies the sharing of life and connection. They are flanked by four powerful pou (carved figures) standing as guardians, representing the strength and resilience of the Māori people.

The Doodle seamlessly blends traditional Māori art forms with modern digital techniques. It serves as a powerful reminder of the partnership at the heart of Waitangi Day and New Zealand's commitment to building a future where different cultures coexist in harmony.

We're dedicated to celebrating and preserving Māori culture, language, and histories, and helping global audiences learn about them. From supporting te reo Māori in our products to showcasing the beauty of Aotearoa through initiatives like Google Doodle, we strive to honor the unique heritage of New Zealand and share it with the world.

Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director, Google New Zealand

Introducing Gemini 2.0: our new AI model for the agentic era

2024-12-12T17:33:00.000+13:00

Over the past year, we have continued to make incredible progress in artificial intelligence. Today, we are releasing the first model in the Gemini 2.0 family of models: an experimental version of Gemini 2.0 Flash. It’s our workhorse model with low latency and enhanced performance at the cutting edge of our technology, at scale.

We are also sharing the frontiers of our agentic research by showcasing prototypes enabled by Gemini 2.0’s native multimodal capabilities.

Gemini 2.0 Flash

Gemini 2.0 Flash builds on the success of 1.5 Flash, our most popular model yet for developers, with enhanced performance at similarly fast response times. Notably, 2.0 Flash even outperforms 1.5 Pro on key benchmarks, at twice the speed. 2.0 Flash also comes with new capabilities. In addition to supporting multimodal inputs like images, video and audio, 2.0 Flash now supports multimodal output like natively generated images mixed with text and steerable text-to-speech (TTS) multilingual audio. It can also natively call tools like Google Search, code execution as well as third-party user-defined functions.

Our goal is to get our models into people’s hands safely and quickly. Over the past month, we’ve been sharing early, experimental versions of Gemini 2.0, getting great feedback from developers.

Gemini 2.0 Flash is available now as an experimental model to developers via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI with multimodal input and text output available to all developers, and text-to-speech and native image generation available to early-access partners. General availability will follow in January, along with more model sizes.

To help developers build dynamic and interactive applications, we’re also releasing a new Multimodal Live API that has real-time audio, video-streaming input and the ability to use multiple, combined tools. More information about 2.0 Flash and the Multimodal Live API can be found in our developer blog.

Gemini 2.0 available in Gemini app, our AI assistant

Also starting today, Gemini users globally can access a chat optimized version of 2.0 Flash Experimental by selecting it in the model drop-down on desktop and mobile web and it will be available in the Gemini mobile app soon. With this new model, users can experience an even more helpful Gemini assistant.

Early next year, we’ll expand Gemini 2.0 to more Google products.

Unlocking agentic experiences with Gemini 2.0

Gemini 2.0 Flash’s native user interface action-capabilities, along with other improvements like multimodal reasoning, long context understanding, complex instruction following and planning, compositional function-calling, native tool use and improved latency, all work in concert to enable a new class of agentic experiences.

The practical application of AI agents is a research area full of exciting possibilities. We’re exploring this new frontier with a series of prototypes that can help people accomplish tasks and get things done. These include an update to Project Astra, our research prototype exploring future capabilities of a universal AI assistant; the new Project Mariner, which explores the future of human-agent interaction, starting with your browser; and Jules, an AI-powered code agent that can help developers.

We’re still in the early stages of development, but we’re excited to see how trusted testers use these new capabilities and what lessons we can learn, so we can make them more widely available in products in the future.

Project Astra: agents using multimodal understanding in the real world

Since we introduced Project Astra at I/O, we’ve been learning from trusted testers using it on Android phones. Their valuable feedback has helped us better understand how a universal AI assistant could work in practice, including implications for safety and ethics. Improvements in the latest version built with Gemini 2.0 include:

Better dialogue: Project Astra now has the ability to converse in multiple languages and in mixed languages, with a better understanding of accents and uncommon words.

New tool use: With Gemini 2.0, Project Astra can use Google Search, Lens and Maps, making it more useful as an assistant in your everyday life.

Better memory: We’ve improved Project Astra’s ability to remember things while keeping you in control. It now has up to 10 minutes of in-session memory and can remember more conversations you had with it in the past, so it is better personalized to you.

Improved latency: With new streaming capabilities and native audio understanding, the agent can understand language at about the latency of human conversation.

We’re working to bring these types of capabilities to Google products like Gemini app, our AI assistant, and to other form factors like glasses. And we’re starting to expand our trusted tester program to more people, including a small group that will soon begin testing Project Astra on prototype glasses.

Project Mariner: agents that can help you accomplish complex tasks

Project Mariner is an early research prototype built with Gemini 2.0 that explores the future of human-agent interaction, starting with your browser. As a research prototype, it’s able to understand and reason across information in your browser screen, including pixels and web elements like text, code, images and forms, and then uses that information via an experimental Chrome extension to complete tasks for you.

When evaluated against the WebVoyager benchmark, which tests agent performance on end-to-end real world web tasks, Project Mariner achieved a state-of-the-art result of 83.5% working as a single agent setup.

It’s still early, but Project Mariner shows that it’s becoming technically possible to navigate within a browser, even though it’s not always accurate and slow to complete tasks today, which will improve rapidly over time.

To build this safely and responsibly, we’re conducting active research on new types of risks and mitigations, while keeping humans in the loop. For example, Project Mariner can only type, scroll or click in the active tab on your browser and it asks users for final confirmation before taking certain sensitive actions, like purchasing something.

Trusted testers are starting to test Project Mariner using an experimental Chrome extension now, and we’re beginning conversations with the web ecosystem in parallel.

Jules: agents for developers

Next, we’re exploring how AI agents can assist developers with Jules — an experimental AI-powered code agent that integrates directly into a GitHub workflow. It can tackle an issue, develop a plan and execute it, all under a developer’s direction and supervision. This effort is part of our long-term goal of building AI agents that are helpful in all domains, including coding.

More information about this ongoing experiment can be found in our developer blog post.

Agents in games and other domains

Google DeepMind has a long history of using games to help AI models become better at following rules, planning and logic. Just last week, for example, we introduced Genie 2, our AI model that can create an endless variety of playable 3D worlds — all from a single image. Building on this tradition, we’ve built agents using Gemini 2.0 that can help you navigate the virtual world of video games. It can reason about the game based solely on the action on the screen, and offer up suggestions for what to do next in real time conversation.

We're collaborating with leading game developers like Supercell to explore how these agents work, testing their ability to interpret rules and challenges across a diverse range of games, from strategy titles like “Clash of Clans” to farming simulators like “Hay Day.”

Beyond acting as virtual gaming companions, these agents can even tap into Google Search to connect you with the wealth of gaming knowledge on the web.

In addition to exploring agentic capabilities in the virtual world, we’re experimenting with agents that can help in the physical world by applying Gemini 2.0's spatial reasoning capabilities to robotics. While it’s still early, we’re excited about the potential of agents that can assist in the physical environment.

You can learn more about these research prototypes and experiments at labs.google.

Building responsibly in the agentic era

Gemini 2.0 Flash and our research prototypes allow us to test and iterate on new capabilities at the forefront of AI research that will eventually make Google products more helpful.

As we develop these new technologies, we recognize the responsibility it entails, and the many questions AI agents open up for safety and security. That is why we are taking an exploratory and gradual approach to development, conducting research on multiple prototypes, iteratively implementing safety training, working with trusted testers and external experts and performing extensive risk assessments and safety and assurance evaluations.

For example:

As part of our safety process, we’ve worked with our Responsibility and Safety Committee (RSC), our longstanding internal review group, to identify and understand potential risks.
Gemini 2.0's reasoning capabilities have enabled major advancements in our AI-assisted red teaming approach, including the ability to go beyond simply detecting risks to now automatically generating evaluations and training data to mitigate them. This means we can more efficiently optimize the model for safety at scale.
As Gemini 2.0’s multimodality increases the complexity of potential outputs, we’ll continue to evaluate and train the model across image and audio input and output to help improve safety.
With Project Astra, we’re exploring potential mitigations against users unintentionally sharing sensitive information with the agent, and we’ve already built in privacy controls that make it easy for users to delete sessions. We’re also continuing to research ways to ensure AI agents act as reliable sources of information and don’t take unintended actions on your behalf.
With Project Mariner, we’re working to ensure the model learns to prioritize user instructions over 3rd party attempts at prompt injection, so it can identify potentially malicious instructions from external sources and prevent misuse. This prevents users from being exposed to fraud and phishing attempts through things like malicious instructions hidden in emails, documents or websites.

We firmly believe that the only way to build AI is to be responsible from the start and we'll continue to prioritize making safety and responsibility a key element of our model development process as we advance our models and agents.

Gemini 2.0, AI agents and beyond

Today’s releases mark a new chapter for our Gemini model. With the release of Gemini 2.0 Flash, and the series of research prototypes exploring agentic possibilities, we have reached an exciting milestone in the Gemini era. And we’re looking forward to continuing to safely explore all the new possibilities within reach as we build towards AGI.

By Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind and Koray Kavukcuoglu, CTO of Google DeepMind on behalf of the Gemini team

From Flat Whites to "How to Mew" – Here’s what Kiwis searched for in 2024

2024-12-10T06:00:00.012+13:00

It's time for our annual Year in Search list, revealing Kiwis' top trending Google searches of 2024 - and it's packed with surprises!

What was on Kiwis' minds?

Kiwis had their eyes fixed on the world stage in 2024, with the US election dominating trending search queries. Sports captivated the nation. From the UEFA European Football Championship and Cricket T20 World Cup to the All Blacks’ rugby clash against England and the Australian Open, Kiwis proved once again they are sports fanatics.

A curious trend emerged this year: a surge in searches for the humble flat white. Perhaps it was fuelled by a rekindled debate about its origins - was it invented in New Zealand or Australia? Whatever the reason, this iconic Kiwi beverage struck a chord, landing a spot in the Top 10.

The tragic passing of Liam Payne sent shockwaves through the nation, sparking a wave of searches likely driven by One Direction nostalgia or a stark reminder of life's fragility. In a year marked by uncertainty, Kiwis sought escapism: flexing their vocabulary with the New York Times' Connections game or indulging their bargain-hunting instincts on Temu.

Memes: A blend of global awareness and local humour

"Raygun", inspired by Australian Olympian Rachael Gunn's breakdancing, was a viral sensation in New Zealand, topping the memes chart. The "Demure" trend, with its emphasis on kindness and composure, resonated with Kiwis’ friendly and welcoming spirit. Classic memes like “What’s up brother” and “Knee surgery” also proved popular, showing that Kiwis ultimately appreciate a good laugh above all else.

How-to searches reveal a nation eager to learn

Kiwis' "how-to" searches in 2024 reveal a nation eager to learn, adapt and explore the digital world. "How to watch the Olympics in NZ" emerged as #1, showing a sporting nation keen to catch the action even from afar. Beyond sports, “How to lock Facebook profile" reflects a growing desire for online privacy.

“How to make human in Infinite Craft" and "How to say Happy Matariki in te reo” showcased a country embracing both digital innovation and cultural heritage. And who could forget the "How to mew" trend? This tongue-positioning technique, promising a sculpted jawline, demonstrates the unpredictable nature of online trends.

Finally, no Kiwi year would be complete without the America's Cup, with "How to watch America's Cup in NZ" rounding out the top searches.

Beyond the trends

This year's Google searches paint a vivid picture of New Zealand in 2024: a nation connected to the world yet proud of its unique identity, embracing both tradition and technology, with a keen interest in everything from sports and current events to quirky online trends.

To bring the year's top trending searches to life visually, we collaborated with the Kākano Youth Arts Collective, a programme that supports vulnerable young artists. Our collaborating artist has brilliantly used birds to show some of the key moments of 2024 – very cool and very Kiwi!

Explore the Year in Search website to see the full list and uncover more of what intrigued Kiwis this year. And if you're on TikTok, keep an eye out for our cool new filter, to have fun guessing what Kiwis "Googled" the most in 2024!

Launching Financial Services Verification in New Zealand to Help Combat Scams

2024-10-23T09:02:00.001+13:00

Kiwis will soon have greater protection from online scams as Google rolls out Financial Services Verification in New Zealand, a step forward in the company's decades-long efforts to combat scams and create a safer online experience.

Starting November 7, select advertisers of financial products and services will be required to complete a verification process before they can run ads on Google's platforms. For most advertisers, this will entail obtaining verification that they are authorised by New Zealand authorities, including the Financial Markets Authority and Reserve Bank of New Zealand, to ensure only legitimate financial service providers can advertise on our platforms. We believe this will reduce the risk of Kiwis falling victim to fraudulent financial schemes online.

Scammers are constantly evolving and devising new tactics to evade detection, making this program a defence in ensuring only authorised financial providers can reach users on Google. By verifying select advertisers, we hope to give Kiwis greater peace of mind when interacting with financial services online.

This program builds upon Google's existing multi-layered approach to combating fraud and scams, which includes strict policies against misleading financial information, advanced enforcement using machine learning and human review, and an advertiser verification program launched in 2020. These efforts work together to protect users and maintain a safe advertising ecosystem.

The support of the New Zealand Government is critical to the success of this program, and we appreciate their collaboration.

Google will continue partnering with the New Zealand government and industry leaders in the ongoing fight against online scams. Together, we can create a safer and more secure online experience for all Kiwis.

Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director, Google New Zealand

Addressing the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill

2024-10-04T12:30:00.004+13:00

As a significant longtime supporter of New Zealand’s news industry, we are deeply concerned about the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. This Bill proposes a "link tax" that would require Google to pay simply for linking to news articles. While Google supports efforts to foster a sustainable future for New Zealand news, this Bill is not the right approach. We have outlined these concerns transparently in public submissions and in ongoing consultation with the Government.

We’ve been transparent with the Government that if the Bill were to proceed on its current trajectory and became law, we would be forced to make significant changes to our products and news investments. Specifically, we’d be forced to stop linking to news content on Google Search, Google News, or Discover surfaces in New Zealand and discontinue our current commercial agreements and ecosystem support with New Zealand news publishers.

These are not outcomes we want for New Zealanders, news publishers, or our business. We believe there is a sensible path forward and have proposed reasonable alternatives to the Government that do not harm smaller, local or regional publishers and maintain the principles of the open web, in line with recent agreements we've reached elsewhere.

We’ve outlined our current contribution to the New Zealand news industry, our concerns with the proposed Bill, as well as suggested alternatives to achieve the same goal, in more detail below.

Google’s long-standing contribution to the New Zealand news industry

We are proud of our long standing contribution to New Zealand’s news industry. Our services help connect New Zealanders with quality journalism every day, driving valuable traffic to publishers. Through our local partnerships and investments, we continue to contribute to a sustainable, diverse and innovative news ecosystem in New Zealand, including through Google News Showcase - a licensing program that covers over 95% of New Zealand digital news publishers and results in us paying millions of dollars per year to almost 50 local publications. [1] Our investments in New Zealand news are targeted to help journalists and news publishers evolve in response to the changing way people are looking for and consuming information. Today, people are getting news from sources like short-form video, newsletters, social media, and curated podcasts, and many are avoiding the news entirely. We want to continue making contributions to the news ecosystem to help news publishers navigate this inflection point. We’ve already helped New Zealand partners navigate these changes by supporting work to increase paid subscribers, create technology solutions that are fit for this future and personalise user experiences. The Bill as currently drafted would put these contributions at risk.

Google's Concerns with the Bill

We believe the proposed "link tax" model is fundamentally flawed and would generate unintended consequences and unsustainable models. Here's why:

Ineffective and Against the Open Web: Link taxes are in conflict with the principles of the open web, and have not proven effective in supporting journalism, as seen in similar situations where other platforms have disengaged after deciding it’s no longer feasible to carry news links, including in Australia and Canada. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage commissioned an independent report from Sapere that concluded “There is no plurality justification to require digital platforms to pay news firms for linking to news content.” [2]
Harmful to Smaller Publishers: Solutions that overwhelmingly benefit a small number of large operators at the expense of small and local language publishers are neither sustainable nor desirable outcomes for New Zealand. [3]
Business Uncertainty: The uncapped financial exposure, an opaque political process for exemption and lack of clarity in the current Bill create an untenable level of business uncertainty for any company. This makes it impossible to plan and invest effectively in New Zealand.

A Path Forward We’ve been engaging with New Zealand publishers and lawmakers throughout the legislative process and have proposed reasonable and balanced alternatives to the draft Bill. Google is currently the only tech company providing financial support to New Zealand's news industry - as we have been for over two years. Further strengthening New Zealand’s news industry will require additional public and private support from both the New Zealand Government and a broad base of private companies. Looking ahead, we encourage the Government to reconsider the current Bill and engage in constructive dialogue to find alternative solutions that will ensure a sustainable future for New Zealand journalism. We are confident that, together, we can develop a better path forward.

_________

[1] This includes: NZ Herald, 1News, Stuff, Stuff Auckland, RNZ, The Post, Otago Daily Times, Otago Daily Times - Dunedin, The Spinoff, Newsroom, Waikato Times, The Star - Dunedin, The Star - Christchurch, Southland Times, Southland Express, Ashburton Guardian, Crux, Mahurangi Matters, Hibiscus Matters, Nelson App Online, Marlborough App Online, Northern Advocate, Northland Age, Kāhu, Waikato News, Bay of Plenty Times, Hawkes Bay Today, Rotorua Daily Post, Whanganui Chronicle, Stratford Press, Manawatu Guardian, Kapiti News, Horowhenua Chronicle, Te Awamutu Courier, Gisborne Herald, SunLive, Pacific Media Network, Scoop.co.nz, Taranaki Daily News, Manawatū Standard, Nelson Mail, Marlborough Express, The Press, Timaru Herald, Wairarapa Times-Age, Times Online, Wanaka App, Te Ao Māori News

[2] Sapere: The implications of competition and market trends for media plurality in New Zealand, page 77

[3] For example, independent analysis by The Media Ecosystem Observatory estimated a loss of Facebook traffic to Canadian news outlets of between 64 and 85% following similar legislation being introduced in Canada - similar impacts in New Zealand would be devastating for struggling smaller publishers.

Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Google New Zealand Country Director.

Google's commitment to te Reo Māori: More than just words

2024-09-16T14:04:00.013+12:00

Kia ora koutou! As country director of Google New Zealand, and a passionate advocate for te reo Māori, I'm thrilled to share our small role in celebrating this year's Te Wiki o te Reo Māori.

If you often use te reo Māori when you're chatting with friends, family or colleagues online, you might find this Chrome extension handy. Google Input Tools makes it easy to add macrons to your writing on a Chromebook, and switch between different languages with just a click.

If you wish to learn te reo Māori in a fun, interactive way, check out the Kupu app. We worked with Spark on this innovative app that uses Google's tech to turn everyday things into Māori lessons. Just take a photo of something, and the app will say what it is in te reo. Kupu has gotten even better with more words, and recently, a new "Stories" feature where you can share photos and new words with others! It's a great way to make language learning social and enjoyable.

We're also proud to have added Māori to Google Translate over ten years ago. It's been a big help for people learning Māori, Māori communities talking to others, and New Zealand translators. Recently, we added several more Pacific Island languages to Google Translate too, like Fijian and Tok Pisin, which will benefit even more people across the islands.

Finally, I couldn't be prouder of the grassroots initiatives blossoming within the Google New Zealand team. Each week, a dedicated colleague shares new Māori words and phrases during our team call segment "Te Reo Tuesday”, enriching our vocabulary and deepening our connection to the Māori culture. Another colleague of mine has, in consultation with our cultural partner AU, created an engaging online training module for Googlers, delving into Aotearoa's history, te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the relevance of Māori values in our workplaces. Whenever we welcome honored guests, the team and I would sing them a Māori song as part of a Māori welcome at the door. These ground-up efforts are invaluable in fostering a deeper appreciation of te ao Māori within our team.

Celebrating Te Wiki o te Reo Māori with a hāngī feast and a scavenger hunt around the office

But we know there's still more to do to support and protect this language, which is so important to us in Aotearoa. We’re open to hearing your ideas and thoughts, and excited to see what the future holds for te Reo Māori. I know we can make a real difference in preserving and promoting this beautiful language, and I'm grateful for the chance to be a part of this journey.

He mihi nui ki a koutou katoa! Happy Māori Language Week.

Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Google New Zealand Country Director

New Zealand's Wildlife.ai Trust selected for Google.org-supported APAC Sustainability Fund

2024-08-29T20:00:00.024+12:00

Wildlife.ai Trust, a grantee of the APAC Sustainability Seed Fund 2.0

Wildlife.ai Trust, a New Zealand conservation tech organisation, is one of 18 Asia-Pacific grantees selected as part of the APAC Sustainability Seed Fund 2.0.

Established by AVPN, the $5M Sustainability Seed Fund is supported by Google.org and the Asian Development Bank as the outreach partner. In its second iteration, this fund set out to support organisations using AI and Cloud tools to tackle pressing environmental challenges.

Wildlife.ai Trust will use the grant to create Wildlife Watcher, a smart camera trap using AI to improve wildlife conservation efforts. It promises more accurate animal identification, which will aid conservationists in preserving New Zealand’s natural heritage.

Dr Victor Anton, Founder of Wildlife.ai Trust

Dr Victor Anton, Founder and GM of Wildlife.ai Trust, says: "Imagine a wildlife camera that not only photographs animals but also uses cutting-edge AI to instantly identify them! That's the power of the Wildlife Watcher.”

He adds: “We're thrilled that the support of AVPN and Google.org will unlock a whole new level of animal monitoring. With their support, we'll create a user-friendly, affordable camera that empowers biologists and nature enthusiasts everywhere to track wildlife across vast areas and over time – something never before possible!”.

Founded in 2019, Wildlife.AI Trust has developed several projects to aid in conservation efforts. Pepeketua ID is a pattern recognition software that enables the individual identification of Archey's frogs, an archaic species of frog endemic to New Zealand’s North Island. Spyfish Aotearoa, a machine learning project, identifies fish in baited underwater videos, while Wētā Watcher is a smart camera that monitors ground-dwelling lizards and geckos.

Like the rest of the APAC region, New Zealand is susceptible to the impacts of climate change, making initiatives like the APAC Sustainability Seed Fund crucial. The 18 selected projects span a diverse range of environmental concerns, ranging from education and water resource management to circular economy and marine conservation. For more information about the program and its recipients, visit the APAC Sustainability Seed Fund 2.0 website.

Posted by Annie Lewin, Senior Director, Google.org

Google and Minister Judith Collins co-host “an evening of AI” at Parliament

2024-08-22T17:56:00.003+12:00

Government officials, business leaders and Google reps discussed AI’s potential to build a brighter future for New Zealand

Aug 22 - Google has reaffirmed its passion to support the New Zealand government in harnessing the power of AI to build a brighter future for the country. This was expressed during high-level discussions held yesterday in Wellington with Honourable Judith Collins, Minister for Digitising Government, and other key government officials.

At the event co-hosted by Minister Collins and Google New Zealand, a delegation of Google representatives, led by Country Director Caroline Rainsford, and including Urs Hölzle, one of Google’s earliest employees, shared their insights on AI's potential to drive economic growth, innovation, and societal progress. In attendance were key government figures including Paul James (Government Chief Digital Officer).

Google’s visit to Parliament aimed to showcase the exciting potential of AI to bring positive change to New Zealand. As a leader in AI innovation, Google also highlighted the company’s readiness to support this journey, while stressing the need for proactive engagement from government agencies to fully realise these opportunities.

Caroline Rainsford addresses the crowd at last night's Hui

Caroline Rainsford, Country Director of Google New Zealand, says: "The energy at Parliament House was palpable. There was definitely a shared excitement about AI's potential to transform New Zealand. From revolutionising healthcare to personalising education, the possibilities are immense.”

The discussions also highlighted the importance of smart regulations and collaborative efforts between the public and private sectors, to ensure the responsible and beneficial development of AI in New Zealand.

Rainsford adds: “Minister Collin’s optimistic approach to AI resonates with our vision. With our strong local presence, AI expertise, Cloud tools, and more, Google is ready to support the government’s vision for a digital New Zealand. We’re confident that we can help the country realise its AI aspirations with action and proactive engagement from government agencies."

Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director of Google New Zealand

Celebrating Māori and Pasifika Innovation: A Virtual Internship Journey

2024-08-13T08:12:00.002+12:00

When 24 of the brightest, most curious minds from the Māori and Pasifika communities step into Google New Zealand's halls, amazing things happen.

Even though it was through a virtual internship, these students and working professionals didn't let that stop them from dreaming up solutions to some of the Pacific's most pressing challenges, and picking up important career skills.

This virtual internship program, a first in Aotearoa, was part of our collaboration with TupuToa to foster Māori and Pasifika representation in the tech industry.

Over three weeks, the 24 interns, divided into four groups of six, immersed themselves in mentorship and innovation, guided by four Googler mentors based in New Zealand and the United States, including Rob Coyne, Jacob Chalkley, Justin Keown and Hautahi Kingi.

The internship threw down the gauntlet: "If you could develop and change a Google product, what would it be and why?".

Fuelled by the challenge and their Googler mentors, the interns responded with four novel and innovative ideas, each with the potential to transform the lives of Māori and Pasifika communities.

These include an AI-powered mental health product for Māori and Pasifika communities, earlier disaster alerts, enhanced ways to trace Māori and Pasifika ancestry using Google tools, and a more efficient Google Scholar indexing system for research related to these communities.

As we delve into the feasibility of these four concepts, mentor Hautahi Kingi reflects on the profound impact of this internship program. His own journey, from growing up on a marae near Whanganui to becoming a Google Data Scientist in New York, resonates deeply with the aspirations of these interns.

Hautahi Kingi says he’s proud to have become the representation he longed for as a young person - a symbol of success for Māori and Pasifika individuals in the tech industry.

“It was a privilege to have the opportunity to work with these impressive and talented rangatahi,” he says. “The future looks bright for tech in Aotearoa.”

For TupuToa Initiative’s chief executive, Anne Fitisemanu, this was a much-needed step in the right direction. “Programmes like this internship are the foundation for TupuToa, that really help support and grow curious minds and foster innovation. The talent pool in our communities is vast and deep, and we’re proud to work alongside our partners to provide a platform to seek and nurture it.”

Google New Zealand is proud and thrilled that this program has ignited a spark in these 24 youths. They leave with a deeper passion for tech, connections with the tech industry, and skills that will serve them well in any field they choose, among them problem-solving, collaboration, and critical thinking.

We’re excited to see what the future holds for them and grateful to TupuToa for their partnership. We look forward to working together to build an even more inclusive tech landscape in and around New Zealand.

Give it up for these 24 interns! Amish Kumar, Anaya Cole, Asifa Hanif, Gloria Tawake, Hayden Richard-Marsters, Lachlan McCreanney, Lauryn Maxwell, Lenalei Chan Ting, Lomaloma Pepine, Lucas Bawden, Malia Carter, Maria Munsanda Analega Ioane, McKay Leehmann Rimbao, Michael Heavey, Miracle Faamalosi, Paulo Opetaia, Rahera Williams, Sakura Kawakami Potaka-Dewes, Tele Tamati, Tom Tamaira, Vensel Margraff, Zachariah Hunt.

And a big shout-out to the awesome foursome who clinched the Google challenge with their idea for a mental health virtual assistant, designed to bridge the gap between young people and mental health resources: Sakura Kawakami Potaka-Dewes, Zachariah Hunt, Lucas Bawden and Maria Munsanda Analega and Lachlan McCreanney (with mentor Justin Keown).

By Nathan Laing, Head of Scaled, Google Customer Solutions, Google New Zealand

New grants to empower New Zealand educators with important AI skills

2024-07-08T06:00:00.001+12:00

We can see that new technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are becoming part of everyday life and changing the way we work.

Having the skills and opportunity to use these new technologies is crucial - which is why we recently launched a new AI Essentials course, helping people to learn AI skills.

But we’re also keenly aware of the need to ensure New Zealand’s educators have the capabilities they need to teach the next generation of technologists, scientists and engineers. How do we ensure we are preparing New Zealand students for a digital future where these technologies will be integral to daily life and work?

Announcing the 2024 Educator PD Grants

By equipping educators with the knowledge and tools to integrate these technologies into their classrooms, we can prepare students to be not just consumers of technology but also creators, innovators, and critical thinkers who shape New Zealand’s digital future.

To effectively integrate AI and ML into education, we first need to ensure students have a solid foundation in computational thinking and computer science (CS). These foundations involve breaking down complex problems into smaller, more manageable steps, designing algorithms, and using data to make informed decisions. These skills are not only applicable to coding but also to everyday problem-solving.

Google’s Educator PD Grants program has been funding high quality professional development for educators throughout Australia and New Zealand since 2011. These PD opportunities have focused on these core computational skills and ensure that educators in regional and remote areas have access to relevant and engaging resources.

We’re excited to see many of the New Zealand 2024 grant awardees embracing AI education and upskilling in their PD workshops and look forward to the innovative uses of technology in the classroom.

Posted by Marie Efstathiou, AUNZ Lead, University Relations and CS Education

Better te reo Māori access for tamariki in the digital space

2024-05-20T06:00:00.066+12:00

Image: Tamariki using the new te reo Māori keyboard

Tēnā koe me mōrena whānau. Typing this phrase is now easier than ever with the new te reo Māori keyboard on my Chromebook.

In collaboration with PB Tech and Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori - Māori Language Commission - we’ve supported the development of a special localised Chromebook that offers a reo Māori keyboard. Reaching the milestone of 5000 laptops delivered to tamariki across the motu, this kaupapa was first launched during last year’s Wiki o te Reo Māori - Māori Language Week.

The goal of this mahi is to empower New Zealanders to more easily use te reo in the digital space. The Chromebooks offer both physical keys for tohutō (macrons), single keys for frequently used Māori terms and te reo naming of keys such as tomo (enter). Chromebook users can access the shortcuts through a simple Chrome extension, created by the ChromeOS languages team. This significantly reduces the current barriers to using macrons on a standard QWERTY keyboard.

Image: Te reo Māori keyboard

Caroline Rainsford, Country Director of Google New Zealand said “I’m so proud that we’re part of this kaupapa to provide greater accessibility and therefore utilisation of te reo Māori on Chromebooks, which are the number one laptop used by kura. It’s so important that our kids’ have greater opportunity to use te reo digitally and I know these laptops will continue to have a positive impact across the country.”

Stan Fosenbauer, PB Tech Head of Education said, “Aotearoa New Zealand is about inclusion and it’s important that we recognise our official languages and represent them in our devices, for our students. So far with the devices delivered to over 120 schools, the response has been overwhelming! The strength of our partnership with Google has shone throughout this project as we worked closely on timings and the development of new features. In the future we hope to include even more of our local IT industry in this kaupapa.”

“This was an exciting initiative to be a part of, not only does the reo Māori keyboard support

normalising te reo Māori every day within Aotearoa, this particular initiative is focused around Rangatahi in kura, and integrating reo Māori into the IT sector. This is another valuable contribution to achieving one million speakers of te reo Māori by 2040.” said Ngahiwi Apanui, Chief Executive of Te Taura Whiri I te Reo Māori.

Google also recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Te Taura Whiri to identify mutual areas for collaboration towards advancing access to the Māori language features within Google products.

It’s important to Google that all Kiwis have access to technology and tools to thrive in a digital future, and Chromebooks are an important tool for learning for many of our youngest New Zealanders through education. The development of a unique keyboard for Kiwis is just another way we can make sure our devices work for all New Zealanders.

Posted by Steve Smith, Google for Education Lead, Google New Zealand

New partnerships and initiatives to strengthen fact-checking online

2024-04-02T16:46:00.005+13:00

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.

Image Alt Text: Animated image of the 'About this image' tool

When you click on the three dots next to a website in search results, you can learn more about a site before visiting it through the About this result feature. By tapping on the ‘more about this page’ tab in that menu, you will get more context about the website, such as how Wikipedia (when available) or others have described it in the news or reviews. Today, this feature is available in 40 additional languages, including Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Hindi, Thai, Vietnamese and Tagalog.

We are committed to building on these efforts and look forward to the seeing the impact of these important partnerships

Reliable information is essential for every facet of life and if more people have access to it, they can make small and big, fun and serious, short term and long term decisions with clarity.

Post content Posted by Uma Patel, Google News Lab Lead Australia and New Zealand

Kotahitanga through kapa haka in today’s Waitangi Day Doodle

2024-02-06T04:00:00.000+13:00

Image alt text: New Zealanders participating in kapa haka to show kotahitanga, unity, in celebration of Waitangi Day 2024.

Poi, pukana and kapa haka are a shared experience for many people all across New Zealand, whether participating or watching.

Vincent Egan of Māui Studios has created an image of kotahitanga through kapa haka in today’s Waitangi Day Doodle. “The Doodle artwork delivers a message of kotahitanga - the importance of unity and a celebration of our collective cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand. This piece is a tohu, or symbol, of how awesome we are as a people when we come together and look out for each other.”

Displayed today on the Google New Zealand homepage, the 2024 Waitangi Day Doodle depicts a group of New Zealanders participating in or celebrating elements of the kapa haka festivals, mau rākau weaponry workshops, or annual tribal celebrations that Egan has experienced.

The design captures a moment in time with whānau and friends: Taking centre stage are a diverse group of tamariki, each representing components of kapa haka - practising with poi and taiaha, and a cheeky Māori boy, Tamaiti haututū, performing a haka dance movement and doing a pukana. The scene is book ended by a proud Māori father who is holding a trophy which one of his tamariki has won in a manu korero speech competition; And an older Pacifica Aunty who is on kai (food) duty with some freshly made rēwana (sweet bread).

In the centre of the image is a girl gazing in interest and wonder at the collective wairua (spiritual essence) of everyone coming together and participating in events. It speaks to the numerous cultures participating and an embracing of each culture’s spirit.

When explaining why the Waitangi Day is meaningful to him, Vincent shared, “It speaks of the people in Te Ika ā Māui and Te Waipounamu of New Zealand and the important series of historic moments in this country. This is a perfect opportunity to depict the different personalities of our collective home, in a style that resonates deeply with me and the communities we serve at Māui Studios.” Vincent collaborated with his colleagues and fellow designers and illustrators, Madison Henry and Royce Southerland.

Aotearoa New Zealand today recognises Te Tiriti o Waitangi which was signed on 6 February 1840. Kiwis search interest in Waitangi Treaty Grounds is currently at a four-year high.

Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director Google New Zealand

2023 Google News Key Moments

2023-12-21T09:05:00.008+13:00

Image: Te Rito journalism cadets learning at Ngā Kete Wānanga Marae marae in September 2023

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

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.

Post content Posted by Caroline Rainsford, Country Director Google New Zealand

Year in Search: Here’s what Kiwis searched for in 2023

2023-12-11T05:00:00.005+13:00

A census and a cyclone. An austere Coronation and the humble cookie. And defining ‘culvert’. Here are the top trending queries that captivated Kiwis this year.

Image: Year in Search 2023 illustration by local artist Sarah Maybe Little

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the moments, milestones and mysteries that captured Kiwi’s attention this year.

We tried to make sense of historic events, both on our shores and further afield. We grappled with cyclones and flooding, elected a new Government and hosted the world’s women’s soccer teams. We mourned the loss of the universally funny Matthew Perry, asked questions about the resignation of Jacinda Ardern and marvelled at the spectacle of Posie Parker. And we continue to try to make sense of the war in Israel and Gaza.

Yet among all of this there were moments of levity. Barbie hit our screens, we found a new daily challenge in Connections and yorkshire puddings graced our dinner plates.

Google’s Year in Search also allows us to reflect on the year through the lens of the questions we asked. Why is there an egg shortage? How do you say Happy Matariki? How exactly do you cook frankfurters?

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

Sports Above All Else

We’ve proven time and again that we’re a nation of sports-mad people and this year is no exception. We were so spoiled with sports games, events and tournaments that it's a wonder we got anything else done. We hosted the FIFA Women’s World Cup, made it all the way to the finals of the men’s Rugby World Cup and created a cultural movement around “Up the Wahs!”. The list of sporting heroes reflects the breadth of our sporting prowess, with golf, UFC, motorsports, cricket, soccer, rugby and league all represented in our top trending Kiwis.

How’s the weather?

As we wait patiently for the summer we deserve to begin, it is clear that the weather has occupied more than just the thoughts of many Kiwis this year. With unprecedented becoming the most common way to describe weather events, we bore the brunt of flooding, atmospheric rivers and cyclones unlike anything we’ve seen before. Tools like Geonet, Windy and Rain Radar helped us to understand these weather patterns, while Skyscanner assisted in planning our escape. The DIY-minded looked to make the most of the sunshine with solar panels, while star gazers wondered how to find matariki.

Civic Duty

We close out this year with a new Government and a new Monarch. The latter had us whipping up Coronation quiche and chicken. We started this year wondering why Jacinda Ardern decided to resign, and we put our mettle to the census and elections of both the human and avian kind. Congratulations again to the Pūtekeke! With politicians from across the political spectrum in our trending searches, as well as questions on how to register and vote, we clearly took our civic duties seriously this year.

Culinary Creativity and Home Comforts

Our top trending culinary delights show we like to branch out creatively, but are also creatures of comfort. Yorkshire pudding took the top savoury spot, while teriyaki sauce, crayfish and frankfurters all featured on menus around the country. Dishes like fry bread, steak and lamb chops show we’re still keen to get the basics right. Our sweet tooth cravings had us baking cookies, afghans and, perhaps curiously, orange cake.

Check out the full trending Search data for New Zealand in 2023:

News

Cyclone Gabrielle
Matthew Perry
Election Results
Census 2023
Auckland Airport
Auckland Flooding
Jacinda Ardern
War in Israel and Gaza
Auckland Shooting
Submarine Missing

Sporting Events

Rugby World Cup
FIFA World Cup
NRL Ladder
Cricket World Cup
Warriors vs Broncos
All Blacks vs Ireland
ASB Classic
Ashes
All Blacks vs France
Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury

Sports Teams

Warriors
All Blacks
Black Caps
Inter Miami
Lakers
Football Ferns
Wrexham
Chiefs
Breakers
Manchester City

Loss

Matthew Perry
Sinead O'Conner
Jock Zonfrillo
Ken Block
Tina Turner
Nicola Bulley
Yanfei Bao
Cal Wilson
Angus Cloud
Lance Reddick

Global Figures

Posie Parker
Andrew Tate
Taylor Swift
David Beckham
Harry Styles
Prince Harry
Margot Robbie
Jeremy Renner
Elton John
Ed Sheeran

Notable New Zealanders

Ryan Fox
Israel Adesanya
Liam Lawson
Lydia Ko
Dai Henwood
Shaun Johnson
Rachin Ravindra
Simon Barnett
Sam Whitelock
Michael Boxall

New Zealand Politicians

Jacinda Ardern
Chris Hipkins
Kiri Allen
Christopher Luxon
Winston Peters
David Seymour
Carmel Sepuloni
Wayne Browne
Chloe Swarbrick
Marama Davidson

Movies

Oppenheimer
Barbie
Avatar
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Guardians of the Galaxy
John Wick 4
The Menu
Sound of Freedom
Puss in Boots
Glass Onion

Series

The Last of Us
Ginny & Georgia
The Night Agent
Daisy Jones & The Six
Wednesday
Queen Charlotte
Succession
Beef
White Lotus
The Idol

Definitions

Culvert
Cis White Male
Wan
Woman
Proclaim
Staid
Credo
Snafu
Contempt
Misogyny

Sweet Recipes

Cookie
Scone
Afghan
Icing
Mug Cake
Red Velvet Cake
Pancakes
Muffin
Orange Cake
Pikelets

Savoury Recipes

Yorkshire Pudding
Focaccia
Coronation Quiche
Coronation Chicken
Teriyaki Sauce
Fry Bread
Pulled Pork
Bagel
Big Mac Sauce
Chicken Nibbles

How To

How to vote
How to lock facebook profile
How to watch rugby world cup
How to deactivate facebook
How to solve a rubik's cube
How to get rid of my ai on snapchat
How to say happy Matariki
How to register to vote
How to watch women's world cup
How to find Matariki

What is...?

What is Threads?
What is happening in Israel?
What is Hamas?
What is a blue moon?
What is ALS?
What is the willow project?
What is Oppenheimer about?
What is ChatGPT?
What is a culvert?
What is Matariki day?

Why

Why is Israel and Gaza fighting?
Why is Book Depository closing?
Why were chainsaws invented?
Why is there an egg shortage?
Why did hamas invade Israel?
Why was the interislander ferry Kaitaki in the news last week?
Why did Jacinda Ardern retire?
Why is China upset with Japan?
Why were some roads closed and the public asked to avoid an area in central Auckland last week?
Why is it called a blue moon?

D.I.Y

Headboard
Chicken Coop
Lash Extensions
Easy Halloween Costumes
Chocolate Gift Box Ideas
Mother's Day Gifts
Solar Panels
Dog Wash
Fly Screen
Advent Calendar

How to Cook

How to cook pasta
How to cook steak
How to cook lamb chops
How to cook brown rice
How to cook tofu
How to cook choko
How to cook rhubarb
How to cook salmon
How to cook crayfish
How to cook frankfurters

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