What’s New in Waterloo? Google!
We were honored to be one of only 16 Google Partners invited to come and spend the day at Google’s latest and greatest office in Canada’s tech hub – Waterloo, Ontario. This is one of the many perks that we get as a Premier Google Partner in Canada. The day was packed with insightful speakers, great content, exclusive training, lots of food, and a tour.
If you were not aware, we are giving away 6 trips in September to this very same office where you will be treated to a similar experience – click here for details and to enter. You will not be disappointed if you win!
So what did we learn? A lot! We are going to break this down into three additional posts. One on Google’s brand new Expanded Text Ads, another on every business’s favorite source of frustration: Google My Business, and finally, one on What’s New with YouTube.
A little about the newest Google office first. It is in an incredible building that was built in 1918 and was actually a former rubber plant. It houses approximately 500 Googlers with the capacity for about 500 more. These engineers don’t work on Canadian specific projects either; they work on big ticket items like Gmail, Chrome and the Ads Infrastructure. Like all Google offices that I have had the pleasure of visiting, it has wicked food at the main cafeteria, mini cafe’s on all floors, a cyborg moose (what’s more Canadian tech?) a gym with a climbing wall, nap pods and a whole lot more.
What did we learn? For this post I am going to focus on two speakers, the individual posts will take care of the rest. First up was Ben Wood, Director of Channel Sales Americas. Ben spoke about how Google focuses on the ‘whole problem’ and works from that perspective. If someone using Google can’t spell, it’s a Google problem. If the internet is not fast enough, it’s Google’s problem. This type of thinking has lead to great developments like Google Suggest (you know when Google suggests searches before you are done typing) and Google Chrome, a way faster and way better internet browser than what was available. Further to looking at the whole problem, he spoke about 10X and moon shots – essentially the big, big wins that will transform your business, maybe even your industry. Google considers these types or products over small iteration. This is how we get self-driving cars, contact lenses to measure insulin levels for diabetics, and project Loon (balloon powered internet for the remote parts of the world).
After Ben we heard from Sam Sebastian, Managing Director of Google Canada, or the big boss. Sam provided us with an unbiased look at what Google is trying to accomplish in Canada – mainly diversify away from search advertising. He spoke candidly about ad blocking and that one solution will be for Google and Premier Partners like us to build better ads. One comment that he made was that in 10-15 years every business will be a software business. He provided examples from big banks and agencies and how software is starting to be at the core of all we do. Whether he is right or wrong, I am going to learn how to code. The last concept he shared that really resonated with me was about Yahoo’s sale to Verizon for ~$4.8B. Yahoo was valued at more than $100B at its peak in 2000. What happened to the other $95B? No one knows exactly, but it is this type of event that constantly reminds him (and perhaps it should all of us) that we need to be a little bit paranoid about the next start up. It is this paranoia that needs to drive us to hit our 10X goals that Ben outlined, to stay in business and not lose 95% of our value.
Overall it was a great day and it is always an honor to be invited to such an exclusive event. For more information on the day and all the training we received, check out our three other blogs on the event: Expanded Text Ads, Google My Business, and What’s New with YouTube.
Thanks,
Duncan Cochrane
