Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Brussels buzzes with ideas for the future
Friday, September 25, 2009
Brussels is buzzing with ideas for a new technology agenda. The European Commission recently distributed a questionnaire on the
post-i2010 Initiative
and the EU's Swedish Presidency is seeking views on a
Green Knowledge Society
. Not to be outdone, the European Parliament's
European Internet Foundation
(EIF) has just published a
paper
on the Europe of 2025, including room to comment on their site. The Foundation is a
Parliamentarian led
organisation funded by businesses (full disclosure: Google is a
member
) and industry trade associations.
The Foundation's secretariat penned the paper, building upon three workshops held earlier in the year. Google provided a speaker on
cloud computing
at the
technology workshop
. Debates also took place on
economic
and
socio-political
issues.
The resulting paper does not pretend to be a common position of the Foundation's members, it contains few dramatic policy recommendations, and is clearly meant to stimulate new debate.
But it does shine a spotlight on some key issues, starting with the crucial concept of "mass collaboration", which has for example led to a globally accessible repository of information called
Wikipedia
. It's not so much the technology in itself is not so exciting; what's cool is how humans adapt it to accelerate our natural inclinations to communicate and share ideas. This concept of "mass collaboration" is fueling debate about intellectual property rules (our recent submission can be found
here
) and whether Europe needs to join with the
FCC
to promote a strong set of net freedoms.
Secondly, we cannot rely on the next generation alone to fuel innovation. As the paper points out, "70% of Europe’s workforce of 2025 is already part of our work-force today." I can't think of a more powerful statistic about the need to embrace change.
A third point to note is the notion of a "data-driven world" where "our ability to capture, measure and analyse our collective, collaborative behaviour will itself have become a defining feature, driving force and economic engine in the digital world". This is unquestionably true, and Google is a pioneer in this space. As the ability to collect data grows, the paper recognises the need to debate the privacy issues that emerge. A
consultation
on Europe's data protection directive is underway and it will have the challenge of balancing data-driven growth & jobs while protecting fundamental rights.
Google is going to be involved in all of these debates. We published
some policy proposals
back in June. You may want also to take a look this
recent speech
by our CEO Eric Schmidt, which provides a real vision of the opportunity.
But you don't have to be based inside the Brussels 'Ring' to join in - the debate is open, and stakes for Europe's society and economy are high.
Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of Public Policy
What's up with Measurement Lab
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Cross posted from Google Public Policy Blog
Eight months ago
, we joined a group of researchers to launch
Measurement Lab (M-Lab)
, an open platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools.
We created M-Lab in order to help measure the
actual
performance of broadband Internet connections. Is your connection as fast as advertised? Where are the bottlenecks that impact VoIP or video performance? Answers to these sorts of questions will help users to make informed decisions in the market, and help governments around the globe to craft sound broadband policy.
So, how's it doing?
To date, more than 150,000 Internet users from around the world have used M-Lab to test the performance of their broadband connection and share information with researchers.
Now M-Lab is hitting the Mediterranean. We're thrilled to announce that the
EETT
-- Greece's telecommunications regulator -- and the
Greek Research and Technology Network (GRnet)
have contributed servers and connectivity for a new M-Lab node in Athens, Greece, and will collaborate with M-Lab to help improve the usability of the platform's tools.
EETT has already been working to provide useful information about broadband networks to consumers, through their
central Web portal
. EETT plans to incorporate data collected through M-Lab into this map, so that users will be able to compare broadband providers' and their Internet connection's performance across several dimensions.
In addition to EETT and GRnet,
Voxel
also has joined as an M-Lab partner, providing server nodes and connectivity in New York City and Amsterdam. Since launch, we've added many new servers, for a total of 38 between the U.S. and Europe.
We've also added two new tools,
PathLoad2
and
ShaperProbe
. PathLoad2 allows users to test their available bandwidth (the maximum bit rate you can send to a network link before it gets congested), and ShaperProbe detects whether the ISP reduces the speed of a download or an upload after it begins.
We're happy about M-Lab's successful beginning, but it's only the beginning. The platform and its tools are still very much in beta, and we continue efforts to improve them.
In the coming months we're aiming to make the collected data publicly available and accessible, improve the user experience and stability of our tools, and expand the availability of the site globally. Stay tuned, and in the meantime we hope you'll
run an M-Lab test on your own broadband connection
.
Posted by Sascha Meinrath and Robb Topolski, Open Technology Initiative (OTI), and Derek Slater, Policy Analyst, Google
(Editor's note: We're pleased to welcome Sascha Meinrath and Robb Topolski of the
Open Technology Initiative
(OTI) as
guest
bloggers. As a part of The New America Foundation, OTI works to support policy and regulatory measures that further open technologies and communications networks.)
Introducing DataLiberation.org: Liberate your data!
Monday, September 14, 2009
Cross-posted from
Google Policy Blog
Imagine you want to move out of your apartment. When you ask your landlord about the terms of your previous lease, he says that you are free to leave at any time; however, you cannot take all of your things with you - not your photos, your keepsakes, or your clothing. If you're like most people, a restriction like this may cause you to rethink moving altogether. Not only is this a bad situation for you as the tenant, but it's also detrimental to the housing industry as a whole, which no longer has incentive to build better apartments at all.
Although this may seem like a strange analogy, this pretty accurately describes the situation my team, Google's Data Liberation Front, is working hard to combat from an engineering perspective. We're a small team of Google Chicago engineers (named after a Monty Python skit about the
Judean People's Front
) that aims to make it easy for our users to transfer their personal data in and out of Google's services by building simple import and export functions. Our goal is to "liberate" data so that consumers and businesses using Google products always have a choice when it comes to the technology they use.
What does product liberation look like? Said simply, a liberated product is one which has built-in features that make it easy (and free) to remove your data from the product in the event that you'd like to take it elsewhere.
At the heart of this lies our
strong commitment
to an open web run on open standards. We think open is better than closed -- not because closed is inherently bad, but because when it's easy for users to leave your product, there's a sense of urgency to improve and innovate in order to keep your users. When your users are locked in, there's a strong temptation to be complacent and focus less on making your product better.
Many web services make it difficult to leave their services - you have to pay them for exporting your data, or jump through all sorts of technical hoops -- for example, exporting your photos one by one, versus all at once. We believe that users - not products - own their data, and should be able to quickly and easily take that data out of any product without a hassle. We'd rather have loyal users who use Google products because they're innovative - not because they lock users in. You can think of this as a long-term strategy to retain loyal users, rather than the short-term strategy of making it hard for people to leave.
We've already liberated over half of all Google products, from our popular blogging platform Blogger, to our email service Gmail, and Google developer tools including App Engine. In the upcoming months, we also plan to liberate Google Sites and Google Docs (batch-export).
Feel free to take a deeper look into product liberation at
dataliberation.org
, a website we're launching today which is dedicated to explaining the Data Liberation Front and the products we've liberated.
If you'd like to contribute suggestions for services that you think need to be liberated, please do so on our Data Liberation
Moderator page
. We're also on Twitter
@dataliberation
.
Posted by Brian Fitzpatrick, Data Liberation engineering manager
Bringing the world's lost books back to life
Monday, September 7, 2009
Today I am attending the European Commission's information hearing in Brussels on Google Books's agreement with American authors and publishers. This offers us a wonderful opportunity to clear up misunderstandings and further explain the opportunities offered by the US Agreement. All of us, on both sides of the Atlantic share the same crucial goal - to bring millions of lost books back to life.
If an American court approves, readers in the U.S. will be able for the first time to search, preview and buy online access to a great number of out-of-print books that were scanned as part of Google Book Search. A new non-profit registry will be set up to locate these in copyright but difficult to find books' rights holders and collect and distribute revenues to authors and publishers.
This hearing shows that European libraries, authors, publishers and users are grappling with the same issue of how to open up access to the world of knowledge contained in books. In recent weeks, we noted several important measures of support. We are already working successfully with libraries around the world, including in France, Belgium, the UK, Switzerland, Germany and Spain, insuring that our digital library includes works over 100 languages. I was particularly pleased to hear our Ghent Library Partner Sylvia van Peteghem talking about how together we have worked to allow viewers from all over the world access to her institution's priceless public domain collection. Last week, Mario Resca, General Director of the Italian Ministry of Culture, expressed a desire to partner with us to find ways on best valuing the Italian public domain books collection. Support from the Italian authorities represents an important step forward to demonstrating how our Books project can further benefit Europe.
While anybody is allowed to digitise and distribute out of copyright, so called public domain works, pose no legal problem free of charge or for a fee, what's really at stake are the fate of the vast majority of books -- by some estimate up to 80 percent of the total - which are in copyright out of print and hard to locate. These works are not sold through bookstores or held on most library shelves, and yet represent an important repository of the world's knowledge and culture. Often it is difficult to identify or locate the copyright holder. If the author has died, who holds his rights, his wife, children or another relative?
The agreement announced in October 2008 between Google and a broad class of copyright holders in the United States will dramatically expand access to out-of-print books, creating new revenue opportunities for authors and publishers. The new registry should help reduce the number of in-copyright works whose owners cannot be identified or found because authors will have a concrete economic incentive to come forward, claim their works and then earn money. For books that are in-print, the agreement would offer new distribution opportunities to copyright holders in the United States.
European authors and publishers whose books have been scanned from an American library may benefit from the new revenue that will come as American readers discover and purchase their books. They can register with the new registry to control and profit from online access to their books, or, just like American authors, they can choose to opt out. The registry will also benefit rightsholders by helping potential licensors for Europe reach out to rightsholders and negotiate agreements to license works in the EU. But no readers outside of the United States will reap the benefits American readers will see-- because the agreement is under U.S. law, it can by nature only govern what happens within the U.S.
In this context, we are delighted to see that the EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding recently added her voice to the debate welcoming calling for Europe to act. "Google Books is a commercial project developed by an important player," she said. "It is good to see that new business models are evolving which could allow bringing more content to an increasing number of consumers." We agree. The bottom line conclusion from today's hearing is clear and straightforward: Europeans, not just Americans, should be empowered to rediscover long lost books
.
Posted by Daniel Clancy, Engineering Director
Europe unveils ambitious digital agenda
Thursday, September 3, 2009
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso today unveiled his
platform
to win a new five year term in office. He promised that the Commission will work for a successful exit from the financial crisis, tackle climate change and advance a "people's Europe".
For us at Google, the most important signal was the scale of his declared ambition to spur a digital revolution. The President's paper repeated the word "transform" nine times and "radical" four times - a "
Europe committed to the radical transformation towards a knowledge-based society"
is, for Google, an essential starting point to address huge societal challenges we face.
The paper emphasises the need to invest in the new skills for the jobs of tomorrow, and sets an ambitious program to bring fast speed Internet across the European Union. Importantly, Barroso aims to bridge the divide between Europe's digital haves and have nots. Naturally, we are particularly excited that the
"Commission will develop a European Digital Agenda (accompanied by a targeted legislative programme) to tackle the main obstacles to a genuine digital single market,
" echoing recent calls made by the European Digital Media Association
EDiMA
(Google is a member).
But we would have liked to see more analysis of the new dynamics of innovation. Presiden Barroso's platform avoids mentioning the academic insights to be found in works such
Wikinomics
or
We Think
. Social networking media (such as Facebook and Twitter) are transforming the way people communicate and organise. These collaborative sites are powerful engines both driving forward economic growth and for addressing the big societal challenges the Commission wants to address. As we move forward, Google will discussing these opportunities with policy makers.
Posted By Simon Hampton, Director of European Public Affairs
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Brussels buzzes with ideas for the future
What's up with Measurement Lab
Introducing DataLiberation.org: Liberate your data!
Bringing the world's lost books back to life
Europe unveils ambitious digital agenda
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