Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
A new agreement to bring out-of-print French books back to life
Thursday, August 25, 2011
For some time, Google has been working with publishers to make cultural works more widely discoverable online and to create new sources of revenue for them. Today we announced a new partnership with French publishing group
La Martinière
. We will work together to make La Martinière’s out-of-print, in-copyright works available online, extending their commercial lifespan and preserving important French literary works for future generations. This agreement effectively ends the legal dispute between La Martinière and Google.
Together, Google and La Martinière will produce a list of the publishing group’s out-of-print works. La Martinière will then make these hard-to-find works available for sale online via Google eBooks, under a revenue share deal.
The partnership also looks to the future: La Martinière will let us know which of its out-of-print works it wants scanned - and subsequently made available for sale - when we come across them in our library partners’ collections.
The terms of the agreement may sound familiar: we signed a similar partnership with another French publisher, Hachette Livre,
last year
. We believe this deal represents another important step in our relationship with French publishers - and that moving forward, these kinds of partnerships will be of great value in preserving and promoting French cultural heritage, and are of long term benefit to French authors and readers.
Posted by Philippe Colombet, Strategic Partnerships Development Manager, Google France
Ongoing privacy work
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Last October we announced the creation of
stronger privacy controls inside Google
. The changes included enhancements to employee training and changes to our internal procedures, as well as my appointment as director of privacy for product and engineering.
In the months since then, I have worked closely with people across the company to improve our training programmes and our product development processes, and to expand their reach. We’ve expanded privacy and security trainings for new employees, and we’ve significantly enhanced the core training for engineers over the past year to focus on the responsible collection, use and handling of data. We’ve also developed new security and privacy training for all Googlers. At the same time, we have improved our internal procedures by introducing new documentation for engineering projects and by creating a team to review (and where appropriate audit) those projects.
These changes have just received their first external review. In the course of completing its investigation into our
inadvertent collection of WiFi payload data
, the Information Commissioner’s Office requested a consensual audit of our privacy processes. Today, the ICO released its report, finding “reasonable assurance that Google have implemented the privacy process changes outlined in the Undertaking.” The report verifies the improvements we’ve made to our internal privacy structures, training programmes and internal reviews, and identifies some scope for continued work. We welcome their feedback on our progress, and we look forward to working with them to ensure that we continue to develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
We have worked hard on these new privacy controls, which are designed to improve our internal practices without getting in the way of the innovation that has powered Google since its inception. We know that there is no perfect solution, so we will continue to improve our current processes and develop new ones so that privacy awareness grows and evolves alongside Google.
Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering
Helping Senior Citizens Stay At Home
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
An extended version of this post appears on
Google’s Public Sector and Elections Lab
blog
For European policymakers, projects such as the
European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Aging
and the UK’s
“Get Digital”
initiative demonstrate the importance of helping senior citizens stay happy and healthy at their homes. A pensioner living at home is bound to be happier and more productive than one stuck in a nursing home. Technology can help achieve this goal, and Google is doing its part. We recently brought together a diverse bunch of energetic people of all generations for our first ever Interactivism event - a special two day
hackathon
in London designed to make the Internet more accessible to older generations.
Before the hacking commenced, we heard from a true YouTube star, Peter Oakley, known online as "
Geriatric 1927
". Peter, 83 years-old, spoke inspirationally about his experiences on YouTube, his love of all things web related, and demoed his skills.
It was then time to get down to business. Students and senior citizens paired off to work on projects, which ranged from
TV Mate
(an easy to use remote control made from a computer tablet that can be personalised with photographs and sounds) to
TimeTag
(
a mechanism for dealing with delays in hospital appointment schedules) to
Echoing
(
helping people in care homes connect and add value to the outside world by recording memories specific to local places).
Several of the older participants from the grandparenting forum
Gransnet
commented on how much they appreciated the respect they received from their young colleagues. Some even found the experience life-changing, with one attendee writing: “this event really has done something wonderful
to me... I feel quite different”.
After hours of hard work, the final projects were presented to a panel of judges. They awarded
EZPZ Browser
the much sought-after
Google Interactivism Award
. A group of Gransnetters were also invited to form their own panel of judges. They voted for
Spotte
d, an app for sharing likes and dislikes.
Following the success of this event, we plan to use Interactivism’s innovative format to help inform policy development in a variety of other areas. Google UK will soon be announcing the second Interactivism event focusing on the ways in which technology can break down barriers and open doors for kids searching for jobs. Watch this space.
Posted by Naomi Gummer, Policy Analyst
PS: More
photographs from the Interactivism
weekend are now available at this
Interactivism Flickr group
.
UN strengthens freedom of expression safeguards
Monday, August 8, 2011
C
ross-posted from the Google Public Policy Blog
At Google, we believe that it is important for the international community to step up in defense of freedom of expression. Many governments around the world are attempting to exert more control over the net. Fortunately, the United Nations is going in the other direction.
In Geneva, the UN’s
Human Rights Committee
recently emphasized that the protections guaranteed by one of the
most important global human rights treaties
apply fully in the online world: bloggers, for example, should receive the same protection as journalists.
The Committee’s action represents only the latest sign of how international organisations are stepping up to defend free expression. Earlier this year, the UN’s Special Rapporteur
Frank La Rue
argued in a
report
that restricting the flow of online information violates human rights. He has also joined with representatives from the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
, the
Organisation of American States
, and the
African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights
to issue a
joint declaration
.
These strong signals are generating positive momentum. After a group of UK parliamentarians leveraged the UN declarations to complain about
website blocking plans
, their government pulled back. The UN Human Rights Committee offers important safeguards: individuals can directly bring many human rights violations to the committee for redress. It’s up to all of us to use this power to pressure governments to live up to their obligations and safeguard online freedom of expression.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Google Europe Middle East and Africa
Restoring Bletchley Park, birthplace of modern computing
Monday, August 8, 2011
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
Late last year Google
backed the bid
to buy the papers of the British computer scientist and wartime codebreaker
Alan Turing
and return them to their rightful home at
Bletchley Park
. We were thrilled when this was finally
achieved in February
.
Now we’ve joined forces with the Bletchley Park Trust to help raise funds to rebuild Block C, the original wartime building that once housed the vast punched card index—in essence, the “search engine” at the heart of Bletchley Park’s decryption activity.
Block C at Bletchley Park, awaiting restoration
Bletchley Park played a pivotal role in computing history. For decades the extraordinary achievements of its veterans were hidden by order of the UK’s Official Secrets Act. It was not until the 1980s that the full secret of
Colossus
— the world’s first electronic programmable computer—was revealed. Housed at Bletchley Park, Colossus and other custom-built machines were crucial aids in the code-breaking, reputed to have
shortened World War II
by two years.
Tony Sale, leader of the Colossus rebuild project, demos it at the National Museum of Computing
Today, Block C is derelict. We hope to help restore it to serve as a visitor and learning centre for both
Bletchley Park
and the UK’s
National Museum of Computing
. The fund-raising campaign kicked off this week with a Google-supported
garden party
in the Bletchley Park grounds, at which over £10,000 was raised. We still have a long way to go, though, so if you’d like to contribute,
please donate
at the Bletchley Park website.
If you’re in London, Bletchley Park is less than an hour away by train, and well worth an afternoon’s visit. You can see a working replica of Colossus, along with many other exhibits highlighting wartime work at Bletchley Park and the UK’s rich computing heritage.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations for Europe, Middle East and Africa
Labels
Academics
18
Advertising
10
Africa
26
Austria
7
Belgium
25
Big Tent
11
Bosnia and Herzegovina
2
Browsers
1
Brussels Tech Talk
7
Bulgaria
5
Campus
2
Child Safety
24
Cloud computing
17
Competition
16
Computer Science
35
Computing Heritage
37
Consumers
11
controversial content
2
COP21
1
copyright
34
Crisis Response
2
Culture
116
Czech Republic
16
Data Centre
15
Denmark
4
Digital News Initiative
6
Digital Single Market
1
Diversity
7
Economic Impact of the Internet
57
Economy
24
Elections
7
Energy + Environment
16
Engineering
6
Environment
5
Estonia
6
European Commission
21
European Parliament
14
European Union
104
exhibitions
1
Finland
13
France
77
Free Expression
88
Free flow of information
47
German
1
Germany
65
Google for Entrepreneurs
9
Google in Europe Blog
846
Google Play
1
Google TechTalk
2
Google Translate
1
Google Trends
3
Google+
4
Greece
16
Growth Engine
3
Hackathon
3
Hungary
16
Innovation
70
Internet Governance
7
IP
10
Ireland
16
Israel
17
Italy
42
Journalism
34
Latvia
1
Lithuania
1
Luxembourg
3
Maps
17
Middle East
18
Netherlands
6
News
2
News Lab
1
North Africa
6
Norway
3
online
1
Online Safety
2
Open data
8
Open Government
7
Open source
2
Poland
24
Portugal
6
Power of Data
25
privacy
49
Publishing
30
Right to be Forgotten
9
Rio+20
1
Romania
3
Russia
18
Safer Internet Day
4
San Marino
1
Science
5
Security
7
Single Market
7
Slovakia
16
Slovenia
2
SMEs
24
Spain
39
Startups
6
State of the Union
2
STEM Education
36
Street View
38
Surveillance
1
Sweden
13
Switzerland
11
Telecoms
11
The Netherlands
4
Tourism
1
Transparency
12
Tunisia
4
Turkey
3
Ukraine
3
United Kingdom
94
Vatican
2
Youth
2
YouTube
42
Archive
2016
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
A new agreement to bring out-of-print French books...
Ongoing privacy work
Helping Senior Citizens Stay At Home
UN strengthens freedom of expression safeguards
Restoring Bletchley Park, birthplace of modern com...
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Feed
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
