Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Watch the Big Tent on YouTube
Friday, March 30, 2012
Our programme of Big Tent events aims to bring together digital businesses, policymakers and advocacy groups to debate some of the hot issues facing the Internet and society.
Now, with the launch of our new
Big Tent YouTube channel
, everyone can engage with these debates online.
The channel includes videos from our sessions so far in
London
,
The Hague
,
Berlin
and
Madrid
. You can filter by topic, speaker and event, so whether you’re interested in privacy or child safety, Hillary Clinton on Internet freedom or Wael Ghonim on the role of the Internet in Egypt’s revolution, it’s all available under the Big Tent.
The launch of our new channel coincides with our first Big Tent in the US--an event on Digital Citizenship held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Over the course of the day, we discussed child safety online, the most effective ways to incorporate technology with educationa and what governments and civil society can do to maintain a responsible and innovative web.
Stay tuned for videos from that and future Big Tents as the programme continues to roll out across the world.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations EMEA
Visualise the world’s economic recovery - and win $2,000
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The summer before I left university, banks - overburdened with housing bubble debts - started collapsing. My fellow students and I had anticipated that finding a job would be challenging - but not that we would get to unemployment rates as high as 9.6% in both the
United States
and the
European Union
in 2010, the highest they’ve been in almost 30 years.
So we figured it would be pretty interesting to see which government policies are reversing the trend - which is why we’ve teamed up with the
Guardian Datastore
to launch a
competition
to create the best visualisation of public data sets.
Using information from
Eurostat
,
the World Economic Forum
,
World Bank
,
UN
,
IMF
and some of the world's major
economic
experts
, we want you to make an argument about how to generate sustainable growth in the 21st century.
Finding solutions to these problems is critical to the future of our society and economy. To debate the issues that surface in the visualisations, we’ll be co-hosting public conversations via Google+ Hangouts that are anchored in hard numbers. Stay tuned to this blog or the Guardian Datastore for details.
The competition is open to U.K. and U.S. citizens with a prize of $2,000 going to the most compelling, beautiful and informed visualisation. Entries are due by May 21 and results will be published on the Guardian Datastore’s new site,
Show and Tell
.
A new economic reality is setting in, and if we are going to master it, citizens and leaders alike need to invest in figuring out how to adapt. Check out the data from our list or bring your own as long as it’s freely available to the public - and submit your entry to datavisualisation@guardian.co.uk!
Posted by Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst at Google
Let’s fill London with startups...
Thursday, March 29, 2012
London has become one of the world's great digital capitals. The Internet accounts for eight percent of the U.K. economy and has become, in these days of tough public finances, a welcome engine of economic growth.
We believe there is even more potential for entrepreneurs to energize the Internet economy in the U.K., and to help spur growth, today we’re opening
Campus London
, a seven story facility in the east London neighborhood known as Tech City. Google began as a startup in a garage. We want to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs to be successful by building and supporting a vibrant startup community. Our goal with Campus is to catalyze the startup ecosystem and build Britain's single largest community of startups under one roof.
The U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. George Osborne MP, launched Campus at this morning's official opening. The Chancellor toured the building, meeting some of the entrepreneurs currently making their home in Campus and learning more about their innovations, ranging from fashion trendsetting websites to personalized London leisure guides. He then flipped the switch on a commemorative graffiti plaque.
Campus is a collaboration between Google and partners Central Working, Tech Hub, Seedcamp and Springboard. It will provide startups with workspace in an energizing environment and will also host daily events for and with the community. We will run a regular speaker series, alongside lectures and programing, as well as provide mentorship and training from local Google teams.
Visitors will have access to a cafe and co-working space, complete with high speed wifi. We welcome members of the startup community: entrepreneurs, investors, developers, designers, lawyers, accountants, etc. and hope that this informal, highly concentrated space will lead to chance meetings and interactions that will generate the ideas and partnerships that will drive new, innovative businesses.
The buzz around Campus from within the startup community has meant that today, on day one, Campus is already at 90% capacity, with more than 100 people on site and an additional 4,500 who have signed up online to visit.
We are looking forward to getting to know the community. East London is emerging as a world-leading entrepreneurial hub, and we’re excited to be a part of it. Take a photo tour of Campus
here
, and if you’d like to learn more, visit us at
www.campuslondon.com
.
Let’s fill this town with startups!
Posted by Eze Vidra, Head of Campus London
Honoring Innovation for Free Expression
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Update, Thursday, March 29
: Kubatana's FreedomFone won the first Google-sponsored Innovation Award given out last evening at the Index on Censorship's annual Freedom of Expression awards.
FreedomFone's Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwana accepted the prize, describing how their product allows information to "be shared and received at anytime in any language wherever there is mobile coverage. Traditional roadblocks of licensing, regulation and literacy are bypassed, and freedom of expression is broadened."
Judges explained the reasons behind their choice in this video:
Index on Censorship
holds its annual awards this evening in London, celebrating the work of journalists, artists and activists who champion free expression, often at great personal risk.
This is the third year that Google is sponsoring the awards evening. We're delighted that this year's edition includes a new Google-sponsored innovation award which recognises the original use of new technology to foster debate, argument or dissent.
Nominees come from all across the globe. They include Zimbabwean NGO
Kubatana
, which has developed a Freedom Fone. It uses open-source software to help organisations share pre-recorded audio information in any language via mobile phones and landlines. Another nominee is ObscuraCam, a free smartphone application developed in the United States that uses facial recognition to blur individual faces automatically. This helps protect activists who fear reprisals but want to safely capture evidence of state brutality. A full list of the nominees is
here
.
The Awards ceremony takes place on Wednesday 28 March at 6.30pm at the
St Pancras Renaissance Hotel
in King’s Cross, London. We’ll begin with champagne and canapés, followed by the Awards ceremony at 8pm hosted by BBC presenter Jonathan Dimbleby with a keynote from the author of War Horse, Michael Morpurgo. We will be on hand to celebrate the winners.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Explore Mandela's archives online
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Last year we
announced
a $1.25 million grant to the
Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory
to help preserve and digitize thousands of archival documents, photographs and videos about Nelson Mandela. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory (NMCM) is committed to documenting the life and times of one of the world's greatest statesmen and spreading his story to promote social justice throughout the world.
Today, the Mandela archive has become a reality. Along with historians, educationalists, researchers, activists and many others around the world, you can access a wealth of information and knowledge about the life and legacy of this extraordinary African leader. The
new online multimedia archive
includes Mandela’s correspondence with family, comrades and friends, diaries written during his 27 years of imprisonment, and notes he made while leading the negotiations that ended apartheid in South Africa. The archive will also include the
earliest-known photo of Mr. Mandela
and
never-before seen drafts
of Mr. Mandela's manuscripts for the sequel to his autobiography
Long Walk to Freedom
.
We’ve worked closely with the NMCM to create an interactive online experience which we hope will inspire you as much as us. You can search and browse the archives to explore different parts of Mandela’s life and work in depth:
Early Life
,
Prison Years
,
Presidential Years
,
Retirement
,
Books for Mandela
,
Young People
and
My Moment with a Legend
.
For example, you might be interested in Nelson Mandela’s personal memories of the time he was incarcerated and click into the
Prison Years
exhibit. You can immediately see a curated set of materials threaded together into a broader narrative. These include handwritten notes on his
desk calendars
, which show, for example, that he met President F.W. De Klerk for the first time on December 13, 1989 for two and a half hours in prison; the
Warrants of Committal
issued by the Supreme Court which sent him to prison; the earliest known
photo of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell
on Robben Island circa 1971; and a
personal letter
written from prison in 1963 to his daughters, Zeni and Zindzi, after their mother was arrested, complete with transcript.
From there, you might want to see all the letters held by the archive, and click “See more” in the letters category, where you can discover all
personal letters
or use the time filter to explore his
diaries and calendars
written between 1988 and 1998, where you can see that in the
last page
of the last diary, he met with President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda to exchange ideas about the situation in northern Uganda. If you were a researcher, you can search through various fragments of Madiba’s memory that relate to
Ahmed Kathrada
, his long-time comrade, politician and anti-apartheid activist, where you can find photos, videos, manuscripts and letters that relate to him.
Finally, by clicking into the exhibit,
My Moment with a Legend
, you can go beyond Madiba’s personal materials to get a diverse perspective through photos, videos and stories, via the memories of people like
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
,
F.W. De Klerk
and
Nomfundo Walaza
, a community worker.
The Nelson Mandela Digital Archive project is an initiative by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and the
Google Cultural Institute
, which helps to preserve and promote our diverse cultural and historical heritage. Some of our other initiatives include the
Art Project
, digitizing the
Dead Sea Scrolls
and bringing the
Yad Vashem Holocaust
materials online.
You can start exploring the Nelson Mandela archive right now at
archive.nelsonmandela.org
. We hope you’ll be inspired by this influential leader—the face of South Africa’s transition to democracy.
Posted by Mark Yoshitake, Product Manager, Google’s Cultural Institute
Compete in the EUhackathon
Monday, March 19, 2012
Have you ever had an amazing idea for improving the experience of children on the Internet? Or perhaps you’ve wondered why a tool or platform for harnessing the limitless creativity of young people didn’t already exist?
Then you should apply to participate in this year’s
EUhackatho
n. The Hack4Kids event will be the second
hackathon
organised with the European Union institutions in Brussels and will take place on June 20 and 21, 2012 in Brussels.
Developers are invited to apply in one of two tracks: Child Safety or Child Creativity. The Child Safety Track focuses on building or improving tools that allow children, their parents and teachers enjoy a better Internet experience. Areas for focus include improved reporting mechanisms around cyberbullying, age verification tools and facilitating responsible web surfing.
The Child Creativity Track invites coders to create a tool or platform that enables children to create new online content such as a website, game, or video to be shared. Our ultimate goal is to unlock young people’s creativity.
Last year’s event
was a major success with hackers from across Europe developing tools to help measure network speeds and to improve global transparency tracking. You can check out last year’s winners of the transparency track’s game,
Beat the Censor
and
Internet Performance Analysis
.
Applications
are open until 16 April 2012 at noon CET. Good luck!
Posted by Marco Pancini, Senior Policy Manager, Brussels
Debating drugs on YouTube and Google+
Friday, March 16, 2012
Whether enabling voters to
interview their President
, or
connect underwater
to photograph the ocean floor,
Google+ Hangouts
are being used in amazing ways. Hangouts not only have the ability to connect people on opposite sides of the planet - they can also connect people on opposing sides of the social and political spectrum.
This week, we partnered with
Intelligence2
to launch
Versus
- our first in a new series of global policy debates using Google Hangouts and live streamed on YouTube. Our inaugural discussion asked whether
“It’s time to end the War on Drugs.”
Entrepreneur
+Richard Branson
, comedian
+Russell Brand
, Wikileaks founder
+Julian Assange
and the President of Columbia, participated. BBC newsreader and presenter
+Emily Maitlis
chaired.
Branson began by speaking on behalf of the motion “If my brother, or sister or children have a drug problem, I do not want them to go to prison. I want them to be helped.” Via Google+ Hangout, Brand agreed, saying that we need to “stop treating [addiction] as a crime as opposed to treating it as an illness.” He rejected the opposition argument that legalisation would increase drug consumption.
On the other side, former-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer wished former U.S. President Richard Nixon had never used the confusing term “war on drugs”. Spitzer called instead for a “nuanced” drug control policy, based on the range of tools already being used, that “evolves over time.” The former head of London’s police force, Lord Ian Blair, rubbished his opponents’ decriminalisation argument. “What they are proposing is probably an irreversible experiment, where the result could be complete catastrophe,” he said.
This Versus debate is just the first of many to be hosted on Google+ and streamed on YouTube in the coming months. We encourage all of you to visit the Versus Google+ page and have your say.
Posted by Anna Bateson, Director of Youtube Marketing, EMEA
Making our ads better for everyone
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
We believe that ads are useful and relevant information that can help you find what you’re looking for online—whether you’re comparing digital cameras or researching new cars. We also want you to be able to use Google and click on any ads that interest you with confidence. Just as we work hard to
make Gmail free of spam
and
malware
, we’re committed to enforcing rigorous standards for the ads that appear on Google and on our
partner sites
.
Like all other Internet companies, we’re fighting a war against a huge number of bad actors—from websites selling counterfeit goods and fraudulent tickets to underground international operations trying to spread malware and spyware. We must remain vigilant because scammers will always try to find new ways to abuse our systems. Given the number of searches on Google and the number of legitimate businesses who rely on this system to reach users, our work to remove bad ads must be precise and at scale.
We recently made some improvements to help ensure the ads you see comply with our strict policies, so we wanted to give you an overview of both our principles and these new technologies.
Ads that harm users are not allowed on Google
We’ve always approached our ads system with trust and safety in mind. Our
policies
cover a wide range of issues across the globe in every country in which we do business. For example, our ads policies don’t allow ads for illegal products such as
counterfeit goods
or harmful products such as
handguns or cigarettes
. We also don’t allow ads with misleading claims (“lose weight guaranteed!”), fraudulent work-at-home scams (
“get rich quick working from home!”
) or
unclear billing practices
.
How it all works
With billions of ads submitted to Google every year, we use a combination of sophisticated technology and manual review to detect and remove these sorts of ads. We spend millions of dollars building technical architecture and advanced machine learning models to fight this battle. These systems are designed to detect and remove ads for
malicious download sites
that contain
malware or a virus
before these ads could appear on Google. Our automated systems also scan and review landing pages—the websites that people are taken to once they click—as well as advertiser accounts. When potentially objectionable ads are flagged by our automated systems, our policy specialists review the ads, sites and accounts in detail and take action.
Improvements to detection systems
Here are some important improvements that we’ve recently made to our systems:
Improved “query watch” for counterfeit ads: While anyone can
report counterfeit ads
, we’ve widened our proactive monitoring of sensitive keywords and queries related to counterfeit goods which allows us to catch more counterfeit ads before they ever appear on Google
New “risk model” to detect violations: Our computer scanning depends on detailed risk models to determine whether a particular ad may violate our policies, and we recently upgraded our engineering system with a new “risk model” that is even more precise in detecting advertisers who violate our policies
Faster manual review process: Some ads need to be reviewed manually. To increase our response time in preventing ads from policy-violating advertisers, we sped up our internal processes and systems for manual reviews, enabling our specialists to be more precise and fast
Twenty-four hour response time: We aim to respond within 24 hours upon receiving a reliable complaint about an ad to ensure that we’re reviewing ads in a timely fashion
We also routinely review and update the areas which our policies cover. For example, we recently updated our
policy for ads related to short-term loans
in order to protect people from misleading claims. For short-term loans, we require advertisers to disclose fine-print details such as overall fees and annual percentage rate, as well as implications for late and non-payment.
Bad ads are declining
The numbers show we’re having success. In 2011, advertisers submitted billions of ads to Google, and of those, we disabled more than 130 million ads. And our systems continue to improve—in fact, in 2011 we reduced the percentage of bad ads by more than 50% compared with 2010. That means that our methods are working. We’re also catching the vast majority of these scam ads before they ever appear on Google or on any of our partner networks. For example, in 2011, we shut down approximately 150,000 accounts for attempting to advertise counterfeit goods, and more than 95% of these accounts were discovered through our own
detection efforts and risk models
.
Here’s David Baker, Engineering Director, who can explain more about how we detect and remove scam ads:
What you can do to help
If you’re an advertiser, we encourage you to review our
policies
that aim to protect users, so you can help keep the web safe. For everyone else, our
Good to Know site
has lots of advice, including tips for avoiding scams anywhere on the Internet. You can also report ads you believe to be fraudulent or in violation of our policies and, if needed, file a
complaint
with the appropriate agency as listed in our
Web Search Help Center
.
Online advertising is the commercial lifeblood of the web, so it’s vital that people can trust the ads on Google and the Internet overall. We’ll keep posting more information here about our efforts, and developments, in this area.
Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP, Engineering
Honoring and supporting Belgian Internet pioneers
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
It’s not everyday that a Prime Minister visits your office. Today, Googlers in our Brussels office were honoured by a visit from Belgium’s
Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo
to celebrate and revive the memory of two unique Belgian inventors and pioneers.
Decades before the creation of the World Wide Web,
Paul Otlet
and
Henri La Fontaine
envisaged a paper archival system of the world’s information. They built a giant international documentation centre called
Mundaneum
, with the goal of preserving peace by assembling knowledge and making it accessible to the entire world. For us at Google, this mission sounds familiar.
The two Mundaneum founders met in 1895 and created the modern library
universal decimal classification system
, building from John Dewey’s early work. When La Fontaine won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913 for his work as an activist in the international peace movement, he invested his winnings into the Mundaneum project, which was already underway. La Fontaine and Otlet collected 3-by-5 inch index cards to build a vast paper database which eventually contained some 16 million entries, covering everything from the history of hunting dogs to finance. The Belgian government granted them space in a government building and Otlet established a fee-based research service that allowed anyone in the world to submit a query via mail or telegraph. Inquiries poured in from all over the world.
World War II and the deaths of La Fontaine in 1943 and Otlet in 1944 slowed the project. Although many of these archives were stored away, some of them in the Brussels subway, volunteers kept the dream alive. In 1998, Belgium’s French community government revived the Mundaneum’s memory, bringing most of the archives to a beautiful Art Deco building in the city of Mons.
That brings us to today. The Prime Minister came to our office to announce a major partnership with the Mundaneum and the University of Ghent. Google will sponsor and partner in both the upcoming exhibition at the Mundaneum headquarters in Mons and a speaker series on Internet issues at the Mundaneum and the University of Ghent. Web pioneers
Louis Pouzin
and
Robert Cailliau
are already scheduled to speak.
Mundaneum will use Google to present and promote its conferences and exhibitions. It has also constructed an
online tour
of its dazzling premises. At today’s event in the Google Brussels office, Prime Minister Di Rupo said he hopes that the Google-Mundaneum cooperation becomes a “wonderful forum for experimentation.” Di Rupo himself is passionate about the Mundaneum; as mayor of Mons, he was instrumental in preserving the archive.
If information was important a century ago, it is even more important in the 21st century. In his remarks, the Prime Minister made the connection between the past and the future, and called on Belgium to embrace the digital economy. We showed him our recently-launched Belgian version of
Street View
. In Belgium, the internet accounts for 2.5% of GDP—and its contribution is expected to grow by more than 10% a year for the next five years. “If all our companies could take better advantages of these new technologies, its sure that our exports would get a boost,” Di Rupo said.
Our partnership with Mundaneum is part of a larger project to revive the memory of Europe’s computing pioneers. Europe played a crucial role in the invention of computers and the Internet, yet all too often has forgotten its innovators. Last year marked the 60th anniversary of
LEO
, the world’s first business computer, built by
J.Lyons & Co
, a leading British food manufacturer at the time that also ran a famous chain of tea shops. This past December, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the formal recognition of Ukraine’s
Sergey Lebedev’s pioneering MESM project
. We’ve also given our support to help restore
Bletchley Park
, the site of the U.K.’s wartime codebreaking and home of
Colossus
, the world’s first electronic programmable computer.
Now we’re moving to the heart of Europe. “This is a beautiful story between Google and us, which allows us to recognize the memory of the Mundaneum,” says the Mundaneum’s director Jean-Paul Deplus. For Google, it’s just as exciting to rediscover our own roots.
Posted by William Echikson, External Relations, Brussels
Syrian citizen journalists capture Netizen Prize
Monday, March 12, 2012
For the past year, Syrian citizen journalists have continued to collect and disseminate information on the uprising wracking their country.
Reporters Without Borders
tonight honored these courageous activists, awarding them the
2012 Netizen Prize
.
Jasmine a 27-year-old Syrian activist living in Canada, accepted the award in a ceremony in Paris on behalf of the
Local Coordination Committees
. She preferred to use a pseudonym to protect her family inside Syria. “The Netizen Prize proves that our voices were heard and that we succeeded in delivering the stories of millions of Syrians who are struggling on the ground to achieve what they have always dreamed - to live in freedom and dignity” she said.
This is third year in a row that Google has sponsored the Netizen Prize. Reporters Without Borders counts 200 cases of netizens arrested in 2011, up 30% over the previous year. Five were killed. This is the highest level of violence against netizens ever recorded. More than 120 are currently in jail for keeping us informed. Our own products are blocked in about 25 of 125 countries in which the company operates. “The Internet allows courageous individuals in Syria and elsewhere to tell their story to the world,” said Google France President Jean-Marc Tassetto. “The Netizen Prize and our work with Reporters Without Borders testifies to our belief that access to information will lead to greater freedom and greater social and economic development.”
Syrian journalists and bloggers are threatened and arrested by the government. International news organizations are, for the most part, kept out of the country. In their absence, the committees have become almost the only way to keep the world abreast of the violence wracking the country. They emerged spontaneously following the start of the Syrian revolution last March, bringing together human rights activists and local journalists, and now are found in most cities and towns across the country. “The Netizen Prize proves that our voices were heard," Jasmine said.
Informants on the ground send information and the committees confirm it from multiple sources. A third group translates the news into English and distributes it. News, videos and pictures are posted on the group's
Facebook page
, on its
photo blog
, and on the group’s own
website
. "There are millions of stories that made us cry, laugh, get mixed emotions since the uprising began,” Ola added. “We were talking to a mother of three detainees and she made us all promise each other that no matter what, we will never stop covering the events of our beloved Syria."
The award was distributed on
World Day Against Cyber Censorship
. In 2010, the Netizen Prize was awarded to
Iranian cyberfeminists
. Last year, it went to
Nawaat
, a group blog run by independent Tunisian bloggers. The nominees for the Netizen Award 2012 come from across the globe, ranging from Russia to Syria to Brazil and China. their geographic diversity a reflection of the growing impact of the Net.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Freedom of Expression at the United Nations
Friday, March 9, 2012
Sessions at the
United Nations Human Rights Council
-- the UN body in Geneva that holds countries to account for their international obligations -- are almost always predictable affairs. Lots of diplomats talking about the same problems year after year. But the UN last week devoted a special session for the first time to free expression on the Internet, and we at Google were pleased to be one of the first private corporations invited to participate in such an official UN event.
The moment signaled how the international community is waking up to the importance of Internet freedom. The UN council’s auditorium was packed with almost 300 people. More than 50 ambassadors and delegates raised their hands to speak. Officials said they had rarely seen so many requests. Obviously, the stakes are high.
Some delegations outlined the limits on free expression and openness that many countries would like to impose. Some even tried to quash the session entirely through procedural means. The critics emphasized the dangers of the Net to promote terrorism, violence, or religious hatred, proposing that governments should be able to limit freedom by deciding how much opposition "legitimate authorities" should face from their citizens.
But many others - the majority, in fact - spoke up in favor of an open Internet where information flows freely. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, many feared the evils in books, argued
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt
, whose country was the primary sponsor of the session. The same rules that govern freedom of expression on paper or the television airwaves should apply online, he insisted.
For Google, this UN session represented an opportunity to encourage governments to protect free expression online by disclosing when and why they make requests to companies to remove content or turn over information about users. We publish our own
Transparency Report
. This way, government/citizens can evaluate whether or not laws that may be well intentioned are enhancing/eroding freedoms. But our Report represents at best only a partial view. It would be much better if governments would do this themselves for their entire countries.
This session offered a critical look at the issues facing countries around the world as we debate the future of protecting and promoting the free flow of information online. The stakes are huge and all those who care about keeping the Internet open and free must come together to press the cause.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Remembering Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer
Thursday, March 8, 2012
It’s no secret we have a
special fondness for Bletchley Park
. The pioneering work carried out there didn’t just crack codes—it laid the foundations for the computer age.
Today, we’d like to pay homage to a lesser-known contributor—
Tommy Flowers
. Bletchley Park’s breakthroughs were the product of theoretical mathematical brilliance combined with dazzling feats of engineering—none more so than Flowers’ creation of
Colossus
, the world’s first programmable, electronic computer.
Photo of Dr. Thomas “Tommy” Flowers. Reproduced with kind permission of the Flowers family
By 1942 the hardest task facing Bletchley Park’s wartime codebreakers was deciphering messages encrypted by
Lorenz
, used by Germany for their most top-secret communications. Initially Lorenz messages were broken by hand, using ingenious but time-consuming techniques. To speed things up, it was decided to build a machine to automate parts of the decoding process. This part-mechanical, part-electronic device was called
Heath Robinson
, but although it helped, it was unreliable and still too slow.
Tommy Flowers was an expert in the use of
relays
and
thermionic valves
for switching, thanks to his research developing telephone systems. Initially, he was summoned to Bletchley Park to help improve Heath Robinson, but his concerns with its design were so great he came up with an entirely new solution—an electronic machine, later christened Colossus.
When Flowers proposed the idea for Colossus in February 1943, Bletchley Park management feared that, with around 1,600 thermionic valves, it would be unreliable. Drawing on his pre-war research, Flowers was eventually able to persuade them otherwise, with proof that valves were reliable provided the machine they were used in was never turned off. Despite this, however, Bletchley Park’s experts were still skeptical that a new machine could be ready quickly enough and declined to pursue it further.
Fortunately Flowers was undeterred, and convinced the
U.K.’s Post Office research centre
at Dollis Hill in London to approve the project instead. Working around the clock, and partially funding it out of his own pocket, Flowers and his team completed a prototype Colossus in just 10 months.
Photo of the rebuilt Colossus which you can visit at
The National Museum of Computing
in the U.K.
Reproduced with kind permission of The National Museum of Computing.
The first Colossus came into operation at Bletchley Park in January 1944. It exceeded all expectations and was able to derive many of the Lorenz settings for each message within a few hours, compared to weeks previously. This was followed in June 1944 by a 2,400-valve Mark 2 version which was even more powerful, and which provided vital information to aid the D-Day landings. By the end of the war there were 10 Colossus computers at Bletchley Park working 24/7.
Once war was over, all mention of Colossus was forbidden by the
Official Secrets Act
. Eight of the machines were dismantled, while the remaining two were sent to London where they purportedly were used for intelligence purposes until 1960. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that Colossus could begin to claim its rightful crown at the forefront of computing history.
Tommy Flowers passed away in 1998, but we were privileged recently to catch up with some on his team who helped build and maintain Colossus.
This week heralds the opening of a
new gallery
dedicated to Colossus at the U.K.’s
National Museum of Computing
, based at Bletchley Park. The rebuilt Colossus is on show, and over the coming weeks it will be joined by interactive exhibits and displays. Bletchley Park is less than an hour from Central London, and makes a fitting pilgrimage for anyone interested in computing.
Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
)
Lights, camera, action
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Film-making among young people has never been more popular, and the great thing about the internet is that you no longer need to be a movie mogul to reach a global audience. These days the tools to shoot, edit and distribute your work are available to just about everyone.
YouTube has been working with two organisations in the UK who do great work to help develop the next generation of film industry talent. At the
First Light Awards
, held this week at the
British Film Institute
in London, we supported a brand new Digital Innovation Award. It gives film-makers aged 18-25 from all backgrounds the chance to win £1,000 towards their next film project. Winner Kristina Yee’s film entitled “Witch” is a beautiful and innovative piece of animation.
Ben Burdock, only 22, from London was a runner up with his film No Escape.
The other runner up was Horoscope Crazy, by 19-year old Luc Eisenbarth from Brighton and Hove.
We also sponsored the National Film and Television School’s Showcase at the BFI Southbank. It showcases students’ animation, documentary, fiction and entertainment work to the industry. Films from last year’s edition went on to win an
Oscar nomination
and a
BAFTA award
. Agents have already been swooping on this year’s talent.
Our partnership with the school includes a film clinic aimed at helping amateur film-makers tell their stories to a broader audience and a business module in which students can learn about new digital distribution strategies and ways to make money from their work online.
YouTube is all about helping the next generation of creative stars to innovate and thrive online. We now have more than 30,000 partners making money from their work and we look forward to seeing this week’s winners and exhibitors get their names up in lights.
Posted by Anna Bateson, Director of YouTube Marketing, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Celebrating Courageous Citizen Journalism
Monday, March 5, 2012
Each year on
World Day Against Cyber Censorship
, Google and
Reporters Without Borders
join together to celebrate and hand out a prize for defending online freedom. This year, we’ll be gathering in Paris on March 12 to debate the issue of cyberfreedom and name our annual
Netizen of the Year
.
The 2012 nominees come from around the globe, from Russia to Syria to Brazil, China and beyond. Their geographic diversity a reflection of the growing impact of the Net. Once connected, each one of us is now able to share our thoughts and observations with the world.
Forty countries engage in active censorship, up from four a decade ago. Google products are blocked in about 25 of 125 countries in which we operate.
Reporters Without Borders inaugurated the annual World Day against Cyber Censorship in 2008, with the aim of protecting a single Internet, free, and accessible to all. Google joined in 2010 to sponsor the Netizen of the Year award, which recognises a user, or a blogger dissident who became famous for his work in defence of freedom of expression on the Net. An independent jury of press experts chooses the winner who receives prize money of EUR 2,500.
In 2010, the Netizen Prize was awarded to
Iranian cyberfeminists
. Last year, it went to
Nawaat
, a group blog run by independent Tunisian bloggers. The nominees for the Netizen Award 2012 are:
Leonardo Sakamoto, Brazil
: Journalist and professor, Sakamoto covered East Timor's war of independence and Angola's civil war. On his blog, he investigates the plight of Indian minorities in the Amazon.
Wukan, China
: The village of Wukan (13,000 inhabitants) in Southern China was the scene of a violent revolt last December. Village inhabitants used the Internet and social network Weibo to mobilise public opinion.
Maikel Nabil Sanad, Egyp
t: This blogger denounced abuses by the army during the popular protests of spring 2011 and was imprisoned in post-revolutionary Egypt.
Grigory Melkonyants, Russia
: Melkonyant’s
KartaNarusheniy.ru
publishes an interactive map illustrating irregularities in Russian election campaigns. It allows users to locate and report fraud by posting photos, videos or audio recordings.
Media Centers Local Coordinating Committee, Syria
: Groups of citizen journalists collect and disseminate, in real time, information and images of Syria's uprising.
Paulus Le Van Son, Vietnam
: Le Van Son is a 26-year old blogger covers religious and human rights issues. After he reported on anti-Chinese protests and police violence, he was arrested on August 3, 2011, in Hanoi.
We look forward to seeing you in Paris on March 12 to celebrate cyberfreedom and learn the name of the winner.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Five billion voices - Big Tent comes to Madrid
Thursday, March 1, 2012
This week Spain hosted the world's biggest
mobile phone conference
. Today, more and more people are accessing the internet through their phones and other mobile devices. So this seemed a good moment to debate how the world will change when huge numbers of people get online, many for the first time.
The theme of our latest Big Tent event in Madrid was five billion voices: the internet and free expression.
Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt spoke of the life-changing potential of bringing tablets and low cost computers to billions of people in the developing world. At the same time, he warned about a construction of a digital caste system - where the world’s digital elites move ever further ahead through access to highest quality technology.
Another danger is government censorship. Schmidt warned that today more than 40 governments around the world seek to deny their citizens access to the internet. In the debate that followed, the famous Spanish journalist, Malén Aznárez, President of the Spanish office of
Reporteros sin Fronteras
, suggested that we were underestimating the threat. Tthe number of governments now censoring the internet has risen to 60, Aznárez said, adding that authoritarian regimes are learning fast how to block and filter content.
Subjects covered in the course of the lunchtime event included the proposed US Stop Online Piracy Act, Child Safety online, and the European Commission's proposed Right to be Forgotten.
Secretary of State for Telecoms and the Information Society, Víctor Calvo-Sotelo Ibáñez-Martín, closed with a speech outlining the new Spanish government’s commitment both to the digital economy and to online government transparency.
This was the latest of a series of Big Tent events aimed at bringing together diverse points of view on the hot issues relating to the internet and society. So far we’ve held them in
London
,
Berlin
and the
Hague
. We’ll be continuing the debate on a range of issues - free expression, privacy, copyright, innovation and more - over the coming months all around the world. And coming soon, we’ll be launching the Big Tent YouTube channel so you can join in the debate, wherever you live.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director, External Relation, EMEA
Google's new privacy policy
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
Our
updated Privacy Policy
takes effect today, March 1. As you use our products one thing will be clear: it’s the same Google experience that you’re used to, with the same controls.
And because we’re making these changes, over time we’ll be able to improve our products in ways that help our users get the most from the web.
While we’ve undertaken the most extensive user education campaign in our history to explain the coming changes, we know there has been a fair amount of chatter and confusion.
Here are a few important points to bear in mind:
Our privacy policy is now much easier to understand.
We’ve included the key parts from more than 60 product-specific notices into our main Google Privacy Policy—so there’s no longer any need to be your own mini search engine if you want to work out what’s going on. Our Privacy Policy now explains, for the vast majority of our services, what data we’re collecting and how we may use it, in plain language.
Our privacy policy will enable us to build a better, more intuitive user experience across Google for signed-in users.
If you’re signed in to Google, you expect our products to work really beautifully together. For example, if you’re working on Google Docs and you want to share it with someone on Gmail, you want their email right there ready to use. Our privacy policies have always allowed us to combine information from different products with your account—effectively using your data to provide you with a better service. However, we’ve been restricted in our ability to combine your YouTube and Search histories with other information in your account. Our new Privacy Policy gets rid of those inconsistencies so we can make more of your information available to you when using Google.
So in the future, if you do frequent searches for Jamie Oliver, we could recommend Jamie Oliver videos when you’re looking for recipes on YouTube—or we might suggest ads for his cookbooks when you’re on other Google properties.
Our privacy controls aren’t changing.
The new policy doesn’t change any existing privacy settings or how any personal information is shared outside of Google. We aren’t collecting any new or additional information about users. We won’t be selling your personal data. And we will continue to employ industry-leading security to keep your information safe.
If you don’t think information sharing will improve your experience, you can use our privacy tools [
link
] to do things like edit or turn off your search history [
link
] and YouTube history [
link
], control [
link
] the way Google tailors ads to your interests and browse the web “incognito” using Chrome [
link
]. You can use services like Search, Maps and YouTube if you are not signed in. You can even separate your information into different accounts, since we don’t combine personal information across them. And we’re committed to
data liberation
, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can.
We’ll continue to look for ways to make it simpler for you to understand and control how we use the information you entrust to us. We build Google for you, and we think these changes will make our services even better.
Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering
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