Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Getting social in the Swedish countryside
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Have you heard of a summer camp for the social web? Neither had we. So when Google was invited to join the Sweden Social Web Camp 2012, we couldn’t resist.
Sweden Social Web Camp
started out as an online community where people with different backgrounds and experiences shared a passion for the web. After a couple of years they decided to meet face-to-face and ironically chose the most offline spot imaginable - the small island of
Tjaro
in the archipelago of southern Sweden.
This year's event brings together more than 500 Internet evangelists, opinion leaders, social media frontrunners, bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs and general web lovers. It's all about sharing ideas and initiating discussions on topics ranging from the challenges of the web and the future media landscape to technical developments and hands-on engineering challenges. There are no big keynote speeches or stages. Instead, anyone can invite participants to a presentation, discussion, or creative workshop on any topic related to the web. The sessions take place from early morning by the breakfast in the barn until late night by the campfire.
Besides listening and learning from some great talks and discussions, we took the opportunity to present the
latest features of Google+
and share some of our thoughts on the social web. We also brought the event to all of the people who were not lucky enough to be on site by broadcasting some of the sessions live via Hangouts On Air on the Sweden Social Web Camp website and
Google+
Page. Thanks to everyone who joined in!
We hope Social Web Camps will spread across Europe - bringing the passion of online communities together in the real world!
Posted by Emma Stjernlof, Google Communication Team Nordics
Big Tent expands to Google+
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Big Tent launched 18 months ago as a one-day event near London, bringing together speakers with diverse points of view to debate some of the hot issues relating to the Internet and society. Since then, we’ve taken the idea across the globe, holding events in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and America. We’ve also opened up the discussion to everybody through our
YouTube channel
- and from this week - on
Google+
.
Our new G+ page already features some interesting entries. We’ve posted Kirby Ferguson’s intriguing
“Everything is a Remix” video
, news about a new art book with images combed from Street View and the story of a crowdsourced
homicide reporting platform
from Washington, DC.
Everything is a Remix Part 1
from
Kirby Ferguson
on
Vimeo
.
Google+ will help bring together different voices who might not be able to travel and participate in our regular events. Through the video Hangout tool, we’re planning a series of guest video posts from inspiring thinkers on some of the key issues facing the Internet and society.
Our Big Tent header is "Many points of view, one amazing Internet." Please check it out and consider circling the page and joining in on the conversation.
Posted by Jon Steinberg, External Relations
Geeks gather for Campus Party in Berlin
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Among geeks, the
Campus Party
is the equivalent of Woodstock, a festival celebrating innovators and entrepreneurs. Previous editions took place in Latin and North America. Now the Campus Party is coming for the first time to Europe, this week taking over the recently closed and abandoned Tempelhof Airport in Berlin.
Google is proud to support and participate. Our Google booth will present its new contest for founders,
“Gruender-Garage,”
as well as hosting a
Startup Weekend
where startup enthusiasts work on their ideas for 54 hours supported by coaches and experts.
From August 22 to 24, we will support a Chrome Hackathon, “Your Data, Your Rules!”, aimed at creating new extensions to increase user privacy. Prizes will be announced at the booth on August 24 at 8 pm. The winners will be invited to present their findings to our Munich-based Chrome team and present their innovations at the next edition of our
Big Tent on Privacy
.
Berlin is an appropriate setting for this spirited geek gathering. While the
Economist
recently described in vivid detail the German capital’s thriving startup culture, the magazine also pointed out the factors that continue to hold back German entrepreneurs, such as their difficulty raising risk capital, hiring top flight managers, and overcoming regulation. Simon Hampton, Google’s Director Public Policy for the European Unionm will discuss these issues on Thursday at the Campus Party on a panel titled the
“GeekEconomy”
.
Recent studies show that the Internet represents a giant opportunity for German business. A a Cologne-based research firm
estimated
that German entrepreneurs have founded 28,000 new businesses using online services from Google and other web companies. These new businesses have created nearly 100,000 new jobs and generated EUR8.6 billion in annual sales.
The Berlin Campus Party is set to attract thousands of ambitious digital pioneers for its talks, workshops, competitions and hackathons. We hope it will spark a new generation of European innovators.
Posted by Sandro Gianella, Google Policy Team Berlin
Updating Google's voice in Europe
Monday, August 20, 2012
Today, this blog is making a small but significant change to its name. The Google European Public Policy Blog is becoming the Google Europe Blog.
When we first launched this blog four years ago, the idea was to focus on Brussels-based European Union policy issues. Our horizons and subject matter have since expanded. Instead of dealing just with policy we began blogging on the revival of Internet history projects, free expression, cultural and economic outreach, and other Google and YouTube activities.
We publish on average three posts weekly, with readership averaging around 60,000 a week. Initially, most of our readers came from the United States. Today we have fast-growing numbers of readers in the UK, France, Belgium and Germany.
Our goal has become become a one-shot destination of choice for Google in Europe. The new Google Europe Blog name reflects this ambition.
Posted by William Echikson, External Relations
Improving Google Patents with the European Patent Office
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Cross-posted from the
Google Research Blog
At Google, we're constantly trying to make important collections of information more useful to the world. Since 2006, we’ve let people discover, search, and read United States patents online. Starting this week, you can do the same for the millions of ideas that have been submitted to the European Patent Office, such as
this one
.
Typically, patents are granted only if an invention is new and not obvious. To explain why an invention is new, inventors will usually cite prior art such as earlier patent applications or journal articles. Determining the novelty of a patent can be difficult, requiring a laborious search through many sources, and so we’ve built a Prior Art Finder to make this process easier. With a single click, it searches multiple sources for related content that existed at the time the patent was filed.
Patent pages now feature a “Find prior art” button that instantly pulls together information relevant to the patent application.
The Prior Art Finder identifies key phrases from the text of the patent, combines them into a search query, and displays relevant results from Google Patents, Google Scholar, Google Books, and the rest of the web. You’ll start to see the blue “Find prior art” button on individual patent pages starting today.
Our hope is that this tool will give patent searchers another way to discover information relevant to a patent application, supplementing the search techniques they use today. We’ll be refining and extending the Prior Art Finder as we develop a better understanding of how to analyze patent claims and how to integrate the results into the workflow of patent searchers.
These are small steps toward making this collection of important but complex documents better understood. Sometimes language can be a barrier to understanding, which is why earlier this year we
released an update to Google Translate
that incorporates the European Patent Office’s parallel patent texts, allowing the EPO to provide translation between English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Swedish, with more languages scheduled for the future. Details are
here
.
And with the help of the United States Patent & Trademark Office, we’ve continued to add to
our repository of USPTO bulk data
, making it easier for researchers and law firms to analyze the entire corpus of US patents. More to come!
Posted by Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager
Enjoy our summer of music on YouTube
Monday, August 13, 2012
Summer means music, particularly here in Europe, and that is especially true this summer on YouTube. Last weekend, YouTube hosted a livestream of
Sziget 2012
, winner of “Best European Major Festival award” from Budapest and this coming weekend Lowlands 2012 will be streamed live from the Netherlands, featuring acts like Bloc Party, The Black Keys and Two Door Cinema Club.
In addition to Sziget and Lowlands, music fans on YouTube have been able to watch some of the world’s best and biggest music festivals this summer, including
Tomorrowland
,
San Miguel Primavera Sound
,
Sónar
,
Rock in Rio
,
EXIT
,
INmusic
,
Heineken Open’er Festival
,
Bonnaroo
and
Lollapalooza
.
Music represents a key component of YouTube’s success. Musicians and bands are no longer restricted by the number of people they can get through the turnstiles, but can play to a global audience.
In tough economic times, many people can’t always afford to attend festivals in person. YouTube helps them experience the event - for free (and without queues or mud). We know viewers enjoy them -- festivals like Lollapalooza have seen viewers spend an average 44 minutes watching the show. Tomorrowland had over 600,000 comments posted on the channel through a custom conversation gadget, highlighting just how engaged fans were during the stream.
Much more is scheduled for the rest of the summer and beyond - so tune in and enjoy!
Posted by Patrick Walker, Senior Director, YouTube Music Partnerships
RISE to the computer science education challenge
Friday, August 3, 2012
Our business at Google is rooted in STEM education - science, technology, engineering and math - so we’re passionate about encouraging organizations that are expanding access to these fields. The annual Google
Roots in Science and Engineering
(RISE) program supports organizations running innovative STEM and computer science enrichment programs for K-12 and university students around the world.
Applications for the 2013 Awards are now open.
RISE promotes primary and secondary school education initiatives. Winners receive grants ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 USD. When we say around the world, we mean it. RISE Awards are open to applicants in six continents and 243 countries. All eligible nations are listed
here
. This year’s honorees include a
Danish IT camp
for girls, a
UK student team
producing a robot, to after-school programs that have students configuring cluster computers in the United States.
We believe it is our duty to support students who have the uncanny ability to create the technology they consume. Last
August
, our executive chairman Eric Schmidt lamented the sorry state of computer science education in UK schools. In a recent follow-up
speech
at London’s Science Museum, he explained, “Put simply, technology breakthroughs can’t happen without the scientists and engineers to make them. The challenge that society faces is to equip enough people, with the right skills and mindset and to get them to work on the most important problems.”
Show us what you can do to get students excited about STEM and computer science.
Submit your application
before September 30th, 2012. Winners will be announced by January 2013.
Posted by Niall Byrne, Pre-university Education Outreach Specialist
Stimulating “garage-style” innovation in Germany
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Germany has been home to many groundbreaking innovators --
Gottlieb Daimler
,
Werner von Siemens
, and
Heinz Nixdorf
to name but a few. But those great entrepreneurs launched their business long before the Internet. As the Economist recently
reported
, Germany and the rest of Europe are struggling to breed digital entrepreneurs. “Most sources of capital will shun them,” the magazine wrote. “Regulations will shackle them. And when they fail, as most are sure to do, they will not be allowed just to dust themselves off and start all over again.”
Because we believe the Internet must help overcome these obstacles, we are launching a new competition for digital entrepreneurs. Its called the “Gruender-Garage.” Unlike many startup contests which focus exclusively on tech,
Gruender Garage
is aimed at early-stage entrepreneurs in any field. Having a great idea you can 'release early and iterate' will count for more than a polished business model when it comes to judging. Winners will be named in October, and Google will match successfully fundraised competition ideas until a prize pot of EUR 150,000 is depleted.
Our partners in this unique project include the
Entrepreneurship Foundation
and
Indiegogo
.
Berlin-based Entrepreneurship Foundation will run the contest’s initial learning phase. provide the online training materials. Its founder Professor Guenter Faltin is the author of the best-selling book “Head beats Capital” (
Kopf schlägt Kapital
), that gives advice to early-stage founders. He and his team organize an annual entrepreneurship summit in Berlin, where the winners of the Garage-contest will be announced.
After the learning phase, the contest will focus on funding. Candidates will seek their own capital through Indiegogo, the world's largest platform and pioneer in crowdfunding. Gruender-Garage represents Indiegogo's first localised platform developed for the European market.
Recession and the euro crisis means Germany and the rest of Europe need to encourage new business creation. As many big European companies shed staff, startups - born in a garage or somewhere else - can pick up much of the slack.
Posted by Max Senges and Ralf Bremer, Google Berlin
Journey to Venice: finalists named for YouTube contest
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Today, we are one step closer to finding the world’s next great storyteller. Ten finalists remain from more than 15,000 filmmakers who entered
Your Film Festival
. Each hopes to win $500,000 to produce new content with actor
Michael Fassbender
and director
Ridley Scott
.
During the past month, three million people watched, shared and voted for their favorite film on Your Film Festival. Among the ten finalists is Spain's David Victori Blaya for his short "The Guilt."
Two finalists come from the Middle East, Ramy El-Gabry's "The Time" and Lebanon's Niam's Itani's "Super.Full."
Find all the finalists below:
88:88
, Joey Ciccoline & Sean Wilson (USA)
Bat Eyes
, Damien Power (Australia)
Cine Rincao
, Fernando Grostein Andrade & Fernanda Fernandes (Brazil)
The Drought
, Kevin Slack (USA)
El General
, Diego Pino Zamora (Bolivia)
The Guilt
, David Victori Blaya (Spain)
North Atlantic
, Bernardo Nascimento (United Kingdom)
Super.Full
., Niam Itani (Lebanon)
Scruples
, Adrian Powers (Australia)
This Time
, Ramy EL-Gabry (Egypt)
The finalists will soon travel to Italy where to screen their short films at the historic
Venice Film Festival
. A jury led by director Scott and actor Fassbinder will pick the grand prize winner at a special ceremony on September 2. He or she will be able to pitch a new project idea to Scott’s production team. As part of their journey to Venice, Emirates has invited the filmmakers to stopover in Dubai for a series of events celebrating their achievement.
Join these filmmakers as they travel to Venice and stay tuned to the
Your Film Festival channel
where we’ll take you behind the scenes, tell you more about the finalists, provide special edition
movie posters
, and of course, unveil the winner.
Posted by Gareth Evans, YouTube, 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
Getting social in the Swedish countryside
Big Tent expands to Google+
Geeks gather for Campus Party in Berlin
Updating Google's voice in Europe
Improving Google Patents with the European Patent ...
Enjoy our summer of music on YouTube
RISE to the computer science education challenge
Stimulating “garage-style” innovation in Germany
Journey to Venice: finalists named for YouTube con...
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
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
.
