Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Google learns to speak French and German
Friday, November 29, 2013
“How many calories are there in a banana?”
From now on, you can speak such queries into a phone or tablet and receive a quick response — eighty-nine calories in English,
quatre-vingt-neuf
if you ask in French, or
neunundachtzig kalorien
in German. We’ve been on tour in recent weeks throughout Europe, from London to Paris and Hamburg, with our Google House, demonstrating our vision of the connected present. The star of the show was our most advanced
Voice Search
, which just has arrived in the UK, France and Germany.
In the kitchen, Voice Search can help you find just the right recipe — even if your hands are covered in flour. By talking to their smart device, our chefs in the Google House searched for recipes, asked for weight and temperature conversions, which we will speak right back, and even set a countdown timer on their device to remind them to take their lemon madeleines out of the oven.
Jamie and Ben from
Sorted Food
, YouTube’s largest cooking channel in Europe, showed us how Voice Search can help around the kitchen
We can also provide smart reminders, where you can asked to be notified when you're near the location for that particular task, such as
“Remind me to pick up sugar next time I’m at Sainsburys.”
In the living room, voice can help you discover music, videos, photos, movies and other services, while the teen’s bedroom we showed how school kids could use use Voice Search to help with homework tasks —
“Show me paintings by Picasso”
pulls up a carousel of
Pablo Picasso’s
works right on the search page which can easily be scrolled through.
Google can help kids and adults alike with quick and easy answers
What makes the Voice Search extra-special is its ability to understand the context of a question. For example:
Ask
“How old is David Beckham?”
and then follow up with the question
“And who is his wife?”
, and Google knows you mean
David Beckham’s wife
.
Ask “
What is the weather like in Liverpool?,”
you can follow-up with “
How long does it take to drive there?”
This makes searching by voice like a real-life conversation. Fast and accurate voice recognition technology — available on Android and on the Google Search app on iPhone — enables us to understand exactly what you’re saying and provide speedy responses by tapping the microphone icon. For example,
“Is British Airways flight 248 on time?”
The words appear as you speak, you get your answer immediately and—if it’s short and quick, like the status and departure time of your flight—we tell you the answer aloud.
By the time a guest was ready to leave Google House, he or she was encouraged to ask a simple question:
“How do I get home?”
We came up with the answer — and could even tell you when you need to leave depending on the traffic on your route.
Posted by Michael Valvo, Head of Product Communications, London
Visiting the Vatican’s ancient catacombs
Thursday, November 28, 2013
They date back almost 2000 years, to the roots of the Christianity, and are dug deep into the ground by the Romans. Now, thanks to Google Maps, anyone can take a
virtual visit
of the early Christian burial sites in the ancient
Priscilla
catacombs and
Dino Compagni
catacombs.
View Larger Map
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi
, president of the Pontifical Commission of Culture and of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, which oversaw the catacombs restoration, first suggested the project to us in 2011. During the inauguration of the revamped museum of the Catacombs of Priscilla, the Cardinal said our project closed “the gap” between “two extremes, remote antiquity and today’s contemporary world.”
What our ancestors created is astounding. Restorers uncovered vivid late fourth-century frescoes depicting Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and Saints Peter and Paul accompanying Christians into the afterlife. Jesus’ face resembles portraits of the Emperor Constantine, who legalized Christian worship in 313. Users of Google Maps can now click the “see-inside” option for the catacombs, which allows them to move virtually through the narrow corridors tunneled out of soft tufa stone, and to see high-resolution images of the interiors from practically every angle.
View Larger Map
The artwork has spurred a fascinating debate. One fresco features a group of women celebrating a banquet and another shows a woman, dressed in robe and praying. Advocates for the ordination of women say it bolsters their assertions that women served as priests in the early church. But Fabrizio Bisconti, the superintendent of the Vatican's sacred archaeology commission, has said the women weren't celebrating Mass.
Whatever the truth, we are happy to contribute to art and culture. As this exciting project demonstrates, the Internet provides an extraordinary resource to make masterpieces available all around the world, or even under-earth!
Posted by Giorgia Abeltino, Google Senior Policy Counsel, Rome
Boosting the UK's creative and cultural industries
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
What can a 22 year old on YouTube teach the the
Royal Shakespeare Company
about entertaining audiences? Quite a lot, it turns out, when the YouTubers are stars like
Danisnotonfire
, who has had a 90% growth in traffic in the last year, or
Michael Stevens
, who is fast approaching 500 million views for his channel
VSauce
.
More than 300 British leaders from the arts, creative and cultural sector packed our Central St. Giles office in London to learn from each other - and from some of the new YouTube upstarts - how best to reach and entertain a global audience online. Together with us, the
Arts Council
,
Creative England
,
Culture24
and the
European Creative Industries Alliance
organized the
two day celebration
. On the the first day, we focused on access to finance, and on the second, seizing online opportunities.
Two recurring big themes emerged:
Personality
- Art galleries and museums must engage online in a way that has authenticity, character and even intimacy. One great example was from
Whitechapel Gallery
, where young people at the gallery have set up their own blog,
Duchamp and Sons
, and
twitter feed
to talk about arts and their gallery in their own voice
Collaboration
- The
British Postal Museum
and
Imperial War Museum
explained how our own
Cultural Institute
online exhibitions has helped them not only reach new audiences but enabled collaboration with other institutions.
Every seat was taken for the two-day celebration
All too often, content industries have rushed to blame the Internet for hurting culture. It certainly is bringing change - but as this event shows, it also presents great opportunities for both traditional and new players.
Posted by Theo Bertram, Policy Manager, Google UK
Internet safety comes to the European Parliament
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
It was a cool way to launch a new book on an important subject. Teenagers and teachers from all over Europe recently converged at the European Parliament in Brussels to promote the educational handbook
The Web we Want
. The handbook for 13-16 year olds, developed by
European Schoolnet
in partnership with
Liberty Global
and us, outlines how teenagers can benefit from the web while staying safe. Click
here
to download.
For now, the book is only available in English. In 2014, our goal is to make the handbook available in eight additional languages.
The new handbook is just the latest of our educational materials. The
YouTube Digital Citizenship
Curriculum helps high school teachers educate their students on how to flag dangerous content. Classes from the
Google Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum
identify online tricks and scams. In Germany we’ve partnered with local NGO`s to publish a set of lesson plans to address topics like online reputation. The 250-page
curriculum
is available for free.
For updates on our efforts to support kids, students, teachers and parents exploring the web in a safe and confident way make sure to check our
education resources
and
Good to Know
page.
Posted by Sabine Frank, Media Literacy Counsel, Berlin
Moving Forward
Monday, November 25, 2013
For the past two years we’ve worked closely with the European Commission to settle their inquiry into our search and advertising businesses. We’ve put a lot of effort into addressing the Commission’s concerns, and earlier this year, after a good bit of back-and-forth with the Commission, we proposed a package of measures that the Commission felt comfortable testing in the marketplace.
The Commission subsequently asked us to go even further, including giving rival sites much more visibility in our search results. (The Commission has since
confirmed
that it seeks to promote visibility rather than to mandate where consumers click.) We addressed these requests with our revised offer, which broadens the scope of our offer and provides links to rival sites even more prominently in our search results. Specifically:
We will give links to rival sites much more real estate and visibility
We will include rival sites’ logos with these links for even greater prominence
We will accompany these links with dynamic text from rivals providing more information about their sites
This news was widely reported in the press and you can see screenshots of these proposed links
here
.
As European Commission Vice President
Joaquin Almunia
said in a recent
speech
, the issue is choice for consumers. We've worked closely with a knowledgeable and professional team at the Commission to deliver just that. Users will be presented with alternative specialized search options right in the middle of some of the most valuable and prominent space on our search page. It is hard to see how anybody could reasonably claim that this will not offer users choice.
These weren’t easy concessions to make. Within Google, many asked why we would agree to such unprecedented and far-reaching changes to our continuously evolving search results. But we didn’t want to spend a decade fighting over these issues. We wanted to move forward, letting our engineers continue to do what they do best: building products that help users in their everyday lives.
Of course, we will never satisfy some critics, especially those with a professional and financial interest in impeding a successful competitor rather than helping users. As
Upton Sinclair
once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Some in the anti-Google camp have lobbied for remedies that would help themselves at a cost to consumers. Others have worked to prolong the process to keep us in regulatory limbo, filing new complaints timed to disrupt our settlement negotiations. These complainants continue to recycle claims with no basis in law or fact, while failing to present constructive or realistic suggestions that would benefit consumers.
We’ve gone the extra mile to come up with a settlement that will resolve the Commission’s expressed concerns and allow everyone to focus on competing on the merits and creating innovative new services for consumers. We look forward to bringing this matter to a sound and reasonable conclusion.
Posted by Kent Walker, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
Celebrating Spain’s Influence on the United States
Monday, November 25, 2013
Spaniards were among the first explorers to reach the coasts of the future United States, leaving a deep legacy on our culture, cuisine and customs, from Florida to California. We’re celebrating this influence this year in
seven exciting new exhibitions
on our
Cultural Institute platform
.
Spain’s
Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo
and
Felipe, Prince of Asturias
, along with about 80 Spanish businessmen and officials, recently visited the Google headquarters in California to launch the exhibitions with our CEO Larry Page. The exhibits are timed to commemorate the the 500th anniversary of
Juan Ponce de León
landing in Florida and Vasco Nuñez de Balboa discovery of the the Pacific Ocean as well as the 300th anniversary of the birthday of
Father Junipero Serra
, who founded the first Catholic missions in California.
The exhibitions, curated by a historian appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tell the story of how the Spanish explorers arrived in America and what they did there in more than three centuries. In addition to Florida, Spaniards settled the entire U.S. Southwest: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. They built the region’s first cities and their missions, fortifications, and ranches left an indeliable mark on architecture. They build important roads. They brought new livestock and agricultural techniques. They even played a role in winning independence from the British.
Explore the Spanish legacy in the United States, and enjoy an example of how heritage and the Internet, old and new, can be combined to increase our understanding.
Posted by Barbara Navarro, Director, Public Policy, Madrid
Slovakia’s Eagle flies high with the Internet
Friday, November 22, 2013
It has been an audacious flight, monitored and protected by the Internet. Slovakia’s Lesser Spotted Eagle risked extinction until the
Slovak Ministry of Environment
and the
Tatra National Park
launched an ambitious preservation project. Under the seven year old program, young eagles are fitted with transmitters and systematically monitored. This year, we partnered with the Ministry and the National park, offering Google Earth to track an eagle named "Arnold" in an attempt to keep him safe on his its migration route to South Africa.
So far,
four million views
have been recorded tracking Arnold’s path south into Africa. National television broadcasts weekly updates headlined “Follow the Slovak Eagle.” Earlier this month, the bird vanished near the Kundelungu National Park in Congo. Arnold’s followers became increasingly worried that something bad had happened to him. But after 14 days of silence, Arnold’s transmitter signal reappeared
this week
from Zambia.
In less than a decade, the preservation project has managed to save 15 Lesser Spotted Eagles and stabilize their total population in Slovakia. Baby eaglets are collected from nests, carefully picked out in advance, when they are approximately five days old, in order to prevent their murder by parents. They then temporarily placed in a Rescue Station where a foster mother takes care of them and feeds them. When the young birds can feed by themselves and regulate their body temperature, they are released into the wild.
Now, thanks to the Internet, they can continue to be followed and protected. The Tatra National Park plans to reach out to other national park administrations in the European Union to speak about their lessons learned and promote the use of the internet in forestry
Posted by Ondrej Socuvka, Policy Manager Google Slovakia
Launching Project Link: improving Internet access in Africa
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Africa is home to more than a billion people and is also the fastest growing continent. But only 16% of people are connected to the Internet. That leaves a huge population without access to new opportunities, such as a reliable channel to the latest news, a tool to join in worldwide commerce, or a platform to create and contribute photos, video, and more. This is true even in Africa’s bustling cities, such as Kampala, Uganda.
For the nearly 3 million people living in and around Kampala, the Internet hasn’t been as fast and available as it could be; online activity often sputters on pre-broadband speeds or unreliable connections. That’s why today, we’re announcing
Project Link
, an initiative to build a super-fast, high-capacity fiber network to enable any local mobile operator or Internet service provider (ISP) to connect more people in Kampala to a faster, more reliable Internet.
Project Link’s network is available today to connect providers to long-distance fiber lines, equipping them with near-unlimited capacity to build and expand services to Ugandans. By making this connection, we’re strengthening a crucial piece of the Internet supply chain. Some parts of the chain are already strong: undersea cables are bringing data to Africa’s shores and mobile providers are expanding services across the continent. We’ve now built quality infrastructure in between these points to deliver the speed and capacity that supports the latest and greatest of the Web.
Project Link goes beyond basic access; it enables local providers to offer new mobile data plans or high-speed Internet for office buildings and universities, and support newer technologies as they come to market. For Kampala, we hope it’s a foundation to support the needs of a new crop of entrepreneurs and innovators: the media-rich projects of a successful musician, fast connections for local hospitals, or new digital learning tools for students.
As more of Africa comes online, the Web will grow stronger and richer from the contributions of a growing population. Project Link isn’t just about connecting fiber cables. It’s about connecting the people of Kampala and giving them an opportunity to contribute to a truly global Internet.
Posted by Kai Wulff, Access Field Director
Protecting children from sexual abuse
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Last week 348 people were arrested in Canada – and 386 young kids rescued – in one of the largest child sex investigations ever seen. It defies belief that anyone would sexually abuse children, especially teachers and doctors entrusted with their care.
But this awful case highlights the depths to which humanity can sink.
And while society will never wholly eliminate such depravity, we should do everything in our power to protect children from harm. That's why internet companies like Google and Microsoft have been working with law enforcement for years to stop paedophiles sharing illegal pictures on the web. We actively remove child sexual abuse imagery from our services and immediately report abuse to the authorities. This evidence is regularly used to prosecute and convict criminals.
But as the UK Prime Minister David Cameron said in a speech this summer, there's always more that can be done. We've listened, and in the last three months put more than 200 people to work developing new, state-of-the-art technology to tackle the problem.
Cleaning up search:
We've fine tuned Google Search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results. While no algorithm is perfect – and Google cannot prevent paedophiles adding new images to the web – these changes have cleaned up the results for over 100,000 queries that might be related to the sexual abuse of kids. As important, we will soon roll out these changes in more than 150 languages, so the impact will be truly global.
Deterrence:
We're now showing warnings – from both Google and charities – at the top of our search results for more than 13,000 queries. These alerts make clear that child sexual abuse is illegal and offer advice on where to get help.
Detection and removal:
There's no quick technical fix when it comes to detecting child sexual abuse imagery. This is because computers can't reliably distinguish between innocent pictures of kids at bathtime and genuine abuse. So we always need to have a person review the images. Once that is done – and we know the pictures are illegal – each image is given a unique digital fingerprint. Microsoft deserves a lot of credit for developing and sharing its picture detection technology. But paedophiles are increasingly filming their crimes. So our engineers at YouTube have created a new technology to identify these videos. We're already testing it at Google, and in the new year we hope to make it available to other internet companies and child safety organisations.
Technical expertise:
There are many organisations working to fight the sexual exploitation of kids online – and we want to ensure they have the best technical support. So Google plans to second computer engineers to both the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) here in Britain and the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). We also plan to fund internships for other engineers at these organisations. This will help the IWF and NCMEC stay one step ahead.
The sexual abuse of children is a global challenge, and success depends on everyone working together – law enforcement, internet companies and charities. We welcome the lead taken by the British Government, and hope that the technologies developed (and shared) by our industry will make a real difference in the fight against this terrible crime.
Posted by Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman
Launching a “human” start-up center in France
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
It rivaled the famed Parisian catwalk shows for glitz and glamor. More than 8,000 people recently crowded into and outside of a new building on Rue du Caire near the Paris Stock Exchange - not to celebrate fashion, but to to launch a 1,500 square meter large startup-incubator called NUMA.
NUMA is short for “numérique” (French for “digital”) and “humain” (French for human). We partnered to create this exciting new facility with telephone operator Orange, the Paris city government and the Ile de France regional authorities. Beyond our financial support, we will organise workshops and other learning opportunities for web entrepreneurs and traditional companies that want to go digital.
Minister Fleur Pellerin
The new center is our latest attempt to help jumpstart the web economy. Our
Campus London,
which, in its first year alone, has hosted more than
860 events
, offering more than 60,000 entrepreneurs mentorship, technical advice and training. Another
Campus opened last year in Tel Aviv
and we’re rolling out across the region our
Google for Entrepreneurs
.
In Paris, the new NUMA aims to attract up to 45,000 visitors and 600 tech start-ups each year. It will serve as a base for consolidating existing start-up projects – Le Camping and La Cantine.
At Numa’s launch party, the crowd demonstrated an optimism in sharp contrast with the ongoing stagnation and pessimism about France’s economy. “Together we open NUMA, and declare our ambition to fly the flag of French innovation even higher,” the organizers said on the
NUMA website
, predicting raft of investment and new jobs. Minister of Digital Economy, Fleur Pellerin, saluted this ambition.
The crowd was so numerous that many had to wait outside for an opportunity to enter and see the new facilities. No matter. Instead of fretting, the eager entrepreneurs turned the surrounding streets into a big party, complete with good drink, food and talk of exciting digital ventures.
Posted by Elisabeth Bargès, Public Policy Manager Innovation, Google France
Improving Internet access in Africa with White Spaces
Monday, November 18, 2013
Almost three billion people are online - but four billion remain without access, a failure that drives much political and economic frustration. TV White Spaces—the unused spectrum between TV channels—have the potential to bring wireless broadband access to underserved and rural areas. These low frequency signals can travel long distances and fill a need in places where telecommunications infrastructure is lacking.
Google, joined by a group of partners, (
CSIR Meraka Institute
,
TENET
,
e-Schools Network
,
WAPA
, and
Carlson Wireless
), wanted to help make this potential a reality. In March 2013, the
group
launched a six-month trial using White Spaces to bring broadband Internet access to 10 schools in Cape Town, South Africa. The goal of the trial was to show that White Spaces could be used to deliver broadband Internet without interfering with TV broadcast.
After six months, we can report some good news: the trial has been a success. The participating schools, which previously had slow or unreliable Internet connections, experienced high-speed broadband access for the first time. Teachers were able to use videos in their lesson plans, make Skype calls to other schools, update school websites, and send regular email updates to parents. Students could use educational videos for research. Because the service was better and faster, teachers and learners used the web to enrich the classroom experience.
At the same time, multiple sources confirmed that there was no interference with TV broadcast. Trial partner Meraka Institute performed frequent scientific studies to measure any potential interference over the six-month period. We also provided tools for people to report any interference experience while watching TV. The
final results
of the test have been published for those who wish to take a deeper dive on the trial's outcomes.
ICASA, South Africa’s communication regulator, plans to use the trial outcomes as inputs into the White Spaces regulatory process. This is a big step to bringing this technology to more of South Africa. We hope the results can be useful in encouraging others to consider White Spaces to help bring the power of the Internet to more people in more parts of the world.
Posted by Fortune Sibanda, Policy Manager, Google South Africa
Unveiling a potential Internet superpower - Ukraine
Friday, November 15, 2013
Ukraine faces big choices in coming weeks as it debates signing an Association Agreement with the European Union. A large part of the upside from improved EU commerce could come from the Internet. In order to underline this crucial point,
Google Ukraine
and market research group,
GfK Ukraine
, yesterday launched a study titled: “The impact of Internet on the Ukrainian economy.”
Ukraine should be a computer science superpower. Famed Ukrainian computer scientist Sergei Lebedev unveiled
the first Soviet compute
r -- and indeed the first in continental Europe -- on December 25, 1951. Today, Ukraine already provides the world with backend support thanks to its 50,000 computer science university graduates. It enjoys a largely free and open Internet. More than half of Ukrainians are now online and approximately 90% of Ukraine’s businesses use regular broadband or WiFi access.
Last year, Ukraine’s economy expanded by a mere 0.2 percent. If Ukraine’s businesses could increase their Internet use intensity from 25 to 35 percentage points, the GfK study calculated that it could have grown GDP by 1.2%. At the study’s launch event, Vice Prime Minister
Alexandr Vilkul
highlighted the importance of Internet for Ukrainian business and confirmed his and the Ukrainian government’s support for the digital economy.
Individual Ukrainian companies gain by going online, the study show. Businesses with more active Internet navigated turbulent economic conditions in 2012. Their profits decreased only by 0.7% while companies with a weak Internet presence suffered a 7.3% drop.
Amid Ukraine's tough economic climate, the online sector still is seeing tremendous growth. Hopefully, the report will alert Ukrainians - government officials, business leaders and technology leaders - that the Internet could do even more to drive forward a transformation from its agricultural and traditional industrial past to a shining digital future.
Posted by Oleg Yakymchuk, Policy Manager, Ukraine
Government requests for user information double since 2010
Thursday, November 14, 2013
In a year in which government surveillance has dominated the headlines, today we’re
updating our Transparency Report
for the eighth time. Since we began sharing these figures with you
in 2010
, requests from governments for user information have increased by more than 100 percent. This comes as usage of our services continues to grow, but also as more governments have made requests than ever before. And these numbers only include the requests we’re allowed to publish.
Over the past three years, we’ve continued to add more details to the report, and we’re doing so again today. We’re including additional information about legal process for U.S. criminal requests: breaking out emergency disclosures, wiretap orders,
pen register
orders and other court orders.
We want to go even further. We believe it’s your right to know what kinds of requests and how many each government is making of us and other companies. However, the U.S. Department of Justice contends that U.S. law does not allow us to share information about some national security requests that we might receive. Specifically, the U.S. government argues that we cannot share information about the requests we receive (if any) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But you deserve to know.
Earlier this year, we brought a federal case to assert that we do indeed have the right to shine more light on the FISA process. In addition, we recently wrote
a letter of support
(PDF) for two pieces of legislation currently proposed in the U.S. Congress. And we’re asking governments around the world to uphold international legal agreements that respect the laws of different countries and guarantee standards for due process are met.
Our promise to you is to continue to make this report robust, to defend your information from overly broad government requests, and to push for greater transparency around the world.
Posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security
Street View floats into Venice
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Venice was once described as “undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man,” and from these pictures it’s hard to disagree. You can now explore panoramic imagery of one of the most romantic spots in the world, captured with our Street View
Trekker
technology.
It was impossible for us to collect images of Venice with a Street View car or trike—blame the picturesque canals and narrow cobbled walkways—but our team of backpackers took to the streets to give Google Maps a truly
Shakespearean
backdrop. And not just the streets—we also loaded the Trekker onto a boat and floated by the famous gondolas to give you the best experience of Venice short of being there.
Our Trekker operator taking a well-earned rest while the gondolier does the hard work
The beautiful
Piazza San Marco
, where you can discover Doge's Palace, St. Marks' Cathedral, the bell tower, the Marciana National Library and the clocktower
We covered a lot of ground—about 265 miles on foot and 114 miles by boat—capturing not only iconic landmarks but several hidden gems, such as the
Synagogue
of the first Jewish
Ghetto
, the Devil’s Bridge in Torcello island, a
mask
to scare the same Devil off the church of Santa Maria Formosa and the
place
where the typographer
Manutius
created the Italics font. Unfortunately, Street View can’t serve you a
cicchetto
(local appetizer) in a classic
bacaro
(a typical Venetian bar), though we can show you how to get there.
The
Devil’s Bridge
in Torcello Island
Once you’ve explored the city streets of today, you can immerse yourself in the beauty of Venice’s past by diving deep in to the artworks of the
Museo Correr
, which has joined the
Google Cultural Institute
along with
Museo del Vetro
and
Ca’ Pesaro - International Gallery of Modern Art
.
Compare the modern streets with paintings of the same spots by artists such as Carpaccio and Cesare Vecellio
Or delve into historical maps of Venice, like this one showing the Frari Church, built in 1396
Finally, take a look
behind the scenes
showing how we captured our Street View imagery in Venice.
The Floating City is steeped in culture; it’s easy to see why it’s retained a unique fascination and romance for artists, filmmakers, musicians, playwrights and pilgrims through the centuries—and now, we hope, for Street View tourists too.
Posted by Daniele Rizzetto, Street View Operations Manager (and proud Venetian!)
Playing for online safety in Russia
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Although educational topics such as child safety and digital literacy may appear to be studious, virtuous but perhaps even a little dull, we’re working hard to make them fun and interactive.
Our new
Russian digital literacy project
, developed with Moscow State University’s Department of Psychology, the Foundation for Internet Development, and the Russian Institute for Education Development of the Ministry of Education, puts teens in the futuristic world of an
Internet laboratory
inhabited by amiable robots. The robots give out helpful advice on how to tell facts from lies on the web, what copyright online is, what information should and should not be shared about yourself and others, and how to protect your data from fraudsters and phishing. At the end of their journey, students complete a
test
that evaluates their digital literacy skills and awards Google certificates. Those who score the most points gain the status of ‘Internet Legend’.
The Russian program is only one of efforts across the region to promote online child safety. In Germany, we have created
Juki
, combining video community, interactive lessons, an encyclopedia, and an animation studio, all designed with child safety in mind. In Israel, our
Web Rangers
transform traditional scouting.
We believe such educational efforts represent the best ways to increase online safety as many risks teens face online, such as bullying, are difficult if not impossible to combat through regulation or filtering technologies. This was also proven by the results of the first ever
Russian study
which measured the level of digital literacy skills of Russian school children aged 12-17. Key findings include:
75% of kids learnt to use Internet on their own, without help from school or parents;
55% of Russian kids agree to meet online strangers in real life without even letting grownups know (compared to the EU's
9% average
);
both teens and parents expressed strong willingness to receive additional training on online safety and hope schools would help to provide necessary literacy programmes; fewer than 20% of parents believe legislation will help keep their children safe online, despite the Russian Law on Protecting Children from Harmful Information which entered force in November 2012; parents claimed digital literacy programs and education are a key to family safety on the Internet.
Russian children have fun studying web safety
Creating a code of conduct for web surfing
At the same time, we recognize the need for companies to step up on protecting children. Our project in Russia arms
teachers
with a textbook and interactive exercises kit for the classroom. It gives useful tips for teachers and parents on how to turn on safety tools on Google Search, YouTube and Android based on the
Good to Know
educational portal, and includes advice from educators and psychologists on how to explain key online safety rules to teenagers through case studies, games and
videos
.
Teachers in Moscow and several other Russian regions have already received training through this programme and are now actively using it in their schools. One of the exercises encourages kids to create their own code of conduct on the web, then discuss and share their experiences with teachers and fellow students. We look forward to seeing the program spread in schools throughout the country.
Posted by Ksenia Karyakina, Senior Policy Analyst, Russia
Bienvenue CANAL +!
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Ever since it was launched in 1984,
CANAL+
has played a pivotal role in boosting French culture. Much like
HBO
in the United States, the pay-tv broadcaster financed many of France’s most daring films and became home for many of France’s most innovative television shows, including the sharp-hitting and hilarious
Guignols
that spoofed and titilated the French political world. That’s why we take special pleasure today in announcing a new partnership between CANAL+ Group and YouTube.
Les Guignols
Under the new partnership, CANAL + will launch about 20 different channels on YouTube, bringing some of France’s most iconic TV shows all across the world, including
Le Grand Journa
l or
le Petit Journal
. In addition to featuring CANAL+ content, the new YouTube channels will also show highlights from CANAL+ Group’’s other broadcast outlets, including D8, D17 and i>Télé.
The partnership will also support new talent through a new label, Canal Factory. CANAL+ will use its online distribution with YouTube to feature new shows created only for the web. It will experiment with different formats and short original productions. In the past, CANAL+ Group has discovered online new artists such as les Kairas and tested new formats such as the wacky web series at Cannes 2013.
Over the past decade, YouTube has not only become the largest online video service in the world, but it has reshaped the way information is produced, distributed, and accessed. More than one billion people are finding and subscribing to the channels they love on YouTube every month. That’s almost half the people on the Internet.
YouTube channels are attracting a global generation of viewers that has grown up watching what they want, whenever they want, on whatever device is closest. With this new partnership, we’re very excited to help CANAL+ boost viewership and engagement for some of France’s most iconic audiovisual creations and shows and are delighted to bring all this great content to our YouTube community across the world.
This partnership represents exciting news for all lovers of French culture.
Posted by Helene Barrot, Communications and Public Affairs Manager, YouTube, Paris
Thrilling Germany’s next generation of technologists
Friday, November 8, 2013
In 2011, students at the High School Walburgisgymnasium Menden founded
Technik Begeistert
(literally, Thrilled by Technology) and sought to share their enthusiasm for robots. Two years on, the group’s leader, Markus Fleige and his team are among the brightest stars to emerge from the Google
RISE Awards
, a position underlined by
MINT Zukunft Schaffen’s
decision last month to name Markus as STEM Ambassador of the year.
The Technik Begeistert Team
Since Markus and Technik Begeistert received the RISE Award in January 2013, the number of teams entering the German rounds of the
World Robotics Olympiad
has more than doubled. Markus has launched a weekly
YouTube series
to enthuse teachers, students and parents. In 2014 Technik Begeistert will extend their efforts to target the 8-12 age group as well as continuing their strong focus on inspiring girls to try robotics.
Addressing the gender gap in tech is a common theme across Google’s Education Outreach in Germany. We support the
Bundeswettbewerb Informatik
, Germany’s national coding contest. Each year girls who enter the contest are invited to spend a day at Google’s engineering office in Munich, where they can be inspired by our growing team of female computer scientists. As a result, participation of girls in the finals increased from under 4% to over 20% in just one year.
This year two of the six national winners were female.
Juliane Baldus
went on to win a silver medal at the International Informatics Olympiad in Sydney. Our support has also been extended to the
Jugend Forscht
competition this year to inspire young researchers in science and technology.
These are just some of the many innovative initiatives Google is proud to support in Germany, with the goal of inspiring the next generation of computer scientists, and giving all children the opportunity to become creators, not simply consumers, of tomorrow’s technology.
Posted by Alison Cutler, Pre-University Education Outreach, EMEA
Expanding our data center in Finland
Monday, November 4, 2013
Six decades ago, the famed Finnish architect
Alvar Aalto
built a stunning red-brick paper mill in Eastern Finland. After the plant was shut, we bought it have transformed it into a modern data center - literally jumping from the industrial to the digital age. Today, Finnish Prime Minister
Jyrki Katainan
joined us at our Hamina data center in Eastern Finland to announce a EUR450 million expansion to what already is one of the world’s most efficient and largest facilities.
Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainan visits our Hamina construction site.
Many of our data centres are located in traditional industrial areas where one might not immediately think of being the home for a Google facility. In Finland, the region around our Hamina data centre stands at the heart of a region hard-hit by the retrenchment of its paper industry.
Our data centers can provide real motors to reinvigorate these industrial regions. With our financial support, the prestigious
Aalto University
and the regional development agency Cursor are working to bolster promising startups and to improve the use of the Internet by local small and medium sized industries. Cursor is strengthening the
Venture Gym
acceleration program around the growing
Playa Game Industry Hub
, as well as the region's
Kaakko 135 travel
and tourism initiative. Already, some 800 people and dozens of companies in the region have participated in Aalto-Cursor workshops, not only in the region, but also in Helsinki, London and Cambridge.
Today’s announcement will triple the size of the existing facility, which became operational in September 2011. At its peak, approximately 800 engineering and construction workers, most of whom will be Finnish, will be engaged on the site. Some 125 people currently employed at the datacenter in full time and contractor roles across engineering, technical work, security, food service, and buildings and grounds maintenance. All of our open positions can be found on
Google Jobs page
for positions in Finland.
Alvar Aalto never lived to see the Internet and data centers. But we hope he would have been pleased to see how our data center safeguards and updates his spirit of pioneering architecture.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of community relations, Europe
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