Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
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
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
Experience the London 2012 Games with Google
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The Olympic Games begin tomorrow in my home town, London, and more than half of the planet—some 4.8 billion people—will tune in to watch the London 2012 Games. To help you join in the excitement and glory of the Games, we’ve put together
google.co.uk/olympics
. Here’s a quick look at the updates, results and other content we’re bringing you from London 2012.
Discover and learn more
Want to know what your team’s next medal prospect is, or if you’ve missed Oscar Pistorius make history in the 400m? Here are a few ways we’re helping you get all the hottest news in a flash:
Search from your desktop, phone or tablet for [
london 2012
], a country team like [
Team GB
], or a sport like archery], and you’ll see up-to-the-minute detailed information such as the schedule, medal count, and Olympic records in your search results.
In the Hot Searches section of the site, we show you which topics, athletes or events are being searched for by fans around the world. The analysis is updated hourly, and you can click on any search to read associated news articles.
On Google Play, find a collection of useful apps, from results trackers
to games
, for download on your Android device.
Connect with your teams and favourite athletes
I’ll be cheering on both the stars and the underdogs, and closely following the updates from the Games:
Get the latest posts from
+The Olympics Games
and the competing teams on Google+. (I’ll be rooting for my home country, +Team GB
Show who you’re supporting by customising your cover photo on Google+ (or other social network)
Explore London like you’re there
Living in London, I’ve been lucky enough to see the transformation of the East End of the city over the past few years, but for those of you who live outside the city, you can still see the sights online..
Fly around the Olympic Park, explore the cycling and marathon courses or take a virtual tour of London landmarks in Google Earth
Compare aerial imagery of the London of 1948 (the last time London hosted the Games) to the London of today.
Watch the action as it happens—and see highlights from past Games
For the hundreds of millions of people unable to make it to London, YouTube is helping bring the games to you in a number of markets around the world.
For the first time, U.S. viewers can watch any event on
NBCOlympics.com
; 3,500 hours will be streamed in all. YouTube will power NBC’s online video experience on NBCOlympics.com. You can also access pre-game clips on the
NBC Olympics YouTube channel
.
If you’re in one of
64 markets across Africa and Asia
, including India, Indonesia, Kenya and Nigeria, the IOC will be streaming the Olympics live on YouTube
For those of you who can’t wait for the games to begin or want to relive great moments from some of the previous 29 Olympiads, explore an archive on
YouTube
—some of my favourites are
Derek Redmond’s inspirational finish of the 400m semi-final in Barcelona 1992
,
Cathy Freeman’s gold medal in the 400m at Sydney 2000
and
Afghanistan's first-ever Olympic medal at Beijing 2008
.
Find it all at
www.google.co.uk/olympics
.
Posted by Richard Keelty, Product Marketing Manager, Google U.K.
Ramadan traditions with a digital twist
Saturday, July 21, 2012
More a billion Muslims around the world today begin to observe the holy month of
Today, more a billion Muslims around the world begin to observe the holy month of
Ramadan
, fasting from dawn to sunset. This year, we’re bringing some of the most venerable Ramadan traditions online.
We’re sharing the Islamic prayers live from Mecca on a dedicated
YouTube channel
. Millions of people from around the world will be able to experience and comment on the event by tuning in via video.
Ramadan is about more than just prayer; it is also a special moment to gather with friends and family. Muslims gather to watch special television shows produced for the holiday and shown only during Ramadan. Often the shows overlap in scheduling. This year, for the first time, YouTube is enabling people to watch their favorite shows anytime, anywhere. A new
YouTube Ramadan channel
lets viewers see more than 50 premium Ramadan shows the same day they air. In the clip below, famed Syrian actor
Jamal Suliman
appears in a drama:
Ramadan’s tastiest tradition is the food. After fasting through the day, families gather for evening break-the-fast meals called
Iftar
. Through Google+ Hangouts, we’re hosting 30 virtual get-togethers in the 30 days of Ramadan, in which celebrity chefs will share their favorite recipes and
doctors
will give tips on eating healthy.
The hangouts will engage people in subjects far beyond eating.
Actors
will talk about their favorite Ramadan shows. Poets will discuss literature inspired by the holiday. Religious
figures
will answer questions. Stay tuned to the
Google Arabia
page on Google+ for more details and and join in.
We hope you enjoy experiencing your favorite Ramadan traditions with a digital twist this year. Ramadan Kareem!
Posted by Maha Abouelenein, Head of Communications Middle East and North Africa
Celebrating free expression in Beirut
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
For more than a year, Google has been supporting the
Hay Literary Festival
, as it grew from its origins in Wales into an international organisation. The Hay brings together writers and thinkers, inspiring dialogue around freedom of expression. It recently came to Beirut, its first time ever in the Middle East and North Africa.
The timing was perfect. A new wave of freedom in the Arab world has opened the door for writers to explore new and exciting vistas - and this freedom dominated festival discussions.
One panel featured bloggers from around the region. Samir Elbahaie, Google’s Middle East and North Africa Policy and Government Affairs Manager, spoke with them about the internet and how it is changing people’s lives. Egyptian
Sondos Shabayek
who was at the forefront of the Egyptian revolution and Beirut-based
Moe Ali Nayel
discussed how an open and free web has empowered citizens. Citizens turned to the internet to verify the news when the state media on the ground failed to offer the full picture.
In another lively session , Google’s adviser on freedom of expression and long-time journalist
John Kampfner
moderated a debate around how to ensure respect for human rights. The eclectic panel included
Óscar Guardiola-Rivera
, International Professor of Law and International Affairs, and
Nizar Saghieh
, a leading Lebanese lawyer, legal researcher and human rights activist. Both speakers argued that freedom of expression and human rights were too often framed in Western terms. Saghieh suggested policy makers refer to local and regional cultural norms as much as universal ones, citing the Koran. Guardiola-Rivera said Western governments ignored the clamour for economic rights even though they were regarded as perhaps the most important in developing nations.
Other topics discussed in Beirut ranged from the serious – memories of postwar cities, and the role of writers in sectarian societies – to the more light-hearted and amusing, including a poetry
slam
contest.
It’s great to see the Arab world embrace free expression. The free flow of information spurs creativity and innovation. We believe people make better decisions in their lives when they have more information and look forward to contributing to work toward achieving this goal in the Middle East and North Africa.
Posted by Hind Rasheed, Communications Manager, Middle East and North Africa
Luvvies & Boffins Night at the Museum
Friday, June 29, 2012
[<a href="http://storify.com/lynetter/luvvies-and-boffins-at-the-science-museum" target="_blank">View the story "Luvvies and Boffins at the Science Museum" on Storify</a>]
This week saw the second gathering of Google’s
Luvvies and Boffins
-- this time with added boffinry courtesy of
London’s Science Museum
.
The idea came from Eric Schmidt’s
MacTaggart lecture
, delivered in Edinburgh last summer, in which he said Britain needs to bring art and science back together if its creative industries are to have a successful future. Guests were handed lapel badges denoting “Luvvie”, “Boffin” or the Renaissance “Luvviboff”.
Besides great cocktails and conversation, the evening featured a stellar line-up of computing-themed activities. There were guided tours of the new
Turing Exhibition
, up-close demonstrations of the
Babbage Machine
in action, and hands-on
soldering workshops to make Lumiphones
.
As an added bonus, our evening coincided with
Science Museum Lates
, a monthly night at the museum for adults only. Geek activities abounded --
punk science comedy
, a
cockroach fancy dress tour
, even an impressively silent disco.
Overall, it was a wonderful evening, as the
Storify
below attests. Thanks to the Science Museum for being such great hosts, and to everyone who came along.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations, Google EMEA
[<a href="http://storify.com/lynetter/luvvies-and-boffins-at-the-science-museum" target="_blank">View the story "Luvvies and Boffins at the Science Museum" on Storify</a>]
Writing a new chapter for French books
Monday, June 11, 2012
For the past six years, we have been embroiled in a debilitating dispute over digitisation with French book publishers and authors. Today, we are announcing agreements that end all our legal battles. We are forging partnerships that we believe will put France ahead of the rest of the world in bringing out-of-print works back to life.
Much of the world’s information is found on the printed page. But almost 75 percent of the world’s books are out-of-print and unavailable except to the lucky few who can find old copies in libraries. In order to make this treasure available to everyone, anywhere in the world, we digitised millions of out-of-print works in U.S. libraries.
Until now, legal challenges, not only in France, but also in the United States, have kept us from realizing our goal. French authors and publishers sued us, separately, for copyright violations back in 2006. U.S. authors and publishers also sued. Although we reached an agreement with the American
Author’s Guild
and
Association of American Publishers
in 2008, a U.S. District court in New York last year rejected the agreement.
In France, however, we have found a way to move ahead. Both the French Publishers Association (
Syndicat national de l’édition
) and the French Author’s Association (
Société des gens de lettres
) have withdrawn their suits.
In this win-win solution, publishers and authors retain control over the commercial use of their books – while at the same time, opening the possibility for out-of-print books to reach a wide audience. We remain hopeful of reaching a solution in the US allowing us to make the world's books searchable and discoverable online.
This agreement represents a new step in our broad
support
for French culture. Over the past two years, we have signed agreements with several French collecting societies representing musicians, screenwriters and other creators. Our international culture center is based in Paris.
We are taking other measures as well to support French publishing. As part of this agreement, we will sponsor publishers’ new Young Reading Champions Program, which promotes the pleasures of reading among young people. We are also supporting the Publishing Laboratory -
le Labo de l'édition
- which helps publishing startups and traditional partners test digital technologies.
Our project with the authors is equally exciting. We will support their initiative to build a comprehensive database of published writers, a process that will help identify copyright holders and help them receive payment for their works.
Our hope is that these partnerships will boost the emerging French electronic book market. They make France a pioneer in spreading knowledge in the digital world. Watch this space for more progress on putting the written page online – and keep on reading.
Posted by Philippe Colombet, Strategic Partner Development Manager of Google Books France
Explore historic sites with Google World Wonders
Thursday, May 31, 2012
A month ago, we announced a major expansion of our Google
Art Project
, which featured art from museums around the world. Today, we're taking another significant step forward in our goal to increase access to culture with the Google
World Wonders
Project.
The World Wonders Project goes outdoors to bring online icons from all times and places, and from all over civilizations all over the world. It features 132 historic sites in 18 countries, from prehistoric
Stonehenge
to Ancient Rome’s vanished
Pompeii
and the mystical wooden
Kyoto temples
. The sites are natural as well as man-made, ranging from the sandy dunes of Australia’s
Shark Bay
to the rocky cliffs of America’s
Yosemite National Park
.
The World Wonders Project is the latest creation of the Google
Cultural Institute
, opened in Paris last year. Under the institute’s auspices, we have launched a series of exciting initiatives, ranging from the publication of high resolution images of the
Dead Sea Scrolls
to the digitization the archives of famous figures such as
Nelson Mandela
. For the World Wonders Project, we’ve worked with a prestigious set of partners including
UNESCO
, the
World Monuments Fund
,
Getty Images
and
Ourplace
. The partners have supplied official information and photographs.
In order to create World Wonders, we took our
Street View
technology to a new level. Most of the these historic sites could not be filmed by car. We needed to use camera-carrying trikes and pedal our way close enough. Street View helps millions each day make travel plans or get a helping hand with geography homework. With World Wonders, Street View supports preserving and promoting some of the world’s most significant monuments for future generations.
Our launch event took place today in Madrid. We chose Spain because the country enjoys a particularly rich architectural heritage, including 12 Wonders’ sites. There’s the old cities of
Salamanca
,
Toledo
,
Cuenca
,
Santiago de Compostela
and
Córdoba
, the
Roman aqueduct in Segovia
and
Roman walls in Lugo
, and the
archeological dig in Tárraco
. The Wonders website is launching in Spanish, as well as English, French, Italian, Hebrew and Japanese. The World Wonders Project YouTube channel adds a video dimension.
By bringing these sites online, we’re aiming to encourage visitors to travel to these fabulous sites. Many museum curators involved in our Art Project report spikes in entries after viewing their collections on their computers.
This project provides significant educational benefits. A
section
on the site offers valuable resources for teachers in primary and secondary schools, which enable them to teach history and geography in innovative ways. Educational packages for classroom use can be downloaded free of charge from the World Wonders website.
When I was a child, flipping through encyclopedias while researching for school projects, the thought of exploring the world’s famous historic and cultural sites was a distant dream. Today that dream becomes a little closer for all of us.
Posted by Melanie Blaschke, Product Marketing Manager, World Wonders Project
Championing Free Expression - The Hay Festival in Hungary
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Her father was tortured and her mother was made to kneel on broken glass. Jung Chang, the author of the global sensation
Wild Swans
, which at the last count has sold 13 million copies, talked with passion and humanity about human rights during the Cultural Revolution in China at the first ever
Budapest Hay Festival
this past weekend.
Google has been working with the
Hay Literary Festival
for more than a year, helping it grow from its origins in Wales into an international organisation that now hosts festivals around the globe. This was the first festival ever held in Central Europe.
In Budapest, Chang described how she cornered the late Zairean dictator,
Mobutu Sese Sosuku
, under a hairdryer at a salon in Hong Kong, to persuade him to give details of his friendship with
Mao Tse-tung
. She also revealed how
Imelda Marcos
had a soft spot for
Richard Nixon
.
Another who tackled issues of free speech and technology was rock star turned global activist,
Bob Geldof
. He pointed to strong growth rates in Africa and warned policy makers in Europe and the United States that they ignored the economic potential of Africa, driven in large part by the opening up of the Internet. Other speakers at the two festival included
Tibor Fischer
, the Hungarian-born writer whose parents, both basketball players, fled the country after the Soviet suppression of the 1956 uprising, and Nigerian author
Ben Okri
.
One of the attractions of the Hay festival is the quality of speakers and the diversity of subject matter. Taking its name from a picturesque village on the border of England and Wales, made famous by its bookshops, the Hay Festival has been described as the "Woodstock of the mind.” It attracts tens of thousands of people per day during the 10 days of readings, speeches and interviews. We will unveil our
Big Tent
concept to a Hay audience at this year’s
event
, opening on May 31.
Later in the year, we will participate in four Hay gatherings that come within the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Beirut takes place in early July, while the autumn will see festivals in Istanbul, Nairobi and Segovia, Spain.
Posted by Richard Schuster, Communications Manager, Google, Hungary
Hello from Tunisia
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
It was a perfect way to celebrate the Arab Spring.
UNESCO
last week marked its World Press Day in Tunisia, the country that led the rush for freedom in the Arab world. We sponsored the event, hosting Tunisian President
Moncef Marzouki
who met with
Daniel Calingaert
, Freedom House’s Vice President in Washington DC via an On Air Hangout on
UNESCO’s Google+ page
.
World Press Day marks an appropriate moment to review our progress in the Middle East and North Africa. We’re investing and digging deep roots. Over the past year, we have doubled our regional workforce. We have hosted g|daysreaching an estimated 12,000 entrepreneurs and developers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Our
Google Media Academy
has trained nearly 2,000 journalists.
Google products are going Arabic. Only about three percent of the web now is in Arabic, while more than 10 percent of the world’s web population speaks it as a mother tongue. In order to encourage more local content, we have launched eight local YouTube domains and 11 local maps domains. An Egyptian who searches YouTube is no longer directed to Western videos but instead is able to access local content. We have introduced Arabic versions of Voice Search, Driving directions for Maps, and Google+.
Many magic moments have occurred in the past year. We hosted celebrity high profile hangouts with entertainer
Myriam Fares
and the Arab world’s biggest pop star, Amr Diab. We also launched the Official Google Arabia Google+
page
.
Earlier this month, two Qatar museums,
Museum of Islamic Art
and
Mathaf
, joined the Google Art Project. Egypt, the first episode of "Inside Google" aired on
Al Hayat Al Youm
, Egypt's number one Prime Time TV show. Egypt’s very own Amr Mohamed became a global finalist in the
YouTube Space Lab
. And next week we will crown a national winner for the
Ebda2
with Google competition to provide local entrepreneurs seed capital to start their own business kickstarting the internet ecosystem in Egypt to flourish.
This Arabization drive is producing impressive results. Google searches are up by 25 percent year on year in the region. Some 167 million YouTube videos are viewed each day in the Middle East and Africa - the second highest number in the world, behind the U.S. and ahead of Brazil. These daily views represent 112 percent increase since last October - more than double the views in just one year. An hour of YouTube video is uploaded each minute in the Middle East and North Africa. Since the launch of our local map domains, we have seen 50 percent growth in maps usage throughout the region.
Our goal is clear – to become part of the local landscape, giving people around the Middle East and North Africa access to information, preferably in their own language. For us, our contribution to UNESCO’s World Press Day represents yet another strong step towards this goal.
Posted by Maha Abouelenein, Head of Communications, Middle East and North Africa
Opening the Big Tent in Moscow
Friday, April 27, 2012
Russians are embracing the Internet and the government is encouraging the move online - some 18 million Russians already have broadband access. Right now the Internet economy contributes less than 2% to Russia’s GDP, but small businesses, start-ups and tech powerhouses are growing so fast that’s expected to rise to around 5% of GDP by 2015.
With that as a backdrop, we held our first Big Tent event in Moscow to debate some of the hot issues facing the Internet and society. We had speakers and guests from across Russian government, business and media, alongside well-known international web gurus.
Arkady Dvorkovich
, aide to the Russian President, kicked off the day by describing how the Internet is playing an important role in building a new level of democracy in Russia.
A lively debate followed on the role the Internet plays, and can play, in Russian civil society. Author
Jeff Jarvis
, data pioneer
Jon Gosier
, Transparency International’s
Elena Paniflova
and head of
Bigovernment.ru
Raf Shakirov discussed whether Russia’s burgeoning online activism can make itself heard offline. Will government-hosted services protect whistle blowers, can crowd sourcing tools put pressure on government for everything from fixing potholes to political change, and what are the prospects of increased government censorship?
The issue of online piracy is a hot one in Russia and an international panel of artistic types debated whether the Internet is an instrument for creating or for copying.
Artemy Troitsky
, a celebrated Russian rock critic, drew gasps, tweets and applause when he said intellectual property belongs to everyone - like love or air - and showed no sympathy for the intermediaries who complain of lost revenues.
Marc Sands
of London’s
Tate
Gallery spoke of his organisation’s decision to put every single work they have online, including through Google’s
Art Project
.
Another key area of conversation centered on the economic impact of the Internet, specifically how to encourage innovation in fast-developing economies such as Russia, Brazil, India and China (the so-called BRICs). Why have global Internet companies generally failed to emerge from outside the US or Western Europe? Should Russia and other BRIC countries aim to create copycats of the global leaders, or entirely new business models? Jacques Bughin of
McKinsey
,
Leonid Boguslavksy
, one of Russia’s most successful Internet investors, and the digital trends author
Mike Walsh
didn’t agree on all the answers, but they were optimistic about the potential for growth in Russia.
Google has a big presence in Russia, with engineering offices in both Moscow and St. Petersburg. David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal officer, came from our Mountain View headquarters to take part. He fielded questions on a range of topics, from our new
computer-aided glasses
to his opinion on what regulatory regime is most conducive for Internet innovation and growth.
You’ll be able to watch videos of all the sessions on our
YouTube channel
soon, alongside previous discussions and details of upcoming events. Next stop for the Big Tent is in London in May.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director, External Relations Europe Middle East and AfricaSoAndSo Team
Celebrating Exceptional Young Minds
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Its time to celebrate the ten winners of our ‘
Zeitgeist Young Minds
’ online competition.
All are aged between 18 and 24 and have done something exceptional through science, the arts, education and innovation. They will attend Google’s annual Zeitgeist event near London on May 21 and 22, alongside some of today's greatest minds and innovators. While in London, they will participate in masterclasses and have their voices heard.
A panel of prestigious judges chose the winners. It included UK Digital Champion
Martha Lane Fox
, social entrepreneur and hip-hop artist
Akala
, award winning inventor
Emily Cummins
, software developer and founder of metaLayer.com
Jonathan Gosier
, and Channel 4 news presenter and correspondent
Jon Snow
.
The winners are:
Ada Umeofia, 19 from Nigeria:
WeBuilt: Africa is a design-centered social enterprise that redesigns and constructs market stalls for poverty-stricken Africans by recycling found building materials in slums.
View the entr
Alex Leboucher, 21 from France:
The Schoolbag (NGO) connects young people to education and a sustainable future by enabling children to pursue an education by providing eco-friendly school supplies.
View the entry
Elliott Verreault, 23 from Sweden:
It'sOneHumanity: The Humanitarian Social Network is inspiring a new humanitarian culture by leveraging the stories of humanitarian workers with the help of social media.
View the entry
James Boon, 23 from the UK:
Socially responsible enterprise ElephantBranded.com, sends a school bag to a child in Asia and Africa for each product sold on the website.
View the entry
Joel Mwale, 19 from Kenya:
Skydrop Enterprise Inc has brought safe drinking water to a community of 5,000 and has become a profitable enterprise from selling bottled water across Kenya and Uganda.
View the entry
Jordan Ridge, 23 from South Africa:
Made by Mosaic is a job creation project fro women in South Africa addressing the challenges of economic development in the townships.
View the entry
Maaike Veenkamp, 23 from the UK:
Off The Bench is a project with a core aim to empower young people through positive activities.
View the entry
Sibusiso Tshabalala, 20 from South Africa:
Developed reading clubs and a library renovation programme in South Africa to encourage critical thinking and thoughtful debate within local high schools.
View the entry
Simeon Oriko, 23 from Kenya:
The Kuyu Project trains school children on how to use social media for social change and promotes digital literacy.
View the entry
Simon Straetker, 19 from Germany:
An independent filmmaker, promoting conservational and social projects around the world making videos that engage young people with their natural environments.
View the entry
Congratulations! We're looking forward to hosting these talents here in the UK.
Posted by Elizabeth Dupuy, Event Manager, External Relations
Launching an Internet lecture program
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
In March, Belgium’s Prime Minister
Elio Di Rupo
visited our Brussels headquarters to celebrate our
partnership
with the Mundaneum, a pioneering 1920's Belgian project that we see as, in many ways, an ancestor of Google.
This month marked the launch of our joint lecture series, with an evening exploring linguistic diversity on the Web.The Mundaneum’s headquarters in the southern Belgian city of Mons was packed for the first Google-sponsored lecture. I was privileged to introduce the main speaker
Louis Pouzin
, the inventor of the
datagram
and designer of an early
packet
communications network.
From Google’s perspective, the Net offers fantastic possibilities to promote local languages. Our
Google Translate
now serves 53 languages, from Afrikaans to Yiddish, including Basque, Gujarati, and Swahili. At the click of a computer mouse, web pages can be instantaneously translated, allowing anybody, anywhere, to understand a web page.
In other ways, too, Google is committed to reviving and promoting local culture. Our partnership with Mundaneum is part of a larger project to revive the memory of Europe’s computing pioneers. The next lecture at the Mundaneum is scheduled for this autumn.
Robert Cailliau
, a Belgian computer scientist who, together with
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
, developed the
World Wide Web
. We look forward to seeing you in Mons.
Posted by Thierry Geerts, Managing Director, Belgium
Going global in search of great art
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
South African rock designs
.
Brazilian street graffiti
.
Australian aboriginal art
. Today we’re announcing a major expansion of the
Google Art Project
. From now on, with a few simple clicks of a finger, art lovers around the world will be able to discover not just paintings, but also sculpture, street art and photographs from
151 museums
in 40 countries.
Since we
introduced
the Art Project last year, curators, artists and viewers from all over the globe have offered exciting ideas about how to enhance the experience of collecting, sharing and discovering art. Institutions worldwide asked to join the project, urging us to increase the diversity of artworks displayed. We listened.
The original Art Project counted 17 museums in nine countries and 1,000 images, almost all paintings from Western masters. Today, the Art Project includes more than
30,000 high-resolution artworks
, with Street View images for 46 museums, with more on the way. In other words, the Art Project is no longer just about the Indian student wanting to visit the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
. It is now also about the American student wanting to visit the
National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi
.
The expanded Art Project embraces all sizes of institutions, specializing in art or in other types of culture. For example, you can take a look at the
White House
in Washington, D.C., explore the collection of the
Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar
, and continue the journey to the
Santiniketan Triptych
in the halls of the
National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi
. In the United States alone, some 29 partners in 16 cities are participating, ranging from excellent regional museums like the
Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston
, South Carolina to top notch university galleries such as the
SCAD museum of art
in Savannah, Georgia.
Here are a few other new things in the expanded Art Project that you might enjoy:
Using completely new tools, called Explore and Discover, you can find artworks by period, artist or type of artwork, displaying works from different museums around the world.
Google+ and Hangouts are integrated on the site, enabling you to create even more engaging personal galleries.
Street View images are now displayed in finer quality. A specially designed Street View “trolley” took 360-degree images of the interior of selected galleries which were then stitched together, enabling smooth navigation of more than 385 rooms within the museums. You can also explore the gallery interiors directly from within
Street View in Google Maps
We now have 46 artworks available with our “gigapixel” photo capturing technology, photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution so you can study details of the brushwork and patina that would be impossible to see with the naked eye.
An enhanced My Gallery feature lets you select any of the 30,000 artworks—along with your favorite details—to build your own personalised gallery. You can add comments to each painting and share the whole collection with friends and family. (It’s an ideal tool for students.)
The Art Project is part of our efforts to bringing culture online and making it accessible the widest possible audience. Under the auspices of the
Google Cultural Institute
, we’re presenting high-resolution images of the
Dead Sea Scrolls
, digitizing the archives of famous figures such as
Nelson Mandela
, and creating 3D models of
18th century French cities
. Our launch ceremony was held this morning at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, featured in the following slideshow.
For more information and future developments, follow the
Art Project on Google+
. Together with the fantastic input from our partners from around the world, we’re delighted to have created a convenient, fun way to interact with art—a platform that we hope appeals to students, aspiring artists and connoisseurs alike.
Posted by Amit Sood, Art Project
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
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
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
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
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
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