Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Rapping in Brussels
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The invitation sounded cool. Instead of dull, bureaucratic Brussels, I received a link to a European Commission site entitled
IT for Girls
, which featured the arresting title "Cyberellas are IT!" accompanied by - get this - rap music.
Intrigued, I investigated and learned that the European Commission was asking Google to sign up to a
Code of Conduct
in order to improve prospects for women to build careers in information technology. This goal resonates with us. Too few women study engineering and computer science and this gap continues to widen in all but a very few European countries. The IT industry as a whole is finding it hard to fill positions and any serious effort to solve the problem means encouraging women to overcome the "geek stereotype." So I agreed to come to Brussels on October 8 and participate in a seminar with European Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding.
At Google, we aspire to make information access better for everyone. Our users are simply everyone on the planet - so, we need to have an engineering organisation that represents that to the best of its abilities - making products that mean something for people. Having women developing products is key to us developing relevant and meaningful products. It's obvious to me that working in a team ofGooglers from diverse backgrounds and life experiences makes problem solving and creativity a lot more likely - and a lot more fun.
We've already undertaken many of the measures the Commission encourages to improve gender balance, working with universities and sponsoring scholarships for female computer scientists. Four years ago, we posted this inside
look
at our pioneering female engineers at Google. We also sponsor the
Anita Borg Scholarship
for women undergraduate and graduate students in technology. Named after the late and great female computer scientist Anita Borg, scholarship recipients will each receive a EUR 7,000 award for the 2010-2011 academic year and be invited to attend the Annual Google Scholars' Retreat in our European Engineering Headquarters in Zurich. The British Computer Society recognized Google as a great place to work in 2008 and we are shortlisted again this year, so fingers crossed.
We're proud to have a strong lineup of top female executives. Megan Smith, our vice president of new business development, oversees our new-ventures partnerships, explorations, and licensing, FrancoiseBrougher , vice president of business operations, has led us into Sub-Saharan Africa. Marissa Mayer, our vice president of search products, is spearheading efforts in Web search, images, news, maps, Google Earth, and more.Shona Brown joined Google in 2003 to oversee critical operational issues across the company as senior vice president of business operations.
We try to make Google a welcoming place to work for all of its staff, including women. Google offers its staff free lunches and massages, as well as games rooms and 20% time (engineers can choose for themselves what they wish to work on for, on average, one day per week). These are not frivolous perks, but a crafted, thought-out our human resource strategy that we believe pays off in happy, productive employees.Generous maternity leave allows women to pursue careers - and Google's progressive paternity policy gives them a strong support structure at home (actually, we recently made two very high profile promotions of women who were on maternity leave at the time!). For those first few weeks of baby's new life, Google Mums or Dads can also claim the new parent food allowance to, at least, remove one of the household headaches. Both male and femaleGooglers tell us how they appreciate flexibility in working hours - and our company policy of doing all work collaboratively on the Internet improves overall work-life balance.
We have just started this journey to help women get online - and there's lots more we can do. I look forward to explaining our Google culture this week in Brussels - and to enjoying a little more of that surprising rap music.
Posted by Rachel Mooney, Head of Diversity & People Policy for Europe
Brussels buzzes with ideas for the future
Friday, September 25, 2009
Brussels is buzzing with ideas for a new technology agenda. The European Commission recently distributed a questionnaire on the
post-i2010 Initiative
and the EU's Swedish Presidency is seeking views on a
Green Knowledge Society
. Not to be outdone, the European Parliament's
European Internet Foundation
(EIF) has just published a
paper
on the Europe of 2025, including room to comment on their site. The Foundation is a
Parliamentarian led
organisation funded by businesses (full disclosure: Google is a
member
) and industry trade associations.
The Foundation's secretariat penned the paper, building upon three workshops held earlier in the year. Google provided a speaker on
cloud computing
at the
technology workshop
. Debates also took place on
economic
and
socio-political
issues.
The resulting paper does not pretend to be a common position of the Foundation's members, it contains few dramatic policy recommendations, and is clearly meant to stimulate new debate.
But it does shine a spotlight on some key issues, starting with the crucial concept of "mass collaboration", which has for example led to a globally accessible repository of information called
Wikipedia
. It's not so much the technology in itself is not so exciting; what's cool is how humans adapt it to accelerate our natural inclinations to communicate and share ideas. This concept of "mass collaboration" is fueling debate about intellectual property rules (our recent submission can be found
here
) and whether Europe needs to join with the
FCC
to promote a strong set of net freedoms.
Secondly, we cannot rely on the next generation alone to fuel innovation. As the paper points out, "70% of Europe’s workforce of 2025 is already part of our work-force today." I can't think of a more powerful statistic about the need to embrace change.
A third point to note is the notion of a "data-driven world" where "our ability to capture, measure and analyse our collective, collaborative behaviour will itself have become a defining feature, driving force and economic engine in the digital world". This is unquestionably true, and Google is a pioneer in this space. As the ability to collect data grows, the paper recognises the need to debate the privacy issues that emerge. A
consultation
on Europe's data protection directive is underway and it will have the challenge of balancing data-driven growth & jobs while protecting fundamental rights.
Google is going to be involved in all of these debates. We published
some policy proposals
back in June. You may want also to take a look this
recent speech
by our CEO Eric Schmidt, which provides a real vision of the opportunity.
But you don't have to be based inside the Brussels 'Ring' to join in - the debate is open, and stakes for Europe's society and economy are high.
Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of Public Policy
Bringing the world's lost books back to life
Monday, September 7, 2009
Today I am attending the European Commission's information hearing in Brussels on Google Books's agreement with American authors and publishers. This offers us a wonderful opportunity to clear up misunderstandings and further explain the opportunities offered by the US Agreement. All of us, on both sides of the Atlantic share the same crucial goal - to bring millions of lost books back to life.
If an American court approves, readers in the U.S. will be able for the first time to search, preview and buy online access to a great number of out-of-print books that were scanned as part of Google Book Search. A new non-profit registry will be set up to locate these in copyright but difficult to find books' rights holders and collect and distribute revenues to authors and publishers.
This hearing shows that European libraries, authors, publishers and users are grappling with the same issue of how to open up access to the world of knowledge contained in books. In recent weeks, we noted several important measures of support. We are already working successfully with libraries around the world, including in France, Belgium, the UK, Switzerland, Germany and Spain, insuring that our digital library includes works over 100 languages. I was particularly pleased to hear our Ghent Library Partner Sylvia van Peteghem talking about how together we have worked to allow viewers from all over the world access to her institution's priceless public domain collection. Last week, Mario Resca, General Director of the Italian Ministry of Culture, expressed a desire to partner with us to find ways on best valuing the Italian public domain books collection. Support from the Italian authorities represents an important step forward to demonstrating how our Books project can further benefit Europe.
While anybody is allowed to digitise and distribute out of copyright, so called public domain works, pose no legal problem free of charge or for a fee, what's really at stake are the fate of the vast majority of books -- by some estimate up to 80 percent of the total - which are in copyright out of print and hard to locate. These works are not sold through bookstores or held on most library shelves, and yet represent an important repository of the world's knowledge and culture. Often it is difficult to identify or locate the copyright holder. If the author has died, who holds his rights, his wife, children or another relative?
The agreement announced in October 2008 between Google and a broad class of copyright holders in the United States will dramatically expand access to out-of-print books, creating new revenue opportunities for authors and publishers. The new registry should help reduce the number of in-copyright works whose owners cannot be identified or found because authors will have a concrete economic incentive to come forward, claim their works and then earn money. For books that are in-print, the agreement would offer new distribution opportunities to copyright holders in the United States.
European authors and publishers whose books have been scanned from an American library may benefit from the new revenue that will come as American readers discover and purchase their books. They can register with the new registry to control and profit from online access to their books, or, just like American authors, they can choose to opt out. The registry will also benefit rightsholders by helping potential licensors for Europe reach out to rightsholders and negotiate agreements to license works in the EU. But no readers outside of the United States will reap the benefits American readers will see-- because the agreement is under U.S. law, it can by nature only govern what happens within the U.S.
In this context, we are delighted to see that the EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding recently added her voice to the debate welcoming calling for Europe to act. "Google Books is a commercial project developed by an important player," she said. "It is good to see that new business models are evolving which could allow bringing more content to an increasing number of consumers." We agree. The bottom line conclusion from today's hearing is clear and straightforward: Europeans, not just Americans, should be empowered to rediscover long lost books
.
Posted by Daniel Clancy, Engineering Director
Europe unveils ambitious digital agenda
Thursday, September 3, 2009
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso today unveiled his
platform
to win a new five year term in office. He promised that the Commission will work for a successful exit from the financial crisis, tackle climate change and advance a "people's Europe".
For us at Google, the most important signal was the scale of his declared ambition to spur a digital revolution. The President's paper repeated the word "transform" nine times and "radical" four times - a "
Europe committed to the radical transformation towards a knowledge-based society"
is, for Google, an essential starting point to address huge societal challenges we face.
The paper emphasises the need to invest in the new skills for the jobs of tomorrow, and sets an ambitious program to bring fast speed Internet across the European Union. Importantly, Barroso aims to bridge the divide between Europe's digital haves and have nots. Naturally, we are particularly excited that the
"Commission will develop a European Digital Agenda (accompanied by a targeted legislative programme) to tackle the main obstacles to a genuine digital single market,
" echoing recent calls made by the European Digital Media Association
EDiMA
(Google is a member).
But we would have liked to see more analysis of the new dynamics of innovation. Presiden Barroso's platform avoids mentioning the academic insights to be found in works such
Wikinomics
or
We Think
. Social networking media (such as Facebook and Twitter) are transforming the way people communicate and organise. These collaborative sites are powerful engines both driving forward economic growth and for addressing the big societal challenges the Commission wants to address. As we move forward, Google will discussing these opportunities with policy makers.
Posted By Simon Hampton, Director of European Public Affairs
Google Translate now supports all 23 official EU languages
Monday, August 31, 2009
(Cross-posted from the
The Official Google Blog
)
We spend a lot of time thinking about how information travels around the globe. After all, there are Googlers living and working in
dozens of countries
— and we're pretty sure our products are used in many more. So we're familiar with the need to translate information across borders, and we've been working hard to build the technology to enable you to do just that. Today, we're excited to announce that we've added nine new languages to
Google Translate
:
Afrikaans
,
Belarusian
,
Icelandic
,
Irish
,
Macedonian
,
Malay
,
Swahili
,
Welsh
and
Yiddish
. That means that Google Translate now supports 51 languages and 2550 language pairs — including all
23 official EU languages
.
The translation quality of these newest languages is still a little rough, but it will improve over time — and we're continuously working to improve quality for all languages supported by Google Translate. We're also working to integrate Google Translate into some of our other products; you can already translate
emails
within Gmail,
webpages
using Google Toolbar,
RSS feeds
in Google Reader and most recently,
documents
within Google Docs. For more information about Google Translate and these latest additions, check out our post on the
Research Blog
.
Posted by Jeff Chin, Product Manager
Making the dream of digital libraries come true
Friday, August 28, 2009
The European Commission today set out more
detail
on the future of its digital library project
Europeana
and the Commissioner has stated how she welcomes the
evolution of new business models
. It's exciting as the project aims to bring even more books, paintings and pictures online.
Sure, some people have suggested this means there's some sort of competition between Europeana and our own projects on books. I guess it makes a nice headline, but it's just not true. The fact is that bringing our cultural heritage online is a tremendous undertaking that can only be achieved by both private and public effort. Both services are complimentary. Indeed, Google is working hard to expand its cooperation with European libraries which form Europeana's backbone.
Google has already forged partnerships to scan public domain works with 30 libraries all around the world, including the Oxford University, the Bavarian State Library, the University of Lausanne and the University of Ghent. Google Books contains works in more than 100 languages. Just this week, the Italian Ministry of Culture announced that it would like to work with us to accelerate scanning of Italian-language works.
I recently visited one of our library partners, the Ghent library. I was amazed by the progress there. In just two years, almost 100,000 of the university's of public domain books have been scanned, making them available to anyone anywhere in the world. An Australian or African studying 17th-century Flemish art history now has access to a treasure trove of Dutch-language books, without needing to travel all the way to Belgium or to attend the University of Ghent. This revolutionary spread of knowledge represents the inspiration of projects such as Europeana and Google Books.
Of course, a key challenge for such projects is how to revive access to books that are in copyright, but are out of print. Until now, it is very difficult for projects like Europeana or Google Books to enable readers to access these books, even though they represent the bulk of library collections. In Ghent, for example, we only scan work published before the mid 19th-century.
By contrast, Google last year reached a groundbreaking agreement with an international class of authors and publishers that aims to bring back to life millions of these out of print in copyright books. If an American court approves, readers in the U.S. will be able for the first time to search, preview and buy online access to a great number of out-of-print books scanned as part of Google Book Search. A new non-profit registry will be set up to locate the rights holders of these in copyright but difficult to find books and collect and distribute revenues to authors and publishers.
The Commission is holding an information hearing on this agreement in Brussels on September 7. We welcome this as an opportunity to talk about the agreement and on how to develop solutions contributing to spread knowledge and culture through projects like Google Books and Europeana. Here, too, the European Commission Communication released today is helpful, as it launches a public consultation about how to allow for the developments of services similar to the one proposed under the US Google Book agreement. Google is interested in pursuing all avenues of strengthening and expanding our partnership with this ambitious digitization effort.
Posted by Antoine Aubert, European Copyright Policy Manager
British MP David Davis, Google, and Setting the Record Straight
Monday, July 27, 2009
We were surprised and disappointed to open the Times newspaper today and find a vitriolic
column
on Google and our record on privacy, from Conservative Member of Parliament David Davis. Responding to speculation in the Times several weeks ago that the Conservative party was in favour of giving patients the ability to transfer their medical records to private companies, Mr Davis decided to launch an extraordinary attack on Google, riddled with misleading statements. Of course, Mr Davis didn't ask us first for our comments or to check his facts before going to press.
Mr Davis' argument is based on something of a straw man, given that Google Health, our health records product, is only available in the US, and we have no immediate plans to bring it to other countries. But given that he goes on to attack our Street View product as a "high-handed" intrusion on privacy, assert that we do not respect European privacy law, argue we have entered into "an amoral deal with China," and attribute our economic success to "legally unfettered use of personal data", we wanted to set the record straight.
Allegation: Google is "hostile to privacy."
We were the first company in our industry to anonymise information when people conduct searches. We took the US government to court when we were asked to hand over large amounts of data to them. Like all of our products, Street View was built from the ground up to respect user privacy. The imagery is not real time. We automatically blur faces and vehicle number plates, and we make it easy for people with concerns to have their homes removed from Street View if they wish. In the months since Street View launched in the UK, tens of millions of people have found it a useful and interesting tool, whether for exploring a tourist destination, finding a restaurant or checking driving directions.
Allegation: Google claims that European privacy legislation "does not apply to it."
For a company that supposedly ignores European laws, we did not launch Google Street View in the UK until we had the green light from the Information Commissioner! "Google Street View does not contravene the Data Protection Act," said David Evans, the Commissioner's Senior Data Protection Practice Manager, "and, in any case, it is not in the public interest to turn the digital clock back."
Allegation: Google entered an "amoral deal" with China.
As we said
when we launched Google.cn, it wasn't a step we took lightly, but we felt we were doing it for the right reasons - to bring more information to more people. Where Chinese regulations require us to remove sensitive information from our search results we disclose this to users - which is not standard practice in China.
Allegation: Google makes its money from "exploiting its customers' private data for commercial ends."
Google makes the vast majority of its revenue by providing users with free services and serving ads targeted to what the user has searched for or has read. This does not involve selling user data or exposing it in any way. When we launched interest based advertising we did so only after putting users in control of the information collected about them, as we make clear in our
user FAQ.
In addition, we do not use categories defined by
European privacy laws
as "sensitive" such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or health when showing ads.
If managed and used responsibly, the free services Google offers can be of tremendous civic benefit. We’ve developed a tool called “Flu Trends”, which offers an early warning system for flu outbreaks based on the anonymous actions of millions of people searching for symptoms. Relief agencies depend on Google Earth images after natural disasters like tsunamis or hurricanes and Indian farmers leverage our topographical maps to help with flood management.
We're proud of our track record of protecting user privacy. We work hard to make sure our users understand what data we collect and how we use it, because we are committed to transparency and user choice. The important work of education is made more difficult by polemicists who abuse the truth. We are happy to debate our privacy record or policies anytime, but we'd rather that debate was based on fact not fiction.
Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel
Closed networks are a risky business
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Consumers like open networks; operators want to use their control of the network as the basis for developing new business models. It was ever thus!
Europe's legislator and its regulators currently rely on competition to police the gulf, and it has generally worked. New entrants have entered the market and consumers are enjoying a choice of service provider. Meanwhile, an explosion of innovation in the devices used by consumers (such as netbooks, the iPhone, or
Android
-powered handsets) has been matched by massive investment from an array of players in datacentres to enable the so-called Internet "cloud". It has never been a more exciting time to be on the Internet.
The Commission is currently
consulting
on a Recommendation on the regulation of Next Generation Access networks (NGAs, the deployment of fibre either to street cabinets or to the home). This paper aims to translate the legislator's willingness to recognise that investments in NGAs are more risky than traditional investments (e.g. of fibre in an operator's backbone network). The lay-person could be foregiven for wondering why investing in infrastrucutre is seen as risky, given the ongoing signs of exponential bandwidth demand from consumers, but that is not a part of the debate.
The Commission is seeking views on the sort of "risk premium" those that build NGAs (frequently the traditional, incumbent) operators should be able to include in their wholesale prices to other ISPs. Two of the parameters the Commission is considering recommending national regulators to take into account are "demand for additional bandwidth, [&] consumers' willingness to pay".
Our
contribution to the consultation
makes the simple observation that bandwidth demand and consumer willingness to pay are themselves dependent on how open are the Internet access services available to them.
The telecoms package
equips regulators with powers
to ensure consumers can access the services and applications of
their
choice. Weak application of these rules would permit operators to run less open neworks, reducing consumer willingness to pay. But if this was then used as evidence in favour of higher "risk premiums", higher wholesale rates would feed in to increased consumer prices and cause still lower demand. A vicious circle.
We have therefore proposed that the Commission require risk premiums be calculated under the assumption that the regulators' new powers to keep networks open are applied vigorously. Lower risk premiums will increase demand, facilitate market entry and hopefully result in competition continuing to police the openness of network access. A virtuous circle, where assuming regulation is applied will (hopefully) result in it not being needed in practise.
Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of European Public Policy
Smart Meters for Smart Energy Consumption
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The new Swedish Presidency of the European Union has rightly put the climate change challenge as one of its priorities. Next week, Europe's environment and energy ministers will
meet
in the Swedish town of
Åre
. Together they hope to develop synergies on climate change, energy-efficiency, innovation and competitiveness.
We made the case recently on this blog for an
Energy Information Policy
that would harness the power of information technology to support social change. In general, information technology can play a key role in giving citizens access to data that helps drive environmentally friendly behaviour. In particular, we suggested that the deployment of smart meters was a huge opportunity, especially as we would be building on an area of existing European leadership.
Smart meters collect real, or near real, time information on energy use. When this is reflected back to users, studies show that this has a significant impact on end consumer behaviour: On average, household energy savings amount to 5 - 15%. Even greater savings are possible if this information is used to see the value of retiring an old refrigerator, installing a new air conditioner or insulating the home.
The potential impact of large numbers of people achieving similar efficiencies is even more exciting. For every six households that save 10% on electricity, for instance, we reduce carbon emissions as much as taking one conventional
car
off the road.
We wanted to leverage these large energy opportunities for our users, so we created Google
PowerMeter
. It receives information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provides customers with access to their home electricity consumption right on their personal
iGoogle
homepage.
The positive effects are already visible in our
first pilot agreements
for Powermeter with utility companies around the world. Just recently, we announced our latest partner and first European utility,
Yello Strom
, in Germany. Yello uses one of the globally most advanced smart metering technologies, giving users real-time feedback on their energy consumption.
Many of our internal users have seen significant savings opportunities through being a pilot tester for PowerMeter, and
all
of them have become much more aware of energy lingo, and, much more importantly, just what it means to leave your HiFi on standby the whole day round (it translated to an impressive 140 Euros yearly savings
for me
).
When fed into a social network context, we believe the value of getting access to energy information could be even greater. For example, imagine setting a savings target for yourself, sharing it with selected friends, and getting pinged if you exceed or miss your targets.
"Energy education" - making users aware of kiloWatt hours, and the Euro costs they translate into, is one of the key tasks when trying to make this planet greener. We are only at the beginning, and PowerMeter is a small puzzle piece in this much larger challenge. Most people that you would ask on the street would be able to tell you the price of a litre of petrol, or what they spend on their mobile phone bill per month, but very few know hard facts about their energy consumption or cost. Do you? We strongly believe there's a lot of room for change here.
At Google, we have been interacting with policy makers, industry leadership and industry influencers a lot in the past year. It is truly exciting to see that many of the experts' expected developments in that space are well aligned with our idea of making more information accessible to the end user.
This will ultimately lead to lower energy bills, more informed users and a planet a little greener, and we greatly applaud technology, projects and policy that can help drive this trend.
Posted by Jens Redmer, Principal, New Business Development, and Benjamin Kott, Green Business Operations Manager, EMEA
Some Good Ideas about European Innovation
Friday, July 10, 2009
A European Commission sponsored panel of top-ranking business leaders this week launched a fascinating online debate on
future EU innovation policy
. Entitled Re-invent Europe through innovation, the panel makes the case "for an innovation society where knowledge is utilised rapidly and powerfully for societal benefit and development. This goal requires a systematic transformation from fragmented, single issue, closed approaches favouring large incumbents to networked, flexible and open approaches favouring new entrants and ideas". It is a thought provoking agenda, and is timely given
President Barroso
's recent call for "a radical transformation towards a knowledge-based society".
Google is not on the panel, which includes representatives from manufacturing companies such as Kone, financial institutions such as the Czech bank CSOB as well as Cisco from the technology side. But we welcome the agenda and the tenor of the discussion. It echoes our own call for the European Union to adopt a
Fifth Freedom
for knowledge to the Treaty of Rome's original four freedoms. We strongly agree, for example, with the paper's effort to puts the issue of investment in infrastructure in a broader context - "broadband is not simply a new communication line but a new social infrastructure that is a pre-requisite for future innovation".
Of course, praise alone is of only limited use, and there are some issues where the panel would ideally have said more. Intellectual property is always a sensitive topic, and it is covered only in a delphic fashion. Likewise, while there's much focus on how government spends money to support innovation, there's little discussion of how the Internet has enabled grass-roots innovation precisely because - as the report states - public financing is frequently "directed to incumbents in mature industries". More than public financing, judicious public policy is required for intellectual property regimes to support innovation based mass-collaboration.
The panel also expresses a frequently heard concern that "ideas generated here [in Europe] are developed more successfully by others elsewhere." Unfortunately, but the panel extrapolate this logic into the new economy and in particular "social innovations to address climate change, aging and other major challenges". Yet one of the hallmarks of the knowledge economy is the emphasis on sharing, and we need to understand that sharing information may be the socially optimal policy to meet a global challenge such as climate change.
Posted by Simon Hampton, European Public Policy Director
Preventing Advertising of Counterfeit Goods
Friday, June 19, 2009
Many of us have long forgotten how hard it was to travel around Europe or to buy something in other European countries before the
Schengen agreement
or the
Euro
. In the same way, we tend to forget how time consuming it was to find the best deal for plane tickets or hotels, or to compare qualities and prices of products before the Internet. Google is proud that its online ads enable consumers to compare goods and services, and businesses, small and large, to promote their products, locally and
across borders
.
Yet these new powerful online advertising tools must not be misused to support the sale of counterfeits.
Google
has always prohibited ads for the sale or promotion of counterfeit goods. We now are taking measures to further improve our cooperation with trademark owners. Our new
Counterfeit Goods complaint form
streamlines the way trademark owners can inform us about ads they see for counterfeit goods. This allows for faster review and take down of offending ads when necessary. We will continue to innovate to develop solutions that prevent ads for counterfeit goods.
When Europe knocked down borders, customs officials needed to adapt and trademark owners faced new challenges to cope with circulation of counterfeits. Similarly, the Internet has provided new opportunities to unscrupulous advertisers. Yet Europe did not back away from tearing down borders and pursuing the benefits of the single market. In the same way, we will continue to work with trademark owners to fight against ads for counterfeit goods while allowing both users and advertisers to reap the full benefits of the web.
Posted by Antoine Aubert, Policy Manager, Brussels
Street View: Exploring Europe's Streets With New Privacy Safeguards
Friday, June 12, 2009
In 2007 we began to look at bringing the highly innovative and very popular Street View to Europe, and I
highlighted
the new technological challenges this would present given different privacy laws and cultural norms. We pre-empted many of the different requirements and concerns and proactively introduced privacy enhancing technologies, namely industry-leading face and license plate blurring, and made it easy to flag inappropriate images for removal. We began a dialogue with the Article 29 Working Party, which brings together representatives from all 27 European Data Protection Authorities. In turn, they have asked us to make a few additional modifications to address local specificities to ensure Street View better aligns to local interpretations of privacy requirements across the whole of Europe.
First, they have asked us to continue to provide advance notice to the public about the project before we start driving in a new country. We already got a head start on this request earlier this year, when we worked closely with the press to announce details of when and where we would be driving in new countries such as Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Poland, Czech Republic, and Switzerland. As you can probably imagine, it can be tricky at times to say exactly where our cars will be and when; we're affected by lots of things outside our control such as the weather and lighting conditions, we also rely on the local knowledge of our drivers to decide which places it is best to drive when, taking into account traffic conditions and other local factors. Nonetheless, we are committed to working within the Article 29 Working Party's guidelines on this issue.
Second, the Article 29 Working Party has asked that we set a time limit on how long we keep the unblurred copies of panoramas from Street View, in a way that appropriately balances the use of this data for legitimate purposes with the need to deal with any potential concerns from individuals who might feature incidentally on the Street View imagery. To explain the issue here, although the images you see on Street View have faces and car license plates blurred out, we have to collect an original 'unblurred' copy of that image first. We then apply our highly sophisticated blurring technology and we make sure that only the blurred copy is ever made public.
The Article 29 Working Party have, however, asked us to take some additional steps to ensure that we don't keep the original 'unblurred' copy for longer than we need to. This is a challenge, but again one we're committed to meeting not just in Europe but globally. One of the technical challenges at stake with Street View--or any service that uses image detector software --is that the software sometimes makes mistakes, labeling part of the image as containing a face or a license plate when in fact it doesn't. While we like to think we've gotten pretty good at this stuff, we still have lots of these 'false positives'.
Some of these can be pretty funny like the blurred horse shown above, but this also affects the quality of Google Maps and so in turn affects our users - for example, it'd be pretty annoying if you couldn't find the phone number of that little deli across town where you think you might have left your purse, because our software mistook the phone number for a license plate. That's why we're constantly working on ways to improve our technology, and we are constantly training it to detect more of the relevant stuff, while reducing the number of 'false positives' it creates. To do this, though, we need access to the original unblurred copies of the images. Nevertheless, we've communicated to the Article 29 Working Party that we will meet their request that long term we only keep the blurred copy of Street View panoramas, and we will work with them and our engineers to determine the shortest retention period that also allows for legitimate use under EU laws.
It's important for companies operating services across Europe to be able to follow harmonised data protection guidance, and we're grateful to the Article 29 Working Party for their advice and collaboration on Street View. It is this coordinated approach that will best enable the expansion of consumer-facing services and innovative technology across the region. Street View has proven to be extremely popular in the countries in which it has
launched
and with these additional privacy safeguards we plan to bring it to even more countries in the European Union, allowing people to explore their home towns, tourist attractions or cities on the other side of the world. We are already receiving many requests to come drive new areas so that imagery can be used to showcase a town, promote tourism and improve travel planning and we are of course always happy to consider these.
Read about
our latest addition to Street View - tourists and Mickey Mouse fans can now virtually explore the Disneyland parks in Paris.
Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel
Europe Needs a Fifth Freedom
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The 1957 Treaty of Rome established the four freedoms - the free movement of persons; the free movement of goods; the free movement of services; and the free movement of capital.
These initial four freedoms reflected the needs of the prevailing industrial economy and helped spur the creation of the
1992 single market
project. Today, we are on the path to create a knowledge-based economy. Europe's heads of states acknowledged this shift in 2000 when they launched the
Lisbon Agenda
for growth and jobs.
Now, it is time for the European Union to add a Fifth Freedom to meet the needs of the knowledge economy.
A c
onstructive and creative debate has opened about the meaning of the fifth freedom. In a speech given in April, 2007, Science & Research
Commissioner Janez Potočnik
emphasised the importance of the European dimension to research. Later that year, the European Commission published a new
strategic report,
adding high speed Internet and innovation coordination. Last year Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding published a Communication on the
Future of the Internet
, which
put openness at the heart of her future Fifth Freedom agenda.
For Google, Europe's Fifth Freedom should mean freedom of knowledge to enable collaboration and strengthen community, not only to drive jobs and growth but also, for example, to address climate change and to modernise our democracies.
We've been discussing our first thoughts on the Fifth Freedom with policy makers over the last few weeks. Their suggestions have helped us refine our analysis. Among the thin
gs we now suggest is testing new innovation mechanisms, like awards and public procurement, prioritising opening up and mapping information that can fuel innovation in Green ICTs and re-thinking the barriers to entrepreneurship - collaboratively - with entrepreneurs in the driver's seat.
Collaborative innovation should also be the cornerstone of public policy. Today, we are making our revised contribution -
version 1.5
- available. We would be delighted to receive your comments, as we continue to develop this document over time.
This is not the last you will hear from us on the subject. We plan to blog about these issues over the coming months and will continue to discuss our vision.
Posted by Dr Nicklas Lundblad,
European Policy Manager
and Simon Hampton, Director of Public Policy
What We've Learned Rolling Out Street View Around The Globe
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Street View on Google Maps is one of our most popular and fastest-growing products, but it's still a new technology that we're continuing to evolve. We've progressed a long way since the early prototypes collected their first imagery in 2007 and while rolling out Street View around the world we've learned that no two streets are the same.
New countries bring new challenges all the time -- be it the English weather, the darker winters of Northern Europe or even the sensitivities of a red light district. To give just one example, when we first started collecting imagery for Street View in the U.S. we realised that our cars wouldn't capture some of Europe's greatest landmarks which can be found down narrow streets or cobblestone paths. So we built a bicycle system that can tackle sights like Pompei or the Trevi Fountain.
And then there's privacy. We've learned a lot about what people are comfortable with in different parts of the world and we have worked hard to listen to their concerns and make adjustments where necessary. Before launching Street View imagery in a new country, we reach out to the Data Protection Authority to explain what the product is and how our privacy protection tools work, discussing our built-in features like
license blurring
and the ability to flag inappropriate images for
removal
.
We have also been in constructive dialogue and exchanged written information with the Article 29 Working Party which brings together representatives from all 27 European Data Protection Authorities. The Working Party has asked us to make a few modifications to ensure that Street View better aligns to local interpretations of European privacy requirements. For example, they asked us to take steps to notify the public in advance of when we're driving. As you can probably imagine, this can be a bit tricky due to ever-changing weather and lighting conditions, but we are committed to working within their guidelines. In fact, we had already got a head start on this request when we announced the beginning of driving in countries such as Poland, Czech Republic and Switzerland.
As with many cutting-edge technologies, the challenge we face with Street View is striking the right balance between building a sophisticated and highly useful tool while ensuring that the data we collect to provide these services is used appropriately. Street View has once again underlined the mantra our founders have repeated since the early days of Google: listen to users, take their feedback, and iterate. The many people across Europe who already use Street View to explore their home towns, tourist attractions or cities on the other side of the world, suggest that this approach is welcomed. We look forward to bringing these benefits to many more Google Maps users in the months to come.
Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Chief Cartographer, EMEA
When books meet readers... in the digital age
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Over the last few weeks we've heard a number of questions about Books Search and specifically the
Google Book Search settlement
. We thought now would be a good chance to answer some of the most frequently-asked questions, as well as remind authors and publishers that they can visit the
settlement Notice website
for further information. But first, here's a quick overview of Book Search.
Google Book Search allows you to search the content of books, like you search the Internet, creating new opportunities for discovery and unexpected encounter with books. Book Search can be a useful service to the academic in Berlin who is looking for a scholarly work; it can be an even more meaningful experience for someone in an area where libraries are few and far between.
Through our Publisher Programme, publishers provide us with their books, which we scan and put online with a limited preview of the text. Through our Library Project, we index both in-copyright and out-of-copyright works scanned at our library partners in the U.S like Michigan, Princeton or Cornell University Library. Under this project, users are able to freely access the full content of out-of-copyright books; for those books that are in-copyright, users are able to discover books but can see at most snippets, i.e. very short extracts of the text and terms the user has searched for (see below). We are proud to be scanning public domain material at many of Europe's leading libraries.
But the vast majority of books in the world--and in Book Search-- are both in-copyright and out-of-print. This means they are difficult to find in bookshops and sometimes even in libraries. As a result, it's this last category of books that has been the subject of multiple public and private initiatives around the world, all of which have hoped to promote the great wealth of culture and knowledge "locked" in out-of-print works. The
Google Book Search settlement
is just one of these initiatives, and opens up millions of books to users in the U.S.
The settlement between an international class of authors and publishers and Google unlocks access to millions of books in the United States.
With the Settlement, readers in the U.S. will now be able to search, preview and buy online access to the books that are the hardest to find -- those that are still in copyright but are no longer in print. Most of the world's books fall into this category. They are not sold through bookstores or held on most library shelves.
The Settlement offers additional benefits to further improve access to books for visually impaired people or support research in the US. In addition to expanding access to out-of-print books , authors and publishers who are part of our Partner Program will have the ability to sell online access to their in-print books through Google Book Search, readers will have even more options to access in-print books.
For users outside the U.S., the Google Book Search experience won't change unless rightsholders specifically authorize additional uses of their books outside the United States. As always, if the book is in the public domain, any users will be able to download the whole book for free.
While the Google Book Search settlement will only allow for improved access in the U.S., Google is committed to working with European rightsholders to develop similar solutions that are appropriate for the European market.
Authors and publishers who have questions can visit the
settlement Notice website
.
Posted by Antoine Aubert, European copyright policy manager
Reaching Consumers Across Borders
Thursday, May 7, 2009
The European Commission is hosting the first ever
EU SME week
. The tagline - "Small Business, Big Ideas" - aptly captures the excitement of a small business, and Google was one too just a few years ago. Now we offer online advertising
solutions
that many of today's SMEs use as part of their marketing strategy. While the local or national market is a great start for any business, clearly the single market (and beyond) should be the ultimate growth ambition of European entrepreneurs.
And the opportunity is clearly there. We've noted on this blog before that - according to recent Commission
estimates
- only 7% of EU consumers had shopped cross-border. How does the picture look from the seller's perspective?
SMEs that use
AdWords
, Google's online advertising product, can reach consumers who are searching for products and services in multiple languages, across borders, all from a single online advertising account paid for in one currency. Advertisers may target ads to users in more than 40 languages or use location targeting to direct ads to different countries, regions, or cities. The biggest bonus though, is that advertisers only pay if someone interacts with their ad. In simple terms, if there is no click, there is no payment.
AdWords offers the ability for SMEs to show ads to consumers using several methods, such as matching country or language targeting to Google domains (.fr, .de, etc) or by specific geographic search terms ("
London plumbers"
would show to users in London). Another component of targeting is by an analysis of the user's IP address. IP addresses can give a general sense of a user's physical location, based on the regional assignment of IP addresses. Such advertising targeting capabilities give advertisers a reasonable sense of control that they are not wasting precious advertising euros on clicks from potential customers that they are unable to serve.
Many European SMEs have successfully grown their businesses across national borders thanks to the global targeting capabilities in AdWords. Having found success in the UK with AdWords, the footwear retailer
Cloggs
launched a French-language website coupled with ads targeted to French consumers which has generated an average of 100 sales daily.
What we see is that the proportion of our EU customers' AdWords budget spent on cross-border prospects is about double the Commission's 7% figure for cross-border consumer purchases. That difference is not surprising - AdWords advertisers can more easily target consumers across borders compared to traditional media. Further, our figures include B2B sellers, and some may have set up local fulfillment operations such that consumers are unaware that the ultimate seller is in fact based abroad.
In any event this is a figure that both we and the Commission would like to see increase. And more choice for consumers is a good thing too. To that end, we have increased our efforts to educate AdWords advertisers about how they can attract consumers from across borders to their websites by expanding their advertising campaigns internationally. AdWords specialists recently held online web tutorial sessions in 4 languages open to advertisers in 7 EU countries, offering tips for how to expand their reach across borders. We invited thousands of advertisers in the EU to these live sessions and will make recordings of these trainings available online. This month, we're going to post international campaign expansion tips on Google's European Inside AdWords blogs (check out the Swedish Inside AdWords
blog
for an example), spreading the word for how AdWords can support the entrepreneurial ambitions of SMEs in the EU.
Posted by Rich Flanagan, Product Marketing Manager
A European Parliament Internet Initiative
Monday, April 27, 2009
I recently attended in Brussels a European Parliament hearing on Internet governance and whether Europe should sponsor its own Internet Governance Forum.The United Nations
Internet Governance Forum
is a great place to discuss everything from privacy and censorship to copyright and freedom of information. At the latest one held in Hyderabad, a rich dialogue developed on the future of the net.
It's an important step forward for the European Parliament to address this issue. In my opinion, three important ingredients are required to compose a recipe for a successful forum.
First, the discussion must include a broad set of stakeholders, not just officials, but also members of civil society, representatives from industry and technical experts. A good model is the
OECD's work on the Internet
which includes a wide range of representation from Civil Society and the Internet Technical Community, from privacy organizations and the Internet society as well as from businesses. The
multiple stakeholder model
model has served the Internet exceedingly well.
Second, let's avoid requiring a lowest-common denominator consensus and let's avoid replicating existing decision and policy making processes nationally or in the European Union. What is needed, we believe, is lively and confrontational discussions that come up with new ideas on how to keep the net open and free, give users transparency and choice and unleash the economic growth the Internet can bring.
Third, European parliamentarians should participate in any forum. Their presence would help safe-guard the European values of open networks, freedom of speech, freedom of information, and free trade. The last thing we would like to see from a European Internet Governance Forum would be moves to enact trade barriers limiting global electronic commerce. It is also important to safeguard the innovative and open role of the Internet which benefits so many European companies.
Internet governance faces several key challenges this year. After last year's meeting in Hyderabad, we're looking forward to this year's gathering in Cairo. Let's hope there will be record European parliament participation. The UN's Internet Government Forum is scheduled to come to Europe - Vilnius - in 2010. If Europeans work together, we then will have a great chance to leave a lasting contribution to the future of the Internet.
Posted by Dr. Nicklas Lundblad, Public Policy and Government Affairs, Sweden
If It Isn't Open, It Isn't The Internet.
Friday, April 24, 2009
We were proud to host a celebrity this week in Brussels -- Dr. Vinton G. Cerf. Vint holds one of the great job titles ever invented, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist. He is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies and applications on the Internet and other platforms for our company. Vint is best known as a "Father of the Internet," the co-designer of TCP/IP protocols and basic architecture of the Internet.
At the
Open Forum Europe
summit "The Future is Open" today, Vint gave the keynote address. He explained that the conscious choice to design an open and neutral Internet turned out to be the main ingredient for its tremendous success. If the Net stays open, he predicted that it will help us getting out of the present economic gloom by unleashing creative ideas and helping create successful businesses, small and large, in Europe and elsewhere. Before Vint took to the podium,
Professor Ziga Turk
had explained how the first communication revolution - cheap paper from China - empowered the masses and helped unleash the Renaissance's creativity, and how the Internet is provoking a second communication revolution by spreading knowledge across the globe. Vint took up the train of thought and offered an analogy to the French Revolutionary goals of
liberté, egalité
and
fraternité
, saying openness, open standards, and open source must be the three guiding principles for the Net to achieve this revolutionary promise.
The most timely element of Vint's talk concerns open and non-discriminatory network access, commonly called net neutrality. While the European Union is close to a deal on European Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding's electronic communications package, it so far has failed to reach agreement on a provision ensuring that the ones controlling the physical layer do not favour their own or affiliated content or services at the application layer of the Internet. Vint acknowledged that telecom operators should have the necessary flexibility to manage traffic on their networks to keep them functioning in a smooth and secure fashion. Also, Vint acknowledged that an effective way of ensuring fairness in resource allocation is to charge more for faster than slower data transfer rates. This will help avoid congestion.
But it is crucial to ensure that flexibility does not lead to abuse. As "Skype Evangelist" Sten Tamkivi
pointed out
at the same conference: competition law and transparency may provide certain safeguards - but chances are this won't be enough, especially not for start-ups. A recent consumer survey that Google helped commission, showed that an overwhelming 91% of consumers in the UK, France and Germany expect their Internet Service Provider to avoid blocking or limiting their service. We have joined with a group of Internet companies including France's Dailymotion and PriceMinister, as well as Yahoo, eBay, Skype and Amazon, in favor of maintaining an open Internet. Together with them, we have signed a position paper
urging the EU legislator to avoid eroding end-users rights to access the content, applications and services they choose.
Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, traditional or unconventional – can compete on equal terms to serve users. Those providing the highway shouldn't be able to decide who gets to drive in the fast lane. As Vint said, "the Internet must stay open. That’s where new ideas come from. That’s where new entrepreneurs come from. That’s what creates new jobs, new wealth, new knowledge. The openness of the network is going to be the engine to create new wealth. If we do anything to hurt that, we will do untold damage."
Posted by Sebastian Müller, European Policy Manager, Brussels
Putting Consumers In Control
Friday, April 3, 2009
The European Commission held its first
Consumer Summit
this week, hosted by Commissioner
Meglena Kuneva
, bringing together 250 representatives of consumers, of business and of the regulators. Our President of International Operations Nikesh Arora, was one of the keynote speakers.
We urged the audience to consider how our children see the digital world touching every part of their lives. Kids ask their parents why they needs to sit in front of a television set at 19:00 for a specific show. They want to watch right now, and the Internet allows them.
Extrapolated to 1.4 million net subscribers, we explained how shopping, entertaining and learning habits are being revolutionized. At the Summit, Ofcom's Collette Bowe cited her agency's report showing that more than one in five adults in UK, France, Italy and the United States watched feature films or full-length TV shows' online. According to Forrester, 37% of West European adults regularly shopped online in 2008. Yet the Commissioner recently
recorded
that only 7% of EU consumers had shopped cross-border. That's something we'd like to work with the Commission and we have produced a new set of
tips
to encourage cross-border shopping.
These online consumers are powerful. When they unite to challenge business practises, they force change. Earlier this year, thousands of Facebook members protested a sudden change in the site’s terms of service and Facebook reverted back to their old terms.
Businesses need to recognise the force of the networked consumer. We built consumer control right into the heart of our recent interest based advertising
announcements
. In her
speech
at the Summit, Ofcom's Mrs. Bowe described the pre-requisites for privacy in a connected world - transparency, opt-out for consumers, and excluding from targeted advertising sensitive areas such as individual health without an explicit opt-in. Google subscribes to all these points.
We told the audience that regulation has a vital role to play in supporting tomorrow's consumer - enabling innovation while also protecting consumer rights. But just as this presents businesses with both great opportunities and great challenges, the same is true for regulators. Regulators have not only the challenge of deciphering the issues and weighing the alternatives, but also of doing them in "Internet time", fast enough to make a difference.
Posted by Simon Hampton, Director for European Public Policy and Government Affairs
Gmail Turns Five
Friday, April 3, 2009
This week, Gmail celebrated its 5th birthday with the international launch of Gmail Labs, a quirky experimental feature playground. To mark the occasion, we held a press conference in Brussels to talk about how Gmail has evolved from its beginnings as a straightforward email service to the robust and flexible communications product we offer users today. Here's a quick recap of the event for all of those who attended by about 40 journalists.
Our Director of Product Management Eric Tholome put Gmail in context by giving a short history of computing, noting how we moved from the mainframe to personal computers, and from being disconnected to becoming a part of a network via the Internet. Using the power of the Web, many applications today including email, calendars, and online photo albums now can be run from within a browser over the Internet, or "in the cloud." This transformation is analogous to the creation of the electric grid a century ago. Before, everyone owned their own electricity generator. Now that seems inefficient and unnecessary.
Working in the cloud also eliminates the annoyance of manually keeping software up-to-date. Instead of relying on each individual to upgrade his or her software, a web-based application receives new features, security patches, and general updates from the server-side. Users can stop worrying about running updates: they will always see the newest version. Gmail, a web-based service, is a good example. Hundreds of changes have been launched since 2004, and users simply saw the newest version every time they logged on. These new features include increased storage space, video chat, and updated interface, and more.
At the event, Product Manager Christian Miccio introduced the crowd to Gmail Labs, a set of experimental features that you can turn on to modify how your Gmail works. Initially launched in English in June, 2008, Gmail Labs has launched 43 features in 43 weeks - including features like Offline Gmail, Tasks, Mail Goggles, Undo Send, and the Forgotten Attachment Detector. Such a rapid launch schedule, Christian noted, could only happen for a cloud-based application. And now, with the launch of Gmail Labs in 47 new languages, users globally can play with these features in their local languages.
If you are unfamiliar with Gmail Labs experiments, which can be turned on and off individually with a few clicks of the mouse, take a look at the
video
below for a brief introduction.
To set up a Gmail account, just
click
and get started. To turn on Gmail Labs features, go to the Settings link in the top right, then navigate to the Labs tab within the window. f you haven't tried Gmail Labs yet, we encourage you to play around - there's a feature (or two!) for everyone.
Posted by William Echikson, Senior Manager, Communications and Kasia Chmielinski, Communications Associate
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