Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Introducing Google's European Public Policy Blog
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Welcome to Google's new voice on public policy in Europe.
Since its beginning, Google has taken an innovative approach to achieving its mission of organizing information and making it accessible and useful. This includes how we communicate with policy makers and users. We don't merely publish position papers or press releases, but a blog. We want to be transparent about our positions and the reasons behind them.
Google's European policy team represents our messages and opinions in Brussels and around Europe, engaging with policymakers and the press on issues that affect the Internet and its role in modern society. You can expect to see us post about the benefits of the open internet, open standards, freedom of speech, innovation, competition, user information and user choice, along with variety of pressing policy topics ranging from privacy, copyright and trademark protection, content regulation, and broadband policy.
In 2007, we introduced Google's Public Policy blog edited out of Washington. As Andrew McLaughlin, our Global Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs said at the time of that launch: "Yes, we're a multinational corporation that argues for our positions before officials, legislators, and opinion leaders. At the same time, we want our users to be part of the effort, to know what we're saying and why, and to help us refine and improve our policy positions and advocacy strategies. With input and ideas from our users, we'll surely do a better job of fighting for our common interests."
This rationale remains the same, only now we're "going local" and bringing the same Googley style to public policy communications to Europe. European-based Googlers will write and edit. You may wonder why the blog contains more than a months' worth of posts, given that we're only just now launching. We tested out the blog internally to limber up our blogging muscles. Now that we're going public, we thought it'd be fun to share our earlier internal posts. In the weeks and months ahead, expect to hear more from us on all sorts of issues.
We hope this blog will serve as a resource for policy stakeholders, the press and users throughout Europe. We welcome a conversation - feedback is vital - so please do leave your comments below.
Posted by Simon Hampton & Susan Pointer, Directors for European Public Policy and Government Affairs
Embracing Openness in Europe - Revisited
Monday, March 9, 2009
Europe is getting on the Open Standards bandwagon. Since we last blogged on this subject more than two years ago, much progress is to be reported.
First and foremost, the UK government recently published a Government Action Plan on Open Source, Open Standards and Re-use. It created a separate website which contains links to blog posts, news stories and tweets about UK government, open source and open standards. This development attracted much comment in the British press.
The Dutch also have progressed. In addition to the action plan published last year, the Dutch government has created a separate government body that advises the public sector about the best way to implement open source and open standards. Recently the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis published a report on competition, innovation and intellectual property rights in software markets. This study analyzes how best to stimulate open source software. In response to this report the Secretary of State of Economic Affairs announced that the national government's web site, to be launched this autumn, will be based on open source software. Similar developments are taking place in Poland.
Last but not least, the European Commission takes a clear interest in promoting open source software and open standards. In a speech of at a seminar in June last year, Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes stated, “ I know a smart business decision when I see one – choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed.”
Google remains convinced that openness is the key to innovation, and innovation is the key to future growth and development of the European Union. So it is from this perspective that Google supports all initiatives of national governments throughout Europe to support the use of open source software and open standards.
Posted by Machiel Bolhuis, European Policy Manager
Welcome to the Cloud Generation
Friday, February 20, 2009
When I recently traveled to Brussels to speak about Google’s vision for computing, I was pleased to learn how many of our ideas are shared at the European Commission. Both of us are betting on "cloud" computing, where we no longer are doing most of our computing on the desktop, but on the net, through webmail, blogs, posting photos and searching for information.
Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding has recognized this phenomenon - and the fantastic prospects it offers for Europe. In a speech about a year and a half ago, she noted that she believes the "European software industry" will be able "to ride the rising wave of on-line software." Cloud computing, she added, "will place a new emphasis on open and interoperable systems that can be upgraded and joined together in networks" and "see a shift towards open standards and indeed open source software."
Since the Commissioner's encouraging statements, much progress have been made. In the past, the best technology was launched in the workplace. Now, the best technology starts with consumers. Only a year ago, the costs of an internal video service were prohibitive. No longer. One of my teams is currently working on the next generation of video instant messaging that brings video-conferencing within the realm of any business. Here's a full copy of the presentation I made to European parliamentarians.
The cloud will enable companies to save costs, particularly small businesses. In the past, businesses needed to make big investment in computers and software for accounting systems, customer management systems, email servers, maybe even phone or video conferencing systems. Today, all of those services are available via the network cloud, and you pay for it only as you use it. Sophisticated computer systems, previously the realm of larger companies, suddenly are available to all.
When we at Google and other web-born companies such as Salesforce.com or Amazon built our robust platforms for our own services, we started to rent access to our data centres to other companies. Data centres involve huge fixed cost investments, but we're offering server capacity that you can scale as your business succeeds.
I concluded with the message at how this move to online computing promises a radical transformation crucial to Europe’s future competitiveness. My audience at the European Parliament seemed to understand, particularly when I mentioned how Barack Obama used the net to propel forward his presidential campaign. European parliament elections are scheduled for June and many parliamentarians asked how they too could benefit from moving their campaigns into the cloud.
Posted by Rian Liebenberg, Engineering Director
Freedom or control of the Internet?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Google consistently emphasises the importance of the open Internet. So when the European Parliament Greens approached us to talk about controlling the Internet, and the Liberals sought our views on freedom of expression, we jumped at the chance. With commercial forces at work in the EU, and political motivations present in some third countries, now is clearly the time to talk up the importance of enabling the Internet to continue providing a platform for free speech and for new business models.
Fortunately our views are shared by many. Commissioner Reding and Reporters Without Borders spoke passionately at the Liberal's event, while an array of business and civil society representatives spoke at that of the Greens, including [French Data Network], the Internet Society, La Quadrature du Net, the TACD, BEUC, APRIL and OFE (of which we are member).
And there are reasons to be optimistic. The Internet has enabled huge repositories of information to emerge, such as Wikipaedia or our own Knoll, which are globally available for free. We're seeing rights holders adopt new opportunities created by YouTube's Video-ID system, and the net neutrality debate is now clearly focused on addressing concerns about vertical integration - something that telecoms policy makers do have a lot of experience in considering.
Posted by Simon Hampton, European Policy Director
Safer Social Networking and Self Regulation
Monday, February 16, 2009
Although there are European laws in place to protect online users (remember, if an act is illegal offline it's illegal online also), legislative processes can be time consuming and have the potential to be out of date before they can be enforced. That's why self-regulation is a crucial tool for industry be able react quickly to immediate policy needs. We applaud the European Commission also for recognising the need for this approach.
On Safer Internet Day, earlier this week, Google signed up to support the "Safer Social Networking Principles" that were agreed between online service providers with the help of the European Commission through its Social Networking Taskforce. We think this is a great initiative and precisely the right approach to be taken to help protect young people on social networking services.
Obviously Google itself is not a social networking service but some elements of certain services do have social elements and we will endeavor to uphold the principles. On YouTube for example, we give users a wealth of safety information in our "Safety Tips" centre featuring tips and guidance on topics like teen safety, cyber citizenship, cyberbullying, hateful content, and privacy. We'll be making a full self-assessment of the principles and our services by April, along with all the other signatories.
The creation of the principles is another step in the developing the maturing self-regulatory approach to child protection on-line, building on initiatives such as Teach Today.
Posted by Luc Delany, European Policy Associate
A New View of the Sea
Monday, February 2, 2009
Almost 100 journalists today "plunged" into our press conference at the Residence Palace to help us launch an exciting maritime adventure - Google Ocean.
Google always has seen its mission in the broadest possible way to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We took another step toward this goal when we opened up a new frontier to the armchair web surfer with Ocean, which features satellite imagery, photos and videos of the planet's seas.
The European Commission is contributing by providing its own marine data and Maritime Affairs Commissioner Joe Borg gave a brilliant speech praising the product and pledging to incorporate the Commission's Atlas of the Sea into it.
We are delighted, of course, with the Commission's participation. Many public authorities remain hesitant about allowing private companies access to data. In particular, we've had difficulty getting public transport authorities to free up their data. The Commission is setting a positive example of public-private partnership, doing the most possible to disseminate publicly collected data as widely as possible.
Ocean's launch here also underlined just how much Brussels has become a global media center. More journalists reportedly are based here than anywhere else in the world after Washington and we received more coverage from all around the globe. Newspapers that featured the Brussels launch of Ocean included Italy's La Stampa and La Republicca, Spain's La Opinion, Germany's Financial Times Deutschland and Stuttgarter Nachriten, France's Agence France Press, the Czech Republic's leading financial daily and many, many more. Pictures from Brussels event flashed around the world. Even major TV stations carried the event, including Germany's ZDF .
Posted by William Echikson, Senior Communications Manager
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