Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
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
Un modèle ouvert pour l'internet mobile
Monday, July 20, 2009
En avril 2008, le plan
France Numérique 2012
a consacré la réutilisation de 72 MHz du dividende numérique - les fréquences qui vont être libérées avec la transition vers la télévision numérique terrestre et l'arrêt de la diffusion analogique - pour des services haut débit.
L'ARCEP
, le régulateur des communications électroniques français, a ouvert
une consultation publique
durant le premier semestre de cette année sur l’attribution d’autorisations dans les bandes 800 MHz et 2,6 GHz pour les services mobiles à très haut débit. La bande 800 MHz en question correspond précisément à la portion du dividende numérique qui sera consacrée au haut débit.
L'enjeu est de taille. En effet, alors que l'internet a conquis ses premiers 1,5 milliards d'utilisateurs en 20 ans sur des réseaux fixes, le prochain milliard d'internautes sera mobile. C'est donc l'un des grands axes de développement de l'économie numérique dans les prochaines années et les modalités de disponibilité des futures infrastructures sans fil seront un critère déterminant de succès pour faire figurer l'Europe parmi les puissances numériques mondiales, avec tout le potentiel en termes d’emplois et de croissance que cela peut représenter pour l’économie dans son ensemble.
Conscient de cet enjeu, Google a participé à cette consultation publique et vous pourrez consulter notre contribution sur ce billet d'ici quelques jours.
Notre message principal vise à promouvoir le modèle ouvert de l'internet dans l'environnement mobile. Le
modèle ouvert
a permis toute l'innovation que l'on connait sur la Toile, a favorisé l’éclosion d’une multitude d’applications ou de services et généré une infinité de nouveaux usages.
Concernant l'Internet mobile, des approches différentes pouvant être qualifiées de "walled gardens" ont montré leurs limites par le passé. Google croit que la clé du décollage de l'Internet mobile nécessite notamment d'apporter "tout l'internet" auprès des utilisateurs, pas seulement un bouquet d'applications. L'apparition récente de terminaux incluant un navigateur offrant la possibilité aux utilisateurs de naviguer sur l'ensemble des sites web - sans qu'il soit nécessaire d'adapter ces sites - a déjà prouvé l'intérêt de cette approche. On constate deja un succès de ces terminaux et une explosion du trafic et des usages internet au départ de ces terminaux. Un cercle vertueux s'engage dans la mesure où les fournisseurs d'applications, constatant l'explosion du trafic provenant de ce type de terminaux, sont incités à optimiser leurs applications à l'environnement de ces terminaux pour une expérience utilisateur meilleure encore.
Le modèle ouvert est bénéfique pour tous, y compris pour les opérateurs, car le foisonnement d'applications innovantes est le meilleur moyen d’attirer les abonnés en grand nombre sur les nouveaux réseaux. C’est aussi le moyen de donner les meilleures chances à la France et à l'Europe d'être le berceau des futurs champions de l'économie numérique mondiale.
Posté par Olivier Esper, Policy Manager - France
Promoting an open model for mobile internet
In April 2008, the plan "
France Numérique 2012
" (Digital France 2012) confirmed the reuse of 72 MHz of the so-called digital dividend (frequencies that will be freed up by the transition to terrestrial digital television and the analog switch-off) for wireless broadband services.
ARCEP
(the French regulator for electronic communications) opened a public consultation during the first half of this year about licensing in the 800MHz and 2.6 GHz frequency bands for very high speed mobile services. The 800 MHz band is precisely the portion of the digital dividend dedicated to broadband by France Numérique 2012.
Although the subject might sound technical, it is a highly important matter. While the Internet attracted its first 1.5 billion users in 20 years over fixed networks, the next billion Internet users will be mobile. Mobile Internet represents therefore a major strategic development for the French digital economy, with all the potential economic growth and job creation this represents for the economy as a whole.
Google contributed to the public consultation and you will be able to read our submission here shortly.
Our main message is about promoting the open model of the web in the mobile environnement. This
open model
has enabled the development of a multitude of innovative applications and services.
Indeed, different approaches to the mobile internet that can be described as "walled gardens" have shown their limits in the past. Google believes that one key to the take-off of mobile Internet requires that "the entire internet" is available to users and not just a closed set of applications. The recent appearance of handsets including a browser offering the possibility to users to browse the entire web - without the need to tailor these sites - has already proven the benefit of this approach. This can be shown by the success of these terminals and the explosion of traffic and internet usage. A virtuous circle is created to the extent that the application providers, noting the explosion of traffic from this type of terminal, are encouraged to optimize their applications to this more powerful mobile environment and resulting in an even better user experience.
We believe that the open model is beneficial for all, including network operators, because a plethora of innovative applications is the best means to make the next generation access networks attractive to the greatest number of subscribers. The open model is also key for Europe and France to become the home of next generation digital champions.
Posted by Olivier Esper, Policy Manager - France
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
Working with News Publishers
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Last week, a group of newspaper and magazine publishers signed a
declaration
stating that "Universal access to websites does not necessarily mean access at no cost," and that they "no longer wish to be forced to give away property without having granted permission."
We agree, and that's how things stand today. The truth is that news publishers, like all other content owners, are in complete control when it comes not only to what content they make available on the web, but also who can access it and at what price. This is the very backbone of the web -- there are many confidential company web sites, university databases, and private files of individuals that cannot be accessed through search engines. If they could, the web would be much less useful.
For more than a decade, search engines have routinely checked for permissions before fetching pages from a web site. Millions of webmasters around the world, including news publishers, use a technical standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) to tell search engines whether or not their sites, or even just a particular web page, can be crawled. Web
masters who do not wish their sites to be indexed can and do use the following two lines to deny permission:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
If a webmaster wants to stop us from indexing a specific page, he or she can do so by adding '
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">
' to the page. In short, if you don't want to show up in Google search results, it doesn't require more than one or two lines of code. And REP isn't specific to Google; all major search engines honor its commands. We're continuing to talk with the news industry -- and other web publishers -- to develop even more granular ways for them to instruct us on how to use their content. For example, publishers whose material goes into a paid archive after a set period of time can add a simple
unavailable_after
specification on a page, telling search engines to remove that page from their indexes after a certain date.
Today, more than 25,000 news organizations across the globe make their content available in Google News and other web search engines. They do so because they want their work to be found and read -- Google delivers more than a billion consumer visits to newspaper web sites each month. These visits offer the publishers a business opportunity, the chance to hook a reader with compelling content, to make money with advertisements or to offer online subscriptions. If at any point a web publisher feels as though we're not delivering value to them and wants us to stop indexing their content, they're able to do so quickly and effectively.
Some proposals we've seen from news publishers are well-intentioned, but would fundamentally change -- for the worse -- the way the web works. Our guiding principle is that whatever technical standards we introduce must work for the whole web (big publishers and small), not just for one subset or field. There's a simple reason behind this. The Internet has opened up enormous possibilities for education, learning, and commerce so it's important that search engines makes it easy for those who want to share their content to do so -- while also providing robust controls for those who want to limit access.
Image: 'Robots wallpaper,'
Jelene
(
Creative Commons Attribution
)
Update
on 7/20/2009: The word "crawling" in the fourth paragraph has been replaced with "indexing."
Posted by Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager
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
Making YouTube a Safer Place
Monday, June 22, 2009
As a host for other people's content, YouTube aims to be a strong platform for free expression, while respecting individual choice and protecting young people from inappropriate content and exploitation. Over the past year, we've bolstered our efforts in four major areas: (1) developing clear policies about what is and is not acceptable on the site; (2) constructing robust mechanisms to enforce these policies; (3) rolling out innovative product features that enable safe behaviour; and (4) upping our educational efforts to increase user awareness of how to stay safe on the site.
We recently completed a tour of London, Amsterdam, and Brussels to discuss these developments with lawmakers, regulators, academics, civil liberties organizations, and journalists.
During the tour, we demonstrated how we deal with troublesome content. With 20 hours of video going up each minute on YouTube, we can't preview videos to make sure they comply with our rules. Our community steps in and does a great job flagging videos they think are inappropriate. We then conduct a thorough manual review of flagged videos.
In addition, we have put in place strong user controls. Users, for example, can filter out profane language in comments to videos with a new Filter W*rds feature. Currently available only in English, Filter W*rds allows users to replace profanity, lewd language, and racial epithets with ***. Of course, the option remains of leaving comments unfiltered or hiding them altogether by clicking on the arrow beside the "Comments" heading.
While in Europe, we announced the international launch of the YouTube Safety
Centre
. Localised in 17 languages, the Centre features straightforward safety tips and multimedia resources from experts and prominent safety organizations to help teens and their parents learn about issues such as cyberbullying, media literacy, and hateful content. The Safety Centre can be found via a link at the bottom of any YouTube page. The new Centre makes it easier for visitors to reach our
Help and Safety Tool
.
Protecting young people on the web is the shared responsibility of parents and families, educators, industry, and government. At YouTube, we are doing our part by providing education and tools, and by inviting local government, safety, and media literacy organisations to add their own content to the Safety Centre. In every community in which YouTube is launched, we welcome additional partners who can make the Safety Centre even more robust. As with every product at Google, our goal is to put our users' needs first.
Posted by Victoria Grand, Head of YouTube Policy, and Scott Rubin, Sr. Communications & Public Affairs Mgr
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
Labels
Academics
18
Advertising
10
Africa
26
Austria
7
Belgium
25
Big Tent
11
Bosnia and Herzegovina
2
Browsers
1
Brussels Tech Talk
7
Bulgaria
5
Campus
2
Child Safety
24
Cloud computing
17
Competition
16
Computer Science
35
Computing Heritage
37
Consumers
11
controversial content
2
COP21
1
copyright
34
Crisis Response
2
Culture
116
Czech Republic
16
Data Centre
15
Denmark
4
Digital News Initiative
6
Digital Single Market
1
Diversity
7
Economic Impact of the Internet
57
Economy
24
Elections
7
Energy + Environment
16
Engineering
6
Environment
5
Estonia
6
European Commission
21
European Parliament
14
European Union
104
exhibitions
1
Finland
13
France
77
Free Expression
88
Free flow of information
47
German
1
Germany
65
Google for Entrepreneurs
9
Google in Europe Blog
846
Google Play
1
Google TechTalk
2
Google Translate
1
Google Trends
3
Google+
4
Greece
16
Growth Engine
3
Hackathon
3
Hungary
16
Innovation
70
Internet Governance
7
IP
10
Ireland
16
Israel
17
Italy
42
Journalism
34
Latvia
1
Lithuania
1
Luxembourg
3
Maps
17
Middle East
18
Netherlands
6
News
2
News Lab
1
North Africa
6
Norway
3
online
1
Online Safety
2
Open data
8
Open Government
7
Open source
2
Poland
24
Portugal
6
Power of Data
25
privacy
49
Publishing
30
Right to be Forgotten
9
Rio+20
1
Romania
3
Russia
18
Safer Internet Day
4
San Marino
1
Science
5
Security
7
Single Market
7
Slovakia
16
Slovenia
2
SMEs
24
Spain
39
Startups
6
State of the Union
2
STEM Education
36
Street View
38
Surveillance
1
Sweden
13
Switzerland
11
Telecoms
11
The Netherlands
4
Tourism
1
Transparency
12
Tunisia
4
Turkey
3
Ukraine
3
United Kingdom
94
Vatican
2
Youth
2
YouTube
42
Archive
2016
Sep
Introducing YouTube Creators for Change
Announcing a Google.org grant for XperiBIRD.be, a ...
Bringing education to refugees in Lebanon with the...
Juncker embraces creators -- and their concerns
Tour 10 Downing Street with Google Arts and Culture
European copyright: there's a better way
Digital News Initiative: Introducing the YouTube P...
#AskJuncker: YouTube creators to interview the Eur...
An extinct world brought back to life with Google ...
Project Muze: Fashion inspired by you, designed by...
Come Play with us
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Feed
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
