Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Investing in news innovation in Europe
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Journalism is changing fast. And as news businesses experiment with new ways of creating and delivering journalism in the digital age, Google is keen to play its part on the technology side. Over the last year, we’ve been partnering with publishers around the world to
develop
technological
solutions
- including, most recently,
One Pass
- to find new and engaging ways of presenting stories online and to generate greater revenues.
As well as our focus on technological experimentation, we’re also investing at the grassroots level.
Last October
we announced that we would be giving $5m in grants to non-profit organisations working on developing new approaches to journalism. At that time, we allocated around 40% of the total fund to the
Knight Foundation
in the US.
Today, we awarded a
$2.7 million grant
to the International Press Institute, based in Vienna, which will be used to sponsor the
IPI News Innovation Contest
. The contest seeks to find and fund breakthrough ideas that will have a lasting impact on the future of digital news in communities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Grants will be awarded to both non-profit and for-profit organisations working on digital journalism initiatives, including open-source and mobile technology projects created by or for journalists and distributed in the public interest. From today until June 1st,
the IPI will invite proposals
from around the region for projects devoted to online innovation in journalism, new economic models for news and training in digital reporting.
The IPI has a long tradition of working on innovation in journalism, freedom of expression and other important issues. We’re sure they’ll be able to find and advance some great digital journalism projects over the next couple of years - and we encourage anyone with innovative ideas, large or small, to
apply for a grant
from the IPI. In the meantime, we’ll continue to work with the news industry to help develop new projects, products and experiments that make it possible for journalism to thrive online.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations, Google EMEA
Data-driven policy-making
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Everyone loves a good
statistic
. And if you’re a policymaker, parliamentary assistant or academic, statistics - vital for evidence-based policy-making - are your bread and butter.
Over the last two years, we’ve made it easier to find, explore and understand more than
27 datasets
through search and via clear, colourful visualisations using the
Google Public Data Explorer
. You can find and analyse over 300 data metrics provided by public institutions such as Eurostat (eg:
EU inflation rates
), the OECD (labour productivity), the IMF (
government debt levels
), UNECE (
gender balance in parliaments
) and many others.
Yesterday, we made the Public Data Explorer even more useful by enabling you to visualise
your data
. If your organisation produces statistical reports on its key performance indicators, tracks financial or societal trends or conducts large-scale surveys, you can now benefit from the same sort of powerful, animated visualisations that we provide today with our existing datasets.
To make this possible, we’ve developed a
new data format
that makes visualisation easy, and have provided an interface for anyone to
upload
their datasets. Once imported, a dataset can be visualized in the Public Data Explorer, embedded in external websites, and shared with others. This does of course require some technical skills, but we’ve built upon existing open standards and a simple user interface to make things as easy as possible.
Our hope is that even more useful statistics can come to life through Public Data Explorer visualisations - and that we can help you realise the value of data in making informed, data-driven decisions.
Posted by Omar Benjelloun, Technical Lead, Google Public Data Team
A simple way for publishers to manage paid access online
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
At
Humboldt University
in Berlin today, Eric Schmidt announced
Google One Pass
, a service that lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content. With Google One Pass, publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers and give readers access to digital content across websites and mobile apps.
Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. And readers don’t have to re-subscribe in order to access their content on new devices.
With One Pass, publishers can customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them—offering subscriptions, metered access, ‘freemium’ content or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps. The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content. We take care of the rest, including payments technology handled via Google Checkout.
Our goal is to provide an open and flexible platform that furthers our commitment to support publishers, journalism and access to quality content. Like
First Click Free
,
Fast Flip
and
Living Stories
, this is another initiative developed to enable publishers to promote and distribute digital content.
German publishers
Axel Springer AG
, Focus Online (
Tomorrow Focus
) and
Stern.de
joined Eric at Humboldt University today as some of our first One Pass partners. Other publishers already signed up include
La Presse
,
Media General
, Bonnier’s
Popular Science
,
Prisa
and
Rust Communications
.
Google One Pass is currently available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. We hope to develop further partnerships with publishers in coming months and look forward to extending One Pass to other countries too. For more information, please take a look at the
One Pass website
.
Posted by Lee Shirani, director, business product management, Google Commerce
Giving young mathematicians the chance to shine
Friday, January 21, 2011
Maths is very important to Google. It’s the basis of everything we do: from the
algorithms
that deliver answers to your search queries, to the way in which your Gmails are grouped in
conversations
, to the technology advances which are enabling us to develop
driverless cars
. It’s so important to us, that our founders named the company after a very large number - a
Googol
.
Maths is given a lot of importance by policy makers too - its contribution to
creativity and innovation
was celebrated in some of the events organised by the European Union back in 2009. And in December last year, the latest
OECD PISA report
and
league tables
highlighted how well (or not) Europe’s various national education systems are performing in the core educational fields of reading, mathematics and science.
Over the last few months, our attention’s been drawn to another mathematical league table - the one that tracks the
winners of the International Mathematical Olympiad
, first held in Romania in 1959. The IMO is the world championship of secondary school mathematics, designed to test ingenuity and insight and tax the sharpest minds in the world.
Google has always encouraged and supported excellence in the sciences, whether in its own staff, or in its work with academics around the world. And so yesterday, together with the Advisory Board of the International Mathematical Olympiad, we were proud to announce that we are
making a gift of one million euros
to the organisation to help cover the costs of the next five global events (2011-15).
From left to right: Peter Barron (Google), Robbert Dijkgraaf (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chair of the IMO 2011 Foundation) and Geoff Smith (University of Bath, UK and member of the IMO Advisory Board)
We’re delighted that we can help the IMO bring young mathematicians from around the world together to celebrate a shared passion, to push themselves and to compete to be the best in the world.
This year’s event
takes place in Amsterdam in July and we’ll be watching out for the results with particular interest.
And I don’t doubt that quite a few Googlers will also spend some time in coming months trying solve
the sort of mathematical challenges
that will be put to the world’s young Maths Olympians.
Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of Public Policy, Google (BSc Maths)
Google@Thought: exploring happiness
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Brussels is a very busy place. Every week, hundreds of meetings and events take place across the city, hosted by officials, politicians and lobbyists from every part of Europe. Understandably, it’s all too easy to get “event fatigue” in this town.
Which is why - every once in a while - we like to take a break from talking about the policy issues of the day and organise a Google@Thought seminar. We invite speakers who delight in the exploration of ideas and concepts that reach far beyond the Brussels bubble, and enjoy a relaxed dinner with our guests.
Just before Christmas we hosted
Professor Ruut Veenhoven
, director of the
World Database of Happiness
, founding editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies and Emeritus Professor of 'social conditions for human happiness' at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Professor Veenhoven’s specialism, the measurement of happiness, is a discipline that is rapidly gaining interest amongst sociologists, psychologists,
economists
, and most recently, politicians in
France
and in
the UK
.
“Happy people live longer”, explains Professor Veenhoven, “and they really live longer. The effect of being happy or not on how you live is comparable to smoking or not. Basically, if you feel happy it is because your needs are gratified, as an organism you are thriving.” And happy people are good for society. They are likely to be more more healthy and active, and more likely to be politically engaged.
You can explore Professor Veenhoven’s research yourself at the World Database of Happiness - and enjoy the highlights of Professor Veenhoven’s Google@Thought seminar in the below YouTube video.
Posted by Angela Steen, Policy Analyst
More researchers dive into the digital humanities
Monday, December 20, 2010
When we started Google Book Search back in 2004, we were driven by the desire to make books searchable and discoverable online. But as that corpus grew -- we’ve now scanned approximately 10% of all books published in the modern era -- we began to realize how useful it would be for scholarly work. Humanities researchers have started to ask and answer questions about history, society, linguistics, and culture via quantitative techniques that complement traditional qualitative methods.
We’ve been gratified at the positive response to our initial forays into the digital humanities, from our
Digital Humanities Research Awards
earlier this year, to the
Google Books Ngram Viewer
and datasets made public just last week. Today we’re pleased to announce a second set of awards focusing on European universities and research centers.
We’ve given awards to 12 projects led by 15 researchers at 13 institutions:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
. Annotated Corpora in Studying and Teaching Variation and Change in Academic German, Anke Lüdeling
LIMSI/CNRS, Université Paris Sud
. Building Multi-Parallel Corpora of Classical Fiction, François Yvon
Radboud Universiteit
. Extracting Factoids from Dutch Texts, Suzan Verberne
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Jožef Stefan Institute
. Language models for historical Slovenian, Matija Ogrin and Tomaž Erjavec
Université d'Avignon, Université de Provence
. Robust and Language Independent Machine Learning Approaches for Automatic Annotation of Bibliographical References in DH Books, Articles and Blogs, Patrice Bellot and Marin Dacos
Université François Rabelais-Tours
. Full-text retrieval and indexation for Early Modern French, Marie-Luce Demonet
Université François Rabelais-Tours
. Using Pattern Redundancy for Text Transcription, Jean-Yves Ramel and Jean-Charles Billaut
Universität Frankfurt
. Towards a “Corpus Caucasicum”: Digitizing Pre-Soviet Cyrillic-Based Publications on the Languages of the Caucasus, Jost Gippert
Universität Hamburg
. CLÉA: Literature Éxploration and Annotation Environment for Google Books Corpora, Jan-Christoph Meister
Universität zu Köln
. Integrating Charter Research in Old and New Media, Manfred Thaller
Universität zu Köln
. Validating Metadata-Patterns for Google Books' Ancient Places and Sites, Reinhard Foertsch
University of Zagreb
. A Profile of Croatian neo-Latin, Neven Jovanović
Projects like these, blending empirical data and traditional scholarship, are springing up around the world. We’re eager to see what results they yield and what broader impact their success will have on the humanities.
Posted by Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager for Google Books
Supporting research and innovation in Europe’s universities
Thursday, December 16, 2010
As a company that
started out in academia
, we’ve always known that a lot of the world’s best computer scientists don’t work in the private sector (or in Silicon Valley, for that matter!) but in universities and research centres around the world.
Over the years, Google has invested in a large network of research and development centres around the globe, including 11 centres across Europe, Russia and Israel - and our
newly announced centre
in Paris. This diversity of engineering locations means that we’re able to create culturally diverse teams - and
fun working environments
. But they also enable us to stay closely in touch - and collaborate - with academics undertaking cutting-edge research at universities across Europe.
This week - building on an initiative we blogged about
earlier this year
- we announced nearly €3.7 million in research funding via our
Focused Research Awards
scheme. The grants are going to 14 universities and research centres in Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom.
The
Focused Research Awards
are unrestricted gifts that provide support for one to three years, and have been awarded to researchers in disciplines including software engineering, mathematical optimisation, information extraction and integration - and policy areas such as privacy. Recipients also get access to Google tools, technologies and expertise.
The list of research projects that have received focused research awards in Europe includes:
German Academy of Science and Technology (Acatech)
:
User-centred Online Privacy
, Henning Kagermann
M
ax Planck Institut Informatik, Germany
:
Robust and Scalable Fact Discovery from Web Sources
, Gerhard Weikum, Martin Theobald, Rainer Gemulla
Saarland University, Germany
:
Test Amplification
, Andreas Zeller, Gordon Fraser
EPFL, Switzerland
:
Automated Software Reliability Services
, George Candea
CNRS, France and nine universities in France, Germany and Italy
:
Mathematical Optimization
: Thorsten Koch (Zuse Institute of Berlin), Stefan Nickel (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Leena Suhl (University of Paderborn), Narendra Jussien (Ecole des Mines de Nantes), Pierre Bonami (CNRS/Université d’Aix/Marseille), Pierre Lopez (CNRS/LAAS in Toulouse), Denis Trystram (INP Grenoble), Safia Kedad-Sidhoum (LIP6 in Paris), Andrea Lodi (University of Bologna).
University of Cambridge, UK
:
Security-Oriented Analysis of Application Programs
, Steven Hand, Robert Watson
Alongside our Focused Research Awards programme, we provide grants for more than 200 smaller research projects every year, with recent awards highlighted in our
research blog
. These awards typically provide partial funding for PhD students. Google also supports 40 computer science PhDs worldwide through our
PhD Fellowship Programmes
, and currently supports 14 students in Europe. We also host over 20
faculty members on sabbatical
each year world-wide, enabling them to work with Google engineering and policy teams on special projects.
Our hope is that building close connections with universities and researchers will support innovation in Europe - and extend the research capabilities of both Google’s engineers and our colleagues in academia. You can find more information about all of our research programs on our
University Relations site
.
Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education & University Relations and David Harper, Head of University Relations (EMEA)
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