Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Europe looks to the Internet for growth and jobs
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Kicking off the year in which the Single Market turns twenty, the European Commission
announced today its strategy
to build trust in the Digital Single Market. We think this is an important announcement, because the Commission confirms the immense potential of the Internet as a driver of growth and jobs, not just in the tech sector, but throughout the entire economy. It also issues a rallying call for Europe to redouble its efforts to enact concrete, positive reforms.
The figures speak for themselves. As today’s Commission report notes (referencing work by
McKinsey
), “in the G8 countries plus South Korea and Sweden, the internet economy has brought about 21% of the growth in GDP in the last five years. It also generates 2.6 jobs for every job cut, and at times accounts for 25% of net employment creation.”
If Europe fails to grasp the opportunity of a true Digital Single Market, however, the Commission warns of an expensive mistake that could cost the continent “at least 4.1% of GDP between now and 2020 - EUR500 billlion or EUR1000 per citizen.”
The Commission’s communication sets out concrete plans for how it intends to help millions of European businesses - particularly small and medium enterprises - foster cross-border e-commerce.
SMEs and policy makers will be talking about these challenges and opportunities at
an event we’re running on January 24
, here in Brussels at the Concert Noble. Small businesses from 18 countries will present how they have succeeded in taking their businesses online. For more on this initiative, check out our blog tomorrow.
Posted by Antoine Aubert, Head of Brussels Policy Team
Israeli Web-Rangers promote online safety
Monday, January 9, 2012
Rangers traditionally guard parks and other areas of natural beauty. In Israel, some modern day rangers - call them Web-Rangers - aim instead to keep the Internet safe. Since last July when Google Israel launched its
Family Safety Centre
, we have encouraged some 200 Israeli teenage Web-Rangers between the age of 15 and 18 to promote online child protection.
The results have been remarkable. More than 80 innovative and creative social campaigns have been launched, ranging from educational videos to tv-style quiz shows. Some Web-Rangers produced creative videos and posted them on a dedicated
YouTube channel
. Others have cooperated with schools, youth movements, and local municipalities to hold seminars for teenagers about online safety.
Our “Web-Rangers” project is run in partnership with two NGOs working for online safety, the
Israel Internet Association
and
Eran
. All the Web-Rangers also have participated in seminars held at Google Israel offices. These included lectures by Google representatives and our partners on digital citizenship, free speech on the net, Google online safety tools and YouTube content policies.
We recently held the graduation for our inaugural Web-Rangers "class." The Israel Ministry of Education’s Head of the Online Child Safety Division participated. She invited the Web-Rangers to take part in the Ministry’s “National Safe Internet Day” and present their projects in schools around the country.
While the Web Rangers started as a Google initiative, the young adults brought the project to life, developed it, and made it their own. The two Web-Rangers who presented the best work, Elad Yam and Yosi Klein, (both from 11th grade) will soon travel to Google’s offices in London to present their work. We look forward to continuing to learn from these creative teenagers about how to create a safe Internet.
Posted by Doron Avni, Policy Manager, Israel
Happy holidays from our Brussels policy team
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
It has been an exciting and eventful year, even by the Internet’s own exacting standards. Arab activists inaugurated 2011 by revealing the web’s power to help bring freedom to their countries. All too many governments have responded by pressing for controls to throttle the Internet’s liberating power.
Yet we have seen policy makers here in Brussels taking a strong stance in support of an open Internet. After the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur
Frank La Rue
published a
manifesto
for Internet freedom, the European Parliament and Commission extended him a warm welcome. E.U. officials were intrigued to meet the creators of our
Transparency Report
that details government requests for content removals and information on users. The European Parliament even hosted part of our
“hackathon”
in support of Open Data.
In other areas, too, appreciation of the Internet advanced in Brussels. A significant shift was visible measuring and understanding the Internet’s economic impact. At the beginning of the year we commissioned a series of studies that demonstrated that the Internet has become the most important single driver of
growth
in the E.U.. Instead of destroying jobs, the net is creating millions of them. Crucially,
small businesses
benefit disproportionately from the web’s power to reach the entire world with a few keyboard strokes. A contest we sponsored even crowned Europe's leading
eTowns
.
Instead of threatening culture, technology provides new and innovative ways to preserve history and heritage. Our
Art Project
brings online masterpieces from great museums across Europe. Our
book project
is digitizing and bringing online public domain books from more than a dozen European libraries. At the end of the year,
StreetView
came to Belgium, allowing anyone in the globe to stroll along the streets hosting European institutions. As the Internet becomes a significant force for policymakers to converse with citizens, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, shown above, appeared live on
Euronews
and
YouTube World View
.
The European Union is heading towards the 20th anniversary of the creation of the single market, and the Internet will play an important in realizing its full potential. Just like the European Union, the Internet represents a major shift towards openness and collaboration. While Europe faces undeniable challenges on the economic and social fronts, the Internet’s progress is an optimistic story that we believe Europe can demonstrate pride in the coming year.
Posted by Antoine Aubert, Head of Brussels Policy Team
Remembering a remarkable Soviet computing pioneer
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Cross-posted with the
Official Google Blog
In many parts of the world, today is Christmas—but in Russia and Eastern Europe, which use the
Orthodox calendar
, December 25 is just an ordinary day. Little known to most, however, it’s also a day that marks the anniversary of a key development in European computer history.
Sixty years ago today, in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the Soviet Academy of Sciences finally granted formal recognition to
Sergey Lebedev
’s pioneering
MESM project
. MESM, a Russian abbreviation for “Small Electronic Calculating Machine,” is regarded as the earliest, fully operational electronic computer in the Soviet Union—and indeed continental Europe.
Recently we were privileged to get a first-hand account of Lebedev’s achievements from Boris Malinovsky, who worked on MESM and is now a leading expert on Soviet-era computing.
Turn on captions for the English translation.
Described by some as the “Soviet
Alan Turing
,” Sergey Lebedev had been thinking about computing as far back as the 1930’s, until interrupted by war. In 1946 he was made director of Kyiv’s Institute of Electrical Engineering. Soon after, stories of “electronic brains” in the West began to circulate and his interest in computing revived.
Sergey Lebedev*
Initially, Lebedev’s superiors were skeptical, and some in his team felt working on a “calculator”—how they thought of a computer—was a step backward compared to electrical and space systems research. Lebedev pressed on regardless, eventually finding funding from the Rocketry department and space to work in a derelict former monastery in
Feofania
, on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Work on MESM got going properly at the end of 1948 and, considering the challenges, the rate of progress was remarkable. Ukraine was still struggling to recover from the devastation of its occupation during WWII, and many of Kyiv’s buildings lay in ruins. The monastery in Feofania was among the buildings destroyed during the war, so the MESM team had to build their working quarters from scratch—the laboratory, metalworking shop, even the power station that would provide electricity. Although small—
just 20 people
—the team was extraordinarily committed. They worked in shifts 24 hours a day, and many lived in rooms above the laboratory. (You can listen to a lively account of this time in programme 3 of the
BBC’s ”Electronic brains”
series.)
MESM and team members in 1951. From left to right: Lev Dashevsky, Zoya Zorina-Rapota, Lidiya Abalyshnikova, Tamara Petsukh, Evgeniy Dedeshko
MESM ran its first program on November 6, 1950, and went into full-time operation in 1951. In 1952, MESM was used for top-secret calculations relating to rocketry and nuclear bombs, and continued to aid the Institute’s research right up to 1957. By then, Lebedev had moved to Moscow to lead the construction of the next generation of Soviet supercomputers, cementing his place as a giant of European computing. As for MESM, it met a more prosaic fate—broken into parts and studied by engineering students in the labs at Kyiv’s Polytechnic Institute.
*All photos thanks to
ukrainiancomputing.org
.
Posted by Marina Tarasova, Communications Associate, Ukraine
New exhibitions at London’s Science Museum
Thursday, December 15, 2011
At Google, we’re passionate about finding ways to inspire the next generation of technologists and engineers, and we think museums are a great way to do it.
Earlier this year
, and again
this week
we announced how we are supporting science museums internationally through charitable gifts.
Today, one of those museums, the
Science Museum
in London, gave details of two forthcoming exhibitions supported by their Google grants.
A new temporary exhibition celebrating the centenary of the birth of English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist
Alan Turing
will open in June 2012. Turing formalized the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine. The Science Museum’s biographical exhibition will examine Turing’s inspirational (and tragic) story, using objects (including some which have never been on public display), archive material, interactive exhibits, photographs and quotations.
The second is a new permanent exhibition which opens in summer 2014. Situated at the heart of the Museum, Making Modern Communications will explore the history of information and communication technologies. It will tell powerful stories about how these technologies have shaped our world over the last 200 years, showcasing never-before-seen objects and the most advanced multimedia and interpretive techniques.
We’re delighted to be able to support these new exhibitions which will help explain both the birth of modern computing and how that revolution touches all our lives today.
And we’re thrilled that Alan Turing, widely regarded as the father of modern computing and a hero to many of the engineers who work at Google, is finally getting the recognition that his work deserves. This week we also announced support for educational activities at
Bletchley Park
, where Turing’s code-breaking genius helped shorten the second World War and saved thousands of lives.
We look forward to seeing how these exhibitions will inspire tomorrow’s technologists.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director, External Relations, EMEA
Protecting intermediaries - and copyright
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Earlier today the Court of Rome issued an important decision around ISP liability limitation, copyright and video hosting. It reaffirmed that web platforms are not liable for content uploaded by their users and found - referring to the
ECJ ruling
in the SABAM case, and the European Union’s E-Commerce Directive - that web platforms do not have to monitor user uploads for copyright-infringing material, nor prevent future infringements by users.
The background to this ruling is a case brought last summer against Google by RTI, a subsidiary of the Mediaset Group. RTI sued Google for copyright infringement because a web portal, hosted on Blogger, was allegedly streaming football matches broadcast on RTI's TV channels.
Today, the Court of Rome rejected RTI’s claim because - following notification to Google - the allegedly infringing content was removed from Blogger. The Court found that any other interpretation would be contrary to the European Union’s E-Commerce Directive.
Today’s ruling is important because it further clarifies the rules on liability online. But it’s also clear that copyright infringement is a serious matter - and its something we take very seriously. We invest heavily in technology to fight piracy; earlier this year we launched four
new initiatives
to tackle copyright infringement online, including a range of tools to make it easier and faster for rightsholders to report infringing material - and get it removed from our platforms quickly.
It’s important that right holders and intermediaries work together. Without rightsholder cooperation it is impossible for a platform like Blogger to know whether an item has been uploaded with or without a rightsholder’s permission. Today’s decision re-affirms this principle.
Posted by Marilù Capparelli, Italian Senior Legal Counsel
Giving back in 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
As the holiday season approaches we thought it was a good moment to update you on some grants we're making to support education, technology and the fight against modern day slavery.
STEM and girls’ education
Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) open up great opportunities for young people so we've decided to fund 16 great programs in this area. These include Boston-based
Citizen Schools
and
Generating Genius
in the U.K., both of which work to help to expand the horizons of underprivileged youngsters. In total, our grants will provide enhanced STEM education for more than 3 million students.
In addition, we're supporting girls’ education in the developing world. By giving a girl an education, you not only improve her opportunities, but those of her whole family. The
African Leadership Academy
provides merit scholarships to promising young women across the continent, and the
Afghan Institute of Learning
offers literacy classes to women and girls in rural Afghanistan. Groups like these will use our funds to educate more than 10,000 girls in developing countries.
Empowerment through technology
We've all been wowed by the entrepreneurial spirit behind the 15 awards in this category, all of whom are using the web, open source programming and other technology platforms to connect communities and improve access to information.
Vittana
, for instance, helps lenders offer loans to students in the developing world who have have a 99 percent repayment rate—potentially doubling or tripling a recipient's earning power.
Code for America
enables the web industry to share its skills with the public sector by developing projects that improve transparency and encourage civic engagement on a mass scale. And
Switchboard
is working with local mobile providers to help African health care workers create networks and communicate for free.
Fighting slavery and human trafficking
Modern day slavery is a multi-billion dollar industry that ruins the lives of around 27 million people. So we're funding a number of groups that are working to tackle the problem. For instance, in India,
International Justice Mission (IJM)
, along with
The BBC World Service Trust
,
Action Aid
and
Aide et Action
, are forming a new coalition. It will work on the ground with governments to stop slave labor by identifying the ring masters, documenting abuse, freeing individuals and providing them with therapy as well as job training. Our support will also help expand the reach of tools like the powerful
Slavery Footprint calculator
and
Polaris Project
’s
National Trafficking Hotline
.
To learn more about these organizations and how you can get involved, visit our
Google Gives Back 2011 site
and take a look at this video:
These grants, which total $40 million, are only part of our annual philanthropic efforts. Over the course of the year, Google provided more than $115 million in funding to various nonprofit organizations and academic institutions around the world; our in-kind support (programs like
Google Grants
and
Google Apps for Education
that offer free products and services to eligible organizations) came to more than $1 billion, and our annual company-wide
GoogleServe
event and related programs enabled individual Googlers to donate more than 40,000 hours of their own volunteer time.
As 2011 draws to a close, I’m inspired by this year’s grantees and look forward to seeing their world-changing work in 2012.
Posted by Shona Brown, SVP, Google.org
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