Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Supporting a new Oxford free speech initiative
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
As the debate over free expression online grows ever louder, Oxford University has launched an innovative interactive forum in 13 languages called
freespeechdebate.com
. We’re proud to support the initiative with both funds and technology, including
Google Translate
.
Timothy Garton Ash
- a professor and journalist who has analyzed social movements from the rise of the Solidarity free trade union to the tumult of the Arab Spring - is leading the exciting project. At the event’s launch last week in Oxford, Garton Ash interviewed Wikipedia founder
Jimmy Wales
. Just the day before, Wikipedia had gone black in protest of two proposed U.S. laws threatening Internet freedom, helping force the U.S. Congress to pull back from a vote on the bills. “On a normal day 25 million people see Wikipedia; yesterday, 162 million saw it and I heard that we even crashed the House of Representatives phone system,” an ebullient Wales said. “Congress saw that there is a passionate community out there ready to defend the Internet.”
The reception afterward took place in
Oxford University’s Divinity School library
, an appropriate setting where poet John Milton‘s
censored writing were saved from being burned
almost half a millennium ago. “From yesterday's Wikipedia protest to the role of social media in the Arab Spring, every day brings a free speech controversy to the headlines, Garton Ash said. “Our project aims to contribute structure, depth and detail to this global debate, as well as openness to the views of netizens from different cultures and perspectives.”
Freespeechdebate.com brings together a team of more than 30 graduate students and researchers. It publishes interviews with prominent personalities and case studies from around the globe illustrating the complexity of free speech in the Internet age. At the inauguration, the web site already presented case studies and interviews with a diverse range of free speech defenders. Nobel Peace Prize 2003 winner
Shirin Ebadi
said that criticism of Islam should be permitted in Iran, while arguing that insults to the religion should be prohibited.
Arundhati Roy
, the award-winning Indian novelist, spoke about the limits to free speech in India, including government censorship through the media and "goon squads.”
The site's editorial content is translated into Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Urdu. “Freespeechdebate.com will continue producing material for the coming six months, and everyone is encouraged to participate. Members of the public are invited to register online to join the debate. Details on how to participate are found
here
. The debate will be digitally archived by Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and become an online educational resource.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
News Innovation contest opens for applications
Monday, January 23, 2012
We are eager to see journalism flourish in the digital age. Last week, we announced our support of the
Global Editor Network’s data journalism prize
. Today, we’re happy to see that the
International Press Institute
has begun accepting applications for the second round of Google-funded media innovation prizes.
Click
here
for more information and to enter. Applicants are eligible from anywhere in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The Vienna-based International Press Institute is our European partner for Google’s ambitious
$5 million global program
announced in 2010 to help journalism create new ways of reaching readers online. As media organizations globally continue to broaden their presence online, we’re eager to play our part on the technology side—experimenting with
new ways
of presenting news online; providing tools like Google Maps and
YouTube Direct
to make websites more engaging for readers. But while we’re mostly focused on working with news organizations to develop better products for users, we also believe it’s crucial to encourage innovation at the grassroots level. Our grants to non-profit organizations are designed to benefit news publishers of all sizes.
More than 300 applications were received for the first round of International Press Institute-run Google-sponsored prizes last year;
three winners
were named at the end of last year.
This year’s News Innovation Contest offers prizes in two categories:
News Platforms: The International Press Institute is looking for projects that leverage online tools to enhance news gathering and delivery. It aims to encourage the creation of new online news platforms that offer new revenue models for supporting high quality journalism.
Training: Little proper training in online media exists. The Press Institute is looking for initiatives that help traditional journalists transition into online media, by improving their technology skills and familiarising them with online news models.
The contest deadline is February 23 at 15:00 Central European Time. Winners can be announced at the beginning of April.
Posted by Simon Morrison, Copyright Communications and Policy Manager.
Figuring out the value of the web
Friday, January 20, 2012
Today we’re launching a website called
Value of the Web
to collect research that sheds new light on the economic impact of the Internet. It’s available in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish and currently features a range of studies focusing on (amongst other things) the value of cloud computing in Europe, the value of search around the world, and the Internet’s contribution to GDP - a theme highlighted just last week by the European Commission in its new strategy to build trust in the
Digital Single Market
.
The value of the web is also the theme of a special event we’re hosting in Brussels on Tuesday 24th January called
The Single Market Opportunity - Getting Europe’s SMEs Online
. European Commission Vice President Tajani, other prestigious guests and small business from 15 EU countries will join us at the event to discuss how the Internet can help drive economic growth and jobs and help lift Europe out of the economic crisis.
Even though industrial metrics like GDP can’t
fully
capture the Web’s contributions to our information society, these reports represent the best efforts so far to quantify the Internet’s contributions to the economy and society. The new website will highlight the broad range of value generated by the internet, including in areas such as the contribution of the firms who provide the essential hardware and software to power the Internet and the jobs
In other studies, the findings project exponential growth for economies that are already engaging in e-commerce online. The Boston Consulting Group predicts that by 2015, at least 10% of the British economy will be Internet-based. Universal broadband access and creating innovative business models that capture consumer surplus could increase the value added by the Internet by roughly £43 billion, which is just less than half what the British government spends on education today.
The reports draw on work by globally renowned economic analysts such as the
Boston Consulting Group
,
Deloitte Access Economics
,
McKinsey Global Institute
,
Nomura Research Institute
, the
Sogang University Market Economy Research Institute
and academic economist
Federico Etro
at the University of Venice.
In time, we hope the site will become a central repository for insight derived from new measurements and data that move toward a more complete understanding of the Web’s impact. We’ll continue developing the site by adding more improvements, including more languages and content. Check back frequently for updates or choose to subscribe for alerts via email.
And if you’d like to participate in Tuesday's discussion about how the Internet can help get Europe’s economy back on track,
please register now
to secure one of the final places available at the Single Market Opportunity event.
Posted by Patricia Wruuck, Policy Analyst, Brussels
Data Journalism Awards Now Accepting Submissions
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Last November, we
announced
our support for a new Data Journalism competition, organized by the
Global Editors Network
. The competition is now open to submissions and today we hosted an event at our offices in London to share details on how to compete and win a total of six prizes worth EUR 45,000. The
European Journalism Centre
is running the contest and Google is sponsoring.
Journalism is going through an exciting—if sometimes wrenching—transition from off to online. Google is keen to help. We see exciting possibilities of leveraging data to produce award-winning journalism. “Data journalism is a new, exciting part of the media industry, with at present only a small number of practitioners,” said Peter Barron, Google’s Director of External Relations. “We hope to see the number grow.”
In data journalism, reporters leverage numerical data and databases to gather, organize and produce news. Bertrand Pecquerie, the Global Editor Network’s CEO, believes the use of data will, in particular, revolutionize investigative reporting. “We are convinced that there is a bright future for journalism,” he said at the London event. “This is not just about developing new hardware like tablets. It is above all about producing exciting new content.”
The European Journalism Centre, a non-profit based in Maastricht, has been running data training workshops for several years. It is producing the Data Journalism Awards website and administering the prize. “This new initiative should help convince editors around the world that data journalism is not a crazy idea, but a viable part of the industry,” says Wilfried Ruetten, Director of the center.
Projects should be submitted to
http://www.datajournalismawards.org
. The deadline is April 10, 2012. Entries should have been published or aired between April 11, 2011 and April 10, 2012. Media companies, non-profit organisations, freelancers and individuals are eligible.
Submissions are welcomed in three categories: data-driven investigative journalism, data-driven applications and data visualisation and storytelling. National and international projects will be judged separately from local and regional ones. “We wanted to encourage not only the New York Times’s of the world to participate, but media outlets of all sizes,” says Pecquerie. “Journalism students are also invited to enter, provided their work has been published.”
An all-star jury has been assembled of journalists from prestigious international media companies including the New York Times, the Guardian, and Les Echos.
Paul Steiger
, the former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal and founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
ProPublica
, will serve as president.
Winners will be announced at the
Global News Network’s World Summit
in Paris on May 31, 2012.
Posted by William Echikson, External Relations
A Computer Star Visits Zurich
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
For Google engineers,
Donald Knuth
is a true hero. The 74-year old Knuth, a professor emeritis at Stanford, is one of the pioneers of computer science, best known for his multi-volumed work “
The Art of Computer Programming
.” He is also recognized as the “father” of the field of analysis of algorithms, and of course, algorithms are central to much of what we do here at Google.
When the professor visited
our offices in Zurich
recently, more than 350 engineers packed the conference hall for a question and answer session. While many of the queries were technical, many were pertinent to all of us.
In Europe, Google has made a priority of promoting
science education
, so naturally a number of questions focused on this subject. How should a beginner programming get started? A bottom-up education is best, Knuth suggested, explaining that in his analogue era, some people became interested in science in order to build radios by themselves. In the Internet age, he said it was crucial to give aspiring programmers simple tools to learn coding from the ground up.
Another question was whether “programming is more of an art than a science?” Could programming progress in the same way as, say medieval Christians progressed the building of their soaring Gothic cathedrals from a try-and-see art to a mature engineering discipline?” It is only a matter of time that computing takes the same path, Knuth agreed. Many things start as art (even cathedral building), and systematic, scientific methods evolve. In this way, art feeds science and science nurtures art in a virtuous circle.
Knuth signed books that engineers had brought with them, inscribing each book with the message suggested by each engineer. One engineer brought their copy of “The Art of Computing Programming” in Russian to be signed. Before leaving, we presented him with a plaque showing a fragment of the code describing the Google Search page including “I’m feeling lucky!” We felt the same way about his visit.
Posted by David Harper, Head University Relations, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Ask your question in the 2012 Google Science Fair
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Are human beings born curious, or can curiosity be nurtured through environment, competition or a good teacher? Everyone’s got a question—that’s ours. But we’re sure you’ve got tons of questions, too. Today, we’re inviting students around the world to pose their most pressing questions about the world around them and answer those questions through scientific inquiry.
Along with our partners CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, today we’re launching the second annual
Google Science Fair
, the largest online science competition in the world, open globally to students ages 13-18. Either individually or in teams of up to three people, students pose a question, develop a hypothesis and conduct science experiments to test it. The entire process is detailed and submitted online, via a website template participants fill out themselves, so all you need to participate is curiosity, an Internet connection and a browser.
Last year, we received entries that strove to solve a wide variety of needs, from
“How can I cure cancer?”
to
“Can I teach a robot to learn English?”
to
“Can I build a faster sailboat?”
The breadth and depth of these projects was incredibly impressive, and this year we hope to see even more entries from the next generation of brilliant young scientists.
This year’s fair will be even more global than the last: We’re now accepting submissions in 13 languages (Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Spanish and Russia). We will also be recognizing 90 regional finalists (30 from the Americas, 30 from the Asia Pacific and 30 from Europe/Middle East/Africa). From these 90, to be announced in May, our judges will select the top 15 finalists, who will be flown to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. for our live Google Science Fair final event on July 23, 2012. At the finals, a panel of distinguished international
judges
(like Vint Cerf, Sylvia Earle and Nobel Laureates David Gross and Ada Yonath) will select top winners in each age category (13-14, 15-16, 17-18).
We’re also introducing a new category for this year’s competition—the Scientific American Science in Action award. We were so inspired by 2011 finalist Harine Ravichandran’s
project
, which attempted to solve energy surges in rural villages, that we decided to recognize an outstanding project that addresses a social, environmental or health need to make a difference in the lives of a group or community, as Harine’s project did for her grandparents’ village in India. The winner will also be flown to Mountain View for the finalist event in July.
The Google Science Fair opens today, January 12, worldwide, and we’ll accept submissions until Sunday, April 1 at 11:59pm GMT (or 6:59pm ET/3:59pm PT). In addition to satisfying your curious mind, your brilliant project can also help to win you some pretty cool
prizes
, like a $50,000 college scholarship from Google, a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer or an internship at Google or any one of our partners. Our Scientific American Science in Action award winner will earn $50,000 and year-long mentorship to make their project goal a reality.
The winners of last year’s inaugural Google Science Fair became something like scientific rock stars. Shree Bose, Naomi Shah and Lauren Hodge met with
President Obama
, were invited to speak at big events like
TEDx Women
and were
featured
in Wired magazine. Shree, our grand prize winner, was named one of Glamour magazine’s
21 Amazing Young Women
of the Year. White House visits and Glamour aside, every student in the Google Science Fair has the chance to do hands-on research that can truly change the world.
Visit
google.com/sciencefair
and ask your most burning questions at the top of your voice for the world to hear. Google itself was founded through experimentation and with the Google Science Fair, we hope to inspire scientific exploration among the next generation of scientists and engineers, celebrate scientific talent, create scientific role models and unite students around the world in the quest for learning.
Posted by Cristin Frodella, Google Education Team
The Single Market Opportunity - Getting Europe's SMEs Online
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Yesterday, the
European Commission announced
its strategy to build trust in the Digital Single Market. On Tuesday 24th January, we’re hosting a special event -
The Single Market Opportunity: Getting Europe’s SMEs Online
- right here in Brussels’ European district.
We’d like to invite you to to
register
for this event and join us,
Commission Vice President Tajani
and other prestigious guests to discuss how to realise the potential of the Internet as a driver of growth and jobs across Europe’s entire economy. You’ll also hear from entrepreneurs from 15 European countries, who will showcase how they are building successful online businesses that reach far beyond their national borders.
Over the last two years, we've worked with partners in ten European countries to stimulate economic activity and the creation of jobs via the
Getting Business Online initiative
. By providing training, tools and resources, this initiative has helped more than 250,000 small and medium enterprises - from donkey farmers and
butchers
to
magicians
,
beauticians
and
wedding planners
- to go online for the first time.
The Internet already accounts for more than 6% of GDP in some European countries, according to
research
from McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group, but did you know:
That businesses that use the Internet intensively grow twice as fast as those that don't?
That the web fuels net job creation with more than two jobs created for every one lost in a traditional sector?
That more than 20% of global GDP growth over the last five years can be directly attributed to the burgeoning Internet economy?
That over the next five years, many EU member states will see double digit growth in economic activity enabled by the Internet, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs across Europe in the process?
Secure your place at the Single Market Opportunity on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012, by
registering here
today.
Posted by Antoine Aubert, Head of Brussels Policy team
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