Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Google Play music arrives in Europe
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Music lovers rejoice! There’s now an even easier way to manage and listen to your music. Today
music on Google Play
is live in the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.
Google Play lets you store 20,000 songs from your existing music collection in a personal library in the cloud, so you can access it from all your devices. In addition, our new matching feature streamlines the process of uploading your music, so it will be added to your library even more quickly. Both of these we offer free of charge.
You can also buy new music from your favourite artists and build out your collection. We’ll automatically sync your entire music library—both purchases and uploads— so you can listen across all your devices. No need to worry about cables, file transfers or running out of storage space. Even listen when you’re offline - simply “pin” the playlists and albums you want and they’ll be available on your Android device. And for any song you’ve purchased on Google Play, you can share a free full listen with your friends on Google+.
We’ve partnered with all the major record labels and thousands of indie labels to sell their music in Google Play. And if you’re a talented, unsigned or independent musician looking for your big break, check out the
Google Play artist hub
, a great way to sell your music directly to fans.
Check out Google Play today. It will be music to your ears.
Posted by Paul Joyce, product manager for Google Play
Inspiring the next generation of Spanish innovators
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
When highlighting Spain's heritage, it is common to focus on the great artists like Picasso, Dali, and Gaudi. Less often heralded are their
scientific counterparts
, the talented Spanish inventors and researchers who didn't just dream of the future, they helped create it. One such oft-overlooked contributor is
Leonardo Torres Quevedo
. His inventions range from cable cars to the world’s first chess playing computer.
In this, the hundredth anniversary year of his chess machine, Google was delighted to partner with the
Technical University of Madrid
to help resurrect Torres Quevedo’s memory. Together, we celebrated the opening of an exhibition in the main hall of the Telecommunication Engineering department featuring a number of his machines, as well as a
formal lecture programme
exploring his influence across many engineering fields.
It was a great day. Dr Alberto Rodriguez Raposa, the Director General of Telecommunications and IT from the Ministry of Industry opened the exhibitions. Speakers in the seminar included senior representatives from different engineering departments across the university, as well as Dr Francisco González de Posada, Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Madrid and a renowned expert in Torres-Quevedo’s achievements.
In parallel, a chess tournament for 14-17 year olds from regional chess clubs was staged in the hall alongside the exhibition, with the winner playing a simulation of the original chess machine.
It’s important to remember scientific pioneers like Leonardo Torres Quevedo, not only to pay rightful tribute to their achievements, but to inspire others to follow in their footsteps.
This is an appropriate time for reflection. Innovation when combined with an entrepreneurial streak, as demonstrated by Torres Quevedo, can be a powerful catalyst for economic growth, and a vital determinant of a country’s competitiveness on the world stage. In the current context, through these type of partnerships, we seek to inspire the next generation of Torres Quevedo’s to help get countries back on the fast lane to the future.
Posted by Barbara Navarro, Director of Public Policy and Corporate Affairs for Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece
Encouraging the Next Generation of Female Engineers
Monday, November 12, 2012
A 3D printing lab. A digital music master class. A class explaining how to build robots. The third annual
Greenlight@Brussels Day
brought 250 teenage girls from around Belgium for a day of workshops designed to encourage them to become engineers. We helped finance the event and a Google software engineer Emily Soldal came from Sweden to provide mentoring.
Too few women study science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Less than one fifth of engineers in the European Union are women, according to
Engineering UK
. This represents a giant waste of talent, particularly in this period of high youth unemployment. The EU estimates in its
Forsight Report
that there will be 700,000 unfilled tech jobs by 2015.
We support a number of
educational initiatives
to bring more women into computer science.
Greenlight for Girls
is an international non-profit organization. At its annual Brussels event, experts, volunteers and role models from all over Europe contributed to the day’s learnings. European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes contributed a video message, encouraging the young women “to remember they can be anything they want to be”.
Take a look and consider a career in computer science. Events like Greenlight@Brussels showcase how computer science can be combined with other fields - and provide students a competitive advantage in a tight job market.
Posted by Angela Steen, Senior Policy Analyst, Google
NextUp Europe: meet the next generation of YouTube stars
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Over the last couple of months some of Europe’s most exciting creative talents have sent us their entries for
NextUp Europe
, a video contest that aims to unearth the YouTube stars of tomorrow across the UK, France, Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Poland, Italy and Spain.
NextUp is a development program designed exclusively for YouTube partners with bags of potential. Many talented creators are already using the platform to reach a worldwide audience and make money from their videos by allowing YouTube to run ads alongside them and sharing the revenue. Thousands of partner channels are now making
six-figure sums
annually.
We’d love to see even more partners using the site as a launchpad to career success, so we’re supporting them through training, education and promotions via NextUp. By helping them invest in new equipment and training, our NextUp winners are going to develop whole new genres and online experiences for audiences around the world -
ironing skydiving
anyone?
We’ve been busy watching all the entry videos and we’ve selected a list of
25 winners
from across the continent. Winners included UK creator RageNineteen and Spain’s Iker Plan, and you can see their entries below.
Things You Should Know, by RageNineteen
Next Up 2012, by Iker Plan
Each winning creator will receive an all-expenses-paid to trip to London, where they’ll attend a week of hands-on training and mentorship in our brand new creator space. In addition, winners will get a €4,000 video equipment package and €3,000 in cash to help boost the quality of their content.
We’re delighted that we received so many high-quality entries that highlight the passion and talent of the YouTube community. Check out some of the above entries and click ‘Subscribe’ to get regular updates from their channels.
Posted by Kinzie Kramer, YouTube Partner Marketing
Marking the fall of the Iron Curtain
Thursday, November 8, 2012
There are certain events in history that are momentous enough to make you remember where you were at the time. This Friday is the 23rd anniversary of one of those moments—the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
To mark this turning point in history, we’re releasing a collection of online exhibitions under the theme of
The Fall of the Iron Curtain
. Partners, including The DDR Museum in Berlin, Polish History Museum, Romanian broadcaster TVR and Getty Images, have created 13 exhibitions containing
documents
,
videos
and
photos
telling the stories behind how events unfolded.
Independent historians have also contributed their expertise. For example, Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard University, provides video commentary on events as part of his exhibition
The Fall of the Wall: Revelation, not Revolution
.
Some of the other exhibitions include:
Solidarity & the fall of The Iron Curtain
- the creation and evolution of the Solidarity trade union leading to Lech Walesa's election as President of Poland in 1990
Visions of Division
- Professor Patrick Major, a specialist in Cold War history, gives an account of life in a divided Germany and the everyday human cost of the Wall
Years of change
- diary of a fictitious author documenting events in Berlin such as the staged elections, the first protests and David Hasselhoff's concert at the wall
The Berlin Job
- a personal account of life in East Berlin made by independent curator Peter Millar, one of the only non-German correspondents in East Berlin in the 1980s
Romanian Revolution
- a series of four exhibitions containing more than 50 videos documenting the live TV transmission of the overthrow of Romanian dictator Ceausescu
The Fall of the Iron Curtain
is the latest chapter in the work of the Google Cultural Institute, following the launch last month of
42 online historical exhibitions
telling the stories behind major events of the last century. You can explore all the exhibitions on
www.google.com/culturalinstitute
and follow us on
our Google+ page
.
If you’re a partner interested in working with the Google Cultural Institute to turn your archives into online exhibitions, we’d love to hear from you—please fill out this
form
.
Posted by Mark Yoshitake, Google Cultural Institute
Bringing the US election to Berlin
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Last night, the US election came to Berlin in a big way. More than 2000 people from the worlds of politics, media and business convened in Deutsche Telekom’s historic Telegraph Building to follow the action and debate the election live - in person, on air, and
online
.
German public broadcaster
ZDF
anchored its election reporting from the event - one of the largest held anywhere outside the US. For our part, we teamed up with ZDF and the
American Academy
in Berlin, who used Google+ technology to host two live “Transatlantic Election Hangouts”.
The Hangouts featured Bundestag President
Norbert Lammert
, Die Zeit editor
Josef Joffe
, former German Ambassador to the US
Wolfgang Ischinger
and President of the Brookings Institution,
Strobe Talbott
. The discussions were broadcast live to the web as "Hangouts on Air" for politically interested European citizens and people around the world on Google+ and YouTube. ZDF also integrated Hangouts on Air with bloggers in the US into their live programming.
Alongside ZDF, Deutsche Telekom, Google and the American Academy, the event was co-hosted by organisations including the US Embassy in Berlin, the American Chamber of Commerce, Tagesspiegel and the German Newspaper Association (VDZ) among others - each of whom welcomed guests to their own booths.
On the Google stand, guests were able to access a wide range of information via the
Google elections
page, including results displayed state by state on a Google Map in real time, live reporting on YouTube by US broadcasters and newspapers, and the volume of search queries by state for each candidate. Prominent guests including US-ambassador Philip D. Murphy and the Head of the SPD fraction in the German Bundestag
Frank-Walter Steinmeier
dropped by to take a look. Every two hours our guests were able to chat with Google’s election team in Washington DC via Hangout to get the freshest insights into how the race was playing out online.
When the event kicked off at 7pm last night, we knew it was going to be an exciting night. Thanks to the Internet, we - and citizens across Germany and around the world - were able to follow the action in real time, see the results come in and discuss and debate with people on the ground in the US. When we left the building at 7am, bleary-eyed and exhausted, we knew just how close a race it had been.
Posted by Ralf Bremer, Senior Manager Communications and Public Affairs, Google Germany
Supporting bottom-up, multi-stakeholder Internet governance
Monday, November 5, 2012
UPDATE:
A highlight video of the Big Tent Baku is now available. Please take a look.
The Internet has been built from the bottom up. From its origins as a US Government research project, private business, public authorities, civil society, academia and 2.3 billion users have built it over the past three decades into a global information network. Today, we stand at a crossroads as more than a thousand representatives of Internet businesses, NGOs, and governments assemble in Azerbaijan at the
United Nations Seventh Intergovernmental Forum.
While the Net has grown to embrace and enhance almost every human activity, more and more governments, unnerved by its revolutionary freedoms, are seeking to constrain its use. According to the Open Net Initiative, some 42 countries censor, filter or block content on the web. Google is going to Azerbaijan to stand up for freedom and openness of the Internet. At the Internet Governance Forum, all of us can make contributions. All our voices are heard. The Net's value is found in its generalized nature, its abilities to allow all shades of colour to be displayed.
Many of the same governments that restrict Net freedom in their home countries want to interfere with this success story. Some are proposing to impose a new United Nations agency to govern the Net. Others want to use the already established, Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union, as a ‘stalking horse,’ slipping dangerous provisions into a soon-to-be-negotiated telecommunications treaty.
This evening in Azerbaijan, we are hosting a
Big Tent
to discuss these crucial Internet governance issues. Our featured guest is
Vint Cerf,
famed for the role he played in developing the Net’s early technology - and his tireless support for the multi-stakeholder Internet Governance Forum.
At the Big Tent, Baku, we're going to look at this battle for freedom, first hand and up close in Azerbaijan. Our host country is going through a momentous transformation in the two decades since it won independence. It has made huge strides developing its economy. It international profile is rising fast. Yet a strong debate is now underway about freedom of speech. Some bloggers have been imprisoned. Others face restrictions on what they can say online. At the Big Tent, we will show an excerpt from a
film
about
Internet freedom in Azerbaijan.
Under the UN's own convention, each and every one of us enjoys the right to express ourselves freely. We recognize that the limits of free speech are open for debate - different cultural norms allow different levels of expression. We ourselves do not accept certain types of content on Google platforms - for example, videos that incite violence, or child pornography. Wherever we operate locally, we respect local law, even if that means pulling down content that's legal elsewhere. But our bottom line remains a strong preference for keeping the Net as open and free as possible.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
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