Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Government requests for user information double since 2010
Thursday, November 14, 2013
In a year in which government surveillance has dominated the headlines, today we’re
updating our Transparency Report
for the eighth time. Since we began sharing these figures with you
in 2010
, requests from governments for user information have increased by more than 100 percent. This comes as usage of our services continues to grow, but also as more governments have made requests than ever before. And these numbers only include the requests we’re allowed to publish.
Over the past three years, we’ve continued to add more details to the report, and we’re doing so again today. We’re including additional information about legal process for U.S. criminal requests: breaking out emergency disclosures, wiretap orders,
pen register
orders and other court orders.
We want to go even further. We believe it’s your right to know what kinds of requests and how many each government is making of us and other companies. However, the U.S. Department of Justice contends that U.S. law does not allow us to share information about some national security requests that we might receive. Specifically, the U.S. government argues that we cannot share information about the requests we receive (if any) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But you deserve to know.
Earlier this year, we brought a federal case to assert that we do indeed have the right to shine more light on the FISA process. In addition, we recently wrote
a letter of support
(PDF) for two pieces of legislation currently proposed in the U.S. Congress. And we’re asking governments around the world to uphold international legal agreements that respect the laws of different countries and guarantee standards for due process are met.
Our promise to you is to continue to make this report robust, to defend your information from overly broad government requests, and to push for greater transparency around the world.
Posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security
Street View floats into Venice
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Venice was once described as “undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man,” and from these pictures it’s hard to disagree. You can now explore panoramic imagery of one of the most romantic spots in the world, captured with our Street View
Trekker
technology.
It was impossible for us to collect images of Venice with a Street View car or trike—blame the picturesque canals and narrow cobbled walkways—but our team of backpackers took to the streets to give Google Maps a truly
Shakespearean
backdrop. And not just the streets—we also loaded the Trekker onto a boat and floated by the famous gondolas to give you the best experience of Venice short of being there.
Our Trekker operator taking a well-earned rest while the gondolier does the hard work
The beautiful
Piazza San Marco
, where you can discover Doge's Palace, St. Marks' Cathedral, the bell tower, the Marciana National Library and the clocktower
We covered a lot of ground—about 265 miles on foot and 114 miles by boat—capturing not only iconic landmarks but several hidden gems, such as the
Synagogue
of the first Jewish
Ghetto
, the Devil’s Bridge in Torcello island, a
mask
to scare the same Devil off the church of Santa Maria Formosa and the
place
where the typographer
Manutius
created the Italics font. Unfortunately, Street View can’t serve you a
cicchetto
(local appetizer) in a classic
bacaro
(a typical Venetian bar), though we can show you how to get there.
The
Devil’s Bridge
in Torcello Island
Once you’ve explored the city streets of today, you can immerse yourself in the beauty of Venice’s past by diving deep in to the artworks of the
Museo Correr
, which has joined the
Google Cultural Institute
along with
Museo del Vetro
and
Ca’ Pesaro - International Gallery of Modern Art
.
Compare the modern streets with paintings of the same spots by artists such as Carpaccio and Cesare Vecellio
Or delve into historical maps of Venice, like this one showing the Frari Church, built in 1396
Finally, take a look
behind the scenes
showing how we captured our Street View imagery in Venice.
The Floating City is steeped in culture; it’s easy to see why it’s retained a unique fascination and romance for artists, filmmakers, musicians, playwrights and pilgrims through the centuries—and now, we hope, for Street View tourists too.
Posted by Daniele Rizzetto, Street View Operations Manager (and proud Venetian!)
Playing for online safety in Russia
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Although educational topics such as child safety and digital literacy may appear to be studious, virtuous but perhaps even a little dull, we’re working hard to make them fun and interactive.
Our new
Russian digital literacy project
, developed with Moscow State University’s Department of Psychology, the Foundation for Internet Development, and the Russian Institute for Education Development of the Ministry of Education, puts teens in the futuristic world of an
Internet laboratory
inhabited by amiable robots. The robots give out helpful advice on how to tell facts from lies on the web, what copyright online is, what information should and should not be shared about yourself and others, and how to protect your data from fraudsters and phishing. At the end of their journey, students complete a
test
that evaluates their digital literacy skills and awards Google certificates. Those who score the most points gain the status of ‘Internet Legend’.
The Russian program is only one of efforts across the region to promote online child safety. In Germany, we have created
Juki
, combining video community, interactive lessons, an encyclopedia, and an animation studio, all designed with child safety in mind. In Israel, our
Web Rangers
transform traditional scouting.
We believe such educational efforts represent the best ways to increase online safety as many risks teens face online, such as bullying, are difficult if not impossible to combat through regulation or filtering technologies. This was also proven by the results of the first ever
Russian study
which measured the level of digital literacy skills of Russian school children aged 12-17. Key findings include:
75% of kids learnt to use Internet on their own, without help from school or parents;
55% of Russian kids agree to meet online strangers in real life without even letting grownups know (compared to the EU's
9% average
);
both teens and parents expressed strong willingness to receive additional training on online safety and hope schools would help to provide necessary literacy programmes; fewer than 20% of parents believe legislation will help keep their children safe online, despite the Russian Law on Protecting Children from Harmful Information which entered force in November 2012; parents claimed digital literacy programs and education are a key to family safety on the Internet.
Russian children have fun studying web safety
Creating a code of conduct for web surfing
At the same time, we recognize the need for companies to step up on protecting children. Our project in Russia arms
teachers
with a textbook and interactive exercises kit for the classroom. It gives useful tips for teachers and parents on how to turn on safety tools on Google Search, YouTube and Android based on the
Good to Know
educational portal, and includes advice from educators and psychologists on how to explain key online safety rules to teenagers through case studies, games and
videos
.
Teachers in Moscow and several other Russian regions have already received training through this programme and are now actively using it in their schools. One of the exercises encourages kids to create their own code of conduct on the web, then discuss and share their experiences with teachers and fellow students. We look forward to seeing the program spread in schools throughout the country.
Posted by Ksenia Karyakina, Senior Policy Analyst, Russia
Bienvenue CANAL +!
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Ever since it was launched in 1984,
CANAL+
has played a pivotal role in boosting French culture. Much like
HBO
in the United States, the pay-tv broadcaster financed many of France’s most daring films and became home for many of France’s most innovative television shows, including the sharp-hitting and hilarious
Guignols
that spoofed and titilated the French political world. That’s why we take special pleasure today in announcing a new partnership between CANAL+ Group and YouTube.
Les Guignols
Under the new partnership, CANAL + will launch about 20 different channels on YouTube, bringing some of France’s most iconic TV shows all across the world, including
Le Grand Journa
l or
le Petit Journal
. In addition to featuring CANAL+ content, the new YouTube channels will also show highlights from CANAL+ Group’’s other broadcast outlets, including D8, D17 and i>Télé.
The partnership will also support new talent through a new label, Canal Factory. CANAL+ will use its online distribution with YouTube to feature new shows created only for the web. It will experiment with different formats and short original productions. In the past, CANAL+ Group has discovered online new artists such as les Kairas and tested new formats such as the wacky web series at Cannes 2013.
Over the past decade, YouTube has not only become the largest online video service in the world, but it has reshaped the way information is produced, distributed, and accessed. More than one billion people are finding and subscribing to the channels they love on YouTube every month. That’s almost half the people on the Internet.
YouTube channels are attracting a global generation of viewers that has grown up watching what they want, whenever they want, on whatever device is closest. With this new partnership, we’re very excited to help CANAL+ boost viewership and engagement for some of France’s most iconic audiovisual creations and shows and are delighted to bring all this great content to our YouTube community across the world.
This partnership represents exciting news for all lovers of French culture.
Posted by Helene Barrot, Communications and Public Affairs Manager, YouTube, Paris
Thrilling Germany’s next generation of technologists
Friday, November 8, 2013
In 2011, students at the High School Walburgisgymnasium Menden founded
Technik Begeistert
(literally, Thrilled by Technology) and sought to share their enthusiasm for robots. Two years on, the group’s leader, Markus Fleige and his team are among the brightest stars to emerge from the Google
RISE Awards
, a position underlined by
MINT Zukunft Schaffen’s
decision last month to name Markus as STEM Ambassador of the year.
The Technik Begeistert Team
Since Markus and Technik Begeistert received the RISE Award in January 2013, the number of teams entering the German rounds of the
World Robotics Olympiad
has more than doubled. Markus has launched a weekly
YouTube series
to enthuse teachers, students and parents. In 2014 Technik Begeistert will extend their efforts to target the 8-12 age group as well as continuing their strong focus on inspiring girls to try robotics.
Addressing the gender gap in tech is a common theme across Google’s Education Outreach in Germany. We support the
Bundeswettbewerb Informatik
, Germany’s national coding contest. Each year girls who enter the contest are invited to spend a day at Google’s engineering office in Munich, where they can be inspired by our growing team of female computer scientists. As a result, participation of girls in the finals increased from under 4% to over 20% in just one year.
This year two of the six national winners were female.
Juliane Baldus
went on to win a silver medal at the International Informatics Olympiad in Sydney. Our support has also been extended to the
Jugend Forscht
competition this year to inspire young researchers in science and technology.
These are just some of the many innovative initiatives Google is proud to support in Germany, with the goal of inspiring the next generation of computer scientists, and giving all children the opportunity to become creators, not simply consumers, of tomorrow’s technology.
Posted by Alison Cutler, Pre-University Education Outreach, EMEA
Expanding our data center in Finland
Monday, November 4, 2013
Six decades ago, the famed Finnish architect
Alvar Aalto
built a stunning red-brick paper mill in Eastern Finland. After the plant was shut, we bought it have transformed it into a modern data center - literally jumping from the industrial to the digital age. Today, Finnish Prime Minister
Jyrki Katainan
joined us at our Hamina data center in Eastern Finland to announce a EUR450 million expansion to what already is one of the world’s most efficient and largest facilities.
Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainan visits our Hamina construction site.
Many of our data centres are located in traditional industrial areas where one might not immediately think of being the home for a Google facility. In Finland, the region around our Hamina data centre stands at the heart of a region hard-hit by the retrenchment of its paper industry.
Our data centers can provide real motors to reinvigorate these industrial regions. With our financial support, the prestigious
Aalto University
and the regional development agency Cursor are working to bolster promising startups and to improve the use of the Internet by local small and medium sized industries. Cursor is strengthening the
Venture Gym
acceleration program around the growing
Playa Game Industry Hub
, as well as the region's
Kaakko 135 travel
and tourism initiative. Already, some 800 people and dozens of companies in the region have participated in Aalto-Cursor workshops, not only in the region, but also in Helsinki, London and Cambridge.
Today’s announcement will triple the size of the existing facility, which became operational in September 2011. At its peak, approximately 800 engineering and construction workers, most of whom will be Finnish, will be engaged on the site. Some 125 people currently employed at the datacenter in full time and contractor roles across engineering, technical work, security, food service, and buildings and grounds maintenance. All of our open positions can be found on
Google Jobs page
for positions in Finland.
Alvar Aalto never lived to see the Internet and data centers. But we hope he would have been pleased to see how our data center safeguards and updates his spirit of pioneering architecture.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of community relations, Europe
A Greek boot camp for startups
Thursday, October 31, 2013
After suffering an economic catastrophe, seeing a quarter of GDP evaporate over the past five years, Greece needs more than ever to encourage entrepreneurs. In an attempt to do just this, we recently inaugurated "Google Launchpad", a four-day boot camp for early stage start-ups, in Athens.
Greece is a country of highly qualified youth, ranking 10th in the world in availability of scientists and engineers. But it is ravaged by 60% unemployment (highest in the European Union) among youth under the age of 30. Our goal at Launchpad is to marry this potential talent with exciting opportunities.
The project brought together 80 developers and entrepreneurs from around Greece. They formed teams and organized their startups over the course of a week, under the guidance and mentoring from local Greek and visiting Israeli Googlers. Our first Google Launchpad took place in start-up hub Israel, and the Israeli experience provided crucial inspiration.
Some 13 start-ups ended up pitching their plans and prototypes to a panel of VC funders. Three winners were chosen:
· SpeakerZen, an app that presenters can use to get instant feedback from their audience
· SponsorBoat, an event marketplace connecting sponsors with event promoters
· Processus.io, a process management platform for SMB efficiency
Each received a three month package of support with office space, facilities,
legal/accounting advice and mentoring
,
recruiting services
as well as the Google Developers Startup Pack including $18,000 towards Google Cloud Platform products.
Congratulations! We hope these exciting ideas soon will be powering some exciting Greek startups.
Posted by Dionisis Kolokotsas, Policy Manager, Athens
Be inspired, ReCreate
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Edgar Degas
once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Our
ReCreate with Tate Britain
project allows all art-lovers to show what they see.
The project celebrates the Tate’s 500 year
British Art collection
by asking creative types across the world to ReCreate something of their own from a Tate Britain painting and to share on Google+.
Themes include
Cooking,
Comedy
and
Poetry
. Tate Britain invited famous TV chefs The Fabulous Baker Brothers to take inspiration from Hogarth’s ‘O the Roast beef of Old England’ to ReCreate a new recipe as part of the food series.
Watch
how they created a burger recipe inspired by the painting.
This evening, at 8 p.m. GMT, fashion photographer
Miles Aldridge
and our Google+ Photography community will present a special Hangout on Air about photography and art. Be sure to tune in
here
to watch live.
Want to get involved? It's as simple as 1, 2, 3:
Take a look at Tate Britain's
collection
on the Google Art Project and pick something that inspires you
Create something new and share it into the
with Tate Britain Community.
Tag it #Recreate and #TateBritain. Whether it's food, fashion, photography, we'd love to see it
Over the next few months, we will share selected artworks to the Google Art Project and Tate Britain Google+ pages. Upcoming themes include fashion, music and film. Make sure to join the Google+ Community and stay up to date.
Join us and ReCreate.
Posted by Calvin Lau and Kevin Maguire, Product Marketing Managers, EMEA
An unusual meeting of minds in Belgium
Monday, October 28, 2013
It will be a special moment when one of the “fathers’ of the Internet meets some of the “grandfathers." This evening,
Vint Cerf
, who helped pioneer the Internet’s original protocol in the 1980s, will travel to Mons in Belgium for a event celebrating the
Mundaneum
. Click below to enjoy live streaming of the event from the Manege Theater.
More than a century ago, two visionary Belgians envisioned the World Wide Web’s architecture of hyperlinks and indexation of information, not on computers, but on paper cards. Their creation was called the
Mundaneum
. Two years ago, Google struck a partnership with the Mundaneum to support the archive’s exhibitions, conferences, and other activities. Since then, the relationship has bloomed. A Google data centre is located near Mons and the Mundaneum has become a key partner in working with us to dig deep roots in the region.
As demand for our products grows, we’re investing hundreds of millions of Euros in expanding our European data centres. According to the the Wallonia Agency for Foreign Investment, our EUR550 million investment makes us one of Belgium’s largest investors. A data center is about more than just bricks, mortar and servers, too. Its about jobs. All of our open positions can be found on
Google Jobs page
for positions in Belgium.
In Mons, Vint will meet local web entrepreneurs in town, at the local
Beaux-Arts Mons museum
, which is featuring an
Andy Warhol exhibition
. Google is supporting the exhibition’s online activities.
On Tuedsay Vint will travel to Ghent for a repeat performance at the
Minard Theater
. We also have deep roots in Ghent. The Ghent University’s library owns a linguistic treasure trove of centuries-old books in English, French, German and Dutch. As a
Google book partner
, we have scanned more than 200,000 of the library’s out of copyright works. Works that once were relegated to hard-to-reach library shelves and received only an occasional reader now get more than than 100,000 views each day on the Net. That’s quite an achievement for a father of the Internet to celebrate.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Data Centre Community Relations, Europe.
Live streaming at Egypt's Abu Simbel Temple
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
It was a ritual for the Pharaohs! Twice a year, the sun aligns with the face of
Pharaoh Ramses II’s
statue in the inner sanctuary of the temple of
Abu Simbel
. Today, the
Egyptian Ministry of Tourism
live streamed the occasion on YouTube.
The solar alignment occurs on the date of Ramses II's birthday, February 22, and the date of his coronation, October 22. The latter date also signified the start of the harvest season for Ancient Egyptians.
Ramses commissioned the Abu Simbel temple between 1279 and 1213 B.C out of piety to the gods, to mark his own deification and to celebrate his domination of Nubia. It is carved into sheer stone, located 275 kilometers southeast of the city of Aswan. The original temple was positioned on the bank of the Nile. A UNESCO-sponsored project relocated and raised it some 60 meters in the 1960s to save it from flooding caused by the construction of the giant
Aswan Dam
.
Thousands of tourists flock to the temple to see the solar alignment spectacle. Now, thanks to the Internet, anyone can watch it from anywhere in the world at any time using a desktop or mobile device.
Posted by Tarek Abdalla, Head of Marketing, Middle East & North Africa
Seeing Spain through English eyes
Monday, October 21, 2013
Over the past few centuries, Span has exerted a powerful fascination on foreigners, particularly English-speaking ones. Visitors from the United Kingdom, as well as the U.S., Canada, Australia and Ireland, left powerful descriptions of their travels to this exotic land. Now, with our help, the
Cervantes Institute
has created an
online exhibition
based on accounts by foreign travelers collected in more than 240 books on Spain written between 1750 and 1950. More than five hundred images and engravings have been put online.
The Institute, the Spanish government’s equivalent to France’s
Alliance Francaise
and Germany’s
Goethe Institute
, is dedicated to promoting the Spanish language and culture. Some 40 of the exhibition's books, the out of copyright works, already had been scanned in our
Book Project
. Others were found in the collection of the Institute’s London branch. Institute curators have prepared a detailed analysis of the texts and organized them by subject, ranging from the role women to bull-fights
The exhibition explodes many stereotypes about Spain. Most foreign observers found them hard-working, seeing the much-noted afternoon siesta as hiding the real truth. “This is not a fair ground for the charge of laziness, so often urged against the natives of the south of Europe, for the heat at this hour will induce drowsiness even in the active and stirring Englishman, especially when not inured to the relaxing climate,” wrote
George Dennis
in
A Summer in Andalusia
, published in 1839. “The Spanish working man is really a most sober, hard-working being, not much given to dancing and not at all to drinking. They are exceptionally clever and sharp, and learn any new trade with great facility,” concurred Louis Higgin, in 1902 in his
Spanish life In town and country
.
More than 100 people showed up for the exhibition’s launch this month. The Cervantes’s Institute’s General Secretary discussed the project via Google Hangout with the the director of Cervantes Institute in London. The exhibition demonstrates how the Internet helps allow access to previously overlooked or ignored documents. Many of the books, stocked in dusty library shelves, received few readers. Today, anyone, anywhere in the world is able, with a click of their computer, to find and enjoy them.
Posted by Esperanza Ibanez, Public Policy Manager, Spain
Injecting data into journalism
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
We’ve long believed that the vast amounts of information unearthed by the Internet can power innovations in journalism. That’s why we are supporting the
European Journalism Centre’s
new online
data journalism course
. Registration for Doing Journalism with Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools has just opened at
http://www.datadrivenjournalism.net/course/
.
This five-module introductory course will give participants the essential concepts, techniques and skills to effectively work with data to produce compelling and visual stories. It is open to anyone with an Internet connection and is due to start in early 2014.
The course features a stellar line-up of instructors and advisors from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, New York Times, ProPublica, Wired, Twitter, La Nacion Argentina, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Zeit Online, and others. “Whether you want to get over your fear of Excel, learn the language of your data geeks, or discover how to tell stories with data visualisations, this course will help journalists and newsrooms learn how to take advantage of these invaluable skills,” said Josh Hatch, senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education and member of the course’s Advisory Board
There is already plenty of
evidence
of the opportunities and insights to be had in data driven journalism. We hope a graduate of this new course will soon be producing similar ground-breaking journalism.
Posted by Peter Barron, Direct, Communications, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Young and old unite for the Internet in Italy
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Students gr0w up with the Internet, but have difficulty entering the job market. Youth unemployment now reaches 40 percent in Italy. Retired entrepreneurs were successful in the business world, but often have little experience with the Net. Only 16 percent of Italian pensioners are online, benefiting from search, chats, blogs, and social media.
For two innovative Italian associations, the
Fondazione Mondo Digitale
, and
CNA Pensionati
, these alarming figures offer an opportunity to create a mutually beneficial exchange. At the pension group’s annual conference in Rome, and with our support, 300 students from nine schools from throughout Italy heard real life testimony on how to create and manage a company. Through next April, many students will visits to these companies and benefit from a specific training in our
“Clusters on the Web”
initiative.
In exchange for the business knowledge, the students will run workshops for retirees on how to use the Internet in their everyday life, learning how to access and use public administration services online or how to stay in touch with their grandchildren studying abroad.
At the launch event, Luciano, a retired tailor (pictured above), met up with Sara, a highschool student in Rome. Luciano wants to learn how the Internet can help him keep a record of his measurements and rationalise the administration of his business, and Sara wants to help him create an Internet site to promote his hand-made suits online. The Internet can drive ahead Italy’s economy - and engage all ages.
Posted by Laura Bononcini, Public Policy Manager, Rome
Enhancing Greek democracy
Monday, October 14, 2013
The timing for the debate was ideal: Greece is fighting against an unprecedented political - as much as economic - crisis. Earlier this month, police arrested several leaders of a far-right, xenophobic, neo-fascist party Golden Dawn, charging it with a variety of serious criminal offenses including murder. At the beginning of next year, the country takes over the six month European Union presidency.
In response, we became a supporter and prime mover behind the first
“Digital Democracy” conference
, held in the original 19th-century
Old Parliament
building in Athens. Participants included the Deputy Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Deputy Foreign Minister, the e-Government Minister and the Minister responsible for public television. The conference explored the ways that digital technologies and the Internet enhance democracy by changing the nature of political communication.
Speakers concluded that a democratic deficit exists in Europe which the Internet can help fill. Politicians need to leverage the web for a two-way dialogue, listening as much as talking to citizens. We need to close the digital literacy gap which leaves certain parts of the population - the less digitally savvy - out of democratic processes. Most important, the Government needs to use Internet tools to increase transparency via the use of open data and of online public consultations.
Other countries face similar challenges. No silver bullet exists. It will take sweat and perseverance for the Greece and the rest of Europe to solidify their democracies.
Posted by Dionisis Kolokotsas, Policy Manager, Athens
The cultural catwalk: 5,000+ new works in the Cultural Institute
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
The past few weeks, Fashion Week in New York, London, Paris and Milan have given us a feast for the eyes with parades of creativity, color and design. At the
Cultural
Institute
, we're putting on a fashion show of a different kind with new content from 36 partners. Many of these cultural treasures, from China, Hungary, Mexico and 16 other countries, have a strong link to fashion and design through the ages.
Fabrics are the starting point of many designs. You can see this in the wonderful costumes added by the Textile Museum of Canada to the
Google Art
Project
. Highlights include a
kimono
from Japan, a
cape
from Polynesia and an 1800s
jacket
with beautiful detail from Greece. The creation of these fabrics is highly skilled work; in an online
exhibition
, The Craft Revival Trust gives us an insight into the 5,000-year-old Indian textile tradition which creates the prints, motifs and colors that are still used today, while the
The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg
exhibits quilts of delicate beauty.
If regalia and royal jewels are more your thing, then then be sure to see new exhibits from
La Venaria Reale
in Italy and the
Palace of Versailles
in France. Zoom in at brushstroke level to the
gigapixel
painting of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia to appreciate the jewellery, metallics, fabrics and lace of the King’s royal mantle, scepter and crown. And accessories were as important in the 17th century as they are today: an
online exhibition
entitled “Louis XIV: the construction of a political image” curated by experts in Versailles features an amazing
wax portrait
moulded from the monarch’s face, complete with a real wig.
The fashion world has long taken inspiration from tribal traditions. In a new photographic archive named "
African ceremonies
,” the diversity and beauty of 100+ unique African cultures is on full display—the work of two world-class artists who spent 30 years criss-crossing the continent. From the
painted Karo Dancers of Ethiopia
to
The Hands of the Ashanti King
, you'd be hard-pressed to find more elaborate body art and ceremonial dress.
You can also browse the interiors of the
first two museums in China
to open their doors to Street View; enjoy our first
collection of children’s art
from Norway;
learn about Sumatra’s Pustaha book of spells
reflecting the wisdom of nine generations of magicians; or simply sit back and let yourself be
taken on a tour by a museum director
through one of the 12 new galleries they’ve created.
With 5,400 new items to explore, there’s some style inspiration for all of us!
Posted by Piotr Adamczyk, Program Manager, Google Cultural Institute
Music spreads across Europe with Google Play
Friday, October 4, 2013
Your music is supposed to be fun, but in reality it can be the exact opposite: a chore - moving files between computers, syncing across your phone and tablet, and lots and lots of wires.
Google Play Music,
an easier way to manage your music, offers a solution. It just has launched so you can listen to any song you want, whenever you want, on all of your devices. has just come to Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Russia and Switzerland.
All Access coverage is now spread pretty much across the entire continent. A first group of
nine European countries
last month received the service.
All Access is the first service of its kind that lets you store 20,000 songs from your personal music collection in the cloud for free; purchase new music from all the major record labels and thousands of indies to grow your collection; or get an unlimited pass to a huge library of music on all your devices with All Access, our monthly music subscription service. It’s all stored in the cloud so you never have to worry about losing songs or moving them again. You can add a new favorite track to your collection while you’re on your computer, and it will be instantly available on your phone and tablet. And you can “pin” all of this content to make it available on your phone or tablet when you’re offline without a connection.
All Access lets you search for and listen to any song from our library of millions of tracks, wherever and whenever you want. You can create an ad-free, interactive radio station from any song or artist you love. Or you can browse recommendations from our expert music team and explore songs by genre. The “Listen Now” tab puts artists and radio stations we think you’ll like front and center so you can start listening the minute you open your library. You can try All Access for free for the first month and pay only a modest subscription service each month after that.
With this launch, Google Play moves one step closer to being your ultimate digital entertainment destination, where you can find, enjoy and share your favourite apps, games, books, movies, magazines and music on your Android phone or tablet. Good listening.
Posted by Posted by Sami Valkonen, Head of International Music Partnerships, Google Play
An Austrian star of European computing
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Google started as a
graduate school project
. So it’s apt that the next film in our
computing heritage series
pays homage to the work of another student team, nearly 60 years ago in Austria.
In the mid 1950’s, computer design was in the midst of a major transition, going from
vacuum tubes
to
transistors
. Transistors
performed a similar function
electronically, but generated less heat and were a fraction of the size, allowing machines to be made that were both smaller and more powerful.
Heinz
Zemanek
, then an assistant professor at the
Vienna University of Technology
, had long been interested in computers. In 1956, he enlisted a team of students to build one based on this new transistor technology.
Zemanek’s project didn’t have university backing, so the team relied on donations. One student’s work was sponsored by
Konrad Zuse
, the German computer pioneer, on the understanding he would join Zuse’s company after completing his doctorate. Additional money came from an Austrian bankers association, thanks to connections Zemanek had made through his role leading
Austria’s Boy Scouts
. Overall more than 35 companies contributed materials, in particular
Philips
, who donated all the transistors and diodes. The only drawback was the transistors were relatively slow, originally designed for hearing aids.
At the time, leading U.S. machines were named after types of wind, such as MIT’s
Whirlwind
and RCA Laboratory’s
Typhoon
. In a gentle nod to this, Zemanek nicknamed his computer
Mailüfterl
, meaning “May Breeze.”
As he joked
(PDF): "We are not going to produce… any of those big American storms, but we will have a very nice little Viennese spring breeze!”
On May 27, 1958 the Mailüfterl ran its first calculation and became mainland Europe’s first fully transistorized computer—and
one of the earliest in the world
. It remained at the university for its first few years, financed in part by the European Research Office of the American Army. In 1960 Zemanek signed a contract with IBM, and in September 1961 the Mailüfterl was moved to a new research laboratory in Vienna that IBM created for Zemanek and his team.
Today the Mailüfterl is on display at the
Technical Museum in Vienna
—a fitting reminder of Austria’s time at the vanguard of European computing.
Posted by Wolfgang Fasching-Kapfenberger, Communications & Public Affairs Manager, Austria
EUhackathon 2013: Coding for Transparency
Monday, September 30, 2013
The challenge at this year’s
EUhackathon
was to
shine a light
on government surveillance during a 24-hour coding marathon - a particularly pertinent subject given recent headlines. European Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding saluted the coders at the Awards Ceremony, saying “you’re hacking for your rights.”
A total of 29 coders from 13 countries participated. Team Frontwise from the Netherlands won the first prize with its
BIGSIS – Privacy Ranking app
. Reding gave them a EUR 5,000 award. BIGSIS is a Chrome plugin which “visualises your exposure to web services while you’re browsing the internet. It displays with which governments this data can be shared.”
All the competing projects can be found at the
Visualizing.org
website. Take a look at the coders in action.
[Youtube link to official movie
As well as from these technical achievements, the EUhackathon hosted a
series of discussions
on government surveillance, bringing together academics represented by Professors Milton Mueller and Pompeu Casanovas, civil society leaders including Trevor Timm from the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Joe McNamee from the European Digital Rights initiative (EDRi), and international officials such as UNICRI’s Francesca Bosco.
Google’s been at the forefront of calls for transparency about government surveillance for many years. Every six months, we publish detailed statistics on the number of requests we get from governments to access user data – and we’ve done that since 2009. We’ve supported the EUhackathon for the last three years because data visualisation is a great way of making statistics more meaningful, and of raising awareness of an issue that has serious implications for democratic societies.
Posted by Marco Pancini, Senior Counsel, Brussels
Street View arrives at CERN
Thursday, September 26, 2013
At
CERN
, the European particle physics laboratory based in the suburbs of Geneva, some of the world’s best physicists and engineers are using advanced particle accelerators to help solve age old questions about the universe — What is it made of? How did it start?
We’re delighted that CERN opened its doors to Google Maps Street View allowing anyone, anywhere in the world to take a peek into its laboratories, control centers and its myriad underground tunnels housing cutting-edge experiments. Street View also lets scientists working on the experiments, who may be on the other side of the world, explore the equipment they're using.
This is the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC beauty experiment will shed light on why we live in a universe that appears to be composed almost entirely of matter, but no antimatter. Learn more
here
.
This is the the 7000-tonne ATLAS detector. From a cavern 100 metres below a small Swiss village, it’s probing for fundamental particles including the
Higgs Boson
.
ALICE is a heavy-ion detector on the Large Hadron Collider ring. It's designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities, where a phase of matter called
quark-gluon plasma
forms.
The
Compact Muon Solenoid
(CMS) is a general-purpose detector at the Large Hadron Collider. It's designed to investigate a wide range of physics, including the search for the Higgs boson, extra dimensions, and particles that could make up dark matter.
For two full weeks back in 2011, members of our Street View team from Google’s Zurich office worked with our CERN partners to capture this incredible imagery. You can check out the above experiments, like
ATLAS
,
ALICE
,
CMS
,
LHCb
and the
Large Hadron Collider
tunnel in Google Maps, as well as collections of other Street View imagery from amazing sites around the world, on our
Views
site.
You can also learn more about CERN by following its
Google+
page.
Posted by Pascale Milite, Google Street View operations
Troll-proofing Europe’s patent system
Thursday, September 26, 2013
As the European Union moves towards a
unified patent system
, we’re excited about the prospects for a harmonised patent regime that promotes efficiency and long-term competitiveness.
After all, the whole point of a patent system is to promote innovation. Patents encourage inventors to publicly disclose their inventions, sharing knowledge and spurring further progress while recouping their investment.
But in the United States, the abuse of dubious patents is having the opposite effect, impeding innovation and harming consumers.
Patent trolls
- litigation shops that use
questionable patents
to extort money from productive companies—are placing a huge drag on innovation. Trolls use the threat of expensive and extended litigation to extract settlements, regardless of the merits of their claims.
The economic impact of patent troll litigation has been enormous, draining an estimated
$29 billion
in direct costs from productive enterprises in 2011 alone. Over the years Google has faced down hundreds of patent claims, mostly from patent trolls, but only after paying millions of dollars in legal fees.
Europe now has a clear opportunity to adopt rules that limit the risk of fostering
patent trolling in Europe
. Patent trolls have no real business interests to defend. So, at the very least, trolls should have to prove their patents are actually valid and consumer harms should be considered before giving trolls blocking orders that would impact 500 million Europeans.
Today, we’ve joined 16 European and U.S. companies, including Adidas, Deutsche Telekom, Apple and Microsoft in an
open letter
, suggesting improvements to the Unified Patent Court’s proposed rules. These fixes will help the EU system avoid the issues that have plagued the U.S. and will ensure companies are investing in innovation and growth—not patent litigation.
Posted by Catherine Lacavera, Director of Patent Litigation
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