Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Boosting Tourism in Southern Europe
Thursday, December 12, 2013
If Southern Europe is to recover from the euro crisis, the region will need to boost its traditionally strong tourism industry - and one of the best ways to sell its sun, beauty, and history is through the Internet. This is the conclusion of new
Oxford Economics
study titled
“The Impact of Online Content on European Tourism.”
The research, supported by us, found that Greece, Italy and Spain could improve their performance with online bookings. On average, some 49 percent of hotel bookings in the European Union,are made on the web. In Greece, by contrast, online bookings account for only 10 percent. In Spain, it is 26 percent, and in Italy, 43 percent.
In addition, the three countries enjoy great opportunities to market their rich cultural heritage. Culture-related searches account for 45 percent of all tourism-related searches on Greece, 31 percent for Italy, and 44 percent for Spain. Greek Italian and Spanish museums, art galleries, historical sites and cultural events will be able to move more traffic online.
If full advantage is taken of the Internet, Oxford calculates that Greece could see a 20 percent expansion in its tourism business, boosting GDP growth by an astounding 3.2 percent. Italy’s GDP would increase by 1 percent, and Spain’s by 0.5 percent. Some 50,000 jobs would be created in Spain, 100,000 in Greece, and 250,000 in Italy.
Specific recommendations to achieve these goals include:
Encourage tourist businesses to build websites in multiple languages across multiple online platforms - travel apps, travel apps, search, sales portals, travel reviews, travel guides.
Update the content frequently - and given the significant role that culture plays in tourism in Europe, pay special attention to online cultural content.
Motivate government agencies to work with the private sector to provide complementary destination and cultural online content.
Use social media and encourage feedback from customers. This will allow businesses to build relationships with their customers as well as improve service offerings over time.
Fortunately, we’re seeing signs that the Mediterranean tourist industry is embracing these opportunities. At the report's recent launch in Athens, the president of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises,
Andreas Andreadis
, pointed to the
Discovergreece.com
website that serves as a platform for online reservations. Tourism Minister
Olga Kefalogianni
said the
VisitGreece.gr
had attracted 7.3 million unique visitors and reported that her Ministry has launched a web-based communication campaign to promote Greece. Carlos Romero, from Spain’s government tourist innovation agency
Seggitur
, spoke of the success of
spainisculture.com
.
Let’s hope that the research will encourage additional investments in online tourism.
Posted by Dionisis Kolokotsas, Public Policy Manager, Athens
Modernising Amnesty International letter writing marathons
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
For many years,
Amnesty International
and its 3.2 million members have stood up for human rights by organizing
Write for Rights
- an annual global letter-writing marathon. People from over 80 countries come together to support individuals and communities suffering human rights abuses. Today, with our support,
Amnesty
will mark the
International Human Rights Da
y by building a
new digital platform
for this year’s Write for Rights Marathon.
Amnesty’s marathon website will focus on three cases: that of a community leader imprisoned because he tried to stop clashes between religious groups, that of a community that is living in makeshift shelters after their houses were demolished and that of a man brutally attacked by the police. The new website will link to YouTube to show videos of individuals and communities suffering human rights abuses.
This launch represents what we hope is just a beginning. Over the coming months, we will support Amnesty to build a platform that will help Amnesty to respond in a rapid and reactive way to human rights violations.
Amnesty has a unique way of humanising the often abstract issues around free expression. This new website represents not just a modernisation of its letter writing techniques; it also demonstrates an acknowledgement that the future of free expression depends much on the future of the open and free Internet, which anyone with a connection, anywhere in the world, can use to reach a global audience.
For the individual cases featured in Amnesty’s appeal, the impact of letter writing is often life changing, restoring their freedom. As
Julio de Peña Valdez
, a released prisoner of conscience from the Dominican Republic said after his release, “The letters kept coming and coming: three thousand of them. The president was informed. The letters still kept arriving, and the president called the prison and told them to let me go. After I was released, the president called me to his office. He said: 'How is it that a trade union leader like you has so many friends from all over the world?' He showed me an enormous box full of letters he had received and, when we parted, he gave them to me.”
We have always believed in the liberating power of technology: more information means more discussion, better choices and eventually more freedom. Our goal with Amnesty is to raise awareness of the critical human rights issues around the world, including free expression, creating international pressure for their resolution.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Online exhibitions made easy with Google Open Gallery
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Do you run a small gallery and would like people to be able to dive into the
hidden depths of your artworks
with a powerful zoom? Perhaps you’ve been busy tidying your loft/attic and discovered a treasure trove of photos that can tell an amazing story, like
Dean Putney who unearthed a huge archive
of photos taken by his Grandfather, a German officer during World War I. Or are you an artist like
Vitor Rolim
from Brazil, and want to show the evolution of your work but are not sure you have the technical expertise?
Help is now at hand with
Google Open Gallery
, which launches today. For the past few years, we've worked with museums around the world to make their collections available on the
Google Cultural Institute
. Now, we’ve opened up the technologies behind this project so that anyone with cultural content can publish it, creating exhibitions that tell engaging stories on their own website. Take a look at how the
Belgian Comic Strip Center
used the Google Open Gallery to tell the story of their iconic Art Nouveau building—the Waucquez Warehouse—through a quirky mix of comic-style drawings, photographs, sketches and first hand experiences.
Google Open Gallery helps you to create a beautiful experience for people to view your collection, at the click of a button. We’ll host your content and give you access to our technology at no cost to you or your organisation. It’s pretty simple—just upload images, add video, Street View imagery and text, interweaving your story among the images to create an exhibition that will truly engage your visitors. The
Fort Collins Museum of Discovery
matches archive photos with modern day Street View imagery. Berndnaut Smilde is a contemporary artist living and working in Amsterdam, famous for creating stunning clouds as part of his Nimbus series. There’s plenty to inspire the budding artist in you with these 45 new Google Open Gallery creations from around the world so why not get exploring!
It’s not just online that we’ve been busy. Today, we officially opened the
Lab at the Cultural Institute
a physical space within our Google Paris office where the worlds of culture and technology are brought together to discuss, debate and explore new ideas. It’s also where we don our white coats and test out things like 3D scanners, million pixel cameras, interactive screens and more, working with museums to try them out inside their spaces to get their feedback.
We’ll be adding new features to Google Open Gallery and more technologies to the Lab as time goes by and will have plenty more to tell you in the coming months so watch this space!
Posted by Robert Tansley, Google Open Gallery Product Manager & Laurent Gaveau, Head of The Lab at the Cultural Institute
Streaming the Nobel Prize Awards
Friday, December 6, 2013
Since 1901, the
Nobel Prize
has marked the ultimate achievement in physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, literature and peace. This year, we’re happy to announce that the The Nobel Foundation is live streaming on
YouTube
many of the key events during Nobel week.
Starting tomorrow at 1 p.m. Stockholm time, this years’s Nobel medicine winners
James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof
will lecture on their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells. At 5:30 p.m. the Nobel Lecture in Literature
Alice Munro
will appear in a pre-recorded video conversation with the Laureate: "Alice Munro: In her own words".
On Sunday morning at 9 a.m.,
physics prize winners François Englert and Peter W. Higgs
will appear. They were honored "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles." After physics, tune into hear the chemistry and economics winners.
Monday will be marked by a conversation with Nobel Laureates on the future of energy.
The ceremonies culminate on December 10 with the
Nobel Peace Prize
Award in Oslo at 1.00 p.m. and the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, at 4.30 p.m. from the Stockholm Concert Hall. This year’s prize went to to
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
"for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons".
Make sure to tune in to
http://www.youtube.com/thenobelprize
and join the conversation on
google.com/+NobelPrize
.
Posted by Farshad Shadloo, Communications Manager, Stockholm
Culture on the web: the surprising rise of the new voices
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Like many industries, the Internet has upended the world of news and culture. While it has undermined some traditional business models, media consultancy
Oliver & Ohlbaum
published two new studies that we commissioned this week showing that the net is powering the rise of exciting new voices and small players. YouTube stars are building fame online before securing a record deal or a film contract. Newshounds now discover, share, and comment on stories on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
In the first study,
Different media, different roles, different expectations: the nature of news consumption in the digital age
, Oliver & Ohlbaum set out to answer the question of how the Internet affects access to and consumption of news. Are readers consuming more news than they did in the age of ink? From more or fewer sources? After surveying data from the UK and Germany, the researchers found:
A new generation of news junkies is emerging:
On average, all UK adults consulted an average of 2.7 news sources per week, while online readers visit almost twice as many - 5.2 news websites.
Readers are expanding their horizons, consulting a wide array of sources:
In both the UK and Germany, readers now spend only 5-20% of their news-time on their favorite newspaper. Instead, they consume news from, on average, eight other sources.
Readers are encountering a broad range of views:
Even where consuming user generated ‘less trustworthy’ sources, 47% say this is to encounter views different from their own.
Established media retain significant influence:
Television remains considered the most authoritative media source and big brands continue to earn greater trust, audience attention, and influence on consumer opinion than other sources.
A second study,
The Internet and the creative industries: measuring growth within a changing sector ecology
, examines current approaches to measuring the ‘creative sector’; and the impact of the internet on the role of independent artists and small businesses in the business of culture. Drawing on case studies from the UK, France and Sweden, the research finds that the Internet has increased the numbers of creative sector SMEs and 'sole traders.'
In the music industry of twenty years ago, for example, a single record label hired lawyers, accountants, cafeteria workers. Today, many of these roles are distributed among small businesses and independent players. A band might be discovered on YouTube, hire professionals on an hourly basis to handle contracts, self-publish and self-market.
Until now, most research has failed to take into account this structural shift toward ‘unorganized content producers,’ suggesting that they fail to capture a great deal of activity. See below.
What is needed, the researchers conclude, is a new way of measuring the culture industry. Specifically, this new measurement must identify and measure the contribution of SMEs and sole traders. Only when we have reliable statistics can we truly understand the Internet’s impact on the business of news and culture.
Posted by Simon Morrison, Public Policy and Government Relations Manager
Campus London powers UK tech boom
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
It’s been 20 short months since
Campus London
opened its doors to East London’s entrepreneur community, time enough to report some initial results, and time enough to realize that our biggest expectations have been surpassed. In a new report released yesterday, we reported that Campus has more than 22,000 members, hailing from more than 60 countries. Campus has hosted over 1,100 events for more than 70,000 visitors in 2013, including 1,000 mentoring sessions, in which Google employees volunteer their time to advise early-stage companies, through the
Google office hours programme
.
Full details of the survey can be found at
www.campuslondon.com/research
. Highlights include:
Campus is creating job
s: We estimate that at least 576 jobs have been created within the Campus community.
Campus startups are raising serious funding
: Campus members have raised at least £34m in the 12 months to October 2013.
Campus is promoting gender equality
: Campus is helping to address the gender imbalance in the tech startup industry. The presence of women at Campus continues to grow, now at 22% of residents and 20% of the overall member base - compared to the 9% industry average. Campus for Mums
and
Women at Campus
are moving the needle.
Campus continues to attract new entrepreneurs:
Campus is increasingly popular as a place to interact with the local startup community. 78% of survey respondents have been working at Campus for less than 6 months. Campus membership has grown almost 300% since January 2013 (8,000 to 22,500).
Campus members are upbeat:
The outlook of startups at Campus remains very positive with 84% reporting a positive outlook.
We're proud of the role Campus is playing in building this ecosystem, and eager to continue to grow London as one of the world's most exciting technology centres.
Posted by Eze Vidra, Head of Campus London and Google For Entrepreneurs Europe.
Google learns to speak French and German
Friday, November 29, 2013
“How many calories are there in a banana?”
From now on, you can speak such queries into a phone or tablet and receive a quick response — eighty-nine calories in English,
quatre-vingt-neuf
if you ask in French, or
neunundachtzig kalorien
in German. We’ve been on tour in recent weeks throughout Europe, from London to Paris and Hamburg, with our Google House, demonstrating our vision of the connected present. The star of the show was our most advanced
Voice Search
, which just has arrived in the UK, France and Germany.
In the kitchen, Voice Search can help you find just the right recipe — even if your hands are covered in flour. By talking to their smart device, our chefs in the Google House searched for recipes, asked for weight and temperature conversions, which we will speak right back, and even set a countdown timer on their device to remind them to take their lemon madeleines out of the oven.
Jamie and Ben from
Sorted Food
, YouTube’s largest cooking channel in Europe, showed us how Voice Search can help around the kitchen
We can also provide smart reminders, where you can asked to be notified when you're near the location for that particular task, such as
“Remind me to pick up sugar next time I’m at Sainsburys.”
In the living room, voice can help you discover music, videos, photos, movies and other services, while the teen’s bedroom we showed how school kids could use use Voice Search to help with homework tasks —
“Show me paintings by Picasso”
pulls up a carousel of
Pablo Picasso’s
works right on the search page which can easily be scrolled through.
Google can help kids and adults alike with quick and easy answers
What makes the Voice Search extra-special is its ability to understand the context of a question. For example:
Ask
“How old is David Beckham?”
and then follow up with the question
“And who is his wife?”
, and Google knows you mean
David Beckham’s wife
.
Ask “
What is the weather like in Liverpool?,”
you can follow-up with “
How long does it take to drive there?”
This makes searching by voice like a real-life conversation. Fast and accurate voice recognition technology — available on Android and on the Google Search app on iPhone — enables us to understand exactly what you’re saying and provide speedy responses by tapping the microphone icon. For example,
“Is British Airways flight 248 on time?”
The words appear as you speak, you get your answer immediately and—if it’s short and quick, like the status and departure time of your flight—we tell you the answer aloud.
By the time a guest was ready to leave Google House, he or she was encouraged to ask a simple question:
“How do I get home?”
We came up with the answer — and could even tell you when you need to leave depending on the traffic on your route.
Posted by Michael Valvo, Head of Product Communications, London
Labels
Academics
18
Advertising
10
Africa
26
Austria
7
Belgium
25
Big Tent
11
Bosnia and Herzegovina
2
Browsers
1
Brussels Tech Talk
7
Bulgaria
5
Campus
2
Child Safety
24
Cloud computing
17
Competition
16
Computer Science
35
Computing Heritage
37
Consumers
11
controversial content
2
COP21
1
copyright
34
Crisis Response
2
Culture
116
Czech Republic
16
Data Centre
15
Denmark
4
Digital News Initiative
6
Digital Single Market
1
Diversity
7
Economic Impact of the Internet
57
Economy
24
Elections
7
Energy + Environment
16
Engineering
6
Environment
5
Estonia
6
European Commission
21
European Parliament
14
European Union
104
exhibitions
1
Finland
13
France
77
Free Expression
88
Free flow of information
47
German
1
Germany
65
Google for Entrepreneurs
9
Google in Europe Blog
846
Google Play
1
Google TechTalk
2
Google Translate
1
Google Trends
3
Google+
4
Greece
16
Growth Engine
3
Hackathon
3
Hungary
16
Innovation
70
Internet Governance
7
IP
10
Ireland
16
Israel
17
Italy
42
Journalism
34
Latvia
1
Lithuania
1
Luxembourg
3
Maps
17
Middle East
18
Netherlands
6
News
2
News Lab
1
North Africa
6
Norway
3
online
1
Online Safety
2
Open data
8
Open Government
7
Open source
2
Poland
24
Portugal
6
Power of Data
25
privacy
49
Publishing
30
Right to be Forgotten
9
Rio+20
1
Romania
3
Russia
18
Safer Internet Day
4
San Marino
1
Science
5
Security
7
Single Market
7
Slovakia
16
Slovenia
2
SMEs
24
Spain
39
Startups
6
State of the Union
2
STEM Education
36
Street View
38
Surveillance
1
Sweden
13
Switzerland
11
Telecoms
11
The Netherlands
4
Tourism
1
Transparency
12
Tunisia
4
Turkey
3
Ukraine
3
United Kingdom
94
Vatican
2
Youth
2
YouTube
42
Archive
2016
Sep
Introducing YouTube Creators for Change
Announcing a Google.org grant for XperiBIRD.be, a ...
Bringing education to refugees in Lebanon with the...
Juncker embraces creators -- and their concerns
Tour 10 Downing Street with Google Arts and Culture
European copyright: there's a better way
Digital News Initiative: Introducing the YouTube P...
#AskJuncker: YouTube creators to interview the Eur...
An extinct world brought back to life with Google ...
Project Muze: Fashion inspired by you, designed by...
Come Play with us
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Feed
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
