Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
What makes us Human?
Monday, September 14, 2015
Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
Over the past three years, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand travelled to 60 countries, interviewing more than 2,000 people in dozens of languages, in an attempt to answer the question: What is it that makes us human? The result is
HUMAN
, a documentary film that weaves together a rich collection of stories from freedom fighters in Ukraine, farmers in Mali, death row inmates in the United States, and more—on topics that unite us all: love, justice, family, and the future of our planet.
Now we’re partnering with Arthus-Bertrand, the Goodplanet Foundation and Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, to bring HUMAN to you on Google Play, YouTube and the Google Cultural Institute so we can share this project with the widest audience throughout the world.
Watch an extended version of the film on YouTube and Google Play
We’re making HUMAN available on YouTube starting September 12, and later on Google Play. This “director’s cut”of three 90-minute films will be available in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. On YouTube, you can also watch extra footage including interviews with figures like United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, animal rights activist Jane Goodall and actress Cameron Diaz, all of whom participated in the film.
Explore HUMAN with the Google Cultural Institute
Over at the
Google Cultural Institute
, you can learn about the origin of the film and listen to anecdotes from the people who brought it to life. You can also meet the characters in and around the movie in their daily lives, with six exhibits of behind the scenes photos and videos that let you explore how HUMAN was made over three years. This includes a collection highlighting how the director shot the aerial views that are a signature of Arthus-Bertrand’s filmmaking.
Exhibitions on Google the Cultural Institute platform
Learn more about this project at
g.co/humanthemovie
or on the
HUMAN Behind The Scenes mobile app
, available on Google Play. With HUMAN, we want to help citizens around the world connect together. So we’d like to hear your answer to the question of what makes us human. Add your voice to the conversation with #WhatMakesUsHUMAN.
Posted by Raphael Goumain, Head of Consumer Marketing, France
Helping the next generation prepare for the jobs of the future
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Our lives are being transformed by technology, and so too are the jobs of the future, across a whole range of industries - from design to medicine to music and more. That’s why we’ve teamed up with the
BBC’s Make It Digital
team and
The Tech Partnership
to launch the
Make It Digital Matchr
, a new tool to help young people explore a wide range of digital career opportunities.
Aimed primarily at 16-19 year olds, the interactive tool uses the the latest research from The Tech Partnership to match users with the right resources, either from the BBC or one of many partners like Teen Tech, Raspberry Pi, Code Club, Khan Academy and more, to help them develop their skills.
Young people using the tool are asked how they would handle a range of situations involved in developing a fictional game. Their answers reveal their natural strengths and inclinations, helping Matchr find suitable digital careers they may be interested in, and presenting them with resources to help set them on their way.
The opportunity for young people is huge. The Tech Partnership today released a study which found that the number of tech specialists in the UK is forecast to grow at almost four times that of the workforce as a whole between 2014 and 2024. And the European Commission
estimates
that there will be more than 800,000 unfilled digital job vacancies across Europe by 2020 if we don’t close the skills gap - which is something else we’re working on, via our commitment earlier this year to
train 1 million Europeans
in crucial digital skills by 2016.
We hope that the
Digital Matchr
and the Make it Digital campaign inspires the next generation about to start coding and get creative with technology.
Posted by Eileen Naughton, UK Managing Director, Google
A little Street View-style greeting to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Today, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning monarch in the UK.
To mark this momentous occasion, we'd like to welcome a new character to Google Maps at Buckingham Palace Street View - introducing PegMa'am.
PegMa'am can be found to guide you through Street View at any of the royal properties in the UK. Visit
Google Maps
to become acquainted.
Congratulations, Your Majesty.
Posted by: Laurian Clemence, Communications Manager, Google UK
A donation to humanitarian relief for refugees and migrants
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa are facing a refugee and migrant crisis - the world’s biggest since the Second World War. According to the
UNHCR
, thirty-eight European countries recorded 264,000 asylum applications, an increase of 24% compared to the same period of 2013. Given the severity of this crisis, we want to play our part in helping relieve the plight of refugees and migrants around the world.
[Photo credit: UNHCR]
Google.org
is donating €1M to organisations who are providing front-line humanitarian relief to migrants and refugees, such as
International Rescue Committee
,
Médecins Sans Frontières
,
UNHCR
and
Aktion Deutschland Hilft
. These organisations are providing essential assistance, including shelter, food and water, and medical care, to people in dire need.
In addition, we are creating a public site to help people make their own donations and are matching Googler donations as well.
Posted by Jacqueline Fuller, Director, Google.org
Improving quality isn’t anti-competitive
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Google has always worked to improve its services, creating new ways to provide better answers and show more useful ads. We’ve taken seriously the concerns in the European Commission’s Statement of Objections (SO) that our innovations are anti-competitive. The response we filed today shows why we believe those allegations are incorrect, and why we believe that Google increases choice for European consumers and offers valuable opportunities for businesses of all sizes.
The SO says that Google’s displays of paid ads from merchants (and, previously, of specialized groups of organic search results) “diverted” traffic away from shopping services. But the SO doesn't back up that claim, doesn't counter the significant benefits to consumers and advertisers, and doesn't provide a clear legal theory to connect its claims with its proposed remedy.
Our response provides evidence and data to show why the SO’s concerns are unfounded. We use traffic analysis to rebut claims that our ad displays and specialized organic results harmed competition by preventing shopping aggregators from reaching consumers. Economic data spanning more than a decade, an array of documents, and statements from complainants all confirm that product search is robustly competitive. And we show why the SO is incorrect in failing to consider the impact of major shopping services like Amazon and eBay, who are the largest players in this space.
The universe of shopping services has seen an enormous increase in traffic from Google, diverse new players, new investments, and expanding consumer choice. Google delivered more than 20 billion free clicks to aggregators over the last decade in the countries covered by the SO, with free traffic increasing by 227% (and total traffic increasing even more).
Moreover, the ways people search for, compare, and buy products are rapidly evolving. Users on desktop and mobile devices often want to go straight to trusted merchants who have established an online presence. These kinds of developments reflect a dynamic and competitive industry, where companies are continuing to evolve their business models and online and offline markets are converging.
But our central point is our consistent commitment to quality -- the relevance and usefulness of our search results and the ads we display. In providing results for people interested in shopping, we knew we needed to go beyond the old-fashioned “10 blue links” model to keep up with our competitors and better serve our users and advertisers. We developed new ways to organize and rank product information and to present it to users in useful formats in search and ads. In 2012, as part of that effort, in addition to our traditional ads, we introduced the Google Shopping Unit as a new ad format:
We don’t think this format is anti-competitive. On the contrary, showing ads based on structured data provided by merchants demonstrably improves ad quality and makes it easier for consumers to find what they’re looking for. We show these ad groups where we’ve always shown ads -- to the right and at the top of organic results -- and we use specialized algorithms to maximize their relevance for users. Data from users and advertisers confirms they like these formats. That’s not “favoring” -- that’s giving our customers and advertisers what they find most useful.
The SO also seeks a peculiar and problematic remedy, requiring that Google show ads sourced and ranked by other companies within our advertising space. We show in our response that this would harm the quality and relevance our results. And, in a report submitted with our response, former President of the General Court Bo Vesterdorf outlines why such an obligation could be legally justified only where a company has a duty to supply its own rivals – as where it controls an input that is both essential and not available anywhere else (like gas or electricity). Given the many ways to reach consumers on the Internet, the SO doesn't argue that standard applies here.
Our search engine is designed to provide the most relevant results and most useful ads for any query. Users and advertisers benefit when we do this well. So does Google. It’s in our interest to provide high-quality results and ads that connect people to what they’re looking for. The more relevant the ads -- the better they perform in connecting potential buyers and sellers -- the more value they generate for everyone.
Throughout the almost 17 years since Google started, our engineers have been developing innovative approaches to search and ads that are valuable for both users and advertisers. In the video below you can hear from our engineers about how our services have evolved to give people better results and ads. We are proud of their work and eager to tell their story.
We believe that the SO's preliminary conclusions are wrong as a matter of fact, law, and economics. We look forward to discussing our response and supporting evidence with the Commission, in the interest of promoting user choice and open competition.
Posted by Kent Walker, SVP & General Counsel
Google for Entrepreneurs Tech Hub Network arrives in Ireland
Thursday, August 27, 2015
When Google first started in Ireland, we opened an office with just five people. Today we have more than 5000 people in our Dublin office and as we have grown, so has Dublin’s tech community. The city is now home to some of the biggest global tech firms as well as some of the most promising startups in Europe. This community is creating jobs and opportunity with two thirds of all new jobs in the Irish economy being created by startups.
We have always been committed to supporting the startup community in Dublin to help the next generation of companies succeed. So we are especially pleased that today the Google for Entrepreneurs Tech Hub Network announced a partnership with Dogpatch Labs, one of Ireland’s leading startup organisations. The announcement was made by Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton T.D at an event at Dogpatch Labs today.
The partnership will provide co-working space along with new resources including funding, training and mentorship opportunities. Members will also get access to Google programs and products throughout the network including:
Mentorship from Dublin Googlers (in 2014, over 200 Googlers mentored Irish startups)
Eligibility for Google product offers relevant to startups; and
The Google for Entrepreneurs Global Passport, where entrepreneurs from each hub can work for free at spaces designated at any other hub in the network including London, San Francisco and Tel Aviv
With Dogpatch Labs and our
Google for Entrepreneurs program
, we hope Dublin’s world-class startup community will grow that much faster, building transformative products and companies that will take the world by storm. We can’t wait to see what new ideas come out
Posted by Paddy Flynn, Startup engagement at Google Ireland
Google pays tribute to Belgium’s inventors
Sunday, August 23, 2015
In the late 19th century, Belgian lawyer Paul Otlet created the Universal Bibliography in Brussels, a repository of more than 12 million searchable index cards that later came to be called the Mundaneum. With today’s
Google Doodle
on the French, Belgian and several other versions of Google, and new online exhibitions by the
Mundaneum
on the Cultural Institute website, we pay tribute to Otlet's pioneering work in making information accessible and useful.
Throughout history, prolific thinkers and innovators have had the vision to see what the world might look like in the future. Often, they dreamed up today’s most advanced technologies long before it was even possible to create them.
Paul Otlet belongs to that group of thinkers. He had a clear vision for the Mundaneum: a universal system of written, visual, and audio information that people could access from the comfort of their own homes. Just a few decades later, engineers planted the technological seeds that brought electronic information sharing to life.
Created by Googler Leon Hong, today’s Doodle pays tribute to Otlet’s vision. The collection of knowledge stored in the Mundaneum’s wooden drawers form the foundational work for everything that happens at Google and much of what happens across the world wide web.
Today’s Doodle also coincides with the launch of new online exhibitions about Otlet’s work on the
Google Cultural Institute
website. The modern day Mundaneum museum in Mons, Belgium has curated the exhibitions, which give insight into Paul Otlet’s life and achievements, and the Nobel Prize won by Mundaneum co-founder Henri La Fontaine. You can view the exhibitions on
the Cultural Institute website
, and in a dedicated
mobile app
that our engineers developed together with Mundaneum staff. We especially recommend you to check out these three new exhibitions:
Towards the Information Age
Paul Otlet (1868–1944), founder of the Mundaneum
Mapping Knowledge
The Visualizations of Paul Otlet
The 100th Anniversary of a Nobel Peace Prize
Henri La Fontaine (1854-1943), Nobel Peace Prize in 1913
Posted by Pierre Caessa, Program Manager, Google Cultural Institute
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