Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
The best things come in small (Street View!) packages
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
For those looking to relive their childhood dreams of being a conductor
of their own railway and playing with dollhouses, we have a Street View surprise for you: Hamburg’s famed
Miniatur Wunderland
, the world’s largest model railway, has come to Google Maps. Boasting 13,000 meters of track and more than 200,000 tiny citizens, the museum includes tiny replicas of a variety of German provinces, famous places in America and even a fully-functioning airport!
Street View cameras have floated on gondolas in
Venice
, ridden on camels in the
Liwa Desert
and soared on snowmobiles on
Canadian slopes
. But to capture the nooks and crannies in Miniatur Wunderland, we worked with our partner at
Ubilabs
to build an entirely new—and much smaller—device. Tiny cameras were mounted on tiny vehicles that were able to drive the roads and over the train tracks, weaving through the Wunderland’s little worlds to capture their hidden treasures.
Touring the marvels of Wunderland, you must first begin in its oldest section: Knuffingen, a fictional town situated squarely between the Alps and Harz. Become one of this tiny city’s 10,000 inhabitants: Stop by the city’s rustic
farmer’s market
, witness the
local fire department
spring into action when a building catches fire and even see a plane lift off from Knuffingen’s
airport
.
Farmers market in Knuffingen, Miniatur Wunderland with the Street View car driving by
You can also see a variety of real places designed with an eye for accuracy: a
soccer match
in Hamburg’s stadium, a
traditional town center
in central Germany, a rowdy
Oktoberfest celebration
and a replica of the famous
Neuschwanstein Castle
in Bavaria, and even the
ski slopes
of Austria. You can also glimpse the everyday lives of thousands of miniature citizens, as they
bike
,
camp
and
dance
their way around the Wunderland.
Wunderland figurines enjoying a parade in Hamburg
Then it’s a (very) short hop over to the U.S., where you can zoom through the valleys of the
Grand Canyon
, gambol down the strip in
Las Vegas
, and even stop by
Mount Rushmore
to salute past U.S. Presidents. Because we captured this imagery at “street level” within the Wunderland itself, you can observe many tiny details in Street View that are not visible even to visitors to the museum --
deep sea divers
at a county fair, farmers
riding a broomstick
, a
newly-married couple
on the steps of the courthouse and the
dancing crowds
at an outdoor concert.
See the bright lights in Las Vegas in Miniatur Wunderland
To see more of Miniatur Wunderland, including a
miniature Street View car
built to commemorate this joint project, explore our
Street View gallery
. As you navigate through this truly wonderful Wunderland, we think you’ll agree: when it comes to great views, size doesn’t matter!
Posted by Sven Tresp, Street View Program Manager
100 years on: explore Ireland's Easter Rising with Google
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Editor's note:
To mark the centenary of the Easter Rising in Ireland, we have launched ‘
Dublin Rising 1916-2016
’, an interactive Google Street View tour which lets visitors virtually explore the city streets, events and people that shaped history 100 years ago. We’ve invited the Irish Minister for Arts and Heritage
Heather Humphreys TD
to write a guest post for the Google Europe blog, explaining the partnership.
In 2016 Irish people at home and abroad will mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, when Irish people fought for their right to self governance. The Rising had a transformative impact and is recognised as the catalyst that ultimately led to the modern Ireland we have today.
The Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme includes more than 2,000 events in Ireland and another 1,000 internationally. Throughout we will remember our shared history on the island of Ireland; reflect on our achievements over the last 100 years and look ambitiously to our future.
In
Dublin Rising 1916-2016
, which has been launched by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland Enda Kenny, TD, today, Google is using its technologies to creatively enable millions of people around the world to share in Ireland’s 2016 commemorations and learn more about the events of 1916 right from their phone, tablet or computer.
This interactive Google Street View tour will allow visitors to virtually explore the city streets, events and people who shaped history 100 years ago. The tour, which is narrated by actor Colin Farrell, will bring visitors on a virtual tour around the Dublin of today, with the Dublin of 1916 overlaid.
Throughout the tour, visitors can stop at city centre locations in Dublin as they are today, hear what happened there and click to explore photos, videos and witness statements from the people of 1916. As a person stands looking at the General Post Office of today, for example, they’ll be able to see the General Post Office as it was 100 years ago, destroyed by shell fire. They’ll hear witness statements from rebels who fought there and hear the stories of all the different people involved.
President Michael D. Higgins recently said that the centenary offers all of us an opportunity to reflect on events of the past, so that we can build a future that honours the promise of equality and inclusiveness contained in the 1916 Proclamation. I want to thank the Google team, together with the historians and experts from Ireland 2016 and Century Ireland who through
Dublin Rising 1916-2016
have made our history accessible and are providing everyone with the opportunity to remember our past while celebrating our present and looking forward to the future.
You can explore Dublin Rising 1916-2016 here:
https://dublinrising.withgoogle.com/
Posted by Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys TD
In the Digital Garage, small businesses learn to grow online
Friday, January 8, 2016
The internet has huge potential for small businesses, enabling them to reach new customers located far beyond their home town. Realising that potential requires digital skills, and at Google, we’re
committed
to helping businesses acquire those skills through programmes like the
Digital Garage
, which offers free, face-to-face training with local digital experts in five cities across the UK.
But small businesses have countless demands on their time. Every hour away from the coalface costs revenue, so a decision to attend external training needs to pay off. So we designed the Digital Garage programme to be laser-focused on the needs of local small businesses - and to be as practical and easily implemented as possible. We also commissioned IPPR North, a British think tank, to survey participants and find out how we were doing.
In Leeds and Birmingham, home to the first two Digital Garage sites, IPPR North interviewed participants after their first training session, and then reinterviewed them at six and twenty weeks after their initial visit. The results (full report
here
) were impressive:
88% of participants had made changes to the way they run their businesses online
27% had seen more sales or bookings
32% had seen an increase in customer numbers
49% had seen an increase in website visitor numbers
9% had hired additional staff to manage their digital work
Digital Garage attendees like Jonathon Blackburn help bring these statistics to life. He set up his building and property maintenance company The HouseMan in 2012, and was keen to use the web to reach new customers and expand his business. At the Digital Garage he received training on online advertising and within ten weeks was quoting for five times as much work and had taken on two new members of staff to meet the demand.
The Digital Garage programme doesn’t just benefit entrepreneurs - it also has an effect on the wider local community. In both Leeds and Birmingham, we worked together with local government and business leaders to find easily accessible venues for our Digital Garages that would drive awareness of the scheme. We also wanted to try and create a ripple effect in the community, attracting other businesses to the same location,
as we did at Birmingham city library
- enabling the library to extend its opening hours, to the benefit of the entire community.
In December 2015, we opened our third Digital Garage, in Manchester, and 2016 will see us open more across the UK. IPPR North will continue to evaluate our performance, helping us further increase the impact this project can make to the small businesses, entrepreneurs and future workers of the UK.
Posted by Katie O'Donovan, Public Policy and Government Relations Manager
Supporting Computer Science Education Across Europe
Monday, December 7, 2015
At Google, we’re committed to making sure Europeans have the right digital skills, pledging to train
up to one million Europeans
by the end of 2016. Since 2009, Google’s
Computer Science for High School
(CS4HS) programmes have supported over 20,000 teachers in their efforts to gain confidence in their understanding of computer science (CS) and learn valuable skills for teaching CS to students across the globe.
And starting today,
applications
are now being accepted for the
2016 CS4HS
Awards.
That is why we are encouraging colleges, universities, and educational non profits from countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa
to apply for an award of up to €15,000.
Computer Science is at the heart of the digital economy in Europe. It is a discipline with a core set of scientific principles that can be applied to solve complex, real-world problems. In today's computing-imbued world, coding is the 'quill' of the 21st century, and knowledge of computer science is essential for the youth of Europe - not just for their future careers, but also to enable them to be active citizens in the digital world.
Despite a growing interest in computer science among young Europeans, recent
research
by Gallup (commissioned by Google) reveals that work still needs to be done when it comes to supporting teachers in their efforts to understand the critical principles of computer science.
In 2016, we are looking to fund applications that include strong plans for the establishment of new or existing communities of practice (COPs). These communities bring teachers together to encourage and support each other in their learning and ongoing professional development. This focus is grounded in a wide body of research (for example
Joyce & Showers, 2002
; and
Wiske, Stone, & Levinson, 1993
) demonstrating that COPs are a critical element for producing and sustaining innovation in the classroom.
Criteria vary from region to region so please visit the
CS4HS
website to learn more about the
eligibility requirements
and to
get started on your application
.
Applications will remain open until midnight (GMT), 15th February, 2016.
Join the
CS4HS Google+
community to connect with past CS4HS organizers and learn about HangOuts on Air we’ll be hosting during the application process.
We hope 2016 will provide many opportunities for Google to partner with the CS education community, and to grow and strengthen the CS teacher community around the globe. We hope you’ll be a part of it, and look forward to reviewing your application.
Posted by: Claire Conneely, CS4HS Program Manager, EMEA
Powering the Internet with renewable energy
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Today we're announcing the largest, and most diverse, purchase of renewable energy ever made by a non-utility company. Google has already committed to purchase more renewable energy than any other company. Now, through a series of new wind and solar projects around the world, we’re one step closer to our commitment to
triple our purchases of renewable energy by 2025
and our goal of powering 100% of our operations with clean energy.
842 MW of renewable energy around the world
Today’s agreements will add an additional 842 megawatts of renewable energy capacity to power our data centers. Across three countries, we’re nearly doubling the amount of renewable energy we’ve purchased to date. We’re now up to 2 gigawatts—the equivalent to taking nearly 1 million cars off the road.
These additional 842 megawatts represent a range of locations and technologies, from a wind farm in Sweden to a solar plant in Chile.
These long-term contracts range from 10-20 years and provide projects with the financial certainty and scale necessary to build these wind and solar facilities—thus bringing new renewable energy onto the grid in these regions. For our part, these contracts not only help minimize the environmental impact of our services—they also make good business sense by ensuring good prices.
Our commitment to a sustainable energy future
Since we opened our
very first owned data center
in 2006, we’ve been working to promote renewable and sustainable energy use in several ways:
First, we’re building the world’s most efficient computer infrastructure by
designing our data centers
to use as little energy as possible.
Second, we're driving the renewables industry forward by fully committing to renewable sources. In 2010, we entered our first large-scale
renewable power purchase agreement
with a wind farm in Iowa, and we subsequently
completed
a number of similar large-scale energy purchases over the past five years. Today’s announcement is another milestone in this area.
Third, we've worked with our utility partners to help promote transformation in the utility sector. In 2013 we
created a new program
that enables customers like Google to buy large amounts of renewable energy directly from their utilities. Today's announcement includes the
first solar project enrolled under that program
. And this past summer we announced that our newest data center will be on
located on the site of a retiring coal plant
and will be 100% renewable powered from day one.
Fourth, beyond our efforts to power our own operations with renewables, we’ve made separate agreements to
fund $2.5 billion
into 22 large-scale renewable energy projects over the last five years, from Germany to Kansas to Kenya. These investments have been in some of the largest and most transformative renewable energy projects in the world with a goal to help drive renewable energy development not only as a customer but as an investor, and bring down costs for everyone.
And we’re also working on new technologies and ideas—ranging from
Project Sunroof
to
Makani Power
to
air quality monitoring
—that we hope can make a cleaner energy future an option for many more people.
With world leaders coming together at the
COP21 UN conference on climate change
in Paris this week, there's no better time to focus on renewable energy. We hope that our efforts play a small part in boosting all of us in the race to solve climate change.
Posted by Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure
Working toward a more accessible and inclusive world
Thursday, December 3, 2015
We
believe
in a world built for everyone, which is why we launched the global
Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities
earlier this year. The Impact Challenge is a Google.org initiative to invest $20 million in nonprofits who are using technology to make the world more accessible for the 1 billion people living with disabilities.
Today, as part of the program, we’re proud to celebrate the U.N. International Day of Persons with Disabilities with three new grants, totalling $2.95 million. Through our grants, the Royal London Society for Blind People will develop the
Wayfindr
project, helping visually impaired people navigate the London underground; Israeli NGO
Issie Shapiro
will distribute Sesame, an app that allows people with mobility impairments to control a smartphone using only head movements; and, finally, German grantee Wheelmap will expand its accessibility mapping efforts worldwide. This week, many Googlers around the world will also
join
Wheelmap’s Map My Day campaign to help out.
We’ve also collected 11
tips
that help people with disabilities get more out of their favourite Google products. (Why 11? It’s a play on “a11y”, tech-speak for “accessibility.”)
Much of the accessibility work we do is driven by passionate Googlers from around the world. To give you a look at what motivates us to make Google, and the world, more inclusive, we asked four Googlers from our Disability Alliance to share more about what they’re working on:
Kiran Kaja, Technical Program Manager, London:
Being blind from birth, I’ve always been excited by devices that talk to you or allow you to talk back to them. Today, I work on Google’s Text to Speech team developing technologies that talk to people with disabilities. I’m also helping improve eyes-free voice actions on Android so that people with low vision can accomplish standard tasks just by talking to their phone. This not only helps people with disabilities, but anyone whose hands are busy with another task—like cooking, driving or caring for an infant. The advances we’re making in speech recognition and text to speech output promise a bright future for voice user interfaces.
Paul Herzlich, Legal Analytics Specialist, Mountain View:
As a wheelchair user from a spinal cord injury, I'm passionate about the potential impact of technology to solve disability-related issues. Outside of my job, I'm working alongside a team of mechanical and electrical engineers, UX designers, and medical professionals to develop a new technology called SmartSeat, which I hope to bring to life in tandem with Google.org through its
Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities
. SmartSeat is a device that notifies wheelchair users when they have been sitting in the same position for too long by using force sensors connected to a mobile app, thereby helping these users prevent pressure sores. You can watch a video of the early prototype on
YouTube
.
Aubrie Lee, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Mountain View:
Like many other disabled people, I’ve spent most of my life as the minority in the room. In high school, I attended a state forum on disability and felt what it was like to be in the majority. Now, I work to create that feeling for other disabled people. I started the Googler Disability Community, a group that works on changing Google’s physical environment and workplace systems to help make our company truly inclusive. Outside of my job, I enjoy exploring the beauty in disability through
photography
and poetry. My own disabilities and the way they influence my interactions with others provide endless inspiration for my art.
Pablo Pacca, Language Market Manager, São Paulo:
I’m in charge of making sure Google’s products are translated well into Brazilian Portuguese for the 180+ million Brazilians who don’t speak English. I’m also an activist and advocate for accessibility and inclusion, both as a blogger on disability issues and the lead for the Google Brazil People with Disabilities (PwD) group. At PwD Brazil, we educate Googlers about disability issues, and work to foster a more accessible office space and inclusive work environment across the company.
Rodolfo Cattani, Secretary General for the
European Disability Forum
, said earlier today about Europe’s initiatives on accessibility:
"Technology is opening up new opportunities for persons with disabilities, to move around, and to get access to information, education and employment opportunities like never before. But so much more needs to be done. The long-awaited
European Accessibility Act
should mark the beginning of new efforts to boost the impact of technology in improving independent living and the participation in the society of 80 million Europeans with disabilities.
MEP Philippe De Backer, who recently hosted a summit on accessibility and the app economy in the European Parliament, said on this same topic: "We need an Accessibility Act with a strong tech component to improve people's lives. This, together with the creativity and ingenuity of European app developers should make a real difference in boosting accessibility and independent living across Europe."
Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org and Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist
Enriching Dutch Startups Together With The Next Web
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Last night in Amsterdam, we celebrated a new partnership with
The Next Web
to bring
Google for Entrepreneurs
to the Netherlands. In the unfinished space at
Singel 542 in Amsterdam
, within a stone’s throw of the city's famous Flower Market, The Next Web shared their inspiring vision for the project,
called X
, which we expect to open to more than 150 Dutch startups in the first half of 2016.
We have a very clear goal for this unique partnership in the Netherlands: to further strengthen local entrepreneurship in the heart of the city. We know the startup scene in Amsterdam is a vibrant one--but we think X will cut through the noise of a buzzy ecosystem that’s been missing a physical center, something
research tells us
really matters for startups. At X with TNW we’ll be able to offer our local mentoring program and initiatives like demo days with international guests, global exchange programs and training sessions designed to help Dutch startups grow.
“The Dutch startup ecosystem is flourishing and new initiatives that empower the growth of startups are sprouting,” says Dutch Startup Envoy Neelie Kroes. “‘X’ contributes to this energetic scene by connecting players with global networks like The Next Web, Google, KPMG, ABN Amro and Booking.com that can offer the next growth step for startups.”
One thing’s sure: this isn’t our first rodeo.
Through the
Google for Entrepreneurs
network, we have 25 tech hub partners around the world, plus five
Campus
spaces we offer ourselves--in Tel Aviv, London, Seoul, Madrid and Warsaw--all sharing know-how and content to help new and fast-growing businesses do more. Members of X here in the Netherlands will have access to that
global community
and world class network of physical spaces and programming.
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, CEO of
The Next Web
says that building X together with Google and other partners that include Booking.com and ABN-AMRO is “a dream come true” for the company. “Joining the Google For Entrepreneurs network not only makes sense for X but even more to the X residents who can instantly reap the benefits of this amazing global network to scale their businesses even faster.”
But why make this kind of investment in startups in the Netherlands? It’s pretty simple. Google began in a garage, and we remain a startup at heart. Because of that, we’re committed to supporting next-generation entrepreneurship across Europe and around the world. It’s the same reason we recently launched the
Digitale Werkplaats
in the Netherlands with
a goal of bringing digital skills to 30,000 Dutch entrepreneurs and independents to help them grow their businesses online, part of our greater efforts to show how Google can be a
Growth Engine
for all of Europe.
Posted by James van Thiel, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Google
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