Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
A New Skills Agenda for Europe: Getting Everyone Digital
Friday, June 10, 2016
Succeeding online shouldn’t just be for the privileged few. We want all Europeans to benefit - and digital skills play a big role in this. Today, the European Commission launched
its proposals
for a new skills agenda and we welcome their plans. Digital skills, one focus area of the plans, make people more employable, are indispensable for many new jobs being created, and fuel economic growth.
At Google, we’re committed to ensuring Europeans have the right skills for this digital age. The process starts with projects like
Digital Active
in France, aimed at training young people looking for jobs. And we’ve partnered with more than 50 European universities to train students. Our initiatives across 25 European countries result in
stories
like the Italian
Levaggi brothers
, who have been making handcrafted chairs for over half a century and increased overseas exports by 30% in major markets after completing our digital skills training.
We’ve made a commitment to train 2 million Europeans in digital skills and are a
proud member
of the European Commission’s Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs. A rounded education should prepare young people for online life -- it's as essential as literacy and numeracy. And it should be accessible to everyone: we’re particularly pleased that more than 40% of participants in our online workshops so far have been women. And it’s not just for the young - for instance in The Netherlands, of the thousands of people that attended training sessions in Dutch cities, over half are older than 45 years.
We believe all this dovetails with the aims set out by the European Commission. Europe is looking to the future, and good digital skills give people the tools to excel in their jobs, start their own businesses and fully participate in contemporary life.
As emphasized in
this
recent report by BCG, we need to get better at matching the skills of the workforce with the skills required in new jobs. That is key to making the most out of the digital opportunity. We want to contribute to more stories like the ones above, and are creating various programmes to nurture them. We welcome the Commission's proposals and look forward to working with the next generation of digitally-skilled Europeans.
Lie Junius, Public Policy Director for Google Brussels
A virtual tribute to Cervantes
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Over a thousand photos, videos, manuscripts, texts, paintings and virtual tours make up
“The Routes of Cervantes”
, one of the most comprehensive virtual exhibitions about Cervantes to date, presented today by Google in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry for Education, Culture and Sport. It is the first time that 8 leading cultural institutions from around Spain collaborated with the Google Cultural Institute to bring a writer’s legacy to new life online.
In just a few taps, users can find themselves in the fascinating world of Cervantes. You are invited to step into the home of the Spanish author and go on virtual tours through the most important places in his life, like
Casa Natal
, the house where he was born, or
Casa de Valladolid
, the house where it is believed that the writer penned the last lines of the Quixote.
Virtual tours of the houses where Cervantes lived:
Casa Natal
in Alcalá de Henares and
Casa de Cervantes
in Valladolid
You can now take a close look at the the oldest surviving
autograph
of the literary genius and explore the
famous
portrait of Cervantes
- a mystery in itself. Painted based on Cervantes' written description of himself, researchers have since not been able to confirm with certainty who painted the piece and whether it was indeed painted in the author’s lifetime.
Or join renowned historian Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, the curator of this project and member of the Spanish Royal Academy of History on
an interactive experience
built with the support of Google’s specialists, that takes viewers to through an outstanding selection of manuscripts and paintings.
Cervantes’ influence extends well beyond his home and the Hispanic culture. Trace his impact on global art and culture through a wide collection of lithographs by
Gustave Doré
and
William Hogarth
, paintings by international artists inspired by the work of the famous author and
a photo collection
from Agencia EFE, which shows the influence of Cervantes today and across the world.
In collaboration with
Acción Cultural Española
,
Agencia EFE
,
Archivos Estatales
,
Asociación Española de Pintores y Escultores
,
Museo Casa Cervantes de Valladolid
,
Museo Casa Natal de Cervantes
,
Real Academia Española
and
Teatro Real
, as a part of the 400
th
anniversary of the death of Cervantes, this online exhibition pays tribute to one of the greatest writers. We wish to offer this to all who love the Spanish language and literature.
The exhibition is available online for everyone online at
g.co/routesofcervantes
as well as through the Google Arts and Culture mobile app for
iOS
and
Android
.
DNI Innovation Fund: Calling all news innovators across Europe
Thursday, June 2, 2016
In February, we shared the
first 128 recipients
of the
Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund
, our €150 million commitment over the next three years to supporting innovation in the European news industry, and we’re excited to see those projects get underway this summer. Today, we’re thrilled to open the Fund for a second round of applications which will be accepted through July 11th.
The goal of the Fund is simple--if ambitious: to spark new thinking, which could come from anywhere in the news ecosystem, to give news organisations - of all sizes - the space to try some new things with no-strings-attached awards.
The
Digital News Initiative
, which began as a partnership between Google and a small handful of European news organisations, has grown into an ecosystem of more than 150 now working together to support high quality journalism through technology and innovation, including the open-sourced
Accelerated Mobile Pages Project.
Today in Germany, France, Russia, Italy and the U.K., the AMP carousel will appear in Google News searches on mobile devices, making the mobile news experience even quicker. The DNI initiative is open to anyone involved in Europe’s digital news industry, large or small, established or newcomer.
We were blown away by the number of applications we received last fall--when more than 1,000 projects from 30 European countries were submitted for review. This season’s application round will be open for the next six weeks, ending 11th July. Additional details can be found on the
DNI Fund website.
Here’s a quick reminder of how the Fund works:
Projects
We’re looking for projects that demonstrate new thinking in the practice of digital journalism; that support the development of new business models, or maybe even change the way users consume digital news. Projects can be highly experimental, but must have well-defined goals and have a significant digital component. There is no requirement to use any Google products. Successful projects will show innovation and have a positive impact on the production of original digital journalism and on the future sustainability of the news business.
Eligibility
The Fund is open to established publishers, online-only players, news start-ups, collaborative partnerships and individuals based in the EU and EFTA countries.
Funding
There are three categories of funding available:
Prototype projects: open to organisations - and to individuals - that meet the eligibility criteria, and require up to €50k of funding. These projects should be very early stage, with ideas yet to be designed and assumptions yet to be tested. We will fast-track such projects and will fund 100% of the total cost.
Medium projects: open to organisations that meet the eligibility criteria and require up to €300k of funding. We will accept funding requests up to 70% of the total cost of the project.
Large projects: open to organisations that meet the eligibility criteria and require more than €300k of funding. We will accept funding requests up to 70% of the total cost of the project. Funding is capped at €1 million.
Exceptions to the €1 million cap are possible for large projects that are collaborative (e.g., international, sector-wide, involving multiple organisations) or that significantly benefit the broad news ecosystem.
How to apply
Visit the
Digital News Initiative website
for full details, including eligibility criteria, terms and conditions, and application forms. Applications must be made in English and the submission deadline for the first round of funding is 11th July 2016.
Governance
We’ve consulted widely to ensure that the Fund has inclusive and transparent application and selection processes. Confidentiality is critical; applicants should not share business-sensitive or highly confidential information. Full details can be found on the DNI website.
Initial selection of projects will be done by a Project team, composed of a mix of experienced industry figures and Google staff, who will review all applications for eligibility, innovation and impact. They’ll make recommendations on funding for Prototype and Medium projects to the Fund’s Council, which will have oversight of the Fund’s selection process. The Council will vote on Large projects.
Council members:
Joao Palmeiro, President of the Portuguese publishers association and Chair of the DNI Innovation Fund Council
Alexander Asseily, Founder & CEO of State, Founder of Jawbone
Arianna Ciccone, Co-Founder and Director of the Perugia International Journalism Festival
Bartosz Hojka, CEO of Agora S.A.
Katharina Borchert,
Chief Innovation Officer, Mozilla
Veit Dengler, CEO, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Rosalia Lloret, Head of Institutional Relations, Online Publishers’ Association Europe
Bruno Patino, Dean of Sciences-Po Journalism School
Murdoch MacLennan, CEO of the Telegraph Media Group
Madhav Chinnappa, Head of Strategic Relations, News and Publishers, Google
Torsten Schuppe, Director of Marketing EMEA, Google
Ronan Harris, Vice President, Google
We will announce the next recipients of these awards before the winter holidays. We look forward to receiving your
applications
!
Posted by
Ludovic Blecher on behalf of the DNI Fund Team
Our commitment to fighting illegal hate speech online
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
In the offline world, it’s usually clear what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. Those boundaries are just as important online, which is why today, together with the European Commission, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter we signed a
Code of Conduct
which will help combat the spread of illegal hate speech online in Europe.
We’re committed to tackling this important issue. We have always prohibited illegal hate speech on our platforms, and we have
Community Guidelines
that set the rules of the road on YouTube, including prohibitions on hate speech, terrorist recruitment and incitement to violence.
European Justice Commissioner Vĕra Jourová (centre), signed the Code of Conduct, as did representatives from (l to r) Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Google
We’ve built efficient systems to review the majority of valid notifications in less than 24 hours, and to remove illegal content. We also cooperate with legal process so that governments are able to do their investigatory work and request removal of information that may violate local law. Beyond review processes, we also support NGOs working on counterspeech initiatives.
We welcome the Commission’s commitment to developing self-regulatory approaches to fighting hate speech online. We look forward to working with them and civil society groups to fight illegal content online, improve the experience online for our users, and ensure that there is no space on our platforms for hateful content.
Posted by Lie Junius, Public Policy Director, Google Brussels
A principle that should not be forgotten
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Today, we
published an op-ed
by Kent Walker, Google’s global general counsel, in France’s Le Monde newspaper. We’re republishing the op-ed in English below.
For hundreds of years, it has been an accepted rule of law that one country should not have the right to impose its rules on the citizens of other countries. As a result, information that is illegal in one country can be perfectly legal in others: Thailand outlaws insults to its king; Brazil outlaws negative campaigning in political elections; Turkey outlaws speech that denigrates Ataturk or the Turkish nation — but each of these things is legal elsewhere. As a company that operates globally, we work hard to respect these differences.
In March, the French data protection regulator (the CNIL) ordered that its interpretation of French law protecting the right to be forgotten should apply
not just in France,
but in every country in the world.
The right to be forgotten - more accurately, a right to be delisted from search results - was created in a landmark 2014 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It lets Europeans delist certain links from search engine results generated by searches for their name, even when those links point to truthful and lawfully published information like newspaper articles or official government websites.
Google complies with the European Court’s ruling in every country in the EU. Our approach reflects the criteria set out by the CJEU, as well as guidance from each country’s regulators and courts about the nuances of their local data protection rules. Across Europe we’ve now reviewed nearly 1.5 million webpages, delisting around 40%. In France alone, we’ve reviewed over 300,000 webpages, delisting nearly 50%.
Following feedback from European regulators, we recently
expanded our approach
, restricting access to delisted links on all Google Search services viewed from the country of the person making the request. (We also remove the link from results on other EU country domains.) That means that if we detect you’re in France, and you search for someone who had a link delisted under the right to be forgotten, you won’t see that link anywhere on Google Search - regardless of which domain you use. Anyone outside the EU will continue see the link appear on non-European domains in response to the same search query.
The CNIL's latest order,
however, requires us to go even further, applying the CNIL’s interpretation of French law to every version of Google Search globally. This would mean removing links to content - which may be perfectly legal locally - from Australia (
google.com.au
) to Zambia (
google.co
.zm
) and everywhere in between, including
google.com
.
As a matter of both law and principle, we disagree with this demand. We comply with the laws of the countries in which we operate. But if French law applies globally, how long will it be until other countries - perhaps less open and democratic - start demanding that their laws regulating information likewise have global reach? This order could lead to a global race to the bottom, harming access to information that is perfectly lawful to view in one’s own country. For example, this could prevent French citizens from seeing content that is perfectly legal in France. This is not just a hypothetical concern. We have received demands from governments to remove c
ontent globally on various grounds -- and we have resisted, even if that has sometimes led to the blocking of our services.
In defence of this
foundational
principle of international law, we today filed our appeal of the CNIL’s order with France’s Supreme Administrative Court, the Conseil d’Etat. We look forward to the Court’s review of this case, which we hope will maintain the rights of citizens around the world to access legal information.
Posted by Kent Walker, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
Look beyond the surface - celebrating Freud’s 160th birthday
Friday, May 6, 2016
Do you wake up in the morning wondering what your dreams mean? The idea that dreams ‘mean’ anything, or that we have an unconscious mind at all, is now commonly accepted thanks to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the father of psychoanalysis. To celebrate the 160th anniversary of his birth today, we have partnered with the
Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna
and the
Freud Museum London
to bring the stories behind Freud’s life and legacy online. We
commemorate Sigmund Freud
with a
Google Doodle
on our homepages in 40 countries.
The Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna is located in the physician’s former apartment and office located in the city’s ninth district. He lived and worked there from 1891 until 1938, when his family fled Nazi persecution. The online exhibition
Getting to know Sigmund Freud
, presents several stages of his life through a selection of photographs, illustrations and documents.
The Freud Museum London is located in
the house where the Freud family lived after their escape from Austria. The museum’s online exhibition “
Sigmund Freud: A Life in Psychoanalysis
” brings Sigmund Freud to life and shows how he was one of the most
influential thinkers and cultural personalities of the 20th century. The exhibit introduces psychoanalysis
in an accessible way, show us how Freud’s ‘talking cure’ helped treat psychological issues, and even allows us to peek inside Freud’s home with
the famous couch
his patients opened up their thoughts.
Freud's psychoanalytic couch
(2015)
by photographer: Ardon Bar Hama,
Freud Museum London
The Google Doodle that honors Freud’s work doesn’t focus on the more familiar symbol of the psychoanalyst’s couch. Instead, Kevin Laughlin, who created this Google Doodle, visualises Freud’s theory of the mind.
The hidden portion of the icebergs suggest the vast, murky underside of the unconscious human mind. Like the steam ship, Freud’s psychoanalysis helps us to navigate these fascinating depths. Sigmund Freud steered a path through 20th-century thought, leaving all of us in the wake of his remarkable legacy.
Posted by
Lauren Nemroff, program manager, Google Cultural Institute
This Is For Everyone: Google and Debating Europe Discuss Women and Tech
Friday, May 6, 2016
The online world is at its best when it includes everyone. Currently, three billion of the world's seven billion people are connected to the internet; by 2020 it'll be five billion. If women aren't included as equal partners in this internet revolution, we all stand to lose. That's why this week, we teamed up with
Debating Europe
to host a Women & Tech event in Brussels with EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality Věra Jourová, Google Europe’s President Matt Brittin, and wired women from around the world to highlight the impact of tech on women and of women on tech.
Women are still vastly underrepresented in the tech sector. We only make up only 30% of the workforce in the ICT sector, and 19% of digital entrepreneurs -- compared to over 30% in other sectors. This disparity begins in education, where we have a lower participation rate worldwide in science, technology maths and engineering subjects.
Jourová set the tone, noting that we shouldn’t just talk about change, but make it happen. She told us about the vital work the European Commission is doing in this area, for instance by contributing to the
Girls in ICT
project. But there’s still a lot of work on the same basic point: we need to increase the number of women working in tech.
To solve a problem, you need data. Google's aim is to organise the world's information, and one of our speakers, Lucy Hurst, had plenty to share. She co-authored The Economist Intelligence Unit's
report
on the gender gap, which showed that in some countries inequality between men and women is getting worse.
Next, you need enthusiasm, and a will to change. One of the most inspiring speakers we heard from was
Hayla Ghazal
-- a Dubai-based YouTube star who was recently made a
UN Change Ambassador
. She mentioned that in one of her videos -- which offer a light-hearted look at everything from pre-exam panic to satirical differences between Arab and Western mothers -- she talked about her love of reading. Soon after, parents were thanking her for encouraging their daughters to read.
She also told us about the importance of having a diverse range of female role models worldwide; about how women can discover economic and educational opportunities online; and that everyone benefits when women around the world are connected, educated, and able to use their capabilities to the full.
From Google, we invited Yvonne Agyei, our Vice President of People Operations.We know the most exciting ideas come from unexplored places: that's why with hiring, we extend our reach beyond traditional universities, helping us discover the talent of underrepresented groups, including women. We also invest in partnerships across the continent to get young people excited about computer science, like
Lero’s Summer Computing Camp for Girls
in Ireland.
We’re pleased with the results, even though there’s clearly more to do. So far, 37% of Campus London community members are female, and 33% of our Madrid members are female. Our Campus Directors in London and Madrid - Sarah Drinkwater and Sofia Benjumea - are doing an amazing job in supporting greater diversity in local start-up communities. Of all the startups that make up our
Campus
community, 40% have a woman in the ‘founder’ team.
All of this fits in with our wider goal of training 2 million Europeans in digital skills -- in fact, 43% of participants in our digital workshops, so far, are women. They include Romanian folk blouse retailers and a cat grooming service in The Netherlands.
There's a lot to be optimistic about, but there's a great deal of work to be done as well. Great companies rely on great people -- and if women aren’t included, half the talent pool is absent. We want more stories like
Mame Khary Diene
, and her start-up BioEssence, more YouTubers like Hayla and her friends sharing their excitement about gender equality, and more coding workshops for girls like the ones run by Cheryl D. Miller of the Digital Leadership Institute. We look forward to training hundreds of thousands of girls and women in digital skills over the next few years.
Posted by: Sara Elnusairi, Public Affairs Manager Google Brussels
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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...
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