Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Driving into the future with European partners
Monday, January 19, 2015
Since we revealed our plans last May to build
fully self-driving vehicles
for testing and learning, we’ve been working on different prototypes. We’ve now put all those systems together into a
fully functional vehicle
which we discussed recently at the
Automotive News World Congress
in Detroit.
These vehicles, designed from the ground up to drive themselves, could only be possible by working with strong European partners and suppliers, including ZF Lenksysteme, Continental, Bosch, FRIMO and many others. ZF Lenksysteme, for example, brought its expertise in steering system development, driver assistance systems and safety concepts. Bosch provided expertise in powertrain development and driver assistance systems and Continental provided expertise in braking systems and other electronics.
In addition to our existing suppliers, we’re looking for automotive industry partners to help bring the vision of self-driving cars to market. We see that our best path forward to this goal is combining our technology with car maker know-how.
The self-driving car project is designed to improve road safety and help people who are
blind
,
disabled
or otherwise can’t drive, Much work remains ahead. Our hope is to test prototypes on public roads in later this year. We're excited by the progress we've made so far - and our suppliers are playing a crucial role.
Posted by Chris Urmson, Director, Self-Driving Car Project
Hallo, hola, olá to a new powerful Google Translate app
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Often the hardest part of traveling is navigating the local language. If you've ever asked for "pain" in Paris and gotten funny looks, confused "embarazada" with "embarrassed" in Mexico, or stumbled over pronunciation pretty much anywhere, you know the feeling. We’ve now updated the
Translate app
on
Android
and
iOS
to transform your mobile device into an even more powerful translation tool.
Instant translation with Word Lens
The Translate app already lets you use camera mode to snap a photo of text and get a translation for it in 36 languages. From today, you can instantly translate text. While using the Translate app, just point your camera at a sign or text and the translated text will overlaid on your screen—even if you don't have an Internet or data connection.
This instant translation currently works for translation from English to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and we’re working to expand to more languages.
Have an easier conversation using the Translate app
When talking with someone in an unfamiliar language, conversations can... get... sloowwww. While we’ve had real-time conversation mode on Android since 2013, our new update makes the conversation flow faster and more naturally.
Starting today, simply tap the mic to start speaking in a selected language, then tap the mic again, and the Google Translate app will recognize which of the two languages are being spoken, letting you have a more fluid conversation. For the rest of the conversation, you won’t need to tap the mic again—it'll be ready as you need it. Asking for directions to the Rive Gauche, ordering bacalhau in Lisbon, or chatting with your grandmother in her native Spanish just got a lot faster.
These updates will be coming to both Android and iOS, rolling out over the next few days. This is the first time some of these advanced features, like camera translations and conversation mode, will be available for iOS users.
More than 500 million people use Google Translate every month, making more than 1 billion translations a day to more easily communicate and access information across languages. Today’s updates take us one step closer to turning your phone into a universal translator and to a world where language is no longer a barrier to discovering information or connecting with each other.
Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate
#Deutschland25 - a new generation after the Berlin Wall
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Today, we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the brave people who tore down the Iron Curtain. Courtesy of the
German Federal Archives
, we have produced a special Doodle featuring unique photos from Berlin in 1989. Berlin composer Nils Frahm created the music.
We also have launched a platform called
#Deutschland25
. It shares the stories of 25 extraordinary personalities who were born in Germany around 1989.
Julia and Natalie
come from Leipzig, the city which saw peaceful demonstrations spark the movement to bring down East German communism. These young women started Code Girls, helping young women feel comfortable to learn programming.
Philipp
from Berlin helps children with his skateboarding culture, while
Lisa and Christian
from Munich launched Hemdless, creating shirts for people with Down’s syndrome. “The stories tell of a generation who have so many great ideas which have already been put into action," says director Bettina Blümner.
These young Germans embrace change and stand for openness, sustainability and tolerance. We at Google share these values. By making these stories accessible online, we hope to spark a conversation, allowing anybody to participate in creating our interactive portrait of today's Germany.
Posted by Frida Elisson, Consumer Marketing Manager, Google
Teaching children to program robots
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
"Programming is child’s play." That’s the motto of our new German cloud platform
Open Roberta
which simplifies programming for small robots for both teachers and students.
Its a priority to encourage students to program - and indeed in the rest of Europe. Every year, the German Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media estimates that Germany lacks 39,000 trained IT experts. Initiatives like Open Roberta are designed to fill this gap, allowing students and teachers to start programming with ease - and enjoy it by making learning into a fun game.
This Open Roberta cloud-based platform allows school kids to program LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robots and control them using mobile devices. The cloud-based approach makes it simple to open the Open Roberta website and get started right away, eliminating the need for any installation or regular updating of PC software.
Researchers at Google and
Fraunhofer IAIS
have been collaborating since the spring of 2013 on ways to simplify programming of these little robots. The aim was to minimize technical hurdles for both students and the 1,000 certified 'Roberta Teachers'. Our solution with Open Roberta is to put the software in the cloud and open source it. Google.org provided Fraunhofer IAIS the necessary EUR1 million in funding to develop the new program. In parallel with the launch of the platform, LEGO Education introduced 160 all-new kits to be given in ten-packs to schools in the 16 German states.
Open Roberta makes it possible for kids to work on their programming projects both at school and at home, share them with others, and tinker away on them together – anywhere and anytime. At the same time, this approach is of particular advantage to schools, which often do not have enough computers for all their students.
Tutorials soon will be available for teachers on using Open Roberta in ways that meet the diverging interests of girls and boys. We at Google are proud to be supporting this initiative. Additional information is posted at
open-roberta.org
. To get started with programming, just visit the Open Roberta Lab at
lab.open-roberta.org
... and unleash the robots!
Posted by Sabine Frank, policy counsel for Child Welfare and Media Literacy
Launching Code for Germany
Monday, August 11, 2014
At Google, we like to experiment. Today we are experimenting with a guest blogpost from the Germany’s
Open Knowledge Foundation
.
Many in Europe believe that computer science and the Internet is an American invention. This summer, we decided to prove this idea wrong, launching our program, launching our program
Code for Germany.
The feedback so far has been amazing. In the past few months, fourteen labs have sprouted up all across the country, bringing together more than 150 people on a regular basis to work on civic tech, use open data, and make the most of their skills to better their cities.
All told, more than 4000 hours of civic hacking has produced multiple apps and projects. The
OK Lab in Hamburg
has a strong focus on urban development, and have created a map which shows the distribution of playgrounds in the city. An app from the
OK Lab Heilbronn
depicts the quality of
tap water
according to the region, and another from the
OK Lab Cologne
helps users find the closest defibrillator in their area. One of my favourite developments is called
“Kleiner Spatz”
, which translates to “Little Sparrow” and helps parents find available child care spaces in their city. Check out the
list
for yourself to see what amazing things can be built with technology.
This is just the beginning. In the coming months we want to strengthen the various communities and establish ties with officials, governments and administrations. We want to foster innovation in the field of Open Data, Civic Innovation and Public Services and create fertile collaborations between citizens and governments. Our OK Labs offer this possibility.
So far, Code for Germany has been a blast! Let me express my most heartfelt gratitude towards the community of developers and designers who have contributed so much already. Let’s rock and stay awesome!
Posted by
Fiona Krakenbürger
, Code for Germany
Showcasing tolerance From Berlin to Budapest
Thursday, July 17, 2014
At a time when racism is on the
rise in Europe
, reportedly reaching its worst level since the 1980s, it is more more important than ever to stand up against scapegoating of migrants and minorities. Two initiatives highlight our commitment to tolerance.
In Germany, we kicked off a new edition this month of the
YouTube 361 Grad Respekt
combating social exclusion and (cyber-)bullying. This YouTube youth competition runs five video camps across the country, helping students script and shoot videos. You can also participate from home using a webcam or make a video with your smartphone or tablet. Tell us all what makes you strong, talk about your experiences, give others courage, and inspire and motivate them to submit their own statement about showing more respect. Share the video and upload
here
.
Submissions from the five video camps will be presented one by one on
www.youtube.de/361grad
until September. Keep checking the channel. After only two days live, the site had received more than 500,000 views!
In Hungary, we’re well into our second year of an exciting program called
WeAreOpen
. It’s rallying cry is: "Being open is not only the right thing to do, but it's also worth it." To date, more than
750 companies, communities and organisations
, big and small, have signed up in support. This year’s version launched in March with a social media campaign to counter hate speech. Musicians, actors, celebrities, and Internet users (including students, doctors and teachers) shared their own experiences, taking a stand against prejudice, showing support for Roma, lesbians, gays, Jews and handicapped. Their videos have received more than 200,000 views on YouTube.
At July’s
Budapest Pride
march, WeAreOpen supplied an
army of colorful balloons
and invited everyone to join. The march was live streamed the on YouTube and more than 20,000 watched it live.
This year's WeAreOpen 2014 features
research
from the
Gemius consulting firm
about diversity and tolerance at the workplace. It found that more than half of Hungarian employees have already encountered negative discrimination.
The virus of hatred, unfortunately, will not vanish. 361 Grad Respekt, WeAreOpen and many more initiatives promoting tolerance are urgently needed.
Posted by Richard Schuster and Mounira Latrache, Communications managers
Germany's World Cup victory comes alive through search
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
On Sunday, Germany won their fourth world championship, and, over the course of the last month, the world watched them do it—in Brazil, in bars and living rooms around the world, on their phones and laptops and tablets. This World Cup was the most digital, most connected, and most searched global event we've seen to date. There were more than 2.1 billion tournament-related searches on Google, many of which we shared on our
trends hub
.
Looking at the trends from each match, you’ll see some topics that you’d expect to catch the world’s attention, such as top players and highly-anticipated matches. But who would have guessed that there were
10x more searches
in the U.S. for the World Cup than for the NBA Playoffs? Or that
Clint Dempsey
, American soccer star who also has a rap single, had 2x more search interest than Jay-Z? Or that after
Ángel di María's
divine goal against Switzerland, he netted 4x more global searches than his fellow countryman, Pope Francis?
Mexico’s Guillermo Ochoa was the most searched goalie in the tournament, but
Tim Howard’s heroics
could hardly be forgotten. German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer not only snagged third place in search, but took home the 2014 Golden Glove award and a World Cup championship to boot.
The
Germany vs. Brazil
semifinal was the most searched match throughout the tournament, leaving many people around the world asking, “What is the biggest win in World Cup history?” Meanwhile, some countries were ready to move on to the next opportunity: after the third place game, Brazilians
searched more
for “World Cup 2018” than for the final game between Argentina and Germany.
No World Cup would be complete without a few surprises—and the creative people of the web were ready to weigh in. Uruguay's Luis Suarez was the most searched player meme, and at the time of the Uruguay-Italy game, there were 20x more searches globally for “Suarez Bite” than for snake, spider, tick, fly, dog and mosquito bites combined.
And if a search Dream Team was created, you’d see these 11 players strutting their stuff on the field. While German star
Mario Götze
didn’t make this list, he was a favorite on search. Even before his goal won it all in the final, he attracted 4x more search attention than Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen, who presented Germany with the championship trophy.
Beyond the impressive stats on the field, we’ve got some numbers of our own to share:
Our team watched 107+ hours of football (we didn’t even need a water break!) and spent 250+ hours bringing you regular insights from our first ever World Cup trends hub. We hope you enjoyed the excitement of the tournament as much as we did, and for more trends, visit
google.com/worldcup
or check out our
Google+ album
.
Posted by
Roya Soleimani
, Communications Manager, who searched for [
iran vs. argentina
], [
brazil’s 12th player
], and of course [
world cup schedule
] throughout the tournament<
Commemorating World War I
Friday, June 27, 2014
A century ago, a Serb nationalist assassinated Austrian Archduke
Franz Ferdinand
, sparking World War I. Today, we are launching a new
channel
dedicated to commemorate the war’s centenary. It brings together World War I content, paintings, photographs, letters, documents, soldiers’ poems and more, from a range of Museum partners, ranging from the German Federal Archives to the Belgian Mundaneum to the Imperial War Museum.
A search for Franz Ferdinand brings up
photos
relating to the Archeduke’s assassination. They show the Franz and his wife Sophie arriving in Sarajevo. Outfitted in regal dress, treated with the pomp and circumstance of royalty, they stroll through the streets. A final image shows police arresting Serb assassin
Gavrilo Princip
.
Other exhibits explore the art around the conflict and personal impact of the conflict. Belgium’s Mundaneum has collected postcards sent from POW camps. The Imperial War Museum’s features
Christopher Nevinson's bleak landscapes
. The British authorities censored some of the paintings for being too “negative.” At the same time, the museum also features
John Nash’s patriotic paintings
.
The German side of the war is well represented, with more than
200 new items in 13 new exhibits
. Items include photographs, newspapers, letters, army documents, ration cards, and unusual items like the anti war poem written by a German soldier which lead to his detention. Exhibits range from German policy around the Sarajevo assassination to the rise of German airships to problems of nutrition due to the conflict.
The exhibits are designed for for a wide audience and full of exciting details for specialists. More content will be added over the coming months and years as commemorations around the Great War continue.
Posted by James Davis, Google Culture Institute, Paris
After a week in Brazil, here are the hot trends on the field
Friday, June 20, 2014
The 2014 FIFA World Cup™ is heating up, and it’s capturing the imagination of Europeans.
Google Trends
gives your real-time guide to the players, teams and moments that football lovers are interested in. Here’s a flavour of what Europeans have been searching for during the first week of action in Brazil.
During a match without national anthems due to a technical glitch, France searches for anthem La Marseillaise increased more than 3x
In a game that went all Germany’s way, Müller’s hat-trick scored 3x more local searches than Pepe’s head-butt.
We can show you what questions fans are most asking Google about the tournament, and we can give you a flavour of the national sentiment before or after a match, by analysing posts on Google+. Compare how Costa Rica and Italy are feeling before today’s game:
At
google.com/worldcup
you can explore these moments throughout the tournament, whether it’s insight on how a country is feeling ahead of a big match, or where fans stand on a controversial match-winning refereeing decision.
Posted by Gareth Evans, Communications, London
Encouraging schools to teach computer science
Sunday, April 27, 2014
We recently told you about
CS4HS
, our program for high school and middle school computer science teachers. Today, there’s some additional news to share: the winners of our 2014 Europe, the Middle East and Africa CS4HS awards.
Twenty-six computer science education projects, from across 20 countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa, were chosen. All address training of computer science teachers in secondary schools and aim to spread best practice amongst educators.
Among the winners, the
University of Stuttgart
will host a teacher training workshop introducing computer science topics.
Technion
– Israel’s leading Institute of Technology — will give teachers access to a collaborative educational site featuring successful lesson plans and classroom idea. Kenya's
Maseno University
will offer sessions on mobile application development and IT leaders will be invited to discuss the value of a computer science degree and potential career paths.
Visit
www.cs4hs.com
to find out more and to access
teacher resources
such as online workshops, tutorials and information on computational thinking. Ongoing, year-round help is available by joining our Google+ Community which hosts Hangouts on Air with CS industry leaders, Googlers, and top educators. Our ultimate goal is ambitious — to “train the trainer,” develop a thriving community of high school Computer Science teachers, and above all, engage pre-university students about the awe and beauty of computing.
Posted by Michelle Finnegan, Program Manager
Driving data-driven innovation at CeBIT
Friday, March 14, 2014
CeBIT
is the worlds biggest IT-fair, attracting world leaders to make an annual pilgrimage to the Hannover Fair Grounds. This year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the opening event. We came to advance the agenda of Data-Driven innovation.
In Germany, data all too often often is seen in a negative light. We believe it can be, properly used, a powerful motor for economic and social progress. We Accenture and Acatech that produced a
report on Data-Driven Innovation
, which was
handed over
during the fair to Chancellor Merkel. German corporate heavyweights including Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Post, Siemens, Miele, Deutsche Telekom, SAP, and Thyssen-Krupp participated as well. The report’s conclusion was clear: Germany needs to embrace the value of data to remain competitive.
Data is not just a dry well of numbers. It can be used in exciting, dramatic and artistic ways as well. We partnered with
CODE_n
to run a DatenDialog in a hall surrounded by 50 start-ups under the topic of “driving the data revolution”.
Artists Kram/Weisshaar
visualized data from the
Ngram
viewer on a wall of 80mx20m, showcasing our partnership with the Bavarian State Library to digitise its priceless book collection.
Another priority for us at CeBIT was digital safety and literacy - closing the gap between the comfortable-with-Internet and the left-out less-comfortable-with-Internet. Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière visited the booth of our NGO partner
Deutschland sicher im Netz
and learned about our joint initiative
"Digital Neighborhood."
It consists of a set of ready-to-use lesson plans for volunteer IT trainers who want to teach computer and Internet basics.
Germany needs to embrace the digital revolution in order to keep its position as one of the world’s economic and exporting powerhouses. In her keynote remarks, Chancellor Merkel acknowledged tremendous “respect” for the IT industry as a source of growth and praised is the emergence of a strong German Start-Up culture. Let’s hope these words soon will extend to praising the merits of data driven innovation.
Posted by Sandro Gianella and Sabine Frank, Public Policy, Berlin
Inviting you to take a Romanesque journey
Monday, February 3, 2014
More than a millenium before the birth of the European Union, a style of architecture and art spread across the continent. It was called Romanesque and it emerged almost simultaneously in Spain, France, Italy, and Germany with sufficient unity to be considered Europe’s first common international art style.
Celebrating this achievement, our Cultural Institute just has launched launch a new, virtual exhibition, called
“Origins of Romanesque: the Birth of Europe.”
Curated by the
Santa María la Real Foundation
, it presents 26 iconic expressions of Romanesque beauty, explaining their social, political and cultural context. More than 100 guests attended the launch event in Madrid, featuring the president of the Foundation, José María Perez Peridis and the President of National Heritage as speakers.
Monestaries and abbeys led the way in spreading Romanesque constructions. In Spain, Romanesque cathedrals, churches, monasteries, cloisters and chapels mark the famed
Camino de Santiago pilgrammage
route.
Elsewhere in Europe, abbeys in
Fulda,
Lorsch
,
St. Gallen
and
Bobbio
arose in the 11th century and became beacons for the new style, as did Europe’s first universities, beginning with
Bologna
in 1088.
Beside exploring Romanesque buildings, the new online exhibition includes drawings, photographs, films and video about Romanesque Europe.
We hope this present exhibition is only the first of a series, exploring other a series of exhibitions on life and art in Europe from Roman to modern times. Our goal is help everyone learn about and enjoy the beauties from the past.
Posted by Barbara Navarro, Director of Institutional Relations and Public Affairs Google
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
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
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
Bringing “Moonshot Thinking” to Germany
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Germany is famous for its entrepreneurial spirit and innovative capacity, which is why it is suprising that Germans have been more reluctant than others to grasp new opportunities offered by the Internet. In an attempt to jumpstart moonshot thinking, Google and its partners
Deutsche Bank
,
Shell
, and start-up hub
Factory
recently launched initiative called
ConSensus
.
Technology & Society: this logo captures the innovative spirit of ConSensus
Since June, ConSensus collected from all over Germany some 280 audacious Internet ideas, ranging from energy & finance to education. This month, business executives, researchers, entrepreneurs and artists came together at the Factory campus close to Berlin’s former wall. Based on the suggestions, steering committee created a
10-point charter
to trigger a new kind of “moonshot innovation” in Germany which was handed over to the Ministry of Economics State Secretary
Anne Ruth Herkes
.
From left to right: Wolfgang Warnecke (Shell), Philipp Justus (Google), State Secretary Anne Ruth Herkes, Simon Schaefer (Factory) and Harald Eisenach (Deutsche Bank); Foto: Jürgen Stüber
The experts also chose 10 “lighthouse” projects for innovation ranging from an online education platform, a cloud computing platform, to an Aupair exchange programme for seniors. Hopefully, ConSensus can help show that Germany is still the country of bold innovators that are willing to take their idea up to the moon - and further.
Posted by Max Senges, Internet Policy and Innovation Manager
Debating the German General Election
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
The Internet allows new and fascinating exchanges between citizens and politics. For Germany’s upcoming September 22 general election, we launched this week
a map
to help German voters find information about the the country's 299 voting districts and learn about the candidates in all of Germany's electoral district. On election night, the map will display official results.
This new feature adds to our recently launched
Election Page
which aims to allow voters to make informed choices. Our motto is "2013+you. It's your election. Take part in the discussion.” The page tracks the campaign’s hottest topics with news, video and other links. It includes a new debating tool on Google+ that allows anybody, with just a few clicks, to participate in discussions and join the German language Google+ Community, "Politics & Elections."
A new series of "Hangouts" with politicians are being held on blogger
Tilo Jung’s "Jung & Naiv"
site. In these video chats, he addresses young, often first-time voters. Tilo already has hosted Pirate party politician
Marina Weisband
and Social Democrat Chancellor Candidate,
Peer Steinbrück
.
Another election partner
politik-digital.de
, provides for the selection of editorial content on
google.de/wahle
n. Much more is planned: we will continue to provide interesting Google search trends. And on election night we will provide fresh election results as they come. Keep coming to our election page and participate!
Posted by Ralf Bremer, Senior Communications and Public Affairs Manager, Berlin
Fighting against a censorship machine
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
The Internet is a remarkable platform for giving each of us a voice to reach a global audience. In some cases, unfortunately, people abuse this freedom by publishing unlawful content. Europe’s E-Commerce Directive provides clear rules for dealing with this content without sacrificing the Internet’s broader free expression mission. Importantly, the law says platforms should not be forced to become Internet police, monitoring all content to prevent certain material from ever getting online.
In a Paris courtroom today, former Formula One head Max Mosley's lawyers asked a judge to upset this balance by imposing an alarming new model of automated censorship. He wants web companies to build software filters, in an attempt to automatically detect and delete certain content. Specifically, Mr. Mosley demands that Google build a filter to screen Google’s index and proactively block pages containing images from our results – without anyone, much less a judge, ever seeing it or understanding the context in which the image appears.
We sympathize with Mr. Mosley, and with anyone who believes their rights have been violated. We offer well-established tools to help people to remove specific pages from our search results when those pages have clearly been determined to violate the law. In fact, we have removed hundreds of pages for Mr. Mosley, and stand ready to remove others he identifies.
But the law does not support Mr. Mosley’s demand for the construction of an unprecedented new Internet censorship tool. In repeated rulings, Europe’s highest court has noted that filters are blunt instruments that jeopardise lawful expression and undermine users’ fundamental right to access information. A set of words or images may break the law in one context, but be lawful in another. As an example, a filter might end up censoring news reports about Mr. Mosley’s own court case.
While constituting a dangerous new censorship tool, the filter would fail to solve Mr. Mosley’s problems. Pages removed from search results remain live on the Internet, accessible to users by other means – from following links on social networks to simply navigating to the address in a browser. As an example, one page Mr. Mosley sought to remove comes from a blog, which according to public sources, receives the vast majority of its visits from sources other than web search.
This not just a case about Google, but the entire Internet industry. If Mr. Mosley’s proposal prevails, any start-up could face the same daunting and expensive obligation to build new censorship tools -- despite the harm to users’ fundamental rights and the ineffectiveness of such measures.
We don’t hold paper makers or the people who build printing presses responsible if their customers use those things to break the law. The true responsibility for unlawful content lies with the people who produce it; how web companies work to reduce this content is set out in the E-Commerce Directive. We hope that the courts of France and Germany, where Mr. Mosley has also filed suit, will reject his request for a censorship machine.
Posted by Daphne Keller, Associate General Counsel
Searching in Summer
Friday, August 9, 2013
For much of Europe, August is synonymous with holidays and we’ve been trolling through
Google Trends’s new Hot Searches
tool to see what is amusing, fascinating or titillating Europeans during the summer.
The clear winner - football.
Even before the Premier League kicked off, UK searchers went looking for game scores as lower Championship League swung back into action. Liverpool's Luis Suarez and Manchester United Wayne Rooney’s
transfer sagas
scored high and
Charlotte Green’s appointment
as the first woman announcer of the BBC’s Saturday Football topped the ranking of the August 7 Hot Searches.
In Germany, results of the first round of the DFB Cup, particularly Bayern Munich’s crushing 5-0 victory, led the August 6 results. Russians searched for the fortunes of the
Anzhi team’s
financial issues and St. Petersburg’s Zenit’s
purchase
of two players, full-back "Rubin" and Argentinian Cristian Ansaldi.
Admittedly, some serious issues received serious attention. When Bavarian judges ordered the immediate release of 57-year old
Gustl Mollath
, from an institution for the criminally insane, the legal scandal surrounding the case soared to the top of Germany’s searches.
Severe storms
affecting German train traffic received wide attention, as did Amazon founder
Jeff Bezos’s purchase
of the Washington Post. Russians searched for news about government’s decision to accept American leaker
Edward Snowden’s asylum request
and the
mass protest
against a new Internet anti-piracy law.
Take a look yourself at Google Trends and see for yourself what people, places and issues are making waves.
Posted by William Echikson, External Relations, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Promoting a Safe Web in Brussels - and throughout Europe
Thursday, June 6, 2013
As a mum of two energetic and curious kids, I love to see how the Internet helps them learn, share and be entertained. Like any parent, I also understand how the Internet can become an overwhelming place and that, as in real life, includes bad actors.
That’s why I work at Google to help parents and children surf safely. My job is to mobilize support for parents, teachers, and non-profit organizations to promote child safety through fun and innovative ways - from theater performances in Greece to animation contests in Germany.
The projects, I’m happy to say, are attracting attention at the highest levels of the European Union. This week, I participated in a meeting of the
Better Internet for Kids Coalition in Brussels
, an initiative launched by
European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes
. Our Senior Vice President Rachel Whetstone explained, via video, how we build safety tools such as
SafeSearch
and
YouTube Safety Mode
.
I’m always on the lookout for creative ways to spread the safety message. In Greece, the local
Saferinternet.gr
coalition has produced a play called “The Internet Farm.” After the performances, children, teachers and parents participate in safety workshops. Take a look:
In Germany, we have partnered with the biggest festival of German-language children’s media
Golden Sparrow
, supporting a new online prize promoting child safety. This year’s winner, recently announced is
Kindernetz
. Our
YouTube 361° Respect
campaign against racism, discrimination and bullying recently had its grand finale featuring the pop band “Glasperlenspiel.”
We look forward to continuing our work with Vice President Neelie Kroes in Brussels - and parents and children throughout the European Union.
Posted by Sabine Frank, Public Policy & Gov't Relations Counsel, Media Literacy, Berlin
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