Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Street View reaches new heights
Friday, October 3, 2014
Street View cars, Trekkers and trikes are always striving to unveil new informative and entertaining views of the world, making
Google Maps
more useful and comprehensive. In recent weeks, we have launched two exciting European projects — one in Switzerland, the other in Russia — which literally take the images to a new velocity and a new height!
StreetView Trekker climbs the Swiss Alps
Together with the
Swiss Alpine Club
(SAC) and the Swiss Tourism Board
(MySwitzerland.com)
, we launched a contest called “Queen of the Alps.” High in the Swiss Alps, far from any road or other buildings, are picturesque huts used to spend a night by farmers and vacationers.
It often takes a full day hike to reach these out of the way huts. We ran online vote to find the favorite Swiss hut, promising to film the choice for Street View. The Swiss Alpine Club’s
Lauteraarhütte-SAC
in the canton of Berne (region “Grimselgebiet”) won. It took our Trekkers a five hour hike up the Grimsels Hospiz to capture this exciting imagery.
The interior of the winning alpine hut
In Russia, the site of our Street View shoot was much more accessible but just as exciting - the Winter Olympic venues in Sochi. Stroll around the Fischt stadium which hosted the opening and closing ceremonies. Walk on the Ice Palace "Iceberg" and visit the Olympic Village, where your favorite team stayed.
In particular, take a look at the new Formula 1 track in Sochi. It is located in the city’s Olympic Park and is the only Formula 1 track in Russia. From October 10-12, Russia will host its first World Championship race.
The new Sochi Formula 1 Track on StreetView
Before the event, we thought it would be cool for racing fans to test out the new track. The new Street View imagery allows anyone, anywhere to preview the route. Take a spin.
Posted by Marta Nowak-Przygodzka, Street View team
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
Music spreads across Europe with Google Play
Friday, October 4, 2013
Your music is supposed to be fun, but in reality it can be the exact opposite: a chore - moving files between computers, syncing across your phone and tablet, and lots and lots of wires.
Google Play Music,
an easier way to manage your music, offers a solution. It just has launched so you can listen to any song you want, whenever you want, on all of your devices. has just come to Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Russia and Switzerland.
All Access coverage is now spread pretty much across the entire continent. A first group of
nine European countries
last month received the service.
All Access is the first service of its kind that lets you store 20,000 songs from your personal music collection in the cloud for free; purchase new music from all the major record labels and thousands of indies to grow your collection; or get an unlimited pass to a huge library of music on all your devices with All Access, our monthly music subscription service. It’s all stored in the cloud so you never have to worry about losing songs or moving them again. You can add a new favorite track to your collection while you’re on your computer, and it will be instantly available on your phone and tablet. And you can “pin” all of this content to make it available on your phone or tablet when you’re offline without a connection.
All Access lets you search for and listen to any song from our library of millions of tracks, wherever and whenever you want. You can create an ad-free, interactive radio station from any song or artist you love. Or you can browse recommendations from our expert music team and explore songs by genre. The “Listen Now” tab puts artists and radio stations we think you’ll like front and center so you can start listening the minute you open your library. You can try All Access for free for the first month and pay only a modest subscription service each month after that.
With this launch, Google Play moves one step closer to being your ultimate digital entertainment destination, where you can find, enjoy and share your favourite apps, games, books, movies, magazines and music on your Android phone or tablet. Good listening.
Posted by Posted by Sami Valkonen, Head of International Music Partnerships, Google Play
Street View arrives at CERN
Thursday, September 26, 2013
At
CERN
, the European particle physics laboratory based in the suburbs of Geneva, some of the world’s best physicists and engineers are using advanced particle accelerators to help solve age old questions about the universe — What is it made of? How did it start?
We’re delighted that CERN opened its doors to Google Maps Street View allowing anyone, anywhere in the world to take a peek into its laboratories, control centers and its myriad underground tunnels housing cutting-edge experiments. Street View also lets scientists working on the experiments, who may be on the other side of the world, explore the equipment they're using.
This is the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC beauty experiment will shed light on why we live in a universe that appears to be composed almost entirely of matter, but no antimatter. Learn more
here
.
This is the the 7000-tonne ATLAS detector. From a cavern 100 metres below a small Swiss village, it’s probing for fundamental particles including the
Higgs Boson
.
ALICE is a heavy-ion detector on the Large Hadron Collider ring. It's designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities, where a phase of matter called
quark-gluon plasma
forms.
The
Compact Muon Solenoid
(CMS) is a general-purpose detector at the Large Hadron Collider. It's designed to investigate a wide range of physics, including the search for the Higgs boson, extra dimensions, and particles that could make up dark matter.
For two full weeks back in 2011, members of our Street View team from Google’s Zurich office worked with our CERN partners to capture this incredible imagery. You can check out the above experiments, like
ATLAS
,
ALICE
,
CMS
,
LHCb
and the
Large Hadron Collider
tunnel in Google Maps, as well as collections of other Street View imagery from amazing sites around the world, on our
Views
site.
You can also learn more about CERN by following its
Google+
page.
Posted by Pascale Milite, Google Street View operations
Expanding Google Business Photos in Europe
Friday, May 31, 2013
Want to show off appealing images of your business? We've just expanded Google Maps
Business Photos program
to six new European countries including:
Belgium
,
Czech Republic
,
Germany
,
Poland
,
Russia
, and
Switzerland
.
The Business Photos program enables merchants to create 360-degree, interactive tours of their establishments. This imagery allows potential customers to look inside and explore businesses before they go.
Bohema restaurant in Szczecin, Poland
Are you a business owner?
If you are a business owner in any of these locations, joining the program is easy.
Simply hire a Trusted Photographer or Agency
to take pictures. Using Street View technology, the photographer will create panoramic images from the photo shoot and upload them. These images will be available automatically to anyone who searches for your business on Google.com, Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile and on your Google+ page or Places for Business listing. If a local photographer isn’t yet available in your neighborhood,
let us know
and we’ll do our best to find a photographer for you.
Fat Cow Restaurant in Singapore
Photographers can sign up...
Whether you’re a professional photographer or photography agency we’d love to have you on board! We are recruiting more Trusted Photographers and Agencies. Please visit our website for
Trusted Photographers
and
Trusted Agencies
to learn more and sign up.
Posted by Deborah Schenker, Program Manager, Google Business Photos
Training journalists to meet digital challenges
Friday, March 22, 2013
Much ink has been spilled about the challenges posed to the press by the digital age - but even more ought to be spilled about the opportunities of digital journalism. We are supporting
Editors’ Lab Hackdays
, a series of international workshops hosted by world-renowned newsrooms, to help fill this gap.
We recently hosted an
Editors' Lab
in Austria. German-language media groups from Austria, Germany and Switzerland were represented, including
Zeit Online
,
Der Standard
,
Neue Zurcher Zeitung
,
ORF
,
Der Spiegel
and
Vorarlberg Online
.
The theme of the Austrian
Editors’ Lab
was “Covering International Migration.” Participants were organised into teams and competed for a prize of EUR 5000 for the best new storytelling tools, applications and data journalism projects on international migration. “We want to encourage journalists, developers and designers to collaborate stories, even if they are all from different departments,” said Gerold Riedmann, CEO of Russmedia Digital and GEN Board Member.
Editors’ Lab
Austria included presentations and classes. On the opening day, Simon Rogers, Data Blog Editor at the Guardian, gave a keynote address. Adam Thomas, Founder of Hack/Hackers Berlin and Head of Communications of SourceFabric, taught a course on data journalism.
After Austria, there will be further
Editors’ Lab
Hackdays in Cairo, New York City, New Delhi, and Amsterdam. All the winners receive an invitation to the final GEN News Hackathon at the
GEN News Summit
in Paris from June 19 to 21, 2013.
Posted by Wolfgang Fasching-Kapfenberger, Communications and Public Affairs Manager
The real Mountain View: on the piste with Street View
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
As the ski season approaches and you’re busy digging out your thermal underwear and snow boots, we hope to make your holiday preparations a little more enjoyable by adding some of the world’s favourite ski runs and resorts to Google Maps. Whether you’re looking to discover a piste you’ve never tried before, or just want to take in some of the breathtaking scenery to get in the mood for your trip, we hope you have fun exploring locations across Europe (including runs in Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Italy and Spain), Canada (including runs at Blue Mountain, Lake Louise and Fernie) and the US (including runs in Utah and Michigan).
For example, take a look at
Sölden
, a popular ski resort in the Ötztal valley of Tyrol, Austria. It’s not just tourists who flock there every year, but fans of professional skiing - Sölden regularly hosts the giant slalom competition as part of the Alpine World Cup in late October.
View Larger Map
Or virtually visit one of the iconic resorts in Switzerland like St. Moritz or Zermatt.
View Larger Map
Whenever we launch new imagery, our users start to develop creative and inspiring uses for the images. For example,
Skiline.cc
has integrated our snowy pictures into their web app which lets skiers virtually
recap their day
on the slopes.
Street View travels further north
Continuing the wintery theme, we’re introducing our first ever imagery in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago that lies about 400 miles north of mainland Europe - and the most northerly territory we’ve ever had on Street View. Svalbard was allegedly first discovered by Viking explorers in the 12th century, and now you can discover the beautiful tundras and harsh landscapes of the sparsely populated islands for yourself.
Svalbard is important today, hosting the
Svalbard Satellite station
, used by organisations like NASA and the ESA and the
Global Seed Vault
, a facility that provides spare samples of seeds found in gene banks all over the world.
View Larger Map
View Larger Map
The ice roads
Finally, we’re also delighted to introduce some brand new imagery of the ice roads in Estonia, fashioned from the frozen waters of the Baltic Sea. Although these roads are only open when the weather permits and the ice is thick enough, we were lucky enough to capture the 10km ice road from Rohuküla to Sviby and the 3km stretch from Haapsalu to Noarootsi, among others.
View Larger Map
View Larger Map
Posted by Ulf Spitzer, Street View Program Manager
Debating the future of Europe’s Single Market
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
“Europe wake up! We will only return to growth and prosperity if we complete the Single Market.”
This motion will be
debated tonight at 19:00 CET
, live via Google+ Hangout on Air and on YouTube.
European Commissioner
Michel Barnier
will open the debate. Four EU experts - from the left and the right of the political spectrum and each with an axe to grind - will argue for and against the motion. Via Google+ Hangouts, the experts will cross-examine witnesses - including
journalists
,
academics
,
economists
and
entrepreneurs
from Ireland, Poland, Germany, France and Greece - to convince you they’re right. Veteran journalist and broadcaster
Christine Ockrent
will moderate.
The debate takes place just a few days before the EU marks the
Single Market’s 20th anniversary
. When it was launched in 1992, the Commission’s bold attempt to construct a seamless, truly tariff-free, pan-European market stimulated a wave of ‘Europtimism’. Now, with Europe facing challenging economic times, the Single Market’s importance to Europe is being re-examined.
You can have your say by voting on the motion - both before and after the debate - via
youtube.com/versusdebates
.
You can also join the discussion by adding your comments and questions to the
+Versus Google+ page
during the debate. The best questions, as decided by the debate organiser, Intelligence Squared, will be put to the panel, live on air.
Posted by Al Verney, Senior Communications Manager, Google
Exploring the Higgs Boson particle with CERN
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Update:
Watch the exciting hangout with CERN.
Has the recent discovery of the Higgs boson particle left you scratching your head trying to master the basics of the standard model and particle physics? Are these
useful explanations
sufficient?
If you are still confused - or just curious, then you’re in luck. This Thursday, the team behind CERN People, a documentary film
project
chronicling the cutting edge work being done to better understand our universe, will take part in a Google Hangout with the Guardian’s Ian Sample, author of "Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle". They’ll discuss their most recent findings, what’s next for the researchers at the Large Hadron Collider and answer your questions.
CERN People is a feature-length film project by the award-winning documentary-maker
Films of Record
. They’ll be releasing a full length film on the Higgs boson next year but you don’t have to wait to see their work. Their
YouTube channel
and
Google+
page are full of interviews and explanations from CERN scientists.
The Hangout will be live at 5pm BST and available at on the
CERN People G+ Page
. Tune in and catch up on the exciting news about the origins of our universe and other head-scratching insights into our world.
Posted by Jon Steinberg, External Relations
A Computer Star Visits Zurich
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
For Google engineers,
Donald Knuth
is a true hero. The 74-year old Knuth, a professor emeritis at Stanford, is one of the pioneers of computer science, best known for his multi-volumed work “
The Art of Computer Programming
.” He is also recognized as the “father” of the field of analysis of algorithms, and of course, algorithms are central to much of what we do here at Google.
When the professor visited
our offices in Zurich
recently, more than 350 engineers packed the conference hall for a question and answer session. While many of the queries were technical, many were pertinent to all of us.
In Europe, Google has made a priority of promoting
science education
, so naturally a number of questions focused on this subject. How should a beginner programming get started? A bottom-up education is best, Knuth suggested, explaining that in his analogue era, some people became interested in science in order to build radios by themselves. In the Internet age, he said it was crucial to give aspiring programmers simple tools to learn coding from the ground up.
Another question was whether “programming is more of an art than a science?” Could programming progress in the same way as, say medieval Christians progressed the building of their soaring Gothic cathedrals from a try-and-see art to a mature engineering discipline?” It is only a matter of time that computing takes the same path, Knuth agreed. Many things start as art (even cathedral building), and systematic, scientific methods evolve. In this way, art feeds science and science nurtures art in a virtuous circle.
Knuth signed books that engineers had brought with them, inscribing each book with the message suggested by each engineer. One engineer brought their copy of “The Art of Computing Programming” in Russian to be signed. Before leaving, we presented him with a plaque showing a fragment of the code describing the Google Search page including “I’m feeling lucky!” We felt the same way about his visit.
Posted by David Harper, Head University Relations, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Street View in Switzerland
Friday, November 13, 2009
Today we have learned that Swiss Data Protection Authority intends to take Google to court over Street View in Switzerland. We are disappointed. Data Protection Commissioner Herr Thuer has taken this move despite our efforts to provide a comprehensive set of solutions to his concerns.
We want to take this opportunity to outline the situation to date and to explain why we believe his legal action is unnecessary.
Before the launch in Switzerland, we made sure we spoke to privacy regulators and other interested groups to give them an opportunity to ask questions and raise any concerns they might have. We always do this before a launch because we know that different countries may have different expectations.
So we were pleased when the Swiss DPA gave us the green light to launch the product, confirming our understanding that Street View is legal under Swiss law. This pleasure turned to disappointment, however, when Herr Thuer changed his mind a few days after launch and sought to stop users from being able to enjoy exploring Swiss towns and cities on their computers.
We're proud of the blurring technology we've developed for Street View, and are confident the product is completely legal, but we wanted to go the extra mile to address Herr Thuer's concerns.
We proposed five concrete measures:
1. Improved license plate blurring. Swiss license plates are unique compared to other nearby countries - smaller and therefore harder to identify. So our engineers are focusing attention on our technology to deal better with these unique characteristics, and to improve the blurring of license plates in Switzerland.
2. Improved face blurring. A new version of our software for recognising and blurring faces has recently been released. We are fast tracking this upgrade into the Swiss product. Blurring technology has already reached a high standard--and with these improvements it should get even better.
3. Interest group dialogue. Aside from the DPA, we are willing to consult with other interested groups such as abortion clinics and women's refuges to hear their feedback and to answer any questions.
4. Monitoring sensitive areas. There are certain areas of a city that are particularly sensitive, and which could cause embarrassment to individuals photographed there. This is an issue we'll continue to take into account to ensure maximum user privacy.
5. Informing the public of Street View driving. One of the challenges we face with Street View is how best to let people know when our cars will be in their area. Bad weather, changes in traffic and other unplanned events often result in last minute changes of driving locations. However, we are working to provide more accurate information about where our cars are driving. You can currently track our progress
here
.
We are confident that the measures we have put in place are delivering improvements in both license plate and face blurring. And, as always, people who spot an image we might have missed can use the "report a problem" tool to let us know. These requests are dealt with quickly, usually within hours. Questions of data protection and privacy must be taken seriously, which is why we've put great effort into building sophisticated, easy to use tools for users. We believe that Street View offers a comprehensive set of protections for user privacy, and we continue to work on improving these tools. We are disappointed that Herr Thuer has changed his position on Street View after launch, and that he has not considered sufficient our proposals for improvements to the product.
We will vigorously defend Street View in court and we're committed to continue bringing the benefits to Swiss users.
Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel
Labels
Academics
18
Advertising
10
Africa
26
Austria
7
Belgium
25
Big Tent
11
Bosnia and Herzegovina
2
Browsers
1
Brussels Tech Talk
7
Bulgaria
5
Campus
2
Child Safety
24
Cloud computing
17
Competition
16
Computer Science
35
Computing Heritage
37
Consumers
11
controversial content
2
COP21
1
copyright
34
Crisis Response
2
Culture
116
Czech Republic
16
Data Centre
15
Denmark
4
Digital News Initiative
6
Digital Single Market
1
Diversity
7
Economic Impact of the Internet
57
Economy
24
Elections
7
Energy + Environment
16
Engineering
6
Environment
5
Estonia
6
European Commission
21
European Parliament
14
European Union
104
exhibitions
1
Finland
13
France
77
Free Expression
88
Free flow of information
47
German
1
Germany
65
Google for Entrepreneurs
9
Google in Europe Blog
846
Google Play
1
Google TechTalk
2
Google Translate
1
Google Trends
3
Google+
4
Greece
16
Growth Engine
3
Hackathon
3
Hungary
16
Innovation
70
Internet Governance
7
IP
10
Ireland
16
Israel
17
Italy
42
Journalism
34
Latvia
1
Lithuania
1
Luxembourg
3
Maps
17
Middle East
18
Netherlands
6
News
2
News Lab
1
North Africa
6
Norway
3
online
1
Online Safety
2
Open data
8
Open Government
7
Open source
2
Poland
24
Portugal
6
Power of Data
25
privacy
49
Publishing
30
Right to be Forgotten
9
Rio+20
1
Romania
3
Russia
18
Safer Internet Day
4
San Marino
1
Science
5
Security
7
Single Market
7
Slovakia
16
Slovenia
2
SMEs
24
Spain
39
Startups
6
State of the Union
2
STEM Education
36
Street View
38
Surveillance
1
Sweden
13
Switzerland
11
Telecoms
11
The Netherlands
4
Tourism
1
Transparency
12
Tunisia
4
Turkey
3
Ukraine
3
United Kingdom
94
Vatican
2
Youth
2
YouTube
42
Archive
2016
Sep
Introducing YouTube Creators for Change
Announcing a Google.org grant for XperiBIRD.be, a ...
Bringing education to refugees in Lebanon with the...
Juncker embraces creators -- and their concerns
Tour 10 Downing Street with Google Arts and Culture
European copyright: there's a better way
Digital News Initiative: Introducing the YouTube P...
#AskJuncker: YouTube creators to interview the Eur...
An extinct world brought back to life with Google ...
Project Muze: Fashion inspired by you, designed by...
Come Play with us
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Feed
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.