More researchers dive into the digital humanities

When we started Google Book Search back in 2004, we were driven by the desire to make books searchable and discoverable online. But as that corpus grew -- we’ve now scanned approximately 10% of all books published in the modern era -- we began to realize how useful it would be for scholarly work. Humanities researchers have started to ask and answer questions about history, society, linguistics, and culture via quantitative techniques that complement traditional qualitative methods.

We’ve been gratified at the positive response to our initial forays into the digital humanities, from our Digital Humanities Research Awards earlier this year, to the Google Books Ngram Viewer and datasets made public just last week. Today we’re pleased to announce a second set of awards focusing on European universities and research centers.

We’ve given awards to 12 projects led by 15 researchers at 13 institutions:

• Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Annotated Corpora in Studying and Teaching Variation and Change in Academic German, Anke Lüdeling
• LIMSI/CNRS, Université Paris Sud. Building Multi-Parallel Corpora of Classical Fiction, François Yvon
• Radboud Universiteit. Extracting Factoids from Dutch Texts, Suzan Verberne
• Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Jožef Stefan Institute. Language models for historical Slovenian, Matija Ogrin and Tomaž Erjavec
• Université d'Avignon, Université de Provence. Robust and Language Independent Machine Learning Approaches for Automatic Annotation of Bibliographical References in DH Books, Articles and Blogs, Patrice Bellot and Marin Dacos
• Université François Rabelais-Tours. Full-text retrieval and indexation for Early Modern French, Marie-Luce Demonet
• Université François Rabelais-Tours. Using Pattern Redundancy for Text Transcription, Jean-Yves Ramel and Jean-Charles Billaut
• Universität Frankfurt. Towards a “Corpus Caucasicum”: Digitizing Pre-Soviet Cyrillic-Based Publications on the Languages of the Caucasus, Jost Gippert
• Universität Hamburg. CLÉA: Literature Éxploration and Annotation Environment for Google Books Corpora, Jan-Christoph Meister
• Universität zu Köln. Integrating Charter Research in Old and New Media, Manfred Thaller
• Universität zu Köln. Validating Metadata-Patterns for Google Books' Ancient Places and Sites, Reinhard Foertsch
• University of Zagreb. A Profile of Croatian neo-Latin, Neven Jovanović

Projects like these, blending empirical data and traditional scholarship, are springing up around the world. We’re eager to see what results they yield and what broader impact their success will have on the humanities.

Posted by Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager for Google Books

Supporting research and innovation in Europe’s universities

As a company that started out in academia, we’ve always known that a lot of the world’s best computer scientists don’t work in the private sector (or in Silicon Valley, for that matter!) but in universities and research centres around the world.

Over the years, Google has invested in a large network of research and development centres around the globe, including 11 centres across Europe, Russia and Israel - and our newly announced centre in Paris. This diversity of engineering locations means that we’re able to create culturally diverse teams - and fun working environments. But they also enable us to stay closely in touch - and collaborate - with academics undertaking cutting-edge research at universities across Europe.

This week - building on an initiative we blogged about earlier this year - we announced nearly €3.7 million in research funding via our Focused Research Awards scheme. The grants are going to 14 universities and research centres in Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom.

The Focused Research Awards are unrestricted gifts that provide support for one to three years, and have been awarded to researchers in disciplines including software engineering, mathematical optimisation, information extraction and integration - and policy areas such as privacy. Recipients also get access to Google tools, technologies and expertise.

The list of research projects that have received focused research awards in Europe includes:

• German Academy of Science and Technology (Acatech): User-centred Online Privacy, Henning Kagermann
• Max Planck Institut Informatik, Germany: Robust and Scalable Fact Discovery from Web Sources, Gerhard Weikum, Martin Theobald, Rainer Gemulla
• Saarland University, Germany: Test Amplification, Andreas Zeller, Gordon Fraser
• EPFL, Switzerland: Automated Software Reliability Services, George Candea
• CNRS, France and nine universities in France, Germany and Italy: Mathematical Optimization: Thorsten Koch (Zuse Institute of Berlin), Stefan Nickel (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Leena Suhl (University of Paderborn), Narendra Jussien (Ecole des Mines de Nantes), Pierre Bonami (CNRS/Université d’Aix/Marseille), Pierre Lopez (CNRS/LAAS in Toulouse), Denis Trystram (INP Grenoble), Safia Kedad-Sidhoum (LIP6 in Paris), Andrea Lodi (University of Bologna).
• University of Cambridge, UK: Security-Oriented Analysis of Application Programs, Steven Hand, Robert Watson

Alongside our Focused Research Awards programme, we provide grants for more than 200 smaller research projects every year, with recent awards highlighted in our research blog. These awards typically provide partial funding for PhD students. Google also supports 40 computer science PhDs worldwide through our PhD Fellowship Programmes, and currently supports 14 students in Europe. We also host over 20 faculty members on sabbatical each year world-wide, enabling them to work with Google engineering and policy teams on special projects.

Our hope is that building close connections with universities and researchers will support innovation in Europe - and extend the research capabilities of both Google’s engineers and our colleagues in academia. You can find more information about all of our research programs on our University Relations site.

Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education & University Relations and David Harper, Head of University Relations (EMEA)

Open government = better politics?

Earlier this year, I blogged about the Internet & Society Co://aboratory, a new thinktank here in Germany that brings together independent Internet experts from academia, civil society and the private sector. Google initiated the group and funds its organisation. The Co://aboratory was set up to contribute to the public debate in Germany about how the Internet transforms our daily lives - and how we can ensure it continues to be an engine of innovation and economic growth. Back in July, the Co://aboratory released its first report on the state of online innovation culture.

Now, the second circle of 38 experts has published a second paper, entitled Open Statecraft - Better Politics Through Open Government? It examines how the Internet can enable citizens to participate more in the political process. It asks whether open government concepts from other countries can be transferred successfully to Germany - and discusses whether more open policy-making also leads to better policy.

The report includes data from a specially commissioned Dimap survey of more than 1000 German voters (full results downloadable here), which shows that:

• Nearly three-quarters of Germans want to be more involved in making decisions at a national level. Within this group, 85% of 25-34 year olds want to participate more in the political process via the Internet - as do 73% of 55-64 year olds.
• Supporters of the German opposition parties are more in favour of open government initiatives than supporters of the current federal government coalition.
• 69% of people said they would want to participate if - for example - municipalities were to let local residents vote on planned projects or investments
• The question whether to open up access to government data - and more specifically, whether national and state authorities should make all of their (non-personally identifying) information publicly available - is still not clear to the wider public. 45% were in favour of open data, but 44% opposed the idea.

On the face of it, it probably isn’t that surprising that German citizens want to be more involved in political decision-making. But it is interesting - especially given recent debates about the Internet in German society - that a high proportion of people, across age groups, want to get involved in the political process via the web. There are already numerous examples around the world of how the web can bring citizens, activists and politicians into closer and more productive dialogue - and Google supports and encourages this trend, both by organising events and through tools such as Google Moderator.

It’s surprising that people do not yet fully understand the benefits of opening up access to public sector information. It seems there is a need for better information about just how useful public data reuse can be - whether you’re talking about raw weather modelling data, public transport schedules or platforms that enable cool visualizations of public data (Mapnificent, Google Public Data Explorer).

The Co://aboratory is now undertaking its third initiative, due out in March 2011. This report will look at how the concept of copyright can be updated to better reflect the challenges and opportunities of the information age. In the meantime, please do take a few minutes to explore the Co://aboratory website and read the reports.

[BTW: if you’re not a German speaker, you might want to use Google Translate to take a closer look at some of the links I’ve included in this post.]

Posted by: Dr Max Senges, Public Affairs and Internet Policy, Google Germany

Making copyright work better online

(Cross-posted from the Google Public Policy Blog)

There are more than 1 trillion unique URLs on the web and more than 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. It’s some pretty fantastic stuff - content that makes us think, laugh, and learn new things. Services we couldn’t have imagined ten years ago - iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, and many others - help us access this content and let traditional and emerging creators profit from and share their work with the world.

But along with this new wave of creators come some bad apples who use the Internet to infringe copyright. As the web has grown, we have seen a growing number of issues relating to infringing content. We respond expeditiously to requests to remove such content from our services, and have been improving our procedures over time. But as the web grows, and the number of requests grows with it, we are working to develop new ways to better address the underlying problem.

That’s why today we’re announcing four changes that we’ll be implementing over the next several months:

• We’ll act on reliable copyright takedown requests within 24 hours. We will build tools to improve the submission process to make it easier for rightsholders to submit DMCA takedown requests for Google products (starting with Blogger and Web Search). And for copyright owners who use the tools responsibly, we’ll reduce our average response time to 24 hours or less. At the same time, we’ll improve our “counter-notice” tools for those who believe their content was wrongly removed and enable public searching of takedown requests.

• We will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete. While it’s hard to know for sure when search terms are being used to find infringing content, we’ll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose.

• We will improve our AdSense anti-piracy review. We have always prohibited the use of our AdSense program on web pages that provide infringing materials. Building on our existing DMCA takedown procedures, we will be working with rightsholders to identify, and, when appropriate, expel violators from the AdSense program.

• We will experiment to make authorised preview content more readily accessible in search results. Not surprisingly, we’re big fans of making authorised content more accessible on the Internet. Most users want to access legitimate content and are interested in sites that make that content available to them (even if only on a preview basis). We’ll be looking at ways to make this content easier to index and find.

These changes build on our continuing efforts, such as Content ID, to give rightsholders choice and control over the use of their content, and we look forward to further refining and improving our processes in ways that help both rightsholders and users.

Posted by Kent Walker, General Counsel

Our thoughts on the European Commission review

At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first by providing the best possible answers as quickly as possible - and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. However, given our success and the disruptive nature of our business, it’s entirely understandable that we’ve caused unease among other companies and caught the attention of regulators. Today, the European Commission has announced that they will continue to review complaints about Google's search and search advertising. We respect their process and will continue to work closely with the Commission to answer their questions.

So that everyone understands how we approach search and ads ranking, we thought it would be helpful to state clearly the principles that guide our business:

• Answering users' queries accurately and quickly is our number one goal. Sometimes the best, most relevant answer to a query is our traditional “ten blue links”, and sometimes it is a news article, sports score, stock quote, video, or a map. Today, when you type in “weather in London” or “15 grams in ounces” you get the answers directly (often before you even hit Enter). In the future, we will need to answer much more complex questions just as fast and as clearly. We believe ads are information too, which is why we work so hard to ensure that the advertisements you see are directly relevant to what you are looking for;

• We built Google for users, not websites. It may seem obvious, but people sometimes forget this -- not every website can come out on top, or even appear on the first page of our results, so there will almost always be website owners who are unhappy about their rankings. The most important thing is that we satisfy our users.

• We are always clear when we have been paid for promoting a product or service. Before we launched Google, many search engines took money for inclusion in their results without making that clear to users. We have never done that and we always distinguished advertising content from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and types of content, we promise to continue to be transparent about payments.

• We aim to be as transparent as possible. We provide more information about how our ranking works than any other major search engine, through our webmaster central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube channel. We give our advertisers information about the ad auction, tips on how to improve their ad quality scores, and the ability to simulate their bids to give them more transparency. And we’re committed to increasing that transparency going forward. At the same time, we don’t want to help people game our system. We do everything we can to ensure that the integrity of our results isn’t compromised.

Our final principle: the only constant is change. We’ve been working on this stuff for well over a decade, and in that time our search technology has improved by leaps and bounds. Our results are continuing to evolve from a list of websites to something far more dynamic. Today there’s real-time content, automatically translated content, local content (especially important for mobile devices), images, videos, books, and a whole lot more. Users can search by voice -- and in a variety of languages. And we’ve developed new ad formats such as product listing ads and new pricing models such as cost-per-action. We cannot predict where search and online advertising will be headed, but we know for sure that they won’t stay the same. By staying focused on innovation we can continue to make search even better -- for the benefit of users everywhere.

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Udi Manber, Vice President, Engineering

Un soutien solide a la culture française

(English follows)

Hier, dans un hôtel particulier somptueusement décoré au coeur de Paris, siège de la Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, j’ai pris part à un évènement qui illustre parfaitement l’engagement de Google pour la promotion et le soutien de la culture française et de ses traditions.

YouTube, la SACD, la SCAM and l’ADAGP - trois sociétés de gestion collectives représentant un large spectre d’auteurs français, créateurs, compositeurs et artistes - ont signé un accord de soutien aux auteurs français. Ce partenariat vise a encourager une diffusion plus large d'émissions et de films français sur la plateforme YouTube en France.

En permettant aux auteurs de bénéficier d'une juste rémunération pour l'exploitation de leurs œuvres, cet accord encourage la création de programmes originaux français et leur diffusion sur Internet.

Pour l’occasion, les signataires ont tenu une conférence de presse sous l'égide du dramaturge Beaumarchais, premier défenseur des droits d’auteurs en France et représenté ce jour-la par un buste majestueux ornant la pièce qui accueillait cet événement. « C’est un accord qui permet de concilier le droit d’auteur tel qu’il a été imaginé par Beaumarchais avec le développement et l’utilisation des nouvelles technologies », déclare le cinéaste Bertrand Tavernier.

Le jour-même, le Ministre de la Culture Frédéric Mitterrand a salué l'accord annoncé entre YouTube, la SACD, la SCAM et l’ADAGP lors de son discours de clôture des Assises du Numérique organisées hier à Paris-Dauphine: « Je ne peux que saluer la démarche entreprise par certains de ces acteurs majeurs, qui intègrent progressivement les principes du droit d’auteur dans leur stratégie, en passant notamment des accords avec les sociétés d’auteurs françaises. Je veux parler bien sûr de l’accord qui vient d’être signé entre YouTube, la SACD, la SCAM et l’ADAGP.»,

Pour Jean-Marc Tassetto, récemment nommé Directeur Général de Google France, les partenariats conclus ces derniers mois avec les artistes, auteurs et éditeurs soulignent l’engagement réel de Google pour la culture française.

Il fait ainsi référence à l’accord stratégique annoncé la semaine dernière avec Hachette pour la numérisation des œuvres en langue française dont les droits sont contrôlés par Hachette Livres mais aussi à celui passé le mois dernier avec la Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique afin de proposer plus de contenus français sur la plateforme YouTube.

Beaumarchais aurait sans doute esquissé un sourire complice hier matin.

Par Christophe Muller, directeur des partenariats YouTube Europe du Sud, de l’Est, Moyen-Orient et Afrique

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Supporting French culture

Yesterday, in a lavishly decorated former palace in central Paris, the home of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, I took part in an event that offered a perfect picture of just how serious Google is about supporting French culture and traditions in the internet age.

YouTube and SACD, SCAM and ADAGP - three associations representing French screenwriters, composers and other creative artists - signed an agreement to put more TV shows and movies online in France. The deal improves YouTube’s access to French content - and allows French creators to profit.

Appropriately, the signatories gave a press conference sitting below a gilded mirror and in front of a bust of the 18th-century Ancien Regime dramatist Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais - someone who also fought hard in the courts to protect his copyright. Well known French movie director Betrand Tavernier described the agreement as “allowing us to reconcile copyright as Beaumarchais defined it with the development and use of new technologies.”

It was great to hear support too from French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand, who saluted the accord in a speech. “I can only welcome the approach taken by some of these major players, who are gradually incorporating the principles of copyright law into their agreements with French authors' societies. I refer of course to the agreement signed between YouTube and the SACD, SCAM and ADAGP. "

For Jean-Marc Tassetto, Google’s recently appointed managing director for France, the event represented another important step forward in the partnerships we are signing with artists, authors and publishers in France. Last week, we announced a breakthrough deal with France’s largest publisher Hachette and last month we signed a deal with SACEM, a French musicians association to bring more French music videos to YouTube.

Without a doubt, Beaumarchais would be smiling.

Posted by Christophe Muller, Director of Partnerships for YouTube in Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Partnering to put out-of-print French works back in circulation

It’s astonishing, but true: approximately 75% of the world’s books are in-copyright, but out-of-print. That can make things pretty difficult for people who want to find those books and read and enjoy them. Not to mention for the authors and publishers who created them and want to sell them and see them accessed and valued.

Yesterday morning in Paris, Google and Hachette Livre, one of France’s largest publishers, signed a Memorandum of Understanding that both companies believe will breathe new life into Hachette’s catalogue of dormant and commercially unavailable books. Within six months, we aim to sign a more detailed agreement which we believe will benefit French authors, publishers, booksellers, researchers, academics and the reading public - and will increase public access to cultural works.

Under the terms of the MoU, Hachette will determine which of its out-of-print works it wants scanned; these books will then be scanned by Google and made searchable via Google Books. Hachette will decide which books are to be made available for purchase via Google Editions. Hachette and Google will also be able to make these books available for other services.

Finally, French booksellers will be able to sell Hachette’s out-of-print works electronically and Hachette intends to make digital copies of scanned works available to public institutions such as the Bibliotheque Nationale de France - thus contributing to the growing corpus of French culture available online.

This might just be a first step, but it’s an important one to us, and to Hachette. We’re keen to work with the creative industries to find new business models and new solutions for increasing the value of public access to cultural works. We hope to sign similar MOUs with other publishers throughout France.

Posted by Philippe Colombet, Strategic Partnerships Development Manager, France

Friday 19/11/2010, updated para 3 to better reflect the MoU

Learned lunches: the Oxford Internet Institute Lectures

Game theory in advertising content and pricing; the Panopticon implications of the Internet as our digital memory; and bringing 30 year old guidelines on privacy into the Internet age - these topics and more are addressed by leading academics in the new series of Oxford Internet Institute lectures, hosted by Google Brussels.

Established in 2001 as an academic centre for the study of the societal implications of the Internet, the Institute’s research faculty devotes its time to the study of the economical, social, political and ethical questions shaping the Internet today.

The first lecture of the autumn series was given by Dr Greg Taylor, an economist whose research focuses on the microeconomics of search and other online marketplaces, and the social science implications of commercial interactions. Greg presented his study of the relationship between the information content of online advertisements and the fee structure used to price them, looking at pay per-click, pay per-impression and pay per-scale.

On November 9th, we will welcome Christopher Kuner, Head of the International Privacy and Information Management Practice at law firm Hunton & Williams. Christopher will discuss the Regulation of Transborder Data Flows in the framework of the OECD privacy guidelines and will debate whether the policies that form the basis of today’s privacy and data protection laws are in line with the realities of the Internet age. You can sign up for his lecture here.

On December 8th, Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law and Professorial Fellow of St. Peter’s College Oxford, will discuss keyword advertising and trademark law. You can sign up for his lecture here.

The 2011 calender will kick off on February 8th with a lecture from Christopher Millard, Professor of Privacy and Information Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, and researcher at the QMUL Cloud Legal Project. Christopher will discuss the shift of computing intelligence to the Internet cloud and the key legal and regulatory challenges of controlling and processing data in the cloud. The registration form for his lecture is here.

If you would like to be added to the mailing list for the Oxford Internet Institute lecture series, please contact Tim Davies: tim.davies [at] oii.ox.ac.uk

Posted by: Angela Steen, Policy Analyst, Google Brussels

The Internet - the engine of European economic growth?

We’ve all heard the stories of companies that find a niche product they can sell via the Internet to large numbers of people. Companies that maybe started out around a farmhouse kitchen table or in someone’s bedroom and are now fantastically successful global Internet businesses.

Amazingly, despite more than 10 years of constant growth in ecommerce, neither the EU not a European Government has yet tried to get to the bottom of these stories and work out what the real economic impact of the Internet is.

At a time of global economic uncertainty, establishing the difference that the Internet makes to our local economies seems like a sensible thing to do. So we asked The Boston Consulting Group, a well respected adviser on business strategy, to make a start on the real facts and figures here in the UK.

After many months of data-crunching, their Connected Kingdom report reveals for the first time some surprising and significant facts. Here are some of the headline figures they’ve established:

• In 2009, the Internet contributed £100 billion to the UK economy. That represents 7.2% of GDP.
• The Internet’s contribution to UK GDP is bigger than that of many other industries, for example utilities or transport.
• The UK is the no1 country in the world for e-commerce and is a net exporter of ecommerce goods and services: we export £2.80 for every £1 we import.
• The companies that enable the online economy (ie, provide the infrastructure, access and services that constitute the Internet) employ an estimated 250,000 people in the UK and have revenues of over £50 billion.
• The Internet economy is expected to grow by 10% per year

BCG’s research also highlights the fact that not all economic activity is captured by GDP measures, and so the significance of the Internet to the UK economy is actually greater than £100 billion. For example: consumers benefit from the Internet by purchasing products in the high street which they researched online (valued at around £40 billion per year), by saving money through online shopping (around £18 billion per year) and by consuming free online content (around £5 billion per year).

In truth, the headline numbers are bigger than any of us thought when we first commissioned the report. It’s very exciting to see that UK companies that are becoming global success stories through their innovations on the Internet. From companies exporting tartan to those building online games for kids, these are the home-grown success stories that we need to celebrate and foster here in the UK.

This report is just the start. The tough policy questions have yet to be answered. How do we ensure this 10% growth really happens? What barriers are these UK companies facing in trying to grow their start ups into global businesses? And we know that some of the answers will also have to come from the EU.

The next step has to be a conversation between the UK’s Internet sector and the Government about how to make the online economy a Government priority and a UK success story. In November, we’re running an event with the Oxford Internet Institute to discuss the policy implications of BCG’s report. And if you’d like to get involved yourself, please do have your say about the way forward on www.connectedkingdom.co.uk.

Posted by Sarah Hunter, Senior Policy Manager, Google UK

Redefining innovation policy for big societal change

Europe’s industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries was one of the most intense periods of technological innovation in human history. Agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, civil engineering and many more fields of human endeavour were transformed by scientific and technological advances. Countries were able to drive their economies forward, change standards of living and increase their competitiveness and standing on the world stage.

In 21st century Europe, there is a bigger need than ever to stimulate radical innovation in as many fields as possible. Innovation policy needs to focus on addressing both economic concerns and the big societal challenges of the day. So it was good to read in the Commission’s Communication on the Innovation Union that Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn intends to push for an innovation policy that addresses “climate change, energy and food security, health and an ageing population”.

Including “business models, design, branding and services and social innovation” in the new broader definition is important too, since this builds on the findings of the OECD. This is a move that Google broadly welcomes, especially since it’s clear that information technology is frequently a critical part of delivering this broader agenda.

There are also some other interesting and exciting new ideas in the Communication:

• The Commission will monitor a second benchmark of innovation (in addition to the target of 3% of GDP being spent on R&D) based on the “share of fast-growing, innovative companies in the economy”. This is good news: recent research from think tank Bruegel (disclosure: Google is a corporate member) shows that Europe has significantly less young firms among its leading innovators than the US. And as we noted on this blog just a few days ago the Internet has created unparalleled opportunities for small companies to go global.

• For the first time in a paper of this prominence, the Commission recognises the particular dynamics of innovation in the tech sector and the importance of openness. This is something that was highlighted in the recent Lisbon Council paper on Wikinomics.

• Similarly, the Commission highlights the importance of free movement of knowledge - and it redefines the Fifth Freedom more broadly. This is a move that we called for last year.

• The pilot project on open access is declared successful and the Commission promises to make "open access to publications the general principle for projects funded by the EU research Framework Programmes". This only seems right given that research is paid for by taxpayers, and that in the internet age, research is done by a much more diffuse community of people who are increasingly willing to share ideas and collaborate.

There are many good points in this Communication, but the challenge for the Commission will be to enable innovation in other policy areas. For example, the UK’s Intellectual Property Office is looking to “assess [...] the role intellectual property plays in the knowledge economy”. The scope of what they want to look at is much broader than the emphasis on patents in the Commission’s paper, and that’s something Google will continue to emphasise in its contacts with the EU institutions.

Wouldn’t it be great if, in ten years’ time, we could look back and describe the second decade of the 21st century as the knowledge revolution - a time when disruptive innovation drove the European economy forward, changed standards of living and increased Europe’s competitiveness and standing on the world stage?

Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of European Public Policy

Creating stronger privacy controls inside Google

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

In May we announced that we had mistakenly collected unencrypted WiFi payload data (information sent over networks) using our Street View cars. We work hard at Google to earn your trust, and we’re acutely aware that we failed badly here. So we’ve spent the past several months looking at how to strengthen our internal privacy and security practices, as well as talking to external regulators globally about possible improvements to our policies. Here’s a summary of the changes we’re now making.

• First, people: we have appointed Alma Whitten as our director of privacy across both engineering and product management. Her focus will be to ensure that we build effective privacy controls into our products and internal practices. Alma is an internationally recognized expert in the computer science field of privacy and security. She has been our engineering lead on privacy for the last two years, and we will significantly increase the number of engineers and product managers working with her in this new role.
  
  
• Second, training: All our employees already receive orientation training on Google’s privacy principles and are required to sign Google’s Code of Conduct, which includes sections on privacy and the protection of user data. However, to ensure we do an even better job, we’re enhancing our core training for engineers and other important groups (such as product management and legal) with a particular focus on the responsible collection, use and handling of data. In addition, starting in December, all our employees will also be required to undertake a new information security awareness program, which will include clear guidance on both security and privacy.
  
  
• Third, compliance: While we’ve made important changes to our internal compliance procedures in the last few years, we need to make further changes to reflect the fact that we are now a larger company. So we’re adding a new process to our existing review system, in which every engineering project leader will be required to maintain a privacy design document for each initiative they are working on. This document will record how user data is handled and will be reviewed regularly by managers, as well as by an independent internal audit team.

We believe these changes will significantly improve our internal practices (though no system can of course entirely eliminate human error), and we look forward to seeing the innovative new security and privacy features that Alma and her team develop. That said, we’ll be constantly on the lookout for additional improvements to our procedures as Google grows, and as we branch out into new fields of computer science.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to update one point in my May blog post. When I wrote it, no one inside Google had analyzed in detail the data we had mistakenly collected, so we did not know for sure what the disks contained. Since then a number of external regulators have inspected the data as part of their investigations (seven of which have now been concluded). It’s clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords. We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place. We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users.

Posted by Alan Eustace, Senior VP, Engineering & Research

How many German households have opted-out of Street View?

Cross posted from Der Google Produkt-Kompass

Since April 2009, people in Germany have been able to ask for their house to be blurred on Street View ahead of the product being launched. At first they could ‘opt-out’ by writing us a letter and a few months ago we launched a special online tool to make the process easier. We worked closely with the Data Protection Authorities to ensure all the right German privacy standards were met.

We’re now close to launching Street View imagery for the 20 biggest cities in Germany and we’ve counted the number of households in those cities which decided to opt-out. Out of a total of 8,458,084 households we received 244,237 opt-outs, which equals 2.89% of households. Two out of three opt-ots came through our online tool.

Given how complex the process is, there will be some houses that people asked us to blur that will be visible when we launch the imagery in a few weeks time. We’ve worked very hard to keep the numbers as low as possible but in any system like this there will be mistakes. For instance, some people asked us to blur their house, but didn’t give us the precise location. In such cases the household can still ask us to blur the image using the ‘report a problem’ tool on Street View once imagery is published - and we’ll do it as fast as we can. The same is true of faces and car licence plates that our automatic blurring technology may have missed.

It won’t be long before you’ll be able to look at some of the most beautiful images of Germany using Street View. We’ve got a couple of nice surprises as well. We’ll be back with more news soon!

Posted by Andreas Türk, Product Manager for Street View in Germany

Unlocking the Internet’s potential for SMEs

Here’s an unusual question: what do an agricultural exchange, time tracking software and a social radio start-up have in common? The answer is, of course, the Internet. Agroterra (from Spain), Timr (from Austria) and Spreaker (from Italy) are three young companies that use the Internet to create, distribute and market their products and services across Europe and around the world.

Their founders recently outlined their successes and challenges at the Google Brussels office during a seminar organised by PIN-SME, the small business association that represents over 50,000 SMEs in Europe’s ICT sector. The event focused on the importance of the Internet as a driver of innovation and competitiveness in Europe, a theme that the Commission identified earlier this year in its Digital Agenda and more recently in its Europe 2020 Innovation Union Flagship Initiative.

Speaking at the event, Joanna Drake, the European Commission’s SME envoy, highlighted how the Internet is currently underexploited by European small businesses - and emphasised the EU’s target of getting 33% of all SMEs to buy and sell online by 2015. She also outlined the EU’s efforts to promote innovative use of ICT and the Internet by entrepreneurs, and how the Small Business Act aims to help SMEs access global markets - and succeed on them.

Agroterra, Timr and Spreaker had some suggestions that they felt would help European SMEs perform better: better broadband access, especially in rural areas; better information on and harmonization of tax regimes; improved cross-border transactional systems; a single market for music rights; campaigns to build consumer trust in the Internet; and more help in learning to take advantage of the opportunities of the Internet.

At Google, we often hear about these sorts of challenges from the small businesses that use our services - from online advertising to cost-effective online applications such as Gmail, Calendar and Docs. Of course, the companies using our services have already launched themselves into the online world, but many entrepreneurs in Europe have not yet taken advantage of the potential of the Internet. Eurostat figures show that 85% of Danish small businesses already have a website, but in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and elsewhere, less than 55% are already online.

To help European SMEs bridge this digital divide and participate in the global online economy, we’re working with public- and private sector partners in the UK and in Poland. We’re running joint initiatives that make it easier for small businesses to get online for the first time, giving them a simple website and online tools - for free - that boost their sales and their long term growth.

The results speak for themselves: since the start of this year, nearly 90,000 British businesses with no prior online presence now have websites and are generating new opportunities for themselves. In Poland, more than 30,000 businesses have signed up since the campaign launched, and on average, a small business is going online for the first time every 20 minutes.

Posted by Sarah Greenwood, Policy Manager, Google Brussels

Google TechTalk: Tomorrow’s web and why the HTML5 standard matters

First conceived in 1990 by CERN scientist Tim Berners-Lee, HTML is the international standard used to create most of the websites and content that we enjoy online today. HTML has evolved and grown over the years and today, a new iteration - HTML5 - is approaching the final phase of the approvals process.

HTML5 is a radical departure from its predecessors and will enable web designers to create sites and applications that are more interactive and more graphically rich than ever before. It promises an end to websites and applications that only work in a particular browser or on a particular type of computer or cellphone.  And it will enable a whole new generation of innovative services for web users around the world.

At Google, we’ve been focusing heavily on HTML5 in our own research and development, even before the standard is fully approved. We firmly believe HTML5 will drive the web forward, help keep it open and equally accessible for all, and deliver great benefit to individuals, businesses and governments around the world.

Tab Atkins, a member of Google’s HTML5 development team, will talk about the importance of open standards for tomorrow’s web, show some cutting-edge demonstrations of HTML5 web technology, and explain what the new standard might mean for Europe.

When: Friday, 29th October 12.15-13.45 CET
Where: Google Brussels | Chaussée D'Etterbeek 180 | 1040 Brussels
Registration: Please register here
Need another reason to come? There will be a delicious, Googley lunch (!)

About our Tech Talks: Ever wondered how exactly Google is tackling the big technology problems that the online world faces? Want to take a look behind the curtain of our engineering operations and learn from the people who actually work on the Google products and services day-in, day-out? Here's your chance: The Google Brussels TechTalks.


Posted by Angela Steen, Policy Analyst, Google

Eurostat and World Bank data now searchable on Google in 34 languages

Last year we launched a search feature that made it easy to find and visualise statistics and public data. Our data visualisation tools are designed to surface statistical information about a wide range of topics - from energy usage and the environment to health, education and the economy - and make complex datasets more accessible.

In the current economic environment, policymakers, academics and individuals around the world (and particularly in Europe) want to ensure that new rules and regulations are evidence-based. Interactive visualisations such as charts and maps allow raw data to be seen in context and give helpful new insights that can lead to better policies.

The data we made available last year in English was just a first step, and today we’re happy to share that we’re making a lot more public data searchable via Google - across 34 languages and Google domains.

We’ve been working closely with Eurostat to surface some really useful and interesting data about unemployment rates, government debt, minimum wage, and broadband penetration across Europe.

Try searching for [arbeitslosenstatistik deutschland], [smic france] or [deuda publica españa] to see examples of this data visualisation in action.

Clicking through, you can interact with the data and create comparisons among countries.

We’re also excited to share that the subset of the World Bank Development Indicators which we launched last November in English on google.com are also now available in search in 34 different languages and domains.  Try a search for [人口オーストラリア] (population Australia) on  [google.co.jp].  You can also find additional public statistics on a variety of topics in Public Data Explorer.

Eurostat and the World Bank have been making this data available to the public for quite some time and we’re thrilled to work with them to make it more searchable, in multiple languages.  

We believe that public data empowers people all around the world to make better informed, data-driven decisions that have positive effects at a personal and societal level. So it will be no surprise that we welcome the discussions taking place around the world at the moment about the potential of public data re-use.

Today and tomorrow, as part of its annual meeting, the World Bank is running a special online debate about the power of public data in international development.  And here in Europe, it’s great news that Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes also sees a lot of opportunity in public data re-use.  She’s currently holding a consultation on the PSI directive (first adopted in 2003) and you can share your views with the Commission until 30th November.

Posted by Mary Himinkool, Public Data Partnerships

Discussing free expression at Internet at Liberty 2010

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)


It’s not often that we get to step out of our everyday jobs and spend extended time engaging in global conversations about one of our fundamental values at Google: ensuring access to information.  For three days last week in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, we had that chance when more than 300 bloggers, activists, academics, government officials and representatives of non-profits and business convened for “Internet at Liberty 2010.” The conference, which we co-hosted with the Central European University, focused on “the promise and peril of online free expression” and the role of individuals, corporations and government in protecting free expression online.

The conference drew participants from 74 countries, including many from places where free expression is constantly under threat—such as Kazakhstan, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.  It drew a large contingent of bloggers and activists from the Middle East and representatives from both the Iranian and Chinese diasporas.  Our liveblog of the conference was followed by more than 3.3 million people around the world.

The issues at the heart of the gathering—and the challenges faced by free expression advocates the world over, were highlighted by our senior vice president, David Drummond, when in his opening remarks to the conference he quoted an email from an activist who could not obtain permission to attend “Internet at Liberty.”  The activist wrote:

Everywhere I turned, I was only talking to a repetition of the same monomaniac mind where all the keywords around the conference were defined as dangerous and forbidden: ‘liberty,’ ‘access,’ ‘Internet,’ ‘Google,’ and even such simple words as ‘university,’ ‘conference’ and ‘Europe.’ Upon a second investigation, I realized that they are not afraid of these things because of their intrinsic identity, but because they can transform me from a passive and obedient member of the mass to a free, critical, creative and active citizen.

Also at the conference, we introduced the Google Transparency Report, an interactive online site that allows users to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked. (Read more in our blog post.) Other sessions included a debate on the question, “Is the potential of the Internet as a force for positive political change being oversold?” and workshops offering practical education and tools for lobbying governments on key issues.

Visit our website for the conference, which we plan to turn into a discussion and action forum for those who attended the conference and—we hope—thousands more.  Our aim is to bring together people who share the common goal of promoting free expression on the Internet.  We want to build constituencies behind key initiatives including helping individuals protect themselves online; promoting corporate and government transparency; finding the right balance between privacy and free expression; and making sure that platforms like Google aren’t held liable for content they host.

We’re committed to reaching far beyond the results of the Budapest conference and the banks of the Danube to help ensure that online free expression, like the Internet itself, knows no borders.

Posted by Bob Boorstin, Director, Public Policy

A Big Win for the Internet

Today a federal court in Madrid dismissed charges of copyright infringement against YouTube. This decision is a clear victory for the Internet and the rules that govern it. Spanish broadcaster Telecinco had claimed that YouTube should be liable when users upload copyright-infringing material.

The court rejected Telecinco’s claim, noting that YouTube offers content owners tools to remove copyright infringing content and this means that it is the responsibility of the copyright owner – not YouTube – to identify and tell YouTube when infringing content is on its website. This decision reaffirms European law which recognizes that content owners (not service providers like YouTube) are in the best position to know whether a specific work is authorised to be on an Internet hosting service and states that websites like YouTube have a responsibility to take down unauthorised material only when they are notified by the owner.

The law strikes a careful balance: it protects copyright owners’ interests while allowing platforms like YouTube to operate, making it possible – for example – for elected officials to interact with the public in new ways and enabling first-hand reporting from war zones.

This decision demonstrates the wisdom of European laws. More than 24 hours of video are loaded onto YouTube every minute. If Internet sites had to screen all videos, photos and text before allowing them on a website, many popular sites – not just YouTube, but Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others – would grind to a halt.

YouTube and other websites give artists the opportunity to reach wider audiences than ever before and make money in the process. At the same time, people gain access to a wealth of creative content. We believe that letting websites like YouTube thrive is in the best interest of artists, publishers and consumers who can all benefit from the opportunities offered by hosting platforms.

YouTube respects copyright laws and wants to ensure that artists, publishers and media companies succeed online. That’s why we built Content ID; our technology is designed to prevent copyright abuses and give owners control over their content. The owner of a video simply gives us a copy and tells us what to do with an unauthorised upload: remove it, place ads next to it, or simply let them know that it’s been uploaded. Over 1,000 media companies, including Lagardère Active, Channel 4 and RAI in Europe currently use Content ID. And in Italy, all major broadcasters but one are using these tools.

We have always been open to working cooperatively with rightsholders and continue to grow our number of partnerships with content owners and hope to be able to work with Telecinco in the future in the spirit of copyright protection, content distribution and new opportunities.

Posted by Aaron Ferstman, Head of Communications for YouTube - Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Google TechTalk: Designing Privacy as a Product

Google has a whole group of engineers and product managers solely focused on developing innovative privacy features. Do you want to get an insider’s view into this team and the industry leading products they launched? What are the goals and principles leading their work? How do they "design for privacy"? How do they get users engaged? What are the challenges they face?

If you’d like to find out more, join us for a Google TechTalk given by Privacy Product Manager, Yariv Adan, entitled Designing Privacy as a Product". Yariv has spent three years focused on building innovative products that protect both your privacy and your data, and will provide his insights into the goals and challenges we face as a company today.

When: Monday, September 27th 12:15 - 13:45 hours CET
Where: Google Brussels | Chaussée D'Etterbeek 180 - Steenweg op Etterbeek 180 | 1040 Brussels
Registration: Please register here.
Need another reason to come? There’ll be a delicious, Googley lunch (!)

About our Tech Talks: Ever wondered how exactly Google is tackling the big technology problems that the online world faces? Want to take a look behind the curtain of our engineering operations and learn from the people who actually work on the Google products and services day-in, day-out? Here's your chance: The Google Brussels TechTalks

Posted by Angela Steen, Policy Analyst, Google

Trimming our privacy policies

Cross-posted from the Google Blog

Long, complicated and lawyerly—that's what most people think about privacy policies, and for good reason. Even taking into account that they’re legal documents, most privacy policies are still too hard to understand.

So we’re simplifying and updating Google’s privacy policies. To be clear, we aren’t changing any of our privacy practices; we want to make our policies more transparent and understandable. As a first step, we’re making two types of improvements:

1. Most of our products and services are covered by our main Google Privacy Policy. Some, however, also have their own supplementary individual policies. Since there is a lot of repetition, we are deleting 12 of these product-specific policies. These changes are also in line with the way information is used between certain products—for example, since contacts are shared between services like Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Docs, it makes sense for those services to be governed by one privacy policy as well.
2. We’re also simplifying our main Google Privacy Policy to make it more user-friendly by cutting down the parts that are redundant and rewriting the more legalistic bits so people can understand them more easily. For example, we’re deleting a sentence that reads, “The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,” since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies.

In addition, we’re adding:

• More content to some of our product Help Centers so people will be able to find information about protecting their privacy more easily; and
• A new privacy tools page to the Google Privacy Center. This will mean that our most popular privacy tools are now all in one place.

These privacy policy updates will take effect in a month, on October 3. You can see the new main Google Privacy Policy here, and if you have questions this FAQ should be helpful.

Our updated privacy policies still might not be your top choice for beach reading (I am, after all, still a lawyer), but hopefully you’ll find the improvements to be a step in the right direction.

Posted by Mike Yang, Associate General Counsel

Facts about our network neutrality policy proposal

Cross-posted from our Global Public Policy Blog.

Over the past few days there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding our announcement of a policy proposal on network neutrality we put together with Verizon. On balance, we believe this proposal represents real progress on what has become a very contentious issue, and we think it could help move the network neutrality debate forward constructively.

We don’t expect everyone to agree with every aspect of our proposal, but there has been a number of inaccuracies about it, and we do want to separate fact from fiction.

MYTH: Google has “sold out” on network neutrality.

FACT: Google has been the leading corporate voice on the issue of network neutrality over the past five years. No other company is working as tirelessly for an open Internet.

But given political realities, this particular issue has been intractable in Washington for several years now. At this time there are no enforceable protections – at the Federal Communications Commission or anywhere else – against even the worst forms of carrier discrimination against Internet traffic.

With that in mind, we decided to partner with a major broadband provider on the best policy solution we could devise together. We’re not saying this solution is perfect, but we believe that a proposal that locks in key enforceable protections for consumers is preferable to no protection at all.

MYTH: This proposal represents a step backwards for the open Internet.

FACT: If adopted, this proposal would for the first time give the FCC the ability to preserve the open Internet through enforceable rules on broadband providers. At the same time, the FCC would be prohibited from imposing regulations on the Internet itself.

Here are some of the tangible benefits in our joint legislative proposal:

• Newly enforceable FCC standards
• Prohibitions against blocking or degrading wireline Internet traffic
• Prohibition against discriminating against wireline Internet traffic in ways that harm users or competition
• Presumption against all forms of prioritizing wireline Internet traffic
• Full transparency across wireline and wireless broadband platforms
• Clear FCC authority to adjudicate user complaints, and impose injunctions and fines against bad actors

Verizon has agreed to voluntarily abide by these same requirements going forward – another first for a major communications provider. We hope this action will convince other broadband companies to follow suit.

MYTH: This proposal would eliminate network neutrality over wireless.

FACT: It’s true that Google previously has advocated for certain openness safeguards to be applied in a similar fashion to what would be applied to wireline services. However, in the spirit of compromise, we have agreed to a proposal that allows this market to remain free from regulation for now, while Congress keeps a watchful eye.

Why? First, the wireless market is more competitive than the wireline market, given that consumers typically have more than just two providers to choose from. Second, because wireless networks employ airwaves, rather than wires, and share constrained capacity among many users, these carriers need to manage their networks more actively. Third, network and device openness is now beginning to take off as a significant business model in this space.

In our proposal, we agreed that the best first step is for wireless providers to be fully transparent with users about how network traffic is managed to avoid congestion, or prioritized for certain applications and content. Our proposal also asks the Federal government to monitor and report regularly on the state of the wireless broadband market. Importantly, Congress would always have the ability to step in and impose new safeguards on wireless broadband providers to protect consumers’ interests.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the future of wireless broadband increasingly will be found in the advanced, 4th generation (4G) networks now being constructed. Verizon will begin rolling out its 4G network this fall under openness license conditions that Google helped persuade the FCC to adopt. Clearwire is already providing 4G service in some markets, operating under a unique wholesale/openness business model. So consumers across the country are beginning to experience open Internet wireless platforms, which we hope will be enhanced and encouraged by our transparency proposal.

MYTH: This proposal will allow broadband providers to “cannibalize” the public Internet.

FACT: Another aspect of the joint proposal would allow broadband providers to offer certain specialized services to customers, services which are not part of the Internet. So, for example, broadband providers could offer a special gaming channel, or a more secure banking service, or a home health monitoring capability – so long as such offerings are separate and apart from the public Internet. Some broadband providers already offer these types of services today. The chief challenge is to let consumers benefit from these non-Internet services, without allowing them to impede on the Internet itself.

We have a number of key protections in the proposal to protect the public Internet:

• First, the broadband provider must fully comply with the consumer protection and nondiscrimination standards governing its Internet access service before it could pursue any of these other online service opportunities.

• Second, these services must be “distinguishable in purpose and scope” from Internet access, so that they cannot over time supplant the best effort Internet.

• Third, the FCC retains its full capacity to monitor these various service offerings, and to intervene where necessary to ensure that robust, unfettered broadband capacity is allocated to Internet access.

So we believe there would be more than adequate tools in place to help guard against the “cannibalization” of the public Internet.

MYTH: Google is working with Verizon on this because of Android.

FACT: This is a policy proposal – not a business deal. Of course, Google has a close business relationship with Verizon, but ultimately this proposal has nothing to do with Android. Folks certainly should not be surprised by the announcement of this proposal, given our prior public policy work with Verizon on network neutrality, going back to our October 2009 blog post, our January 2010 joint FCC filing, and our April 2010 op-ed.

MYTH: Two corporations legislating the future of the Internet.

FACT: Our two companies are proposing a legislative framework to the Congress for its consideration. We hope all stakeholders will weigh in and help shape the framework to move us all forward. We’re not so presumptuous to think that any two businesses could – or should – decide the future of this issue. We’re simply trying to offer a proposal to help resolve a debate which has largely stagnated after five years.

It’s up to Congress, the FCC, other policymakers – and the American public – to take it from here. Whether you favor our proposal or not, we urge you to take your views directly to your Senators and Representatives in Washington.

We hope this helps address some of the inaccuracies that have appeared about our proposal. We’ll provide updates as the situation continues to develop.

Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel