Innovation culture and Germany’s digital society

When Members of Parliament regrouped in Berlin last year after the German Federal elections, one of the first things they did was establish the Enquete-Kommission to look into the internet and digital society. The group was tasked with examining how Germany’s political, legal and social frameworks need to adapt to the opportunities and challenges presented by the digital revolution.  

Since the Kommission’s establishment, discussions in Germany about the internet have been infused with new energy.  A wide variety of stakeholders are coming to the table to share their positions and arguments. Berlin’s political community is getting involved in the discussion about the possibilities of the web as never before. And German web users from all walks of life are finding their voice, contributing to the debate and sharing their views on what the internet means for them and for society at large.

At Google, we’re keen to stimulate and support this very important discussion. That’s why we’re one of the initiators (together with a wide range of other interested parties) of a new thinktank, the Internet & Society Co:llaboratory, which we also fund.  We think it takes a refreshingly independent and innovative approach to debating how the internet affects us all in our daily lives – and how we can ensure it continues to be an engine of innovation and economic growth.

At the core of the Co:llaboratory are independent internet policy experts representing the worlds of science, business, and civil society. These experts bring a diverse range of viewpoints to the table and are responsible for both monitoring developments in the digital world and defining the key issues the group wants to debate. Every quarter, they will make proposals for how developments in the digital world can be framed and used in the best possible way for society as a whole.

It is not called the Co:llaboratory for nothing. Every three months, the group will test and refine its positions and recommendations on a specific topic with a wide community of stakeholders. Their feedback and positions are then brought together into a quarterly report which gives a snapshot of how people think and feel about particular issues.  The Co:llaboratory also shares its findings via its website and its YouTube channel, which is managed and moderated by politik-digital.de, one of the co-initiators of the thinktank.

The Co:llaboratory recently issued its first report on the state of online innovation culture in Germany – one of the first to come out after the establishment of the parliamentary commission. The findings are based on a survey of more than 530 members of the broader German internet community, and on more than 2,300 responses and statements, covering five key areas:

• Internet governance and standardisation
• Removing obstacles to innovation: legal frameworks and intellectual property
• Data protection and the principle of choice
• Digital communication, democracy and freedom of speech
• Reducing the digital divide and the importance of access to the internet

I’d encourage you to read the report: it’s insightful, thought-provoking, controversial in places. We don’t necessarily agree with everything that’s said in the report either. But what’s important is that there is now a recognition in Germany that the internet really matters and that it is vital to ensuring we remain innovative and competitive as a country. We’re glad to be engaged in the debate, and we hope that there will be more initiatives like the Co:llaboratory, ensuring that the views of web users are represented too. 

Posted by: Dr. Max Senges, Google Policy team, Germany

[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.]

Google Books goes Dutch

In recent months, I’ve got to know a group of people in the Hague who are working on an ambitious project to make the rich fabric of Dutch cultural and political history as widely accessible as possible - via the internet.

That team is from the National Library of the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), and as of today, we’ll be working in partnership to add to the library’s own extensive digitisation efforts. We’ll be scanning more than 160,000 of its public domain books, and making this collection available globally via Google Books. The library will receive copies of the scans so that they can also be viewed via the library’s website.  And significantly for Europe, the library also plans to make the digitised works available via Europeana, Europe’s cultural portal.

The books we’ll be scanning constitute nearly the library’s entire collection of out-of-copyright books, written during the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection covers a tumultuous period of Dutch history, which saw the establishment of the country’s constitution and its parliamentary democracy. Anyone interested in Dutch history will be able to access and view a fascinating range of works by prominent Dutch thinkers, statesmen, poets and academics and gain new insights into the development of the Netherlands as a nation state.

This is the third agreement we've announced in Europe this year, following our projects with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the Austrian National Library.  The Dutch national library is already well underway with its own ambitious scanning programme, which will eventually see all of its Dutch books, newspapers and periodicals from 1470 onwards being made available online. By any measure, this is a huge task, requiring significant resources, and we’re pleased to be able to help the library accelerate towards its goal of making all Dutch books accessible anywhere in the world, at the click of a mouse.

It's exciting to note just how many libraries and cultural ministries are now looking to preserve and improve access to their collections by bringing them online. Much of humanity's cultural, historical, scientific and religious knowledge, collected and curated over centuries, sits in Europe's libraries, and its great to see that we are all striving towards the same goal of improving access to knowledge for all.

Google and other technology companies have an important role to play in achieving this goal, and we hope that by partnering with major European cultural institutions such as the Dutch national library, we will be able to accelerate the rapid growth of Europe's digital library.

Posted by: Philippe Colombet, Strategic Partnership Development Manager

French Supreme Court rules for Google in trademark cases

The French Supreme Court this afternoon ruled in Google’s favour in a series of groundbreaking trademark cases.

Back in March, Europe’s highest court ruled that Google had not infringed trade mark law by allowing advertisers to bid for keywords corresponding to third party trade marks. The ruling applies to three cases, one with Louis Vuitton, another brought by bride service CNRRH and another by travel agency Viaticum. As is standard practice, the ECJ referred the cases back to France for their final judgment.

Today, the French Supreme Court was unequivocal in their rulings and anyone who reads them will be left in no doubt that there was no trade mark infringement in these cases. In addition, the Court went beyond the European Court of Justice by excluding any act of unfair competition or misleading advertising by Google.  The Court also ruled in Google’s favour in a related fourth case brought by a French company called Gifam.

All cases that are judged by the Supreme Court are automatically referred to a French Court of Appeal. But the appeal court needs to apply today’s judgement.

Our guiding principle has always been that advertising should benefit users, and our aim is to ensure that ads are relevant and useful. We believe that user interest is best served by maximizing the choice of keywords, ensuring relevant and informative advertising for a wide variety of different contexts. So, we believe this is a good day for users who will continue to benefit from greater rather than restricted choice.

Posted by: Benjamin Du Chaffaut, Google Legal Counsel, France

Street View driving update

In May we announced that we had mistakenly included code in our software in Street View cars that collected WiFi payload data. As soon as we discovered our error, we not only stopped collecting WiFi data entirely, but also grounded our fleet of cars globally to give us time to remove the WiFi scanning equipment and discuss what had happened with local regulators.

The WiFi data collection equipment has been removed from our cars in each country and the independent security experts Stroz Friedberg have approved a protocol to ensure any WiFi-related software is also removed from the cars before they start driving again.*

Having spoken to the relevant regulators, we have decided to start Street View driving in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden again starting next week. We expect to add more countries in time. Our cars will no longer collect any WiFi information at all, but will continue to collect photos and 3D imagery as they did before:

• Photos: so that we can build Street View, our 360 degree street level maps. Photos like these are also being taken by TeleAtlas and NavTeq for Bing maps. In addition, we use this imagery to improve the quality of our maps, for example by using shop, street and traffic signs to refine our local business listings and travel directions; and

• 3-D building imagery: we collect 3D geometry data with low power lasers (similar to those used in retail scanners) which help us improve our maps. NavTeq also collects this information in partnership with Bing. As does TeleAtlas.

We recognize that serious mistakes were made in the collection of WiFi payload data, and we have worked to quickly rectify them. However we also believe that Street View is a great product for users, whether people want to find a hotel, check out a potential new home or find a restaurant. If you want more information about driving schedules, please look here www.maps.google.com/streetview.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Geo

*We've updated this paragraph to clarify that both the hardware and software will have been removed from all Street View vehicles before they resume driving.

Growing our appetite for geeky girl dinners

We’re always looking for opportunities to partner up with organizations that promote diversity and encourage women to excel in technology.  Girl Geek Dinners is a world-wide initiative that does exactly that—it helps build communities of women who have a passion and interest in science, technology and other traditionally male-dominated fields by hosting social events around the world.  

We recently sponsored the Amsterdam Girl Geek Dinner and I attended the event with my colleague Noha, who, like me, is a software engineer for Google in Zurich.  At the dinner, we had the opportunity to meet and mingle with other women in the tech community and talk about what it’s like being a woman in the field of computer science. The keynote speaker at the event was renowned mathematician Ionica Smeets and I can’t imagine a woman more inspiring.

Google shares a similar goal to Girl Geeks—we want to make it possible for everyone to pursue careers in technology, regardless of gender. And, in our presentation at the event, we outlined our numerous initiatives to promote and support diversity in technology.  We have various scholarship programs to help students to pursue their interests, excel in their studies and become leaders. And to encourage more female computer scientists to attend and participate in research conferences around the world, we also offer travel and conference grants in the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions. You can learn more about our diversity programs, here.

Posted by Alexandra Alecu, Software Engineer

Celebrating Freedom Of Expression in Poland

When I last visited Gdansk two decades ago, the independent Solidarity movement had just won a resounding victory in the communist world’s first free elections. Since then, I have seen Poland transformed into a prosperous democracy and I recently returned to speak at the All About Freedom festival addressing the meaning of freedom of expression in the Internet age.

It is tempting to compare Solidarity with the evolution of the Internet. Just like Solidarity, the Internet has proven a powerful grass-roots force for freedom of expression. At a newly created Solidarity Museum, a room is devoted to the underground press that flourished under one party communist restrictions. Any future Internet museum will surely contain rooms about the power of bloggers uploading their own opinions around the world and videos taken by mobile phone and posted on YouTube in places like Iran.

For much of the 1980s, the totalitarian regime in Poland attempted to crush Solidarity, declaring martial law and imprisoning its founder Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders. Today, it’s clear that certain governments are attempting to control their citizens by monitoring or censoring information on the Internet. We’re also seeing a general increase in the number of requests from democratic governments - for information about Internet users or for removal of information from Google’s index of the web. Some of these requests are legitimate and based in the rule of law and we honor them. In the interests of transparency, however, we recently launched an online Government Requests tool to show where these requests originate.

Poland certainly values free expression. My colleague, Susan Pointer, is in Krakow this weekend, speaking in the ‘New Technologies for Democracy’ session at the High-Level Democracy Conference. She will be focusing on the important role that technology - and internet technology in particular - can play in facilitating communication, participation, transparency and accountability in decision-making across the world.

In the end, Solidarity emerged victorious from its long struggle by sticking to its values of non-violence, free speech and multi-party democracy. Where governments try to crack down on the free exchange of ideas on the web, I believe the web’s innate openness will end up triumphing.

Posted by William Echikson, Head of Communications South, East Europe, Middle East and Africa