Experience the London 2012 Games with Google

The Olympic Games begin tomorrow in my home town, London, and more than half of the planet—some 4.8 billion people—will tune in to watch the London 2012 Games. To help you join in the excitement and glory of the Games, we’ve put together google.co.uk/olympics. Here’s a quick look at the updates, results and other content we’re bringing you from London 2012.

Discover and learn more
Want to know what your team’s next medal prospect is, or if you’ve missed Oscar Pistorius make history in the 400m? Here are a few ways we’re helping you get all the hottest news in a flash:

• Search from your desktop, phone or tablet for [london 2012], a country team like [Team GB], or a sport like archery], and you’ll see up-to-the-minute detailed information such as the schedule, medal count, and Olympic records in your search results.
• In the Hot Searches section of the site, we show you which topics, athletes or events are being searched for by fans around the world. The analysis is updated hourly, and you can click on any search to read associated news articles.
• On Google Play, find a collection of useful apps, from results trackers to games , for download on your Android device.  

Connect with your teams and favourite athletes
I’ll be cheering on both the stars and the underdogs, and closely following the updates from the Games:

• Get the latest posts from +The Olympics Games and the competing teams on Google+. (I’ll be rooting for my home country, +Team GB 
• Show who you’re supporting by customising your cover photo on Google+ (or other social network)

Explore London like you’re there
Living in London, I’ve been lucky enough to see the transformation of the East End of the city over the past few years, but for those of you who live outside the city, you can still see the sights online..

• Fly around the Olympic Park, explore the cycling and marathon courses or take a virtual tour of London landmarks in Google Earth
• Compare aerial imagery of the London of 1948 (the last time London hosted the Games) to the London of today.

Watch the action as it happens—and see highlights from past Games
For the hundreds of millions of people unable to make it to London, YouTube is helping bring the games to you in a number of markets around the world.

• For the first time, U.S. viewers can watch any event on NBCOlympics.com; 3,500 hours will be streamed in all. YouTube will power NBC’s online video experience on NBCOlympics.com. You can also access pre-game clips on the NBC Olympics YouTube channel.
• If you’re in one of 64 markets across Africa and Asia, including India, Indonesia, Kenya and Nigeria, the IOC will be streaming the Olympics live on YouTube
• For those of you who can’t wait for the games to begin or want to relive great moments from some of the previous 29 Olympiads, explore an archive on YouTube—some of my favourites are Derek Redmond’s inspirational finish of the 400m semi-final in Barcelona 1992, Cathy Freeman’s gold medal in the 400m at Sydney 2000 and Afghanistan's first-ever Olympic medal at Beijing 2008.

Find it all at www.google.co.uk/olympics. Posted by Richard Keelty, Product Marketing Manager, Google U.K.

A new way of talking politics in Italy

Traditionally, politics is conducted top down, with politicians speaking to the people. The Internet can help break this mould, allowing the people to question politicians. We have developed a series of tools on Google+ and YouTube to help connect citizens with their leaders.

In Italy, we worked with La Stampa, one of Italy’s most prestigious daily newspapers, to enable citizens to question three senior Italian politicians in a Google+ Hangout. Under the headline A New Relation Between Citizens and Politicians, La Stampa elicited interview questions from Google+ users on how the web can be used to “rebuild the relationships between citizens and politicians and overcome the populism which is damaging our confidence in our members of parliament.”

Citizens submitted their questions via La Stampa’s Google+ page. Maurizio Lupi, Vice President of the Italian Parliament and member of the centre-right PDL Party; Enrico Letta, Vice-Secretary General of the centre-left Democratic Party; and Roberto Rao, Member of Parliament for the centrist UDC party, answered. Topics focused on the economic crisis and youth employment.



“Most MPs use the web only as a showcase,” acknowledged Mr. Rao. “Just a few of us understand the potential of the web to interact with citizens.”

Politicians using the web “is an important experiment,” said Mr. Letta. “If it succeeds it can be used much more as a way to engage citizens,”

We hope that this inaugural Hangout encourages other politicians to engage with voters online in the run up to the Italian elections in spring 2013. Stay tuned.

Posted by Diego Ciulli, Policy Analyst Google Italy

Spanish teenagers capture a Google Science Fair prize

Some of the world’s brightest young scientists gathered at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View this week to present their projects to a panel of renowned judges at the Google Science Fair finals.

The 15 finalists were chosen from thousands of projects from more than 100 countries. Their work covered a wide variety of topics: from cancer research to vertical farming, 3D electronics to dementia. It was a tough decision, but we’re proud to name three projects as winners of this year’s Google Science Fair, including one project from Spain:

• 13-14 age category: Jonah Kohn (USA)—“Good Vibrations: Improving the Music Experience for People with Hearing Loss Using Multi-Frequency Tactile Sound.” By creating a device that converts sound into tactile vibrations, Jonah’s project attempts to provide the hearing impaired with an improved experience listening to music.
  
• 15-16 age category: Iván Hervías Rodríguez, Marcos Ochoa and Sergio Pascual (Spain)—“La Vida Oculta del Agua (The Secret Life of Water).” Iván, Marcos and Sergio studied hidden microscopic life in fresh water, documenting the organisms that exist in a drop of water, and how those organisms influence our environment.
  
• 17-18 age category AND Grand Prize Winner: Brittany Wenger (USA)—“Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer.” Brittany’s project harnesses the power of the cloud to help doctors accurately diagnose breast cancer. Brittany built an application that compares individual test results to an extensive dataset stored in the cloud, allowing doctors to assess tumors using a minimally-invasive procedure.
  

Each of the winners will receive prizes from Google and our Science Fair partners: CERN, LEGO, National Geographic and Scientific American. This evening, we also recognized Sakhiwe Shongwe and Bonkhe Mahlalela, from Swaziland, the winners of the Scientific American Science in Action award.

The judges were impressed with the quality of all the projects this year—and by the ingenuity, dedication and passion of the young scientists who created them. We applaud every contestant who submitted a project to the 2012 Google Science Fair and look forward to seeing the innovations, inventions and discoveries of young scientists in the years to come.


Posted by Cristin Frodella, Google in Education

Ramadan traditions with a digital twist

More a billion Muslims around the world today begin to observe the holy month of
Today, more a billion Muslims around the world begin to observe the holy month of Ramadan, fasting from dawn to sunset. This year, we’re bringing some of the most venerable Ramadan traditions online.

We’re sharing the Islamic prayers live from Mecca on a dedicated YouTube channel. Millions of people from around the world will be able to experience and comment on the event by tuning in via video.

Ramadan is about more than just prayer; it is also a special moment to gather with friends and family. Muslims gather to watch special television shows produced for the holiday and shown only during Ramadan. Often the shows overlap in scheduling. This year, for the first time, YouTube is enabling people to watch their favorite shows anytime, anywhere. A new YouTube Ramadan channel lets viewers see more than 50 premium Ramadan shows the same day they air. In the clip below, famed Syrian actor Jamal Suliman appears in a drama:



Ramadan’s tastiest tradition is the food. After fasting through the day, families gather for evening break-the-fast meals called Iftar. Through Google+ Hangouts, we’re hosting 30 virtual get-togethers in the 30 days of Ramadan, in which celebrity chefs will share their favorite recipes and doctors will give tips on eating healthy.

The hangouts will engage people in subjects far beyond eating. Actors will talk about their favorite Ramadan shows. Poets will discuss literature inspired by the holiday. Religious figures will answer questions. Stay tuned to the Google Arabia page on Google+ for more details and and join in.

We hope you enjoy experiencing your favorite Ramadan traditions with a digital twist this year. Ramadan Kareem!

Posted by Maha Abouelenein, Head of Communications Middle East and North Africa

Explore Chrome's “Exquisite Forest” at London’s Tate Modern

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

This week, in partnership with the Tate Modern in London, we released an online art experiment called This Exquisite Forest, which lets you collaborate with others to create animations and stories using a web-based drawing tool.

Seven renowned artists from Tate’s collection, including Bill Woodrow, Dryden Goodwin, Julian Opie, Mark Titchner, Miroslaw Balka, Olafur Eliasson and Raqib Shaw, have created short “seed” animations. From these seeds, anyone can add new animations that extend the story or branch it in a new direction. Or you can start a tree of your own with some friends. As more sequences are added, the animations grow into trees, creating a potentially infinite number of possible endings to each animation.



In addition to the website, an interactive installation will open on July 23 in the Level 3 gallery of Tate Modern. Trees seeded by Tate artists—and the contributions from the public—will be on display as large-scale projections. Gallery visitors may also contribute using digital drawing stations.

This Exquisite Forest uses several of Google Chrome’s advanced HTML5 and JavaScript features to produce a unique content creation and exploration experience. For example, the Web Audio API makes it possible for contributors to generate music to accompany their submissions. The project also runs on Google App Engine and Google Cloud Storage.

Please try it out at ExquisiteForest.com and contribute your own animation to help the forest grow.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Google Creative Lab, Data Arts Team

Web Lab brings Internet magic to London Science Museum

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

 Inspiration comes in many forms and can influence you in unexpected ways. I can trace my own interest in programming to Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which fascinated me on my childhood visits to the Science Museum in London. This idea that science and technology can inspire people is one that we hold close to our hearts.

It’s also the thought behind a new exhibition we’re launching today online and at the Science Museum in London. We hope to inspire people around the world by showcasing the magic that the Internet makes possible.



Launching in beta, Web Lab is a set of five physical installations housed in the Science Museum in London. You can interact with them in person at the museum, or from anywhere in the world at chromeweblab.com.

By opening up the museum experience to the world online, Web Lab doesn’t play by the usual rules—a visitor’s location and museum opening hours no longer matter. Each of the five experiments—Universal Orchestra, Data Tracer, Sketchbots, Teleporter and Lab Tag Explorer—showcases a modern web technology found in Chrome to explore a particular theme in computer science.

For example, the Universal Orchestra experiment uses WebSockets to demonstrate real time collaboration as people from around the world make music together on custom-built robotic instruments housed in the Science Museum. Please join us online or at the Science Museum in London (entry is free), and let us know what you think. True to its name, the year-long exhibition is a working lab, and we’ll continue to tinker with it based on your feedback. Here’s to the next wave of Internet invention!

 Posted by Jayme Goldstein, Product Marketing Manager, Chrome, on behalf of the Web Lab team

Face blurring: when footage requires anonymity

YouTube is proud to be a place where citizens and activists come to tell their stories -- stories that may otherwise go unnoticed. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that YouTube is a top destination for news and that “citizens play a substantial role in supplying and producing footage.”  But this level of exposure can mean risk to the citizens shooting the footage and the people who appear in their videos.

Today, we announced a new face blurring tool that represents a first step toward providing visual anonymity within our video enhancement tool.

Of course, anonymity is never a guarantee, and people who capture sensitive video footage should consider taking other precautions to keep themselves and their subjects safe. Here are three suggestions:

1.  Assess your risk. You and the people you film may face risk in every step of filming an advocacy video. You may face risks to your own safety and that of your subjects while filming sensitive footage, during the editing process after you have captured the film, and when you distribute your film online. After assessing the risks you and your subjects face you can make more informed decisions about when to film, whether to distribute your footage, and how widely you want to share it. 
2.  Consider other information which may give away identity. Video footage of your face is not the only way someone can detect your identity. Other factors that may be caught on video can also identify you or your subjects. Watch out for vocal identifiers, like the sound of your voice or saying someone’s name on camera. Other visual footage can give away identity like a license plate, a name tag, or even the background scenery. Make sure that the imagery in your videos does not give away information about your location or identity.
3. Understand local laws. Given the global scope of YouTube, we comply with different sets of laws in the various countries in which we're launched (to see where we're launched, go to the YouTube.com footer and click "Worldwide"). If the content in your video is illegal in one of these countries, we must comply with the local formal legal processes. For instance, that means that in Germany we don't stream videos that are sympathetic to Nazism. Know your local laws before you upload. 

Over the past seven years, YouTube has evolved into a destination for citizen reporting. Along with efforts like the Human Rights Channel and Citizentube that curate these voices, we hope that the new technologies we’re rolling out will facilitate the sharing of even more stories on our platform.

Posted by Amanda Conway, YouTube Policy Associate

Books on Google Play arrives in France

Earlier this year, we introduced Google Play, a digital entertainment hub where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite apps and movies on your Android phone or tablet. Today we’re adding books to Google Play for people in France.

Books on Google Play offers millions of books, including hundreds of thousands of French titles, from new releases to bestsellers and classics. It's easy to find great French authors such as Antonin Varenne, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Fred Vargas and Dominique Sylvain, plus international bestsellers, in the country’s largest ebookstore. With the launch of ebooks, Google Play becomes a one-stop-shop for the very best digital content available on the web.

France is the fifth European country to launch books on Play, following in the footsteps of Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK. This follows on our recent announcement of a settlement of all outstanding litigation between us and French publishers.

Books on Google Play is all about choice: we’re offering many titles and many ways to access and read them, so that your library is literally at your fingertips no matter where you are. You can choose from great titles from hundreds of award-winning and diverse publishing houses at launch, not to mention the telethousands of international publishers Google works with around the world.

With Google Play you can read on the device of your choice. And with your books in the cloud you can read on the web, a phone, or a tablet and pick up right where you left off. You can discover, purchase and read books on:

• Android phones and tablets - you can purchase books in the Google Play Store and begin reading them instantly in the Google Play Books app;
• your computer - you can purchase and read books on the Google Play store and read in your web browser; and
• iPhones and iPads -- you can read books in the Google Play Books app

We’re happy to make it even easier for all French book lovers to discover and buy whatever they want to read, whether that’s the next bestseller, a new release from their favourite author or a well-loved classic. Whether you’re a bookworm or casual reader, we hope you find something great to read on Google Play.

Posted by Philippe Colombet, Google Books France

Exploring the Higgs Boson particle with CERN

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 different Olympics comes to Hungary

As London gears up to host Olympic athletes, Hungary recently attracted some of the world’s most promising computer scientists for its own cerebral Games - the Central European Olympiad in Informatics. A total of 52 competitors, aged 15 to 17, came from 12 countries to the town of Tata. They worked for two days coding. All shared a common goal: to build the best algorithm and to solve complex problems of everyday life with the power of technology.

 This computer Olympiad, launched in 1994, is held annually, in a different country each year. The John von Neumann Computer Society organises the 2012 Games, in Hungary and Google joined as a sponsor.

Competitors were given practical problems to solve by building efficient algorithms. The faster the program, the higher the score. One task - inspired by the scenic view from the venue - was to design a program that can calculate the longest possible path a sightseeing cruise can travel on a lake, touching multiple stops in a restricted order, while only crossing its own path once. Romanian and Bulgarian teams won the Gold Medal in this contest and the highest number of overall gold medals. A full listing of medal winners is found here.
 

During the Olympiad, contestants took part in an hour long conversation via Google Hangout with Google engineer Mihai Stroe, who leads a team of Google Maps engineers in Zurich, He and his team write algorithms which every day help millions of people and help them find the quickest way from A to B whether they are travelling by foot, by car or public transport.

 More than a decade ago, Mihai competed in student programming competitions. He even took part in an Olympiad as a member of the scientific committee. The experience helped shaped his career at Google. “Algorithms, like the ones these talented students built today, are at the very heart of what Google does. Google is making the world better with the power of technology, and these guys are our future too. I’m happy to share my experiences with them,” he said.

Posted by Richard Schuster, Communications Manager, Budapest

Celebrating free expression in Beirut

For more than a year, Google has been supporting the Hay Literary Festival, as it grew from its origins in Wales into an international organisation. The Hay brings together writers and thinkers, inspiring dialogue around freedom of expression. It recently came to Beirut, its first time ever in the Middle East and North Africa.

The timing was perfect. A new wave of freedom in the Arab world has opened the door for writers to explore new and exciting vistas - and this freedom dominated festival discussions.



One panel featured bloggers from around the region. Samir Elbahaie, Google’s Middle East and North Africa Policy and Government Affairs Manager, spoke with them about the internet and how it is changing people’s lives. Egyptian Sondos Shabayek who was at the forefront of the Egyptian revolution and Beirut-based Moe Ali Nayel discussed how an open and free web has empowered citizens. Citizens turned to the internet to verify the news when the state media on the ground failed to offer the full picture.

In another lively session , Google’s adviser on freedom of expression and long-time journalist John Kampfner moderated a debate around how to ensure respect for human rights. The eclectic panel included Óscar Guardiola-Rivera, International Professor of Law and International Affairs, and Nizar Saghieh, a leading Lebanese lawyer, legal researcher and human rights activist. Both speakers argued that freedom of expression and human rights were too often framed in Western terms. Saghieh suggested policy makers refer to local and regional cultural norms as much as universal ones, citing the Koran. Guardiola-Rivera said Western governments ignored the clamour for economic rights even though they were regarded as perhaps the most important in developing nations.

Other topics discussed in Beirut ranged from the serious – memories of postwar cities, and the role of writers in sectarian societies – to the more light-hearted and amusing, including a poetry slam contest.

It’s great to see the Arab world embrace free expression. The free flow of information spurs creativity and innovation. We believe people make better decisions in their lives when they have more information and look forward to contributing to work toward achieving this goal in the Middle East and North Africa.

Posted by Hind Rasheed, Communications Manager, Middle East and North Africa

Italy’s rich film heritage comes to the Internet

Italy is home to a rich cinema tradition. The first Italian movie was filmed only a few months after the Lumiere Brothers patented their cinematographe - when Pope Leo XIII was shown for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera. From the futurists to the neorealists, Italian movies always have been at the cutting edge.

Today, at the Rome headquarters of Italy’s Ministry of Culture, we’re proud to announce a partnership with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà aimed at preserving much of this valuable heritage. More than 30,000 clips from the Istituto Luce-Cinecittà’s archive are being put online on a special YouTube channel. These include historical newsreels shown in Italian cinemas over 40 years. Many feature Italy’s great film stars, including Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. YouTube viewers will be able to search and surf through the immense amount of film thanks to themed playlists,



This announcement represents an important step in our efforts to safeguard Italy’s rich culture and allow global public access to it. Over the past few years, Google has, among other efforts, featured Italy’s national monuments in our World Wonders project, and partnered with leading Italian museums for the Google Art project. When imagery of the famed Pompei ruins went online on Street View, the number of visitors to the site soared.

The Istituto Luce-Cinecittà partnership not only preserves and spreads Italian culture, but also serves as a powerful tool to give a second commercial life to this vast archival treasure. Istituto Luce-Cinecittà will use our Content ID, a free technological solution designed to protect copyright on YouTube. We already have more than 30,000 Content ID partners in the world and more than a hundred in Italy. At the same time, cinephiles from all over the globe will be able to enjoy this archive without paying any entry fee. Instituto Luce-Cinecittà will benefit from advertising sold alongside its clips on YouTube.

The deal demonstrates how Italy is moving to embrace the web. Although recent studies show that the digital economy accounts for only 2% of GDP - compared to 7% in the UK - the net’s contribution is set to double over the next two years. ECommerce expanded by 20% last year over 2010, according to NetComm. In a country suffering from high unemployment, and particularly high youth unemployment, the net is creating jobs: for every 10% of increased Internet use, London School of Economics professors estimated in a recent report that youth employment grew by almost 1.5%. This online boom is coming during a period of financial crisis, without requiring any additional government spending.

Our project with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà is one of the first partnerships to bring back to life a film archive anywhere in the world. Instead of fearing the net, one of Italy’s most venerable names in culture is seizing a giant opportunity to both preserve - and profit - from its rich artistic heritage. We look forward to working with the Italian movie industry to achieve both of these laudable goals.

Posted by Federica Tremolada, YouTube Partnerships Manager for Italy

Big Tent Sendai: Smarter ways to share information in a crisis

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

As we’ve seen in the last decade, information technology can save lives in a crisis. But even as data becomes more crucial to rescue efforts, key information like evacuation routes, shelter locations and weather alerts often remains inaccessible to the public. Time is of the essence in the wake of a disaster, and it's critical for emergency information to be available in open standards and formats to enable instant communication among first responders and affected populations.

This was the theme of our first Big Tent in Asia, held yesterday in Sendai, Japan. The event brought together tech industry leaders, non-profits, volunteers and government officials to discuss how technology can better assist in preparing for, responding to and rebuilding from disasters. This is an extremely pertinent issue for the Asia-Pacific region, as nearly 70 percent of fatalities from natural disasters occur here. And with the earthquake and tsunami last year affecting the coastal regions of Northeastern Japan, Sendai was a particularly meaningful location to discuss new ways that technology can aid the efforts of responders to reduce the impact and cost of disasters.

During the panels, the audience heard stories about how two Pakistani volunteers mapped their home country so well through Google MapMaker that the UN’s mapping agency UNOSAT adopted the maps and provided them to aid workers during the Pakistan floods. Sam Johnson, Founder of the Christchurch Student Army and Young New Zealander of the Year, talked about using Facebook to quickly coordinate relief efforts on the ground after the earthquakes in Christchurch in 2010 and 2011. Twitter Japan Country Manager James Kondo talked about Japanese earthquake victims tweeting with the hashtag “stranded” in order to find help. Meanwhile representatives of open source project Ushahidi talked of “brainsourcing” reporters on the ground and remote volunteers to keep the world abreast of conditions in disasters such as the earthquake in Chile in 2010.

After the panels, conversations and debates, four key themes emerged. First, there is a conflict between traditional closed data architectures and emerging open models—and we need to close the gap between them. Second, we need to find complementary ways to embrace both authoritative data from official sources and crowdsourced data. Third, there’s a universal need for data, but they way it’s shared needs to be tailored to the local environment—for example, Internet-reliant countries vs. SMS-reliant countries. Finally, we were reminded that beyond the data itself, communication and collaboration are key in a crisis. Information isn’t worth anything unless people are taking that information, adapting it, consulting it and getting it to the people who need it.

Crisis response tools will continue to improve and more people across the globe will own devices to quickly access the information they need. But there are still major challenges we must address. As Margareta Wahlström, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction said, we can now get quick warnings and alerts to many populations on their phones, but many who receive the alerts don’t know how to act.

To see clips from Sendai and previous events, visit the Big Tent YouTube channel, where you can also join in the debate via comments, get more information on the presenters and see how different communities approach many of the same issues. We’ll hold more Big Tents in Asia soon, so please check back on our website to learn more.

Posted by Nigel Snoad, Product Manager, Google.org Crisis Response Team

Measuring innovation and creativity in the Internet era

Innovation is not just about science and technology. It’s about arts and culture, too. Technological development and the arts have always had a symbiotic relationship. For example, the videocassette recorder led to new markets for movies and television. Computer animation was once considered by some to be just a novelty until Pixar came along and redefined the entire genre of animated film.

How should creativity be measured in the Internet era? Many traditional measures of creativity tended to focus on particular industries, rather than content creation by individuals. This made some sense in the past -- producing and widely distributing content was expensive, something only a few broadcasters, newspapers, record labels, and studios were capable of. But today the Internet allows anyone, anywhere to instantly connect with an audience of billions, and more content is being produced on more platforms than ever before.

Researchers are only starting to come to grips with this challenge, and today the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and business school INSEAD have made an important contribution. In its annual Global Innovation Index—a report that ranks 141 countries based on their innovation capabilities and results—WIPO adds new measures of creativity online. Specifically, the report measures the creation of online content by including two metrics focused on the creation of Internet sites—generic top-level domains and country codes TLDs—and two metrics focused on online participation in the creation of content—Wikipedia edits and YouTube uploads.

This does not solve the problem of how to measure online creativity, let alone its relationship to innovation. We hope more people will follow this new report’s lead and develop methodologies for quantifying online creativity and its contributions to innovation. Robust data are the bedrock of public policy, and 20th century metrics are inadequate measures for the 21st century economy.

As part of the report, WIPO also gave Google the opportunity to offer our thoughts on the role that the Internet plays in driving creativity, and ways to improve measurement:

...output metrics need to more rigorously account for the sheer quantity of art being produced. Today, 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, and there are 440 blogs for every autobiography available on Amazon. Yet, if one is measuring only traditional, professional distribution channels, this creativity would not be part of the picture.

You can read our chapter here, and the whole report here.

Posted by Derek Slater, Policy Manager

Breaking Borders for free expression

Today in Nairobi, at the biannual Global Voices Citizen Media summit, Google and the group Global Voices announced the winners of the 2nd Breaking Borders Award. The award honors people who, in the view of Global Voices, are making a difference in the push for a free and open Internet.

The 2012 winners were selected by the board of Global Voices, and come from two regions in the world where free speech is often threatened — North Africa and Central Europe.



In Morocco, Mamfakinch has become far and away the most popular Moroccan citizen media portal. The name means "we don't give up" in that nation's Arabic dialect. Mamfakinch uses volunteer editors to aggregate and curate
materials from its contributors. In less than a year, the site grew from a "crazy idea" to a site with more than one million unique visitors.

The other award winner was Budapest-based Atlatszo.hu. Global Voices cited its work in supporting press freedom in Hungary in the wake of the passage of a new, controversial media law. Atlatszo.hu has worked to maintain standards of journalistic integrity and quality investigative journalism. The group, led by Marietta Le, recently fought and won an important fight for the protection of sources in Hungary.

We are proud to support Global Voices and the work they do to recognize and empower
citizens’ media around the world.

Posted by Bob Boorstin, Director, Global Policy 

Follow the money to fight online piracy

Update: 4 July, 19:00 CET. Minor amendments in paragraphs 6 and 10 to more accurately reflect the report and other sources.

Until now, most debate about online piracy is driven by emotion, not hard data. In an attempt to fill this gap, we teamed up with the UK copyright collective PRS for Music and asked BAE Systems Detica to take a detailed look. Their report was published today.

Detica examined hundreds of websites cited by rightsholders as the main online pirates. For each, it analysed - amongst other things - the number of unique visitors, IP addresses, the main sources of funding, and preferred audio-visual formats. The results suggest that the most effective weapon to tackle piracy is to follow the money - to squeeze the pirates’ financing.



The report details intriguing trends. Sites selling unlicensed music tend to have low and declining volumes of users, suggesting that the ease of buying legal copyrighted music is having an impact on piracy. In contrast, sites streaming free live TV account for a third of all sites and are increasing in number the fastest.

How best to combat this danger? Instead of imposing blocks or filters that might damage fundamental freedoms, governments should construct coalitions with reputable advertising networks, payment processors and rightsholders. Together, these coalitions can crack down and squeeze the financing behind online infringement.

A close look at pirate financing shows why following the money could be so effective. Some 86% of advertising on the pirate sites surveyed by Detica comes from networks that have failed to sign up with the UK’s self-regulatory bodies or commit to strong codes of conduct. More than two thirds of the sites that rely on subscriptions or payments display well-known credit card logos. Online advertising networks, credit card and online payment facilities should be encouraged to sign up to self-regulatory codes of conduct that help cut off the pirates' oxygen supply - financing

The UK Government is moving in this direction. It encourages advertising networks, payment processors, rightsholders, and the police to collaborate and squeeze pirate financing. And the research shows that the UK no longer is an attractive home for pirates.

Here’s the real good news: the UK is becoming an attractive place for legitimate online content businesses. According to the BPI, digital music counted for 55.5% of record industry revenues in the first quarter of the year. Advertising-supported music services grew year on year by 23.6% to £86.5m.

Paid-for subscription services are booming. Their income almost doubled year-on-year to just under £9 million. Advertising-supported digital services such as Spotify and We7 raked in revenues of £3.4m, an increase of 20% on Q1 2011.

The upshot? Even though revenue from compact discs fell, the music industry’s overall market value grew by 2.7% to £155.8m.

Now that’s one nice tune.

Posted by Theo Bertram, policy manager, UK