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Supporting Computer Science Education Across Europe

At Google, we’re committed to making sure Europeans have the right digital skills, pledging to train up to one million Europeans by the end of 2016. Since 2009, Google’s Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) programmes have supported over 20,000 teachers in their efforts to gain confidence in their understanding of computer science (CS) and learn valuable skills for teaching CS to students across the globe. And starting today, applications are now being accepted for the 2016 CS4HS Awards. That is why we are encouraging colleges, universities, and educational non profits from countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa to apply for an award of up to €15,000. Computer Science is at the heart of the digital economy in Europe. It is a discipline with a core set of scientific principles that can be applied to solve complex, real-world problems. In today's computing-imbued world, coding is the 'quill' of the 21st century, and knowledge of computer science is essential for the youth of Europe - not just for their future careers, but also to enable them to be active citizens in the digital world. Despite a growing interest in computer science among young Europeans, recent research by Gallup (commissioned by Google) reveals that work still needs to be done when it comes to supporting teachers in their efforts to understand the critical principles of computer science. In 2016, we are looking to fund applications that include strong plans for the establishment of new or existing communities of practice (COPs). These communities bring teachers together to encourage and support each other in their learning and ongoing professional development. This focus is grounded in a wide body of research (for example Joyce & Showers, 2002; and Wiske, Stone, & Levinson, 1993 ) demonstrating that COPs are a critical element for producing and sustaining innovation in the classroom. Criteria vary from region to region so please visit the CS4HS website to learn more about the eligibility requirements and to get started on your application. Applications will remain open until midnight (GMT), 15th February, 2016. Join the CS4HS Google+ community to connect with past CS4HS organizers and learn about HangOuts on Air we’ll be hosting during the application process. We hope 2016 will provide many opportunities for Google to partner with the CS education community, and to grow and strengthen the CS teacher community around the globe. We hope you’ll be a part of it, and look forward to reviewing your application.    Posted by: Claire Conneely, CS4HS Program Manager, EMEA

Powering the Internet with renewable energy

Today we're announcing the largest, and most diverse, purchase of renewable energy ever made by a non-utility company. Google has already committed to purchase more renewable energy than any other company. Now, through a series of new wind and solar projects around the world, we’re one step closer to our commitment to triple our purchases of renewable energy by 2025 and our goal of powering 100% of our operations with clean energy.

842 MW of renewable energy around the world
Today’s agreements will add an additional 842 megawatts of renewable energy capacity to power our data centers. Across three countries, we’re nearly doubling the amount of renewable energy we’ve purchased to date. We’re now up to 2 gigawatts—the equivalent to taking nearly 1 million cars off the road.

These additional 842 megawatts represent a range of locations and technologies, from a wind farm in Sweden to a solar plant in Chile.

These long-term contracts range from 10-20 years and provide projects with the financial certainty and scale necessary to build these wind and solar facilities—thus bringing new renewable energy onto the grid in these regions. For our part, these contracts not only help minimize the environmental impact of our services—they also make good business sense by ensuring good prices.

Our commitment to a sustainable energy future
Since we opened our very first owned data center in 2006, we’ve been working to promote renewable and sustainable energy use in several ways:

• First, we’re building the world’s most efficient computer infrastructure by designing our data centers to use as little energy as possible.
• Second, we're driving the renewables industry forward by fully committing to renewable sources. In 2010, we entered our first large-scale renewable power purchase agreement with a wind farm in Iowa, and we subsequently completed a number of similar large-scale energy purchases over the past five years. Today’s announcement is another milestone in this area.
• Third, we've worked with our utility partners to help promote transformation in the utility sector. In 2013 we created a new program that enables customers like Google to buy large amounts of renewable energy directly from their utilities. Today's announcement includes the first solar project enrolled under that program. And this past summer we announced that our newest data center will be on located on the site of a retiring coal plant and will be 100% renewable powered from day one.
• Fourth, beyond our efforts to power our own operations with renewables, we’ve made separate agreements to fund $2.5 billion into 22 large-scale renewable energy projects over the last five years, from Germany to Kansas to Kenya. These investments have been in some of the largest and most transformative renewable energy projects in the world with a goal to help drive renewable energy development not only as a customer but as an investor, and bring down costs for everyone.

And we’re also working on new technologies and ideas—ranging from Project Sunroof to Makani Power to air quality monitoring—that we hope can make a cleaner energy future an option for many more people.

With world leaders coming together at the COP21 UN conference on climate change in Paris this week, there's no better time to focus on renewable energy. We hope that our efforts play a small part in boosting all of us in the race to solve climate change.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure

Working toward a more accessible and inclusive world

We believe in a world built for everyone, which is why we launched the global Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities earlier this year. The Impact Challenge is a Google.org initiative to invest $20 million in nonprofits who are using technology to make the world more accessible for the 1 billion people living with disabilities.

Today, as part of the program, we’re proud to celebrate the U.N. International Day of Persons with Disabilities with three new grants, totalling $2.95 million. Through our grants, the Royal London Society for Blind People will develop the Wayfindr project, helping visually impaired people navigate the London underground; Israeli NGO Issie Shapiro will distribute Sesame, an app that allows people with mobility impairments to control a smartphone using only head movements; and, finally, German grantee Wheelmap will expand its accessibility mapping efforts worldwide. This week, many Googlers around the world will also join Wheelmap’s Map My Day campaign to help out.

We’ve also collected 11 tips that help people with disabilities get more out of their favourite Google products. (Why 11? It’s a play on “a11y”, tech-speak for “accessibility.”)

Much of the accessibility work we do is driven by passionate Googlers from around the world. To give you a look at what motivates us to make Google, and the world, more inclusive, we asked four Googlers from our Disability Alliance to share more about what they’re working on:

Kiran Kaja, Technical Program Manager, London: Being blind from birth, I’ve always been excited by devices that talk to you or allow you to talk back to them. Today, I work on Google’s Text to Speech team developing technologies that talk to people with disabilities. I’m also helping improve eyes-free voice actions on Android so that people with low vision can accomplish standard tasks just by talking to their phone. This not only helps people with disabilities, but anyone whose hands are busy with another task—like cooking, driving or caring for an infant. The advances we’re making in speech recognition and text to speech output promise a bright future for voice user interfaces.

Paul Herzlich, Legal Analytics Specialist, Mountain View: As a wheelchair user from a spinal cord injury, I'm passionate about the potential impact of technology to solve disability-related issues. Outside of my job, I'm working alongside a team of mechanical and electrical engineers, UX designers, and medical professionals to develop a new technology called SmartSeat, which I hope to bring to life in tandem with Google.org through its Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities. SmartSeat is a device that notifies wheelchair users when they have been sitting in the same position for too long by using force sensors connected to a mobile app, thereby helping these users prevent pressure sores. You can watch a video of the early prototype on YouTube.

Aubrie Lee, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Mountain View: Like many other disabled people, I’ve spent most of my life as the minority in the room. In high school, I attended a state forum on disability and felt what it was like to be in the majority. Now, I work to create that feeling for other disabled people. I started the Googler Disability Community, a group that works on changing Google’s physical environment and workplace systems to help make our company truly inclusive. Outside of my job, I enjoy exploring the beauty in disability through photography and poetry. My own disabilities and the way they influence my interactions with others provide endless inspiration for my art.

Pablo Pacca, Language Market Manager, São Paulo: I’m in charge of making sure Google’s products are translated well into Brazilian Portuguese for the 180+ million Brazilians who don’t speak English. I’m also an activist and advocate for accessibility and inclusion, both as a blogger on disability issues and the lead for the Google Brazil People with Disabilities (PwD) group. At PwD Brazil, we educate Googlers about disability issues, and work to foster a more accessible office space and inclusive work environment across the company.

Rodolfo Cattani, Secretary General for the European Disability Forum, said earlier today about Europe’s initiatives on accessibility: "Technology is opening up new opportunities for persons with disabilities, to move around, and to get access to information, education and employment opportunities like never before. But so much more needs to be done. The long-awaited European Accessibility Act should mark the beginning of new efforts to boost the impact of technology in improving independent living and the participation in the society of 80 million Europeans with disabilities. MEP Philippe De Backer, who recently hosted a summit on accessibility and the app economy in the European Parliament, said on this same topic: "We need an Accessibility Act with a strong tech component to improve people's lives. This, together with the creativity and ingenuity of European app developers should make a real difference in boosting accessibility and independent living across Europe."

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org and Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist 

Enriching Dutch Startups Together With The Next Web

Last night in Amsterdam, we celebrated a new partnership with The Next Web to bring Google for Entrepreneurs to the Netherlands. In the unfinished space at Singel 542 in Amsterdam, within a stone’s throw of the city's famous Flower Market, The Next Web shared their inspiring vision for the project, called X, which we expect to open to more than 150 Dutch startups in the first half of 2016. We have a very clear goal for this unique partnership in the Netherlands: to further strengthen local entrepreneurship in the heart of the city. We know the startup scene in Amsterdam is a vibrant one--but we think X will cut through the noise of a buzzy ecosystem that’s been missing a physical center, something research tells us really matters for startups. At X with TNW we’ll be able to offer our local mentoring program and initiatives like demo days with international guests, global exchange programs and training sessions designed to help Dutch startups grow.

“The Dutch startup ecosystem is flourishing and new initiatives that empower the growth of startups are sprouting,” says Dutch Startup Envoy Neelie Kroes. “‘X’ contributes to this energetic scene by connecting players with global networks like The Next Web, Google, KPMG, ABN Amro and Booking.com that can offer the next growth step for startups.” One thing’s sure: this isn’t our first rodeo. Through the Google for Entrepreneurs network, we have 25 tech hub partners around the world, plus five Campus spaces we offer ourselves--in Tel Aviv, London, Seoul, Madrid and Warsaw--all sharing know-how and content to help new and fast-growing businesses do more.  Members of X here in the Netherlands will have access to that global community and world class network of physical spaces and programming. Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, CEO of The Next Web says that building X together with Google and other partners that include Booking.com and ABN-AMRO is “a dream come true” for the company. “Joining the Google For Entrepreneurs network not only makes sense for X but even more to the X residents who can instantly reap the benefits of this amazing global network to scale their businesses even faster.” But why make this kind of investment in startups in the Netherlands? It’s pretty simple. Google began in a garage, and we remain a startup at heart. Because of that, we’re committed to supporting next-generation entrepreneurship across Europe and around the world. It’s the same reason we recently launched the Digitale Werkplaats in the Netherlands with a goal of bringing digital skills to 30,000 Dutch entrepreneurs and independents to help them grow their businesses online, part of our greater efforts to show how Google can be a Growth Engine for all of Europe.

Posted by James van Thiel, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Google

Step on stage with the Google Cultural Institute

It takes years of practice to perfect the pirouettes. Months of rehearsal to get the crescendos just right. Multiple stories of lights, rigging and machinery to set the scene. At the world’s leading performing arts venues —like Carnegie Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Bolshoi Theatre—artists, costume designers, musicians, stage crews and many more all come together to create the perfect moment on stage.



And now you can join them. In a new virtual exhibition from the Google Cultural Institute and more than 60 performing arts organizations, you can experience dance, drama, music and opera alongside some of the world’s leading performers—onstage, backstage and with a 360 degree-view of the action.



The new Performing Arts exhibition gives you a view that’s even closer than the best seat in the house. With 360-degree performance recordings, you you can choose a dancer’s-eye view of the crowd, or look down from the stage into the orchestra pit. At the Paris Opera, you can stand in the middle of the largest stage in Europe, surrounded by dancers performing choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s moves. Sit between the woodwinds and strings at Carnegie Hall with a full view of Maestro Nézet-Séguin. Don’t worry if you’re underdressed as you tour the Berliner Philharmoniker’s rehearsal performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with conductor Sir Simon Rattle—you’ll see the orchestra is not in black tie either.



Beyond the performance itself, new indoor Street View imagery gives you an all-access backstage pass to each venue. Wander through the wig workshop at Brussels’ opera house, look beneath the stage at the historic underground arches of the Fundação Teatro Municipal in São Paulo, or zoom in on ultra-high resolution Gigapixel costume images at France’s National Centre for Stage Costume, before browsing more than a hundred interactive stories about the shows, the stars and the world behind the scenes. If you’re lucky enough to be planning an in-person visit to one of these venues, you can be tour them in Street View first to see where you’ll be sitting, or how the view is from the balcony.



The Google Cultural Institute was founded in 2011 to bring the world’s treasures to anyone with an Internet connection. Starting in partnership with a handful of renowned museums, we’ve since joined forces with 900+ institutions to include historic archives, street art, and 200 wonders of the world. Now you can also visit dozens of the world’s stages together in one place—across mobile, tablet and desktop at g.co/performingarts and on the Google Cultural Institute website.



Curtain-up, and let Performing Arts take the stage!



Posted by Amit Sood, Director of the Google Cultural Institute



IMAGE URL Amit Sood Director Google Cultural Institute

Campus Warsaw: Central and Eastern Europe’s Digital Leap

Last week I was in Warsaw to launch Campus Warsaw, a modern space for entrepreneurship, in a town that is postively pulsing with start-up talent. I am thrilled to see how Poland and the broader Central Eastern European region is making a big digital leap and I’m happy that Google can help fuel this growth.

Campus Warsaw is a place for Poland’s and Central Eastern Europe’s entrepreneurs to gather, build companies, network, learn and share. The site provides everything necessary - from office and event space to training and mentoring programs and more - to help freshly-minted entrepreneurs thrive.

A year ago, Eric Schmidt discussed this project with Poland’s Prime Minister Tusk - as a way to strengthen Poland's and CEE region's innovation economy. Last week I was joined by political leaders and startup community leaders from Poland, thirteen European Member States and the United States, to celebrate the launch of this investment.

Campus Warsaw was opened under the Honorary Patronage of the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda. Mateusz Morawiecki, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland was joined by government officials and startup communities representatives from 15 countries at the inauguration ceremony. Everyone was excited to see how a strong focus on entrepreneurship can fuel economic growth in the CEE region.

Campus Warsaw is joining our similar investments in London, Tel Aviv, Madrid, and Seoul. Other Campus sites, like Campus London, which opened its doors just over three years ago, have been hugely successful, building a community of nearly 50,000 members. Startups there have created more than 1,800 new jobs, raising over US$110 million in funding.

Campus Warsaw is part of our Growth Engine effort for all of Europe -- Europe's entrepreneurship is growing and going global on digital -- strong entrepreneurship spirit (and a Single Digital Market) is what Europe needs the most to boost its economic growth and competitiveness.

Posted by Matt Brittin, President, Google EMEA, Business & Operations

Suffragette the movie - and the fight for equality

Earlier this month, we co-hosted the Brussels premiere of ‘Suffragette’, a film about female emancipation in the UK starring Helena Bonham Carter, Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan. The film is directed by Sarah Gavron and is interesting for policy geeks since it is the first film in history to be shot in the UK Houses of Parliament. The film follows the struggles of several women fighting for the right to vote and for greater equality. Even though we have made great strides in the fight for equality since the 19th century, the film is a reminder that we still have a long way to go. At Google, diversity and equality are big priorities. We think creating product and services for users --all users-- starts with having a workforce that reflects the diversity of people around the world. We’re not there yet, but we’re working on it. That’s why we publish our data on diversity - it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts. Overall only 30% of Google’s workforce are women - a reflection of the picture in the tech sector and STEM education overall. We’re working hard to improve this, not only for Google but for our communities. We’re empowering Googlers to confront unconscious bias and to celebrate diversity in their teams. We offer internships to young people interested in pursuing a career in tech and programs encouraging girls to learn how to code. We do all this because we want to move the needle on equality. With more and more career opportunities in technology, the fight for equality means encouraging young girls to study STEM subjects, improving representation of women in government and business and demanding equal pay for equal work. You can find out more about Google’s work on diversity here. Posted by: Catherine Williams, Public Affairs Associate Google Brussels

Climate change affects the things we love #OursToLose

Cross-posted from the YouTube blog

From seasons to octopuses and chocolate, environmental issues stand to impact the things we love. What if we could help change the way people discuss climate change, so that the issue and its consequences could become more relevant and tangible to people around the world?

Leading up to COP21, a conference which will bring leaders from around the world together to develop a global climate agreement, we’re encouraging the YouTube community to join the discussion by uploading their own videos that share their concerns about how environmental issues may impact the things they love. The conversation on YouTube will live through a simple hashtag: #OursToLose.



With the help of YouTube creators from around the world, including Casey Neistat (U.S.), https://www.youtube.com/user/JacksGap
(U.K.), Golden Moustache (France), Jamie Curry (New Zealand) and Flavia Calina (Brazil), we’re also encouraging people to show further support by signing the Avaaz petition, a campaign aimed at delivering clean energy worldwide by 2050.

Whether you’re questioning how global warming can impact your day-to-day life, curious about new sources of energy, or concerned about the melting Arctic, we hope that you share your ideas through #OursToLose videos to help make the climate conversation more accessible to people around the world.



The YouTube community can empower tremendous collaboration, advocacy, and creativity. Through #OursToLose, we hope to continue helping people to broadcast their message, empower their communities, and even catalyze a global movement to further action on climate change.

Posted by Marc Hertz, Programming Coordinator, and Aaron Taylor, Associate Product Marketing Manager, YouTube. Videos they watched recently include “Misconceptions about Climate Change” recently watched “What’s Possible: The UN Climate Summit Film.”

From Paris to Berlin: Getting Europe Growing, Digitally

For us, this year has been all about getting Europe trained up in terms of digital skills. The follow-on from that is creating growth when European companies go global. We've been partnering with Politico to host a series of events across the continent exploring the roadmap for Europe's digital growth. Earlier this month we were in Paris, and last week we took the debate to Berlin, where guests included MEP Eva Paunova, Bundestag member Thomas Jarzombek and Poland's Undersecretary of State for Digital Affairs Jurand Drop.

Alwin Mahler from Google Germany kicked us off with exciting research Deloitte did on the German economy. Businesses using Google services generated up to EUR 30 billion in revenue, and support up to 500,000 jobs - in Germany alone. These aren't just the big names either -- Google has helped the small and midsize firms which make up the Mittelstand, the backbone of the German economy, expand into new markets worldwide.

"Let’s use the famous example of Lederhosen,” Alwin explained -- living near Munich, he knows all about the famous leather shorts. Until recently, many producers would only sell to people from their physical store in the Bavarian region. "Today they can advertise for this product in regions as far as Asia or Australia. Because Asians and Australians like “Lederhosen”, even if they only visit “Oktoberfest” once a year!" Given we hosted the event in the Kulturbrauerei, cheers to that!

It's not just Germany. Another 439,000 jobs in Europe are directly associated with the development of apps, which we support via Android. And that's a global market for European start-ups. A running app developed in Austria, Runtastic, has proven a huge hit in markets as distant as Brazil and China.

Then there's “Weltweit Wachsen,” roughly translated as "Growing Worldwide." This export initiative run by Google in partnership with DHL, PayPal and Commerzbank has already helped tens of thousands of German entrepreneurs to expand their horizons.

MEP Eva Paunova in conversation with Politico's Noelle Knox

Back to the European policy agenda. Ms. Paunova said there's a need for legislation to speed up, generally, starting with new legislation to end geoblocking. "For the past year and a half we’ve been saying what we want to see, but still no legislative documents have been passed on the topic,” the member of the Parliament's Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection told the audience.

We heard a lot of interesting things and people went home optimistically. As did Alwin Mahler, who said, "literally any European business can reach a global market using the Internet, even allowing a solo entrepreneur to become a multinational company."

Posted by: Mark Jansen, Corporate Communications Google Brussels

Friends Of Europe and Google partner to discuss education and skills

Computers, the internet and smartphones are integrated into our daily lives in a way that was unthinkable a few years ago. How can we ensure the next generation have the skills necessary for working in this digital world? Tech smarts aren't an optional extra: the European Commission predicts that by 2020, there will be nearly 900,000 unfilled jobs in Europe because of the digital skills gap.

Friends of Europe and Google teamed up this week to discuss this urgent issue. In Brussels, we brought together experts from around the world including Esther Wojcicki, Vice Chair of Creative Commons and author of ‘Moonshots in Education’, Jos Bertemes, Director at Luxembourg's Ministry of National Education and René Tristan Lydiksen, Managing Director of LEGO Education Europe.

Before speaking with educators, we did our homework. We commissioned research by the Economist Intelligence Unit, titled "Driving The Skills Agenda," which looks into digital skills levels worldwide. (The report definitely gets an A+ grade). They describe how education systems around the world are changing. We kicked off the discussion with the report's author, Irene Mia, telling us about her findings.

The report draws on data from global surveys of senior business executives, teachers and two groups of students, aged 11 to 17 and 18 to 25 -- and is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of education. For example, 51% of executives say a skills gap is hampering their organisational performance and only 34% claim to be satisfied with the level of attainment of young people entering their company.

The research didn’t only look at general skills, but also at digital skills specifically. Teachers know this is an issue -- 85% of teachers say that technological advances have changed the way they teach, but only 27% claim to be very confident in developing digital literacy in their students. Technology could ultimately level the playing field, by giving students access to tools and teaching from around the world and broadening their horizons.

An overview of the ideas discussed at our event, captured by Somang Lee

Of course, experts and policymakers can discuss these issues for hours -- but what really matters is hearing from young people -- in their own words. That's why we invited Google Science Fair European finalists, a global online competition open to young kids interested in science, technology, math and engineering.

Their award-winning projects might one day change the world: Krtin Nithiyanandam, from the UK, has worked on a molecular-level 'Trojan Horse' which can be used as a sensitive method for earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. His fellow global finalist, Laura Steponavičiūtė from Lithuania has been experimenting with how nanoparticles affect nature. And Matthew Reed is developing a lightweight, cheap open-source satellite standard that will be free for anyone to use and develop.

Google Science Fair finalist Krtin Nithiyanandam and other participants using LEGO to make learning fun

Skills for the future is a topic that’s relevant not only to young people. As a digital company with hundreds of millions of users in the EU, Google is dedicated to ensuring Europeans have world-class digital skills. We're working on everything from giving entrepreneurs the tools they need to set up their own business, to putting Europe's top galleries online so everyone can enjoy their cultural treasures. And all of these projects need digital skills -- which is why it's so important the next generation learn them now.

Posted by: Liz Sproat, Google’s Head of Education for Europe, Middle East and Africa

Celebrating Vermeer’s Little Street With Cultural Institute

The Dutch have always known that Delft is a special city. Now a recent discovery by Frans Grijzenhout, Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam, using a unique pairing of seventeenth century records and Google Street View technology, has uncovered a new treasure on its streets. A small door, tucked between numbers 40 and 42 on Vlamingstraat, which marks the alleyway depicted in Johannes Vermeer’s world-famous Little Street.

"In my endeavours to pinpoint the exact location of Vermeer's Little Street, I have been an avid user of Google Maps, particularly in studying the rythmic articulation of the canal walls along Vlamingstraat,” said Professor Grijzenhout this week.

The discovery of the whereabouts of Vermeer’s Little Street is the subject of an exhibition running from 19 November 2015 to 13 March 2016 in the Rijksmuseum. It will then transfer to Museum Prinsenhof Delft.

To commemorate this discovery--including the small part that Google Street View technology has played in it--we’re marking 19 November 2015 Vermeer Day on the Google Cultural Institute. Today our homepage will feature 17 works of art by the Dutch master, including Little Street, and the site will feature a special look at the present day Little Street in Delft. The aim of the Google Cultural Institute is twofold, helping users to discover artworks in new ways and helping the cultural sector to make the most of digital opportunities. 

We’re thrilled to celebrate the Delft’s own Vermeer with our longtime partners at the Rijksmuseum, and to mark the discovery of this little street in that’s been culturally significant--if unknown--since the 17th century.

Posted by Meghan Casserly, Communications Manager Google Netherlands

Young and Digital: Google Signs the European Pact4Youth

We’ve said it a lot this year: every business should be a digital business, because every customer is a digital customer, and that’s a huge economic opportunity.  And by extension, that means that everyone coming into the job market should have some digital skills too. So when we heard about the European Pact4Youth, we were keen to be a part of it.

The agreement is an exciting idea from The European Business Network for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR Europe) which aims to help young people across Europe find work.  Together with the European Commission, other businesses, social partners, education and training providers all over Europe, we  have committed to developing and consolidating partnerships in support of youth employability and inclusion.

We're not the only ones who are excited. "Our top priority has been to get Europe growing again and to stimulate good quality job creation," said Marianne Thyssen, Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility. "It builds on the successful European Alliance for Apprenticeships.... the Commission, together with business, is moving now towards one quarter million new opportunities for young people across Europe."

While we're looking forward to working with our fellow signatories to create jobs for young people in the same way Erasmus has broadened their educational experience, we can't resist telling you about some of the work we're already doing in this area. We're currently in the middle of training up one million Europeans in essential digital skills -- in time for next year. We've committed over €25 million to build a Europe-wide training hub.

And in Spain -- one of the countries worst hit by youth unemployment -- we've developed a series of massive open online courses (MOOCs), Google Activate, together with the Spanish Ministry of Industry, through the business school, EOI, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The news from Spain is encouraging: more than 148,000 people have registered for Activate with 13% of participants earning a certificate.

Another example is Italy, where we have the initiative Crescere in Digitale, offering free digital skills online training to the 700,000 young Italians currently not in employment, education or training. This program is run in partnership with the Ministry of Labour and the Chamber of Commerce and will provide 3,000 internships in addition to the training.

Improving Europe's skills in everything from data analytics to web design are a key part of tackling youth unemployment -- and we are excited to support the Pact4Youth.

Posted by: Lie Junius, public policy director, Google Brussels

Tackling Urban Mobility with Technology

Over half the world’s population live in cities and urban areas, and over the next thirty years, 2 billion more people are expected to become urban residents. Cities are thinking carefully about the challenges associated with such rapid growth - like avoiding over-stressed public transit infrastructure and reducing traffic congestion. We’re interested in these questions too: we’ve been helping people navigate urban areas and route around traffic jams for many years.

So a while ago, we started working with a small group of research partners in the EU and the US to see if we could tackle some of these challenges together, using aggregate, anonymised data about historical traffic patterns to help improve urban mobility for everyone.

Our initial exploration has lead to a series of pilot projects with our partners to find ways to minimize traffic congestion, speed up journeys, improve safety, and reduce the amount of money spent on infrastructure.

In Stockholm, a city with many bridges and tunnels, we’re working with KTH Royal Institute of Technology to reduce the number of tunnel closures on the Södra Länken, the second longest urban motorway tunnel in Europe, to improve travel times for citizens.

In the Netherlands, we’re working with the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) to see whether it’s possible to reduce their reliance on expensive physical road sensors for information about traffic flows. The aim is to reduce infrastructure costs without compromising on traffic safety. We’re also working with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions on related questions.

We’re also working with major research institutions and transportation planning groups in Denmark (the Technical University of Denmark) and in the US (the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University Wagner School of Public Service, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy).



We only share aggregate, anonymized snapshots of historical traffic statistics with these institutions, including average traffic speed, relative traffic volumes, and traffic trajectory patterns. These statistics are derived from aggregate Location History data that our users have proactively chosen to share with us (and which they can switch off again at any time via My Account). This is the same data we use in Google Now to notify users of disruptions to their commute due to traffic, and tell them about the best time to visit their favourite museum in Google Maps.

To ensure that no individual user’s journey can be identified, we only share representative models of aggregate data employing a technique called differential privacy, which intentionally adds “noise” to the data in a way that maintains both users' privacy and the data's accuracy. The technique has also been successfully tried and tested in Chrome.

It's still early days, but preliminary results have been positive. In the Netherlands, TNO ran tests on a 10km stretch of highway that regularly faces traffic jams, using our anonymized traffic statistics instead of physical road sensors. They found that they could still accurately detect traffic jams at the right moment and at the correct location on the road without the sensors, potentially saving 50K Euro per year if the redundant sensors were removed. Other pilots are starting to show similarly positive results.

We’re excited by the promise that these initial projects have shown in meeting the challenges of urban mobility, and today, we’re pleased to announce that we’re expanding our pilot programme. We’re seeking to build partnerships with cities and research institutions to evaluate ideas and run experiments, ultimately improving urban mobility for everyone. If you’re working on a project addressing congestion, pollution, safety and similar mobility challenges, and are interested in working with us, please get in touch.

Posted by Andrew Eland, Engineering Director

Investing In Growth For Dutch Businesses Online

Last February, we invited entrepreneurs from across Europe, including the Netherlands, to celebrate their online success stories in Brussels. At the same time we made a commitment: to train 1 million Europeans in crucial digital skills by the end of 2016. Today we've begun to put those plans into action in the Netherlands with the launch of the Digitale Werkplaats (Digital Garage) in the city of Eindhoven, a two day training programme. In the Netherlands, more than 40% of the labor market is made up of small business owners and independent contractors.

Why Eindhoven? Eindhoven is often called the digital capital of the Netherlands, and the region is rich with digital startups that were born there and have grown to international successes. Companies like 3D printing marketplace Shapeways, and Study Portals, which connects students to international travel opportunities, and which are familiar with the ways that the web can accelerate a business. With the Digitale Werkplaats we aim to bring the opportunity to use the Internet as a growth engine to the small businesses and independents of the region. And there’s plenty of growth opportunity--in Eindhoven 80% of small businesses have fewer than 20 employees.

We’re not alone in these efforts. All across the country governments and SMB organizations are recognizing the need for digital skills--from online marketing to general proficiency in web tools-- in achieving growth. We’re keen to be playing our part. It's simple: SMEs throughout the country get training in the essential digital skills they need to grow online. We'll partner with Dutch microfinance organization Qredits, and both small business associations and local governments to achieve big results: our goal is to train 30,000 people in the Netherlands by the end of 2016 through in-person events like this week's and online trainings.

Dutch minister Henk Kamp together with a number of Dutch SMEs

This morning in Eindhoven the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Henk Kamp said: "The Netherlands is one of the most innovative countries in the world, in part because of its strong tech infrastructure. To ensure our country remains competitive, the skills needed for using technology have become indispensable for SMEs. These entrepreneurs create a lot of new jobs and play an important role when it comes to developing products and services. By helping SMEs to become better at using technology, we're building a stronger fundament for economic growth, which leads to more jobs. Google's initiative deserves praise, because it enables this development."

Elwin Groenevelt, the general manager of Qredits Microfinance, explained in Eindhoven that they have created 10,000 jobs in the past five years by financing Dutch 7,000 entrepreneurs. By partnering with Google, giving workshops on the topic of microfinance, they want to offer even more opportunities to ambitious entrepreneurs to achieve their growth objectives.

There are many Dutch entrepreneurs who have achieved growth through their smart use of the Internet, and we’re excited to meet thousands more over the next year. What’s inspired us is that these business owners and independents come from all different backgrounds and levels of tech-savvy -- three that we’ve met in Eindhoven are husband and wife pair Henk Jan Bruil & Irene, who aspire to scale their new soup and salad bar, PIT, nationally; Wendy Govers of Trimsalon Pet’s Choice, who has seen her clientele of dogs and cats grow from 20 to over 500, and Marie-Louise Holl of Holl Klompen, whose 40+ year souvenir business ships “Made in Holland” souvenirs all over the world thanks to the reach of the web. 

See here for more Dutch success stories.

Posted by: Pim van der Feltz, country director Google Netherlands