Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Baltic Way

Twenty-five years ago, on this week, two million people in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined hands to form a human chain for freedom. We’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Baltic Way with a customized logo our 'doodles made specially for the three countries.



The Baltic Way was a remarkable non-violent protest. It brought together almost a third of the three Baltic nations population seeking independence. ’The demonstrators created a 600km long human chain, starting from Tallinn in Estonia, going through Riga in Latvia and finishing in Vilnius in Lithuania.



Baltic Googlers themselves came up with the idea for the Baltic Way doodle. Many have very vivid and strong memories about the Baltic Way. Although Vytautas was only eight years old, he remembers his grandparents bringing him to the human chain near Vilnius Cathedral. "I joined hands with my grandma and a stranger. The real magic moment for me was when the light airplanes flew over the heads and dispersed a huge cloud of flowers - way better than any firework I've seen before! I'm proud I can say "I was also part of it!”

In Latvia, Laura remembers people singing songs, and "many of them, including me and my parents, were crying - all for the freedom of Baltics. Regimantas was six years old and still remembers how "we had to wait for instructions through an old radio on when we should all stand together, holding each other hand.” Gabriele says her parents were in Germany. During the event, they stopped on a freeway near Berlin -and joined their hands and sang the national anthem of Lithuania. "Germans stopped their cars to find out what was happening and joined hands together once they got to know about the Baltic Way. It was a unique sense of brotherhood of nations.”

Many of our Baltic team work from our European headquarters in Dublin. They met up this week to share and enjoy songs, dance performances, sport games and just have a good time together. Together with the Lord Mayor of Dublin and diplomatic and community representatives, they joined hands with participants to form a human chain through the heart of Dublin.

Posted by Google Baltics team

Become a cartographer: help us improve Europe's maps

Maps are no longer static paper records, but living, breathing representations of our world. Places around us are constantly changing — while mountains don’t move, roads are rerouted, homes are built, shops open and close. Many times, the best way to keep Google Maps fresh and up to date is by allowing anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection to contribute to the map using their knowledge of the areas they know best. So we’re delighted that Google Map Maker is now available for budding cartographers to edit our maps of Greece, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

With Map Maker, everyone can contribute your local expertise to make an even more comprehensive, useful and interesting map. Begin in your town or village and try adding the outlines or ‘footprints’ of local shops, restaurants and other businesses. Then help enrich the maps of national parks, or add leisure facilities and historic landmarks. If you enjoy the great outdoors, try adding campsites, beautiful beaches or your favorite cycling paths.



Whether you add a biking route through Tallinn or a landmark in Vilnius, each improvement to the map will help locals and tourists alike better understand the area and discover new things to do. Once approved, your contributions will appear on Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Maps for mobile.

The map of Korčula, Croatia, often cited as the birthplace of Marco Polo, before and after Map Maker edits

To get started, visit our Google Map Maker community forum and see the Help Centre for tips and tricks, or watch mapping in real-time with Map Maker Pulse. Happy mapping!

Posted by Nicole Drobeck, Map Maker Community Manager

Promoting transparency around Europe

When eight technology companies presented a plan this month to reform government surveillance, a key request concerned transparency. At Google, we were the first company to publish a transparency report detailing the requests we receive from governments around the world to bring down content or hand over information on users.

But Google’s report represents only a narrow snapshot. It is limited to a single company. Imagine instead if all the requests for information on Internet users and for takedowns of web content in a country could be published. This would give a much more effective picture of the state of Internet freedom. As the year draws to a close, we’re happy to report that Panoptykon, a Polish NGO, published this month a preliminary Internet transparency report for Poland and Fores, a Stockholm-based think tank, issued a study in Sweden.

In Poland and Sweden, we helped initiate these transparency efforts and supported them financially. NGOs in six other European countries are working on national transparency reports. Our Estonian-supported transparency coalition already published a report last spring. In addition, university researchers in Hong Kong moved ahead over the summer with their own report. In Strasbourg, the Council of Europe recently held an important conference on the subject and hopefully will move ahead to present a series of recommendations on transparency for its 47 members.

Each transparency campaign takes a different approach - we hope this process of experimentation will help all of us learn. The Estonian effort, titled Project 451, focuses on content removals, not government surveillance, because the authors believe this is the most important issue in their country. The name of Project “451″ refers to HTTP Status Code 451, defined as “unavailable for legal reasons” and the report found that many web platforms were taking legal content down due to fears of legal liability.

The new Polish and Swedish reports attempt to shed light on government requests for information on users. Fores contacted 339 Swedish authorities and found that more than a third had requested data about users or takedowns of user-uploaded content. Panoptykon uncovered that Polish telcos received 1.76 million requests for user information in 2012, while Internet companies polled received approximately 7,500. In addition, Panoptykon discovered that many Polish government requests for information on users were based on a flawed or unclear legal basis.

Admittedly, both the Swedish and Polish reports remain incomplete. Not all Internet companies participated. Much relevant data must be missing. Like with our own Google report, we hope to continue filling in the holes in the future. Our aim is to see this campaign gather momentum because the bottom line is transparency is essential to a debate over government surveillance powers.

Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Estonia earns top e-freedom award

Freedom House launched its the 2012 Freedom on the Net report in Brussels this week, an appropriate moment given the rising global debate about free expression sparked by a YouTube video that ridicules Islam. The report makes for chilling reading. Online censorship is growing and attacks on bloggers and online critics are mounting. In 19 out of 47 countries Freedom House examined, “restrictions on Internet freedom in many countries have continued to grow.”



Amid the alarming news, an impressive beacon of freedom stood out - Estonia. The Baltic nation ranked first in Freedom House’s rankings. Thanks to a high internet penetration rate and widespread e-commerce and e-government services embedded into the daily lives of individuals and organizations, Estonia has become a model for free internet access as a development engine for society,” reads the report. Estonia has used the net to solidify its freedom from the Soviet Union and ’as a key to economic growth and invested heavily in their development,” reads the report.

Freedom House ranks countries’ “Internet Freedom Status” in three main ways: obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of users’ rights. It also factors in tertiary factors, including internet penetration and blogger arrests. Estonia got high marks in almost every category. Other top scorers included the United States, Germany, and Australia.

Google helped sponsor the report. We hosted its Washington launch, which featured Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. In Brussels, European Parliamentarian Marietje Schaake, the rapporteur on digital freedom, used the occasion to call on Europe to step up its defense of Internet liberties, in particular, by heading off attempts by governments to exert control through the International Telecommunications Union.

Posted by Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Estonian President debates Internet Freedom at Big Tent

Around the world, Internet freedom is under threat. According to the Open Net Initiative, more than 620 million Internet users - 31% of the world’s total Internet users - live in countries where there is substantial or pervasive filtering of online content.

On Monday 18 June, we’ll be hosting a Big Tent on the Internet and free expression at the Mansion House in Dublin, as part of the official programme of Ireland’s Presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

This event follows the thought-provoking Big Tent we held in The Hague last November, at which U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave the keynote speech.

Monday’s Dublin Big Tent features another special guest: President Toomas Ilves of Estonia, pictured at left. Years after earning its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, his country fought off a massive cyber attack. Instead of cracking down on the Internet, Estonia emerged determined to keep it open and free.

We’ll also be hearing from one of the fathers of the Internet, Vint Cerf; the U.S. Department of State’s Innovation Advisor Alec Ross; and the author of the acclaimed book War Horse, Michael Morpurgo, who will offer a lyrical take on free expression in the modern world.

By coincidence, Myanmar’s recently freed Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Sui Kuy will also be in the Irish capital on Monday evening to receive an Amnesty International award. As her experience demonstrates, freedom can never be taken for granted. We must remain vigilant in its defence.

Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Launching Street View in e-Estonia

Estonia is an e-leader. The Baltic nation boasts one of the world’s highest broadband penetration rates and has carved out a pioneering role in promoting e-government and online freedom. About 94 per cent of tax returns last year were made online. Estonians vote on their laptops and sign legal documents on a smartphone. Cabinet meetings are paperless. It’s all quite impressive in a country where, only two decades ago population, it was difficult to obtain a phone line.

Most important, Estonians know firsthand about the need to keep networks open. The country suffered a massive cyberattack three years ago. Instead of imposing draconian plans to control the net, however, its reaction has been to embrace the Internet has become a symbol of progress and freedom.

For all these reasons, we take particular pleasure today to announce the launch of our popular Google Maps Street View feature in Estonia. From now on, anyone, anywhere, will, with the click of a computer mouse, be able to stroll in the cobbled medieval streets of of the capital Tallinn, the university town of Tartu, the colorful wooden houses of Pärnu. Or enjoy Estonia’s pristine nature, strolling down the sandy white beaches of the country’s Baltic coast, deep forests, picturesque lakes and rivers, mysterious swamps and rich flora and fauna.


Grotere kaart weergeven

Our users have told us that this ability to view a location as if they were actually there helps them find information about the places they live and visit. Street View permits us to preview holiday accommodation and look at nearby amenities such as parks, roads, bus stops, shopping areas and parking when planning your move. Can't remember the name of that amazing restaurant or clothes store you visited a few months ago? Walk the streets and find it. And then use the driving directions in Google Maps, with Street View images of intersections and landmarks, to get there.


Grotere kaart weergeven

Street View is educational. It encourages study of the geography, vegetation and landscape of different parts of the world. Teachers can incorporate Street View, Google Maps and Google Earth into geography or history lesson plans or arrange a virtual field trips. StreetView also promotes business, allowing potential customers to view your store or office, and find out how to get there.

We’re delighted to add Estonia to our Street View family and we look forward to working with Estonians as they pursue their bright e-future.

Posted by Simon Meehan, Senior Policy Analyst, Southern and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa