100 years of celebrating women

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

As today’s doodle shows, we’re very excited to celebrate the centenary of International Women’s Day. Late last month we teamed up with Women for Women International to announce the Join me on the Bridge campaign, a celebration of the achievements of women taking place on bridges around the world. Since then almost 300 bridge events in more than 50 countries have been added to the map. I’ve found it inspiring to watch all of those little red pins pop up, knowing that each of them represents a group of women and their supporters coming together to let the world know how far we’ve come.

In addition to the flagship events happening throughout the day on the Brooklyn Bridge (New York), the Millennium Bridge (London) and the Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco), women and men are gathering in places as far-flung as Brussels, Belgium; Kabul, Afghanistan; La Paz, Bolivia; and Sydney, Australia.

It’s not too late to join the celebrations and show your support — simply find an event on the map. Remember to “check in” to the event on the map before the end of the day, and if you have photos or videos of an event, it’s easy to share them with the world: just click on the pin for the event you attended (or want to support virtually) and start uploading.

We hope you’ll also consider donating to one of the more than 40 incredible women’s organizations participating in our celebration. You can learn more and make a donation at google.com/iwd2011.

Plus, when you use Google Maps on March 8, you’ll notice that Pegman, Street View’s trusted guide, has a new friend. He invited his colleague Pegwoman to join him on the map today to celebrate International Women’s Day!

Posted by Claire Hughes Johnson, VP, Global Online Sales, and Chair, Google Women’s Professional Community

The freedom to be who you want to be...

Cross-posted from the Google Public Policy Blog

Peter Steiner’s iconic “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon may have been drawn in jest - but his point was deadly serious, as recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have shown. In reality, as the web has developed - with users anywhere able to post a blog, share photos with friends and family or “broadcast” events they witness online - the issue of identity has become increasingly important.

So we’ve been thinking about the different ways people choose to identify themselves (or not) when they’re using Google - in particular how identification can be helpful or even necessary for certain services, while optional or unnecessary for others. Attribution can be very important, but pseudonyms and anonymity are also an established part of many cultures - for good reason.

When it comes to Google services, we support three types of use: unidentified, pseudonymous and identified. And each mode has its own particular user benefits.

• Unidentified. Sometimes you want to use the web without having your online activity tied to your identity, or even a pseudonym—for example, when you’re researching a medical condition or searching for that perfect gift for a special someone. When you’re not logged into your Google Account (or if you never signed up for one), that’s how you’ll be using our services. While we need to keep information like IP addresses and cookies to provide the service, we don’t link that information to an individual account when you are logged out.

• Pseudonymous. Using a pseudonym has been one of the great benefits of the Internet, because it has enabled people to express themselves freely—they may be in physical danger, looking for help, or have a condition they don’t want people to know about. People in these circumstances may need a consistent identity, but one that is not linked to their offline self. You can use pseudonyms to upload videos in YouTube or post to Blogger.

• Identified. There are many times you want to share information with people and have them know who you really are. Some products such as Google Checkout rely on this type of identity assurance and require that you identify yourself to use the service. There may be other times when it’s more desirable to be identified than not, for example if you want to be part of a community action project you may ask, “How do I know these other people I see online really are community members?”

Equally as important as giving users the freedom to be who they want to be is ensuring they know exactly what mode they’re in when using Google’s services. So recently we updated the top navigation bar on many of our Google services to make this even clearer. In the upper right hand corner of these Google pages, you will see an indicator of which account, if any, you are signed into.

We’re also looking at other ways to make this more transparent for users. While some of our products will be better suited to just one or two of those modes, depending on what they’re designed to do, we believe all three modes have a home at Google.

Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering

Investing in news innovation in Europe

Journalism is changing fast. And as news businesses experiment with new ways of creating and delivering journalism in the digital age, Google is keen to play its part on the technology side. Over the last year, we’ve been partnering with publishers around the world to develop technological solutions - including, most recently, One Pass - to find new and engaging ways of presenting stories online and to generate greater revenues.

As well as our focus on technological experimentation, we’re also investing at the grassroots level. Last October we announced that we would be giving $5m in grants to non-profit organisations working on developing new approaches to journalism. At that time, we allocated around 40% of the total fund to the Knight Foundation in the US.

Today, we awarded a $2.7 million grant to the International Press Institute, based in Vienna, which will be used to sponsor the IPI News Innovation Contest. The contest seeks to find and fund breakthrough ideas that will have a lasting impact on the future of digital news in communities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Grants will be awarded to both non-profit and for-profit organisations working on digital journalism initiatives, including open-source and mobile technology projects created by or for journalists and distributed in the public interest. From today until June 1st, the IPI will invite proposals from around the region for projects devoted to online innovation in journalism, new economic models for news and training in digital reporting.

The IPI has a long tradition of working on innovation in journalism, freedom of expression and other important issues. We’re sure they’ll be able to find and advance some great digital journalism projects over the next couple of years - and we encourage anyone with innovative ideas, large or small, to apply for a grant from the IPI. In the meantime, we’ll continue to work with the news industry to help develop new projects, products and experiments that make it possible for journalism to thrive online.

Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations, Google EMEA

Data-driven policy-making

Everyone loves a good statistic. And if you’re a policymaker, parliamentary assistant or academic, statistics - vital for evidence-based policy-making - are your bread and butter.

Over the last two years, we’ve made it easier to find, explore and understand more than 27 datasets through search and via clear, colourful visualisations using the Google Public Data Explorer. You can find and analyse over 300 data metrics provided by public institutions such as Eurostat (eg: EU inflation rates), the OECD (labour productivity), the IMF (government debt levels), UNECE (gender balance in parliaments) and many others.

Yesterday, we made the Public Data Explorer even more useful by enabling you to visualise your data. If your organisation produces statistical reports on its key performance indicators, tracks financial or societal trends or conducts large-scale surveys, you can now benefit from the same sort of powerful, animated visualisations that we provide today with our existing datasets.

To make this possible, we’ve developed a new data format that makes visualisation easy, and have provided an interface for anyone to upload their datasets. Once imported, a dataset can be visualized in the Public Data Explorer, embedded in external websites, and shared with others. This does of course require some technical skills, but we’ve built upon existing open standards and a simple user interface to make things as easy as possible.



Our hope is that even more useful statistics can come to life through Public Data Explorer visualisations - and that we can help you realise the value of data in making informed, data-driven decisions.

Posted by Omar Benjelloun, Technical Lead, Google Public Data Team

A simple way for publishers to manage paid access online

At Humboldt University in Berlin today, Eric Schmidt announced Google One Pass, a service that lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content. With Google One Pass, publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers and give readers access to digital content across websites and mobile apps.

Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. And readers don’t have to re-subscribe in order to access their content on new devices.

With One Pass, publishers can customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them—offering subscriptions, metered access, ‘freemium’ content or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps. The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content. We take care of the rest, including payments technology handled via Google Checkout.

Our goal is to provide an open and flexible platform that furthers our commitment to support publishers, journalism and access to quality content. Like First Click Free, Fast Flip and Living Stories, this is another initiative developed to enable publishers to promote and distribute digital content.

German publishers Axel Springer AG, Focus Online (Tomorrow Focus) and Stern.de joined Eric at Humboldt University today as some of our first One Pass partners. Other publishers already signed up include La Presse, Media General, Bonnier’s Popular Science, Prisa and Rust Communications.

Google One Pass is currently available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. We hope to develop further partnerships with publishers in coming months and look forward to extending One Pass to other countries too. For more information, please take a look at the One Pass website.

Posted by Lee Shirani, director, business product management, Google Commerce

Giving young mathematicians the chance to shine

Maths is very important to Google. It’s the basis of everything we do: from the algorithms that deliver answers to your search queries, to the way in which your Gmails are grouped in conversations, to the technology advances which are enabling us to develop driverless cars. It’s so important to us, that our founders named the company after a very large number - a Googol.

Maths is given a lot of importance by policy makers too - its contribution to creativity and innovation was celebrated in some of the events organised by the European Union back in 2009. And in December last year, the latest OECD PISA report and league tables highlighted how well (or not) Europe’s various national education systems are performing in the core educational fields of reading, mathematics and science.

Over the last few months, our attention’s been drawn to another mathematical league table - the one that tracks the winners of the International Mathematical Olympiad, first held in Romania in 1959. The IMO is the world championship of secondary school mathematics, designed to test ingenuity and insight and tax the sharpest minds in the world.

Google has always encouraged and supported excellence in the sciences, whether in its own staff, or in its work with academics around the world. And so yesterday, together with the Advisory Board of the International Mathematical Olympiad, we were proud to announce that we are making a gift of one million euros to the organisation to help cover the costs of the next five global events (2011-15).

From left to right: Peter Barron (Google), Robbert Dijkgraaf (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chair of the IMO 2011 Foundation) and Geoff Smith (University of Bath, UK and member of the IMO Advisory Board)

We’re delighted that we can help the IMO bring young mathematicians from around the world together to celebrate a shared passion, to push themselves and to compete to be the best in the world. This year’s event takes place in Amsterdam in July and we’ll be watching out for the results with particular interest.

And I don’t doubt that quite a few Googlers will also spend some time in coming months trying solve the sort of mathematical challenges that will be put to the world’s young Maths Olympians.

Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of Public Policy, Google (BSc Maths)

Google@Thought: exploring happiness

Brussels is a very busy place. Every week, hundreds of meetings and events take place across the city, hosted by officials, politicians and lobbyists from every part of Europe. Understandably, it’s all too easy to get “event fatigue” in this town.

Which is why - every once in a while - we like to take a break from talking about the policy issues of the day and organise a Google@Thought seminar. We invite speakers who delight in the exploration of ideas and concepts that reach far beyond the Brussels bubble, and enjoy a relaxed dinner with our guests.

Just before Christmas we hosted Professor Ruut Veenhoven, director of the World Database of Happiness, founding editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies and Emeritus Professor of 'social conditions for human happiness' at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Professor Veenhoven’s specialism, the measurement of happiness, is a discipline that is rapidly gaining interest amongst sociologists, psychologists, economists, and most recently, politicians in France and in the UK.

“Happy people live longer”, explains Professor Veenhoven, “and they really live longer. The effect of being happy or not on how you live is comparable to smoking or not. Basically, if you feel happy it is because your needs are gratified, as an organism you are thriving.” And happy people are good for society. They are likely to be more more healthy and active, and more likely to be politically engaged.

You can explore Professor Veenhoven’s research yourself at the World Database of Happiness - and enjoy the highlights of Professor Veenhoven’s Google@Thought seminar in the below YouTube video.



Posted by Angela Steen, Policy Analyst