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Helping for the long term in Flint, Michigan

Google Blogs — Tue, 03 May 2016 10:00:00 +0000

Access to clean drinking water is a concern all over the world, but in the United States it’s often a foregone conclusion. That is not the case recently for the residents of Flint, Michigan, many of whom we now know have been exposed to lead in their tap water. It’s a crisis, one to which the American people readily responded by donating water and resources to help alleviate the immediate pain. But the problem won’t go away quickly, and understanding its extent is both challenging and an absolute necessity. Today, Google.org is providing $250,000 to partners in the Flint community to help, with a special focus on a technical solution for understanding and resolving the crisis for the long term.

First, we’re making a $150,000 grant to the University of Michigan-Flint to enable the University of Michigan-Flint to develop a comprehensive data platform that will assist government and community leaders in making more informed decisions about the crisis and providing critical information to citizens. The funds will support student researchers at the University of Michigan, Flint and Ann Arbor campuses, to do this work under the leadership of Professors Mark Allison (Flint) and Jake Abernathy (Ann Arbor) to answer key questions about the crisis and response, such as the probability of lead levels before they are tested. The team plans to develop a platform and app that visualizes the data and also provides the ability for citizens to seek out and request key services, such as reporting concerns about water and requesting testing kits. Google volunteers will provide guidance and mentoring on the technology and product design.

We’re also making a $100,000 donation to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint for the Flint Child Health & Development Fund. The Flint Child Health & Development Fund was founded to ensure the long-term health of Flint families, especially newborns to children 6 years old—the group most vulnerable to developmental issues from lead. The Fund is a supplemental resource to state and federal funding and gives grants for childcare-related initiatives such as early childhood education, student support services, continuous access to a pediatric medical home, access to infant and child behavioral health services, and research.

With Google offices in Ann Arbor and Birmingham, Flint and its residents are also our neighbors. In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, a group of 20 Google volunteers went to Flint and volunteered at the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, where they helped with distributing bottled water and food in the greater Flint area. Around $35,000 has been donated through employees and Google's gift match program to the United Way of Genesee County and the Flint Water Fund to aid in the crisis, and our employee groups, like the Black Googler Network, continue to explore more ways to help.

As a native Michigander, I'm proud that we can help our neighbors in Flint. We hope we can support a resolution to this crisis and assist the residents of Flint in getting the resources they need and deserve, both for the short and long term.

Posted by Mike Miller, Head of Google Michigan

Creating a world that works for everyone with Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities

Google Blogs — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 07:01:00 +0000

More than a billion people have a disability. And regardless of the country or community they live in, the gaps in opportunity for people with disabilities are striking: One in three people with a disability lives in poverty. In places like the United States, 50 to 70 percent of people with disabilities are unemployed; in developing countries that number increases to 80 to 90 percent. And only 10 percent of people with disabilities in developing countries have access to the assistive devices they need.

Last spring, Google.org kicked off the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities, an open call to global nonprofits who are building transformative technologies for the billion people around the world with disabilities. We’ve been amazed by the ideas we’ve received, coming from 1,000+ organizations spanning 88 countries. We’ve shared a handful of the organizations we’re supporting already—and today we’re excited to share the full list of 30 winners.

The organizations we’re supporting all have big ideas for how technology can help create new solutions, and each of their ideas has the potential to scale. Each organization has also committed to open sourcing their technology—which helps encourage and speed up innovation in a sector that has historically been siloed. Meet some of our incredible grantees below, and learn more about all 30 organizations working to improve mobility, communication, and independence for people living with disabilities at g.co/disabilities.

The Center for Discovery, $1.125 million Google.org grant
Power wheelchairs help provide greater independence to people with mobility limitations—allowing them to get around without a caregiver, or travel longer distances. But power chairs are expensive and often not covered by insurance, leaving many people limited to manual wheelchairs.

With their Google.org grant, the Center for Discovery will continue developing an open source power add-on device, the indieGo, which quickly converts any manual wheelchair into a power chair. The power add-on will provide the mobility and freedom of a power chair for around one-seventh the average cost, and will allow people who mainly use a manual wheelchair to have the option of using power when they need it. The device design will be open sourced to increase its reach—potentially improving mobility for hundreds of thousands of people.

A young man using the indieGo to greet friends.

Perkins School for the Blind, $750,000 Google.org grant
Turn-by-turn GPS navigation allows people with visual impairments to get around, but once they get in vicinity of their destination, they often struggle to find specific locations like bus stops or building entrances that GPS isn’t precise enough to identify. (This is often called the “last 50 feet problem.”) Lacking the detailed information they need to find specific new places, people tend to limit themselves to familiar routes, leading to a less independent lifestyle.

With the support of Google.org, Perkins School for the Blind is building tools to crowdsource data from people with sight to help people navigate the last 50 feet. Using an app, people will log navigation clues in a standard format, which will be used to create directions that lead vision-impaired people precisely to their intended destination. Perkins School for the Blind is collaborating with transit authorities who will provide access to transportation data and support Perkin’s mission of making public transportation accessible to everyone.

Perkins School for the Blind employee, Joann Becker, travels by bus. It can be hard for people with visual impairments to locate the exact location of bus stops and other landmarks.

Miraclefeet, $1 million Google.org grant
An estimated 1 million children currently live with untreated clubfoot, a lifelong disability that often leads to isolation, limited access to education, and poverty. Clubfoot can be treated without surgery, but treatment practices are not widely used in many countries around the world.

Miraclefeet partners with local healthcare providers to increase access to proper treatment for children born with clubfoot. They will use Google.org support to offer support to families via SMS, monitor patient progress through updated software, and provide extensive online training to local clinicians. To date, Miraclefeet has helped facilitate treatment for more than 13,000 children in 13 different countries; this effort will help them significantly scale up their work to reach thousands more.

Miraclefeet helps partners use a simple, affordable brace as part of the clubfoot treatment. Here, a doctor in India shows a mother how to use the miraclefeet brace.

Ezer Mizion and Click2Speak, $400,000 Google.org grant
People with high cognitive function but impaired motor skills often have a hard time communicating—both speaking or using standard keyboards to type. Augmentative and alternative communication devices (AAC) help people more easily communicate, but are often unaffordable and restricted to specific platforms or inputs. Without an AAC, people may have difficulty maintaining personal relationships and professional productivity.

Ezer Mizion is working with Click2Speak to build an affordable, flexible, and customizable on-screen keyboard that allows people to type without use of their hands. With the grant from Google.org, Ezer Mizion and Click2Speak will gather more user feedback to improve the technology, including support for additional languages, operating systems, and different devices like switches, joysticks, or eye-tracking devices.

A young girl learns to use the Click2Speak on-screen keyboard with a joystick controller.

From employment to education, communication to mobility, each of our grantees is pushing innovation for people with disabilities forward. In addition to these grants, we’re always working to make our own technology more accessible, and yesterday we shared some of the latest on this front, including voice typing in Google Docs and a new tool that helps Android developers build more accessible apps. With all these efforts, our aim to create a world that works for everyone.

Posted by Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink, Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities Project Lead for Google.org

Providing support to combat Zika in Brazil and beyond

Google Blogs — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 08:01:00 +0000

The recent Zika virus outbreak has caused concern around the world. We’ve seen more than a 3,000 percent increase in global search interest since November, and last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency. The possible correlation with Zika, microcephaly and other birth defects is particularly alarming.

But unlike many other global pandemics, the spread of Zika has been harder to identify, map and contain. It’s believed that 4 in 5 people with the virus don’t show any symptoms, and the primary transmitter for the disease, the Aedes mosquito species, is both widespread and challenging to eliminate. That means that fighting Zika requires raising awareness on how people can protect themselves, as well as supporting organizations who can help drive the development of rapid diagnostics and vaccines. We also have to find better ways to visualize the threat so that public health officials and NGO’s can support communities at risk.

As a company whose mission is helping people find information, with a lot of experience in analyzing large sets of data, we’re in a good position to help—at scale and at speed. So today we have Google engineers working with UNICEF to analyze data to determine how to map and anticipate the virus. We’ve also made some updates to our products to make Zika information more accessible, and we’re providing UNICEF with a $1 million grant to help their efforts on the ground.

Mapping information to help with prevention
A volunteer team of Google engineers, designers, and data scientists is helping UNICEF build a platform to process data from different sources (i.e., weather and travel patterns) in order to visualize potential outbreaks. Ultimately, the goal of this open source platform is to identify the risk of Zika transmission for different regions and help UNICEF, governments and NGO’s decide how and where to focus their time and resources. This set of tools is being prototyped for the Zika response, but will also be applicable to future emergencies.

Google software engineers John Li and Zora Tung with UNICEF research scientist Manuel Garcia Herranz and UX designer Tanya Bhandari working on the open source data platform.

Supporting UNICEF’s efforts to combat Zika
Our $1 million grant will be used by UNICEF to raise widespread awareness, reduce mosquito populations, support the development of diagnostics and vaccines, and work with communities and governments to prevent Zika transmission. The organization expects to reach 200 million affected or vulnerable people in Brazil and throughout Latin America with these efforts.

© UNICEF/Ueslei Marcelino2016. A mother holds her 4-month old baby born with microcephaly in Recife, Brazil. "When I left the hospital, they already had another 7 children with the same situation," she shared with UNICEF.

We’ve also launched a matching campaign for Google employees, aimed at providing an additional $500,000 to UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to support their work on the ground.

Making Zika virus information accessible
We already include robust information for 900+ health conditions directly on Search for people in the U.S. We’ve now also added extensive information about Zika globally in 16 languages, with an overview of the virus, symptom information, and Public Health Alerts from that can be updated with new information as it becomes available.

We’re also working with popular YouTube creators across Latin America, including Sesame Street and Brazilian physician Drauzio Varella, to raise awareness about Zika prevention via their channels.

We hope these efforts are helpful in fighting this new public health emergency, and we will continue to do our part to help combat this outbreak.

And if you’re curious about what that 3,000 percent search increase looks like, take a look:

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director, Google.org

Strengthening our commitment to racial justice

Google Blogs — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 17:00:00 +0000

I started working with Dr. Carl Mack when I took an engineering internship in my hometown of Seattle. But it wasn’t long before my internship took me in a completely different direction. The city was on high alert in the wake of racial discrimination and violence, and Dr. Mack was the VP of the city’s NAACP chapter. At his side, I was soon participating in protests and closed door meetings with city leaders—opening my eyes to non-technical solutions, and setting me off on a path that would eventually lead me to Google.org, where today I lead giving projects focused on the Bay Area and on racial justice.

More recently, incidences of racial violence have again dominated our headlines, with the killing of young men like Tamir Rice and Jordan Davis, the deaths of Michael Brown and Sandra Bland, and countless other acts of injustice. And it isn’t just heartbreaking individual stories. The data is troubling: African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. An estimated 40 percent of all students expelled from U.S. schools are black, and 30 percent are Latino. Of course, Google and our own industry need to do more to promote equality and opportunities for all.

Social innovators can help us move closer to our ideals of equality and justice. That’s why last year, Google.org launched a new, dedicated effort to support leaders who are doing critical work to end mass incarceration and combat endemic educational inequality for black and brown students. We announced $2.35 million in grants to support leaders like #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Patrisse Cullors; Chris Chatmon, who leads Oakland's African American Male Achievement Initiative; and Raj Jayadev, who founded the criminal justice reform organization Silicon Valley De-Bug.

Patrisse Cullors, Co-Founder of #BlackLivesMatter, at the Google.org screening of 3 ½ Minutes and 10 bullets, Castro Theatre in San Francisco, Calif. on November 3, 2015.

Today, I'm excited to continue that momentum with the addition of four more organizations in this space, totalling $3 million in new grants. To help eliminate racial bias within our educational systems, we’re supporting San Francisco’s My Brother and Sister's Keeper (MBSK) program, Oakland’s Roses in Concrete Community School, and the tech-enabled college success startup, Beyond12. We're also supporting Bryan Stevenson and the national Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which is focused on countering deep-seated bias against people of color in our communities and institutions. In addition to the grant, we’re committed to working with EJI to bring its public education work online so that millions more can experience it.

From left to right: David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Alphabet; Bryan Stevenson, Founder and CEO, Equal Justice Initiative; Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Founder, Roses in Concrete Community School, Oakland; Landon Dickey, Special Assistant for African American Achievement & Leadership, San Francisco Unified School District; Alexandra Bernadotte, Founder and CEO, Beyond 12; Richard Carranza, Superintendent, San Francisco Unified School District; and Justin Steele, Principal, Google.org. Photo credit: 510Media.

Each of these organizations and their leaders have shown a deep, fundamental understanding of racial injustice and are actively finding ways to rid our systems of social, educational and economic exclusion. We as a company are proud to support them.

Posted by Justin Steele, Principal, Google.org

On IDPD, working toward a more accessible and inclusive world

Google Blogs — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 08:00:00 +0000

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 favorite 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.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org

Big ideas for an even better Bay Area

Google Blogs — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:01:00 +0000

Converting a liquor store into a community-based learning and tutoring center. Providing millions of dollars of 0% interest loans to small businesses. Breaking the poverty- to-prison cycle by building a residential alternative to prison for young adults. This is just a sampling of the big ideas that local nonprofits submitted for our second annual Google Impact Challenge: Bay Area.

Today, after reviewing hundreds of submissions, we’re unveiling 10 finalists chosen together with our panel of advisors—a group that includes the San Francisco Chronicle’s Editor-in-Chief Audrey Cooper, The Golden State Warriors’ Harrison Barnes, The San Francisco Giants’ Hunter Pence, and CEO of the San Francisco Foundation, Fred Blackwell.

Representing San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Clara, San Mateo and more, these organizations span the Bay Area. Learn more about these groups and their ideas for change:

This year, finding and funding new ideas will be just one part of the Google Impact Challenge: Bay Area. We are also reinvesting in a few of our 2014 finalists. The Ella Baker Center, Beyond12, Lava Mae, and Bay Area Community Resources in collaboration with Instituto Familiar de la Raza all were funded last year, and will receive between $250,000 and $1,000,000 in additional funding this year. We’re very pleased to continue supporting organizations focused on homelessness, youth employment, and racial justice—big problems that Google.org works to tackle with local organizations, year-round.

What happens next is in your hands! Anyone can vote for the new projects they think will have the most impact on the Bay Area. Again, the top four will receive $500,000 in grant funding, the remaining six will get $250,000 each. 15 additional organizations will each receive $100,000 and all nonprofits will be connected with Googler volunteers and coworking space in San Francisco. We’ll announce winners on October 21.

To vote, visit g.co/bayareachallenge or check out one of our voting stations across the Bay Area.

When creative, socially-conscious minds and the Bay Area’s innovative spirit join forces, big things can happen. Congratulations to all finalists, and best of luck the rest of the way!

Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, Alphabet

Matching your donation to humanitarian relief for refugees and migrants

Google Blogs — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 21:03:00 +0000

My name is Rita Masoud and I am a refugee. I was born in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan. When I was seven, my family and I fled to Europe with our belongings in a single suitcase, hoping for a safer and better future. Our journey involved many dark train and bus rides, as well as hunger, thirst, cold and fear. Fortunately, we received asylum in The Netherlands, where I grew up in a safe environment and was able to find my way in life. Today, I work for Google in California.

I was lucky. But as the refugee and migrant crisis has grown, many people like my family are desperate for help. Last week, Google announced a €1 million (~$1.1 million) donation to organizations who are providing front-line humanitarian relief to refugees and migrants around the world. Today, we're inviting you to join us. To double the impact of your contribution, we’ll match the first €5 million (~$5.5 million) in donations globally, until together we raise €10 million (~$11 million) for relief efforts.

Your donation will be distributed to four nonprofits providing aid to refugees and migrants: Doctors Without Borders, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children and UN High Commissioner for Refugees. These nonprofits are helping deliver essential assistance—including shelter, food and water, and medical care—and looking after the security and rights of people in need.

Visit google.com/refugeerelief to make your donation. Thank you for giving.

En route from Afghanistan, with my family and some belongings. You can read more about my journey on my blog.

Update September 18: In just two and a half days, you've helped us reach our goal to raise €10 million (~$11 million). Thank you for your contributions to help refugees and migrants in need.

Posted by Rita Masoud, Product Marketing Manager, Google.org

Building even better communities with the Google Impact Challenge: Bay Area

Google Blogs — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:00:00 +0000

What if low-income kids had the same opportunity for jobs in the tech sector as students from the best computer science departments? What could that mean for their futures, or the future of their communities?

That’s the question asked by Oakland-based Hack the Hood, whose mission is to inspire Bay Area kids to pursue careers in technology. Hack the Hood trains young people by hiring them to build websites for small businesses in their communities. After applying for the Google Impact Challenge last spring, Hack the Hood went to work with $500,000 in Google.org funding and nearly 100 Googler volunteers. In the past year they’ve expanded their programs in SF, Oakland and Richmond to reach six times as many young people.

Last year we awarded $5 million to help “hometown hero” organizations like Hack the Hood make a greater impact. Today we’re announcing the 2015 Challenge, and issuing an open call for nonprofits who are asking big “what ifs” about how they can improve their communities and put innovative solutions to work in the Bay Area.

Click to find out more about last year's finalists

The Bay Area region has always been defined by the people who live here: people who question the status quo to help move our communities forward. From Harvey Milk’s fight for LGBT rights to Alice Waters’ movement for sustainable food to the technological advances of Silicon Valley, the Bay Area has long been at the forefront of positive social change.

We saw this passion in the 1,000+ nonprofit proposals we received for the 2014 Impact Challenge, and we see it in the 25 finalists. We see it in C.E.O., which is training formerly incarcerated people to reenter the workforce; in Lava Mae’s commitment to bringing showers with dignity to the homeless; and in Mission Asset Fund’s providing low-income people with zero-interest loans. We see it in our neighbors who are striving for a better Bay Area for all.

As this is our home, and thousands of Googlers live and work here, we want to work together towards an even better Bay Area. The Google Impact Challenge will be accepting proposals from nonprofits through Thursday July 23, 2015 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. To learn more or to nominate a nonprofit visit g.co/bayareachallenge.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director, Google.org

Which animal are you? Take the Google Doodle Earth Day Quiz

Google Blogs — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 13:38:00 +0000

You can search Google for answers to all kinds of animal questions: What does an aye-aye eat? Where do narwhals live? How long is a toco toucan's beak? And this Earth Day, you can turn to Google for the answer to something that you’ve always needed to know: which animal are you???

Clicking on this year’s Earth Day logo (or searching for “Earth Day quiz”) presents one of the Internet’s favorite pastimes: a totally scientific and 1,000% accurate personality quiz. Take the time to answer a few questions to determine and share your Earth Day animal. And, of course, you’re only a search away from learning more about nature’s precious pals and interesting inhabitants (FYI: kakapo is the heaviest parrot).

If you need proof of the accuracy of our quiz, look no further than the testimonials of some of our wildlife-loving, quiz-taking friends like Ed Norton, Jared Leto, and Maggie Q. Dame Jane Goodall took the quiz and had this to report:

Once you’ve gotten to know your deepest self (and animal avatar), we hope you’re inspired to help make a real difference this Earth Day. For the month of April, we’re partnering with our friends at Google.org, who will match donations to the following animal-loving organizations up to $20,000. That means every $1 you donate to one of these great groups is worth $2 to protect wildlife around the world. Chip in what you can at the Jane Goodall Institute, Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, World Wildlife Fund, WildAid, Zoological Society of London and Virunga Fund.

Happy Earth Day!

Posted by Ryan Germick, Doodle Team Lead, Giant Squid

Meet the five Giving through Glass winners

Emily Wood — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000

We believe technology can help nonprofits make a difference more easily, and connect people to the causes they care about. It's with this in mind that we launched Giving through Glass—a contest for U.S. nonprofits to share ideas for how Google Glass can support the impact they're having every day.

Today, we’re announcing the five winners: 3000 Miles to a Cure, Classroom Champions, The Hearing and Speech Agency, Mark Morris Dance Group and Women's Audio Mission. The winners were selected from more than 1,300 proposals, and each will take home a pair of Glass, a $25,000 grant, a trip to Google for training, and access to Glass developers who can help make their projects a reality.

Here’s what our winners are planning to do with Glass:

Classroom Champions will give students in high-needs schools a look through the eyes of Paralympic athletes as they train and compete, helping kids build empathy and learn to see ability where others too often see only disability. Bay Area-based Women’s Audio Mission will give instructors Glass to use in its music and media-based Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math training program for women and girls, creating a more immersive lab experience for students online and in person.

U.S. Paralympic Gold Medalist Josh Sweeney visits a Waller, Texas school
as part of a Classroom Champions program

Two programs focus on using Glass in therapeutic settings. The Hearing and Speech Agency will use Glass to pilot new ways to improve communication access for people who have speech language challenges, hearing loss and autism—and support those who teach and care for them. And the Mark Morris Dance Group will create a Glass app that will build on their award-winning Dance for PD® initiative to help people with Parkinson’s disease remember and trigger body movements in their daily lives.

Finally, Glass will head across the U.S. by bicycle to help raise money and increase awareness for brain cancer research. For the first time, supporters of participants in the 3000 Miles to a Cure Race Across America will be able to see and experience it through a racer’s eyes and the racer will be alerted to every message of encouragement and donation supporters send.

Developers are already working with these inspiring groups, and next week these five nonprofits will descend on Google Glass' Base Camp in San Francisco for training, and to connect with their Google mentors. Stay tuned for updates on how the projects unfold!

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org

Meet the Bay Area Impact Challenge winners

Emily Wood — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 17:34:00 +0000

Ten days ago, voting opened for Google’s first Bay Area Impact Challenge, and now the tally is in. On the ballot? Ten amazing nonprofit proposals to make a difference in our community.

Between May 22 and June 2, nearly 200,000 votes poured in (191,504 to be exact)—adjusted for population, that makes it the highest voter turnout we’ve had in a Challenge to date. Now we’re unveiling the winners. Each will receive $500,000 in funding and support from Google:

Hack the Hood will address digital equity by training low-income youth to build websites for local small businesses, actively supporting them to launch their own tech careers.
Center for Employment Opportunities will develop a tech platform to prepare formerly incarcerated people for employment in a digital world.
The Health Trust will create new distribution channels for people to get affordable produce, expanding options for street vendors, corner stores, and farmers' markets for underserved areas.
Bring me a book will give kids access to digital books, in multiple languages, while creating a supportive online community for parents and caregivers.

Hack the Hood celebrates their win with community advisor Reverend Cecil Williams

But everyone wins in this competition: The six remaining finalists will each receive $250,000, and we also gave an additional 15 nonprofits around the Bay Area $100,000 each.

Finally, all 25 Google Impact Challenge nonprofits will receive one year of accelerator support at our first-ever impact lab, a co-working space launched in partnership with Impact Hub SF, a shared workspace for entrepreneurs committed to positive social and environmental change.

Nonprofits will have access to networking events, meeting space, and development workshops in the Impact Hub SF, as well as membership to all U.S. Hub locations. We also plan to host community events for the Bay Area nonprofit community throughout the year—so check out our website or follow us on Google+ to stay in the loop.

Now the work really begins, and we’re excited to continue to build on our ongoing efforts to give back to the community.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org

Bright ideas for an even better Bay Area

Emily Wood — Thu, 22 May 2014 15:00:00 +0000

Local nonprofit heroes are making a difference in our community, and we want to do more to support them. As part of that mission, we recently launched a Bay Area Impact Challenge with a question: working together, what can we do to make the Bay Area an even better place to live?

Provide training and job opportunities for people with disabilities. Match surplus medical supplies with community clinics. Bring mobile showers and toilets to the homeless. These are just a few of the nearly 1,000 thoughtful and creative proposals we received.

A panel of community advisors—Honorable Aida Alvarez, Secretary Norman Mineta, Chief Teresa Deloach Reed, Reverend Cecil Williams and Barry Zito—joined Googlers to narrow down the pool to the 10 top finalists. Each project was selected for its community impact, ingenuity, scalability and feasibility.

Now we need your help deciding which projects to support. Which one do you think will make the biggest impact in our community? Vote now for the four ideas that inspire you.

Your votes will decide which projects get up and running in a big way—with $500,000 going to each of the top four projects, and $250,000 to the next six. An additional 15 nonprofits that entered the Challenge have already received $100,000 each in support of their work.

Cast your vote by 11:59 p.m. PST on June 2, and join us in celebrating the community spirit that makes the Bay Area a great place to call home.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org

Ok Glass… Let’s celebrate Earth Day

Emily Wood — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Part of honoring Earth Day is celebrating the people who dedicate their lives to protecting our planet’s most vulnerable species. You’ll find one of those people in the tall grasslands of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, where Sabita Malla, a senior research officer at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is hard at work protecting rhinos and Bengal tigers from poaching. She spends her days collecting data about wildlife in order to track the animals, assess threats, and provide support where needed. Now, she’s getting help from something a bit unexpected: Google Glass.

Last year, WWF started exploring how smart eyewear could help further its conservation mission in the Arctic and the Amazon as part of the Giving through Glass Explorer program. Now they’ve brought it to Nepal to see how it could help monitor wild rhinos. Take a peek:

Rhino monitoring can be a slow process, especially in habitats with tricky terrain, but data collection is crucial for making the right conservation decisions. Most parts of Chitwan National Park are inaccessible to vehicles, so Sabita and her team ride in on elephants, and have been collecting health and habitat data using pencil and paper.

Now custom-built Glassware (the Glass version of apps) called Field Notes can help Sabita do her work hands-free instead of gathering data in a notebook. That’s helpful for both accuracy and safety when you’re on an elephant. Using voice commands, Sabita and other researchers can take photos and videos, and map a rhino’s location, size, weight, and other notable characteristics. The notes collected can also be automatically uploaded to a shared doc back at the office, making it easier to collaborate with other researchers, and potentially a lot faster than typing up handwritten notes.

This is just one example of a nonprofit exploring how Glass can make their critical work easier. Today, we’re looking for more ideas from you.

If you work at a nonprofit and have an idea for how to make more of a difference with Glass, share your ideas at g.co/givingthroughglass by 11:59 PDT on May 20, 2014. Five U.S.-based nonprofits will get a Glass device, a trip to a Google office for training, a $25,000 grant, and help from Google developers to make your Glass project a reality.

To learn more about Google.org's ongoing collaboration with World Wildlife Fund, visit this site.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org

‘Tis the season to give back

Emily Wood — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 15:00:00 +0000

The holidays are here, and that means eggnog lattes, festive lights and spending time with the people you love. It’s also the season to give back and help make the world brighter for those in need. Today we’re unveiling six new Global Impact Awards—totaling $11.5 million in grants—to innovators using technology to tackle the world’s toughest challenges.

This year, we’re inviting you to get in the giving groove with 12 Days of Giving—an interactive holiday calendar where you can explore a Google-backed cause, donate to what inspires you and unwrap a surprise each day—such as meeting Pamela the polar bear or experiencing how far people walk to reach clean water. To spread cheer throughout the year, download OneToday for a daily reminder to give back.

The 12 Days of Giving include our six newest Global Impact Awardees. Join me in celebrating these tech-fueled initiatives:

Zooniverse: Advanced crowdsourced research hub that allows anyone, anywhere to help create scientific breakthroughs as a citizen scientist.
Kiva: Finance lab that enables anyone to provide affordable loans to entrepreneurs, students and farmers in poor countries, to support people left out of traditional finance.
Landesa and FrontlineSMS: Mobile system that transforms the inefficient and confusing process to establish land rights into an accessible, efficient way for poor farmers to get title to their land.
Get Schooled: Online platform that provides free college prep for underserved students by aggregating resources on scholarships, tests and applications, and setting personal reminders for staying on track.
Samasource: Platform to train data workers in developing countries and provide jobs.
DoSomething.org: Comprehensive data initiative to empower more young people to lead and share powerful and effective social impact campaigns.

In 2013, we donated more than $100 million in grants, $1 billion in free ads and apps and 60,000 volunteer hours to nonprofits around the globe.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org

World Bank and Google join forces to empower mapping communities around the world

Lat Long Blog — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:34:00 +0000

Today the World Bank and Google announced a collaborative agreement aimed at improving disaster preparedness and development efforts in countries around the world.

Under this agreement, the World Bank will act as a conduit to make Google Map Maker source data more widely and easily available to government organizations in the event of major disasters, and also for improved planning, management, and monitoring of public services provision.

The free, web-based mapping tool called Google Map Maker enables citizens to directly participate in the creation of maps by contributing their local knowledge. Once approved, those additions are then reflected on Google Maps and Google Earth for others around the world to see.

The Google Map Maker data includes detailed maps of more than 150 countries and regions, and identifies locations like schools, hospitals, roads, settlements and water points that are critical for relief workers to know about in times of crisis. The data will also be useful for planning purposes, as governments and their development partners can use the information to monitor public services, infrastructure and development projects; make them more transparent for NGOs, researchers, and individual citizens; and more effectively identify areas that might be in need of assistance before a disaster strikes.

Community mapper in Kampala, Uganda

World Bank partner organizations, which include government and United Nations agencies, will be able to contact World Bank offices for possible access to the Google Map Maker data for their various projects. World Bank country offices in Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Moldova, Mozambique, Nepal, and Haiti plan to pilot the Map Maker agreement.

The World Bank Institute (WBI) and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) will manage the World Bank’s involvement in the collaboration, building on previous joint mapping efforts. For example in April 2011, members of the Southern Sudanese Diaspora participated in a series of community mapping events organized by World Bank and Google to create comprehensive maps of schools, hospitals and other social infrastructure in this new country via Map Maker technology.

Google has enjoyed a strong relationship with World Bank for many years. As indicated by the World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region Obiageli Ezekwesili, “Today’s technology can empower civil society, including the diaspora, to collaborate and support the development process. This collaboration is about shifting the emphasis from organizations to people, and empowering them to solve their own problems and develop their own solutions using maps.”

France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org

Giving back in 2011

A Googler — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:01:00 +0000

As the holiday season approaches we thought it was a good moment to update you on some grants we're making to support education, technology and the fight against modern day slavery.

STEM and girls’ education
Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) open up great opportunities for young people so we've decided to fund 16 great programs in this area. These include Boston-based Citizen Schools and Generating Genius in the U.K., both of which work to help to expand the horizons of underprivileged youngsters. In total, our grants will provide enhanced STEM education for more than 3 million students.

In addition, we're supporting girls’ education in the developing world. By giving a girl an education, you not only improve her opportunities, but those of her whole family. The African Leadership Academy provides merit scholarships to promising young women across the continent, and the Afghan Institute of Learning offers literacy classes to women and girls in rural Afghanistan. Groups like these will use our funds to educate more than 10,000 girls in developing countries.

Empowerment through technology
We've all been wowed by the entrepreneurial spirit behind the 15 awards in this category, all of whom are using the web, open source programming and other technology platforms to connect communities and improve access to information. Vittana, for instance, helps lenders offer loans to students in the developing world who have have a 99 percent repayment rate—potentially doubling or tripling a recipient's earning power. Code for America enables the web industry to share its skills with the public sector by developing projects that improve transparency and encourage civic engagement on a mass scale. And Switchboard is working with local mobile providers to help African health care workers create networks and communicate for free.

Fighting slavery and human trafficking
Modern day slavery is a multi-billion dollar industry that ruins the lives of around 27 million people. So we're funding a number of groups that are working to tackle the problem. For instance, in India, International Justice Mission (IJM), along with The BBC World Service Trust, Action Aid and Aide et Action, are forming a new coalition. It will work on the ground with governments to stop slave labor by identifying the ring masters, documenting abuse, freeing individuals and providing them with therapy as well as job training. Our support will also help expand the reach of tools like the powerful Slavery Footprint calculator and Polaris Project’s National Trafficking Hotline.

To learn more about these organizations and how you can get involved, visit our Google Gives Back 2011 site and take a look at this video:

These grants, which total $40 million, are only part of our annual philanthropic efforts. Over the course of the year, Google provided more than $115 million in funding to various nonprofit organizations and academic institutions around the world; our in-kind support (programs like Google Grants and Google Apps for Education that offer free products and services to eligible organizations) came to more than $1 billion, and our annual company-wide GoogleServe event and related programs enabled individual Googlers to donate more than 40,000 hours of their own volunteer time.

As 2011 draws to a close, I’m inspired by this year’s grantees and look forward to seeing their world-changing work in 2012.

Posted by Shona Brown, SVP Google.org

Giving back in 2011

Google Students — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:11:00 +0000

Today, our SVP of Google.org, Shona Brown, announced $40 million in Google end-of-year grants, and we’re thrilled to report that nearly $20 million is going toward supporting education—specifically, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and girls’ education.

As a company with computer science at our core, supporting strong STEM programs is in our DNA. We know how important it is to inspire the next generation and introduce students to the possibilities of STEM and CS at a young age. This year, Google.org is funding 15 highly effective STEM programs, including Boston-based Citizen Schools and the D.C. Public Education Fund (both 100Kin10 partners), Generating Genius in the U.K. and Teach for All, four organizations that enrich the learning experiences of underserved youth. In total, our grants will provide enhanced STEM education for more than 3 million students.

Our end-of-year giving is also supporting programs that focus on girls’ education, specifically in the developing world. It’s a simple but remarkably powerful fact: give a girl an education and you’ll improve the chances for lifelong success not only for her, but also for her entire family and community. Among others, we’re funding the African Leadership Academy, which awards merit scholarships to promising young African women, and the Afghan Institute of Learning, which provides literacy classes to women and girls in rural Afghanistan. In total, our funding in this area will educate more than 10,000 girls.

You can see a complete list of education organizations receiving grants here (PDF).

Nonprofit organizations play an increasingly crucial role in making sure that vital services reach the people and communities that need them most, and we are thrilled to be able to support the work of so many incredible organizations. In addition to education, Google.org also chose to give to organizations promoting technology for social good and those fighting against modern day slavery. For the complete story of how Google is giving back in 2011, read Shona’s post on the Official Google Blog.

Posted by Jordan Bookey, Head of K-12 Education Outreach

Show your love for charities on Google+ this holiday season

A Googler — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:00:00 +0000

We’ve been thrilled to see the ways nonprofit organizations use Google+ to raise awareness about their work, as well as the ways people connect with causes on Google+. In the past couple days, several entertainers have helped start a movement for this holiday season, drawing attention to their favorite charities on Google+ using the phrase #CauseILoveEm and creatively showing their followers what they love about these nonprofit organizations.

+Russell Brand is asking fans to volunteer for two hours of charity work at +Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, +Los Angeles Animal Alliance or one of four other local L.A. charities. In exchange, he and Sarah Silverman will give fans two hours of live comedy.

+Usher and student participants in his New Look Leadership Academy asked people to do an international act of kindness and post descriptions of their acts including photos and videos as comments on +Usher's New Look Foundation. The acts with the most "+1"s will be re-posted by Usher and highlighted on the New Look Foundation website.
+Linkin Park posted a new video asking people to spread about the word about +Music For Relief and their new Power the World Give Light campaign, which encourages people to donate to provide solar-powered light bulbs for families in Haiti without electricity. People who share their website online and drive the most clicks will be eligible to win prizes.
+Dolly Parton and +Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, her early child literacy program that provides 700,000+ free books every month, are sharing Champion Spotlight stories about their community leaders and posting the 20 most inspiring Imagination Moments submitted by families who have benefited from this gift of reading.

Co-founder +Hugh Jackman and +Laughing Man Coffee & Tea asked people to share photos of themselves with Laughing Man's fair trade products (the profits of which go to charity) and to sound off on living their motto, "All Be Happy," using #CauseILoveEm to be included in a thank you photo album.

+Find Your Light Foundation and +Josh Groban announced the Fulfill-a-Wish campaign, spotlighting the needs of nonprofit arts organizations from across North America in videos and posts, and asking for your help fulfilling these holiday wishes.

We hope you’ll join these folks and lots of others in the Google+ community who have already started sharing their favorite nonprofits this holiday season. Say which nonprofit you like and what you like about them in a public post using the phrase #CauseILoveEm and mentioning the nonprofit’s Google+ page by typing “+” and the nonprofit’s name. Be creative and post videos, images and stories that will convince others to love them too. Through the end of December on our +Google for Nonprofits page, we’ll re-share great examples of the ways people are recognizing their favorite nonprofits and highlight some nonprofits with which you might want to connect.

If the nonprofit you care about most isn’t yet on Google+, be sure to let them know about our Google+ for Nonprofit community page that they can use to get started and learn more. Thanks in advance for caring about these organizations and doing something small to help them grow and achieve their goals during the holiday season.

Posted by Mimi Kravetz, Google.org, Senior Product Marketing Manager

Using technology in crisis preparedness

A Googler — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the Google.org Blog)

In many ways, the arrival of Hurricane Irene last week drove home the importance of National Preparedness Month, an effort from the FEMA Ready campaign to encourage Americans to take steps to prepare for emergencies throughout the year. With people relying on the Internet worldwide, it’s not surprising that Google search data and a recently released American Red Cross survey show that people turn to online resources and tools for information and communication during major crises. First responders, who provide services in the aftermath of disasters, are also finding Internet and cloud-based tools and information useful—for improving their understanding of a situation, collaborating with each other and communicating with the public.

Today, in preparation for September’s National Preparedness Month, our Crisis Response team is introducing a new Google Crisis Preparedness website with information and educational tools on using technology to prepare for crises. On the site, you can see how individuals and organizations have used technology during crises in the past, including how two girls located their grandfather after the Japan earthquake and tsunami in March of this year and how Americorps tracked volunteers during the tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri in May of this year. There’s a section for responders with information on using Google tools in crises, such as collaborating efficiently using Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Sites, visualizing the disaster-related information with Google My Maps and Google Earth, and more.

Also, you can access a new public preparedness web resource launching today: Get Tech Ready, developed as a collaboration between FEMA, the American Red Cross, the Ad Council and Google Crisis Response. There, you’ll find tips on using technology to prepare for, adapt to and recover from disasters, for example:

Learn how to send updates via text and internet from your mobile phone in case voice communications are not available
Store your important documents in the cloud so they can be accessed from anywhere or in a secure and remote area such as a flash or jump drive that you can keep readily available
Create an Emergency Information Document using this Ready.gov Emergency Plan Google Docs Template, or by downloading it to record and share your emergency plans and access them from anywhere

We encourage you to take a moment now to see how simple, easy-to-use and readily-available technology tools can help you prepare for a crisis. You’ll be more comfortable using these tools in the event of a disaster if you’ve already tried them out—and even integrated them into your daily life.

Posted by Nigel Snoad, Crisis Response Product Manager

Examining the impact of clean energy innovation

A Googler — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:00:00 +0000

At Google, we’re committed to using technology to solve one of the greatest challenges we face as a country: building a clean energy future. That’s why we’ve worked hard to be carbon neutral as a company, launched our renewable energy cheaper than coal initiative and have invested in several clean energy companies and projects around the world.

But what if we knew the value of innovation in clean energy technologies? How much could new technologies contribute to our economic growth, enhance our energy security or reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? Robust data can help us understand these important questions, and the role innovation in clean energy could play in addressing our future economic, security and climate challenges.

Through Google.org, our energy team set out to answer some of these questions. Using McKinsey’s Low Carbon Economics Tool (LCET), we assessed the long-term economic impacts for the U.S. assuming breakthroughs were made in several different clean energy technologies, like wind, geothermal and electric vehicles. McKinsey’s LCET is a neutral, analytic set of interlinked models that estimates the potential economic and technology implications of various policy and technology assumptions.

The analysis is based on a model and includes assumptions and conclusions that Google.org developed, so it isn’t a prediction of the future. We’ve decided to make the analysis and associated data available everywhere because we believe it could provide a new perspective on the economic value of public and private investment in energy innovation. Here are just some of the most compelling findings:

Energy innovation pays off big: We compared “business as usual” (BAU) to scenarios with breakthroughs in clean energy technologies. On top of those, we layered a series of possible clean energy policies (more details in the report). We found that by 2030, when compared to BAU, breakthroughs could help the U.S.:

Grow GDP by over $155 billion/year ($244 billion in our Clean Policy scenario)
Create over 1.1 million new full-time jobs/year (1.9 million with Clean Policy)
Reduce household energy costs by over $942/year ($995 with Clean Policy)
Reduce U.S. oil consumption by over 1.1 billion barrels/year
Reduce U.S. total carbon emissions by 13% in 2030 (21% with Clean Policy)

Speed matters and delay is costly: Our model found a mere five year delay (2010-2015) in accelerating technology innovation led to $2.3-3.2 trillion in unrealized GDP, an aggregate 1.2-1.4 million net unrealized jobs and 8-28 more gigatons of potential GHG emissions by 2050.
Policy and innovation can enhance each other: Combining clean energy policies with technological breakthroughs increased the economic, security and pollution benefits for either innovation or policy alone. Take GHG emissions: the model showed that combining policy and innovation led to 59% GHG reductions by 2050 (vs. 2005 levels), while maintaining economic growth.

This analysis assumed that breakthroughs in clean energy happened and that policies were put in place, and then tried to understand the impact. The data here allows us to imagine a world in which the U.S. captures the potential benefits of some clean energy technologies: economic growth, job generation and a reduction in harmful emissions. We haven’t developed the roadmap, and getting there will take the right mix of policies, sustained investment in technological innovation by public and private institutions and mobilization of the private sector’s entrepreneurial energies. We hope this analysis encourages further discussion and debate on these important issues.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar, and Charles Baron, Google.org, Clean Energy Team

Webbing the gap between science and the public

A Googler — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:40:00 +0000

We recently held an Innovation Workshop for the 2011 Google Science Communication Fellows, a group of early to mid-career PhD scientists chosen for their leadership in climate change research and communication. The Fellows spent three days together alongside Googlers and external experts at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. exploring the potential of information technology and social media to spur public engagement.

All 21 of the 2011 Fellows are experienced science communicators, trained in using traditional media to bridge the gap between complex science and the general public. This workshop was an opportunity for them to explore new media communications optimized for the age of the web; or, as as I like to say, learning how to “web” the gap between the science community and the larger world in the digital age.
We organized the workshop around three themes:

Understanding the public. This session introduced trending tools— like search, Google Trends and Correlate—that can be used to gather data from search queries and online discussions. If you’re curious, watch Google user experience researcher, Dan Russel, give the Fellows a 101 on how people search, and what they’re looking for.
Documenting your science story. Here, the Fellows played around with Google Earth, Fusion Tables and YouTube to learn how to create interactive and engaging stories with science data, which could then be shared with a broad audience. For more on this, visit the Science Communications Fellows talks page on YouTube.
Joining the conversation. In this session, Googler Chris Messina, a developer advocate, took the Fellows on a journey into the social web, illustrating by examples the power of the crowd in shaping ideas and building understanding across diverse social networks. You can view Chris’s outstanding talk here.

Several external experts participated in the workshop as well, including Andy Revkin, Dot Earth blogger and senior fellow of environmental understanding at Pace University. Andy gave a thought-provoking keynote the first evening, which also included a self-composed ditty about the fossil age (look out Schoolhouse Rock!).

Armed with new knowledge on “webbing the gap,” the Fellows are now developing project proposals to put what they learned into practice. Proposal selections will be made later this summer. You can learn more about tools for science communication in the digital age and the innovation workshop at our site here. Stay tuned for future opportunities for participating in this program.

Posted by Dr. Amy Luers, Google.org

Information resources for Egypt

Jamie Yood — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 05:15:00 +0000

We continue to follow the fast-changing events in Egypt, hopeful that compiling vital information in one place helps people on the ground and their anxious relatives and friends. We just posted the first version of a resource page in response to the need for information such as emergency hotlines, embassy phone numbers, and recent updates about the unrest in Egypt. We plan to translate the page into Arabic and will continue adding useful information.

As has been widely reported, Internet access is limited inside Egypt. We hope that the resources on this page will be valuable for those in touch with friends and family on the ground and others simply eager to find information. We believe that access to information is a fundamental global right. YouTube is helping people access and share footage from the demonstrations. We also teamed up with Twitter to turn on a speak-to-tweet service that helps people in Egypt stay connected at this challenging time.

Our thoughts remain with those in Egypt.

Posted by Essam El-Dardiry, Technical Program Manager, Middle East and North Africa and Ahmad Hamzawi, Head of Engineering, Middle East and Africa

Tech for good – catching up on Google.org

Jamie Yood — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 03:26:00 +0000

Google.org continues to ramp up technology projects and test new ideas while Google’s overall charitable giving, in-kind giving and employee volunteering have grown as well. Our newsletter outlines the latest updates to our philanthropic projects. I caught up with Megan Smith, VP New Business Development and General Manager of Google.org, to talk about how Google views philanthropy.

After two years at the helm of Google.org, what are you most optimistic about?
The Internet offers an opportunity to connect in ways never before possible. Things that have historically been far apart are now “virtually adjacent”—most people are a text away, data sets can be mashed up, and all world knowledge is coming online from both expected and surprising sources. Given all of this, I am most excited about all the extraordinary ways people are using the web to connect, be informed, use data and to start solving problems together.

For Google.org specifically, we want to contribute our knowledge and skills to help use technology to address humanity’s greatest challenges. We now have more than 50 engineers and about 40 other cross-functional Googlers working on four or five larger projects—like Google Crisis Response and RE—and over a dozen smaller experimental pilot projects.

What kind of project fits this opportunity?
One of our newer projects, Google Earth Engine, takes advantage of Google’s computing infrastructure to create a planetary sciences computation platform that could help reduce negative environmental impact at scale. The first focus is on deforestation monitoring. Earth Engine has just made it through the pilot phase to a full project with its launch last month at climate change talks in Mexico. If we meet our goals to enable global-scale monitoring of changes in the planet’s environment, I believe that Earth Engine could play an important information role in helping to slow deforestation.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned since joining Google.org?
Two things: first, the opportunity we have is great; and second, the work has served as a reminder that creating truly useful, innovative technology is challenging and requires patient iteration, dialog, teamwork and creativity. It takes time to gather new ideas, learn from the right partners, collaborate, pilot those ideas that pass initial assessment and then launch for scale the few projects that meet the criteria for a Google.org product.

Do Google.org projects have a specific focus?
We don’t have a topical focus—we work on technology solutions to many different kinds of global challenges. The key is to take advantage of Google’s strengths. In the area of global health, for example, we have been able to create a global flu monitoring system based on search data. For our environmental work, we were able to leverage our data center computing power to put together the finest-scale forest map of Mexico to date (processing this data would take two years on one computer, but we made it in less than 24 hours using our computing infrastructure).

How does Google.org start and ramp up its technology projects?
We work to tap into the talent at Google. Some projects have come out of hallway conversations and others from extensive talks with partners in the field. Formally, we have a bimonthly new initiatives meeting with senior engineers where talented individuals or teams within Google bring ideas or prototypes. If we think the idea is a match and has promise, we give it budget, headcount, guidance and time to see where it can go during a pilot period. Once we have a live pilot or project, we take advantage of Google.com’s standard project review and management processes that our company has effectively used for years.

What if those pilots fail?
That’s normal. We should expect that some of them will fail or will only have smaller impact. If you’re not failing some of the time, you’re not taking risks. As we progress, some of our failures will hopefully teach us as much as some of our successes.

What other charitable giving does Google do?
As a company that has been doing well, it’s important that we push ourselves to be amongst the most generous companies. We have several charitable giving programs supporting, for example, education (especially K-12 science and math programs), university research, communities where we work, and technology solutions for underserved groups. Last year the company gave more than $145 million to non-profits and academic institutions, and more than $184 million when including Google Grants, Google.org technology projects and in-kind product support for non-profits.

How is this philanthropic work different from that of other companies?
Like other companies, we have charitable giving programs, we provide products in-kind and we have a range of employee volunteering programs. Some companies like ours may also have experiments like Google.org to leverage their strengths—a form of skills-based giving. However, many companies do amazing charitable work through a centralized Corporate Social Responsibility arm that tackles a key issue or two. We approach philanthropy the way we do our core business, with big goals and a “launch early and iterate” approach. Ideas come from all over the company and we work to tackle a range of issues we care about, from clean energy to education to development. It may not be as clean as the process that some others have, but we think this is how we can have the most impact.

We remain determined, as our founders said when they set the vision for Google.org, "to find original ways to extend our assets, so that we can drive scalable, sustainable efforts. ...the underlying principle: Never stop looking for ways to do the best with what you have."

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations

Stanford’s Single-Well EGS Investigation

Parag Chokshi — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 19:55:00 +0000

Next week Stanford University will host the 36th annual Stanford Geothermal Workshop, one of the world’s foremost geothermal technical gatherings.

Stanford’s Geothermal Laboratory, led by Professor Roland Horne, has been investigating novel single-well approaches to Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), sponsored by a research grant from Google’s RE.

Currently, for every well that sends cold water down to the hot rock (called injectors), there are one to three wells that bring heated water back up to generate electricity (called producers). But what if one well could act as both an injector and producer? It could dramatically lower the cost of EGS (example below).
The Stanford team, which included graduate students Zhe Wang and Mark McClure, modeled a variety of single-well configurations to determine their feasibility. The investigation determined that on a per well basis, an optimal single-well EGS system would produce four times more energy than an isolated pair of wells and two times more energy than an infinite series of alternating producers and injectors.

Single-well systems, when combined with advances in reservoir engineering, present another innovative technique for advancing baseload EGS on the path to RE.

Posted by Charles Baron, Geothermal Program Lead, Google.org

Haiti, one year after the earthquake

A Googler — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:37:00 +0000

It’s been one year since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, and governments and NGOs are continuing to respond, many using high-resolution images of the area. To support these efforts, we’ve updated our aerial imagery in Google Earth of the Port-au-Prince area to include images from before and after the earthquake, as well as made updates throughout 2010. These pictures provide an evolving view of the movement of people, supplies and rubble.

To access this imagery directly, use the Historical Imagery feature of Google Earth.

Complementing our online efforts with this imagery, a webpage and crisis response tools such as Person Finder, Google has made an effort to contribute to relief in Haiti by providing technical and financial support to NGOs. These organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health and specific technology NGOs such as Samasource and Frontline SMS continue to help the Haitian people. We’ve looked to them to help us guide our ongoing response to this crisis.

In November, we gathered updated aerial imagery, and sent a second wave of Google teams to Haiti to evaluate our earlier response efforts and see where Google could continue to provide help. We met with local Haitians and technology NGOs under tents, in trailers, in Internet cafes and at restaurants.

From these visits we witnessed the difficulty involved in using our mapping tools under the unpredictable nature of the Internet in Haiti, and so have focused on developing better offline capabilities and have proposed ideas for improving overall Internet access in Haiti. We also ran training for aid workers on our collaborative tools like Google Apps, which can help coordinate resources. While there, we spent time understanding how NGOs are combating the cholera epidemic, and brainstorming tools that could help aid workers produce specialized maps of epidemic case data and chlorination levels at water points, which are critical for planning and prevention.

If you’re interested in helping with Google’s efforts in Haiti, you can:

Support our open source Crisis Response projects such as Person Finder or attend conferences like the Random Hacks of Kindness.
Volunteer with NGOs working on Crisis Response technology such as Crisis Commons and Ushahidi.

Our experience and the updated imagery demonstrate that there are still significant needs on the ground in Haiti. We’re continuing our efforts to support locals and NGOs and look forward to seeing how technology will continue to help both Haitians and victims of disasters worldwide.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager, on behalf of Google Crisis Response

Queensland Flood Emergency Information

Jamie Yood — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:26:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from The Official Google Australia Blog)

The flood emergency in Queensland continues to unfold.

We’ve been working over the last 24 hours to access the latest information from authorities about river levels and projected road closures due to flooding and to display the information on a Google Map. You can view the map here to see layers of information including which roads are projected to be closed or river levels in a particular area.

We hope this map is of some use to people who may be affected and that it takes the load off some other websites that are coping with lots of queries. We will let you know of any additional updates on this blog.

If your personal safety is impacted by floods, please visit the official sites:

Queensland Government Flood Information

ABC emergency website

To donate to the flood relief appeal visit the Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal site.

For eligible charities working directly on flood assistance, we have made available additional emergency funding through our Google Grants program. More information for charities not currently participating in the program is available here.

Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the floods, and we add our thanks to those from around the country for the work of emergency services personnel and SES volunteers.

Posted by Anthony Baxter and James McGill, Software Engineers
(on behalf of the team of willing Googlers who helped out on this)

Going Green at Google in 2010

Parag Chokshi — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:20:00 +0000

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog

At Google, we’re committed to building a clean energy future because we we want to be good environmental stewards, and because we think it makes business sense. We’ve had a busy year with our clean energy initiatives. Take look at our redesigned green website and this new video from the Google green team to learn more about the priorities we’re pursuing:

As we look back on 2010, we wanted to highlight what we’ve been working on this year to help build a more sustainable future—for Google, and the world.

Greening our operations. We already have the most energy efficient data centers in the world, and use renewable energy whenever possible. This year we created a subsidiary, Google Energy LLC, to enable us to purchase renewable energy on the wholesale power markets and to help spur development in the sector.
- Flexibility in buying renewable energy. In February, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted Google Energy LLC the authority to buy and sell energy on the wholesale market, giving us the flexibility to procure renewable energy at competitive prices.
- 20-year green power purchase. Our FERC authority enabled Google Energy LLC to enter a 20-year green Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) in July to buy clean energy from 114 megawatts (MW) of wind generation at NextEra’s Story County II facility in Iowa (read more about how the deal is structured). By purchasing so much energy for so long, we’re giving the developer financial certainty to build additional clean energy projects.
Developing green products and tools. Just a few weeks ago, during the the U.N. Climate Change Conference in sunny Cancun, Mexico, we launched Google Earth Engine, a new Google Labs product. Google Earth Engine is a technology platform that makes an unprecedented catalog of imagery and data available online in one place for the first time. It enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth’s environment. We’re particularly excited about the initial use of Google Earth Engine to support efforts to stop global deforestation. We’ve also been busy this year incorporating green features into our products—like Google Maps biking directions and adding Carbon Disclosure Project ratings into Google Finance.

Investing in a clean energy future. To date, Google has invested over $100 million in clean energy. Google.org has already invested in several clean technology companies. We’ve also continued our internal R&D on renewable energy technologies (RE), substantially growing our engineering team. And this year, Google began making project investments that offer a solid financial return, and could have a transformational impact on the renewable energy sector.
- North Dakota wind farms. In May, we invested $38.8 million in two North Dakota wind farms that generate 169.5MW, enough to power 55,000 homes. It was our first project investment, and uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid.
- Offshore wind transmission. In October, we made a development stage investment in a project to build a backbone transmission line off the Mid-Atlantic coast. The project will put in place strong, secure transmission, removing a major barrier to scaling up offshore wind. When finished, the 350-mile line will connect up to 6,000MW of offshore wind energy—enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households!

It’s been a busy year at Google, and we believe the world needs better options in the future. As we head into the new year, we look forward to continuing our work to find and support innovative clean energy solutions.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Health Speaks pilots result in 266 new local language health articles

Jamie Yood — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:55:00 +0000

In September we announced Health Speaks, an initiative to make more quality health information available in local languages on the Internet. We began by launching three pilots for which people crowd-sourced translation of English Wikipedia health articles into Arabic, Hindi and Swahili.

After an inspiring 3.5 months, these pilots have come to a close. Health Speaks communities translated, reviewed and published 266 new health articles (177 in Arabic, 79 in Hindi and 10 in Swahili). My colleague, Dr. Joanne Stevens, and I met hundreds of enthusiastic volunteers, and heard powerful stories about the importance of local language health information. We’ve also learned invaluable lessons about providing tools that allow for community coordination and easy and accurate translation.

Our first Health Speaks pilots pledged a donation of 3 US cents per English word translated to three non-profit organizations working in health. As an extra thank you to the volunteers who were so generous with their time as we tested our approach for the first time, we are adding an additional $10,000 donation to each NGO. Their contribution has resulted in donations of $26,611, $16,815 and $10,580 to the Children's Cancer Hospital Egypt 57357 (Arabic), the Public Health Foundation of India (Hindi) and the African Medical and Research Foundation (Swahili) respectively.

Dr. Joanne Stevens and I lead a translation session in Tanzania.

While we iterate on our future approach for crowd-sourcing the translation of health content, there are still many ways to contribute to the goals of Health Speaks. We encourage anyone who is passionate about local language health information to consider one or more of the following:

Authoring a health article on Wikipedia or another platform
Creating a health information-based blog
Translating Wikipedia or other health articles into another language
Bringing offline local language health information online, through digitization programs such as Google Books

Lastly, we would like to give a special mention to the many Wikipedians who worked with us by training others and providing help with Wikipedia, as well as to our top contributors for each pilot.

We’re already seeing evidence of the impact of our volunteers’ hard work. For example, three reproductive health-related articles in Arabic have been viewed over 20,000 times. Articles from the Health Speaks pilots (including the professionally translated articles commissioned by Google.org) have been viewed over 145,000 times. We think it’s a great first step towards making important health information accessible online in all languages.

Posted by Jennifer Haroon, Manager, Health Initiatives, Google.org

Introducing Google Earth Engine

A Googler — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:55:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the Google.org blog)

Today, we launched a new Google Labs product called Google Earth Engine at the International Climate Change Conference in sunny Cancun, Mexico. Google Earth Engine is a new technology platform that puts an unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data—current and historical—online for the first time. It enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth’s environment. The platform will enable scientists to use our extensive computing infrastructure—the Google “cloud”—to analyze this imagery. Last year, we demonstrated an early prototype. Since then, we have developed the platform, and are excited now to offer scientists around the world access to Earth Engine to implement their applications.

Why is this important? The images of our planet from space contain a wealth of information, ready to be extracted and applied to many societal challenges. Scientific analysis can transform these images from a mere set of pixels into useful information—such as the locations and extent of global forests, detecting how our forests are changing over time, directing resources for disaster response or water resource mapping.

Congo Basin Water Map (detail): Original satellite image (left) and derived water map (right), created using Google Earth Engine [Potapov, P., Hansen,M. - South Dakota State University].

The challenge has been to cope with the massive scale of satellite imagery archives, and the computational resources required for their analysis. As a result, many of these images have never been seen, much less analyzed. Now, scientists will be able to build applications to mine this treasure trove of data on Google Earth Engine, providing several advantages:

Landsat satellite data archives over the last 25 years for most of the developing world available online, ready to be used together with other datasets including MODIS. And we will soon offer a complete global archive of Landsat.
Reduced time to do analyses, using Google’s computing infrastructure. By running analyses across thousands of computers, for example, unthinkable tasks are now possible for the first time.
New features that will make analysis easier, such as tools that pre-process the images to remove clouds and haze.
Collaboration and standardization by creating a common platform for global data analysis.

Google Earth Engine can be used for a wide range of applications—from mapping water resources to ecosystem services to deforestation. It’s part of our broader effort at Google to build a more sustainable future. We’re particularly excited about an initial use of Google Earth Engine to support development of systems to monitor, report and verify (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation.

Deforestation releases a significant amount of carbon into the atmosphere, accounting for 12-18% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. The world loses 32 million acres of tropical forests every year, an area the size of Greece. The United Nations has proposed a framework known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) that would provide financial incentives to tropical nations to protect their forests. Reaching an agreement on early development of REDD is a key agenda item here in Cancun.

Today, we announced that we are donating 10 million CPU-hours a year over the next two years on the Google Earth Engine platform, to strengthen the capacity of developing world nations to track the state of their forests, in preparation for REDD. For the least developed nations, Google Earth Engine will provide critical access to terabytes of data, a growing set of analytical tools and our high-performance processing capabilities. We believe Google Earth Engine will bring transparency and more certainty to global efforts to stop deforestation.

We’ve been working with several partners to fully develop this platform. In particular, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has been a key strategic and funding partner. The Moore Foundation has also committed over $12 million dollars through its Environmental Conservation Program to projects that support the development of Google Earth Engine. The Moore Foundation’s Environment Program finances practical, enduring solutions to environmental challenges and works to improve the way society uses and manages important terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal marine ecosystems to create working land and seascapes that support resilient and productive ecosystems for current and future generations. They’ve funded the U.S. Geological Survey to scale their infrastructure and accelerate bringing historic Landsat data off tape, and online, through Google Earth Engine.

This animation shows the breadth and depth of the Landsat archive that has been uploaded into Google Earth Engine to date. We are grateful to the USGS for their ongoing technical collaboration.

Support from the Moore Foundation includes funding for several scientists to develop and integrate their desktop software to work online with the data available in Google Earth Engine. Those scientists—Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Carlos Souza of Imazon—are also key partners, along with Matt Hansen of the Geographic Information Science Center at South Dakota State University. All are at the cutting edge of forest monitoring in support of climate science.

In collaboration with Matt Hansen and CONAFOR, Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, we’ve produced a forest cover and water map of Mexico. This is the finest-scale forest map produced of Mexico to date. The map required 15,000 hours of computation, but was completed in less than a day on Google Earth Engine, using 1,000 computers over more than 53,000 Landsat scenes (1984-2010). CONAFOR provided National Forest Inventory ground-sampled data to calibrate and validate the algorithm.

A forest cover and water map of Mexico (southern portion, including the Yucatan peninsula), produced in collaboration with scientist Matthew Hansen and CONAFOR.

We hope that Google Earth Engine will be an important tool to help institutions around the world manage forests more wisely. As we fully develop the platform, we hope more scientists will use new Earth Engine API to integrate their applications online—for deforestation, disease mitigation, disaster response, water resource mapping and other beneficial uses. If you’re interested in partnering with us, we want to hear from you—visit our website! We look forward to seeing what’s possible when scientists, governments, NGO’s, universities, and others gain access to data and computing resources to collaborate online to help protect the earth’s environment.

Update on 12/6: Additional information on the Moore Foundation, Google Earth Engine’s Landsat archive, and the Congo Basin Water Map have been added to the post.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager, Google Earth Engine

Learn about the human side of climate change with Kofi Annan

Jamie Yood — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:16:00 +0000

(Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog and the LatLong Blog)

Climate change is too often misunderstood to be simply an environmental issue, rather than a human issue. For our children and grandchildren, climate change is an issue of public health, economics, global security and social equity. This human side of climate change is explained in a new Google Earth tour narrated by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Within these stories, you’ll find data and tools to explore this topic in more depth, and meet some of the people who are actively working on managing the risks of climate variability and change. We encourage you to take the tour to learn more about these human issues and the inspiring work of groups like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) that are helping farmers cope with climate change. We hope this video will serve as a useful tool as educators help students around the world understand the complexity of this issue.

This is the latest in our series of climate change tours that we’re releasing leading up to the global U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP16) talks in Cancun, Mexico this week.

As part of the Google Earth for Educators Community, we’ve also created a special Climate Change Educators Resources page that teachers can use in their classrooms. Here, teachers can find the tools they need to create lesson plans about climate change, including all the individual Google Earth KML layers available for download. Teachers and students can overlay multiple data layers that help illustrate climate change, and discuss and analyze them as part of K-12 and higher education curriculum. We’re also looking for lessons plans for any school grade that use this narrated tour or these Google Earth KML layers, so if you’re a teacher or instructor, please submit your lesson plan for review now.

Visit google.com/landing/cop16/climatetours.html or the Climate Change Educators Resources page to learn more about climate change today.

Posted by Dr. Amy Luers, Google.org

Be Part of Improving Google Person Finder

Jamie Yood — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:42:00 +0000

Google Person Finder has become a useful tool in responding to natural disasters by reconnecting people with their family and friends. We’ve been looking at the next phase of Google Person Finder and decided to begin hosting the open source project at Google Code. We’re inviting the developer community to help improve Google Person Finder and the PFIF data format.

Google Person Finder provides a common place to search for, comment on, and connect records from many missing person registries. After the January 12th earthquake in Haiti, a team of Googlers worked with the U.S. Department of State to quickly create a site that helped people who were affected by the disaster. The site was used heavily after the Chile earthquake in February and put in action again in April after the Qinghai earthquake in China and in August for the Pakistan floods.

The software powering Google Person Finder is open source so we’re listing the open issues and feature requests we’ve received over the past few months in hopes the community can help us improve the code. We’ve created a Developer Guide to help developers get started. As always, we invite those interested to post questions on our public Person Finder discussion group. Those who are interested in improving the PFIF data format can also join the PFIF discussion group.

In addition to opening our product for developers, we’ve decided it’s now time to turn off our Google Person Finder instances for Haiti, Chile, China, and Pakistan. It doesn’t seem useful to be serving these missing person records on the Internet indefinitely, so we intend for each instance of Google Person Finder to be running for a limited time. Once an instance has served its purpose, we will archive the PFIF records in a secure location for historical preservation for one year while we work to identify a permanent owner for these records. Assuming a long-term owner cannot be found, we will delete the records after one calendar year. For more information, please feel free to review the Google Person Finder FAQ.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager, Crisis Response Team

Comparing Flu Around the World

Jamie Yood — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:16:00 +0000

Earlier this year, we asked a global group of public health officials and influenza experts how we can make Google Flu Trends better. Their most common request was for visualizations that enable easy comparison of flu levels across regions, so that differences in the trend of the season could be easily identified. We now publish the flu levels of all countries and regions on Google Public Data Explorer which provides this feature and much more. Also, as part of our annual model update for the Northern Hemisphere, we’re refreshing our models in 13 countries and adding new regional estimates for the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, and Spain.

It’s important to note that the flu level is a normalized number indicating how unusually high or low our estimate of flu-related activity is in a place. Zero means business as usual. Eight means flu activity is unusually high for that country or region. So, you can’t use these visualizations to say there was more flu in one place than in another, but you can know whether the situation deviated more from normalcy in one location than in another.

Let’s look at some of the ways these new visualizations allow us to compare flu activity across the globe:

Has the flu season started in Western Europe? There was a bit of activity in Germany and Austria at the beginning of October. Otherwise, there is not much flu in that region as of this week.

Let’s look at the data on a map. On the chart below, each bubble has a size proportional to the flu level for November 9, 2008 (a minus sign indicates less flu activity than is usual). The flu season hasn’t started anywhere. Hit the “Play” button to see how the flu season develops first in the Northern hemisphere.

Check out how flu seasons alternate between the northern and southern hemispheres.

Click on "Explore data" in any one of the charts above to go to Public Data Explorer and start exploring!

Posted by Julia Kodysh, Software Engineer

Helping you find emergency information when you need it

Jamie Yood — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 08:16:00 +0000

We know that in times of crisis, it's especially important for you to find the crucial information you're looking for—and find it fast. Today, in 13 countries, we’ll begin displaying some combination of special search results for searches around poison control, suicide and common emergency numbers that point to emergency information.

This effort started last year when I received an email from a mother in the U.S. who had trouble finding the phone number for the poison control hotline after her daughter accidentally ingested something potentially poisonous (fortunately, her daughter was fine). As a result, people in the U.S. performing various searches including "poison control" began to see a special result displaying the national phone number for the American Association of Poison Control Centers last fall.

Example of the poison control result in Spain

Soon after we added poison control information to search results, we heard from Googlers whose lives had been affected by suicide and who thought that suicide prevention could be another case for a special search result. In April we began prominently displaying the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at the top of the results page for certain search queries in the U.S. Since then, our friends at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline have reported a 9 percent increase in legitimate calls to its hotline.

Example of the suicide prevention result in the UK

So, following positive feedback from consumers and our hotline partners, we decided to expand the poison control and suicide prevention special search results beyond the U.S. Each of these 13 countries will see one or more of these results: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. We looked for hotlines that are available nationally and 24/7 and we hope to add additional countries in the future.

We're also introducing a new special search result for common emergencies, such as fire, medical and police emergencies. We want to make this information easier to find for residents as well as travelers, especially as some countries have different numbers for different emergencies.

Example of the emergency number result in France

An emergency is stressful enough. We hope this small step helps connect people with the information they need immediately.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Chief Health Strategist

Ideas for Haiti’s Internet

Jamie Yood — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 18:12:00 +0000

In the nearly ten months since the Haiti earthquake, Google has engaged with and learned a lot about the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. When we looked at our internal data a few months ago we were particularly saddened, although not entirely surprised, to find that the country’s Internet bandwidth -- a critical component of any modern economy -- was radically lower than that of its close neighbors.

At the request of the Clinton Foundation, and with some input from external experts like Inveneo, we recently came up with some ideas for improving access to the Internet in Haiti and wrote them up in this paper (.pdf). They include opening TV or other appropriate spectrum for use, as the FCC recently approved in the United States, and different possibilities for connecting to undersea cables that would help make easy, cheap broadband connectivity a reality for Haitians.

These are some ideas to start the discussion. Multilateral institutions, entrepreneurs from around the globe, and the Haitian government and its citizens can all play a role in helping the Internet grow there. We believe a stronger Internet means a stronger economy and democracy, and we hope this discussion will help Haiti succeed.

Posted by John Lyman, Program Manager, Google.org

West Virginia – Country Roads to Geothermal Power

Jamie Yood — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 21:54:00 +0000

Could clean, reliable, baseload geothermal energy be produced in the Pioneer State?

The SMU Geothermal Laboratory, led by Principal Investigator Dr. David Blackwell, has discovered unexpectedly high temperatures beneath West Virginia capable of supporting geothermal energy production. As a result, they have increased estimates of West Virginia's total heat content by 78% and geothermal generation potential by 75%. The discovery was made as part of SMU's project to update the Geothermal Map of North America supported by Google's RE initiative. The finding, first reported today in Science News, will be presented at the upcoming Geothermal Resources Council conference in Sacramento, CA.

The finding indicates that West Virginia potentially holds the highest grade geothermal resources east of the Mississippi River. SMU estimates that 2% of West Virginia's geothermal resources could support over 18,890 megawatts of electrical generating capacity using Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and other advanced geothermal technologies such as Co-Produced Fluids and Low Temperature Hydrothermal.

The results can be seen in the updated Google Earth layer on U.S. Geothermal Resources:

BEFORE............................AFTER

How'd they do it?

The SMU team has been developing entirely new pictures of the earth's geothermal resources. They have started by aggregating thousands of new Bottom Hole Temperature (BHT) temperature readings from oil, gas, and water wells in previously under-sampled regions of the U.S. For example, The 2004 Geothermal Map of North America featured only four temperature points informing geothermal estimates for West Virginia, compared to 1,455 points in the updated version. In addition, the team has improved estimates of heat flow through the earth's crust with better regional lithologic data. The new results indicate the potential for temperatures as high as 200c (392 f) at depths of 5 kilometers (16,404 feet).

SMU's full U.S. project will be completed in early 2011 with a new map and national resource estimatess. With improvements in EGS technology, these resources can be harnessed to provide clean, reliable, baseload renewable power 24/7/365.

Our congratulations go out to the SMU team for their exiting discovery: Dr. David Blackwell, Maria Richards, Zachary Frone, and Joseph Batir.

For more information on Google.org's geothermal investments and research projects, please visit google.org/egs.

Posted by Charles Baron, Geothermal Program Lead, Google.org

Preparing for the 2010-2011 flu season with the flu vaccine finder

Jamie Yood — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:42:00 +0000

Last year’s flu season began with significant fanfare and concern. The H1N1 virus posed a new threat to public health and sent governments around the world scrambling to protect people’s well-being. We don’t yet know the severity of this flu season, but have learned in the past that many people come to Google to search for information about the flu.

In time for the upcoming flu season, Google is again collaborating with the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), their flu.gov collaborators and the American Lung Association to release a feature which allows people to more easily find nearby locations for getting the flu vaccine. By searching for terms like [flu] or [flu shot], information will appear at the top of your search results, including tips from flu.gov as well as the flu vaccine finder box with an expanding map that displays locations where you can receive vaccine.

In addition to finding it in our search results, you can check out the flu vaccine finder at www.google.com/flushot. The same tool will also be available shortly on www.flu.gov and the American Lung Association websites.

This year’s flu vaccine protects against the three viruses that research suggests will be most common, including the H1N1 virus, so officials do not expect the need for multiple vaccines.

We continue to hope for a relatively uneventful flu season, but encourage you to prepare appropriately.

Update on 9/30: Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health & Human Services, just announced that the flu vaccine finder is now embedded on flu.gov, along with instructions for how others can embed it on their site.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Chief Health Strategist

Our Clinton Global Inititive commitment to Pakistan

Jamie Yood — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:27:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from The Official Google Blog)

At the opening ceremony of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) this morning, President Clinton discussed the urgent need to help the people of Pakistan recover from widespread floods which have affected more people than the 2004 South Asia tsunami, the 2005 South Asia earthquake, and the Haiti earthquake combined. The floods have put one-fifth of the land underwater, impacting more than 20 million people, damaging or destroying 1.9 million homes, putting 3.5 million children at risk of waterborne diseases, and wiping out livestock and crops.

Unfortunately the global response has been anemic. While U.S. corporations, foundations and individuals responded admirably to the earthquake in Haiti by donating $900 million in the first five weeks after the disaster, that same group donated $25 million to Pakistan in the first five week weeks after the floods hit. In an interview with citizens hosted by YouTube, President Clinton called for a dramatically increased global response.

As part of our CGI commitment this year, Google is providing $1 million in charitable grants, as well as technology support to help the people of Pakistan recover from these floods. Roughly one-third of our grants support organizations providing clean water, shelter, medical care and other immediate needs, while two-thirds will be focused on longer-term rebuilding efforts. Partners for the first round of support include: A.S. Edhi International Foundation, Architecture for Humanity, CARE, The Citizens Foundation, Naya Jeevan for Kids, Real Medicine Foundation, SIUT North America, Sungi Development Foundation and UM Healthcare Trust.

Amazing work is already being done by these organizations. SIUT, for example, has already established seven medical relief camps and three field hospitals in different parts of the country. Their doctors and paramedics have treated more than 100,000 people, many of whom are suffering from gastroenteritis, malaria and skin diseases.

In remarks during the opening plenary today, Eric Schmidt noted the importance of bringing 21st century technology solutions to disaster relief work. In collaboration with numerous NGOs, for example, Google developed Person Finder, an application that allows individuals to check on the status of friends and loved ones affected by a disaster, a few days after the Haiti earthquake. We developed Resource Finder, an experimental tool that aggregates information on health facilities to help first responders, and shared our MapMaker data with the U.N. We’ve published sites linked from our homepage to provide updated maps and imagery, videos, news and ways to donate in the wake of recent natural disasters in Haiti, Chile, China, Pakistan and the Gulf oil spill.

We’re excited to be at CGI this week to learn about innovative ways to use technology to assist with health, development and disaster response. We encourage non-profits to visit our newly updated Google for NonProfits site to learn how Google’s free tools can help expand the impact of each organization.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Advocacy Director, Google.org

Official data underestimate global water and sanitation crisis, showing need for improved monitoring

Jamie Yood — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:06:00 +0000

Official data on the number of people still lacking access to adequate water and sanitation services prove that the current situation is simply unacceptable: 884 million people lack adequate access to clean water and 2.6 billion lack access to proper sanitation, according to the WHO and UNICEF’s Joint Water Monitoring Program. Disease spreads rapidly with over one billion people forced to defecate outside due to a lack of sanitation and indoor plumbing; in fact, unsafe water and sanitation is the most important environmental cause of ill-health, with millions dying every year as a result of poor water, sanitation and hygiene conditions. Young children in particular tend to suffer from water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea.

Success in water supply and sanitation interventions is commonly measured in terms of the number of wells dug, public water points connected or public toilets constructed. This is what the official data - available at national scale only - reflect. The assumption is that every water point and every toilet will provide adequate and sustainable services to a fixed number of people. Too often, though, wells run dry, hand pumps break, toilets go “out-of-service,” or the quality of the water provided is not safe.

As a result the official data seriously underestimate the water and sanitation crisis. A realistic assessment requires continuous monitoring at local levels. Modern technology now makes that possible.

The H2.0 group of partners set out to demonstrate that community level monitoring of operational water and sanitation services is feasible at national scales. Google.org is one of the H2.0 partners. We have co-funded the effort and provided technical support. Yesterday the group launched the H2.0 platform at a World Water Week event in Stockholm. Over the past several years, the partners have collected detailed water and sanitation service data and developed a data management and mapping platform. This platform will enable users open access to analyse, visualise and interact with the data. We want to support government and development partners prioritize water investments and help NGOs and service providers assess their performance in a transparent manner.

Three components of the platform show Google tools in action.

The data show that the number of people with access to safe and affordable water is significantly lower than official estimates have previously shown:

For Kenya, the initial analysis of data collected by the Water Services Trust Fund shows, according to Han Seur of GTZ, that: “In over a thousand low income urban areas with a total population over 4.5 million less than 25% have access to safe and affordable water.”
For Tanzania WaterAid and partners mapped over 25 thousand rural public water points in 2006. Vincent Casey of WaterAid summarized their report as: “Water point data mapped by WaterAid Tanzania has demonstrated that nearly half (46%) of rural water points are not functional. A quarter of all new water points are no longer working just two years after installation.”
For Zanzibar, according to Graham Alabaster of UN-Habitat: “Counting only those who are paying less 10% of their income for water as having affordable access, the water access rate had to be revised from 90% down to 22%.”

Unfortunately this information implies that the water and sanitation crisis is affecting two to three times more people in the areas surveyed than the official data suggest.

Better data on water services can help consumers hold their water service provider accountable. H2.0 partner ITC developed the Human Sensor Web, a system that allows Zanzibar citizens to report water outages by SMS and receive alert messages on water quality and availability.

To understand the issue and invest in solutions that work, we need to stop measuring success as construction of taps and toilets, and start measuring success by monitoring the number of people with sustainable access to safe and affordable water and sanitation services.

Posted by Frank Rijsberman, Director Program, Google.org and Chair, H2.0 Consortium

Health Speaks begins pilots in Arabic, Hindi and Swahili

Jamie Yood — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:29:00 +0000

Here in the U.S. I often take for granted the ability to immediately find information on if I might have a cold versus the flu or what vaccinations are recommended prior to traveling abroad. Like a lot of Americans, I often consult health information on the Internet in addition to talking with a medical professional. This information makes me more informed about my own health and more confident in making healthy decisions.

In most parts of the world, however, quality information that would help people improve their health is not available online in local languages. In fact, a 2004 Lancet article (.pdf) described the lack of access to health information as a “major barrier to knowledge-based healthcare in developing countries.” The authors noted that “among currently available technologies, only the Internet has the potential to deliver universal access to up-to-date healthcare information.”

To tackle this issue, we're introducing a new initiative called Health Speaks which aims to help increase the amount of high-quality online health information in local languages. Today we are beginning pilot projects to support community-based, crowd-sourced translation of health information from English into Arabic, Hindi and Swahili.
We encourage anyone with health knowledge who is bilingual in English and either Arabic, Hindi or Swahili to take part in the pilot projects for Health Speaks. We have chosen hundreds of good quality English language health articles from Wikipedia that we hope will be translated with the assistance of Google Translator Toolkit, made locally relevant, reviewed and then published to the corresponding local language Wikipedia site. To further show our commitment to this cause, we have funded the professional translation of a small subset of these articles.

We are additionally providing a donation incentive to encourage community translators to participate. For the first 60 days, we will donate 3 cents (US) for each English word translated to the Children's Cancer Hospital Egypt 57357, the Public Health Foundation of India and the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) for the pilots in Arabic, Hindi and Swahili, respectively, up to $50,000 each. This means that community translators will help their friends and neighbors access quality health information in a local language, while also supporting a local non-profit organization working in health or health education.

We will undoubtedly learn from these three pilots and iterate on our approach as we learn how best to engage volunteers and provide tools that allow for easy and accurate translation. We hope to one day expand the Health Speaks initiative to include high-quality health content from other publishers and other languages that suffer from a lack of health information online.

According to UNESCO, 90% of the content on the Internet exists in only 12 languages. Language should not be the barrier that denies millions of people worldwide the opportunity to improve their health with valuable health information. Please join us in the effort to break down part of that barrier.

Update on 10/15 @ 10AM: We are excited to extend the donation incentive period for all three pilots to December 15, 2010. However, registration for new participants will close, as planned, on October 31, 2010.

We are honored by the response we have received so far. At our events in Egypt, India, Kenya and Tanzania we heard from so many people about the effect quality health information can have in their communities. We’ve also received a great deal of feedback on the pilot and, as expected, will iterate on how best to crowd-source the translation of the health information. In the meantime, we’ve decided to extend the donation incentive period because we know many community members have begun translating articles, but have not had enough time to complete and publish them. We hope the additional time will allow community members to complete the great work they have started so their communities can benefit.

Posted by Jennifer Haroon, Manager, Health Initiatives, Google.org

Take Action with Google PowerMeter’s new personalized recommendations

Parag Chokshi — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:25:00 +0000

Google PowerMeter now offers personalized energy savings recommendations to help you save more energy and show off your savings. You can find it under “Take action” in your Google PowerMeter page.

Over time, the feature will provide even more useful tips. As your energy consumption behavior changes, you will receive new recommendations to help you save even more.

In addition to receiving customized energy saving recommendations, you’ll earn a special badge when you complete a recommendation. Collecting badges is a fun way of keeping track of your accomplishments to reduce energy waste and save money. And you might even strike up some friendly competition among family and friends to see who can collect the most badges the fastest!

We’ve also made it easier to see how much energy you’re using with a new display feature on the Google PowerMeter chart. Now, when you move your cursor over the chart, you’ll see a pop-up that shows the amount of power used at that moment in time.

Stay tuned as we continue to develop new features for Google PowerMeter.

Posted by Ryan Falor, Product Manager, Google PowerMeter

Honoring humanitarian work across the world

Jamie Yood — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:12:00 +0000

Today we celebrate World Humanitarian Day for just the second time, by honoring all those who participate in humanitarian work globally. August 19th marks the anniversary of the 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, in which Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN’s Special Representative in Iraq, and 21 of his colleagues were killed while working on one of the world’s biggest challenges.

Humanitarians often work in some of the least secure corners of the world. They face war, famine, disease and natural disasters. On this day, we’re honored to highlight all the work being done by our partners, and all organizations and individuals, who work to help global challenges. And we are reminded of how important it is to respond directly to the current flooding in Pakistan and the many humanitarian crises that continue today.

There are also many ways to have an impact on humanitarian crises from afar. In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig explosion, for example, the Defenders of Wildlife (and latest Google Earth Hero) built the Gulf Oil Spill Recovery map to track restoration efforts from citizens, nonprofits and government agencies.

Humanitarian workers are deeply involved in solutions to the global challenges being addressed by the Millennium Development Goals. Recently the UN Secretary General issued a request for citizens around the world to become “Citizen Ambassadors,” giving people the opportunity to provide direct feedback to global leaders. Learn more about how you can participate:

Thanks again to all the organizations and individuals who help others.

Posted by Meryl Stone, Google.org and Google for Nonprofits

Responding to the floods in Pakistan

A Googler — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:38:00 +0000

Pakistan has been struck by the worst flooding in its recorded history. The latest estimate of the number of people affected by the flood exceeds 14 million—more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Critical infrastructure has been damaged over the last two weeks and clean water is in short supply. As monsoons approach, flooding is expected to worsen.

Our Crisis Response team has been working to use existing tools and build new ones to help the relief efforts. We just launched a page in Urdu and English where you can find information, resources and donation opportunities to help the victims of the floods. We’re also donating $250,000 to international and local NGOs to immediately aid in relief efforts. Although we’ve been able to provide satellite imagery for disasters in the past, cloud cover in Pakistan has prevented us from compiling useful imagery so far. We hope to share imagery as soon as possible.

We’ve already learned a lot about building useful tools from our previous efforts to help with disaster relief. Following the earthquake in Haiti, a small team of Googlers visited relief aid workers in Haiti to understand how we could further help. In observing and speaking with the relief aid workers, we learned that they needed up-to-date information about available resources (such as which field hospitals have X-ray machines or orthopedic surgeons), their location and contact information. Coordination between various health and relief facilities that spring up in a disaster zone can be challenging.

Based on what we learned in Haiti, we’ve been working to develop Resource Finder, a new tool to help disseminate updated information about which services various health facilities offer. It provides a map with editable records to help relief workers maintain up-to-date information on the services, doctors, equipment and beds available at neighboring health facilities so that they can efficiently arrange patient transfers. We normally wouldn’t release the tool so quickly, but decided to make an early release version of Resource Finder available for supporting relief efforts in Pakistan. This is the first time the tool is being launched during a disaster situation so we’ll be working closely with NGOs to understand its usefulness and will iterate accordingly.

We’ve also launched Person Finder in both Urdu and English for this disaster. This application allows individuals to check and post on the status of relatives or friends affected by a disaster. Fortunately, we’ve heard that missing persons has not been as concerning an issue as it was during the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, but we’ll leave the application up regardless.

Responding to a disaster of this scale is a daunting task, but we can all do something to help. We will try to do our part and continue working with the many incredible NGOs to develop tools that help them work more effectively.

Posted by Ka-Ping Yee, Software Engineer, Google.org

Where in the world is dengue?

Jamie Yood — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:09:00 +0000

I’ve learned a lot as an intern with Google.org’s health efforts the last few months. Just this week I learned about a new collaboration between Google.org grantee HealthMap - the same group mentioned in our previous post Swine flu near you? - and the Dengue Branch of the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). They’ve created DengueMap to show recent reports of dengue around the world and regions where people are at risk to catch it. The reports on DengueMap are updated multiple times a day, keeping you up-to-date on where dengue is.

One week ago, I barely knew a thing about dengue. It turns out 2.5 billion people around the world are at risk of contracting dengue, and 50 to 100 million people get sick from it every year. Dengue is present in more than 100 countries, and dengue is on the rise in many parts of the world. This even includes the US. According to the CDC, there have been 28 cases where people caught dengue in Florida since 2009. While this doesn’t sound like a lot of cases, it’s somewhat alarming given that there were only a handful of cases ever recorded before 2009.

Dengue thrives in both cities and rural areas of the tropics and subtropics and is caused by a virus that is transmitted by mosquitoes. The symptoms are similar to a severe flu, and can be quite painful. There is no cure and no vaccine. Fortunately, dengue rarely causes death, though severe complications, like dengue hemorrhagic fever, can be lethal.

The bottom line? Be smart about protecting yourself from dengue. Know the areas where dengue is present (DengueMap is helpful for this) and wear bug spray.

For more info on dengue visit the CDC Dengue Branch page.

Posted by Rachael Holmes, Google.org intern

Our Support for AB32 and a Clean Energy Future in California

Parag Chokshi — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:55:00 +0000

We believe in taking responsibility for our carbon emissions and promoting sustainable environmental solutions. Today, we hosted an event with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group: Electric Bills & Oil Spills: Will California Continue to be a Clean Energy Leader? The discussion focused on AB32, California’s landmark legislation to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the future of the clean energy economy here in California and across the country.

California has led the nation in putting in place the right energy policies to foster growth in the clean energy economy. Google has been an early and strong supporter of AB32, legislation that creates jobs and spurs the development of clean energy technologies. In fact, last year, California's policies attracted 60 percent of all cleantech investment capital in North America -- $2.1 billion. From 1995 to 2008, California has seen a 45 percent increase in green businesses, and a 36 percent expansion in green jobs. That’s why we joined Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs, a coalition of businesses, NGOs, and labor organizations that support AB32.

Indeed, we believe our work in clean energy is good for business. We made the decision to become carbon neutral in 2007. We are minimizing our energy consumption with some of the most energy efficient data centers in the world, lowering our energy costs. And we are purchasing carbon offsets for the emissions we can’t eliminate. We also seek to power our facilities with renewable energy, like one of the largest corporate solar installations at our headquarters in Mountain View, CA. And we’re making investments in renewable energy, such as our $38.8 million investment in two North Dakota wind farms, and our recent agreement to purchase 114MW of wind energy over a 20 year period, spurring real growth in the sector by giving the developer financial certainty to develop new projects.

As a technology company, we’ve seen how the power of innovation can change the way we live our lives. Eric Schmidt said it best: “In Silicon Valley, it was the limitations of one technology or system that served as the drivers of change and led to the success of our industries here. AB32 provides a similar opportunity for new job creation in many sectors as business responds to the need for energy-efficient buildings, transportation and a growing portfolio of renewable energy resources.”

We’re committed to finding the right solutions to a clean energy future and we hope California’s policies continue to lead the way.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Seeking map data in response to Pakistan floods

Jamie Yood — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:59:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the LatLong blog)

According to the UN, the recent floods in Pakistan have affected over 4 million individuals - and the human toll continues to grow. Disease is an ever-increasing risk as relief agencies rush to the aid of those who have been hurt or displaced.

Google’s Crisis Response team has provided satellite imagery and KML layers to assist relief efforts in past disasters, including the Haiti earthquake and recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In Pakistan, however, the cloud cover over the impacted areas has inhibited our ability to make this valuable content available. The Crisis Response team is looking to collect and aggregate imagery and user generated KML, or other map data, with the goal of making this content more accessible to both crisis responders and the general public. We’re hoping you can help. You can submit links to KML and map data via the following form. We’ll contact you if we are able to publish your content.

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View BKTEF Relief Activity in a larger map

Further, we’ve released a version of our Person Finder tool in Urdu. We realize many of the victims of this disaster lack any connectivity to the Internet, but remain hopeful that tools like this can assist the diaspora and general disaster community in collecting and dispersing information on the well-being of those impacted.

Your data might help relief efforts; we appreciate you sharing it with the world.

Posted by Steve Hakusa, Software Engineer, Google Crisis Response Team

Open Source Altruism

Jamie Yood — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:11:00 +0000

Down a remote alleyway in Dar es Salaam, Gregory Mchopa picks up his paint brush and studies the empty canvas. He closes his eyes and visualizes his next painting, whether that be a group of Maasai women collecting water from a well, or villagers dancing before a brilliant Tanzanian sunset. For years, Gregory has been capturing the rich heritage of the Tanzanian Maasai with painstaking dedication. His delicate strokes against the canvas radiate a warmth and brightness unrivaled by his peers - one that had once never reached far beyond that maze of streets in Dar es Salaam.

It wasn't until the summer of 2007 that I first had the privilege of meeting Gregory Mchopa and witnessing his work. I had traveled to Tanzania as part of an outreach trip for google.org, during which we met with local businesses in Dar es Salaam and gave presentations with the goal to spark local economic growth. We spoke before local entrepreneurs, established businessmen, and government politicians; but it wasn't until we met a young artist deep in that maze of streets that we truly recognized the potential for sparking local enterprise. After watching Gregory paint a brilliant work of three Maasai women carrying water over their heads to the backdrop of a sweeping red sky, he sat down to explain the difficulties of being an artist in Tanzania: a limited market, a lack of connectivity, and an absence of distribution channels.

Gregory suffered not for lack of passion or talent, but from the lack of technologies and services that could broadcast his work to a far wider audience. After returning to the States, I worked with BRUTE LABS (a non-profit I founded with several other Googlers) to build a simple website, www.mchopa.com, that would bring Gregory's work before a global audience. Using several Google tools that are free and easy to use - App Engine, Checkout, Spreadsheets, Gmail - we developed a website and interface for Gregory that serves as an open source model for other artists in the developing world seeking to showcase and sell their work.

Since the launch of mchopa.com in 2009, Gregory has sold 47 paintings and kept all of the profits. Perhaps more significantly, Gregory's web presence has connected him with gallery representatives and individual collectors in the US, Canada, and the UK, many of whom have requested custom works for display. The culture of the Maasai has now spread to people around the world.

Down a remote alleyway in Dar es Salaam, Gregory Mchopa continues to faithfully wield his paint brush, capturing the heritage of his country and people. But through Google's online suite of tools, he now wields the power to broadcast his work far beyond that maze of streets to a global audience of buyers, suppliers, and admirers. The only question left for us now: who's the next Gregory Mchopa?

Posted by Joshua To, Program Manager

In honour of Stephen Schneider

Jamie Yood — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:02:00 +0000

The world has lost a brilliant scientist, a dynamic communicator, and a caring soul. Dr. Stephen Schneider, a Stanford Professor and a global leader in climate change science died Monday morning of a heart attack.

Steve was an important mentor and friend to me, as I know he was to many scientists and activists around the world. For many years I turned to Steve for advice on climate science and insights into the political process. I remember one line he often repeated to me:

“Amy, when it comes to climate science, always stick to the facts, the truth is bad enough.”

Steve was brilliant at communicating the facts in plain language – always driving home the message of risk. Managing climate change was like his struggle with leukemia, it required making decisions with incomplete information to improve the odds that you live a better and longer life.

Last year Steve collaborated with us on developing a Google Earth tour that provides a glimpse of his communication power. I remember as we were putting the final touches on this Google Earth Tour, I asked Steve if he would be at the World Climate Conference in Geneva, hoping we could meet up in person. His response in a late night email was:

“Nope, I won’t be there. I was at first two, as described in detail in Science as a Contact Sport—we got the ball rolling. SO your generation now takes up the baton--have fun.”

We have the baton Steve and will not let it go. And in your honor, I promise to have fun.

Posted by Dr. Amy Luers, Sr. Environmental Program Manager

It’s flu o’clock somewhere

Jamie Yood — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:59:00 +0000

It’s flu season. Well, below the equator, it’s flu season. As we turn towards summer heat in the northern hemisphere, half of the globe has colder weather and more flu activity on the way. Just as we expanded Google Flu Trends to much of Europe last fall in advance of the winter flu season, we’re bringing Google Flu Trends to eight additional countries in the southern hemisphere where winter is approaching.

We now show national estimates (and a few regions too!) of flu activity for Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, and Uruguay, bringing our grand total of countries with Google Flu Trends estimates to 28. As flu affects millions every year, these estimates made in near real-time give health officials an additional early warning tool which can help them to respond more quickly to flu outbreaks. This can be especially important when people from many countries converge in one place, like in South Africa for the World Cup. South Africa is the first country we’re adding in Africa, and we hope Google Flu Trends will provide useful information for football fans and foes alike.

Several of the newly added countries are near the equator which means they won’t show a strong seasonal peak of flu activity. Brazil provides a neat example of how the flu season in a country becomes more pronounced as you are further away from the equator. In Ceará, a Brazilian province that is nearer to the equator, the Google Flu Trends estimates generally don’t show a strong peak. The chart below shows the current season curve as compared with last year’s curve:

You can, however, see a stronger peak emerge as you move further south, away from the equator. Rio Grande do Sul offers a fine example of this, again comparing the current season with last year:

Where more people are searching, our models will likely be more robust. We won’t be able to provide flu-related estimates if people aren’t searching for flu-related information online. In the U.S. we’ve given estimates that are more than 90% accurate as compared with the CDC’s ILINet data from which our model was built.

Upon annual review of a country’s model, we may release an updated model. Just as we updated the U.S. model one year after launching, today we’re also updating the Australia and New Zealand models. We’ve retrained these models with an additional year of surveillance data and they should better reflect current activity levels.

You can also see animated Google Flu Trends for the world in the Google Earth layer now also available on the website. This video visualizes flu activity over the last two years in North America and Europe:

Check out flu activity in your area and stay healthy!

Posted by Corrie Conrad, Google.org

Largest supplier of energy monitors now compatible with Google PowerMeter

Jamie Yood — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:59:00 +0000

Today we are excited to offer a new way for many more people to access Google PowerMeter: our new Featured Device partner Current Cost - the largest global supplier of real time displays for monitoring energy use. Having already sold one million energy monitoring devices, Current Cost will now offer devices that are compatible with Google PowerMeter. They will also offer upgrades to existing customers so that they too can monitor their energy consumption anywhere online with our software.

Devices that integrate with Google PowerMeter will first be available in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Current Cost uses the Google PowerMeter API that we released back in March and joins others as a Featured Device partner that allows customers to understand their energy use. Our partnership is another example of hardware meeting our software to help customers save energy and money.

E.ON, one of the UK’s largest utilities, has also teamed up with Current Cost to offer its customers a Google PowerMeter compatible energy monitor as part of its free “Energy Fit Starter Pack.”

Current Cost estimates that their customers have already saved close to 400,000 tons of CO2 through monitoring their electricity use. One Australian restaurant recently learned that something as easy as turning off their coffee pots each night would save them $3,000 dollars per year.

Curious how you can start saving? Sign up for Google PowerMeter today.

Posted by Scott Coleman, Partnership Development Manager, Google.org

Researching with Google Flu Trends

Jamie Yood — Wed, 19 May 2010 03:26:00 +0000

When creating Google Flu Trends, we decided early on to make all of our estimates of flu activity available to the public for download. We’re always excited to hear about researchers using this data and recently learned about a study which compares Google Flu Trends estimates of flu activity with estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Almost any public health expert will tell you that there isn’t a single perfect measure of flu activity. Instead, there are several good measures, each of which tells a slightly different story. A good picture of flu activity emerges when these stories are examined together. One such measure is the CDC’s influenza-like illness surveillance network (ILINet) which shows the proportion of people who visit a physician with flu-like symptoms such as fever, cough and sore throat. This network can highlight areas where activity is unusually high given the time of year but cannot provide insight into the specific pathogens which are causing the illness. Another is the CDC’s Virologic Surveillance which shows the proportion of people who visit a physician, get tested, and have lab-confirmed influenza. This network shows the specific strains of influenza in circulation but can be affected by changes in testing practices, making it difficult to interpret the data over long periods of time.

We collaborated with the CDC when designing Google Flu Trends and decided to build a system that would make estimates based on the CDC’s ILINet data. Historically, we’ve shown a strong correlation with CDC’s ILINet data, typically with a correlation of greater than 0.9 (or more than 90% accurate as compared with CDC’s ILINet data). This recent study shows that Google Flu Trends is 72% accurate as compared with CDC's Virologic Surveillance data. This doesn't come as much of a surprise since the virologic data is telling a different story than the ILInet data. However, it’s good to see research showing the differences in these measures, as it highlights the need for multiple networks to exist.

We provide Google Flu Trends as an additional source of information for helping to understand the flu season. Google Flu Trends helps paint the picture of flu activity by providing estimates daily while some traditional flu surveillance systems can take days or weeks to collect and release data.

Posted by Matt Mohebbi, Software Engineer

Response to China Earthquake

Jamie Yood — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:55:00 +0000

(Translated from the Google China Blog)

Yesterday, when a powerful earthquake struck the Qinghai province in Western China, Googlers within China and internationally mobilized to see how we could help with disaster response.

We are working on several tools to help people on the ground find out more information about the earthquake, connect with loved ones, as well as help with recovery efforts.

For those concerned about loved ones in Qinghai, the China Person Finder tool can be used to submit or search for information about individuals who may have been affected. The tool is available in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English. We encourage organizations and media sites to embed the gadget on their sites and help spread the word.

In addition, users can access earthquake information on Google News and Google Maps from a link on our homepages on google.com.hk, and google.com.tw. The site also includes links to real-time search information, which includes people’s posts to Twitter and other sources.

We will keep posting updates to the Google China blog as more information and tools become available. Please visit this page for updated resources.

Powering consumers with information about their energy use

Jamie Yood — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:59:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the Google Public Policy Blog)

We all receive an electricity bill once a month that is hard to decipher besides the total amount due. What if we instead had access to more useful and actionable information about our energy consumption? What if consumers could use this information to automatically adjust appliances, lights, and other equipment to save money and cut energy use?

That’s what a group of over 45 major companies and organizations said today in a letter to President Obama. Signers include companies like AT&T, General Electric and Intel and NGOs like The Climate Group, NRDC and the Alliance to Save Energy. The group also includes start ups, smart grid companies, venture firms and trade organizations.

This diverse group shares a common vision: giving consumers the ability to monitor and manage their power use will save them energy and money. It will also unleash innovation in homes and businesses as new energy saving technologies and apps are developed.

This group will continue to look for ways to offer ideas to policymakers on how to empower consumers with energy saving tools and information. Join the discussion tomorrow at an event in Washington, DC co-hosted by Google and The Climate Group. If you can make it, RSVP here.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel

Liberia: A Country in Transition

Jamie Yood — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 19:22:00 +0000

The international community likes to define Liberia’s recent history primarily through two events: its fourteen-year civil war, which ended in 2003, and the work of the country’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first democratically elected female leader in Africa. The chart below illustrates both. On my recent trip to Liberia, first with a group of Bay Area philanthropists hosted by the government and then as part of a small group of Googlers on a country visit, I learned more about how terrible the 1980s and 90s were in this small West African nation. GDP -- a crude measure of the health of a nation, but an indicator nonetheless -- dropped 90% as the country endured brutal dictatorship after brutal dictatorship. That decline is the largest in any nation since World War II, and nearly twice the percentage drop that Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and other states experienced during their crises. The good news is that although Liberia essentially had no economy at the depths of the war, GDP has almost risen to pre-conflict levels during Johnson Sirleaf’s tenure, and foreign direct investment has returned.

The numbers also tell a third story. Throughout the 1960s and 70s Liberia’s economy grew at a steady pace in a way that most other African economies did not. The growth was inequitable -- but real -- and the ingenuity and entrepreneurship that drove it are on full display today, albeit in ways that can sometimes puzzle a visitor to the country.

During the ten days I was in Liberia my colleagues and I always had a driver; it’s the only way for foreigners to get around. The first day we reserved our car for 9:00am but when I looked out the hotel window at 9:02am I noticed the car speeding off with three other passengers. When I frantically called the driver he responded, “My man, don’t worry -- I will get you to your meeting on time.” And he did. Then there was the night a local friend suggested dinner by saying, “Come on -- this place has a nice outdoor patio at the base of Sniper Hill. . . wait, that didn’t quite sound as inviting as I meant it.” When we arrived our waiter was Frankie, a cheerful eight-year old sporting an Alex Rodriguez Yankees jersey who delivered our food and drink on the jog. At the local family restaurant, everyone pitched in.

Like most of Africa, cell phones are ubiquitous in Liberia and are the technology of choice for the vast majority of the population. Our meetings with the mobile providers there could have taken place anywhere in the world. They’re making money but are fiercely competitive with one another, slashing prices and offering new products to gain market share, and desperately trying to expand into new markets like broadband. Their activities are far from philanthropic, but they’re arguably having a more positive affect on Liberians’ day-to-day life than any other segment of society. The mobile penetration rate is 40% and rising, particularly in rural areas where phones are often the first “big” purchase a Liberian will make.

The country’s trademark ingenuity is of course noticeable here as well. Liberians will often carry SIM cards from different mobile carriers and switch back and forth depending on coverage and prices (a noticeably nice option that’s not available in the locked-down U.S. market). Since unanswered calls don’t incur a charge and the person who initiates the call pays more than the receiver, Liberians will also occasionally call and hang up, meaning, “I want talk to you but you can afford this more than I can, so call me back.” Scratch cards, which give you twenty or thirty minutes of talk time, are practically used as cash and are sold virtually everywhere.

The past thirty years have been difficult ones for most Liberians, and with an 80% unemployment rate and known war criminals still occupying high government offices, there are still huge problems to address. In the next two years the country will hold elections and most of the UN peacekeepers will withdraw. Watch closely: if both go well, a stable Liberia may finally be back.

Posted by John Lyman, Google.org

Gooey Googley Energy

Niki Fenwick — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:58:00 +0000

We appreciate TechCrunch’s early April Fool’s story but have no comment at this time other than to say that this has nothing to do with our exploration of marshmallows as an alternative energy source. They work for kids; why not for data centers too?

Posted by Jamie Yood, Team Lead, Project Puffed

Easing the development of Google PowerMeter compatible devices

Jamie Yood — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:07:00 +0000

At Google, we are encouraged to experiment and tinker to see if there is a better way of doing things. We want to encourage others in the energy monitoring space to do the same. To this end, I'd like to introduce our most recent strategic partner Microchip, which is a supplier of cost-effective, innovative products for the embedded developer. Today, Microchip will include as part of their developer demonstration environment the Google PowerMeter API library that we recently announced. This integration will make it much easier to create devices compatible with Google PowerMeter which means one can more quickly go from concept to demo to product.

The Google PowerMeter API is designed to work with a variety of energy monitoring devices - from utilities with smart meters, back haul networks and enterprise scale meter data management systems - to small embedded consumer devices that can send energy information directly to Google PowerMeter.

Google's belief in open source also means that the Google PowerMeter API library is available to everyone under the Apache 2.0 license. Embedded developers, tinkerers and makers are welcome to explore the code and use it in their products.

As we search for clean energy alternatives, it is important that everyone - from utilities to garage inventors - get a chance to try out new technologies and methods so that we all benefit from their inspirations.

Posted by Charles Spirakis, Google Software Engineer

Share your Power(Meter)!

Jamie Yood — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:41:00 +0000

Google PowerMeter now gives you the ability to share your data with others. What does this mean? Everyone in your household can now activate Google PowerMeter on her own personalized iGoogle page so families and roommates can all track their energy consumption online together.

You can also share your data with friends or other Google PowerMeter users to get advice on your usage, compare trends or even strike up a friendly competition to see who can save the most. After all, how can you keep up with your friends, the Joneses, when you don't know how much they are consuming?

Members of the Google PowerMeter team routinely compare their energy usage data and share energy saving tips and suggestions with one another.

For instance, by comparing his PowerMeter data with his friend's data during a heat wave, a fellow Googler discovered that his home air-conditioning system was consuming much more energy than his friend's system. The friend lives in the same area and in a similar sized house. By sharing this data, the Googler found out that his air conditioner was malfunctioning, and after making the necessary repairs, was able to reduce the amount he spends on electricity for air conditioning.

All sharing is completely opt-in and your privacy will still be protected. If you are already a Google PowerMeter user, please visit our help center to get started. Don't have Google PowerMeter yet? Visit our website to see how you can get it.

We hope that this feature sparks some interesting energy-related conversations between you and your friends!

Posted by Danan Sudindranath, Google Software Engineer

Applications now open for the 2010-2011 Global Heath Corps

Jamie Yood — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:22:00 +0000

We are pleased to share with you that the Global Health Corps (GHC) is now accepting applications for their 2010-2011 class. GHC sent their inaugural class of 22 recent university graduates to complete year-long assignments in public health organizations in various countries. This program came to fruition after discussions at the aids2031 conference hosted by Google.org in March 2008.

GHC is a unique program that enhances a fellow's cultural experience by pairing cross cultural teams - one fellow from the host country and one international fellow. Once accepted, all chosen fellows must complete a summer training course sponsored by Stanford University. This year GHC has 32 open positions with locations ranging from Burundi, Rwanda, New Jersey, Malawi, and Massachusetts. We believe that Global Health Corps offers a unique experience that enables young professionals to gain valuable experience for strengthening global public health equity.

The American application deadline is set for March 1st while the deadline for in-country fellows is April 1st. Applicants must be under 30 years old, possess at least an undergraduate degree, and be proficient in English. Fellows wlll be chosen based on their skills that meet organization's assignment goals once they successfully complete GHC's intense interviewing, application and orientation process. Good luck!

Posted by Kataneh Sarvian, Google.org

How much power do you use in the middle of the night?

Niki Fenwick — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:10:00 +0000

"Always On" power is the lowest level of sustained power used during a day-long period. On our energy-monitoring software tool, Google PowerMeter, this shows up as a dark green bar on your power usage graph. We've found that American users, on average, have 589 watts of electrical power being consumed all day long. What items are using all this electricity?

- "Vampire loads" - appliances that don't really turn off, even when you're not actively using them

- Old appliances, especially refrigerators

- Lights that are never turned off

- Outdoor lights

- Cable box or DVR

- Computers that never turn off

- Electric water heaters

Here's the good news: It's typically very easy to reduce your Always On power. Below is a graph of a household that did just that. This household started reducing electricity use by turning off their outdoor lighting (green period) instead of leaving the lights on all day (red period). That change reduced the average Always On from 420 watts to 300 watts. That 120 watt Always On reduction can yield hundreds of dollars in estimated savings over a single year!

On January 27, 2010, almost 40% of Google PowerMeter users had Always On levels at over 500 watts. If these users reduced that amount by just 100 watts each, that's a significant cumulative savings. (Look for more of these aggregate analyses of our data in the future as we continue to learn more about how people use electricity.)

Posted by Omar Khan, Software Engineer

FCC broadband plan to call for access to real-time energy info

Jamie Yood — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from Public Policy Blog)

Over the past six months we have been providing you with periodic updates and comments on the FCC's National Broadband Plan, which is scheduled for release in mid-March. Earlier today FCC energy and environment director Nick Sinai gave a sneak preview of one of the Plan's key components: how broadband will facilitate smarter energy usage.

He told an audience at the Clean-tech Investor Summit that the FCC will call on States and the Congress to give consumers and consumer-authorized third parties access to real-time energy information. This kind of information could have a huge financial and environmental impact. Studies show that access to real-time usage data results in energy savings of up to 15%. He talked about how, combined with other measures, this information could create a platform that could lead to new products and services to help consumers manage energy. Picture it: a smart phone apps store for home energy management.

Sinai singled out for praise technologies like "smart" electricity meters and recent efforts in California to include consumer data access policies as part of a statewide smart meter roll out. (Learn more by reading Google's comments.) While encouraged by state-led initiatives like this, Sinai said if state efforts don't work, the FCC could recommend that Congress consider national energy data accessibility legislation.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel

A simple way to curb climate change

Jamie Yood — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:39:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from Google's Public Policy Blog)

People often get up in settings like the international climate change conference in Copenhagen and make complicated pronouncements that leave heads spinning. Today was different. Google, GE, the Climate Group, and NRDC, supported by other leading businesses and NGOs, had a simple message: governments across the world should ensure people have real-time access to their home energy information.

Most of us know little about how we use energy in our homes, other than what our monthy power bill tells us. Yet studies show that when people can see in real-time how much energy they are using, they save up to 15% on their electricity use with simple behavioral changes, and even more with investments in energy efficiency. The savings are huge when added up: if all US households reduced 15% of their energy use by 2020 it would be equivalent to taking 35 million cars off the road and would save consumers $46 billion on their energy bills.

As 40,000 people gather in Copenhagen to fight global warming, we think that's a solution that governments should be paying attention to. This group, which will take other actions after the meeting has ended, has begun a push to give ordinary citizens the tools to save money and save the planet. A lot of the decisions on the table in Copenhagen are hard, we believe this one is simple.

Copenhagen statement signers: Google, GE, The Climate Group, NRDC, Alliance to Save Energy, Center for American Progress, Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition, Digital Energy Solutions Campaign, Dow, Energy Future Coalition, Intel, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, US Green Building Council, Whirlpool

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel, Google.org