Mass open online education courses - MOOCS - are transforming education. We’re working with the European Journalism Centre to bring journalism education online, offering a free web data journalism course ‘Doing Journalism with Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools.’

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More than 14,000 participants have signed up. The course will officially start on May 19, 2014. It is part of the European Journalism Centre’s Data Driven Journalism initiative, which aims to enable more journalists, editors, news developers and designers to make better use of data and incorporate it further into their work. Started in 2010, the initiative provides resources for journalists through DataDrivenJournalism.net, the School of Data Journalism, and the Data Journalism Handbook.

Participants in the new online course will learn the essential concepts and skills to work effectively with data and produce compelling stories under tight deadlines. The line-up of instructors and advisors hails from journalism schools and media outlets around the world. Listen to them introduce themselves below - and enroll in the course.

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Posted by Simon Morrison, Public Policy Manager

For the first time, the Google Cultural Institute has been given ‘access all areas’ to one of the world’s most famous Opera Houses: the Palais Garnier in Paris, the setting for The Phantom of the Opera.

Our indoor Street View images feature exquisite detail and allow anyone in the world to tour 11 floors (and 3.7km!) of the Palais Garnier. You can now experience virtually what it’s like to be on stage, backstage, in the rehearsal rooms, the costume room, a hidden lake or even on the roof of the Opéra building, overlooking Paris’ skyline!


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View from the stage (Mezzanine and Orchestra)


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View of the “Grand Foyer”


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View of the ground floor main staircase and “Grand Véstibule”


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View from the “4ème loges”

In our second installment from the Paris Opéra House, we bring you what we think might be the world's first multi-billion pixel image of a ceiling - it's certainly the first one to be captured by our team!

Marc Chagall’s masterpiece in the Opéra Garnier in Paris sits 18 meters above the auditorium seating, with specific light conditions and a concave shape, making it one of our biggest technical challenges to date.

In his riotously colourful modernist work, Chagall pays tribute to the composers Mozart, Wagner, Mussorgsky, Berlioz and Ravel, as well as to famous actors and dancers. And if you look carefully you might even be able to spot famous characters such as Carmen, or the discreet signature of the artist, 18 metres from the ground.

Finally, the Opéra has produced an online exhibition called Le Chemin des Etoiles, with portrait photos and information about more than 80 of its star dancers over the last 74 years.

Posted by Sixtine Fabre, Program Manager, Google Cultural Institute

From homophobia and racism to political and religious extremism, “hate speech” on the Internet is raising concern. YouTube and other Google products such as G+ have strong Community Guidelines and offer effective tools, featured in the below video, to flag inappropriate content. Yet a recent event with the UK Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee in London’s YouTube Space demonstrated that perhaps the best way to fight hate is through positive counterspeech.



Free speech is vital to democracy. Drowning out ideology with reason represents a powerful weapon. It is only on open platforms like YouTube—not in jihadist chat rooms or the extremist echo chambers of the ‘dark internet’—that susceptible or curious minds will find countervailing points of view.

In 2010, columnist Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller set out to combat discrimination against young gays and lesbians. They started small. Savage filmed a homemade YouTube video called “It Gets Better.” It soon swelled into a global phenomenon. In Britain, “It Gets Better… Today,” led to a hit single that climbed the UK independent charts - garnering more than 50 million views.



Our London event aimed to achieve something similar with online extremism. We explored how two British YouTube creators, Ben Cook and Jack Howard, partnered with Oxfam on an online campaign to help refugees. Michael Stevens of Vsauce proved that YouTube can educate and inform, as well as entertain. And a community worker who helps people that are vulnerable to radicalisation, launched his YouTube channel, Abdullah X, to fight online recruitment of foreign fighters and terrorists.

The internet can be a tool of radicalisation, so it is vital to seize it as a force of good. Though the removal of the really bad stuff, like violence, continues to be essential, too little focus so far has been placed on the importance of counter-messages. As one participant in London said, “We must embrace new technology and make the right messages more digestible so we can flood the internet with positivity.” Building a community around counterspeech is difficult. It may take time. In the end, though, it wins.

Posted by Verity Harding, Public Policy Manager, London

Think “Saudi Arabia,” and one thing probably comes to mind - oil. But the desert kingdom is also remarkable for another reason - its love of YouTube. In 2013, the average Saudi Internet user watched three times as many videos per day as the average U.S. user. Saudis aren’t just watching: more and more are producing video content and building businesses.

These successful Saudi YouTube content creators recently gathered for a seminar in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. In the course of a day, they compared their experiences, learned how to create viral Arabic language videos and received tips on how to make money with their online shows.

No cinemas exist in Saudi Arabia, explaining part of the online video phenomena. The Internet allows room to tackle issues often avoided by foreign run TV stations - and permits satire in a way unavailable elsewhere in the Kingdom. A recent hit by UTURN spoofed the popular “First Kiss” video, showing various men performing the locally traditional “touching of the nose” embrace in a humorous manner.



“Eysh Elly” has won more than two million subscribers and more than 200 million views by discussing, and often poking fun at everyday life in the Kingdom. One show, for example, tackled the issue of child care. As the show’s producer says, “we promote harmony, honesty and halal,” discussing issues that “only a Saudi would understand only something a Saudi would talk about.”



Other YouTube Saudi productions tackle issues previously neglected in the local media. UTURN runs a show called Salemha which teaches English by using clips from popular Hollywood movies. Noon Al Niswa and SenTube focuses health and fitness. Ana wa Heya (Him and Her), pits men against women to debate social issues of Saudi culture.



As elsewhere, light entertainment including music and games are popular. Saudi video gaming channels such as D7oomy999, Saudi Gamer and Zpad receive widespread attention not just in the Middle East. Music also can contain a serious message: TELFAZ11’s Alaa Wardi’s “No Women No Drive” song, chanted in an acapella version mixing Arabic and Western musical styles, raised awareness about Saudi women fighting for the right to drive.



Arabic content on the web represents just three percent of the total digital content online—yet Arabic speakers make up more than 5 percent of the global population. YouTube in Saudi Arabia is helping close this gap—helping local talents get discovered, express their opinions and start their own businesses. In Saudi Arabia, the Internet is moving the country far beyond oil.

Posted by Haisam Yehia, YouTube team, Middle East, North Africa

It’s not always that a private corporation and a civil rights NGO see eye to eye on key issues. But this is the case for Google and Index on Censorship.

For the fourth year in a row, we worked with Index on its annual awards event, which took place last evening at London's Barbican Centre. This ongoing relationship reflects our common concerns about the ongoing and increasing government crackdown against the free and open Internet. Index has made a strong move to invest in the defense not just of print, radio and tv freedom - but also with us in defence of online freedom.

When we first learned about Digital Freedom Award, we were immediately impressed with its motto - celebrating the fundamental right to "write, blog, tweet, speak out, protest and create art and literature and music." Google aims to provide a platform to promote just such a fundamental right. The Digital Freedom Award recognizes the original use of new technology to foster debate, argument or dissent.

Google Digital Journalism Award winner Shubhranshu Choudhary

Let’s be clear: Total editorial control remains with Index. Index, not us, chooses the nominees. Until now, distinguished juries have selected winners. But this year, we worked with Index on an innovation - asking the public to vote by filling in an online form.

This year’s nominees came from China, India, the U.S., and appropriately enough, cyberspace! There was whistleblower Edward Snowden, whose actions are well-known.

There was the Chinese microblogging Weibo, an uncensored version of China’s biggest social network, SinaWeibo. Free Weibo keeps track of and publishes everything which has been censored and deleted by the government, providing a fascinating insight into the regime’s priorities and fears.

There was TAILS - the Incognoto Amnesiac Live Operating System. Its open-source encryption tool helps protect the free online communication of journalists and sources in any country, regardless of official limits on free expression.

The winner came from India, journalist Shubhranshu Choudhary. He’s the brains behind CGNet Swara (Voice of Chhattisgarh) a mobile-phone (no smartphone required) service that allows citizens to upload and listen to local reports in their own dialect.

Please join us in congratulating Shubhranshu - and all the free-expression champions who shines a light on their ongoing struggle against censorship around the world.

Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe

The Belgian city of Mons becomes a European capital of culture next year, ushering in 12 months of festivities. One of Google’s two major European data centers is located just down the road from the city, making us a major local investor and employer. It is only natural that we want to help put some sparkle into the city’s ambitious capital of culture plans.

At today’s press conference launch of the Mons 2015 program, we launched something special and sparkling - new Indoor Street View images. Street View cars and trikes captured new imagery of some of Mons’s most famous buildings - both their exteriors - and for the first time, their interiors. These include the splendid Grand Place, including the inside of the the City Hall, the Collégiale Sainte Waudru, and the BAM art museum.

Mons is an architectural treasure. The canonesses of the Sainte Waudru religious community began their first church in 1450 and the Brabant Gothic style church remains of the most beautiful buildings in Mons. Inside, the exceptional Treasure of Sainte Waudru houses a precious collection of gold and remarkable 16th-century alabaster statues from the artist and Mons resident Jacques du Broeucq.


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The historic city centre is dominated by the Grand Place and its remarkable City Hall. Commissioned by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, famed architect Matthijs de Layens designed the imposing edifice.


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Throughout the coming year and a half, we’ll continue to support the Mons 2015 adventure, in particular by working with our longtime partners, the Mundaneum archive. More than a century ago, two visionary Belgians envisioned the World Wide Web’s architecture of hyperlinks and indexation of information, not on computers, but on paper cards. Their creation was called the Mundaneum.

The Mundaneum plans an exciting “Mapping Knowledge” exhibition. Together, we are bringing high-level speakers to the city to explore Internet issues. Our own chief Internet evangelist and “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf recently visited and presented his vision of the future to a packed audience at the city’s 600 seat Manege Theater. Mons’ time on the big stage of European culture promises many more exciting events.

Posted by William Echikson, Head of Community Relations, Europe

High-quality content is important to the web and we are committed to working with publishers to ensure that readers find their content. Our Publisher Advisory Council, bringing together our advertising and product teams with top media executives, meets about twice a year since 2009 in different venues in Europe.

The Council’s next session opens tomorrow in Madrid. Although planned months ago, it comes at important time, just as a debate has opened in Spain about whether publishers should be paid for linking their content. At the Advisory Council, we will concentrate on forging win-win business deals. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy recently made the same point, urging Internet companies and publishers to reinforce their commercial agreements.

The Council’s goal is to create a virtuous circle: more, better engaged users, generating more revenue, and ultimately enabling greater investment in higher quality content. Google drives 10 billion clicks a month to publisher websites for free. Each click represents a business opportunity, offering the chance to show ads, register users and win loyal readers. In 2013, we shared more than $9 billion with our AdSense publisher partners.



Beyond our AdSense advertising program, other Google tools allow publishers to make money from their content. DoubleClick offers ways to show display ads. Ad Exchange maximizes the value of ad space on an impression-by-impression basis. YouTube channels, video embeds and YouTube Direct create new opportunities for publishers to create new video sources of revenue.

We are keen to help news organisations make the transition to digital journalism. For 2014 our Google Journalism Fellowship will fund 11 students a summer internship with organizations steeped in everything from investigative journalism to press freedom and to those helping the industry figure out its future in the digital age. In Europe, we have partnered with the Global Editors Network on a series of "Editors Lab" events, including this recent hackathon in Barcelona. We funded Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s report on the future of journalism and Oliver & Ohlbaum’s report on the impact of the Internet on journalism.

The Internet lives on the oxygen of information. It needs quality journalism. Commercial agreements with publishers are a win-win solution and preferable to regulations that damage innovation as a pillar of the economic recovery. We are ready to play our part in working with the news industry to find a way for it to thrive in the new digital age.

Posted by Bárbara Navarro, Director Public Policy for Southern Europe

The Internet has generated a series of new opportunities and issues for policymakers, impacting everything from copyright to competition. As a company that started out in academia, we’ve long supported some of the world’s best computer science researchers in universities. Our Google Research Awards grant program only recently branched out into policy areas and we’re eager now to attract top notch researchers to submit applications on Internet policy matters.



Researchers can apply for up to $150,000. However most first time awards are funded at the amount needed to support basic expenses for one graduate student for one year, or around $50,000. Please see our FAQs for more details on eligibility and budgets.

Applications for the next funding round are due by April 15th.

Each funded project will be assigned a Googler as sponsor. The role of the sponsor is to support the project by discussing research directions, engaging with professors and students, and overseeing collaboration between the project team and Google. For more details, look at the FAQ for the question, What are Google contacts and potential Google sponsors, and what roles do they play?



A separate, but related program, for students is the Google Policy Fellowship program, which provides an exciting opportunity for paid internships. Inspired by Google’s Summer of Code with a public policy twist, the Google Policy Fellowship program offers undergraduate, graduate, and law students the opportunity to work at public interest organizations at the forefront of debates on broadband and access policy, content regulation, copyright and creativity, consumer privacy, open government, government surveillance, data security, data innovation, free expression and more. More information about the host organizations and the areas of focus for the fellows is outlined here.

The deadline is April 14th.

Both the Policy Fellowship Program and the Research Awards program aim to stimulate public debate around the exciting challenges born in the Internet age. Please do apply and participate in this adventure.

Posted by Max Senges, Internet Policy & Innovation Manager, Berlin

Today we’re celebrating a series of "firsts" at our Cultural Institute - our first Nigerian partner, our first Pakistani partner, and our first Native American partner.

Nigeria's Pan-Atlantic University is presenting its collection of rare historical documents and photographs that tell the story of Nigeria’s formation as a colony. A second exhibition documents through rare photographs Lagos's transformation from a cosmopolitan colonial trading center to West Africa’s largest metropolis.

Colonial Lagos

Modern Lagos

Our first partner from Pakistan is the Citizen’s Archive. Its exhibit documents the emergence of new media after the country’s independence in 1948. During this period, traditional art forms were revived on radio and television, with series that addressed issues such as the role of women.

Pakistani TV medical drama from the 1980s

Mashantucket Pequot Museum's collection encompasses 20,000 years of Native American history. Its eye-opening exhibition on Neetôpáwees (pronounced nee-top-a-wees) means “Little Friends” in the Mohegan-Pequot language.

In the exhibition, we discover dolls from the past 125 years, and their myriad uses: as medicine dolls, possessing healing and protective powers, important tokens of exchange and respect between Northeastern Native American tribes, and interactive, educational toys. The dolls’ stories and meanings are as varied as their origins, design, and materials.

Two Indian dolls on exhibit

Posted by Lauren Nemroff, Program Manager, Google Cultural Institute

CeBIT is the worlds biggest IT-fair, attracting world leaders to make an annual pilgrimage to the Hannover Fair Grounds. This year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the opening event. We came to advance the agenda of Data-Driven innovation.

In Germany, data all too often often is seen in a negative light. We believe it can be, properly used, a powerful motor for economic and social progress. We Accenture and Acatech that produced a report on Data-Driven Innovation, which was handed over during the fair to Chancellor Merkel. German corporate heavyweights including Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Post, Siemens, Miele, Deutsche Telekom, SAP, and Thyssen-Krupp participated as well. The report’s conclusion was clear: Germany needs to embrace the value of data to remain competitive.

Data is not just a dry well of numbers. It can be used in exciting, dramatic and artistic ways as well. We partnered with CODE_n to run a DatenDialog in a hall surrounded by 50 start-ups under the topic of “driving the data revolution”. Artists Kram/Weisshaar visualized data from the Ngram viewer on a wall of 80mx20m, showcasing our partnership with the Bavarian State Library to digitise its priceless book collection.


Another priority for us at CeBIT was digital safety and literacy - closing the gap between the comfortable-with-Internet and the left-out less-comfortable-with-Internet. Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière visited the booth of our NGO partner Deutschland sicher im Netz and learned about our joint initiative "Digital Neighborhood." It consists of a set of ready-to-use lesson plans for volunteer IT trainers who want to teach computer and Internet basics.

Germany needs to embrace the digital revolution in order to keep its position as one of the world’s economic and exporting powerhouses. In her keynote remarks, Chancellor Merkel acknowledged tremendous “respect” for the IT industry as a source of growth and praised is the emergence of a strong German Start-Up culture. Let’s hope these words soon will extend to praising the merits of data driven innovation.

Posted by Sandro Gianella and Sabine Frank, Public Policy, Berlin

I’m excited to be traveling to Brussels this week to attend the European Union’s flagship innovation summit.

Under the patronage of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, the Convention will gather more than 2000 innovators, thought leaders, policy makers, business and top researchers. We’re delighted that the goal is to create an innovation-friendly environment, allowing great ideas to be turned into products and services that will bring our economy growth and jobs.

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My role representing Google at such a big event is a bit daunting - two years ago, our executive chairman Eric Schmidt gave the keynote address.



At this year's edition, I will present Google's initiatives to foster entrepreneurship and startups. Our Google for Entrepreneurs program includes four European tech hubs in London, Krakow, Berlin, or Paris. These initiatives are Google’s pledge to the EU Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs.

We’re not just coming to the summit to talk, either. We’ll be there to offer participants Google will an exclusive demonstration of the exciting Google GLASS demonstration. GLASS is one of the first examples of the development in wearable technology that is meant to make exploring and sharing the world around you faster and easier. It just the type of idea and product that we would like to see emerge here in Europe.

Posted by Eze Vidra, Head of Google for Entrepreneurs - Europe, and Campus London

Real Madrid is one of the world’s great athletic clubs. In addition to winning football and basketball championships, it is keen to promote sportsmanship, on and off the field. We worked with the club’s foundation to run a competition called "First Prize for the Promotion of Internet Values.”

More than 4,000 children from the Real Madrid Sport School competed, producing essays and videos promoting the values of sportsmanship for the Internet.

Contest winners meet Real Madrid basketball star Tremmel Darden

Like Real Madrid, we believe technology and sport offer powerful tools for personal development. When you play sport or surf the Internet, you aim to have fun and learn. As in sports, the Net bans violence towards others. When you play sports, you are obliged to help all who are injured or have a disability. On the Internet, too, you need to help others .

Fair play is important, off and online. If you insult an opponent on the field, the referee would expel you. When you play a team you wear a uniform with a number and name. On the Internet you have to act the same without impersonating others or lying about your identity.

Real Madrid basketball star Tremmel Darden and Enrique Sánchez, Vice President of Real Madrid Foundation, chaired the award ceremony. Six children from eight to 13 years old received prizes for their presentations, which included videos, powerpoints and drawings, all promoting Internet sportsmanship. For prizes, they received Android Nexus tablets and Real Madrid’s shirts signed by players, including football superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Iker Casillas.

Posted by Francisco Ruiz Anton, Public Policy Manager, Madrid

For the past two years, we have supported the Global Editors Network(GEN) Data Journalism Awards. The third edition is now open to submissions on the GEN website until April 4. Work may be submitted for any media platform, but must be published or broadcast between April 10, 2013 and April 4, 2014. A total of eight prizes, worth a total of EUR16,000, will be awarded.



As journalism makes the exciting, if sometimes difficult, transition from off to online, technology is opening up new avenues for journalism. The emerging field of data journalism analyses numerical data and databases to make inferences and discoveries which enable journalists to produce news in ways that were difficult or impossible before the invention of the Internet and powerful data-processing. Bertrand Pecquerie, the GEN CEO, believes the use of data will, in particular, revolutionize investigative reporting.

Entries will be judged by an all-star jury of journalists, including Wolfgang Blau of The Guardian, Simon Rogers of Twitter, and Giannina Segnini from La Nación. Paul Steiger, the former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal and founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica, will serve as president.

Winning teams will be invited to present their work at the Global Editors Network Summit in Barcelona on June 12, 2014. Steiger and Jaume Giro, CEO of the bank la Caixa, will preside at the ceremony, which will be held at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.

Posted by Simon Morrison, Public Policy manager, London