Hey—we've moved. Visit
The Keyword
for all the latest news and stories from Google
Official Blog
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Searching for the right balance
July 11, 2014
In May, the Court of Justice of the European Union established a “right to be forgotten." Today, we published an op-ed by David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, in the U.K.'s
The Guardian
, Germany's
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
, France's
Le Figaro
and Spain's
El Pais
, discussing the ruling and our response. We're republishing the op-ed in full below.
-Ed.
When you search online, there’s an unwritten assumption that you’ll get an instant answer, as well as additional information if you need to dig deeper. This is all possible because of two decades worth of investment and innovation by many different companies. Today, however, search engines across Europe face a new challenge—one we’ve had just two months to get our heads around. That challenge is figuring out what information we must deliberately
omit
from our results, following a new ruling from the European Court of Justice.
In the past we’ve restricted the removals we make from search to a very short list. It includes information deemed illegal by a court, such as defamation, pirated content (once we’re notified by the rights holder), malware, personal information such as bank details, child sexual abuse imagery and other things prohibited by local law (like material that glorifies Nazism in Germany).
We’ve taken this approach because, as article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
But the European Court found that people have the right to ask for information to be removed from search results that include their names if it is “
inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive.
” In deciding what to remove, search engines must also have regard to the public interest. These are, of course, very vague and subjective tests. The court also decided that search engines don’t qualify for a “journalistic exception.” This means that
The Guardian
could have an article on its website about an individual that’s perfectly legal, but we might not legally be able to show links to it in our results when you search for that person’s name. It’s a bit like saying the book can stay in the library, it just cannot be included in the library’s card catalogue.
It’s for these reasons that we disagree with the ruling. That said, we obviously respect the court’s authority and are doing our very best to comply quickly and responsibly. It’s a huge task as we’ve had over 70,000 take-down requests covering 250,000 webpages since May. So we now have a team of people individually reviewing each application, in most cases with limited information and almost no context.
The examples we’ve seen so far highlight the difficult value judgments search engines and European society now face: former politicians wanting posts removed that criticize their policies in office; serious, violent criminals asking for articles about their crimes to be deleted; bad reviews for professionals like architects and teachers; comments that people have written themselves (and now regret). In each case, someone wants the information hidden, while others might argue it should be out in the open.
When it comes to determining what’s in the the public interest, we’re taking into account a number of factors. These include whether: the information relates to a politician, celebrity, or other public figure; if the material comes from a reputable news source, and how recent it is; whether it involves political speech; questions of professional conduct that might be relevant to consumers; the involvement of criminal convictions that are not yet “spent”; and if the information is being published by a government. But these will always be difficult and debatable judgments.
We’re also doing our best to be transparent about removals: for example, we’re informing websites when one of their pages has been removed. But we cannot be specific about why we have removed the information because that could violate the individual’s privacy rights under the court's decision.
Of course, only two months in, our process is still very much a work in progress. It’s why we incorrectly removed links to some articles last week (they have since been reinstated). But the good news is that the ongoing, active debate that’s happening will inform the development of our principles, policies and practices—in particular about how to balance one person’s right to privacy with another’s right to know.
That’s why we've also set up an
advisory council
of experts, the final membership of which we're announcing today. These external experts from the worlds of academia, the media, data protection, civil society and the tech sector are serving as independent advisors to Google. The council will be asking for evidence and recommendations from different groups, and will hold public meetings this autumn across Europe to examine these issues more deeply. Its public report will include recommendations for particularly difficult removal requests (like criminal convictions); thoughts on the implications of the court’s decision for European Internet users, news publishers, search engines and others; and procedural steps that could improve accountability and transparency for websites and citizens.
The issues here at stake are important and difficult, but we’re committed to complying with the court’s decision. Indeed it's hard not to empathize with some of the requests we've seen—from the man who asked that we not show a news article saying he had been questioned in connection with a crime (he’s able to demonstrate that he was never charged) to the mother who requested that we remove news articles for her daughter’s name as she had been the victim of abuse. It’s a complex issue, with no easy answers. So a robust debate is both welcome and necessary, as, on this issue at least, no search engine has an instant or perfect answer.
Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer
Google Cloud Platform predicts the World Cup (and so can you!)
July 11, 2014
In 2010, we had
Paul the Octopus
. This year, there’s
Google Cloud Platform
. For the past couple weeks, we’ve been using Cloud Platform to make predictions for the World Cup—analyzing data, building a statistical model and using machine learning to predict outcomes of each match since the group round. So far, we’ve gotten 13 out of 14 games correct. But with the finals ahead this weekend, we’re not only ready to make our prediction, but we’re doing something a little extra for you data geeks out there. We’re giving you the keys to our prediction model so you can make your own model and run your own predictions.
A little background
Using data from
Opta
covering multiple seasons of professional soccer leagues as well as the group stage of the World Cup, we were able to examine how activity in previous games predicted performance in subsequent ones. We combined this modeling with a power ranking of relative team strength developed by one of our engineers, as well as a metric to stand in for hometeam advantage based on fan enthusiasm and the number of fans who had traveled to Brazil. We used a whole bunch of Google Cloud Platform products to build this model, including
Google Cloud Dataflow
to import all the data and
Google BigQuery
to analyze it. So far, we’ve only been wrong on one match (we underestimated Germany when they faced France in the quarterfinals).
Watch
+Jordan Tigani
and
Felipe Hoffa
from the BigQuery team talk about the project in
this video from Google I/O
, or look at our
quarterfinals
and
semifinals
blog posts to learn more.
A narrow win for Germany in the final
Drumroll please… Though we think it’s going to be close, Germany has the edge: our model gives them a 55 percent chance of defeating Argentina. Both teams have had excellent tournaments so far, but the model favors Germany for a number of factors. Thus far in the tournament, they’ve had better passing in the attacking half of their field, a higher number of shots (64 vs. 61) and a higher number of goals scored (17 vs. 8).
(Oh, and we think Brazil has a tiny advantage in the third place game. They may have had a disappointing defeat on Tuesday, but their numbers still look good.)
Channel your inner data nerd
Now it’s your turn. We’ve put together a step-by-step guide (warning: code ahead) showing how we built our model and used it for predictions. You could try different statistical techniques or adding in your own data, like player salaries or team travel distance. Even though we’ve been right 92.86 percent of the time, we’re sure there’s room for improvement.
The model works for other hypothetical situations, and it includes data going back to the 2006 World Cup, three years of English Barclays Premier League, two seasons of Spanish La Liga, and two seasons of U.S. MLS. So, you could try modeling how the USA would have done against Argentina if their game against Belgium had gone differently, or pit this year’s German team against the unstoppable Spanish team of 2010. The world (er, dataset) is your oyster.
Ready to kick things off? Read our post on the
Cloud Platform blog
to learn more (or, if you’re familiar with all the technology, you can jump right over to
GitHub
and start crunching numbers for yourself).
Posted by Benjamin Bechtolsheim, Product Marketing Manager, Google Cloud Platform
GoogleServe 2014: More opportunities to give back globally
July 10, 2014
In June, we celebrated the seventh annual GoogleServe, where employees come together and volunteer in our communities. This year, we doubled GoogleServe from one to two weeks so we could involve more volunteers and serve more community organizations. And it paid off—more than 12,000 Googlers from 70+ offices participated in 800+ projects, making this our biggest GoogleServe to date. Here’s a look at how we gave back to our communities this year:
Making tech more accessible
At our Mountain View headquarters and in Hyderabad, India, Googlers volunteered in three
SocialCoding4Good
events. Googlers participated in an Accessibility Code Sprint with
Benetech's Global Literacy Program
to improve
Go Read
, a free mobile app for people with visual impairments and reading disabilities. A team of Googlers also worked with
Bookshare
to write descriptions for nearly 1,400 images in five STEM textbooks, making charts, graphs, and diagrams more accessible to blind and visually impaired students.
Helping veterans build their resumes
Googlers helped 475 veterans build their resumes as part of our “Help a Hero Get Hired” workshops in 14 cities: Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, Cambridge, Chicago, Kansas City, Moncks Corner, Mountain View, New York City, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. This was our fourth year partnering with
Student Veterans of America
to help veterans take the next steps in their careers.
Volunteering at local schools and community centers
In Oakland, volunteers canvassed the community with
Hack the Hood
, a
Bay Area Impact Challenge winner
that trains youth from Oakland's low-income communities to build mobile-friendly websites. In San Francisco, Googlers visited the
Presidio YMCA
, where they repaired picnic tables, cleaned toys and organized closets, and worked with the YMCA’s marketing specialists to redesign their corporate partnerships materials. In Kampala, Uganda, Googlers painted a nursery at
Sanyu Babies’ Home
, helping brighten the living space of the Home’s young residents.
Building houses and preparing meals
Googlers in Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Valparaiso, Chile, partnered with
Techo
to build houses for low-income families, while volunteers in Singapore prepared, cooked, and distributed 3,000 meals at
Willing Hearts Soup Kitchen
. In Milan and Mountain View, Googlers packaged 16,500 meals with
Stop Hunger Now
, a nonprofit that ships food to schools, orphanages and clinics in more than 70 countries.
Protecting the environment
A group of Googlers in Auckland, New Zealand, cleared three kilometers of coastline at
Tahuna Torea Nature Reserve
, and Ann Arbor Googlers collected trash as they paddled down the Huron River with the
Huron River Watershed Council
. And volunteers in San Jose, Calif., mulched, weeded and cleared leaves in the beautiful gardens of the
Guadalupe River Park Conservancy
.
Click the image below for photos from this year’s GoogleServe.
GoogleServe is part of our larger commitment to giving and volunteering throughout the year; employees have 20 hours of work time a year to volunteer with approved charitable organizations. In 2013, Googlers volunteered 130,000 hours with 1,390 nonprofits around the world. If you want to learn how you can give back to your community, visit
All for Good
or
VolunteerMatch
.
Posted by Seth Marbin, on behalf of the GoogleServe & GooglersGive Teams
Google Ventures invests in Europe
July 9, 2014
Wander through the excellent
Science Museum
in London, and you’ll see inventions that transformed history. Like
Puffing Billy
, one of the world’s first steam locomotives; or Charles Babbage’s
difference engine
, a Victorian predecessor to the modern computer; or
penicillin
, the wonder drug that revolutionized the treatment of disease. These marvels from the past still influence our lives today, and are tangible examples of how fearless exploration and entrepreneurship can literally change the world.
To help support the next generation of European entrepreneurs, today
Google Ventures
is launching a new venture fund, with initial funding of $100 million. Our goal is simple: we want to invest in the best ideas from the best European entrepreneurs, and help them bring those ideas to life.
When we
launched
Google Ventures in 2009, we set out to be a very different type of venture fund. Startups need more than just capital to succeed: they also benefit from engineering support, design expertise, and guidance with recruiting, marketing and product management. Five years later, we’re working with
more than 250 portfolio companies
, tackling challenges across a host of industries. For example, the team at
Flatiron Health
is improving the way doctors and patients approach cancer care,
SynapDx
is developing a blood test for the early detection of Autism in children, and
Clean Power Finance
is making solar energy affordable for homeowners.
We believe Europe’s startup scene has enormous potential. We’ve seen compelling new companies emerge from places like London, Paris, Berlin, the Nordic region and beyond—SoundCloud, Spotify, Supercell and many others.
We can’t predict the kinds of inventions the Science Museum might showcase 10+ years from now, but we do know European startups will be essential to this future, and we can’t wait to see what they create.
Posted by Bill Maris, Managing Partner, Google Ventures
Meet the five Giving through Glass winners
July 9, 2014
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
Build the best summer ever at Maker Camp 2014
July 7, 2014
This post comes to us from Dale Dougherty, founder and publisher of
MAKE: magazine
and
Maker Faire
. For the third straight year, Google and Make have come together to put on Maker Camp, a free, online summer camp for teens on Google+. Building on 2 million past participants, Maker Camp 2014 officially kicks off today at 11 a.m. PDT / 2 p.m. EDT today with a
Hangout
featuring NASA and Buzz Aldrin. -
Ed.
We’ve always believed that everyone, especially young people, should be able to feel the joy that comes from imagining and creating something that didn’t exist before.
Nine years ago, we hosted our very first Bay Area Maker Faire, an all-ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, hobbyists and artists. The event was partly inspired by the idea that the special creative energy produced by kids is even stronger when they’re brought together. Since that first get-together, it has grown globally with more than 100 events in places like Tokyo, Rome, Santiago and Oslo. Recently, a man in Atlanta told me that “making” changed his son’s life—by inspiring self-confidence through the joys of engineering, design and music. And just last weekend, a family drove eight hours to reach a Maker Faire because their 14-year-old son, Daniel, was so excited about meeting other makers.
But eight hours is a long way to drive to connect with other creative kids. So to make sure that inspiration and community are more accessible to young makers—no matter where they are—we teamed up with Google to create
Maker Camp
, now back for its third summer. Through Google+, Maker Camp connects young makers from across the globe as they create, invent and build projects like
soda bottle rocket fireworks
,
glowing bikes
, and
LED shoe clips
(our version of arts and crafts). In addition to the daily projects, campers will join epic virtual Friday field trips to places like
+NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center, Google [x] and
+LEGO
Education.
Camp is available to anyone with an Internet connection and an imagination—and kids who’d rather gather together around the digital campfire can visit one of Maker Camp’s
500 local “campsites”
hosted by libraries and community centers, in locations ranging from Australia to Jordan.
So roll up your virtual sleeping bag and come join us at Maker Camp this summer! To get started, simply follow
+Make on Google+
.
Posted by Dale Dougherty, CEO of Maker Media Inc.
DevArt: Art, made with code, opens at London’s Barbican
July 2, 2014
Though it can look like gobbledygook to the average person, code is the backbone of how we express ourselves, share and search online. We’ve always tried to push the limits of what code can do—from products like Chrome and Hangouts to tools that developers use to build incredible apps and games. Now, we’re showing off another side of code with
DevArt
, a series of digital art installations made with code, at the Barbican’s
Digital Revolution Exhibition
.
(Photos - Andrew Meredith)
DevArt celebrates developers who use technology as their canvas and code as their paintbrush to make art that explores and challenges the creative and technical limits of code. With the Barbican, we commissioned three interactive artists to create pieces for Digital Revolution.
Karsten Schmidt
’s
Co(de) Factory
empowers anyone to be an artist with an online design tool that creates 3D digital sculptures that may be showcased in the exhibition.
Zach Lieberman
’s
Play the World
uses code to find musical notes from hundreds of live radio stations around the world. When a visitor plays the piano at the centre of the piece, each note is precisely matched to one of those radio sounds, and played back via 360-degree speakers to create a uniquely global piece of music. And duo
Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet
’s
Wishing Wall
lets you whisper a wish, see your words projected in front of you, then transformed into a butterfly that (virtually) lands on your hand.
We also put out a
global call
to undiscovered interactive artists for the opportunity to be commissioned by Google and Barbican, and exhibited alongside the DevArt artists. There were hundreds of entries, including a giant map (using Google Maps API) where
children can explore fantasy and reality
, a
group-play haptic musical instrument
that visualizes sound using Android, and
maps of dreams
as they move through the brain (using Google+ APIs). In the end, the DevArt judges chose
Les Métamorphoses de Mr. Kalia
, by Cyril Diagne and Beatrice Lartigue, which allows you to use your body's movements to control a larger-than-life animated character, transforming basic movement into a powerful visual performance.
(Photos - Andrew Meredith)
We want to inspire a new generation of coders and artists to see what they can create with technology as their canvas. Soon, we’ll kick off our
DevArt Young Creators
program, a set of workshops hosted by DevArt artists for students aged 9-13 years who have never tried coding before. Each workshop will be developed into lesson plans in line with the U.K.’s new national computing curriculum, and distributed to educators by arts and technology organizations.
DevArt and the Digital Revolution exhibition will be at the Barbican in London until September 15, and after that will tour the world for up to five years. If you can’t make it in person, you can see all this
incredible art online
or watch our launch film to learn more:
Posted by Steve Vranakis, Executive Creative Director, Google Creative Lab
Labels
Africa
19
Android
58
April 1
4
Asia
39
Europe
46
Latin America
18
accessibility
41
acquisition
26
ads
131
apps
418
books + book search
48
commerce
12
computing history
7
crisis response
33
culture
12
developers
120
diversity
35
doodles
68
education and research
144
entrepreneurs at Google
14
faster web
16
free expression
61
google.org
73
googleplus
50
googlers and culture
202
green
102
maps and earth
194
mobile
124
online safety
19
open source
19
photos
39
policy and issues
139
politics
71
privacy
66
recruiting and hiring
32
scholarships
31
search
505
search quality
24
search trends
118
security
36
small business
31
user experience and usability
41
youtube and video
140
Archive
2016
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2006
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2005
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2004
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Feed
Google
on
Follow @google
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
Follow
