The Official google.org blog

German utility partners with Google PowerMeter - willkommen!

2009-06-30T02:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier today we announced on the Google Germany Blog that Yello Strom is our first Google PowerMeter partner in Europe. With over 1.4 million customers, Yello is among Germany's ten largest electricity companies and the very first company to offer commercial smart meters nationwide in Germany.

When Yello Executive Director Martin Vesper gave us a demo of the Sparzähler meter a few months ago, it felt like fate -- Yello's solution for making energy information easy-to-access and easy-to-act-upon aligns perfectly with our vision for Google PowerMeter. The Sparzähler meter's broadband connectivity makes it possible for Google PowerMeter users to see 15 minute interval data nearly in real time. (Its design is also pretty sleek, we think.)

Google PowerMeter now has nine utility partners around the world, large and small -- and each partner shares our goal of giving customers easy access to their own home energy usage information.

We hear from utilities around the world that are interested in enabling their customers to use Google PowerMeter. At the moment, we're focused on working with those utilities that can collect a minimum of hourly data (that's 24 reads a day) and deliver it to Google within one day. If you work for a utility with these kind of capabilities and are interested in getting your customers Google PowerMeter, please let us know!

Posted by Tom Sly, New Business Development

Google SMS to serve needs of poor in Uganda

2009-06-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Official Google Africa Blog)

Today is a big day for the Google Africa team for several reasons. We're announcing an exciting partnership between MTN Uganda, the Grameen Foundation and Google, along with the launch of Google SMS in Uganda. This launch makes available the first suite of applications resulting from an endeavor initiated by Grameen Foundation called "AppLab" (Application Laboratory) which began over a year ago. AppLab is designed to develop mobile applications that serve the needs of poor and other vulnerable individuals and communities, most of whom have limited access to information and communications technology.

At Google we seek to serve a broad base of people — not only those who can afford to access the Internet from the convenience of their workplace or with a computer at home. It's important to reach users wherever they are, with the information they need, in areas with the greatest information poverty. Hence the launch of Google SMS, a bundle of mobile services for users to access content on a range of topics. This not only includes traditional services such as sports scores and local news, but for the first time, also includes services such as health and agriculture tips.

We are also releasing Google Trader, an SMS-based "marketplace" application that helps buyers and sellers find each other, enabling greater access to markets and trade, especially for those who are most excluded today. With these services, we hope to help alleviate some of the information and access to markets barriers for the poor, especially those in rural areas. So when farmers in Iganga want to sell their maize, they can list it on Google Trader and a miller in another trading center can find and contact them to buy their goods (see picture below). If a pregnant woman has a question about prenatal services, she can text her question to 6001 and get a response right away. Now people in any part of Uganda can easily find the information that is most critical to them.

Miller in trading center calling women's farming group in Iganga to obtain maize.

These activities also represent an important milestone: our first major initiative in Uganda, one of the newest locations where Google is setting up operations. Earlier this year, I joined the Google Africa team to lead our efforts in Uganda, where we want to offer valuable services that address real needs. As East African fiber optic cables begin to connect Uganda to the global Internet community, it is vital that the foundation for a thriving Internet economy also be established. Many impressive organizations are focused on this goal, and we hope to enhance these efforts.

Finally, this launch represents the team efforts of many local partners, communities and individuals, each of whom played a role in bringing this vision to life. The Village Phone Operators represent our very first set of focus group participants and product development advisors. And the participation of farmers in more distant villages was fundamental in creating the highly local content — created by them, for them, through our local partner BROSDI (Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative), in collaboration with AppLab. While developing the health tips service, students, health workers, doctors and school nurses stepped forward as leaders in their respective areas and turned this humble mission into a reality. Our partners, Straight Talk Foundation and Marie Stopes International, not only created the content with AppLab based on the input of these many constituents, but forged deep and strong links with the communities where these services are in greatest demand.

When we return to these villages with a product that will be developed through their insights, we want to understand if the service truly is having an impact. To this end, we are conducting a social impact assessment with Innovations for Poverty Action, with support from Google.org, to build from the knowledge of what users need most, to understand what works best.

We hope these services will help a variety of organizations already doing impressive work to reach a broader audience and those with the greatest need, in new and innovative ways, through the mobile phone. This is the first of many exciting collaborative efforts we will be working on to support access to information in Uganda and more broadly, across Africa. So to everyone who participated in this effort, we say Webale Nyo!

Posted by Rachel Payne, Country Manager, Uganda

All for Good: Bringing search, scale and openness to community service

2009-06-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

(cross-posted with Official Google Blog)

While many organizations are doing great work to enable community service locally, it's not simple to search across opportunities from a variety of places to find what's right for you. We have some experience finding relevant information from among many scattered sources, and when we learned that President Obama and the First Lady were making community service a top priority even before taking office, we thought we could help make a difference.

With our mission in mind, a group of "20%" engineers, designers, and program managers from Google and other tech companies began work on All for Good, a new service to help you find volunteer events in your community, and share those events with your friends.

All for Good provides a single search interface for volunteer activities across many major volunteering sites and organizations like United Way, VolunteerMatch, HandsOn Network and Reach Out and Read. By building on top of the amazing efforts of existing volunteer organizations like these, we hope to amplify their efforts.

And in the spirit of open data, All for Good has a data API that anyone can use to search the same data displayed on the All for Good site. All for Good was developed entirely using App Engine and Google Base, with the full code repository hosted on Google Code Hosting. We'll be inviting developers to contribute to the open source application soon, so stay tuned.

Just as releasing the Maps API led to an surge of independent and creative uses of geographic information, we've built All for Good as a platform to encourage innovation in volunteerism, as much as an end product in itself. We hope software developers will use the API or code to build their own volunteering applications, some even better than the All for Good site!

And if you want to volunteer your video-creating skills to make a difference, check out YouTube Video Volunteers, a new platform designed to make connections between non-profits with video needs and skilled video makers who can help broadcast their causes through video.

All for Good is a new kind of collaboration between the private, public, and nonprofits sectors to build free and open technology to empower citizens. Similar to the Open Social Foundation, we helped create a new organization called Our Good Works to make sure that the API, the platform, and social innovation that they inspire are supported for the long term. The leadership includes Reid Hoffman, Chris DiBona, Arianna Huffington and Craig Newmark on the board, and the organization aims to build support volunteerism services like All for Good.

Today the First Lady is in San Francisco calling on Americans to improve our communities by rolling up our sleeves and putting our time and talent towards doing good. You can learn more at serve.gov, where we're proud to power search.

Posted by Paul Rademacher and Adam Sah, Engineering Tech Leads, Google

Happy World Environment Day

2009-06-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

Today is World Environment Day and I wanted to point your attention to a major initiative that just launched and is supported by Google: The Prince of Wales' Prince's Rainforest Project, dedicated to protecting the Amazon rainforest. Check out this video featuring supporters from around the world, including Google's very own CEO, Eric Schmidt - and some adorable frogs. Prince Charles spoke about the destruction of the rainforest and other challenges of the 21st century at our recent European Zeitgeist. As he has said, "If we lose the battle against tropical deforestation, we lose the battle against climate change."

Posted by Amit Sood, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Google Flu Trends for Australia and New Zealand

2009-06-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

As the flu season begins in the southern hemisphere, we're excited to announce the expansion of Google Flu Trends to Australia and New Zealand.

By using aggregated search data, we've been able to produce estimates of flu activity for these countries in the same manner as in the United States and Mexico. We continue to see a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms.

While some existing flu tracking systems may take days or weeks to collect and release data, Google search queries can be counted immediately. Google Flu Trends is updated daily and may provide early detection of flu outbreaks. We hope that this information complements existing flu surveillance efforts in Australia and New Zealand, and proves useful for individuals and public health responders.

We're keenly aware of the trust our users place in us and our responsibility to protect their privacy. Google Flu Trends cannot be used to identify individual users. The patterns we observe are only meaningful across large populations of Google searchers.

For those Kiwis and Aussies out there, avoid becoming part of our statistics and get a flu shot! And keep an eye on those graphs if you're curious to see how the flu season unfolds.

Posted by Dan Vanderkam, Software Engineer, and Corrie Conrad, Senior Associate, Google.org

Energized about our first Google PowerMeter partners

2009-05-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Earlier this year I blogged about energy information and a tool our engineers developed called Google PowerMeter, a Google gadget that can show consumers their personal electricity consumption right on a home computer. Our software relies on "smart meters" (or other metering devices) as a data source. Over the past several months we've been looking to partner with utilities that are installing (or have already installed) this equipment in their customers' homes. We're energized by our very first Google PowerMeter partners:

San Diego Gas & Electric® (California)
TXU Energy (Texas)
JEA (Florida)
Reliance Energy (India)
Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (Wisconsin)
White River Valley Electric Cooperative (Missouri)
Toronto Hydro–Electric System Limited (Canada)
Glasgow EPB (Kentucky)

Our initial partners include utilities with millions of customers as well as smaller ones. They are rural and urban, privately held and municipally run. Some are in the United States, others in Canada and India. They all have one thing in common — a desire to serve their customers by providing access to detailed information that helps save energy and money. For now, Google PowerMeter is only available to a limited group of customers, but we plan to expand our roll out later this year. Our utility partners are leading the charge to make the electricity grid smarter and we look forward to working with them and others.

In addition to utilities, we're also seeking partnerships with companies that can enable the implementation of our software. Our first such partner is Itron, a leading meter and data management company that serves over 8,000 utilities and is helping some of their customers, including San Diego Gas & Electric, integrate with Google PowerMeter. If you're a utility or company with a smart meter project that might be interested in plugging in to our efforts, visit our website for more information.

Posted by Ed Lu, Engineering Team

Understanding health-related searches

2009-05-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Official Google Blog)

As we blogged last summer, there are lots of experiments running on Google web search all over the world. Today we've started a temporary experiment that some people might find interesting: we're researching how Google users search the Internet when they or someone they know is feeling sick.

Understanding how people search when they're feeling sick is an important problem to solve, as it can help improve projects like Google Flu Trends, which uses aggregated search data to detect influenza epidemics. Statistics gathered in this experiment may also help Google deliver more relevant search results in the future. For example, someone who searches for [arthritis pain] to understand why an aging parent is experiencing joint pain might want to learn about nearby health facilities and potential treatments, whereas somebody who searches for [arthritis pain] because she is doing a research project might want results about how common arthritis is and what its risk factors are. Rather than make educated guesses about how many users are searching because they're sick, we're running this experiment to collect real statistics. This is not a permanent change, but a short-term experiment. A small percentage of random health-related searches will trigger the poll question.

For example, at the bottom of the search results for [headache], some users will see a survey which asks whether they were searching because they or someone they know has a headache:

Similarly, if you happen to search for [ibuprofen], a common anti-inflammatory drug, you might see a survey which asks whether you were searching because you or somebody you know is taking ibuprofen:

Data collected in this survey will be aggregated across thousands of users. Survey responses will be stored together with the original search query, but will not be associated with email addresses or other personally identifiable information. Survey data will not be used for advertising — it will only be used to help Google improve health-related search results and to help refine public health trends based on aggregated search queries, much like Google Flu Trends. You can learn more about how Google protects users' privacy at our Privacy Center.

For more information, please take a look at our FAQ.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Product Manager and Jeremy Ginsberg, Software Engineer

New resources for non-profit and humanitarian mapping

2009-05-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Lat Long Blog)

Our friends at MapAction have created a great new publication. Their Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping was produced "to help humanitarian organisations to make use of mapping methods using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related technologies". You can download the first edition for free (3.2MB PDF).

While the free field guide is designed to help organizations doing emergency work, it is relevant to many other organizations, and anyone looking to take advantage of geospatial tools and methods like GPS technologies for collecting data, free & open-source GIS software such as MapWindow for processing and analyzing data, and Google Earth and Google Maps for visualization and display.

Early last year, MapAction published a briefing paper (1MB PDF) on the use of Google Earth in the humanitarian sector. Since then, we've added several new features, like imagery acquisition dates and historical imagery, touring, ocean, and free GPS data import, all of which help users to visualize, share and explore their places and data in new and exciting ways.

Another great new resource is A Nonprofit's Introduction to Google's Online Mapping Tools, recently posted on TechSoup by Chris Peters and Mano Marks. It provides excellent advice on how organizations that have data to display can effectively use Google Maps and Google Earth for outreach and advocacy.

Some more handy Google Earth and Google Maps resources include:

* Google Earth Outreach (website with examples and tutorials)
* Maps 2.0 Resources from Humaninet
* A Rough Google Earth Guide (872kB PDF) form Mercy Corps

Finally, Google has a full suite of free tools available to non-profits on the Google for Non-Profits page.

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Google Earth Outreach

Using the stimulus to advance smarter energy use

2009-05-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed by President Obama in February, includes tens of billions of dollars in federal stimulus funding for clean energy. This investment gives our country an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild our energy system and make it cleaner and more efficient. It's also an opportunity to become "smarter" about the way we all use energy.

Getting smart about energy starts with empowering consumers and businesses with information and tools to make better energy choices. That's why we submitted comments today with the Department of Energy, asking them to put consumers first as they develop one of the more promising elements of the ARRA -- a $4.5 billion grant program for "smart" grid investments. We also asked the DOE to ensure the program contributes to President Obama's goal of funding the installation of 40 million smart electricity meters in American homes. You can read our comments here.

The advent of smart meters, the Internet and a myriad of other information technologies means that our interaction with electricity can be dramatically redefined. Instead of receiving a monthly bill in the mail, for example, we can receive information on electricity use in real time; instead of turning on the furnace or the A/C when once you are home, we can automate these systems or even control them remotely. We can even aggregate energy savings from appliances and electronic equipment from thousands of homes to avoid the need to build new power plants.

Using the stimulus to invest in the electricity grid can help accelerate this transformation, while in the process creating jobs and helping to diversify our energy supply. Most importantly, these investments can help consumers and businesses save energy and money. We feel it's important for the country not to miss this opportunity.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Program Manager, Google.org

Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico

2009-04-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

In November 2008 we launched Google Flu Trends after finding a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Google Flu Trends may be able to detect influenza outbreaks earlier than other systems because it estimates flu activity in near real time.

In response to recent inquiries from public health officials, we've been attempting to use Google search activity in Mexico to help track human swine flu levels. Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico is, as you might have guessed, very experimental. But the system has detected increases in flu-related searches in Mexico City (Distrito Federal) and a few other Mexican states in recent days, beginning early in the week of April 19-25.

In the United States, we were able to validate our estimates using data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We have not verified our data for Mexico in the same manner, but we've seen that Google users in Mexico (and around the world) also search for many flu-related topics when they have flu-like symptoms. Given the tremendous recent attention to swine flu, our model tries to filter out search queries that are more likely associated with topical searches rather than searches by those who may be experiencing symptoms.

While we would prefer to validate this data and improve its accuracy, we decided to release an early version today so that it might help public health officials and concerned individuals get an up-to-date picture of the ongoing swine flu outbreak. As with our existing Flu Trends system, estimates are provided across many of Mexico's states and updated every day. Our current estimates of flu activity in the U.S. are still generally low as would be expected given the relatively low confirmed swine flu case count. However, we'll be keeping an eye on the data to look for any spike in activity.

We're keenly aware of the trust our users place in us and our responsibility to protect their privacy. Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico -- like Google Flu Trends -- cannot be used to identify individual users. The patterns we observe are only meaningful across large populations of Google searchers. We hope that this experimental release provides useful information.

For updates on swine flu and information on how to stay healthy during a disease outbreak, visit the CDC's swine flu site.

Posted by Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebbi, Software Engineers

Brilliant Takes on Urgent Threats

2009-04-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

It's with a grateful heart that I leave full-time work with Google to begin a new chapter in my life. I served as start up Executive Director for Google.org for nearly three years before moving into the role of Chief Philanthropic Evangelist in February. I love Google, the people who make this such a special place and the world-class team at Google.org. Megan Smith, who has taken on the leadership of Google.org, is doing a terrific job and I am watching her and the other leaders of Google.org with admiration and a great sense of satisfaction that "the work" has passed to such competent hands.

When Larry, Sergey and Sheryl Sandberg hired me, I promised to work for at least three years. I've had a wonderful experience and learned enough to fill volumes about new ways to work in the world, trying to make it a better place. Jeff Skoll, founding president of eBay, long time friend of many Googlers, and a "practicing philanthropist" for over a decade recently described to me his fears of a world spinning almost out of control, beset with many simultaneous urgent threats: climate change, nuclear proliferation, Middle East conflict, water scarcity, and emerging communicable disease. He described to me his vision of bundling his many activities to focus them on these "Urgent Threats." Jeff is the founder of the well regarded Skoll Foundation which for ten years has funded dozens of dedicated social entrepreneurs working all over the world. He also has an extremely successful film making company, Participant Media, which has made films to inspire social change such as An Inconvenient Truth, Good Night and Good Luck, North Country, Syriana, Fast Food Nation, Jimmy Carter - Man From Plains, Darfur Now, The Kite Runner, Charlie Wilson's War and The Visitor. In addition, his financial services firm, Capricorn Investments, has made investments in electric car companies, renewable energy, and other investments that are driven by multiple bottom line returns.

Jeff's idea was to create the new Skoll Urgent Threats Fund which would do grant making and, most importantly, advocacy and find someone to lead that Fund. He wants the same person who leads that Fund to be a Senior Advisor to him in bringing together his media and film making activities, his investment interests, and the work of social entrepreneurs supported by the Skoll Foundation who focus these urgent threats, so that all of these different "tools" are working together effectively to drive the change we need. He asked me to become President of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund, sit on the board of the Skoll Foundation, and be Senior Advisor to him on his media and financial investments companies.

I have accepted this position and effective May 5, 2009 (my 65th birthday) I will leave Google as a full time employee though I'll continue to work with Megan and the Google.org team as an advisor.

Google.org and the Skoll Foundation already work together to support "virus hunter" Nathan Wolfe whose Global Viral Forecasting Initiative collects and analyzes blood samples of humans and animals in hot spots. And many of the Skoll Awardees have played an important role in our thinking at Google.org and in the development of other projects and grants.

So these two organizations are neither competitors nor strangers, but rather friends and colleagues. I am not "leaving Google" so much as I'm going down the road to work with a friend and colleague and I hope that in the coming months and years we can expand that relationship even more.

Looking back over the past three years, I'm incredibly proud of the work done by the team at Google.org to support wonderful projects and people. Some examples: The team at Pratham in India that we support is changing the way we think about development by causing improvements in children's education in India. Irene Taylor Brodsky's Oscar nominated film, The Final Inch, is also helping to galvanize global support for the final push to eradicate polio. Working on this film helped my thinking about the media--Rotary International clubs have donated nearly $1 billion to global polio eradication, but you should see the pride in the eyes of Rotarians when they watch The Final Inch and see how much their donated time and money really matters to conquer this disease. They feel their work recognized and celebrated, and they are energized to go raise more money and do more volunteering to conquer this dreaded disease. And the group which emerged from the TED Prize, InSTEDD, is going from "strength to strength" and developing new technologies to enable quick communication and effective response after disasters. At one time they were funded only by Google.org but their work has now been recognized by CDC and by the United Nations emergency relief groups as best in the world and they are being supported by a wide group of organizations.

We've also partnered with Rockefeller Foundation in supporting the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Network program which is providing early warning about possible pandemic flu outbreaks to the six countries which border the Mekong River. We've given millions of dollars and direct support using Google Earth, other Google projects and people to support the heroic efforts to respond to Katrina, the cyclone in Myanmar (Burma) and the terrible earthquakes in Sichuan, China. But it might be in the area of clean energy that Google.org has made its largest contribution to the national debate. It was our joint Google.org+Google.com climate team that created "RE<C" our geeky way of saying that until we have renewable energy -- wind, solar, advanced geothermal (EGS) -- cheaper than coal, fossil fuels will continue to be burned and continue to release the CO2 which is suffocating the planet. We've invested in wind, solar and geothermal companies, we've supported leaders like NRDC, and we advocated in DC for climate change policy and for more resources to drive clean energy R&D. And it has made a big difference in how our government has now responded.

And now we also have intensified "Dotorg's" efforts to leverage Google's skills in technology, partnerships and information; examples of this approach include Flu Trends, RechargeIT, Clean Energy 2030, and PowerMeter.

Larry and Sergey wrote in their initial Letter from the Founders that they wanted to make approximately 1% of Google's equity and profits and substantial employee time devoted to philanthropy. I hope other corporations will follow the example to devote significant resources to the greater good and I support Google.org's fundamental mission "to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age."

I lack the words to adequately thank Larry and Sergey for hiring me, for giving me a chance to lead this wonderful "experiment in active philanthropy" that Google.org has become, and I want to thank Megan Smith and her advisory team of Urs Hoelzle, David Fischer, and Salar Kamangar for their leadership going forward. I especially want to thank the Googlers, both in "dotorg" and "dotcom" that make Google such a special place. I wish time and space allowed me to name each and every one who has taught me, touched me, helped and supported me. I do believe the press which says that this is the best company to work for anywhere. Googlers are the kindest and most wonderful colleagues and friends anyone could ask for. Thank you for your friendship and support---and remember I am not going far away so I do hope Google.org and the Skoll philanthropies will find many areas for working together in the months and years ahead.

Posted by Dr. Larry Brilliant

The Final Inch on YouTube

2009-04-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Today the YouTube homepage is featuring an Oscar®-nominated film set in the slums of India. No, not that one -- this film tells a true story. In honor of World Health Day, YouTube is highlighting The Final Inch, an inspiring short documentary created by Google.org and Vermillion Films about a group of dedicated health workers who are going door-to-door to give polio vaccines to children in the poorest areas of the world. You can watch the film here and embedded below.

In addition to hosting the film in its entirety on YouTube today, the film is also airing tonight at 7:15pm ET/PT on HBO2 and is available on HBO on demand. (See the full HBO schedule here).

Since polio no longer exists in the developed world, many people assume the disease has been eradicated. Tragically, it has not. In the early days of Google.org, the team wanted to bring attention to the global challenge of polio eradication and tell the story of those who are on the front lines helping the most vulnerable -- children under age 5 living in the world's poorest, most remote regions. The result is a stunning 38-minute film which depicts the crippling disease and offers a hopeful account of the eradication effort. We hope the film will encourage those working hard on wiping out polio - and those who have forgotten it still exists - to bring the eradication effort over the finish line.

In 1988, before the WHO eradication effort began, the polio virus was endemic in more than 125 countries, paralyzing more than 1000 children every day. Today, only four countries in the world are considered polio-endemic by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan) and there are fewer than 1700 reported cases of polio. As the eradication effort closes in on the disease, the work becomes more difficult as polio’s strongholds remain in the world’s poorest countries which often lack the basic health infrastructure to distribute vaccine.

The millions of public health workers putting themselves on the front lines vaccinating children are the true heroes of the eradication effort. Our film tries to capture their story. We hope you enjoy the film; but more importantly we hope that you're inspired to contribute and advocate for the cause. You can find out how to participate by clicking 'learn more' on The Final Inch website.

Posted by Jamie Yood, Google.org Team

A Green Light for Green Energy

2009-04-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

To solve the climate crisis and meet our growing demand for energy, we need to move to clean, renewable energy sources that will cut global warming pollution and power our economic recovery. This goal requires construction of clean energy generation plants and transmission lines on an unprecedented scale. Google.org’s Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal initiative is working to drive down the cost of renewable energy, but today one of the bottlenecks is the difficulty of obtaining approvals for siting and permitting of generation and transmission facilities. We need to find a way to ‘green light’ clean energy projects while making sure to protect sensitive landscapes and wildlife habitats.

As part of Google.org’s Geo Challenge Grants program, the National Audubon Society and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have created maps of restricted lands and sensitive wildlife areas in the Western U.S. NRDC produced a map of 13 western states (and more than 10,000 individual conservation areas), showing all of the areas, such as parks, which prohibit or restrict development due to federal and state regulations, as well as sensitive areas where development should be avoided. Audubon researched and mapped critical habitat for birds and wildlife in Wyoming, Montana, and surrounding areas, sites which should also be avoided when planning energy development.

To view these maps on Google Earth, download the layer here.

These maps can serve as a starting point to enable a more collaborative approach to energy siting decisions. By identifying areas that developers should avoid, we hope that the site-specific approval process can be streamlined – possibly by creating green energy generation and transmission corridors that have an expedited approval process.

Posted by David Bercovich, Program Manager, Google.org and Christiaan Adams, Google Earth & Maps Specialist, Google.org

One video that should go viral

2009-03-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

In 2006, Dr. Larry Brilliant - Google.org's Chief Philanthropic Evangelist - won the prestigious TED Prize. He delivered a powerful talk that highlighted the risk of a devastating future pandemic, and described one of his big ideas for combating the threat. His mantra of 'Early Detection, Early Response' inspired other groups such as InSTEDD, who recently launched a suite of open-source applications to allow collaboration between first responders during disease outbreaks and disasters, and the team behind Google Flu Trends.

Now, this important theme has been revisited at TED by Dr. Nathan Wolfe, founder of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI), a new non-profit funded by Google.org and the Skoll Foundation. Dr Wolfe's rousing message is that when it comes to pandemics, early detection in humans isn't early enough. We know that 75% of new human diseases begin in animals – so to discover a pandemic before it devastates the human population, we need to catch new viruses when they take the very first leap from animals into humans.

This mission has taken the GVFI team into some remote and difficult locations, from the jungles of Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (profiled on CNN's Planet in Peril), to the wet markets of China and Malaysia. Here, they collect blood samples from animals and the humans with whom they're in contact, in order to analyse them for evidence of early viral crossover.

You can hear more about this important work and some of GVFI's exciting viral discoveries by watching Dr Wolfe's talk at TED. Pass this on, and help spread ideas, not diseases!

Posted by Joanne Stevens, Associate, Google.org

Smart Outbreak Detection Using Online Info

2009-03-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

An interesting article making a case for the use of online information for earlier detection of disease outbreaks came out last week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The article, co-authored by HealthMap co-founder and Google.org grantee John Brownstein, looks at an outbreak of listeriosis in Canada and compares online search trends, news reports, and diagnosed case counts during the outbreak period.

Listeriosis is a bacterial infection often caused by contaminated food. The outbreak in Canada killed about 20 people last summer. By using Google Insights for Search data combined with HealthMap's news surveillance data, the authors discovered that a specific search query provided even earlier indication of the outbreak than news reports.

So, what was that key search term that gave the earliest indication of the outbreak? Listeriosis. That's right, when the researchers looked at trends for people searching online for the technical term "Listeriosis," they discovered that the peak of the search trend for that term was the same as the actual peak of medically diagnosed Listeriosis cases. The increase in online searches for "Listeriosis" began in mid-July, one month before the federal announcement that an outbreak was underway in Canada. This means that people diagnosed with Listeriosis, or others close to them, were likely to be the ones searching for that term online at the time of diagnosis, causing a spike.

In contrast, search trends for "Listeria," the term used in the public announcement about the outbreak, peaked around the time of the announcement and other news reports in mid-August. Thus, people searching for "Listeria" were probably doing so in response to the press about the outbreak, not because they'd been diagnosed.

Early detection is critical to helping health officials respond more quickly. While documenting the potential for using online info for earlier outbreak detection, the authors also recognize the challenges. This seems to be the tip of the iceberg for research in this area, and it has others talking too - check out the Wall Street Journal blog which calls this "a wonkier example of Google Flu Trends."

Posted by Corrie Conrad, Google.org

U.S. job growth, powered by the sun

2009-03-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

Solar energy has long been touted as a clean alternative to traditional electricity generation, but building a clean energy economy will also create jobs. Thanks to federal and state policies to support renewable energy, it's estimated that the solar industry will create hundreds of thousands of green jobs in coming years. Based on a study by Navigant Consulting, and with the help of Google.org and Google Earth Outreach, our friends at the Solar Energy Research Education Foundation (SEREF) have developed a U.S. solar jobs map in Google Earth. You can also view this as a KML in Google Earth.

The U.S. solar industry is expected to support more than 440,000 permanent, full-time jobs, including many in the manufacturing and construction industry, by the year 2016. The solar jobs growth layer shows where these jobs are likely to be created across the country. You'll see that many of these jobs are being created in states that have experienced the worst of the current economic crisis, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio.

Clicking on the solar icon in each state shows annual job growth over an eight year period, as well as how the three most common solar technologies—photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, and solar water heating—stack-up in terms of job creation.

In addition to exploring the job growth numbers, you can view a 3-D simulation of the job growth over time and compare the solar energy resources of each state with their job growth potential. In the additional data, you can also see solar installations, like photovoltaic panels and solar water heating at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center in Atlanta and a solar power tower at the Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) in Southern California, to see what they actually look like in Google Earth.

Because predicting job creation in the future relies on advanced economic modeling, it can be difficult to predict where all the solar jobs will be created. Nearly 30,000 jobs will likely be created across the other 29 states that aren’t explicitly covered in this map. That means solar energy truly is capable of creating a green economy for the entire U.S.

This map was created as part of SEREF’s and Google.org’s shared objective to rapidly scale-up the use of solar technologies in the U.S. so that the environmental, economic, and national security benefits of renewables can be realized.

To check out the map and learn more about solar energy, please visit the solar jobs map site.

Posted by Dave Bercovich, Google.org and Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach

The Next Chapter for Google.org

2009-02-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

When Larry and Sergey laid out their vision for Google.org, they hoped that this "experiment in active philanthropy" would one day have an even greater impact on the world than Google itself. They committed resources from Google's profits, equity and substantial employee time to this philanthropic effort, and they created the mission: "to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age." They structured Google.org so that in addition to traditional grant making, it can also invest in for-profit companies, advocate for policies and, most important, tap into Google's strengths: its employees, products and technologies. At first I was skeptical about "going corporate," but I came on board convinced that Google could make real progress on these issues. I think we have made an excellent beginning, but it is just a very few steps on a long path.

Now, three years after Google.org was founded, we've been reviewing our progress, and how best to take things forward. It's clear that I am most effective in helping to identify "big ideas" and potential partners, as well as raising awareness about society's biggest challenges. I am therefore very excited to become Google's Chief Philanthropy Evangelist. I think this is the highest contribution that I can make both to Google.org and to fighting the urgent threats of our day: from climate change to emerging infectious diseases, to issues of poverty and health care. By focusing my energy outwards I hope to be able to spend more time motivating policy makers, encouraging public and private partnerships, and generally advocating for the changes that we must make as a global society to solve these problems. Long-time Googler Megan Smith will take over day-to-day management of Google.org, joining as General Manager to lead us through this transition, in addition to her existing role as Vice President of New Business Development.

One of the first things that Megan will focus on is how Google.org can best achieve its mission. During our review it became clear that while we have been able to support some remarkable non-profit organizations over the past three years, our greatest impact has come when we've attacked problems in ways that make the most of Google's strengths in technology and information; examples of this approach include Flu Trends, RechargeIT, Clean Energy 2030, and PowerMeter. By aligning Google.org more closely with Google as a whole, Megan will ensure that we're better able to build innovative, scalable technology and information solutions. As a first step, Google has decided to put even more engineers and technical talent to work on these issues and problems, resources which I have found to be extraordinary. In this global economic crisis, the work Google.org is doing, together with our many colleagues around the world, to help develop cheap clean energy, find and fight disease outbreaks before they sweep the globe, and build information platforms for underserved people globally, is more important than ever. We stand behind the commitment made in 2004 to devote 1% of Google's equity and profits to philanthropy, and we will continue to iterate on our philanthropic model to make sure our resources have the greatest possible impact for good.

Posted by Dr. Larry Brilliant, Chief Philanthropy Evangelist, Google.org

Washington plugs into the smart grid

2009-02-18T23:24:00.000-08:00

Just one week after launching Google's energy information campaign, we kicked off our first joint smart grid event with GE, a larger clean energy collaboration we announced last fall. Our timing was fortuitous; the event took place just as President Obama signed an historic economic stimulus bill that includes $11 billion to modernize the electricity grid.

Getting energy information into the hands of consumers requires reworking the electricity grid to make it smarter. At yesterday's event, hosted in Google's Washington office, experts explored what the fundamental elements of a smarter grid should be -- from empowering consumers with information, tools, and choices to manage their energy use, to creating an open system that encourages innovation, to enabling a massive scale up of renewable energy sources and plug-in vehicles. We also explored the government's role in accelerating these efforts. Our panelists were enthusiastic about the opportunity created by the stimulus, but also noted the government's challenge of getting the money out the door in an effective and efficient manner.

Some highlights from the event:

GE's film clip highlighting a smart grid project in Oklahoma
An appearance by Carol Browner, President Obama's senior energy official in the White House, who noted with delight the packed crowd of over 450 people
Former astronaut and current Googler, Ed Lu, making the case for open standards and user access to energy information on our technology panel
Our very own Dan Reicher shamelessly punning that "we want to help build a fridge to the 21st century," a play on Bill Clinton's '96 campaign mantra

To stay plugged into our energy information campaign and learn about developments along the road to a smarter grid, be sure to join our Google Group.

UPDATE: Watch the event video on YouTube.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Google.org Program Manager

Stimulating clean energy RD&D

2009-02-18T23:06:00.000-08:00

We must quickly develop low-cost renewable and efficient energy technology to avoid the devastating effects of climate change. This requires a strong financial commitment to clean energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to achieve big breakthroughs.

Historically such funding has been anemic. After a peak in 1978 of $7 billion, U.S. government funding for energy RD&D dropped by more than 70%. Corporate RD&D fell even more, and funding in the early 2000s totaled just 0.3% of sector revenue, compared to 15% in the biotech sector. Is it any wonder the energy sector has struggled to make progress?

What level of energy RD&D funding is needed? Kammen and Nemet look at several different metrics and suggest that a sustained level between $20-40 billion is needed to reinvigorate the field. Recent activities push in the right direction: 2008 funding reached $3 billion, 50% higher than during the early 2000s, and the stimulus bill recently signed into law adds $3.25 billion in new RD&D funding for clean energy. But to have a truly transformative effect, investment needs to climb even higher.

In addition, without emphasizing the "R" in RD&D, we will produce only incremental improvements. We need to prime the innovation pump in order to produce more high-quality ideas that produce radically better (and cheaper) technologies. This will provide long-term job growth, and also increase consumers' buying power, stimulating the economy.

Funding must also be coupled with long-term demand for clean technology. This gives companies confidence their investments will pay out, and assures students entering the field that jobs won't evaporate. Research must also focus more on clean tech; in recent years only 40% of energy RD&D funding has gone to renewable energy and energy efficiency.

At Google we've learned some that might be successfully applied to energy:

"Put the user first and all else follows." For instance, customers care about saving money, but only if it's easy to measure. Providing ways to cheaply monitor energy consumption is a powerful first step.
"Great just isn't good enough." Cost-parity for renewables is required for long-term competitiveness, but to replace conventional technology we must develop renewable electricity cheaper than coal, the least expensive fossil fuel.
"Launch early and often." Instead of waiting for perfection, get new technologies into the marketplace quickly, then improve through iteration.

These strategies will make sure that the widest possible set of ideas are considered, increasing the number of breakthroughs. A "fail fast" policy would allocate people to the great ideas, with high-impact results guaranteeing continued funding, particularly at the critical demonstration stage where many technologies fail to attract sufficient capital. Carrying projects over this "Valley of Death" to full commercialization will ultimately result in the best, lowest-cost technologies rapidly reaching the market. For the sake of the planet, clean energy can't arrive soon enough.

Check out this excellent complementary set of recommendations recently published by Harvard's Belfer Center.

Posted by Jeffery Greenblatt, Climate and Energy Technology Manager

Answering the question: “Was this a successful project?”

2009-02-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

A guest post from Howard White, Executive Director, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation:

In the foreign aid business, it's very important to answer the question, “Was this a successful project?” because donors need to know where to target their scarce resources. Unfortunately, the answer to this question has frequently been, “Well it must be, we spent loads of money and employed lots of consultants." This problem has been most recently highlighted by the Centre for Global Development’s report, "When Will We Ever Learn?". Billions of dollars are spent on development interventions each year with little evidence on whether they work or not.

I started my own academic career looking at aid impact at the macroeconomic level. In my own defense, I can say that, starting with my PhD, I criticized the over-aggregated cross-country regression approach, arguing instead for careful country-level analysis of macro impact that could pick up on both context but also the many channels – both money and ideas – through which aid affects development outcomes. Having published a couple of widely ignored books pursuing this approach, I became increasingly convinced that aid impact had to be examined from the bottom up. That is a systematic analysis of, if not all interventions, then enough to be able to make authoritative statements about whether the aid program is working or not. This might seem like a lot of work; but then so is measuring GDP and we do that.

But there are two problems to implementing a bottom up approach. The first is that evaluation design is often poor when it comes to measuring impact. The second problem is that most agencies do not systematically compile evidence across interventions. It is symptomatic of a culture of producing evaluations as a bureaucratic requirement, not as a management or learning tool.

It is to tackle these two problems - the lack of evidence and the failure to synthesize what evidence there is into policy-relevant lessons – that the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) has been created. Google.org has been one of our early funders.

The bulk of 3ie funding is going to help expand our knowledge about what works by supporting new impact studies, focusing on what we call the enduring questions of development. We are in the process of a consultative exercise to identify these questions – to which you can contribute by visiting our website. We will also have an open window for studies on other topics, for which the first request for proposals went out recently. Please visit our web site and join the conversation!

Power to the people

2009-02-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Imagine how hard it would be to stick to a budget in a store with no prices. Well, that's pretty much how we buy electricity today. Your utility company sends you a bill at the end of the month with very few details. Most people don't know how much electricity their appliances use, where in the house they are wasting electricity, or how much the bill might go up during different seasons. But in a world where everyone had a detailed understanding of their home energy use, we could find all sorts of ways to save energy and lower electricity bills. In fact, studies show that access to home energy information results in savings between 5-15% on monthly electricity bills. It may not sound like much, but if half of America's households cut their energy demand by 10 percent, it would be the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road.

Google’s mission is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful," and we believe consumers have a right to detailed information about their home electricity use. We're tackling the challenge on several fronts, from policy advocacy to developing consumer tools, and even investing in smart grid companies. We've been participating in the dialogue in Washington, DC and with public agencies in the U.S. and other parts of the world to advocate for investment in the building of a "smart grid," to bring our 1950s-era electricity grid into the digital age. Specifically, to provide both consumers and utilities with real-time energy information, homes must be equipped with advanced energy meters called "smart meters." There are currently about 40 million smart meters in use worldwide, with plans to add another 100 million in the next few years.

But deploying smart meters alone isn't enough. This needs to be coupled with a strategy to provide customers with easy access to energy information. That's why we believe that open protocols and standards should serve as the cornerstone of smart grid projects, to spur innovation, drive competition, and bring more information to consumers as the smart grid evolves. We believe that detailed data on your personal energy use belongs to you, and should be available in an open standard, non-proprietary format. You should control who gets to see your data, and you should be free to choose from a wide range of services to help you understand it and benefit from it. For more details on our policy suggestions, check out the comments we filed yesterday with the California Public Utility Commission.

In addition to policy advocacy, we're building consumer tools, too. Over the last several months, our engineers have developed a software tool called Google PowerMeter, which will show consumers their home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer. Google PowerMeter is not yet available to the public since we're testing it out with Googlers first. But we're building partnerships with utilities and independent device manufacturers to gradually roll this out in pilot programs. Once we've had a chance to kick the tires, we'll make the tool more widely available.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to providing consumers with detailed energy information. And it will take the combined efforts of federal and state governments, utilities, device manufacturers, and software engineers to empower consumers to use electricity more wisely by giving them access to energy information.

Posted by Ed Lu, Engineering Team

The Final Inch is Nominated for an Oscar!

2009-01-22T09:31:00.000-08:00

Google.org extends its heartfelt congratulations to Irene Taylor Brodsky and Tom Grant on their first Oscar nomination in the category of Best Documentary (Short Film) for The Final Inch, a film produced with support from and in collaboration with Google.org. In speaking with Irene this morning, she said, "This is a great day as more people will see that polio hasn't yet been eradicated, and is still a disease affecting the world's poor. This is a story needing to be told, and now more people will see the film."

Indeed, this is a great day for polio eradication, and we salute Gates Foundation, Rotary International and the governments of the UK and Germany who yesterday announced $630M for polio eradication. Polio continues to afflict mostly children under age 3 in the poorest regions of just a few countries. We hope that our film, which will air nationally on HBO in the coming months, energizes the group of dedicated donors and health workers to bring this eradication campaign past the final inch.

Update on 2/19 @ 3pm: UNICEF issues press release about The Final Inch that effectively outlines the state of the eradication effort in India.

Posted by Gregory Miller, Managing Director, Google.org

Economist video about ASER

2009-01-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

The Economist has just released a fascinating video showing Google.org grantee Pratham in action, conducting ASER (Annual Status of Education Report). The video colorfully illustrates a major issue in India's education system: even when they attend school, students aren't necessarily learning. So, rates of illiteracy are quite high. Watch the video here:

Posted by Katy Bacon, Google.org Team

Sharpening our focus in global development

2008-12-23T10:39:00.000-08:00

As you might expect from a company founded by two engineers and an infusion of start up cash, Google believes in the power of entrepreneurs and small businesses to drive innovation and spur job growth. So it wasn't surprising that when we considered areas to support with our philanthropic efforts, helping entrepreneurs in developing countries rose to the top. This past January we launched an initiative to Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). SMEs in developed countries account for half of GDP and two-thirds of jobs, but they're largely absent in developing countries. We wanted to explore how we could help drive capital to these high-growth businesses. At the same time, we launched a parallel effort to increase access to vital information in poor countries. This effort, known as Inform and Empower, aims to help improve the quality of public services by organizing critical information and making it accessible to all (sound familiar?).

We still strongly believe that growing small businesses will help the poor, but one of Google's ten organizing principles is, "it's best to do one thing really, really well." As we evaluated our efforts this past year, it became clear that given Google.org's unique strengths - including the ability to tap Google engineers to build and link better pathways to information - we could have a greater impact on the lives of the poor by focusing our efforts on Inform and Empower. As a result, we're putting our SME initiative on the back burner. We'll continue to support the grants and investments that we've already committed under the initiative. We have observed and learned from many others addressing the challenges of financing SMEs -- many of whom are seeing significant strong results -- and we hope they continue with great success. At this time, however, we will not fund new efforts in the SME space.

Google remains committed to its philanthropic goal: using information and technology to take on some of the world's greatest challenges. We continue to draw upon resources of 1% equity, 1% profit, and employee time, as outlined by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in their 2004 letter to investors. We've had a strong year of giving since the launch of our initiatives. We know that the global financial crisis is disproportionately affecting the poor and plan to increase our overall giving in 2009.

Posted by Sonal Shah, Head of Global Development, Google.org

Power to the People or Power from the People?

2008-12-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

In early 2008, Google.org announced its initiatives to the world and made clear how the company would leverage its people, money, and creativity to address some of the world’s most pressing and difficult problems. Among them were climate change/renewable energy, global poverty, and emerging threats.

In Africa, one of our initiatives is focused on leveraging the power of information (or the right to know) to increase transparency, accountability, and ultimately the delivery and quality of public services. "You can’t change what you can’t see" is one of our mantras, and our job is to shine light in dark places and help people decipher the black box of public service delivery. What is working? What is not? What options are available to people to plug holes in a leaky pipeline of service delivery?

Much of the initiative is about unlocking quasi-public information. One of my colleagues calls it DBHD (database hugging disorder). Why is so much “public” information not accessible (ie government budgets, service level indicators, population data) and sitting on servers in London, New York, and Geneva but not accessible to citizens, media, and even planners in Africa countries? This clearly needs to change.

What is less intuitive, however, is that there is so much information, knowledge, and wisdom within Africa that is not making its way to politicians, planners, and policy makers who make decisions about Africa. We often hear that teachers, nurses, and civil servants do not show-up for work across the continent and this is a primary contributor to the poor quality of public services. Do we bother asking why absenteeism is such a problem? Ask teachers, nurses, or administrators and they will tell you. For example, since Universal Primary Education (UPE) was adopted in many African countries more than a decade ago, classroom sizes have doubled if not tripled while teacher salaries, instructional materials, and training have hardly changed at all. Government dispensaries are rarely stocked with medications that people come to purchase so why bother staffing clinics?

Last month in rural Uganda, I saw an example of how information gathered from students is helping a local NGO address pupil absenteeism in a very targeted way. The primary school has created a student-led club that investigates why students are missing school and why they drop-out. After all, fellow students face similar challenges and know much about their peers. It turns out that most students dropping out are girls; early pregnancy and lack of finances to purchase school uniforms are leading causes of student absenteeism.

With this information in hand, the Kabarole Research Centre is working with student leaders to plant a community garden to raise money to buy uniforms for needy students, and both are working with community leaders and parents’ committees to raise the sensitive issue of early pregnancy amongst primary school students. Several young girls have returned to school after giving birth, and school administrators are more aware of what needs to happen to reduce student attrition.

And so it’s not just about delivering information to people so they can make better decisions. It’s also about listening to people to make sure donors, planners, and government officials make better decisions. Using student leaders to understand better why their peers are missing school may seem obvious, but such approaches are pretty rare in top-down systems. Better information is certainly not a panacea but it’s a necessary condition to make better decisions based on evidence rather than anecdote.

Check out my photos from the visit.

Posted by Aleem Walji, Head of Global Development Initiatives, Google.org