Celebrating Martin Luther King Day by giving back

Today, Martin Luther King Day of Service in the U.S., Googlers around the country worked with community service organizations to lend a helping hand in their area and commemorate the holiday.

The Black Googler Network (BGN), an employee resource group made up of volunteers, spearheaded this effort to set up service projects in multiple offices. In the California Bay Area today, we joined The Center for Music National Service in the MLK Day of Service & Song in various projects to beautify John O’Connell High School in San Francisco’s Mission district. Projects included mural painting, landscaping and organizing books and materials, and the celebration included time for students and volunteers to share their art and voice their feelings about the importance of the day.



In New York last week, we teamed up with the Harlem Children’s Zone for a full-day workshop with college students to review their resumes and conduct mock interviews, aimed at supporting the organization’s goal of ending the cycle of generational poverty. And in Ann Arbor, Mich., we joined the Ann Arbor Community Center and University of Michigan students to serve hot meals and give out winter garments to homeless families in need.

We’re proud of the ways Googlers came together to celebrate today and we’re committed to diversity and cultural inclusion year-round, with a focus on closing the technology gap. Last year, our FUSE, CSSI, BOLD and BOLD Practicum summer programs brought hundreds of students from culturally diverse backgrounds to Google offices worldwide for summer internships. We hosted national pitch night for The Technovation Challenge for girls. The BGN’s efforts to aid minority and low-income communities included its annual BGN New Orleans Outreach Trip, and we hosted speakers Condoleezza Rice, Alice Walker, Belva Davis and Soledad O’Brien among others. We have even more plans for promoting diversity in 2012.

If you’re interested in volunteer opportunities in your area, visit mlkday.gov or allforgood.org.

Posted by Chad Sanders, Global Learning Systems, Talent

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Beckham kicks it at Google

International soccer phenom +David Beckham is taking off his boots and heading to Google for an exclusive live interview. Have a question you’ve been dying to personally ask Becks? Post it on Google+ with hashtag #GoogleBeckham, and maybe he’ll answer it live!

Watch the interview on Thursday, January 19 at 9am PT on youtube.com/atgoogletalks. And as an added bonus, hangout with him directly afterward on his Google+ profile at 10:30am PT. Add him to your circles now for all the latest updates.



Don’t worry if you can’t make the live interview or Google+ hangout—we’ll post them to YouTube shortly after.

So, what are you waiting for? Punt us your best questions on Google.com/+!

Posted by Andrew Schulte, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted on the YouTube Blog)

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Inaugurating our new French headquarters

Last year, our Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt promised to open a research and development and culture centre in France. Today, Eric returned to Paris to inaugurate our new 10,000-square meter office in a refurbished 19th century Second Empire building near the St. Lazare Train Station.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy honored us with his presence. “Why as President, do I make this symbolic move and come to Google?" he asked rhetorically to a packed courtyard auditorium. “I love the United States, and its motto that everything is possible whatever your origins.” President Sarkozy also officially launched the Elysee Palace’s YouTube channel and his visit was shown on YouTube Live, the section of the site where we list all live streamed events.

The President participated in a Google+ Hangout, taking questions from French-speaking Googlers around the world. (“What time is it there?” he asked someone dialing in from California.) On a serious note, he expressed his gratification for how Google has moved to dig deep roots in France. “When I first met Eric, we had a frank conversation,” he recalled, saying his message was clear. “I asked him how long Google was preparing to make money in France without investing here. I told him that Google must have its feet in France.”



Our new Paris office is emblematic of our commitment to one of Europe’s fastest-growing Internet economies. According to a recent McKinsey study that we helped sponsor, the web contributed to 3.2 percent of the French GDP in 2009 and created more than 700,000 jobs during the past 15 years. Between now and 2015, McKinsey estimates that the digital contribution will grow to 5.5 percent of GDP, and 450,000 additional jobs will be created. In order to help accelerate the French digital engine, we’ve launched a Startup Café, an online platform offering information and tools.

Our investment plan for France is ambitious, and extends far beyond buildings. We’re expanding our engineering presence to take advantage of France’s strong engineering talent pool and are making significant academic investments, including a partnership with the French national research center CNRS.

France is a global cultural leader and we’re working hard to partner with French writers, filmmakers and musicians. Over the past year, we've reached an agreement with the biggest French publisher Hachette to scan and sell digital versions of out-of-print books and are providing payment systems for French news publishers from Hachette. YouTube has signed royalty-collection agreements with music copyright societies and our new Cultural Institute will be located in the Paris headquarters. It will aim at driving innovation in cultural preservation, creation and access, not just in France, but across the world.

Just before the President left, he asked to say a few final words. He praised our “dynamism” and wished well our expanded operations, before making a parting promise. “I hope this inauguration is one of a long series,” he said. “If you invite me to another building opening, I will come.”

Posted by Anne-Gabrielle Dauba Pantanacce, Head of Communications, France

(Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog)

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Gravity Games highlight future scientists and engineers

The Google data center in Caldwell County, NC lies close to the birthplace of NASCAR and any visitor can tell—even our data center is decked out in NASCAR paraphernalia and pretty much everyone is a NASCAR fan. When we learned that many competitive drivers got their first start behind the wheel in soapbox cars, we put two and two together and thought there would be no better way to get local students excited about science and engineering than by giving them a chance to build and race a soapbox car in the first ever Western North Carolina Gravity Games Soapbox Races.

We teamed up with Appalachian State University (ASU) to co-host a soapbox race, hoping that young people would bring the same excitement they had for NASCAR to this hands-on engineering activity and gain some technological ingenuity along the way. The race was divided into three divisions: middle school, high school and an open group for university, corporate or private teams. Each car would compete for both speed and creativity honors. During the months leading up to the event, ASU’s physics, technology and design graduate students and Googlers from the data center in Caldwell County served as mentors for the teams and provided the students with technical assistance and advice.

On November 19, I joined a team of Googlers from the data center and several hundred parents, kids and their derby cars in downtown Lenoir for the race. While most families were still in their PJs, we were busy transforming Church Street into a race track—complete with hay bales, a custom-built starting gate, finish line, a race timer designed by the team at the data center, an event emcee and 34 colorful soapbox cars. Some even had sponsor logos, just like real race cars.

Teams from Alleghany, Avery, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba and Watauga counties competed to be the fastest car on the hill and the kids had an “in-it-to-win-it” swagger. Some had designed their own custom T-shirts, while one driver dressed up in a Super Mario costume. One team created a box-turtle car made from metal and wood and there were several cars with custom paint jobs that included bright red flames and a few bug eyes.

The vehicles had to run solely on potential energy. No electrical, chemical or animal-powered sources were allowed. (Because you never know what kids are capable of, we forbade nuclear power in the rules, too, just in case.) The only thing cars could run on was gravity and—for the upper age divisions—potential mechanical energy, such as springs, weights, elastic or flywheels. Most of the teams stuck with gravity as the primary accelerator and focused on reducing friction, optimizing vehicle weight and selecting the fastest path down the race course.

The Church Street race track was 650 feet long, and the average speed over the course of the track was 17 miles per hour. Top speeds at the finish line topped 30 miles per hour, and our winners clocked in with total times around 26 seconds.

With a time of 26.213 seconds, Hudson Middle School won the speed category in the middle school division, beating 22 other teams. Caldwell Career Middle College won the speed category in the high school division, defeating seven other high school teams with a time of 26.962. Hudson Middle School also won the People’s Choice Award, given to the car the attendees voted as their overall favorite. Each team entered a car that was either custom-built or was created from an approved kit.

In the creativity category, Jacobs Fork Middle School and St. Stephens High School took home top honors. In the open division, ASU’s North Carolina Center for Engineering Technologies won for its two-bicycle design.

The Gravity Games was one of my proudest moments as a Googler. Beyond being a great time, it gave young people a way to get excited about science, technology and engineering. The students who participated in the soapbox races are future engineers and scientists (and possibly Googlers), and I hope they’ll have more opportunities to inspire their peers and this community with the incredible abilities we saw that morning.

Naturally, we’re already planning to host another Western North Carolina Gravity Games in the spring of 2012 and we’ll be including more North Carolina communities. You can view the complete results and event photos at www.ncgravitygames.com.

Posted by Enoch Moeller, Hardware Operations Manager

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Celebrating LEO, the world’s first business computer

This year marks the 60th anniversary of LEO, the world’s first business computer—built by J.Lyons & Co, a leading British food manufacturer at the time that also ran a famous chain of tea shops.

Lyons management had long been keen to streamline their back-office operations. In 1947, two Lyons managers visited the U.S. to learn about the latest business processes, including whether the electronic computers they’d heard about during their wartime service, like ENIAC, might be useful. (At the time, the closer-to-home advances at Bletchley Park were still a well-kept military secret.)

They returned inspired by the possibilities and keen to build a machine of their own. After several years of development, LEO, a.k.a. Lyons Electronic Office, took on its first office job on November 17, 1951—weekly valuations for the bakery division, calculating margins on Lyon’s output of bread, cakes and pies.



Until LEO, computing in a work setting was treated like a specialist bit of kit on a factory production line. Each machine was dedicated to a single task. In essence, they were narrowly defined calculating machines. The vision for LEO, in contrast, was bravely broad. LEO was a single computer capable of handling a whole swathe of accounting and bookkeeping tasks, as well as producing daily management reports.

LEO was such a success that Lyons set up a commercial subsidiary to sell spare time on LEO to other businesses, including the Ford Motor Company, which used it to process the payroll for the thousands of workers at its U.K. plant. Later, Lyons also built entirely new LEOs and sold them to other blue-chip companies of the era. In total, more than 70 LEO’s were built, with the last remaining in service until the 1980’s (not bad for a computer that took up an entire room!).

Today we view IT as critical to any enterprise, but in the 1950s, this was by no means a given, as evidenced by a quote from a 1954 issue of The Economist: “There are those who do not believe in the desirability of introducing anything as esoteric as electronics into business routine.” Things certainly have changed, and in a sense, all modern day businesses owe a debt to the LEO team.

Last week at the Science Museum in London, we were delighted to sponsor a small gathering of early LEO programmers  to celebrate their accomplishments and reminisce about their pioneering work. Today, on this 60th anniversary, we invite you to have a cup of tea and join us in toasting LEO—a remarkable ancestor in IT’s family tree.



Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations

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Raising awareness for breast cancer through the Pink Pin Initiative in NYC and beyond

Every October marks Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a time when organizations and individuals around the world come together to raise awareness to support the fight against breast cancer.

This year, Google joined in and partnered with Susan G. Komen for the Cure on the Pink Pin Initiative, which challenged local businesses in New York City to rally their customers, friends and families around breast cancer awareness. Using Google’s products, including Maps, YouTube, Picasa and Google+, we made it easy for local businesses and New York residents to show their support for the cause. On an interactive website, pinkpin.com, people could register their businesses on the Pink Pin Map, share their experiences by uploading their own videos and photo stories, as well as donate to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

More than 300 businesses signed up to participate in the first 24 hours, and we saw an outpouring of public support from both businesses and individuals, demonstrating how small, random acts of participation can translate to larger scale impact. In fact, some businesses took it upon themselves to take Pink Pin a step further. One New York business offered $100 of free services for every $100 donated. A Brooklyn restaurant hosted a one-day “Dine-out” for Pink Pin, where a percentage of their earnings for that day went to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Pink Pin was a tremendous demonstration of what people will do if you give them the tools to use technology for good. We’re thrilled that Pink Pin has been so positively received by New Yorkers and hope to continue and expand our efforts next year.

Googlers also celebrated Breast Cancer Awareness month in 23 of our offices around the globe. In addition to health talks encouraging Googlers to learn more about breast cancer prevention, we heard a panel of survivors speak in Mountain View, held walk/runs in California, New York and Washington, and participated in flash mobs to raise awareness in Dublin and London. On Wednesday, October 19, we celebrated a global “Wear Pink, Think Pink Day.” We also encouraged donations (and gift matching!) to organizations like Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. You can see a photo album of all our activities below:



Posted by Noel Paasch, Pink Pin team

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