One normally doesn't think about small business when it comes to Luxembourg. Yet, SMEs in this country contribute with an overwhelming majority to the economy. Still, despite digital growth in the region there are a host of smaller, home-grown companies which haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities offered online. Although 93% of the population uses the internet -- one of the highest rates in Europe -- just 7% of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) market their products online. Over the past year, Google has partnered with local organizations all over Europe to create courses and train more than one million people, especially entrepreneurs, in digital skills. This week we showcased our latest project in Luxembourg at an event with Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. "The digital revolution is an opportunity if we seize it, and a catastrophe if we let it pass," he told an audience of business owners, IT professionals and civil servants. "We have to be present online -- if you're not, someone else will take that place." Luxembourg's shoppers aren't shy about going online. As Thierry Geerts, Google's Country Director for Belgium and Luxembourg explained at the event, they frequently search for goods and services online. But, out of 100 search queries, only 13% of links led to companies in Luxembourg -- meaning 87% of those opportunities are going to businesses elsewhere. With e-commerce one of the few sectors consistently growing, that's something Luxembourg's SMEs simply can't afford. Mr. Bettel and his colleagues understand that. Digital Luxembourg is a project launched by the government to provide training specially targeted for SMEs, and Luxembourg's Chamber of Commerce set up a training programme together with a number of banking associations known as House of Training. Google is proud to collaborate with House of Training on the Digital Workshop, offering a range of free courses which combine online and offline aspects of building and promoting a business in the digital age. Letzebuergisch entrepreneurs can up their game with seminars, including "Getting your business online," "International exporting" and "How to attract visitors to your website." At the conference, entrepreneurs were inspired by local success stories. Flibco.lu will be familiar to many in Brussels -- they provide coach transport from major cities to out-of-town airports like Charleroi and Frankfurt-Hahn. The cheapest and easiest way to book them? Online. Guests also heard from Luxcaddy.lu, which sells local product and specialities, and Abitare.lu which delivers stylish furniture all over the Grand Duchy. "We have to be prepared for the jobs of tomorrow, and give young people appropriate training," Mr. Bettel told delegates. When it comes to the business of online commerce, "we are standing on the platform, but we need to get on the train," he concluded. Hopefully, it will be full speed ahead for SMEs with Digital Luxembourg -- especially with free training courses for essential digital skills.

This week at the European Parliament, together with the European Disability Forum and our host MEP Evelyne Gebhardt, we explored the many ways that technology can assist people with disabilities to live more independently. European nonprofit innovators from France, Germany, Austria and the UK presented their inspiring projects and wowed the audience. At Google we believe technology can enable independence for people with disabilities. Launched in May of last year, the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities is putting $20 million in Google.org grants behind nonprofits using emerging technologies to realize that potential, and we were proud to spotlight four of their projects in the EU capital. We hope their work will spark continued innovation for people with disabilities. Here are a few examples of the European projects that attended the event:

Over the last year, we’ve been  telling the stories of our partners - the small businesses, creators and entrepreneurs who use Google products to help them to be more successful online. For them, Google is not just a search engine, but a growth engine that is powering their businesses. They tell us our tools help them connect with new customers, connect with global audiences and build the next great products. And while we’ve been focused on telling their stories, we asked Deloitte to calculate how big of an economic impact our tools have. They looked at four of our markets in Europe: Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. It turns out that our technology and tools are helping all kinds of businesses make a substantial economic contribution to these countries by generating revenue and supporting jobs across the economy. Deloitte’s studies looked at how businesses use our Search and advertising products to connect businesses with customers; how content creators leverage our tools to reach large audiences and monetise their content; how app developers use Android and the Play Store to connect to billions of consumers; and how our collaboration tools help to make Europeans more productive. The full reports give a detailed analysis of the impact of these products. One of the most interesting findings was the return on investment for businesses using AdWords - our Search advertising tool. Deloitte found that businesses receive between €3-€8 in gross advertising profits for every €1 they invest. “Today, every business is a digital business - because every customer is a digital customer,” said Matt Brittin, Google’s EMEA President. “And thanks to the digital revolution, every business can be a global business. We are proud of the role Google products play in helping businesses make the most of the digital opportunity.” The study highlights how businesses use our tools to bring in new customers and expand to new markets - whether that is across town, across the country or across the EU and beyond. These are businesses like ChipsAway, a car body repair specialist based in Oxfordshire. They use Google AdWords to target their marketing to a 15-mile radius of their location and have seen a 15-20% increase in business since they launched the campaign. Here are some of the key figures. The figures are reported as a range as the analyses use a range of inputs in its methodology.

We're proud that the Deloitte study confirms what we believed to be true: that our tools and services are bringing positive economic impact to all kinds of businesses and creators around Europe. Here you can find the full reports for Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Posted by Jon Steinberg, Public Policy Manager, EMEA

Earlier today, Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, spoke to a crowd at Paris's Sciences Po about innovation, Google's commitment to Europe and our ongoing collaboration with journalists and publishers, the Digital News Initiative. His speech is pasted in full below.

Bonjour. Thank you for coming. And thank you to Bruno and the Board of Sciences Po for hosting me today. It’s an honour to be here.

I have visited Paris many times. I have a great love of France - I even studied French for two years in high school! My affinity for this country, for this city, for your way of life, is strong, which is why I felt an unshakeable solidarity with you watching the senseless events of a few months ago. I want you to know that as you recover and rebuild, Google stands with you.

This is my first visit to Paris as CEO of Google, and also my first time here at Sciences Po. But it’s not Google’s first time in this room. Six years ago, our chairman, Eric Schmidt, stood right here to outline a series of major investments in France. I’m glad to say that those investments - in our Paris R+D centre, and in the Google Cultural Institute - are thriving.

Those investments - and others we have made since - further our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible. The Internet has transformed the way we work and learn and live - enabling people to connect with loved ones, educate themselves, start a business, explore the world.

I believe in the incredibly empowering and democratizing effect of putting knowledge in the hands of everyone, everywhere.

That belief is what drives us to fulfill our mission. And it’s a belief we share with France. Yet, four billion of the world’s seven billion population either can’t access the Internet or have much poorer experiences when they get online.

So we still have much work to do.

We’re committed to making knowledge available to more people, no matter where they may be, no matter what language they speak, no matter how they are accessing the Internet. We’re committed to building for everyone.

Google in France
What we’ve learned over the years is that in order to build for everyone, we must focus on partnership. We are proud of our relationship with France. We now have a total of 700 Googlers here--and we’re growing. Our R&D Center has 130 engineers working on Chrome for Mobile and on our YouTube recommendation engine

We have established the Google Cultural Institute here in Paris: they create amazing tools to help cultural organisations bring their treasures online. In five years, it has grown to include the collections of more than 1,000 museums and cultural institutions around the world, including 50 French partners like the Musee d’Orsay and Versailles.

Now, there’s no real substitute for seeing Vigee Le Brun’s Marie Antoinette up close… but for a lot of people that’s just not possible. We want to help them experience and be inspired by the amazing things you have to offer here in France, at virtually no cost. What would Marie Antoinette have thought of that?

One of our engineers here in Paris created Cardboard - an effort to democratize virtual reality. It’s a Virtual Reality viewer costing just a few Euros. Schoolchildren around the world can now make virtual expeditions to places they wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to go - to climb Mont Blanc, or go on stage at the Paris Ballet.


But it’s not just our own projects we’re investing in. Google is more committed than ever to investing in France by helping build an environment where everyone can bring their great ideas to life.

Digital skills
As the French economy becomes more and more digital, it also gets stronger and stronger. The opportunity is huge: according to McKinsey, if French companies speed up their transition to digital, France can add 100 billion euros a year to GDP by 2020.

Digital skills are vital. We’ve partnered with Chambers of Commerce across France to train small business in digital skills. So far, we've trained more than 50,000 SMBs through our Google Pour les Pros program.

Today I am delighted to announce that we’re expanding our program in France to help not just SMBs, but also young job-seekers, students and teachers, as well as those who are socially and digitally disadvantaged.

We’ve set ourselves an ambitious target: to train 200,000 people in France by the end of 2016. We will work with local nonprofits, universities, chambers of commerce and incubators to meet our goal. Through Google.org, we will work with Emmaüs Connect to create a program to help disadvantaged people get the digital skills they need.

And to encourage entrepreneurship, we have been working for three years with NUMA - the first and largest French startup space. I’m delighted to announce that we are renewing our partnership, with an additional investment of 1 million Euros.

The importance of partnership
Google works hard to be a growth engine. A key part of our role is to create tools that others can use, to create and share and spread knowledge themselves. For everyone, by everyone.

Our partners here are doing amazing work - using technology to make life better for people in France and around the world.

Take Android, for example - it can be used by any handset manufacturer, enabling small players to compete with the bigger ones. Wiko is a French company that is now the second biggest supplier of phones in France, after Samsung. And according to recent research, the growth in mobile phone usage has created more than 170,000 jobs for app developers in France.

Or take YouTube: anyone can create something that everyone can see. Sounds simple, but it’s a profound change in the way we communicate and share with each other.

Just ask French creators like EnjoyPhoenix, who started as a teenager, offering beauty tips for girls. And now has 2.2 million subscribers… and is working with global French brands like L’Oreal. Just one of a growing list of French creators using YouTube to build a following and reach a worldwide audience.

Partnering with Publishers
Of course, you can’t have a conversation about great content and partnership without addressing the importance of the publishing industry and journalism. It’s great to be partnering on today’s event with the Sciences Po Journalism School and with the Global Editors Network, based here in Paris.

I have a strong personal connection to journalism: I grew up in a house in India, where “access to information” meant the newspaper. I would get so excited as a kid to get my hands on the paper. In my case, it was The Hindu. It would arrive, and my dad got to read it first. And then my grandfather. I’d wait patiently for my turn … and then devour it. It taught me the true value of information. In fact, it was one of my main motivators for getting my first job--finally I’d get to read the paper first!

So, I care deeply about journalism. And Google cares deeply about journalism - yes, because of the crucial role it plays in democratic society, ensuring the spread of knowledge and the free flow of information. But also because the value of our services, like search, is directly related to having a rich and sustainable knowledge ecosystem.

Put simply, our futures are tied together. So we ought to be good partners. But over the last few years, in discussion with news publishers, we’ve heard that we can do better. So, we’ve been consulting and working closely together to find better ways to collaborate

Here in France, we have a history of this kind of collaboration. In 2013 Google and news publishers launched the French Innovation Fund--60 million Euros--to promote innovation and help develop new business models.

Over the last year we have built on that with the Digital News Initiative - a collaboration between Google and news publishers across Europe. We are committed to ongoing discussion between the tech and news sectors. To promote innovation in digital journalism. And play our part in building a more sustainable news ecosystem.

The DNI started in April last year with 11 founding partners. Today, more than 160 news organisations across Europe participate in the DNI. In France, Les Echos was a founding member - and many others have joined

But let me be clear: participating in the Digital News Initiative is not about buying into Google’s worldview. It is about discussion, debate, and getting things done together. It’s open to everyone involved in news in Europe.

And I hope the few announcements I am about to make encourage you all to join us.

DNI Innovation Fund
First, the DNI European Innovation Fund. Last April we announced we had set aside 150 million euros to help stimulate innovation in digital journalism, which we’ll make available to fund projects over the next three years.

The aim is to spark new thinking, which could come from anywhere, to give news organisations of all sizes the space to try new things and get projects off the drawing board and into production.

In October, we opened up the first application round… and it’s clear the appetite for innovation in news is huge.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that the DNI Innovation Fund will be offering 27 million euros to 128 projects in 23 countries across Europe.

The funding will go to a wide variety of organisations - from small startups to large, established news players. Their projects have been wonderfully diverse, ranging from automated content personalisation and robot journalism, to hoax busting apps and tools to verify social media in real-time reporting... and much more besides!

This is just the first round. We received a huge number of applications--a great sign!--and we want to keep the momentum going. The next round will open before the summer.

Accelerated Mobile Pages
Second, I want to tell you about the progress we are making on the open source Accelerated Mobile Pages project. This project was born out of conversations with publishers in Europe and around the world - we’re now working with hundreds of publishers, social networks, analytics groups, ad networks and more.

Smartphones and tablets have revolutionized the way we access information, and today people consume a tremendous amount of news on their phones. But every time a webpage takes too long to load, publishers risk losing a reader. We want the mobile Web to live up to its potential -- to make it great for everyone, so they can quickly and easily get to the high-quality journalism you are producing.

We’re doing that by building AMP HTML together with the industry - which allows sites to build light-weight versions of pages that will load instantaneously on mobile. It means the same code works across multiple platforms, apps, browsers and devices. It supports a wide choice of ad servers and formats, as well as news sites which use paywalls. And through analytics and reporting - it will help publishers craft the best content and cultivate more loyal readers.

I believe the project has huge potential and today, I’m excited to announce that Accelerated Mobile Pages are now live in Google’s mobile search.

Here’s what it looks like: a search carousel surfacing more news content - beautifully and instantly. Loading 4 times faster, using 10 times less data.


I’m delighted that we have a number of French publishers going live in AMP today - including TF1, Les Echos, Ouest France and Vingt Minutes - and hundreds of partners globally. This is a priority project for Google and for me.

Project Shield
Third: I want to tell you about an initiative called Project Shield. There are times when news content is impossible to get to--NOT because the page loads slowly, but because it’s been subject to an attack.

For example, someone doesn’t like what you are reporting and initiates what’s called a Distributed Denial of Service - or DDoS - attack to destabilize your website and make it hard for people to read your content. People come to your site, urgently needing information, and instead they find… nothing.

This goes well beyond slow scrolling and loading of pages. It’s an attack on the very essence of what you do, and it is happening all the time. For less than 100 Euros, someone who disagrees with what a journalist is reporting can purchase a DDoS attack online, which simply directs hundreds of thousands of compromised computers to visit that news site, crashing it.

Two years ago Google Ideas (now known as Jigsaw) asked: “Google has pretty great DDoS protection - what if we could put independent news sites behind that protection, regardless of where they are hosted?”

That idea turned into Project Shield. Shield works by using a technology called a reverse proxy, which lets Google intercept bad traffic before it reaches your server, providing a “shield” against would-be attackers.

I am happy to announce today that we will be offering Project Shield to all the world’s independent news organizations. For free. We hope that in the future even the smallest news organizations will be able to report the news without the fear of being taken down by digital attacks.

All of these efforts represent the ways we are working with your country, with your industry to fulfill our mission, and hopefully help you fulfill yours. By bringing people more and better information in more and better ways, you empower them. You allow them to create and connect and share, bringing them into the embrace of the powerful global community that only technology has made possible.
You give them knowledge. Nothing can be more valuable than that.

That, in the end, defines everything we stand for: we believe deeply in spreading knowledge to make life better for everyone. It’s at the heart of Google’s mission, it is the mission of publishers and journalists, it is in DNA of France itself. I am personally committed to this, and I look forward to working with you all to get it done.

Merci beaucoup!

In October, we issued an open call for applications to the first round of the Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund. The EUR 150m fund is designed to spark new thinking and give European news organisations of all sizes the space to try some new things, experiment and innovate in the digital space. Today, at Sciences Po in Paris, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, announced that 128 organisations hailing from 23 European countries are being offered funding. All told, just over EUR 27m in funding will be put to work in projects large and small to advance innovation across the industry. We can’t dive deep into details as recipients are still being notified, but here are a few projects that demonstrate new thinking in the practice of digital journalism, and who we’re particularly proud to be offering funding. Spain’s eldiario.es will create a new journalism funding system that will identify niche groups of audiences and invite them to fund a specific story or top up the financial gap in an important area of coverage. Building on a traditional crowd-funding model, the project will leverage the existing relationship between the news organisation behind the platform and a community of millions of readers. 

Cross posted from the Official Google Blog

Access to information is at the heart of Google’s mission. Unfortunately, today, the mobile web isn't living up to the expectations people have for getting the information they need, particularly when it comes to speed. In fact, data shows that people abandon websites after just three seconds if the content doesn't load quickly—which is bad not just for people trying to get what they want online, but for the publishers who want those readers to enjoy the content they've created for them. That's why, last October, we joined others across the industry on the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP for short), an open source initiative to make the mobile web as fast as possible.

In just over four months, AMP has come a long way, with hundreds of publishers, scores of technology companies and ad-tech businesses all taking part in this joint mission to improve the mobile web for everyone. And starting today, we’ll make it easy to find AMP webpages in relevant mobile search results, giving you a lightning-fast reading experience for top stories.

Now when you search for a story or topic on Google from a mobile device, webpages created using AMP will appear when relevant in the Top Stories section of the search results page. Any story you choose to read will load blazingly fast—and it’s easy to scroll through the article without it taking forever to load or jumping all around as you read. It’s also easy to quickly flip through the search results just by swiping from one full-page AMP story to the next.

AMP is great for browsing the web on mobile devices, because webpages built with AMP load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than equivalent non-AMP pages. In many cases, they’ll load instantly. It's how reading on the mobile web should be—fast, responsive and fun.
While helping people find fast AMP content through Google Search is a significant step, there’s still a lot of work ahead for the open source AMP Project. Still, it’s been thrilling to see how the industry has come together to work on this common goal of making the mobile web great for everyone. And given the potential AMP holds for other types of content, we’re excited about what the future holds.

Posted by David Besbris, VP Engineering, Search

One year ago in Brussels I set out Google’s promise to train one million Europeans in digital skills by the end of 2016, responding to EU research suggesting nearly a million jobs by 2020 will not be filled due to a lack of these skills.  We have seen such a huge level of demand for the training--helping Europeans with skills that will help businesses to grow faster and to increase jobs and exports-- that, in just half the time we anticipated, we have already reached that goal. Now Google will aim even higher. Today, at our event with Friends of Europe, I shared our plans to double our commitment to train a total of two million Europeans in digital skills. To be clear, this project is for everyone. Succeeding online shouldn’t just be for the privileged few. We want all Europeans, regardless of age, background or location to benefit. To that end, we’ve provided online training, created programs with universities and worked with microfinance organizations to find companies ready to grow.  Take student consultancy Fleed, a participant in our Activate course in Spain, which helps  connects students who want to go abroad with the right universities.  Our programmes are running all across Europe helping groups like Fleed- from helping German SMEs to find markets abroad, training unemployed Spanish youngsters on digital skills to helping young Italians with training and apprenticeships.

Spanish entrepreneur Tano Lopez from Fleed explained how he's grown his business using the Web

The people we've helped so far have done everything from opening organic retreats in Greece to creating the largest online angling channel in Scandinavia. Through them we’ve learned that every business is a digital business, and the web is your shop window for the world. We love seeing Europe's traditional industries and strengths multiply as they go online, and we can't wait to see what the next million will achieve. It's not just about getting traditional businesses on the web. A whole new industry--app development--is taking advantage of the global market of the Internet. They’re hugely successful in Europe, and according to a recent report Android has created more than 1.2 million jobs in Europe -- jobs that simply didn't exist before the web. Take EyeEm, acclaimed by users as "Instagram for people who take actual photos," which is based in Berlin and employs 50 people… and counts Brazil and the U.S. as two of its biggest markets. That's a fundamental change. When many of us were growing up, small businesses were local businesses. Only huge multinationals could source products worldwide or afford the latest technology. But now, with digital tools built for billions, anyone can scale up their business. We are entering the age of "micro-multinationals," where a smart business idea can go global at the swipe of a finger. At Google, we’re known for our Search Engine - but we are also proud to be an engine supporting economic growth. Search, Maps, YouTube and our advertising tools bring new customers from down the street or across the planet. We help entrepreneurs as well. We are investing in tech startup communities in London, Madrid, Berlin and Warsaw. GV, our venture capital fund, is investing in European businesses and encouraging others to do the same. Stories like these are the reason we gathered dozens of businesses in Brussels today and asked for their ideas on how to get Europe growing again. As the entrepreneurs creating jobs, exports, sales and profits, they have the best ideas on what will really help. One message was clear: they want a single digital market across the continent. With the web removing borders for marketing, sharing and doing deals, why should they remain for billing, tax and delivery? The two million people we train up need a complete single market, on and off, to make the most of their new skills, and to help Europe grow faster. Posted by: Matt Brittin, President for Google Europe, Middle East and Africa

Ahmed is an economics student from Aleppo in Syria. Last year he was forced to leave his hometown because of the war that has forced millions of his compatriots out of their country. He left his family and his studies—everything—behind to find a better future in Europe. Now safe in Berlin, his dream is to continue his studies and eventually become a teacher at a university in Germany.



As they make it through a dangerous journey, the first thing refugees need is to find shelter, food and access to care. But soon enough, they have to learn the local language, acquire skills to work in a new country, and figure out a way to continue their studies—all in an effort to reclaim and reconnect with the lives they had before.



Last fall, we shared how we’re supporting organizations on the frontline of providing essential humanitarian relief support. But we also wanted to do something to help with refugees’ long-term challenges, such as the need for access to information and education. So today, we’re making a $5.3 million Google.org grant to support the launch of Project Reconnect, a program by NetHope to equip nonprofits working with refugees in Germany with Chromebooks, in order to facilitate easier access to education for refugees like Ahmed.

Chromebooks have proven to be a good fit for education purposes. They can be easily set up to run education or language learning apps. They’re automatically kept up to date with the latest features, apps and virus protection. And they can be configured and managed by a central administrator (in this case the nonprofits) to offer relevant programs, content and materials depending on the situation. For example, they can run an educational game for children, a language course for younger adults or even feature information about the asylum application process on a pre-installed homepage.



Nonprofits can apply today on this website. Many organizations and their staff are doing incredible work in very difficult circumstances to help with this crisis. We hope that by supporting these nonprofits, we can help people like Ahmed on the next step of their journey.



Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org



http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NyO22rEaB6c/Vqa50axfoMI/AAAAAAAARx8/DuUaNLtwFT0/s1600/Reconnect_hero.jpg Jacquelline Fuller Director Google.org

The history of art is global. Look at Van Gogh—a Dutchman who spent much of his life in France, and was inspired not only by his contemporaries but also by Japanese artists like Hiroshige. But until recently, the act of enjoying art and culture was limited by geography. Unless you could visit a museum in person, it would be hard for you to appreciate a work, brushstroke by brushstroke. And to fully understand the legacy of someone like Van Gogh, you would have to go from Amsterdam to Chicago to New York to Tokyo to discover and marvel at all of his influences, works and successors.

Left: Van Gogh’s self-portrait (Chicago), right: a street art re-interpretation (Amsterdam)



But with the Google Cultural Institute, it’s all just a few clicks away. Five years ago, the first 17 museums brought online a few hundred artworks so that anyone in the world could explore paintings, records and artifacts no matter where they were. Today, on our fifth birthday, the Google Cultural Institute has grown to include the collections of more than 1,000 museums and cultural institutions, with over 60 new ones added just today.



Starting today, you can descend through the famous rotunda of the Guggenheim museum in New York—a piece of art in itself—thanks to special aerial Street View imagery, or stroll the grand halls of the world’s heaviest building, the Palace of Parliament in Romania. View Monet’s famous water lilies in super-high “gigapixel” resolution and zoom in to see his layered brushstrokes—then visit Monsieur Monet’s real-life garden to see his inspiration.



From “gigapixel” images to Street View inside museums, today’s museums, galleries and theatres are turning to technology to help reach new audiences and inspire them with art and culture. And the possibilities keep expanding with the addition of newer technologies like virtual reality. Just recently we worked with the Dulwich Picture Gallery—England’s oldest public art gallery—to take the young patients of King’s College Hospital in London on a virtual field trip to the museum using Google Cardboard.

Young patients at King’s College Hospital, London, were the first to experience the Dulwich Picture Gallery in virtual reality



Virtual visits will never replace the real thing. But technology can help open up art and culture to everyone, and we think that’s a powerful thing. As you browse the Google Cultural Institute’s 6 million objects exploring humanity’s diverse heritage across 70 countries—from this prehistoric equivalent of the Swiss Army knife in the Netherlands, to the Taj Mahal in India and manga drawings in Japan—we hope you’ll agree.



Posted by Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute IMAGE URL Amit Sood Director Google Cultural Institute