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

Street View cameras have floated on gondolas in Venice, ridden on camels in the Liwa Desert and soared on snowmobiles on Canadian slopes. But to capture the nooks and crannies in Miniatur Wunderland, we worked with our partner at Ubilabs to build an entirely new—and much smaller—device. Tiny cameras were mounted on tiny vehicles that were able to drive the roads and over the train tracks, weaving through the Wunderland’s little worlds to capture their hidden treasures. Touring the marvels of Wunderland, you must first begin in its oldest section: Knuffingen, a fictional town situated squarely between the Alps and Harz. Become one of this tiny city’s 10,000 inhabitants: Stop by the city’s rustic farmer’s market, witness the local fire department spring into action when a building catches fire and even see a plane lift off from Knuffingen’s airport. Farmers market in Knuffingen, Miniatur Wunderland with the Street View car driving by
You can also see a variety of real places designed with an eye for accuracy: a soccer match in Hamburg’s stadium, a traditional town center in central Germany, a rowdy Oktoberfest celebration and a replica of the famous Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, and even the ski slopes of Austria. You can also glimpse the everyday lives of thousands of miniature citizens, as they bike, camp and dance their way around the Wunderland.

At Google, we’re committed to making sure Europeans have the right digital skills, pledging to train up to one million Europeans by the end of 2016. Since 2009, Google’s Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) programmes have supported over 20,000 teachers in their efforts to gain confidence in their understanding of computer science (CS) and learn valuable skills for teaching CS to students across the globe. And starting today, applications are now being accepted for the 2016 CS4HS Awards. That is why we are encouraging colleges, universities, and educational non profits from countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa to apply for an award of up to €15,000. Computer Science is at the heart of the digital economy in Europe. It is a discipline with a core set of scientific principles that can be applied to solve complex, real-world problems. In today's computing-imbued world, coding is the 'quill' of the 21st century, and knowledge of computer science is essential for the youth of Europe - not just for their future careers, but also to enable them to be active citizens in the digital world. Despite a growing interest in computer science among young Europeans, recent research by Gallup (commissioned by Google) reveals that work still needs to be done when it comes to supporting teachers in their efforts to understand the critical principles of computer science. In 2016, we are looking to fund applications that include strong plans for the establishment of new or existing communities of practice (COPs). These communities bring teachers together to encourage and support each other in their learning and ongoing professional development. This focus is grounded in a wide body of research (for example Joyce & Showers, 2002; and Wiske, Stone, & Levinson, 1993 ) demonstrating that COPs are a critical element for producing and sustaining innovation in the classroom. Criteria vary from region to region so please visit the CS4HS website to learn more about the eligibility requirements and to get started on your application. Applications will remain open until midnight (GMT), 15th February, 2016. Join the CS4HS Google+ community to connect with past CS4HS organizers and learn about HangOuts on Air we’ll be hosting during the application process. We hope 2016 will provide many opportunities for Google to partner with the CS education community, and to grow and strengthen the CS teacher community around the globe. We hope you’ll be a part of it, and look forward to reviewing your application.    Posted by: Claire Conneely, CS4HS Program Manager, EMEA

Today we're announcing the largest, and most diverse, purchase of renewable energy ever made by a non-utility company. Google has already committed to purchase more renewable energy than any other company. Now, through a series of new wind and solar projects around the world, we’re one step closer to our commitment to triple our purchases of renewable energy by 2025 and our goal of powering 100% of our operations with clean energy.

842 MW of renewable energy around the world
Today’s agreements will add an additional 842 megawatts of renewable energy capacity to power our data centers. Across three countries, we’re nearly doubling the amount of renewable energy we’ve purchased to date. We’re now up to 2 gigawatts—the equivalent to taking nearly 1 million cars off the road.

These additional 842 megawatts represent a range of locations and technologies, from a wind farm in Sweden to a solar plant in Chile.
These long-term contracts range from 10-20 years and provide projects with the financial certainty and scale necessary to build these wind and solar facilities—thus bringing new renewable energy onto the grid in these regions. For our part, these contracts not only help minimize the environmental impact of our services—they also make good business sense by ensuring good prices.

Our commitment to a sustainable energy future
Since we opened our very first owned data center in 2006, we’ve been working to promote renewable and sustainable energy use in several ways:

• First, we’re building the world’s most efficient computer infrastructure by designing our data centers to use as little energy as possible.
• Second, we're driving the renewables industry forward by fully committing to renewable sources. In 2010, we entered our first large-scale renewable power purchase agreement with a wind farm in Iowa, and we subsequently completed a number of similar large-scale energy purchases over the past five years. Today’s announcement is another milestone in this area.
• Third, we've worked with our utility partners to help promote transformation in the utility sector. In 2013 we created a new program that enables customers like Google to buy large amounts of renewable energy directly from their utilities. Today's announcement includes the first solar project enrolled under that program. And this past summer we announced that our newest data center will be on located on the site of a retiring coal plant and will be 100% renewable powered from day one.
• Fourth, beyond our efforts to power our own operations with renewables, we’ve made separate agreements to fund $2.5 billion into 22 large-scale renewable energy projects over the last five years, from Germany to Kansas to Kenya. These investments have been in some of the largest and most transformative renewable energy projects in the world with a goal to help drive renewable energy development not only as a customer but as an investor, and bring down costs for everyone.

And we’re also working on new technologies and ideas—ranging from Project Sunroof to Makani Power to air quality monitoring—that we hope can make a cleaner energy future an option for many more people.

With world leaders coming together at the COP21 UN conference on climate change in Paris this week, there's no better time to focus on renewable energy. We hope that our efforts play a small part in boosting all of us in the race to solve climate change.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure

We believe in a world built for everyone, which is why we launched the global Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities earlier this year. The Impact Challenge is a Google.org initiative to invest $20 million in nonprofits who are using technology to make the world more accessible for the 1 billion people living with disabilities.

Today, as part of the program, we’re proud to celebrate the U.N. International Day of Persons with Disabilities with three new grants, totalling $2.95 million. Through our grants, the Royal London Society for Blind People will develop the Wayfindr project, helping visually impaired people navigate the London underground; Israeli NGO Issie Shapiro will distribute Sesame, an app that allows people with mobility impairments to control a smartphone using only head movements; and, finally, German grantee Wheelmap will expand its accessibility mapping efforts worldwide. This week, many Googlers around the world will also join Wheelmap’s Map My Day campaign to help out.

We’ve also collected 11 tips that help people with disabilities get more out of their favourite Google products. (Why 11? It’s a play on “a11y”, tech-speak for “accessibility.”)

Much of the accessibility work we do is driven by passionate Googlers from around the world. To give you a look at what motivates us to make Google, and the world, more inclusive, we asked four Googlers from our Disability Alliance to share more about what they’re working on:
Kiran Kaja, Technical Program Manager, London: Being blind from birth, I’ve always been excited by devices that talk to you or allow you to talk back to them. Today, I work on Google’s Text to Speech team developing technologies that talk to people with disabilities. I’m also helping improve eyes-free voice actions on Android so that people with low vision can accomplish standard tasks just by talking to their phone. This not only helps people with disabilities, but anyone whose hands are busy with another task—like cooking, driving or caring for an infant. The advances we’re making in speech recognition and text to speech output promise a bright future for voice user interfaces.

Paul Herzlich, Legal Analytics Specialist, Mountain View: As a wheelchair user from a spinal cord injury, I'm passionate about the potential impact of technology to solve disability-related issues. Outside of my job, I'm working alongside a team of mechanical and electrical engineers, UX designers, and medical professionals to develop a new technology called SmartSeat, which I hope to bring to life in tandem with Google.org through its Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities. SmartSeat is a device that notifies wheelchair users when they have been sitting in the same position for too long by using force sensors connected to a mobile app, thereby helping these users prevent pressure sores. You can watch a video of the early prototype on YouTube.

Aubrie Lee, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Mountain View: Like many other disabled people, I’ve spent most of my life as the minority in the room. In high school, I attended a state forum on disability and felt what it was like to be in the majority. Now, I work to create that feeling for other disabled people. I started the Googler Disability Community, a group that works on changing Google’s physical environment and workplace systems to help make our company truly inclusive. Outside of my job, I enjoy exploring the beauty in disability through photography and poetry. My own disabilities and the way they influence my interactions with others provide endless inspiration for my art.

Pablo Pacca, Language Market Manager, São Paulo: I’m in charge of making sure Google’s products are translated well into Brazilian Portuguese for the 180+ million Brazilians who don’t speak English. I’m also an activist and advocate for accessibility and inclusion, both as a blogger on disability issues and the lead for the Google Brazil People with Disabilities (PwD) group. At PwD Brazil, we educate Googlers about disability issues, and work to foster a more accessible office space and inclusive work environment across the company.

Rodolfo Cattani, Secretary General for the European Disability Forum, said earlier today about Europe’s initiatives on accessibility: "Technology is opening up new opportunities for persons with disabilities, to move around, and to get access to information, education and employment opportunities like never before. But so much more needs to be done. The long-awaited European Accessibility Act should mark the beginning of new efforts to boost the impact of technology in improving independent living and the participation in the society of 80 million Europeans with disabilities. MEP Philippe De Backer, who recently hosted a summit on accessibility and the app economy in the European Parliament, said on this same topic: "We need an Accessibility Act with a strong tech component to improve people's lives. This, together with the creativity and ingenuity of European app developers should make a real difference in boosting accessibility and independent living across Europe."
Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org

Last night in Amsterdam, we celebrated a new partnership with The Next Web to bring Google for Entrepreneurs to the Netherlands. In the unfinished space at Singel 542 in Amsterdam, within a stone’s throw of the city's famous Flower Market, The Next Web shared their inspiring vision for the project, called X, which we expect to open to more than 150 Dutch startups in the first half of 2016. We have a very clear goal for this unique partnership in the Netherlands: to further strengthen local entrepreneurship in the heart of the city. We know the startup scene in Amsterdam is a vibrant one--but we think X will cut through the noise of a buzzy ecosystem that’s been missing a physical center, something research tells us really matters for startups. At X with TNW we’ll be able to offer our local mentoring program and initiatives like demo days with international guests, global exchange programs and training sessions designed to help Dutch startups grow.
“The Dutch startup ecosystem is flourishing and new initiatives that empower the growth of startups are sprouting,” says Dutch Startup Envoy Neelie Kroes. “‘X’ contributes to this energetic scene by connecting players with global networks like The Next Web, Google, KPMG, ABN Amro and Booking.com that can offer the next growth step for startups.” One thing’s sure: this isn’t our first rodeo. Through the Google for Entrepreneurs network, we have 25 tech hub partners around the world, plus five Campus spaces we offer ourselves--in Tel Aviv, London, Seoul, Madrid and Warsaw--all sharing know-how and content to help new and fast-growing businesses do more.  Members of X here in the Netherlands will have access to that global community and world class network of physical spaces and programming. Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, CEO of The Next Web says that building X together with Google and other partners that include Booking.com and ABN-AMRO is “a dream come true” for the company. “Joining the Google For Entrepreneurs network not only makes sense for X but even more to the X residents who can instantly reap the benefits of this amazing global network to scale their businesses even faster.” But why make this kind of investment in startups in the Netherlands? It’s pretty simple. Google began in a garage, and we remain a startup at heart. Because of that, we’re committed to supporting next-generation entrepreneurship across Europe and around the world. It’s the same reason we recently launched the Digitale Werkplaats in the Netherlands with a goal of bringing digital skills to 30,000 Dutch entrepreneurs and independents to help them grow their businesses online, part of our greater efforts to show how Google can be a Growth Engine for all of Europe.

It takes years of practice to perfect the pirouettes. Months of rehearsal to get the crescendos just right. Multiple stories of lights, rigging and machinery to set the scene. At the world’s leading performing arts venues —like Carnegie Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Bolshoi Theatre—artists, costume designers, musicians, stage crews and many more all come together to create the perfect moment on stage.



And now you can join them. In a new virtual exhibition from the Google Cultural Institute and more than 60 performing arts organizations, you can experience dance, drama, music and opera alongside some of the world’s leading performers—onstage, backstage and with a 360 degree-view of the action.



The new Performing Arts exhibition gives you a view that’s even closer than the best seat in the house. With 360-degree performance recordings, you you can choose a dancer’s-eye view of the crowd, or look down from the stage into the orchestra pit. At the Paris Opera, you can stand in the middle of the largest stage in Europe, surrounded by dancers performing choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s moves. Sit between the woodwinds and strings at Carnegie Hall with a full view of Maestro Nézet-Séguin. Don’t worry if you’re underdressed as you tour the Berliner Philharmoniker’s rehearsal performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with conductor Sir Simon Rattle—you’ll see the orchestra is not in black tie either.



Beyond the performance itself, new indoor Street View imagery gives you an all-access backstage pass to each venue. Wander through the wig workshop at Brussels’ opera house, look beneath the stage at the historic underground arches of the Fundação Teatro Municipal in São Paulo, or zoom in on ultra-high resolution Gigapixel costume images at France’s National Centre for Stage Costume, before browsing more than a hundred interactive stories about the shows, the stars and the world behind the scenes. If you’re lucky enough to be planning an in-person visit to one of these venues, you can be tour them in Street View first to see where you’ll be sitting, or how the view is from the balcony.



The Google Cultural Institute was founded in 2011 to bring the world’s treasures to anyone with an Internet connection. Starting in partnership with a handful of renowned museums, we’ve since joined forces with 900+ institutions to include historic archives, street art, and 200 wonders of the world. Now you can also visit dozens of the world’s stages together in one place—across mobile, tablet and desktop at g.co/performingarts and on the Google Cultural Institute website.



Curtain-up, and let Performing Arts take the stage!



Posted by Amit Sood, Director of the Google Cultural Institute



IMAGE URL Amit Sood Director Google Cultural Institute