We know firsthand how vital a good science or math education is to building products that change the world and enrich peoples' lives. We're committed to supporting students in their pursuit of the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields — particularly those from traditionally under-represented backgrounds.
Over time, we've dedicated time, people, and financial resources to organizations, events and schools to help advance this mission — and we're excited to share that we rounded out 2009 with a donation of $8 million to a variety of organizations who share our dedication to this cause. Our efforts were focused in four key areas:
Starting in high school STEM education at an elementary and high school level builds technical skills early and encourages interest in technology. To support the ongoing education of these subjects, we identified more than 600 high schools with significant populations of students from under-represented and economically disadvantaged backgrounds and are providing laptops to their computer science and math departments. We are also offering laptops to some of the most promising students in these schools. In a time when many of these schools are experiencing decreased funding, we wanted to support their continued commitment to learning and teaching these subjects, and recognize the exceptional work done by teachers in these communities. If you're interested in learning more about our efforts in this field, check out Google Code University (CS tutorials for students and teachers) as well as our tools, tips and lesson plans for K-12 educators.
Growing promising talent We've worked with over 200 outstanding students as part of our FUSE, CSSI, BOLD and BOLD Practicum summer programs. To help the alumni of our 2009 summer programs pursue their studies, we awarded former program participants with school-based scholarships. We hope that this support for tuition will lessen the financial burden on these students and their families, reduce work-study commitments and free them up to explore other educational opportunities, like studying abroad.
Advancing technical knowledge through universities We have close relationships with universities around the world — not only do we employ their alumni, but they are also a source of groundbreaking research and innovation. We awarded grants ranging in size from $20k to $100k to 50 U.S.-based universities with whom we already have relationships and directed these funds toward departments that are closely aligned with promoting under-represented minorities in technology. We hope to expand this effort both to more U.S.-based universities and to universities around the world in the future.
Partnerships with the organizations that make it happen Our commitment to promote women and under-represented minorities in technology is shared by dozens of local and national organizations around the country. We awarded grants to 22 partner organizations, almost all of which we have worked with in the past. These organizations are on the front lines, making sure that under-represented groups have the support, resources and contacts they need. You'll find a list of these organizations with a quick overview of the work they focus on here.
This was a terrific way to close out 2009 and we look forward to attracting and encouraging more students from traditionally under-represented backgrounds to pursue studies and careers in science, technology, engineering and math. In the meantime, you can find news especially for students on the Students Blog and by following us on @googlestudents.
Posted by Shannon Deegan, Director, People Operations
In the wake of the devastating Haiti earthquake, aid organizations have been hard at work on the ground and citizens around the world have pitched in to help in whatever way they can. On the Geo team, we've been looking for ways we can help relief efforts using our mapping tools. Last week, thanks to our partner GeoEye, we published updated satellite imagery of Haiti in Google Earth and Google Maps which illustrated the devastation and current conditions on the ground. This data was made available for public consumption and also to assist relief efforts including those by many UN organizations and the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies.
With the hope of furthering awareness and relief efforts, we arranged for a collection of the Port-au-Prince area at even higher resolution (approximately 15cm) to complement the existing imagery. Here are some examples of the kind of detail this new dataset can convey:
click to see full-size
These images were gathered on Sunday (January 17). You can currently view the imagery in Google Maps in Satellite mode. It will also be available via the Google Maps API and in Google Map Maker. As of this morning, this high-resolution imagery is now available as the base imagery in Google Earth (all previous imagery of Haiti will be included in the Historical Imagery feature) and has been published in the Haiti Earthquake KML layer. We're also making this imagery directly available to relief organizations.
We've also updated the Haiti Earthquake KML layer (download for Google Earth) with additional information, including more imagery from GeoEye, Digital Globe, and NOAA, as well as earthquake epicenters and other maps. Aid groups can also download Map Maker data as well.
We have also made Haiti Map Maker data publicly available for download for non-commercial use and attribution. Data can be used by relief workers to do things such as create offline maps, combine data sets and run analysis, all of which we hope will help with their efforts on the ground. Please help improve Haiti maps with Google Map Maker.
News and user footage continues to roll into YouTube. Oxfam and the American Red Cross are even responding to donations by uploading videos that show viewers exactly where their contributions are making a difference.
Posted by Jacquelline Fuller and Prem Ramaswami for the Google Crisis Response Team
These recent satellite images of Port-au-Prince, Haiti before and after Tuesday's earthquake dramatically show the devastation caused by magnitude 7.0 trembler. Here are before-and-after screenshots of the National Palace and an area of Port-au-Prince:
You can also use the below buttons to donate to UNICEF or CARE.
Donate to CARE
Donate to UNICEF
In addition, Map Maker data has been made available to U.N. organizations and the team is working with the Map Your World Community to encourage Map Maker users with on the ground knowledge to help update the map of Haiti with disaster response data. We've received requests from relief organizations and our users to publish recent satellite imagery of the country. One of our imagery partners, GeoEye, has provided us with post-earthquake imagery from Haiti. You can check our Lat Long blog for further updates.
We've also reached out to the YouTube community for help. A Spotlight on the homepage drives traffic to videos from Oxfam and the American Red Cross, where you can make donations to relief efforts. We're also keeping a running playlist of the video footage coming out of Haiti on Citizentube; you can find a broad collection of citizen reports, news wire clips and personal stories of some of the victims.
Update at 1:11: Details regarding YouTube involvement corrected.
Posted by Jacquelline Fuller and Prem Ramaswami for the Google Crisis Response Team
I'm excited to announce that registration for Google I/O is now open at code.google.com/io. Our third annual developer conference will return to Moscone West in San Francisco on May 19-20, 2010. We expect thousands of web, mobile and enterprise developers to be in attendance.
I/O 2010 will be focused on building the next generation of applications in the cloud and will feature the latest on Google products and technologies like Android, Google Chrome, App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, Google APIs and more. Members of our engineering teams and other web development experts will lead more than 80 technical sessions. We'll also bring back the Developer Sandbox, which we introduced at I/O 2009, where developers from more than 100 companies will be on hand to demo their apps, answer questions and exchange ideas.
We'll be regularly adding more sessions, speakers and companies on the event website, and today we're happy to give you a preview of what's to come. Over half of all sessions are already listed, covering a range of products and technologies, as well as speaker bios. We've also included a short list of companies that will be participating in the Developer Sandbox. For the latest I/O updates, follow us (@googleio) on Twitter.
Today's registration opens with an early bird rate of $400, which applies through April 16 ($500 after April 16). Faculty and students can register at the discounted Academia rate of $100 (this discounted rate is limited and available on a first come, first serve basis).
Last year's I/O sold out before the start of the conference, so we encourage you to sign up in advance.
Google I/O
May 19-20, 2010
Moscone West, San Francisco
Unless otherwise noted, most of these statistics are based on our U.S. weekday traffic. We hope you enjoyed this week — and year — in search, and we're looking forward to an exciting 2010!