Google Offers a Map for Its Philanthropy
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Google will spend up to $175 million in its first round of grants and investments over the next three years, officials said.
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(InfoWorld) - Google is partnering with Discovery Networks, the U.S. National Park Service, and others to enrich its Google Earth mapping application with text and multimedia about geographic locations. With its Featured Content for Google Earth, announced Wednesday, Google will provide links to articles, images, blog postings, and videos that inform about topics like the environment, cities, attractions, parks, and landmarks. Other partners include the United Nations Environmental Program and the Jane Goodall Institute. This is the latest in aÂ string of enhancementsÂ for Google Earth, one of the company's most popular products. In recent months, GoogleÂ ported the applicationÂ to Linux and the Mac OS and integrated it with the company's SketchUp 3D design tool. Google Earth's user interface was also overhauled and itsÂ index of images significantly expanded. Google Earth, lauded by users and industry experts, is a free, downloadable application that taps into a massive database of satellite images. Its video game-like interface lets users "fly" around the globe, zooming in and out of cities. Google acquired the software in 2004 when itÂ bought Keyhole. The Google Earth product family also includes more advanced, fee-based versions of the application designed for commercial uses.
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Google is proposing that governments and technology companies create a transnational privacy policy.
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Google Inc.'s philanthropic arm is making more than $26 million in new grants and investments in organizations and companies devoted to causes that the Internet search leader believes will help make the world a better place.
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What's good for the search giant is good for America. Sort of.
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Google is famed for its Web search engine, but over the past few years it has acquired a different role: Microsoft&#39;s No. 1 foreign aid donor.
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Google Inc. launched an initiative yesterday to help non profit groups use maps and satellite images to raise awareness, recruit volunteers, and encourage donations.
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Google Inc.  will  introduce on Wednesday a new feature that lets users create  personalized maps which plot the locations of everything from  cheap gas locally to the latest earthquakes worldwide.
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Google on Monday added details of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) environmental projects to its popular global online mapping service.
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Google is adding the text of books to its searchable database, furthering its bold mission &quot;to organize the world&#39;s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
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Google has a problem -- a good one.
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DigitalGlobe, provider of imagery  for Google Inc's  interactive mapping program Google  Earth, said a new high-resolution satellite will boost the  accuracy of its satellite images and flesh out its archive.
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(InfoWorld) - Google on Monday turned on the solar panels covering nearly all the roof space on its corporate campus and announced that its philanthropic arm plans to dole out over $10 million in grants to support hybrid cars. The announcements follow one last week made from Google's offices in Mountain View, California that launched an industry-wide initiative around improving the energy efficiency of PCs and servers. The solar panels, which make up the largest solar installation on a corporate campus in the U.S., produce 1.6 megawatts of energy, enough to supply about one-third of Google's energy use on the campus, said Jacquelline Fuller, a Google spokeswoman. In addition to the solar panels, Google has also unveiled a new employee parking garage where drivers can charge their plug-in cars, powering up their batteries using solar energy. Plug-ins are hybrid cars that users can drive in all-electric mode for around 30 miles before relying on the gas engine. Because automobile manufacturers aren't producing plug-ins, Google is converting hybrid cars into plug-ins. So far, it has converted four Toyota Prius and two Ford Escapes, Fuller said. On its RechargeIT Web site, Google is posting data on the performance of the cars. Eventually, the company plans to have 100 such plug-in cars that employees who take public transportation to the office will be able to use to run errands during their work days as part of a car-sharing program. The announcements about the changes to the corporate campus were part of the launch of the RechargeIT Initiative by Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the company, on Monday. The plan includes several efforts mainly around plug-in cars, starting with grants already dispersed to a variety of groups. Google.org has given $200,000 each to the Brookings Institute in support of a conference next year about federal policy to promote plug-in vehicles and CalCars for the continuation of its educational initiatives about the cars. The Electrical Power Research Institute, Plug-In America, Rocky Mountain Institute, and a professor at the University of Delaware all have also received grants for their plug-in car projects. In addition, Google.org has earmarked $10 million for investments in companies and projects that support alternative transportation that reduces the use of fossil fuels and emissions. Later this summer the company plans to formally request proposals for the grant money. Last week, Google hinted at the impending launch of environmental initiatives when it hosted the introduction of theÂ Climate Savers Computing Initiative. That group, which includes a who's-who list of the technology industry such as Intel, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard, is setting a series of standards that will incrementally improve the efficiency of power cords used on PCs and servers through 2010.
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Google launches a portal to connect literacy organisations around the world.
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Unlike most charities, GoogleÂs new philanthropy will be for-profit, greatly increasing its range and flexibility.
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Google's philanthropic arm on Thursday said it is taking aim at global warming, poverty, and pandemics with millions in cash and the Internet giant's global resources.
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Google is investing time and energy into promoting an open-source character recognition platform, which likely will be used in Google's library scanning project.