Picture the women in your life—the women you admire. Your grandma. Your daughter. Toni Morrison. Maria Klawe. Temple Grandin. Malala. Somaly Mam. International Women’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate these phenomenal women and all the others around the world—to recognize their impact on society, and to focus on what still needs to be done to achieve gender equality. Today, Google is joining in and showcasing inspiring women of the past and present through a series of events, new content on the Cultural Institute and—of course—a doodle. Join us in celebrating women worldwide!

Celebrating technical women on stage at global Women Techmakers events
To help increase visibility, community and resources for technical women, we’re launching a series of 100+ Women Techmakers events in 52 countries to celebrate and support passionate techmakers around the world. Starting today and throughout March, the event series will feature panel discussions with talented female technology leaders, hands-on career planning workshops, networking opportunities and more. To learn more about the program and find an event near you, visit g.co/womentechmakers.

Shining a light on women in history and their collective impact
The Google Cultural Institute is launching Women in Culture, a new channel featuring exhibits that tell stories of women—some familiar and some lesser-known—and their impact on the world. Starting today, you can browse 18 new exhibits, from both new and existing Cultural Institute partners, including:

• Showcasing Great Women by The National Women’s Hall of Fame
• Makers by WETA (Makers.com: the largest video collection of women’s stories ever)
• Frida Kahlo: ¡Viva la vida! by Museo Dolores Olmedo
• Pioneering Musicians: Women Superstars of the Early Gramophone Era by Archive of Indian Music
• Pathways to Equality by the National Women’s History Museum
• The Struggle for Suffrage by English Heritage
• Profiles for Peace by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security
• This Mad, Wicked Folly: Victorian American Women by the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation
• World Changing Women by Vital Voices
• The painting Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II contributed by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Since history has so often been biased, leaving out or sidelining contributions from women, the channel is also integrated with the rest of the Cultural Institute collections, making it easier for people to discover even more amazing stories about women throughout history.

A homepage homage
Women have been underrepresented in the history-telling of almost all fields: science, school curricula, business, politics—and, sadly, doodles. In addition to our continued effort for doodle diversity and inclusion, today’s truly International Women’s Day doodle features a host of more than 100 inspiring women from around the world, including the President of Lithuania, a brave Pakistani education activist, the most recorded artist in music history, an ever-curious explorer and dozens more.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Posted by Kyle Ewing, People Operations
The Official Google Blog

What does a cable car in Niagara Falls have to do with the world’s
first chess-playing machine? Surprisingly, both were inventions of Spanish civil engineer Leonardo Torres-Quevedo.
Next week, as part of our ongoing effort to celebrate Europe’s computing
heritage, we’re commemorating Torres-Quevedo’s legacy and his
remarkable machine—“El
Ajedrecista” (in English, “The Chess Player”)—in partnership with
the Telecommunication Engineering department of the
Technical University of Madrid.

Photo thanks to Wikimedia Commons

Torres-Quevedo’s inventions span many fields. He was the second in
the world to demonstrate wireless remote control, beaten to the
post only by Nikola Tesla.
His designs for airships were used by both the French
and British during WWI. He was a global leader in cable car design,
creating the “Spanish aero car” over the Niagara Whirlpool
which, nearly a century on, remains a tourist attraction.
However, his most remarkable achievements were in the field of
automation, developing machines that are antecedents to what we now
call computers and robots.

Torres-Quevedo’s ambitions were bold. As Scientific American proclaimed in 1915: “He would substitute machinery
for the human mind.” In the 1890s, Torres-Quevedo built a series of mechanical devices that solved algebraic
equations. In 1920 he wowed a Paris audience with an
electromechanical arithmometer with a typewriter attachment. You
simply typed a formula—say, “24×48”—and the machine would calculate
and automatically type the answer “=1152” in reply.

But El Ajedrecista, an algorithmically powered machine that could
play an end-game of chess against a human opponent completely
automatically, is his most notable creation. Although it’s a far cry
from Deep Blue, El Ajedrecista can lay claim to being
the world’s first (analog) computer game.

.

Photos thanks to Museo Torres Quevedo

The machine didn’t just calculate its moves—it had mechanical arms
that physically moved its pieces, in the form of electrical jacks,
across a grid. In later models the arm mechanism was replaced by
magnets, and play took place on a more ordinary-looking chess board.
You couldn’t cheat the machine as it could spot illegal moves; and you
couldn’t win, as the game always started at a point (machine’s King
and Rook versus human’s King) from which the machine could never lose.

In honor of El Ajedrecista’s 100th birthday, we’re working with the Telecommunication
Engineering department of the Technical University of Madrid to
stage a conference commemorating Torres-Quevedo’s legacy. The
conference, taking place on November 7, will feature lectures and
panel discussions, as well as an exhibition of Torres-Quevedo’s
devices—including El Ajedrecista itself. Attendance is free—if you
want to join us, request an invitation.

Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager,
External Relations

The Official Google Blog

September 15 marked the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month and the start of our third year celebrating the Hispanic community through events and community outreach initiatives. Googlers from our Corporate Social Responsibility Team, Diversity & Inclusion Team, Engineering Industry Team, the Hispanic Googler Network (HGN), and our Community Partners worked together to host 20+ events focused on this year’s theme of Latinos in Technology.

We kicked things off at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) National Conference, where two members from our Google Accelerate team worked one-on-one with business owners during matchmaking sessions to consult on the best use of Google tools for their enterprises. Googler Eliana Murillo spoke on a panel titled “Beyond Social Media: The Potential of Technology & the Internet in a Global Economy,” where she shared how tools like Google Analytics, YouTube and Google for Nonprofits can be useful for businesses.

In early October, we ran a Hispanic Heritage Month 2012 Hangout on Air on the Life at Google page with the Latino Community Foundation (LCF). Raquel Donoso (CEO of LCF) and Googlers Hector Mujica (HGN member) and myself shared the history of the partnership and what our respective goals are. They also talked about the Family Health Day at Google & Olympic Games event, which we held at our Mountain View, Calif. headquarters that same week. Health is a pressing issue (PDF) in the Hispanic community; at this event, part of the Binational Health Week, we encouraged guests to have healthier lifestyles by teaching them some easy exercises, how to be active and eat healthy. More than 380+ community members and 50+ Googlers attended.

Last week we wrapped up a series of networking events in partnership with the Society of Hispanic Engineers (SHPE), where more than 400+ technical professionals came to our Seattle, Cambridge, Chicago, Los Angeles, Austin, New York, and Mountain View Offices to network and learn about how Google is supporting the local hispanic technical community.

Finally, today the Hispanic Googler Network is hosting the Bay Area Latino Employee Resource Group (ERG) Networking Reception in Mountain View. The Honorable Aida Alvarez, Chair of the Latino Community Foundation of the Bay Area, will speak to 300+ guests from local Hispanic ERGs in the Bay Area about what LCF is doing to build a better future for Latino children, youth and families in the Hispanic community.

Though the month officially comes to an end today, we’ll continue to support the Hispanic community as a lead sponsor in the LATISM ’12 conference, taking place in two weeks. LATISM ‘12 connects Latinos in social media, technology, education, business and health fields to increase their online footprint through the web and Google’s tools for small businesses and communities. We’re also participating in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Conference and will soon open up applications for our Hispanic College Fund Google scholarship.

We’ve had a great time celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, and are already looking forward to next year’s events. We invite you to view the recaps, photos and hangouts on our Life at Google page on Google+ and to visit our Diversity & Inclusion site where you can see more of what we do.

Posted by Sylvia Bonilla Zizumbo, Hispanic Googler Network Chair and Strategic Partnerships Lead 

The Official Google Blog

For most of us, there’s at least one teacher whose name we will never forget—that favorite teacher who made a difference in our education, whether they were our first grade art teacher or a professor in college. For me, that teacher was Ms. Taylor, my 8th grade science teacher. Ms. Taylor didn’t just foster my love of science—she understood that 8th grade can be a tough time for students as they try to navigate social cliques and prepare for the pressure of high school. Ms. Taylor knew that taking the time to ask us if we were feeling okay was just as important as teaching us about geological formations. She didn’t just care about teaching us—she genuinely cared about us as people.

This Friday is World Teachers’ Day, and we want to honor the teachers like Ms. Taylor who helped make us the people we are today. We’ve long supported education through technology, offering free tools like YouTube Edu and Google Apps for Education, and by developing cost-efficient devices like Chromebooks. But it’s the teachers who really make the difference by creatively incorporating that technology into their classrooms. As technology usage in schools increases, we hear even more amazing stories about how teachers and students are using our products to foster collaborative learning.

And that usage is growing quickly. As of today, more than 20 million students, faculty and staff worldwide use Google Apps for Education. In addition, in the last year we announced that:

• 400+ universities are posting lectures and/or full courses online using YouTube Edu
• 600,000 staff from the Philippines Department of Education will now be using Google Apps
• Universities across the continents are signing up for Apps, including schools in Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Africa
• More than 500 schools and districts went back to school with Chromebooks this fall
• Seven of the eight Ivy League universities and 72 of this year’s top 100 U.S. universities (as determined by 2013 U.S. News and World Report’s ranking) have gone Google with Google Apps for Education

As a tribute to the educators who are putting these tools to work, this week we’ll be highlighting a few amazing teachers on our Google in Education page on Google+. To kick off the series, we want to celebrate Ms. Kornowski—a science teacher at Kettle-Moraine High School in Wales, WI, who is using Google Forms to bring her students together.

To all the Ms. Taylors and Ms. Kornowskis out there—thank you, both for the positive impact you have on your students and for letting Google be a part of that experience.

Posted by Cristin Frodella, Google in Education

The Official Google Blog

Startups and entrepreneurs have the power to build technologies and creative solutions that transform the world and move us forward. Innovation is happening everywhere: There are approximately 400 million entrepreneurs across 54 countries, and 69 million early-stage entrepreneurs offering new products and services. As Google turns 14 this month, we’re celebrating this creative spirit and officially launching Google for Entrepreneurs, the umbrella for our several dozen programs and partnerships around the world that support startups and entrepreneurs.

Our focus is threefold:

1. Partnerships with strong organizations that serve entrepreneurs in local communities
2. Google-led programs to bring our teams and our tools directly to entrepreneurs
3. Placing relevant Google tools in the hands of startups as they are getting off the ground and ready to scale

We’re already on a roll, with current projects ranging from support for the annual journey of entrepreneurship through India by train, to partnering with a number of accelerator and incubator programs around the world, like iHub in Kenya and Le Camping in France. And, this week, we’re rolling out our newest partnership: teaming up with Women 2.0 to bring their Founder Friday events to more cities. These events bring together current and aspiring female entrepreneurs once a month to connect with mentors and one another to build community. We’re partnering to launch Founder Fridays in Detroit, New Orleans, Sao Paulo and Moscow over the next year.

To celebrate both our birthday and the spirit of entrepreneurship that’s helped get us where we are today, we are hosting our first annual Google for Entrepreneurs Week, which will bring together more than 3,000 entrepreneurs and Googlers around the world. We kicked off over the weekend with a Startup Weekend event hosted at the Google Ventures Startup Lab in Mountain View, Calif., where Bay Area entrepreneurs came together to create their own startups in 54 hours. Over the course of the next week, Googlers in 28 cities across 13 countries will be hosting an event in their communities to bring their passion and expertise to local entrepreneurs. We’re teaming with a number of partners to make this happen, including the Idea Village in New Orleans, Communitech in Waterloo, Tetuan Valley in Wroclaw, the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in Johannesburg and the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce in Iowa.

For more on these existing programs and to stay connected on upcoming events, visit google.com/entrepreneurs and follow us on G+.

Posted by Mary Grove, Head of Global Entrepreneurship Outreach

The Official Google Blog

We encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. And this month Googlers, Gayglers (gay Googlers), and their families and friends took this spirit to the streets in Pride parades and celebrations around the globe. In Sao Paulo, a group of 50 marched as a Google contingent for the first time ever. In San Francisco, more than 1,000 Googlers and allies marched (nearly doubling the number of people we had in 2011!). In New York, more than 700 of our friends and colleagues took over 5th Avenue marching alongside our double-decker Pride bus. And this weekend in Singapore, we’re sponsoring the Pink Dot celebration for the second consecutive year.

It’s not just through Pride that we show our support for the LGBT community. At Mardi Gras in Sydney, we hosted two Queer Thinking seminars on Activism in the Internet Age and Queer Careers. We also have big plans for the World Pride celebration in London this year, launching a “Legalise Love” Conference at Google London, partnering with organizations to identify ways to decriminalize homosexuality and eliminate homophobia around the world.

In addition to supporting the LGBT community outside of Google, we made some changes to our benefits offerings to support our Gayglers. Earlier this year, we enhanced our transgender-inclusive benefits to cover transitioning procedures and treatment in accordance with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Standards of Care, which includes coverage for procedures like facial feminization for transgender women and pectoral implants for transgender men. We also increased our lifetime maximum coverage for these benefits to $ 75K—more than double what it had been previously.

Next month we’ll carry the energy of Pride into our fourth annual company Diversity & Inclusion celebration, the Sum of Google. The Sum is an opportunity to celebrate and engage in a discussion about diversity and inclusion across our offices around the world.

Take a look at the photos below for a peek at this year’s Pride celebrations.

Posted by Randy Reyes, Gaygler and Global Diversity & Inclusion Team Member

The Official Google Blog

One of the best parts of my job working on the Google Education team has been hearing inspiring stories time and again of great teachers who build strong relationships with and bring out the best in their students. We recognize that there are many factors that can impact a student’s ability to learn, and that technology can be a valuable assistant in overcoming educational barriers, but that it’s really teachers, not technology, who help students realize their full potential. In honor of National Teacher Day today in the U.S., we wanted to showcase a few amazing stories of dedicated teachers who have shown us how they used technology to make learning magical for their students.

At Eastfield Global Magnet School in North Carolina, seventh-grade teacher Elaine Waters was looking for a way to help a student of hers named Malachi, who struggled when it came to putting pen to paper. Elaine decided to have Malachi try using a Chromebook to write—watch what happened below:

Across the country at Xavier College Prep in Arizona, beloved history teacher Gina Nunez had to take a medical leave of absence. With her students panicking over their final exam, Gina found a way to help them study from afar:

We’ll be posting more of these stories on our Google in Education +page and encourage you to share your stories in the comments. We’re always eager to hear about excellent educators who have used technology in ways small and large to make a difference in the lives of students. If you’re interested in learning about more ways to integrate technology in school, you can watch recordings from our first Education On Air conference, a free education technology conference held entirely online from our Google in Education page last week. Watch the sessions on our YouTube channel.

Thanks to all the creative teachers out there who find a way to spark each student’s passion—we hope to hear more stories from you soon.

Posted by Cristin Frodella, Group Marketing Manager, Google Education

The Official Google Blog

These days, moms use technology in a ton of creative and resourceful ways to keep their families running smoothly. As a working mom myself, I use Google Calendar to keep track of our three busy kids and all their different activities, sports and schools. Technology also keeps us connected—I’m always amazed at how a Google+ Hangout between my kids in California and their grandparents in France can make the distance between them feel so small.

In celebration of Mother’s Day this weekend, we thought we’d applaud the many tech-savvy super-moms out there by sharing a few of their stories.

Heather Fay, using Google+ to make her dream a reality
Heather, from New Haven, Conn., is a stay-at-home mom of two who has always had a passion for music and performing. Until recently, her music career took a backseat to her responsibilities at home, but when she signed up for Google+ in 2011, she realized she could find an audience using Hangouts—without stepping foot outside of her home. Now Heather can sing and play her guitar for people, no matter where they live in the world. Between changing diapers and cleaning up spilled cereal, she’s on Google+ engaging with more than 13,000 fans, collaborating with other musicians on an epic live concert and sharing the occasional mommy woes. You can find out more about her music on Google Play, where you can also hear a tribute to her daughter called “Ruby’s Song.”

Sarah Stocker, bringing robots to life with Chrome
Sarah, from San Francisco, is the co-founder of My Robot Nation, a Chrome web app that lets you create a unique robot online, then have it printed in full-color 3D and mailed to your door. When developing My Robot Nation, Sarah employed some of the most advanced web technologies, such as WebGL, to bring the 3D experience to the browser; however, making the app easy for people to use was paramount. Enter Sarah’s 10-year-old son Max. He designed the first robot and was My Robot Nation’s first “customer.” The fact that Max could create something online and then hold it in his hands made Sarah feel like the coolest mom ever—and he’s already told her that he wants to be an inventor, just like her.

Carol Galland Wildey and Danielle Yates, founders of Headcovers Unlimited
Almost 25 years ago, at the age of 40, Carol was diagnosed with breast cancer. After losing her hair due to chemotherapy treatments, she and her daughter Danielle realized how few options there were to help cancer patients look and feel like themselves throughout their treatment. In 1994, she and Danielle started Headcovers Unlimited, selling hats, wigs and scarves for patients with hair loss. Danielle helped take the business online in 1995, launching www.headcovers.com. Based in League City, Tex., the Internet helps them reach women in more than 60 countries; and more than half their customers have come through online advertising with AdWords.

Betty Givan, preserving family recipes with YouTube
For years, Betty has been cataloguing and saving family recipes to pass along to her own daughter. At first, she used a scrapbook of recipe cards, but one day, while making nachos for a football game, she decided to make a video of the process and asked her daughter to film it. Soon, she was filming and posting her favorites on a YouTube channel and today, it’s become her full-time business from her Richmond, Ky. home. With more than 1,100 videos of her southern cooking recipes and 16 million video views, Betty has become a mom to people all around the world.

Karen Castelletti, Googler reunited with her birth mother using Google Search
Not only can search help you find what you’re looking for, it can also help you reconnect with the people you care about. Karen grew up knowing she was adopted, and always thought it would be too difficult to find and connect with her birth parents. Then, when she was 22, she received a message from her birth mom, Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen found Karen’s name through public birth records, and used Google Search to find one of Karen’s social networking profiles. They reconnected in time for Mary Ellen to watch Karen graduate from college alongside her adoptive parents, and today they speak regularly.

I hope the stories of these super-moms have inspired you to use technology in ways that keep you connected, organized and creative, so you can spend more time doing the things that matter—having fun with your kids!

Posted by Francoise Brougher, Vice President of SMB Sales and Operations and proud mom of three young boys

The Official Google Blog

Back in November we announced the Google Photography Prize 2012, a competition offering student photographers a chance to share their best photographs with the world.

Groundbreaking photographer Ansel Adams once said, “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs,” so we left the themes for submission suitably broad, with 10 categories that combined classic photography genres with online photography trends including “Night,” “Travel,” “Sound/Silence” and “Me.”

We were thrilled by the interest in the contest: nearly 20,000 students from 146 countries took part, of which 100 were shortlisted. You can see these in the gallery on our website.

Our judging panel of seven leading photography experts chose the 10 finalists whose work will be shown in our exhibition in the Saatchi Gallery. Today we’re announcing the finalists: Collin Avery (U.S.), Viktor Johansson (Sweden), Kyrre Lien (Norway), Alexandra Claudia Manta (Romania), Balázs Maté (Hungary), Adi Sason (Israel), Oliver Seary (UK), Dana Stirling (Israel), Sasha Tamarin (Israel), Zhao Yi (China). Here are examples of the finalists’ work—you can see their full albums on their Google+ profiles.

If you’re in London, come to the Saatchi Gallery to see the work of our finalists displayed alongside a new exhibition of international photography, Out of Focus, starting April 25. The overall winner of the Google Photography Prize will be announced on April 24, and will go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to a location of their choice with a professional photographer as their mentor.

We hope you enjoy these fantastic photos as much as we did.

Posted by Obi Felten, Director of Consumer Marketing EMEA

The Official Google Blog

Last summer, we announced a joint scholarship program for aspiring journalists with the Associated Press, administered by the Online News Association. Congratulations to the six students who will each be receiving $ 20,000 to pursue degrees that lie at the intersection of journalism, computer science and new media:

• Emily Eggleston, 24, graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, studying journalism and geography.
• Reginald James, 30, undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, studying political science and African American studies.
• Katie Zhu, 20, undergraduate at Northwestern University, studying computer science and journalism.
• Rebecca Rolfe, 25, graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, studying digital media.
• Kevin Schaul, 20, undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota, studying journalism and computer science.
• John Osborn, 29, graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, studying journalism.

These students have big plans that range from producing hyperlocal data-driven stories, to developing open-source apps that allow for democratic news gathering and greater collaboration, to data visualization for current events and entertainment, to producing political news games and teaching journalists how to code.

We hope these scholarship winners, and their future projects, inspire the broader journalism community to keep rethinking how to report and share stories through new technologies.

For all undergraduate and graduate students already brainstorming ideas for next year, read more about the application process and eligibility on the scholarship program’s website. Thank you to the Associated Press and the Online News Association for making this scholarship program possible, and we look forward to seeing the impact these students have in their communities and in journalism.

Posted by Sean Carlson, Global Communications & Public Affairs

The Official Google Blog