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Jan. 21, 2008

Last Thursday, Google.org rolled out five core initiatives that will be the focus of its philanthropic efforts up until 2018. Google will collaborate with experienced partners working in many fields, investing its resources and tapping the strengths of Google's employees.

The announcement includes more than $25 million in new grants and investments to initial partners.

The resources come from a commitment by Google's founders to devote approximately 1 percent of the company's equity plus 1 percent of annual profits to philanthropy, as well as employee time.

Overall, Google.org joins a community of like minded groups working to make the planet and population healthier and more equitable.

Google.org supports efforts to empower communities to predict and prevent events before they become local, regional, or global crises, by identifying "hot spots" and enabling a rapid response.

Rapid ecological and social changes are increasing the risk of emerging threats, from infectious diseases to drought and other environmental disasters. Google.org is initially focused on Southeast Asia and tropical Africa.

In Southeast Asia, a hot spot for SARS and potentially bird flu, Google.org is working with partners to strengthen early warning systems and build local capacities to prevent the next pandemic. Initial grants include:

$5 million to InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters) to improve early detection, preparedness, and response capabilities for global health threats and humanitarian crises. InSTEDD will work with the community of relief and response organizations, governments, academia and top scientists around the world to address gaps in information flow with software and other technology-based tools and services.

Acting as an innovation laboratory, InSTEDD aims to support the humanitarian community in preparing for and responding to global public health emergencies, working together towards a safer world.

$2.5 million to the Global Health and Security Initiative (GHSI), established by the Nuclear Threat Initiative to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats. Google.org's support will help GHSI to strengthen national and sub-regional disease surveillance systems through workforce training and better laboratory capacity in the Mekong Basin area (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Yunnan province, China).

More than $600,000 to Clark University, with equal funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, for Clark Labs to develop a system to improve monitoring, analysis and prediction of the impacts of climate variability and change on ecosystems, food and health in Africa and the Amazon.

This system is a prototype platform to deploy global environmental, health, and development data, information and analysis tools that the global community can freely access over the Internet.

"In their first Letter from the Founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin said that we wanted to 'make Google an institution that makes the world a better place.'

The work of Google.org will help us do that by applying Google's strengths in organizing information and scaling technology to these complex issues," said Sheryl Sandberg, VP Global Online Sales & Operations, and Google.org Board member.

Added Dr. Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org, "These five initiatives are our attempt to address some of the hard problems we as a world need to face in the coming decade.

We have chosen them both because we think solving them will make a better, fairer, safer world for our children and grandchildren.

We also believe it will do the same for the children and grandchildren of people all over the world – but also because we feel that these core initiatives fit well with Google's core strengths, especially its innovative technologies and its talented engineers and other Googlers, who are really our most valuable assets."

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Source: Tech Crunch