Google.org Targets Climate Change, Poverty and Emerging Threats
Duncan Riley
25 comments »
Google.org has announced five core initiatives that will be the focus of its philanthropic efforts over the next five to ten years. The philanthropic arm of Google announced $25 million in new grants and investments to initial partners as the part of the core initiative roll out.
Google.org’s five initiatives and partners include:
Predict and Prevent: supporting “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.” Grants as follows:
- $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.
- $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.
- $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.
Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services: working with partners to improve the flow of vital information to improve basic services for the poor in India and East Africa. Grants:
- $2 million to Pratham, a non-governmental organization in India, to create an independent institute that will conduct the Nationwide Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) as well as large scale assessments in the education sector.
- $765,000 to the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, a Bangalore-based analysis group, to create a Budget Information Service for local governments to facilitate better district- and municipal-level level planning in India.
- $660,000 to the Center for Policy Research, an action oriented think tank based in India, to increase the debate and discourse on issues of urban local governance and urban service delivery.
- With the rapid expansion of cities in India, our goal is to provide policy makers the necessary information to make more informed decisions. For more information, see http://www.cprindia.org/.
Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: supporting efforts to lower transaction costs to invest in SMEs in the developing world, create opportunities to access larger financial markets and make investments in this sector.
- $4.7 million grant to TechnoServe to provide general support to expand Technoserve’s efforts to support enterprises, spur job creation, and strengthen poverty alleviation programs globally, and to develop and implement a business plan competition to support entrepreneurs in Ghana and Tanzania.
Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal, a cross-Google collaboration with a goal of producing one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal, within years not decades.
- $10 million to eSolar, a Pasadena, CA-based company specializing in solar thermal power which replaces the fuel in a traditional power plant with heat produced from solar energy.
Accelerate the Commercialization of Plug-In Vehicles (RechargeIT), a Google.org initiative that aims to reduce CO2 emissions, cut oil use and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology. $10 million in amounts ranging from $500,000 to $2 million in selected for-profit companies “whose innovative approach, team and technologies will enable widespread commercialization of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, electric vehicles and/or vehicle-to-grid solutions.”
See our previous coverage of Google.org announcements here and here.
I can’t believe this
http://www.spymac.com/details/?2324191
So maximum money goes to India…..is google.org controlled by Indians…..
How about some nice words for the Gates foundation, whose annual contributions make this look like peanuts.
Or does that go against the TC bash microsoft policy?
Wow..this is so crazy. Google who buys companies like Youtube for billions and even small companies for at least $100 million is only putting $25 million (over ten years) to make the earth a better place. I am sorry, with the amount of noise they make on eco-friendly i expected more, especially from Google. I am pretty sure their monthly catering cost more than that.
Google is earning in Billions and giving only $25 million away……Google itself is evil.
Ghaus
that part is focused on overcoming poverty, there just happens to be a lot of it in India
Damon
there’s no bash Microsoft policy and if you check the archives there’s plenty of positive Microsoft stories in the past. Google is a pure internet play so we cover their major announcements, that’s all. The Gates Foundation does some amazing work, but maybe they’re just off the radar a bit at the moment, if I see anything come up new we’ll take a look and consider running it
@ Duncan
Alot of poverty in India….huh….u might be kidding….what about Vietnam,China,Pakistan,Brazil, and specially whole of Africa ?
Chris
this is just the first round of funding as part of their strategy, I’d expect to see a lot more money flowing in the future
@ Duncan
Are u a Google fanboy ?
This is a great start. The more they donate the more they can write off. I am not sure how the stock holders feel about charity though…
@Ghaus
of course Duncan is a Google fanboy, he even says so in one of his previous posts, and most Google stories on TC are written by him, even many of them are not news-worthy.
Good move for Google to save the earth, but I wish they will give more money, if it was 250M, i will probably say it deserves the news, but 25M? they practically have a cash machine to print money, only 25M? a single generous person can easily top that, but would Duncan write a story if it is not Google? certainly not.
Yep .
COME ON GUYS HOW ABOUT SOME DECENT COVERAGE AND PRAISE FOR THE GATES FOUNDATION !!!!.
seriously Gates and his companions donate sack fulls of cash each year.
This amount google has given out is nothing. There are multi millionaire who donate more than google have. Heck and google are supposed to be billionnaires . Whats that saying about google ??
Skint flint anyone ?? . Google are the new scrooge mcduck.
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http://www.xencasino.com
It may be a small step but a step in the right direction. Thanks Duncan for covering it. May be more companies will start donating to get covered by TechCrunch :). Jokes apart 25M makes a lot of difference to the really poor. Just remember that most of these people live for less than 1$ a day.
@Duncan. Your comment about poverty in India comes out a little disparaging. Hope I am getting it wrong and u did not mean it that way.
#7 .
Not the whole of africa is living in poverty. African’s may not have all the crap the west has such as cars , and other crap they can’t afford but some part of africa are actually living in homes , eating and have jobs.
Can’t really say that about some parts of US society now can we ? check out CNN and see how the living beyond your means has effected americans.
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they only did this as a tax break, duncan is a google fanboy
“Human-caused Global warming” is an absolute HOAX.
Not only are we in the midst of a declining ice age (which peaked just 12,500 years ago), but just the very stipulation that carbon dioxide is “pollution” to begin with, as declared by many political organizations like Google and the UN, is absolutely ridiculous. Carbon dioxide, like water, is an essential ingredient for life. An “excess” of CO2 (and what year does one declare to behold the baseline concentration beyond which any additional quantity is “excess”? LOL, see chart below) should no more be considered “pollution” that an “excess” of raindrops on a showery day!
Ashamedly, when brainwashed idiots like these PR weenies at Google cry wolf and declare a harmless, life-giving compound like CO2 to be “pollution”, they do no more than draw attention away from REAL ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTANTS such as sulfur dioxide, nasty free radicals, and industrial particulate — crap that ACTUALLY DOES make people sick. Google gobbles up their free advertising, but their gluttony comes at a terrible cost to all of us — all this free PR plunders PRECIOUS media focus away from the real threats to biodiversity — 1) habitat destruction & fragmentation, 2) poaching, and 3) pollution. This is a tragic irony that brings tears to my eyes.
And quite frankly, I think people are already tired of these phony, “Look what our company is doing to fight global warming!” press conferences anyway. Google’s masquerade accomplishes nothing — just another string of meaningless fluff and buzzwords conjured from the same old handbook. Furthermore, once again these PR airheads have neglected the most crucial detail of all — THE OFFICIAL PUBLIC DECLARATION OF GOOGLE’s DESIRED CO2 CONCENTRATION! Yes, that’s right — I personally demand that every political globalwarmingist preface every one of their anti-CO2 press conferences, editorials, blogs… drunken diatribes — WHATEVER — by declaring upfront what year on this graph (which I am able to pull instantly from my wallet) they desire to be THE everlasting, eternal concentration of CO2 on Earth:
http://tinyurl.com/39gnm4
Yes, that’s right, I demand they do it right up front — BEFORE they launch into their hysteria. Since every globalwarmingist is essentially demanding that the Earth’s climate hold steady in its present conditions (a ridiculous request which even if were actually somehow magically feasible would STILL be laughably arbitrary and egocentric), I henceforth demand we be provided with this information by any globalwarmingist who wishes to offer an opinion on the subject of long-term climate cycles and ice ages, especially those (like certain U.S. Representatives) who desire to PUNISH US (with taxes and regulations) for what are essentially the Earth’s natural long-term climate cycles –– deep ice ages followed by periods of undulating warmth that have existed peacefully on this beautiful planet for all of eternity.
U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007. http://tinyurl.com/2dv6nz
@Andy - are you trying to foist virii on unsuspecting TC readers?
@bs - yes shame on google for trying to make the world a better place
@randy - your post just added 1lb of hot CO2 air into the atmosphere
$25 million. What an underwhelming announcement for a company worth $188 Billion.
“Don’t be evil?” How about “Don’t do much good.”
Relax everyone….it’s their first (of many) rounds of funding, and they’re testing a new philanthropy model. There will be more donated…much more.
Good efforts towards social cause.
it is good that company is understanding its responsibility towards society
Corporate philanthropy is being charitable with OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY (that of your shareholders). In other words, it’s not philanthropy at all. Charity begins at home. $25m is justifiable as a PR exercise, but most of the posters in this thread need to stop hectoring Google for not being distracted from its main task enough (to serve its customers and give shareholders a return on *their* money).
I’d expect to read a thread full of comments about how making money is evil on a political website based in Cuba or North Korea, not on an American website focused on the business of emerging web technology. Perhaps if anyone in the Web 2.0 sphere actually made any real money from their startups, they’d be more sympathetic
Thank you #23. Google’s “responsibility towards society” (#22’s vapid statement) is zero.
Google is large because we have deemed their services valuable and voluntarily consumed them. We are provided a service by companies because we have a (generally) free market, and as always, both parties profit, because both parties deem the exchange profitable.
This is the whole of their responsibility as a coorporation… To those many, many individuals who have a few shares of Google. It’s those individuals who have a conscience (not a company) and therefore act charitably from the profits they earn… privately and voluntarily.
Now, in this case, the company has deemd the positive PR they will receive as beneficial to their shareholders. So, they are in effect, upholding their only responsibility.
The Gates foundation on the other hand, is not answerable to shareholders. It is in essence, the private donation of an individual.