The company this week expanded its philanthropic efforts by tipping more than US$29 million (A$33 million) in a series of core projects targeted at global problems like climate change, poverty, and energy renewables.
Through its philanthropic arm Google.org, the company announced five initiatives that use ICT to improve lives.
The resources come from a commitment by Google's founders to devote approximately 1 per cent of the company's equity plus 1 per cent of annual profits to philanthropy, as well as employee time. The result is that Google.org currently has assets valued at about US$2 billion.
The first initiative involves technology to help predict and prevent crises. This includes community-level software that helps leaders understand coming problems, like food or energy shortages.
The second program involves ICT as a foundation for improvement of public services – from education to utilities. The third project involves efforts to lower transaction costs for SMEs, something that will give small companies better access to larger financial markets.
The final programs involve the cross-Google initiative that has set a goal to develop one gigawatt of renewable energy that is cheaper than coal within years, not decades. The last is funding for a plug-in vehicle initiative.
“These five initiatives are our attempt to address some of the hard problems we as a world need to face in the coming decade,” said Google.org executive director Larry Brilliant.
“We have chosen them both because we think solving them will make a better, fairer, safer world for our children and grandchildren – and 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,” Dr Brilliant said.
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