When we consider investing in a renewable energy project, we focus on two key factors. First, we only pursue investments that we believe make financial sense. South Africa’s strong resources and supportive policies for renewable energy make it an attractive place to invest—which is why it had the highest growth in clean energy investment in the world last year. Second, we look for projects that have transformative potential—that is, projects that will bolster the growth of the renewable energy industry and move the world closer to a clean energy future. The Jasper Power Project is one of those transformative opportunities. To explain why, perhaps some background would be helpful.
Back in 2008, South Africa experienced a severe energy shortage, which resulted in blackouts throughout the country and slowed down economic growth. Since then the South African government has been actively supporting the growth of new sources of electricity to power the nation. While today South Africa is primarily dependent on fossil fuels, there’s lots of potential for renewable energy—it’s a country blessed with abundant wind and solar resources—and the government has set an ambitious goal of generating 18 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy by 2030 (as a comparison, the entire South African grid is currently 44 GW).
To meet this goal, the South African government has established the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Program (REIPPPP). Through the program, renewable energy projects compete on the basis of cost and contribution to the local economy to be awarded a contract with Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned energy utility. Jasper and the other projects being developed through the REIPPPP have the potential to transform the South African energy grid. And given South Africa’s position as an economic powerhouse in Africa, a greener grid in South Africa can set an example for the whole continent.
Once constructed, the project will use solar panels like these.
Just as compelling are the economic and social benefits that the project will bring to the local community. Jasper will create approximately 300 construction and 50 permanent jobs in a region experiencing high rates of unemployment, as well as providing rural development and education programs and setting aside a portion of total project revenues—amounting to approximately $26 million over the life of the project—for enterprise and socio-economic development. We appreciate how forward-thinking the South African government has been in designing the REIPPPP to encourage these kinds of local economic benefits.
Google has committed more than $1 billion to renewable energy investments and we continue to search for new opportunities. Our search has brought us from the U.S. to Europe and now to Africa. We’re excited to see where else it might lead.
Posted by Rick Needham, Director, Energy & Sustainability
Daniel Orellana of Charles Darwin Foundation crossing a field of ferns to reach Minas de Azufre (naturally-occurring sulfur mines) on the top of Sierra Negra, an active volcano on Isabela Island. The Google Maps team traveled for more than three hours, hiking and on horseback, to reach this remote location.
Images, like the one you see above, are also an important visual record that the CDF and GNPD will use to study and protect the islands by showing the world how these delicate environments have changed over time.
Daniel Orellana of the Charles Darwin Foundation climbs out of a lava tunnel where he was collecting imagery. The dramatic lava landscapes found on Isabela island tell the story of the formation of the Galapagos Islands.
Our 10-day adventure in the Galapagos was full of hiking, boating and diving around the islands (in hot and humid conditions) to capture 360-degree images of the unique wildlife and geological features of the islands with the Trekker. We captured imagery from 10 locations that were hand-selected by CDF and GNPD. We walked past giant tortoises and blue-footed boobies, navigated through steep trails and lava fields, and picked our way down the crater of an active volcano called Sierra Negra.
A Galapagos giant tortoise crawls along the path near Googler Karin Tuxen-Bettman while she collects imagery with the Street View Trekker in Galapaguera, a tortoise breeding center, which is managed by the Galapagos National Park Service.
Life underwater in the Galapagos is just as diverse as life on land. We knew our map of the islands wouldn’t be comprehensive without exploring the ocean that surrounds them. So for the second time we teamed up with the folks at the Catlin Seaview Survey to collect underwater panoramic imagery of areas being studied by CDF and GNPD. This imagery will be used by Catlin Seaview Survey to create a visual and scientific baseline record of the marine environment surrounding the islands, allowing for any future changes to be measured and evaluated by scientists around the world.
Christophe Bailhache navigates the SVII camera through a large group of Sea Lions at Champion Island in Galapagos. Image courtesy of the Catlin Seaview Survey.
We truly believe that in order to protect these Galapagos Islands, we must understand them. As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” We hope this Street View imagery not only advances the important scientific research, but also inspires you to learn more about this special place. Stay tuned for updates on this collection—the first time we’ve captured imagery from both land and sea! We can’t wait to share this amazing imagery with you later this year.
Posted by Raleigh Seamster, Project Lead, Google Maps
In addition to the National Winner, voters across the country helped us determine the four National Finalists, who will each receive a $5,000 college scholarship:
Grades K-3: Reagan Gonsalves (Grade 1, Santan Elementary School, Chandler, Ariz.) for her doodle “My best day ever is learning about nature.” Reagan says, “My best day ever is to be around the pretty animals and plants in nature, because I love to know about what is around me. I love to watch hummingbirds drink nectar out of flowers. I love to read books on nature and how plants and animals grow.”
Grades 4-5: Audrey Zhang (Grade 4, Michael F. Stokes Elementary School, Levittown, N.Y.) for her doodle “...When I discover paradise!” Zhang says, “My best day ever will be when I discover paradise. In paradise, I could play with dragons, romp with leopards, and chat with fairies...It would be the best day ever when I could finally live in a mystical, dreamy realm.”
Grades 6-7: Maria Iannone (Grade 7, Chestnut Ridge Middle School, Sewell, N.J.) for her doodle “The best day ever.” Maria says, “Where I live, it's difficult to view the night sky very well. Having an interest in astronomy, a day where I can observe the things I study on my own time would satisfy me.”
Grades 8-9: Joseph Han (Grade 8, Falmouth Middle School, Falmouth, Maine) for his doodle “Late-afternoon bliss.” Joey says, “For me, ‘the best day ever’ doesn't consist of ambitious dreams, but rather the enjoyment of a day spent in carefree euphoria. Being in the woods is something that evokes such happiness in me. The lighthearted joy of rafting, fishing or catching fireflies is what I've attempted to capture.”
After the awards ceremony, all 50 of our State Winners will unveil a special exhibition of their artwork at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where their doodles will be displayed for the public to view from May 22 - July 14.
Thanks to all who voted and helped us select the 2013 Doodle 4 Google winners. Even more importantly, thank you to all of the students who submitted their artwork and the parents and teachers who continue to inspire and support their young artists. Until next year... happy doodling!
Top Charts includes more than 40 top 10 lists and more than 140 time periods. Hover on a chart for links to embed the chart in your own page or share on social media.
Top Charts is built on the Knowledge Graph, so the data shows interest in real-world things, not just keywords. When you look at a chart of sports teams and you see the Golden State Warriors, those rankings are based on many different related searches, like [gs warriors], [golden state bball] and [warriors basketball]. That way you see which topics are most popular on Google Search, however people search for them. Top Charts provide our most accurate search volume rankings, but no algorithm is perfect, so on rare occasion you may find anomalies in the data. You can learn more about Top Charts in our Help Center.
Hot Searches, now in hot colors
In addition to Top Charts, now there's a vibrant new way to visualize trending searches as they happen. On the Trends homepage in the left-hand panel, you'll find a new link to "Visualize Hot Searches in full-screen." You’ll see the latest trending topics appear in a colorful display:
You can customize the layout by clicking the icon in the upper-left corner and expanding it to see as many as 25 searches at a time. You can also pick any region currently supported by Hot Searches. Use fullscreen mode in your browser for the biggest, purest eye candy.
...and a few design updates
We’re also continuing to spruce up our site. Among other things, now the homepage shows you more interesting stuff up front, and the search box is always available at the top:
The new Trends homepage shows a list of today's Hot Searches. Enter search terms at the top to see search interest over time and by geography.
We hope you enjoy bringing new stories to life with Google Trends. We love feedback, so please feel free to let us know what you think by posting online or by clicking "Send Feedback" at the bottom of any page in Google Trends.
In total, we have more than 1,500 new high-resolution artworks including masterpieces such as Monet’s “Waterlilies,” Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man in a Broad-Brimmed Hat” and Johannes Vermeer’s “The Geographer” (meaning Art Project now houses 15 of his 34 total works, all contributed by different museums). However, the diversity goes well beyond paintings; from ancestral relics used to worship the dead to an ancient Jinsha gold mask from China thought to have been worn by sorcerers. Often the old contrasts with the new, with inscribed Arabic gemstones existing alongside contemporary glass structures from Germany as you can see in this “Compare” image below.
Zoom in to “gigapixel” paintings
Gigapixel paintings—very high-resolution works which enable you to zoom in at brushstroke level—have long been at the heart of the Art Project. They’re a great example of the magic that can happen when technology meets art—and today we have 16 new ones to add, ranging from famous pieces like “The Scream” by Edvard Munch to those chosen by public vote such as “Whitewashing the Old House” by L.A. Ring.
The beauty of gigapixels is their ability to surprise. Look at the painting “Fra Stalheim” by Johan Christian Dahl, shown in full on the left below. You’ll see a beautiful landscape. Zoom in, however, and you discover scenes within a scene—a village with smoking chimneys, a woman tending to her child, and cows grazing on the hillside. Details that can’t always be fully appreciated by the naked eye are brought to life online.
Immerse yourself in Street View
Through Street View and the Google Art Project, many museums have opened their galleries to the world the past few years, and today we’re launching 20 more. For example, Fondation Beyeler Museum in Switzerland houses a collection of seven Mark Rothko paintings. Now anyone in the world can virtually explore the collection.
Of course art collections are not exclusively found in museums—we’re delighted to have our first monastery on Street View in the Art Project. The Monastery of St. John the Theologian on the Greek island of Patmos was founded in 1088 and is a World Heritage Site. In addition to their 116 contributed artworks, you can also explore the architectural splendors of this ancient building.
Jump inside a whole range of beautiful buildings and corridors here by clicking on the orange pegman where it appears.
In a week that celebrates International Museum Day, we’re glad to be able to showcase some of the great treasures held by museums and cultural institutions the world over. There are so many benefits to bringing more content online, be it discovering a new style of art or artist, creating your own gallery, stumbling across a hidden detail of a painting you thought you knew or simply being inspired by something beautiful. With more than 40,000 total works and 250+ cultural organisations around the globe, we hope the experience will be more enriching than ever.
The images were collected as part of an ongoing joint mission between the USGS and NASA called Landsat. Their satellites have been observing earth from space since the 1970s—with all of the images sent back to Earth and archived on USGS tape drives that look something like this example (courtesy of the USGS).
We started working with the USGS in 2009 to make this historic archive of earth imagery available online. Using Google Earth Engine technology, we sifted through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 terabytes of data—to find the highest-quality pixels (e.g., those without clouds), for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth. We then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year.
As the final step, we worked with the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, recipients of a Google Focused Research Award, to convert these annual Earth images into a seamless, browsable HTML5 animation. Check it out on Google’s Timelapse website.
Much like the iconic image of Earth from the Apollo 17 mission—which had a profound effect on many of us—this time-lapse map is not only fascinating to explore, but we also hope it can inform the global community’s thinking about how we live on our planet and the policies that will guide us in the future. A special thanks to all our partners who helped us to make this happen.
Posted by Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager, Google Earth Engine & Earth Outreach
Starting on May 15 at 9 a.m. PT (16:00 UTC), join us as Google Developers Live (GDL) powers multiple channels of live streamed content from Google I/O on developers.google.com/io. On this page, you can:
Stream the keynote on your computer, tablet or phone. Get in on the action, and listen to product and technology announcements straight from our teams. Live streaming will run on developers.google.com/io from 9 a.m. PT (16:00 UTC) to 7 p.m. PT (2:00 UTC) on May 15 and 16.
Watch exclusive interviews with the Googlers behind the latest product announcements. This year, GDL will broadcast one-on-one product deep dives, executive interviews and Developer Sandbox walkthroughs from our onsite stage.
Get the latest news in real time. We’ll post official announcements during I/O. You’ll be able to see the feed on the Google I/O homepage, in the I/O mobile app (coming soon), and on +Google Developers.
Never miss a session. The keynote and all sessions will be recorded and made rapidly available on GDL and the Google Developers YouTube channel.
Whether you’re joining us from the comfort of home for Google Developers Live at I/O or at an I/O Extended event, tune into developers.google.com/io at 9 a.m. PT (16:00 UTC) on May 15 for the latest from Google product teams. Add +Google Developers to your circles and follow #io13 to stay updated on official conference announcements and connect with the community.
Posted by Mike Winton, Director of Developer Relations
You can access Translate via the web at https://translate.google.com, on your Android or iOS device, or via Chrome and in Gmail. We're excited to reach the 70+ language milestone, and we look forward to continuing to add more languages.
Bosnian: Google Prevodilac sada podržava više od 70 jezika! Cebuano: Google sa Translate misuporta na karon sa kapin sa 70 ka mga! Hmong: Google Translate nim no txhawb nqa tshaj li 70 hom lus! Javanese: Google Translate saiki ndhukung luwih saka 70 basa! Marathi: Google भाषांतर आता 70 पेक्षा जास्त भाषांचे समर्थन करते!
Posted by Sveta Kelman, Program Manager, Google Translate
Entry from log book marking the first day that EDSAC was in operation: “May 6th 1949. Machine in operation for first time. Printed a table of squares (0-99), time for programme 2 mins, 35 sec. Four tanks of battery 1 in operation”. Reproduced with kind permission of Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
EDSAC is noteworthy for marking the transition from “test to tool” in civilian computing. Maurice Wilkes, EDSAC’s designer, sought to build a multi-purpose, reliable workhorse that would bring unrivalled calculating power to University of Cambridge researchers. His aim wasn’t to be at the cutting edge of engineering; rather to be at the forefront of delivering a computer-powered general calculation service. Above all else, Wilkes wanted EDSAC to be a practical computer, useful and accessible to a wide range of researchers.
Short film celebrating the work of EDSAC’s team, led by Maurice Wilkes, produced by Google
In May 1949 EDSAC became the world’s first general purpose stored program computer to enter regular service, transforming scientific research at the University of Cambridge by making it possible to speedily tackle analyses of previously impractical scale, across disciplines as varied as astronomy, economics, biology and more.
Sadly, little remains physically of EDSAC today. That’s why a team of U.K. volunteers have embarked on an ambitious project to construct a working replica of the original EDSAC, in partnership with The National Museum of Computing. We’re delighted to support the EDSAC Rebuild Project, and we look forward to welcoming it back to regular service—as a reminder of the U.K.’s illustrious computing past.
Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations
This sketch shows the town’s original seven bridges in green (Source: Wikipedia)
In 1735, Leonhard Euler, one of the most prolific mathematicians of all time and our recent Doodle subject, concluded that there was no solution to the problem because it was impossible to find a route that would cross each bridge only once. This famous problem and Leonhard Euler’s non-resolution paved the way for important discoveries in the field of mathematics including graph theory and topology.
Fast forward 278 years to today where we still rely on Euler’s findings to calculate optimal driving routes for our Street View cars. We use sophisticated algorithms, based on graph theory, to determine the best route through a city or town—helping us capture all the images we need in the shortest amount of time. Though these algorithms are complex, in simple terms, it's equivalent to solving the problem of drawing a house without lifting your pen and never going over the same segment twice. Like this:
(Source: Vincent Furnon, Google Operations Research Team)
While the bridges of Koeningsberg may be one of Kaliningrad’s most famous landmarks, you can also explore other parts of this historic town with Street View—including the oldest building in the city, the Juditten Church, which was built before 1288, and King’s Gate, one of the city’s original six gates built during the 19th century.
We’ll display the winning doodle on the Google homepage on May 23 for millions to see. In addition, you’ll be able to see all 50 doodles created by our state winners in person at a special exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City from May 22 to July 14.
We’d like to send a special thank you to the parents, teachers and administrators who supported young artists and helped students across the country bring their “Best Day Ever” to life. We’ve loved looking at each and every entry that came in this year, and we hope you all enjoy the talent and creativity these 50 students have shared with us.
