Google Product Helping Blog

I started working with Dr. Carl Mack when I took an engineering internship in my hometown of Seattle. But it wasn�t long before my internship took me in a completely different direction. The city was on high alert in the wake of racial discrimination and violence, and Dr. Mack was the VP of the city�s NAACP chapter. At his side, I was soon participating in protests and closed door meetings with city leaders�opening my eyes to non-technical solutions, and setting me off on a path that would eventually lead me to Google.org , where today I lead giving projects focused on the Bay Area and on racial justice. More recently, incidences of racial violence have again dominated our headlines, with the killing of young men like Tamir Rice and Jordan Davis, the deaths of Michael Brown and Sandra Bland, and countless other acts of injustice. And it isn�t just heartbreaking individual stories. The data is troubling: African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. An esti...

Posted by Yolanda Mangolini, Director, Global Diversity & Inclusion On February 1 we kicked off Black History Month with a Doodle recognizing the remarkable life of Frederick Douglass and a new collection of Black history archives on the Cultural Institute . Googlers around the world have joined in the celebrations, hosting film screenings, spoken word performances, speaker series, and participating in community service. These efforts have been driven by the Black Googler Network (BGN), one of Google�s largest employee resource groups with 12 branches worldwide. BGN focuses on empowering the Black community at Google and beyond. BGN Googlers work on many different teams, participating in BGN as volunteers or in their 20 percent time. They run service trips to communities in need, provide professional development and mentorship programs, convene dialogues on topics affecting the Black community, and help Googlers connect with each other and develop a sense of community. They�...

Women around the world are creating and building incredible technology companies. We see this every day through our Google for Entrepreneurs programs�like #40Forward , which works with organizations to increase the representation of female entrepreneurs in startup communities, and our baby-friendly startup school Campus for Moms . Supporting these startups is important because teams with diverse perspectives and experiences�particularly in leadership positions�make better products for users. But the data still tells us that women-led startups often struggle to get access to top investors who can help them raise money. Despite women owning 29 percent of U.S. businesses, female-led companies receive only 3 percent of venture capital �a lifeline for many startups to fund new product development and hiring. With this in mind, today we're hosting our first Google Demo Day specifically for startups with female founders. More than 450 companies from 40+ countries applied, and we chose 11 ...

We believe in a world built for everyone, which is why we launched the global Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities earlier this year. The Impact Challenge is a Google.org initiative to invest $20 million in nonprofits who are using technology to make the world more accessible for the 1 billion people living with disabilities. Today, as part of the program, we�re proud to celebrate the U.N. International Day of Persons with Disabilities with three new grants, totalling $2.95 million. Through our grants, the Royal London Society for Blind People will develop the Wayfindr project, helping visually impaired people navigate the London underground; Israeli NGO Issie Shapiro will distribute Sesame, an app that allows people with mobility impairments to control a smartphone using only head movements; and, finally, German grantee Wheelmap will expand its accessibility mapping efforts worldwide. This week, many Googlers around the world will also join Wheelmap�s Map My Day campaign to help...