Access to information is at the heart of Google’s mission. Unfortunately, today, the mobile web isn't living up to the expectations people have for getting the information they need, particularly when it comes to speed. In fact, data shows that people abandon websites after just three seconds if the content doesn't load quickly—which is bad not just for people trying to get what they want online, but for the publishers who want those readers to enjoy the content they've created for them. That's why, last October, we joined others across the industry on the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP for short), an open source initiative to make the mobile web as fast as possible.

In just over four months, AMP has come a long way, with hundreds of publishers, scores of technology companies and ad-tech businesses all taking part in this joint mission to improve the mobile web for everyone. And starting today, we’ll make it easy to find AMP webpages in relevant mobile search results, giving you a lightning-fast reading experience for top stories.

Now when you search for a story or topic on Google from a mobile device, webpages created using AMP will appear when relevant in the Top Stories section of the search results page. Any story you choose to read will load blazingly fast—and it’s easy to scroll through the article without it taking forever to load or jumping all around as you read. It’s also easy to quickly flip through the search results just by swiping from one full-page AMP story to the next.

AMP is great for browsing the web on mobile devices, because webpages built with AMP load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than equivalent non-AMP pages. In many cases, they’ll load instantly. It's how reading on the mobile web should be—fast, responsive and fun.
While helping people find fast AMP content through Google Search is a significant step, there’s still a lot of work ahead for the open source AMP Project. Still, it’s been thrilling to see how the industry has come together to work on this common goal of making the mobile web great for everyone. And given the potential AMP holds for other types of content, we’re excited about what the future holds.

Posted by David Besbris, VP Engineering, Search https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijh6QNf8kBO2LXu_kYquI1bt6Sl4zVAW2IAhByOI4iJIwmQYAQW1OOzAmbn2edMxdRLzr9v3fXdL1sJ3aHQhdq0ovixgYn1a-BkEeIRCXNeHv_GSRu-zA-Ut2oMY6xLsL4dK_V/s1600/AMP+hero.jpg David Besbris VP Engineering Search

It’s hard to think of a more important source of information in the world than quality journalism. At its best, news communicates truth to power, keeps societies free and open, and leads to more informed decision-making by people and leaders. In the past decade, better technology and an open Internet have led to a revolution in how news is created, distributed, and consumed. And given Google’s mission to ensure quality information is accessible and useful everywhere, we want to help ensure that innovation in news leads to a more informed, more democratic world.

That’s why we’ve created the News Lab, a new effort at Google to empower innovation at the intersection of technology and media. Our mission is to collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs to help build the future of media. And we’re tackling this in three ways: though ensuring our tools are made available to journalists around the world (and that newsrooms know how to use them); by getting helpful Google data sets in the hands of journalists everywhere; and through programs designed to build on some of the biggest opportunities that exist in the media industry today.
Tools for better reporting
From Maps to YouTube to Fusion Tables to Earth to Search, we offer many tools that newsrooms can use in their reporting and storytelling. Now, journalists around the world can access tutorials on these products created specifically for newsrooms, at g.co/newslab. We’ll post short written and video tutorials and case studies that highlight best practices from top newsrooms around the world. As Google develops new products that help journalists, we’ll update these resources regularly. You can also get updates by following us on Twitter and Google+, and by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
Data for more insightful storytelling
There’s a revolution in data journalism happening in newsrooms today, as more data sets and more tools for analysis are allowing journalists to create insights that were never before possible. To help journalists use our data to offer a unique window to the world, last week we announced an update to our Google Trends platform. The new Google Trends provides journalists with deeper, broader, and real-time data, and incorporates feedback we collected from newsrooms and data journalists around the world. We’re also helping newsrooms around the world tell stories using data, with a daily feed of curated Google Trends based on the headlines of the day, and through partnerships with newsrooms on specific data experiments.

Programs focused on the future of media
We’re also working with partners to build a series of programs focused on imagining the future of news and information, as well as on empowering new voices in media. One of the opportunities we’re focused on is increasing the number of media startups in the marketplace. We’ve launched partnerships with Matter, a media accelerator in San Francisco, and Hacks/Hackers, a global community group for developers and journalists, to provide financial support and mentorship from Google engineers that will help these organizations expand their impact to more startups around the world. We’re also holding a series of TechRaking summits with the Center for Investigative Reporting: hackathons focused on developing new investigative tools such as drones, online databases, and more.

Another area we’ve focused our programs on is citizen reporting. Now that mobile technology allows anyone to be a reporter, we want to do our part to ensure that user-generated news content is a positive and game-changing force in media. We’re doing that with three projects—First Draft, the WITNESS Media Lab, and the YouTube Newswire—each of which aims to make YouTube and other open platforms more useful places for first-hand news content from citizen reporters around the world.

The News Lab is a global effort, with teams in the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany to start—and we’re also powering the training and research arm of Google’s Digital News Initiative in Europe.

Google has created many technologies and platforms that have engaged the media industry. As both the media landscape and technology continue to evolve, we believe we can create a more informed world if technologists and journalists work together—and we’re excited to be part of the effort.

Posted by Steve Grove, Director, News Lab

The Google Journalism Fellowship connects students interested in using technology to tell stories in new ways to the organizations that are pushing the boundaries of newsgathering and reporting. Over 10 weeks, Fellows work on projects ranging from building interactive news apps to researching stories, finding data and writing code. In this post, one of last year’s Fellows, Jan Lauren Boyles, shares her perspective on the benefits of the program and what this year’s Fellows stand to get out of it. -Ed.

At first, I thought it was just my imagination.

In the middle of my exams for my doctorate at American University last year, I got a call from the Pew Research Center offering me a Google Journalism Fellowship. Low on sleep, my first thought: "Was this offer all just a reverie, rendered by my foggy mind?"

In some ways, it turned out that that call really was the beginning of a dream.

I had applied for the Fellowship because I wanted to work with the brightest minds in media research and broaden my understanding of the intersections between journalism and technology. I was thrilled to work with leading experts at Pew Research to collect and analyze data that examined how social media is transforming the way Americans consume and share news. I also had a chance to learn from Google’s own mapping and data visualization specialists. But I never imagined we’d also shadow an editorial meeting at The Miami Herald, discuss the future of news with Knight Foundation staff, talk directly with news startup leaders and take part in a design sprint at a CIR/Google conference around data and the news.

Many of the inaugural class of Google Fellows has gone on to carve out careers in the newsrooms of the 21st century. The Fellowship helped me land a full-time position at the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project as a research associate—a dream job, where I’ll use various research methods—from surveys to content analysis to good ol' reporting—to help examine how news and information functions today. One key project that I’ll work on this year will be a deep examination of the flow of local news in society today.

Now a new class of Google Fellows gets a chance to fulfill their own dreams. These 11 students are people to watch—young scholars, computer scientists and practitioners who will likely create new journalism products and platforms that will change our engagement with news in the digital age.

This year’s organizations and Fellows are:

• Center for Investigative Reporting - Emmanuel Martinez, University of Southern California and Suyeon Son, Northwestern University
• Committee to Protect Journalists - Rachael Levy, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
• Investigative Reporters & Editors - Aram Chung, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
• Nieman Journalism Lab - Liam Andrew, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Pew Research Journalism Project - Alex T. Williams, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication
• Poynter - Benjamin Mullin, California State University, Chico
• PRI.org - David Conrad, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication
• ProPublica - Yue Qiu, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
• Sunlight Foundation - Stan Oklobdzija, UC San Diego
• Texas Tribune - Jessica Hamel, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

Congratulations to this year’s Fellows! We look forward to the energy you’ll bring to the host organizations this summer—and to watching your dreams become a reality.

Posted by Jan Lauren Boyles, Research Associate at Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project

More than 2,300 students from across the globe applied for the first Google Journalism Fellowship. The interest the Fellowship attracted clearly demonstrates the need for these types of opportunities, especially as the worlds of journalism and technology increasingly become one.

The students who have been picked for the 10-week program will get the chance to work with organizations focused on exciting projects ranging from those steeped in investigative journalism to those working for press freedom around the world and to those that are helping the industry figure out its future in the digital age. They will also spend a week with the Knight Foundation and a week with Google.

We had so many applications—on the last day they poured in at a rate of roughly one every two minutes—that we extended our review period by a week to make selections. Our host organizations had the unenviable task of choosing just one Fellow out of the mass of talented students who applied; the Nieman Journalism Lab is taking two Fellows.

The Fellows who will take part in the program are:

• Center for Investigative Reporting - Nathaniel Lash of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Committee to Protect Journalists - Lauren Fedor of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
• Investigative Reporters & Editors - Nicole Pasulka of New York University
• Nieman Journalism Lab - Sarah Darville of Columbia University and Linda Kinstler of Bowdoin College
• Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism - Jan Lauren Boyles of American University
• Poynter - Anna Li from Stanford University
• ProPublica - Stephen Suen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Thank you to everyone who made the effort to apply and to the host organizations for their hard work.

Posted by Maggie Shiels, Google Communications and former BBC journalist

Google has worked with news publishers around the globe for years to help them make the most of the web. Our search engine generates billions of clicks each month, and our advertising solutions (in which we have invested billions of dollars) help them make money from that traffic. And last year, we launched Google Play, which offers new opportunities for publishers to make money—including through paid subscriptions. A healthy news industry is important for Google and our partners, and it is essential to a free society.

Today I announced with President Hollande of France two new initiatives to help stimulate innovation and increase revenues for French publishers. First, Google has agreed to create a €60 million Digital Publishing Innovation Fund to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers. Second, Google will deepen our partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using our advertising technology.

This exciting announcement builds on the commitments we made in 2011 to increase our investment in France—including our Cultural Institute in Paris to help preserve amazing cultural treasures such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These agreements show that through business and technology partnerships we can help stimulate digital innovation for the benefit of consumers, our partners and the wider web.

Posted by Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman

If you’re a student journalist looking to harness the power of technology to tell stories in new and dynamic ways, then the first ever Google Journalism Fellowship could help make the summer of 2013 one to remember.

We recognize the value that quality journalism plays in a functioning society and would like to help the next generation of reporters gain valuable skills and experience on the path to creating great content.

This 10-week program will give eight students the opportunity to contribute to a variety of organizations—from those that are steeped in investigative journalism to those working for press freedom around the world and to those that are helping the industry figure out its future in the digital age. Throughout, fellows will gain skills and contacts to help them as they move forward with their careers.

This program will be of particular interest to students studying data journalism, online freedom of expression or new business models for the industry.

Our partners in the first Google Journalism Fellowship are:

• Center for Investigative Reporting
• Committee to Protect Journalists
• Investigative Reporters & Editors
• Knight Foundation
• Nieman Journalism Lab
• Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism
• Poynter
• ProPublica

For more information, visit our website and apply. The deadline for applications is January 31, 2013.

Posted by Maggie Shiels, former BBC journalist, Google Corporate Communications