FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
June 28, 2007
For Nonprofits, Google Marks the Spot
Google rolled out a new program Tuesday to help nonprofits use its Google Earth tool to tell their stories through interactive maps. Along with some technical expertise, Google is offering up free versions of its $400 software to 501(c)(3) organizations through the Google Earth Outreach program.
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The project crystallizes some pre-existing partnerships between Google and some nonprofits that have already used the web tool to create their own "layers." These are basically digital sheets of icons, photos, text and other goodies that are blanketed over Google's satellite maps, which currently cover about a third of the Earth's surface.
Once you download the free Google Earth software, you can open an organization's layer file to view its map presentation. For example, you can open a mapping Google helped the U.S. Holocaust Museum make in April with photos and testimonies of the genocide in Darfur.
For regular users, Google Earth and Maps used to be more about "look ma, I can see our house!" than about charity, but Hurricane Katrina was a "turning point" for the software developers, according to Google Earth and Maps Director John Hanke. In the wake of the disaster, Earth displayed the effects of the flooding and was used by relief workers and families to rescue those who were stranded.
At Google, software engineers can spend 20 percent of their time on their own projects, Hanke explained, and they opted to work with over 100 public service groups in the last year to help them link "global issues to very specific, local realities" on Google Earth.
"This is a classic case where doing the right thing was a very good thing for our team and for the morale of our team," Hanke said at the New York launch event Tuesday.
Google-posted an hour-long video of the launch on its very own YouTube.
Posted by Elise Waxenberg at June 28, 2007 4:34 PM | Category: innovation + creativity |
1 Comment
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What a great combination of technology and non-profit to help raise awareness to a lot of important issues. I think it will have an impact on a lot of people as they begin to visualize problems around them. This will help to make those "distant" issues seem closer and more real.