Google Public Policy Blog

Software downloads in Syria

2012-05-23T09:09:00.002-04:00

Posted by Neil Martin, Export Compliance Programs Manager

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

Free expression is a fundamental human right and a core value of our company—but sometimes there are limits to where we can make our products and services available. U.S. export controls and sanctions programs, for example, prohibit us from offering certain software downloads in some countries.

The fine details of these restrictions evolve over time, and we’re always exploring how we can better offer tools for people to access and share information. For example, last year we were able to make some of our products available for download in Iran. And today we’re pleased to make Google Earth, Picasa and Chrome available for download in Syria.

As a U.S. company, we remain committed to full compliance with U.S. export controls and sanctions. We remain equally committed to continue exploring how we can help more people around the globe use technology to communicate, find and create information.

Google Acquires Motorola Mobility

2012-05-22T09:01:00.002-04:00

Posted by Larry Page, CEO

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

The phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live. It’s now possible to do things we used to think were magic, or only possible on Star Trek--like get directions right from where we are standing; watch a video on YouTube; or take a picture and share the moment instantly with friends.

It’s why I’m excited to announce today that our Motorola Mobility deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone. We all remember Motorola’s StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google.

Sanjay Jha, who was responsible for building the company and placing that big bet on Android, has stepped down as CEO. I would like to thank him for his efforts and am tremendously pleased that he will be working to ensure a smooth transition as long-time Googler Dennis Woodside takes over as CEO of Motorola Mobility.

I’ve known Dennis for nearly a decade, and he’s been phenomenal at building teams and delivering on some of Google’s biggest bets. One of his first jobs at Google was to put on his backpack and build our businesses across the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. More recently he helped increase our revenue in the U.S. from $10.8 billion to $17.5 billion in under three years as President of the Americas region. Dennis has always been a committed partner to our customers and I know he will be an outstanding leader of Motorola. As an Ironman triathlete, he’s got plenty of energy for the journey ahead--and he’s already off to great start with some very strong new hires for the Motorola team.

It’s a well known fact that people tend to overestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, but underestimate its significance in the longer term. Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound--as will the ability to just tap and pay with your phone. That’s why it’s a great time to be in the mobile business, and why I’m confident Dennis and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come.

Internet at Liberty 2012 Conference: Join the discussion

2012-05-17T16:00:00.000-04:00

Posted by Bob Boorstin, Director of Public Policy

Next week, 300+ Internet activists, policy makers, academics and NGO leaders from more than 30 countries will gather in Washington, D.C. to discuss the future of free speech online. The event is called Internet at Liberty 2012, and we want you to join the discussion.

The future of free expression is uncertain. According to the Open Net Initiative, more than 620 million Internet users—31% of the world’s total Internet users—live in countries where there is substantial or pervasive filtering of online content. And when free expression is in jeopardy, so are reporters; as the Committee to Protect Journalists found, nearly half of all the writers, editors, and photojournalists imprisoned around the world are online journalists.

Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes are the worst offenders, but democracies around the world are also questioning whether the Internet requires monitoring and supervision. 2012 is a crucial year. As governments are trying to draw the right lines, we are bringing the most challenging and important debates to you via Internet at Liberty 2012.

Join us on May 23 and May 24 by watching our livestream at YouTube.com/citizentube, and feel free to Tweet your questions and comments (@InternetLiberty). If you are in the DC area, consider joining us at the event live. You can register here. Space is limited, but this is a crucial issue and we want you to participate.

For more information, check out our detailed schedule of events.

Hello from Tunisia

2012-05-08T10:26:00.000-04:00

Posted by Maha Abouelenein, Head of Communications, Middle East and North Africa

Cross-posted from the Google European Public Policy Blog

It was a perfect way to celebrate the Arab Spring. UNESCO last week marked its World Press Day in Tunisia, the country that led the rush for freedom in the Arab world. We sponsored the event, hosting Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki who met with Daniel Calingaert, Freedom House’s Vice President in Washington DC via an On Air Hangout on UNESCO’s Google+ page. We’ll post the Hangout as soon as it becomes available.

World Press Day marks an appropriate moment to review our progress in the Middle East and North Africa. We’re investing and digging deep roots. Over the past year, we have doubled our regional workforce. We have hosted g|days reaching an estimated 12,000 entrepreneurs and developers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Our Google Media Academy has trained nearly 2,000 journalists.

Google products are going Arabic. Only about three percent of the web now is in Arabic, while more than 10 percent of the world’s web population speaks it as a mother tongue. In order to encourage more local content, we have launched eight local YouTube domains and 11 local maps domains. An Egyptian who searches YouTube is no longer directed to Western videos but instead is able to access local content. We have introduced Arabic versions of Voice Search, driving directions for Maps, and Google+.

Many magic moments have occurred in the past year. We hosted celebrity high profile hangouts with entertainer Myriam Fares and the Arab world’s biggest pop star, Amr Diab. We also launched the Official Google Arabia Google+ page.

Earlier this month, two Qatar museums, Museum of Islamic Art and Mathaf, joined the Google Art Project. In Egypt, the first episode of "Inside Google" aired on Al Hayat Al Youm, Egypt's number one Prime Time TV show. Egypt’s very own Amr Mohamed became a global finalist in the YouTube Space Lab. And next week we will crown a national winner of the Ebda2 with Google competition to provide local entrepreneurs seed capital to start their own business kickstarting the internet ecosystem in Egypt to flourish.

This Arabization drive is producing impressive results. Google searches are up by 25 percent year on year in the region. Some 167 million YouTube videos are viewed each day in the Middle East and Africa—the second highest number in the world, behind the U.S. and ahead of Brazil. These daily views represent 112 percent increase since last October—more than double the views in just one year. An hour's worth of YouTube videos is uploaded each minute in the Middle East and North Africa. Since the launch of our local map domains, we have seen 50 percent growth in maps usage throughout the region.

Our goal is clear—to become part of the local landscape, giving people around the Middle East and North Africa access to information, preferably in their own language. For us, our contribution to UNESCO’s World Press Day represents yet another strong step towards this goal.

Inside view on ads review

2012-04-20T17:00:00.000-04:00

Posted by David W. Baker, Director of Engineering, Advertising

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.

This is the first in a series of posts that will provide greater transparency about how we make our ads safer by detecting and removing scam ads. -Ed.

A few weeks ago, we posted here about our efforts in fighting bad ads, and we shared a video with the basics of how we do it. Today I wanted to delve a little deeper and give some insight into the systems we use to help prevent bad ads from showing. Our ads policies are designed with safety and trust in mind—we don’t allow ads for malicious downloads, counterfeit goods, or ads with unclear billing practices, to name a few examples. In order to help prevent these kinds of ads from showing, we use a combination of automated systems and human input to review the billions of ads submitted to Google each year. I’m one of many engineers whose job is to help make sure that Google doesn’t show bad ads to users.

We’ve designed our approach based on a three-pronged strategy, each focused on a different dimension of the problem: ads, sites, and advertiser accounts. These systems are complementary, sharing signals among each other so that we can comprehensively attack bad ads.

For example, in the case of a site that is selling counterfeit goods, this three-pronged approach aims to look for patterns that would flag such a site and help prevent ads from showing. Ad review notices patterns in the ads and keywords selected by the advertiser. Site review analyzes the entire site to determine if it is selling counterfeit goods. Account review aims to determine if a new advertiser is truly new, or is simply a repeat offender trying to abuse Google’s advertising system. Here’s more detail on how we review each of these three components.

Ad Review
An ad is the snippet of information presented to a user, along with a link to a specific webpage, or landing page. The ads review system inspects individual ads and landing pages, and is probably the system most familiar to advertisers. When an advertiser submits an ad, our system immediately performs a preliminary examination. If there’s nothing in the ad that flags a need for further review, we tell the advertiser the ad is “Eligible” and show the ad only on google.com to users who have SafeSearch turned off. If the ad is flagged for further review, in most cases we refer to the ad as “Under Review” and don’t show the ad at all. From there, the ad enters our automated pipeline, where we employ machine learning models, a rules engine and landing page analysis to perform a more extensive examination. If our automated system determines an outcome with a high degree of confidence, we will either approve the ad to run on Google and all of our partners (“Approved”), approve the ad to show for appropriate users in specific locations (“Approved - Limited”) or reject the ad (“Disapproved”). If our automated system isn’t able to determine the outcome, we send the ad to a real person to make a final decision.

Site Review
A site has many different pages, each of which could be pointed to by different ads, often known as a domain. Our site review system identifies policy issues which apply to the whole site. It aggregates sites across all ads from all advertisers and regularly crawls them, building a repository of information that’s constantly improving as new scams and new sites are examined. We store the content of advertised sites and use both machine learning models and a rules engine to analyze the sites. The magic of the site review system is it understands the structure of language on webpages in order to classify the content of sites. Site review will determine whether or not an entire site should be disabled, which would prevent any ads leading to that site showing from any account. When the automated system isn’t able to determine the outcome with a high degree of confidence, we send it to a real person to make a decision. When a site is disabled, we tell the advertiser that it’s in violation of “Site Policy.”

Account Review
An account is one particular advertiser’s collection of ads, plus the advertiser’s selections for targeting and bidding on those ads. An account may have many ads which may point to several different sites, for example. The account review system constantly evaluates individual advertiser accounts to determine if the whole account should be inspected and shut down for policy violations. This system “listens” to a variety of signals, such as ads and keywords submitted by the advertiser, budget changes, the advertiser’s address and phone number, the advertiser’s IP address, disabled sites connected to this account, and disapproved ads. The system constantly re-evaluates all accounts, incorporating new data. For example, if an advertiser logs in from a new IP address, the account is re-evaluated to determine if that new signal suggests we should take a closer look at the content of the advertiser’s account. If the account review system determines that there is something suspect about a particular account with a high degree of confidence, it automatically suspends the account. If the system isn’t sure, it stops the account from showing any ads at all and asks a real person to decide if the account should be suspended.

Even with all these systems and people working to stop bad ads, there still can be times when an ad slips through that we don’t want. There are many malicious players who are very persistent—they seek to abuse Google’s advertising system in order to take advantage of our users. When we shut down a thousand accounts, they create two thousand more using different patterns. It’s a never-ending game of cat and mouse.

We’ve put a great deal of effort and expense into building these systems because Google’s long-term success is based on the trust of people who use our products. I’ve focused my time and energy in this area for many years. I find it inspiring to fight the good fight, to focus on the user, and do everything we can to help prevent bad ads from running. I’ll continue to post here from time to time with additional thoughts and greater information about how we make ads safer by detecting and removing scam ads.

Announcing the 2012 Google Policy Fellows

2012-04-19T11:17:00.000-04:00

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director of Public Policy

We’re excited to announce the 2012 class of Google Policy Fellows, and we’re expecting great things from the 15 students selected for the fifth summer of the Google Policy Fellowship. Our host organizations selected the 2012 fellows from over 1300 impressive submissions. The 2012 class includes undergraduate and graduate students from 12 schools, studying history, public policy, economics, science and technology, computer science, engineering and law.

Congratulations to the 2012 Google Policy Fellows!

Derek Attig, University of Illinois, ALA Washington
Justin Kaufman, George Washington University, Public Knowledge
Lassana Magassa, University of Washington, New America Foundation
Daniel Lieberman, George Washington University, Future of Music Coalition
Anjney Midha, Stanford University, Technology Policy Institute
Yana Welinder, Harvard University, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Jonathan Miller, Georgetown University, Center for Democracy & Technology
Michael Corliss, University of Illinois, TechFreedom
Kieran Bergmann, University of Ottawa, Citizen Lab
Sumitra Nair, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
Andrew Blanco, Stanford University, Creative Commons
Brenda Villanueva, University of Maryland, National Hispanic Media Coalition
Brian Picone, Brown University, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Laurie Birbilas, McGill University, Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic
Leonard Hyman, University of Southern California, Internet Education Foundation

The 2012 Fellows will spend 10 weeks this summer at our host organizations working on Internet and technology policy issues including free expression, privacy, security, and intellectual property.

Thank you to everyone who applied. Please sign up here to follow our program announcements, and visit google.com/policyfellowship for more information.

Checking in with the Global Network Initiative

2012-04-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

Posted by Bob Boorstin, Director, Public Policy and Lewis Segall, Senior Ethics and Compliance Counsel

No matter who or what you are, opening up to outside scrutiny isn’t an easy or comfortable process. But that's what we agreed to do a few years ago when we helped found the Global Network Initiative (GNI), an amalgam of companies, human rights activists, socially responsible investors and academics formed in response to actions by governments that endanger free expression on the global Internet.

The objectives of GNI are both simple and incredibly complex: promote and support free expression and privacy online; subscribe to principles and follow guidelines supported by measures of transparency and accountability; and educate people and engage policymakers around the world in an effort to create a more open and free Internet.

In starting GNI, the founding companies — Google, Microsoft and Yahoo — agreed to bring in outside assessors to review how we were doing against GNI principles. Our agreement to conduct these assessments is an important part of the organization's credibility.

Now these first assessments are finished and the results have been released as part of GNI's annual report released yesterday. After reviewing them, the non-company members of GNI have told us that while we're by no means perfect, the assessments are credible and rigorous and demonstrate that companies are making progress — a concrete step in our efforts to build trust not only with our GNI partners but with all our users.

The activities of Google to promote free expression and privacy around the world extend well beyond GNI. However, being a part of this group is a compelling opportunity, since it brings together diverse stakeholders and provides a unique forum to address the risks to a free and open internet. Along with the GNI, we welcome other companies and groups to join this effort.

Bringing the Halls of Museums Into Classrooms Everywhere

2012-04-03T07:00:00.008-04:00

Posted by Piotr Adamczyk, Google Art Project Team

The last known photo portrait of Abraham Lincoln. A masterpiece made up of thousands of tiny painted dots. Scenes of the American West that will leave you breathless. Some of our nation’s greatest treasures -- all at your fingertips.

In a few hours I will join art enthusiasts, students, and local leaders at the Art Institute of Chicago to announce a major expansion of the Google Art Project. We are thrilled to have partnered with 151 museums in 40 countries including 29 American institutions in 16 cities.

Now anyone with an Internet connection can take a virtual field trip to see some of the finest art around the world and right here in America. No permission slip, sack lunch or bus fare needed! All before lunch, from their desk, a student could walk through the East Room of the White House, visit one of the greatest collections of the American West in the world at the Denver Art Museum, and take a quick trip to Massachusetts to see some of the great illustrations at the Norman Rockwell Museum. They could, of course, also go see South African rock art, street graffiti from Brazil or Australian aboriginal art.

All told, the Art Project puts over 30,000 works of art at your fingertips and allows you to:

Explore inside museums: We’ve adapted mapping technology to take 360-degree images of the interior of selected galleries which were then stitched together, enabling smooth navigation of more than 385 rooms within the museums. You can also explore the gallery interiors directly from within Street View in Google Maps.
Discover history: Our partners have provided the backstory of many of the works in the Art Project and the artists that created these pieces. The Art Project is a fantastic classroom tool with hundreds of short educational videos created by SmartHistory presented by Khan Academy.
Get up close: We now have 46 artworks available with our “gigapixel” photo capturing technology, photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution so you can study details of the brushwork and patina that would be impossible to see with the naked eye.
Curate your own collection - build a personalized collection, provide your own commentary, and share it with your friends and family.

To learn even more about the Google Art Project and today’s announcement read this post on the Official Google Blog.

Giving you more insight into your Google Account activity

2012-03-28T11:10:00.000-04:00

Posted by Andreas Tuerk, Product Manager

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Every day we aim to make technology so simple and intuitive that you stop thinking about it—we want Google to work so well, it just blends into your life. But sometimes it’s helpful to step back and take stock of what you’re doing online.

Today we’re introducing Account Activity, a new feature in your Google Account. If you sign up, each month we’ll send you a link to a password-protected report with insights into your signed-in use of Google services.

For example, my most recent Account Activity report told me that I sent 5 percent more email than the previous month and received 3 percent more. An Italian hotel was my top Gmail contact for the month. I conducted 12 percent more Google searches than in the previous month, and my top queries reflected the vacation I was planning: [rome] and [hotel].

Click the image for a larger version

Knowing more about your own account activity also can help you take steps to protect your Google Account. For example, if you notice sign-ins from countries where you haven’t been or devices you’ve never owned, you can change your password immediately and sign up for the extra level of security provided by 2-step verification.

Give Account Activity a try, and tell us what you think by clicking on the “Send feedback” button in the lower right corner of your report. Over the next few months, we plan to incorporate more Google services. Meanwhile, we hope this feature helps you better understand and manage your information on Google.

Explore Mandela’s archives online

2012-03-27T10:30:00.001-04:00

Posted by Mark Yoshitake, Product Manager, Google’s Cultural Institute

(Cross-posted from the Google Africa Blog)

Last year we announced a $1.25 million grant to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory to help preserve and digitize thousands of archival documents, photographs and videos about Nelson Mandela. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory (NMCM) is committed to documenting the life and times of one of the world's greatest statesmen and spreading his story to promote social justice throughout the world.

Today, the Mandela archive has become a reality. Along with historians, educationalists, researchers, activists and many others around the world, you can access a wealth of information and knowledge about the life and legacy of this extraordinary African leader. The new online multimedia archive includes Mandela’s correspondence with family, comrades and friends, diaries written during his 27 years of imprisonment, and notes he made while leading the negotiations that ended apartheid in South Africa. The archive will also include the earliest-known photo of Mr. Mandela and never-before seen drafts of Mr. Mandela's manuscripts for the sequel to his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

We’ve worked closely with the NMCM to create an interactive online experience which we hope will inspire you as much as us. You can search and browse the archives to explore different parts of Mandela’s life and work in depth: Early Life, Prison Years, Presidential Years, Retirement, Books for Mandela, Young People and My Moment with a Legend.

For example, you might be interested in Nelson Mandela’s personal memories of the time he was incarcerated and click into the Prison Years exhibit. You can immediately see a curated set of materials threaded together into a broader narrative. These include handwritten notes on his desk calendars, which show, for example, that he met President F.W. De Klerk for the first time on December 13, 1989 for two and a half hours in prison; the Warrants of Committal issued by the Supreme Court which sent him to prison; the earliest known photo of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island circa 1971; and a personal letter written from prison in 1963 to his daughters, Zeni and Zindzi, after their mother was arrested, complete with transcript.

From there, you might want to see all the letters held by the archive, and click “See more” in the letters category, where you can discover all personal letters or use the time filter to explore his diaries and calendars written between 1988 and 1998, where you can see that in the last page of the last diary, he met with President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda to exchange ideas about the situation in northern Uganda. If you were a researcher, you can search through various fragments of Madiba’s memory that relate to Ahmed Kathrada, his long-time comrade, politician and anti-apartheid activist, where you can find photos, videos, manuscripts and letters that relate to him.

Finally, by clicking into the exhibit, My Moment with a Legend, you can go beyond Madiba’s personal materials to get a diverse perspective through photos, videos and stories, via the memories of people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, F.W. De Klerk and Nomfundo Walaza, a community worker.

The Nelson Mandela Digital Archive project is an initiative by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and the Google Cultural Institute, which helps to preserve and promote our diverse cultural and historical heritage. Some of our other initiatives include the Art Project, digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls and bringing the Yad Vashem Holocaust materials online.

You can start exploring the Nelson Mandela archive right now at archive.nelsonmandela.org. We hope you’ll be inspired by this influential leader—the face of South Africa’s transition to democracy.

Bipartisanship, new businesses and new jobs, with a little help from your friends

2012-03-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director of Public Policy

As we highlighted in a recent post on Google’s Policy by the Numbers blog, entrepreneurs need access to capital to make grow their ideas into successful companies. We are excited to see members of Congress working to promote entrepreneurs’ efforts to build new companies and create new jobs.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act with nearly full bipartisan support. The JOBS Act makes it easier for startups to raise capital. The crowdfunding provisions drafted by Congressman Patrick McHenry and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are particularly exciting and we applaud the House for its focus on helping to promote innovation and economic growth.

Crowdfunding means raising small amounts of money from a large crowd. Already, thousands of new companies have been funded by crowdfunding platforms like Kiva, Kickstarter, and IndieGogo. With the growth of social networks and other online platforms, crowdfunding is a promising investment model that would allow more Americans to invest in a new company simply by using the Internet to connect with entrepreneurs.

Earlier this week senators from both sides of the aisle -- Senators Merkley, Brown, Bennet, and Landrieu -- introduced the Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and Unethical Non-Disclosure Act of 2011, known as the CROWDFUND Act. President Obama has also expressed support for signing into law crowdfunding legislation.

Google was started by two graduate students in a garage with a check from one (trusting) investor. The next Google, Facebook, Apple, or Amazon could be funded thanks to crowdfunding legislation, and that would be a great thing for our economy.

Making our ads better for everyone

2012-03-14T18:32:00.000-04:00

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP, Engineering

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

We believe that ads are useful and relevant information that can help you find what you’re looking for online—whether you’re comparing digital cameras or researching new cars. We also want you to be able to use Google and click on any ads that interest you with confidence. Just as we work hard to make Gmail free of spam and the Google Play Store free of malware, we’re committed to enforcing rigorous standards for the ads that appear on Google and on our partner sites.

Like all other Internet companies, we’re fighting a war against a huge number of bad actors—from websites selling counterfeit goods and fraudulent tickets to underground international operations trying to spread malware and spyware. We must remain vigilant because scammers will always try to find new ways to abuse our systems. Given the number of searches on Google and the number of legitimate businesses who rely on this system to reach users, our work to remove bad ads must be precise and at scale.

We recently made some improvements to help ensure the ads you see comply with our strict policies, so we wanted to give you an overview of both our principles and these new technologies.

Ads that harm users are not allowed on Google
We’ve always approached our ads system with trust and safety in mind. Our policies cover a wide range of issues across the globe in every country in which we do business. For example, our ads policies don’t allow ads for illegal products such as counterfeit goods or harmful products such as handguns or cigarettes. We also don’t allow ads with misleading claims (“lose weight guaranteed!”), fraudulent work-at-home scams (“get rich quick working from home!”) or unclear billing practices.

How it all works
With billions of ads submitted to Google every year, we use a combination of sophisticated technology and manual review to detect and remove these sorts of ads. We spend millions of dollars building technical architecture and advanced machine learning models to fight this battle. These systems are designed to detect and remove ads for malicious download sites that contain malware or a virus before these ads could appear on Google. Our automated systems also scan and review landing pages—the websites that people are taken to once they click—as well as advertiser accounts. When potentially objectionable ads are flagged by our automated systems, our policy specialists review the ads, sites and accounts in detail and take action.

Improvements to detection systems
Here are some important improvements that we’ve recently made to our systems:

Improved “query watch” for counterfeit ads: While anyone can report counterfeit ads, we’ve widened our proactive monitoring of sensitive keywords and queries related to counterfeit goods which allows us to catch more counterfeit ads before they ever appear on Google
New “risk model” to detect violations: Our computer scanning depends on detailed risk models to determine whether a particular ad may violate our policies, and we recently upgraded our engineering system with a new “risk model” that is even more precise in detecting advertisers who violate our policies
Faster manual review process: Some ads need to be reviewed manually. To increase our response time in preventing ads from policy-violating advertisers, we sped up our internal processes and systems for manual reviews, enabling our specialists to be more precise and fast
Twenty-four hour response time: We aim to respond within 24 hours upon receiving a reliable complaint about an ad to ensure that we’re reviewing ads in a timely fashion

We also routinely review and update the areas which our policies cover. For example, we recently updated our policy for ads related to short-term loans in order to protect people from misleading claims. For short-term loans, we require advertisers to disclose fine-print details such as overall fees and annual percentage rate, as well as implications for late and non-payment.

Bad ads are declining
The numbers show we’re having success. In 2011, advertisers submitted billions of ads to Google, and of those, we disabled more than 130 million ads. And our systems continue to improve—in fact, in 2011 we reduced the percentage of bad ads by more than 50% compared with 2010. That means that our methods are working. We’re also catching the vast majority of these scam ads before they ever appear on Google or on any of our partner networks. For example, in 2011, we shut down approximately 150,000 accounts for attempting to advertise counterfeit goods, and more than 95% of these accounts were discovered through our own detection efforts and risk models.

Here’s David Baker, Engineering Director, who can explain more about how we detect and remove scam ads:

What you can do to help
If you’re an advertiser, we encourage you to review our policies that aim to protect users, so you can help keep the web safe. For everyone else, our Good to Know site has lots of advice, including tips for avoiding scams anywhere on the Internet. You can also report ads you believe to be fraudulent or in violation of our policies and, if needed, file a complaint with the appropriate agency as listed in our Web Search Help Center.

Online advertising is the commercial lifeblood of the web, so it’s vital that people can trust the ads on Google and the Internet overall. We’ll keep posting more information here about our efforts, and developments, in this area.

Syrian citizen journalists capture Netizen Prize

2012-03-14T10:00:00.021-04:00

Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog

Earlier this week, Reporters Without Borders awarded the Netizen Prize to Syrian citizen journalists at a ceremony in Paris. The Netizen Prize is awarded annually to a blogger, online journalist or cyber-dissident who has helped to promote freedom of expression on the Internet.

For the past year, Syrian citizen journalists have continued to collect and disseminate information on the uprising wracking their country. Reporters Without Borders tonight honored these courageous activists, awarding them the 2012 Netizen Prize.

Jasmine a 27-year-old Syrian activist living in Canada, accepted the award in a ceremony in Paris on behalf of the Local Coordination Committees. She preferred to use a pseudonym to protect her family inside Syria. “The Netizen Prize proves that our voices were heard and that we succeeded in delivering the stories of millions of Syrians who are struggling on the ground to achieve what they have always dreamed - to live in freedom and dignity” she said.

This is third year in a row that Google has sponsored the Netizen Prize. Reporters Without Borders counts 200 cases of netizens arrested in 2011, up 30% over the previous year. Five were killed. This is the highest level of violence against netizens ever recorded. More than 120 are currently in jail for keeping us informed. Our own products are blocked in about 25 of 125 countries in which the company operates. “The Internet allows courageous individuals in Syria and elsewhere to tell their story to the world,” said Google France President Jean-Marc Tassetto. “The Netizen Prize and our work with Reporters Without Borders testifies to our belief that access to information will lead to greater freedom and greater social and economic development.”

Syrian journalists and bloggers are threatened and arrested by the government. International news organizations are, for the most part, kept out of the country. In their absence, the committees have become almost the only way to keep the world abreast of the violence wracking the country. They emerged spontaneously following the start of the Syrian revolution last March, bringing together human rights activists and local journalists, and now are found in most cities and towns across the country. “The Netizen Prize proves that our voices were heard," Jasmine said.

Informants on the ground send information and the committees confirm it from multiple sources. A third group translates the news into English and distributes it. News, videos and pictures are posted on the group's Facebook page, on its photo blog, and on the group’s own website. "There are millions of stories that made us cry, laugh, get mixed emotions since the uprising began,” Ola added. “We were talking to a mother of three detainees and she made us all promise each other that no matter what, we will never stop covering the events of our beloved Syria."

The award was distributed on World Day Against Cyber Censorship. In 2010, the Netizen Prize was awarded to Iranian cyberfeminists. Last year, it went to Nawaat, a group blog run by independent Tunisian bloggers. The nominees for the Netizen Award 2012 come from across the globe, ranging from Russia to Syria to Brazil and China. their geographic diversity a reflection of the growing impact of the Net.

Google welcomes broad industry agreement on advertising and privacy

2012-02-23T13:04:00.000-05:00

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, SVP, Advertising

There’s been a lot of debate over the last few years about personalization on the web. We believe that tailoring your web experience -- for example by showing you more relevant, interest-based ads, or making it easy to recommend stuff you like to friends -- is a good thing. We also believe that the best way to protect your privacy is to enable you to exercise choice through meaningful product controls. That said, given the number of different browsers and products available online today -- many of which have different privacy controls -- we recognize that it can get confusing.

So we’re pleased to sign up to today’s industry-wide agreement (you can read the details here) -- put together by the White House, the Federal Trade Commission and the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), which represents over 90 percent of all online advertising in the U.S -- to create a simpler, more unified approach to privacy on the web. Under this agreement, users will be able to exercise choice under the DAA Principles by setting what has been called a “Do Not Track” header straight from their browser. The DAA Principles, and therefore the header, cover some aspects of tailored advertising. But, for example, if users have requested personalization (such as by signing up for particular services) or visit websites that use “first party” cookies to personalize the overall experience (for example a news website recommending articles to its readers, or a video site remembering your volume preferences), then browsers will not break that experience. In addition, today’s agreement supports continued innovation and competition on the web, as well as important, basic web functionality -- such as malware, spam and fraud detection.

We look forward to working with our industry partners, the White House, the FTC, the DAA and all the major browsers including Google Chrome, to adopt a broadly consistent approach to these controls -- rather than the situation today where every browser sets its own defaults, policies, and exceptions. In particular, we are pleased that today’s agreement will ensure that users are given an explicit choice, and be fully informed of the available options.

This agreement will not solve all the privacy issues users face on the web today. However, it represents a meaningful step forward in privacy controls for users. We look forward to making this happen.

Trading over the Internet

2012-02-14T13:51:00.000-05:00

Posted by Winter Casey, Senior Policy Analyst

In the Stone Age, as humans struggled to survive and build, they traded for food and tools. In the Age of Discovery, as explorers traversed the seas, they traded spices. And now in the Information Age, as the Internet becomes an increasingly robust business platform, all kinds of goods and services are traded online every day.

Thanks to the Web, trade has never been easier. Companies large and small can have easy access to a global marketplace. And in that way, the free flow of information without restriction across the Internet is contributing to growing economies across the world.

Fortunately, several countries and entities have recognized the critical role that open information flows play in trade and economic growth. Just a few weeks ago, the United States and Japan signed new information and communications technology principles which support open government and the free flow of information across national borders. That agreement comes on the heels of similar principles signed by the U.S. and EU and members of the U.S. business community last year.

We hope that more governments and industries will recognize the role that the free flow of information plays in the global economy. A consistent and transparent framework for cross-border flows of goods, services and information will help individuals and businesses around the world.

Educating Across the Globe for Safer Internet Day

2012-02-07T13:00:00.021-05:00

Posted by Katharine Wang, Policy Analyst

As more of our life happens online, Internet skills are crucial to living responsibly. So what are the skills needed to navigate today’s Internet society? To answer this question and help adapt to digital society, parents and educators are working together to find new ways to teach themselves, their families, and their communities about important topics like identity protection, online security, and digital citizenship.

Today, on Safer Internet Day, we are proud to partner with Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, the National Consumers League, on launching a new digital literacy portal called ThinkB4U. ThinkB4U combines “choose-your-own-adventure” style videos with expert advice from leading online safety NGOs and the Federal Trade Commission’s OnGuard Online resources.

ThinkB4U is just one example of how seriously we take the challenge of increasing safety on the web. Here are a few examples of Google’s involvement across the globe, along with inspiring efforts from our partners, NGOs, government stakeholders, and researchers from Asia-Pacific to Europe:

Awareness Campaigns

Australia: The Google Australia team is raising awareness of Google and YouTube safety tools by placing advertisements in newspapers and online.
Russia: In collaboration with Net Literacy we are meeting with over 200 Russian journalism students to engage them in a broader discussion on digital literacy, and what they can personally do in their schools and local communities. Additionally, we are hosting a series of international expert panels at the Safer Internet Forum.

Research and Technical Solutions

UK: We are funding research by Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre (YAW-CRC) on how parents can practice online safety (part 1 and part 2).
France: We are supporting great work by e-Enfance on Net Ecoute Chrome extension an extension that allows for quick access to online discussions with a helpline counselor.
Italy: Italian child advocacy organization Telefono Azzurro has decided to share a Google Search Appliance that we had previously donated with all of the members of Missing Children Europe (MCE)—the federation of national NGOs responsible for the European 116.000 phone hotline. We hope the use of our GSA will help streamline processes among the members of MCE in combating child exploitation and recovering missing children throughout Europe.

Events

Israel: Following our successful launch of the Web-Rangers program, Israel’s Ministry of Education has invited these talented online safety ambassadors to present their projects all across Israel and on YouTube.
Hong Kong: We are working with Weborganic, an organization tasked by the government to bridge the digital divide in schools, on an online safety exhibition for participating students and teachers.
Indonesia: We are organizing a series of trainings for NGOs, youth and community leaders, educators, and officials in the Ministry of Communications.
Germany: Wieland Holfelder, Google Engineering Director, is keynoting a session on safe Internet use at the Safer Internet Event in Germany, organized by Bitkom and the Ministry of Consumer Protection (BMELV).
Portugal: We’re launching the Google Family Safety Center in Portugal with an event in Lisbon, chaired by the President of the National Commission for Children's Protection and Young at Risk, Mr. Armando Leandro.

There is still much to be done to achieve high levels of digital literacy for everyone. We hope that these projects and events will boost advocacy for online safety education, the importance of which is invaluable in a deeply connected world.

Check out the EU Public Policy Blog for more Safer Internet Day information!

Busting myths about our approach to privacy

2012-02-01T14:13:00.002-05:00

Posted by Betsy Masiello, Policy Manager

A number of myths are being spread about Google’s approach to privacy. We just wanted to give you the facts.

Myth:In 2011, Google made $36 billion selling information about users like you. [Fairsearch Ad - See this piece for more]
Fact: Google does not sell, trade or rent personally identifiable user information. Advertisers can run ads on Google that are matched to search keywords, or use our services to show ads based on anonymous data, such as your location or the websites you’ve visited.

Myth: Google’s Privacy Policy changes make it harder for users to control their personal information. [Microsoft]
Fact: Our privacy controls have not changed. Period. Our users can: edit and delete their search history; edit and delete their YouTube viewing history; use many of our services signed in or out; use Google Dashboard and our Ads Preferences Manager to see what data we collect and manage the way it is used; and take advantage of our data liberation efforts if they want to remove information from our services.

Myth: Google is changing our Privacy Policy to make the data we collect more valuable to advertisers. [Microsoft]
Fact: The vast majority of the product personalization Google does is unrelated to ads—it’s about making our services better for users. Today a signed-in user can instantly add an appointment to their Calendar when a message in Gmail looks like it’s about a meeting, or read Google Docs within their email.
Myth: Google reads your email. [Microsoft]
Fact: No one reads your email but you. Like most major email providers, our computers scan messages to get rid of spam and malware, as well as show ads that are relevant to you.

Myth: Google Apps aren't safe, and aren't government-certified. [Microsoft]
Fact: Google's Apps are certified for government use because they are secure.

Myth: Google’s Privacy Policy changes jeopardize government information in Google Apps. [SafeGov.org]
Fact: Our new Privacy Policy does not change our contractual agreements, which have always superseded Google’s Privacy Policy for enterprise customers.

Myth: Microsoft’s approach to privacy is better than Google’s. [Microsoft]
Fact: We don’t make judgments about other people’s policies or controls. But our industry-leading Privacy Dashboard, Ads Preferences Manager and data liberation efforts enable you to understand and control the information we collect and how we use it—and we’ve simplified our privacy policy to make it easier to understand. Microsoft has no data liberation effort or Dashboard-like hub for users. Their privacy policy states that “information collected through one Microsoft service may be combined with information obtained through other Microsoft services.”

We’ve always believed the facts should inform our marketing—and that it’s best to focus on our users rather than negative attacks on other companies. Onwards!

Changing our privacy policies, not our privacy controls

2012-01-31T07:59:00.005-05:00

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director, Public Policy

Last week we heard from members of Congress about Google’s plans to update our privacy policies by consolidating them into a single document on March 1. Protecting people’s privacy is something we think about all day across the company, and we welcome discussions about our approach.

We hope this letter, in which we respond to the members’ questions, clears up the confusion about these changes. We’re updating our privacy policies for two reasons:

First, we’re trying to make them simpler and more understandable, which is something that lawmakers and regulators have asked technology companies to do. By folding more than 60 product-specific privacy policies into our main Google one, we’re explaining our privacy commitments to users of those products in 85% fewer words.

Second, we want to make our users’ experience seamless and easy by allowing more sharing of information among products when users are signed into their Google Accounts. In other words, we want to make more of your information available to you when you’re signed into Google services.

Some important things aren’t changing:

We’re still keeping your private information private -- we’re not changing the visibility of any information you have stored with Google.
We’re still allowing you to do searches, watch videos on YouTube, get driving directions on Google Maps, and perform other tasks without signing into a Google Account.
We’re still offering you choice and control through privacy tools like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager that help you understand and manage your data.
We still won’t sell your personal information to advertisers.
We’re still offering data liberation if you’d prefer to close your Google Account and take your data elsewhere.

While our privacy policies will change on March 1, our commitment to our privacy principles is as strong as ever.

Setting the record straight about our privacy policy changes

2012-01-26T17:54:00.001-05:00

Posted by Betsy Masiello, Policy Manager

A lot has been said about our new privacy policy. Some have praised us for making our privacy policy easier to understand. Others have asked questions, including members of Congress, and that’s understandable too. We look forward to answering those questions, and clearing up some of the misconceptions about our privacy policies that first appeared in the Washington Post.

So, here’s the real story:

You still have choice and control. You don’t need to log in to use many of our services, including Search, Maps and YouTube. If you are logged in, you can still edit or turn off your Search history, switch Gmail chat to “off the record,” control the way Google tailors ads to your interests, use Incognito mode on Chrome, or use any of the other privacy tools we offer.
We’re not collecting more data about you. Our new policy simply makes it clear that we use data to refine and improve your experience on Google — whichever products or services you use. This is something we have already been doing for a long time.
We’re making things simpler and we’re trying to be upfront about it. Period.
You can use as much or as little of Google as you want. For example, you can have a Google Account and choose to use Gmail, but not use Google+. Or you could keep your data separate with different accounts -- for example, one for YouTube and another for Gmail.

For more detail, please read the new privacy policy and terms, and visit this site to learn more.

Don’t censor the web

2012-01-18T00:43:00.002-05:00

Posted by David Drummond, SVP Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

You might notice many of your favorite websites look different today. Wikipedia is down. WordPress is dark. We’re censoring our homepage logo and asking you to petition Congress. So what’s the big deal?

Right now in Washington D.C., Congress is considering two bills that would censor the web and impose burdensome regulations on American businesses. They’re known as the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. Here’s what they’d do:

PIPA & SOPA will censor the web. These bills would grant new powers to law enforcement to filter the Internet and block access to tools to get around those filters. We know from experience that these powers are on the wish list of oppressive regimes throughout the world. SOPA and PIPA also eliminate due process. They provide incentives for American companies to shut down, block access to and stop servicing U.S. and foreign websites that copyright and trademark owners allege are illegal without any due process or ability of a wrongfully targeted website to seek restitution.
PIPA & SOPA will risk our industry’s track record of innovation and job creation. These bills would make it easier to sue law-abiding U.S. companies. Law-abiding payment processors and Internet advertising services can be subject to these private rights of action. SOPA and PIPA would also create harmful (and uncertain) technology mandates on U.S. Internet companies, as federal judges second-guess technological measures used by these companies to stop bad actors, and potentially impose inconsistent injunctions on them.
PIPA & SOPA will not stop piracy. These bills wouldn’t get rid of pirate sites. Pirate sites would just change their addresses in order to continue their criminal activities. There are better ways to address piracy than to ask U.S. companies to censor the Internet. The foreign rogue sites are in it for the money, and we believe the best way to shut them down is to cut off their sources of funding. As a result, Google supports alternative approaches like the OPEN Act.

Fighting online piracy is extremely important. We are investing a lot of time and money in that fight. Last year alone we acted on copyright takedown notices for more than 5 million webpages and invested more than $60 million in the fight against ads appearing on bad sites. And we think there is more that can be done here—like targeted and focused steps to cut off the money supply to foreign pirate sites. If you cut off the money flow, you cut the incentive to steal.

Because we think there’s a good way forward that doesn’t cause collateral damage to the web, we’re joining Wikipedia, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Mozilla and other Internet companies in speaking out against SOPA and PIPA. And we’re asking you to sign a petition and join the millions who have already reached out to Congress through phone calls, letters and petitions asking them to rethink SOPA and PIPA.

Tech tips that are Good to Know

2012-01-17T00:00:00.002-05:00

Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Does this person sound familiar? He can’t be bothered to type a password into his phone every time he wants to play a game of Angry Birds. When he does need a password, maybe for his email or bank website, he chooses one that’s easy to remember like his sister’s name—and he uses the same one for each website he visits. For him, cookies come from the bakery, IP addresses are the locations of Intellectual Property and a correct Google search result is basically magic.

Most of us know someone like this. Technology can be confusing, and the industry often fails to explain clearly enough why digital literacy matters. So today in the U.S. we’re kicking off Good to Know, our biggest-ever consumer education campaign focused on making the web a safer, more comfortable place. Our ad campaign, which we introduced in the U.K. and Germany last fall, offers privacy and security tips: Use 2-step verification! Remember to lock your computer when you step away! Make sure your connection to a website is secure! It also explains some of the building blocks of the web like cookies and IP addresses. Keep an eye out for the ads in newspapers and magazines, online and in New York and Washington, D.C. subway stations.

The campaign and Good to Know website build on our commitment to keeping people safe online. We’ve created resources like privacy videos, the Google Security Center, the Family Safety Center and Teach Parents Tech to help you develop strong privacy and security habits. We design for privacy, building tools like Google Dashboard, Me on the Web, the Ads Preferences Manager and Google+ Circles—with more on the way.

We encourage you to take a few minutes to check out the Good to Know site, watch some of the videos, and be on the lookout for ads in your favorite newspaper or website. We hope you’ll learn something new about how to protect yourself online—tips that are always good to know!

Update Jan 17: Updated to include more background about Good to Know.

Crowdsourcing to Protect: NCMEC’s Newly Redesigned CyberTipline

2012-01-06T15:00:00.003-05:00

Posted by Liz Eraker, Policy Counsel

We are strong believers in the importance of abuse reporting tools that identify harmful and illegal content online. That’s why we are proud to say we recently helped The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) launch a newly redesigned CyberTipline — the national reporting mechanism for cases of child sexual exploitation — to better protect all Internet users.

NCMEC receives a staggering amount of information. Since the CyberTipline’s inception over a decade ago, it has handled more than 1.25 million reports of child sexual exploitation. The National Center is at the forefront of efforts to protect society’s most vulnerable individuals by providing tools and resources for reporting abuse and working with law enforcement on child sexual exploitation investigations.

We are proud to have assisted NCMEC in building a more user-friendly and seamless reporting system for both the public and electronic service providers. In the spirit of our continued partnership with NCMEC, we hope that these improvements will help to better facilitate CyberTipline reporting and encourage more Internet users to join the fight against child sexual exploitation.

More details about the new CyberTipline are available on the NCMEC website here.

Giving back in 2011

2011-12-14T10:48:00.001-05:00

Posted by Shona Brown, SVP, Google.org

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

As the holiday season approaches we thought it was a good moment to update you on some grants we're making to support education, technology and the fight against modern day slavery.

STEM and girls’ education
Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) open up great opportunities for young people so we've decided to fund 16 great programs in this area. These include Boston-based Citizen Schools and Generating Genius in the U.K., both of which work to help to expand the horizons of underprivileged youngsters. In total, our grants will provide enhanced STEM education for more than 3 million students.

In addition, we're supporting girls’ education in the developing world. By giving a girl an education, you not only improve her opportunities, but those of her whole family. The African Leadership Academy provides merit scholarships to promising young women across the continent, and the Afghan Institute of Learning offers literacy classes to women and girls in rural Afghanistan. Groups like these will use our funds to educate more than 10,000 girls in developing countries.

Empowerment through technology
We've all been wowed by the entrepreneurial spirit behind the 15 awards in this category, all of whom are using the web, open source programming and other technology platforms to connect communities and improve access to information. Vittana, for instance, helps lenders offer loans to students in the developing world who have have a 99 percent repayment rate—potentially doubling or tripling a recipient's earning power. Code for America enables the web industry to share its skills with the public sector by developing projects that improve transparency and encourage civic engagement on a mass scale. And Switchboard is working with local mobile providers to help African health care workers create networks and communicate for free.,/p>

Fighting slavery and human trafficking
Modern day slavery is a multi-billion dollar industry that ruins the lives of around 27 million people. So we're funding a number of groups that are working to tackle the problem. For instance, in India, International Justice Mission (IJM), along with The BBC World Service Trust, Action Aid and Aide et Action, are forming a new coalition. It will work on the ground with governments to stop slave labor by identifying the ring masters, documenting abuse, freeing individuals and providing them with therapy as well as job training. Our support will also help expand the reach of tools like the powerful Slavery Footprint calculator and Polaris Project’s National Trafficking Hotline.

To learn more about these organizations and how you can get involved, visit our Google Gives Back 2011 site and take a look at this video:

These grants, which total $40 million, are only part of our annual philanthropic efforts. Over the course of the year, Google provided more than $115 million in funding to various nonprofit organizations and academic institutions around the world; our in-kind support (programs like Google Grants and Google Apps for Education that offer free products and services to eligible organizations) came to more than $1 billion, and our annual company-wide GoogleServe event and related programs enabled individual Googlers to donate more than 40,000 hours of their own volunteer time.

As 2011 draws to a close, I’m inspired by this year’s grantees and look forward to seeing their world-changing work in 2012.

Apply for a 2012 Google Policy Fellowship

2011-12-13T10:46:00.000-05:00

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director, Public Policy

From intellectual property enforcement, to patents, to free expression, policy makers are focused on the web. We’re excited to launch the 5th summer of the Google Policy Fellowship, connecting students of all levels and disciplines with organizations working on the forefront of these and other critical issues for the future of the Internet. Applications are open today, and the deadline to apply is February 3, 2012.

Selected students will spend ten weeks this summer working on a broad portfolio of topics at a diverse set of organizations, including: American Library Association, Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, Center for Democracy and Technology, The Citizen Lab, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Future of Music Coalition, Internet Education Foundation, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Media Access Project, National Hispanic Media Coalition, New America Foundation, Public Knowledge, TechFreedom, and Technology Policy Institute.

You can learn about the program and host organizations on the Google Public Policy Fellowship website.

Helping Implement America Invents Act

2011-12-09T15:00:00.003-05:00

Posted by Suzanne Michel, Senior Patent Counsel

In passing and signing the America Invents Act, Congress and President Obama recognized the high costs and harms to innovation posed by invalid patents. To help combat the problem, the law creates three new programs that allow the public to ask the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (or PTO for short) to reconsider the validity of issued patents based on new evidence and arguments: inter partes review, post-grant review, and a transitional program for review of business method patents.

To contribute to the dialog around how to implement these changes, we have submitted three comments to the PTO (two jointly with Cisco and Verizon) making suggestions on regulations that the PTO could issue to help these three programs achieve Congress’ goal, including:

The creation of procedures and rules that allow patent challengers a full opportunity to develop invalidity arguments so that the PTO will have the information it needs to make an informed decision;
Allowing companies harmed by threats of infringement (not just lawsuits) to use the new business method transitional program, including the definition of a broad category of eligible business method patents; and,
Continued protection of prior user rights under the first-to-file patent system, without which companies would be forced to file patents on trade secrets and minor improvements so a later patentee could not stop them from using their own inventions.

You can view these submitted comments in their entirety on the PTO’s site.