Tag Archives: UK

Bite-size skills training for Brits short on time

Digital skills are a key part of many jobs and are crucial for helping small businesses grow. But with the hustle of daily life, many of us struggle to find the time to learn valuable new skills that could help with landing a new job, earning more money or growing a business.

That’s why we’ve asked for advice from four people who’ve done this before: presenter and former footballer Ian Wright, entrepreneur and Dragon’s Den investor Steven Bartlett, finance professional turned YouTuber Patricia Bright, and founder of notonthehighstreet.co.uk Holly Tucker. Based on their experiences with switching careers or starting a business by learning a new skill, they’ve helped us create Skills to Go, a free, bitesize digital skills training programme.

Image shows man in front of bus with advice about keeping your CV brief overlaid

You can complete the short training sessions, which range from five to 20 minutes, as and when you have time — while commuting, over a coffee break or in between appointments. Our Skills to Go site suggests relevant topics — including CV writing, changing careers and growing a business online — based on how much time you have to spare.

We’ve built this programme in response to new data from YouGov that reveals that lack of time is the number one barrier stopping people from learning skills that could take their careers and businesses to the next level. And it’s a very real need: in the UK, more than 90% of people are online, yet fewer than half of businesses have a website. Businesses struggle to recruit people with digital skills; the digital skills gap accounts for 30% of unfilled vacancies, and costs the UK economy £63 billion per year.

Our new Skills to Go campaign is just one of the ways that we’re working to help address the nation’s skills shortage. Since launching our first digital skills training programme in Leeds in 2015, we’ve visited more than 500 locations up and down the country, and have provided digital skills training to more than 800,000 people in the UK. We offer individuals and business owners opportunities to, for example, take part in one-to-one mentoring sessions or learn about digital marketing to help them advance their careers or boost their businesses. This year, we’re visiting more than 30 locations, such as Newport and Cambridgeshire, to help people learn new skills and get Britain growing.

Image showing man sitting at a table with advice overlaid about how 66% of shopping is done on mobile, so websites should be built for speed.

Of course, we can’t do this alone. Earlier this year, alongside a number of top UK employers including the BBC, BT Group, Deloitte, John Lewis Partnership and NatWest, we announced our Employer Consortium, which recognises Google Career Certificates when recruiting for much-needed tech roles, providing an accessible path for Brits into high-growth, well-paid tech jobs.

Everyone should have the opportunity to gain digital skills regardless of their location, race, age, gender or education level. That's why we’re supporting Good Things Foundation’s work with 1,500 community organisations across the UK, which supports up to 25,000 people from underrepresented communities to get online and learn essential digital skills.

These are all part of our efforts to make it easier than ever for you to gain new skills, wherever you’re at in your career. So the next time you have a spare five minutes, search ‘Google Skills Training’ to learn from business experts like Stephen, Holly and Patricia and boost your business or career.

These Lionesses have byte – could analytics help them lift the trophy?

On Sunday, England will face Germany in the final act of this summer’s tournament—one that has pitted the top teams from across Europe against one another, and inspired a generation.

It will take grit, determination and a stunning backheel here or there for England to win. But technology plays a part too. The Football Association’s partnership with Google Cloud has been a vital part of the picture for the lead up to the competition, giving coaches and performance staff access to data and processing muscle that help it select the best squad available at any one time.

The FA’s Player Performance System (PPS) is a central component of Helix—an application and development suite developed by The FA. Helix has been hosted on Google Cloud for the last five years and is used by the Technical Directorate staff associated with both the England women’s and men’s football teams. It provides them with secure access to databases, processes, functions, and compute resources that analyse large volumes of data. It also integrates with visualisation tools to give coaches and performance staff multiple views of data that provides unique insights—customised to end users’ requirements.

This data can include anything from player profiles, to scouting reports, to medical information, to club and international fixtures and results. It also brings in research from metrics pulled from wearable devices, which track players’ training volume and intensity, to allow coaches to better manage their workloads. Coaches also have access to players’ sleep, nutrition, recovery, and mental health data.

“What it allows our users to do is pull together disparate information that they may not be used to seeing side-by-side. This helps us to generate new insights, and hopefully give us an edge when it comes to competitions,” said Craig Donald, CIO at The FA.

Helix provides multi-dimensional insight

Helix tracks more than 3,500 professional footballers and stores more than 22 million player data points collected from competitive games and training sessions. The platform relies on various Google Cloud tools, glued together by a complex microservice system, which is used to update the data being collected, analysed, and stored. Google Cloud Storage is also used to host The FA’s video archives of competitive games. As many as 400 games a day make their way into The FA database, each one creating up to a 5GB file size and 600MB of video tracking data.

Image of three Lioness football players with the middle one holding a football. Data points are circled in yellow, red and blue howcasing how Google Cloud technology is used to look at performance.

This means the FA has faster, more convenient access to data, plus greater insight into player and team performance, which can aid in both the selection and choice of tactics in any given fixture. The additional power and capacity of the GCP hosting infrastructure helps The FA quickly and cost effectively scale up its analytics capabilities to handle additional data sets during forthcoming competitions.

It often seems in football that everybody has their own idea of the best players to pick and the tactics to adopt. But the combination of granular data metrics and cloud architecture deployed by The FA and Google Cloud might actually give a genuine expert the knowledge to back up those opinions.

But does it mean the Lionesses will win on Sunday? Tune in to find out.

A video that showcases Google Cloud's data products and solutions, and how they help the Lionesses (England Team) be at the top of their game. The video features the Lionesses playing on a football pitch with Google Cloud's technology overlap, taking a deep dive into how they use data to improve performance.
10:25

Google News Showcase continues to grow in the UK

At the beginning of last year, we brought Google News Showcase, our product experience and licensing programme for news publishers, to the U.K. It’s designed to help publishers engage more deeply with their readers – and to help readers find, follow and support the news organisations covering the issues that matter to them. We continue to learn, update and expand the product, and we’ve seen strong, steady numbers – both in terms of the number of publishers signing on for the product in the UK, and how readers are interacting with the content.

More publishers join News Showcase in the UK

We’ve negotiated and signed deals with almost 240 news titles in the U.K. since launching News Showcase. The most recent is The Guardian, building on our longstanding work together on digital innovation for the future of news.

Keith Underwood, CEO of The Guardian, commented: “We are pleased to have expanded our partnership with Google to make our journalism available in digital, video and other formats in ways that will engage even wider audiences. This new deal supports further investment in journalism and will bring a new audience back to our sites where we can build deeper relationships of enduring value.”

Local news publishers make up 93% of the titles who’ve signed up to News Showcase in the U.K. to curate news in new ways and deepen their engagement with online audiences. These include Grantham Journal, NationalWorld.com, Reach’s Belfast Live and Clear Sky’s North Devon Gazette.

As Mark Thompson, Editor of National World, says: "We believe it is vital that our stories, videos and images are given the value they deserve so that we can produce ever more insightful, reliable and relevant journalism for audiences all over the UK. News Showcase has enabled our teams based in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland to display their impressive work on a great platform and in a meaningful way.”

Simon Bax, CEO of Clear Sky, also tells us: "Joining the Google News Showcase has had a dramatic and immediate effect as it has enabled us to hire an additional journalist, has elevated our standing within the community and has increased the team's self-assurance."

We recently announced that we’re making it easier to find local publishers in Google News Showcase by bringing their panels into the local section of Google News. Through our partnerships with local news publishers in the U.K., we’ve seen first-hand how local news is an essential way for readers to connect to their communities and ensure they get the news that impacts their day-to-day lives.

Supporting publishers and journalists in the UK

News Showcase is one element of our broader investment in news and journalism in the U.K. We spent more than $18 million on training, partnerships and programming with news organisations and other news industry partners between 2018 to 2020, and we’ve trained 16,500 journalists and journalism students since 2015.

We’re proud to fund the Journalism AI fellowship, organised by the media think-tank Polis at the London School of Economics, and to support organisations like Headlines Network who are providing essential mental health resources for journalists in England and Wales. We’re continuing our support for the University of Central Lancashire's Journalism innovation and Leadership (JIL) Programme for a third year and recently announced the Innovation Challenge for Europe, where small and medium-sized news organisations can apply for funding to stimulate innovation in news.

We’re dedicated to continuing our contribution to and collaboration with the news ecosystem, supporting the open web and continuing to provide access to information in the UK and elsewhere.

A milestone for King’s Cross: a local innovation hub

Over the last few years, King’s Cross has truly transformed, becoming a thriving hub of innovation and creativity. The transformation is a sign of the UK’s strengths, with its incredible local talent and strong history of leading technological and scientific progress. These strengths inspired us to invest here in King's Cross, in one of our most ambitious developments to date.

Today, together with local MP, Keir Starmer, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, leader of Camden Council Georgia Gould, and our building partners, we celebrated a major milestone in the construction of our new King’s Cross office – and in our long-standing commitment to the UK – as we placed the final beam on our new development.

Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party and MP for Holborn and St Pancras said:

“It’s fantastic to attend not only as the leader of the Labour Party and local MP but as a proud local resident of more than 25 years. Congratulations to Google on your magnificent new building, and for all it represents – a seizing of opportunity, harnessing of talent, the creation of good, sustainable jobs and an immense contribution to our community. You’re showing what can be achieved when forward looking local government partners with the ingenuity of the private sector.”

We have long believed that creativity is spurred by environments that promote connection and wellbeing. This is more important than ever as we adapt to a future of flexible, hybrid working. Our new King’s Cross building will be equipped with new workplace technologies to help global and remote teams collaborate more effectively, build relationships, learn from colleagues and dream up new ways to solve complex challenges.

It will also bea place for community and connection thanks to the ground floor retail and community spaces, which are being curated with — and for — the local community. In the coming weeks, in partnership with more than 30 youth organisations in Camden, we’re excited to open our doors to 500 local young people for a week of taster sessions to inspire school students and job seekers with careers in technology, as well as more than 100 local work experience students.

Innovation extends to the design of the building itself, which is playing an important role in helping us to achieve our goal of going carbon free by 2030. We’re pioneering new technologies that will make our King’s Cross office our most ambitious smart building to date, including a system of 13,500 interconnected devices that will work together to improve energy efficiency in real time.

While the doors of our new King’s Cross development won’t open until 2024, incredible work is already underway nearby. The neighbourhood is home to thousands of our engineers working on products like Android, Wear OS, Search and Google Business Profiles, which are used the world over. In fact, many of the team behind some of our newest products – to be released later this year – are based right here in King’s Cross. We look forward to growing these teams and being a part of the local community’s future growth and development.

Sadiq Khan, London Mayor signing a whiteboard

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan commented:

“London has built a reputation as a world leader in technology and innovation, so I’m delighted to see Google reaffirming its commitment to London with the first wholly owned and designed Google building outside of the United States. I was lucky enough to be present for the original ground-breaking at this site back in 2017. So, it’s incredible to see the progress that’s been made since then on this hugely ambitious project.

"My ambition, as Mayor, is to build a better London for everyone – one that is fairer, greener and more prosperous for all. And this magnificent building is a shining example of confidence in our city.”

Helping local journalism in the UK thrive online

Local news is at the heart of all communities – even in big cities. It’s often said London is a ‘city of villages’ and as someone who has grown up, studied and worked in different parts of the capital, I’ve always learnt a lot about my various neighbourhoods through the lens of the local newspaper. From the ‘Surrey Comet’ in Kingston, to the ‘Ham & High’ in Haringey, local journalism shines a light on issues as diverse as local government, culture and important new developments.

Today, thanks to the internet, readers can choose from an incredible array of news sources online. Anyone with a passion can set up a specialist blog and find a following. This is great news for creators and readers like me with a niche interest in anything from arts to architecture. But the online environment and changing audience habits have disrupted traditional business models. Today, local papers and news sites have to work harder than ever to capture – and monetise – audiences' attention with news they’ll enjoy.

One way we support local publishers to meet this challenge is by driving online audiences to their journalism via Google News and Search. In 2021, we sent more than 2.4 billion organic clicks to local news publications in the UK from global users on Google Search and News. A 2019 study by Deloitte in Europe valued each visit between €0.04-0.06 —which equates to more than £84 million in value going to British local news publications from Google traffic alone.

We’ve been working to give local news greater prominence on Google Search and News in recent years, and our latest changes to Google News will help readers discover local content even more easily.

Local publishers often tell us they want to strengthen their digital skills and build on their expertise to further cut through to online audiences. That’s why with the Google News Initiative we are focused on helping local journalism to thrive. We partner with local publishers on new products like Google News Showcase, or the digital portal we developed with the NMA to protect revenue from public notices. On partnerships that support experimentation and innovation in new sustainable business models, and on training to upskill journalists with digital tools and techniques. Our training includes digital verification to tackle misinformation, data journalism and tools that strengthen investigative journalism.

Many local publishers across the UK are already innovating with new digital strategies to pull in new readers and revenues. Today we’re announcing three new programmes that build on this long standing work, and there is more to come.

Supporting local publishers with subscriptions

To be successful in the long term, publishers must have a sustainable digital revenue model. As part of our Digital Growth Programme, we partnered with the NMA and FT Strategies to help 12 local publishers develop the expertise they need to build a blueprint for the future. Local partners like Barnsley Chronicle, Rotherham Advertiser, and Iliffe Media took part, and it’s been great to hear the response:

Jeremy Spooner at the Maidenhead Advertiser said: “The extremely high level of expertise delivered by the FT Strategies team, coupled with their access to insights on how to grow digital subscription revenue would not have been accessible by Baylis Media Ltd, had it not been funded by Google News Initiative. The programme has given the team the confidence to accelerate its Digital Subscription Strategy with a clear methodology now in place and a challenge goal set. Without doubt the programme has provided a significant boost to the Digital Revenue Strategy.”

Today, we’re announcing that we’re expanding the programme for another 12 months in response to feedback from the publishers involved.

A new nationwide training partnership with the National Union of Journalists

As a former journalist, I can begin to understand the pressure to stay across a range of new tools. The team I lead has trained 16,500 UK journalists and journalism students since 2015, with a focus on providing workshops outside of London.

Our new partnership with the National Union of Journalists will build on these efforts, and focus on helping local journalists across the UK and Ireland develop both their journalism and leadership capabilities. They’ll deliver 13 in-person workshops nationwide, and 30 virtual digital skills workshops to ensure the training is fully accessible to all.

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary said: “This partnership is an opportunity to improve the digital skills of our members, in particular by using technology to verify the authenticity and accuracy of images, videos and reports on social media and elsewhere online – an essential skill for a modern and ethical journalist. The training will also help mid-career members to progress towards leadership roles, with a particular emphasis on groups under-represented within the industry’s management – women, black and minority ethic, disabled and working class journalists.”

Partnering with PA Media on digital skills

Ensuring training programmes reach groups that are underrepresented in journalism is important if UK newsrooms are to better reflect the communities they serve. That's why we’re proud to sponsor the NCTJ’s Journalism Diversity Fund and to have helped support 200 aspiring journalists from diverse backgrounds through their training and into local newsrooms such as WalesOnline, Barnsley Chronicle and Newcastle World.

Today we’re launching a new partnership with PA Media to offer more targeted support for underrepresented groups across two key areas: digital skills and misinformation. First, we’re sponsoring 25 places on PA Media's four-week summer school for students from underrepresented backgrounds, with a particular focus on reaching students in Westminster and Camden – as well as a series of training festivals for 500 journalists. Secondly, we’re supporting PA Media to develop a new training curriculum to help journalists tackle misinformation as part of their daily news gathering processes.

Alongside these partnerships, we provide direct funding to support innovation in local news via the GNI innovation Challenge for Europe, our YouTube Creator Programme for Independent Journalists and our newly announced Global News Equity Fund.

We’re excited to see the impact these news projects have and to keep working with our local partners to help ensure a vibrant future for local British journalism.

Helping local journalism in the UK thrive online

Local news is at the heart of all communities – even in big cities. It’s often said London is a ‘city of villages’ and as someone who has grown up, studied and worked in different parts of the capital, I’ve always learnt a lot about my various neighbourhoods through the lens of the local newspaper. From the ‘Surrey Comet’ in Kingston, to the ‘Ham & High’ in Haringey, local journalism shines a light on issues as diverse as local government, culture and important new developments.

Today, thanks to the internet, readers can choose from an incredible array of news sources online. Anyone with a passion can set up a specialist blog and find a following. This is great news for creators and readers like me with a niche interest in anything from arts to architecture. But the online environment and changing audience habits have disrupted traditional business models. Today, local papers and news sites have to work harder than ever to capture – and monetise – audiences' attention with news they’ll enjoy.

One way we support local publishers to meet this challenge is by driving online audiences to their journalism via Google News and Search. In 2021, we sent more than 2.4 billion organic clicks to local news publications in the UK from global users on Google Search and News. A 2019 study by Deloitte in Europe valued each visit between €0.04-0.06 —which equates to more than £84 million in value going to British local news publications from Google traffic alone.

We’ve been working to give local news greater prominence on Google Search and News in recent years, and our latest changes to Google News will help readers discover local content even more easily.

Local publishers often tell us they want to strengthen their digital skills and build on their expertise to further cut through to online audiences. That’s why with the Google News Initiative we are focused on helping local journalism to thrive. We partner with local publishers on new products like Google News Showcase, or the digital portal we developed with the NMA to protect revenue from public notices. On partnerships that support experimentation and innovation in new sustainable business models, and on training to upskill journalists with digital tools and techniques. Our training includes digital verification to tackle misinformation, data journalism and tools that strengthen investigative journalism.

Many local publishers across the UK are already innovating with new digital strategies to pull in new readers and revenues. Today we’re announcing three new programmes that build on this long standing work, and there is more to come.

Supporting local publishers with subscriptions

To be successful in the long term, publishers must have a sustainable digital revenue model. As part of our Digital Growth Programme, we partnered with the NMA and FT Strategies to help 12 local publishers develop the expertise they need to build a blueprint for the future. Local partners like Barnsley Chronicle, Rotherham Advertiser, and Iliffe Media took part, and it’s been great to hear the response:

Jeremy Spooner at the Maidenhead Advertiser said: “The extremely high level of expertise delivered by the FT Strategies team, coupled with their access to insights on how to grow digital subscription revenue would not have been accessible by Baylis Media Ltd, had it not been funded by Google News Initiative. The programme has given the team the confidence to accelerate its Digital Subscription Strategy with a clear methodology now in place and a challenge goal set. Without doubt the programme has provided a significant boost to the Digital Revenue Strategy.”

Today, we’re announcing that we’re expanding the programme for another 12 months in response to feedback from the publishers involved.

A new nationwide training partnership with the National Union of Journalists

As a former journalist, I can begin to understand the pressure to stay across a range of new tools. The team I lead has trained 16,500 UK journalists and journalism students since 2015, with a focus on providing workshops outside of London.

Our new partnership with the National Union of Journalists will build on these efforts, and focus on helping local journalists across the UK and Ireland develop both their journalism and leadership capabilities. They’ll deliver 13 in-person workshops nationwide, and 30 virtual digital skills workshops to ensure the training is fully accessible to all.

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary said: “This partnership is an opportunity to improve the digital skills of our members, in particular by using technology to verify the authenticity and accuracy of images, videos and reports on social media and elsewhere online – an essential skill for a modern and ethical journalist. The training will also help mid-career members to progress towards leadership roles, with a particular emphasis on groups under-represented within the industry’s management – women, black and minority ethic, disabled and working class journalists.”

Partnering with PA Media on digital skills

Ensuring training programmes reach groups that are underrepresented in journalism is important if UK newsrooms are to better reflect the communities they serve. That's why we’re proud to sponsor the NCTJ’s Journalism Diversity Fund and to have helped support 200 aspiring journalists from diverse backgrounds through their training and into local newsrooms such as WalesOnline, Barnsley Chronicle and Newcastle World.

Today we’re launching a new partnership with PA Media to offer more targeted support for underrepresented groups across two key areas: digital skills and misinformation. First, we’re sponsoring 25 places on PA Media's four-week summer school for students from underrepresented backgrounds, with a particular focus on reaching students in Westminster and Camden – as well as a series of training festivals for 500 journalists. Secondly, we’re supporting PA Media to develop a new training curriculum to help journalists tackle misinformation as part of their daily news gathering processes.

Alongside these partnerships, we provide direct funding to support innovation in local news via the GNI innovation Challenge for Europe, our YouTube Creator Programme for Independent Journalists and our newly announced Global News Equity Fund.

We’re excited to see the impact these news projects have and to keep working with our local partners to help ensure a vibrant future for local British journalism.

Connecting UK businesses with tech talent

Since inception, Google has innovated with technology to narrow the opportunity gap that exists in education, access to information, job mobility and more – for people around the world. We believe sustainable economic growth is only possible when there is inclusive growth, so we work to equip people with the skills needed to participate in the digital economy.

Grow with Google, our digital skills training program, has trained 94 million people around the world, and more than 800,000 people in the U.K. From Grow with Google, we launched Google Career Certificates, which provides job seekers with accessible paths to careers in high-growth sectors, including data analytics, IT support, project management, user experience design and digital marketing. Seventy-eight percent of U.K. Certificate graduates report seeing a positive impact on their career within six months, including a raise or a new job.

Today, we are announcing the creation of a UK Employer Consortium – a group of employers, including the BBC, BT Group, Deloitte and John Lewis Partnership, that will consider those who have earned the Certificates for jobs. We know one entity acting alone will never be as effective as many coming together, and we have long been committed to partnering with others. For example, we’ve worked with organizations like the Department for Work and Pensions and The Prince’s Trust to offer 10,000 scholarships to job seekers to help them complete a Certificate, and beginning today we will be making another 10,000 scholarships available.

We believe the Consortium will play an important part, alongside the U.K.’s focus on higher education, in building a digitally skilled workforce and filling the growing number of open technology roles in the country. Almost half of U.K. employers have reported they are struggling to recruit for digital roles, and the Certificate fields have been chosen specifically in response to the high numbers of open positions in those areas.

Ousman, a Certificate graduate, speaks to members of the Employer Consortium at an event at Google.

Ousman, a Certificate graduate, speaks to members of the Employer Consortium

Google is committed to helping employers from across the U.K. meet amazing people like Jelena Stephenson, who I was fortunate to speak with last year when I met some of the first people in the U.K. to take part in our Certificates program. Jelena worked for 15 years as a teacher in Serbia. After her husband was diagnosed with leukemia, they decided to move to London, where she quickly found that despite her strong background in education, she was unable to get a job as a teacher. After receiving a scholarship for the Googler Career Certificate in Project Management, Jelena regained the confidence she had lost while out of work, and found a role as a digital project coordinator.

I have been proud to see first-hand the progression of our program in the U.K. and the impact it has had on people like Jelena. We look forward to further evolving our program as we continue to build the UK Consortium and connect growing businesses with talented jobseekers.

Search ranking is based on many things, British politics isn’t one

In my time at Google, UK publishers of every political leaning have asked me why they don't rank higher in Search. My answer is always the same: search ranking is based on many things, but British politics is not one of them.

We go to great lengths to build our products and enforce our policies in ways that don't take political leanings into account. People trust Google to deliver relevant results; distorting results for political purposes would undermine that trust and hurt our business.

This question comes down to the fundamentals of how Search works. When you type in a query, there could be thousands or even millions of webpages or other information that might be relevant. In a fraction of a second, Google’s Search automated systems sort through this to find the most relevant, useful results for what you’re looking for. There are hundreds of factors that determine which results are shown – from quality and freshness to the words of your query, expertise of sources, and the searcher’s location and settings.

We know Search can always be better. That’s why we conduct hundreds of thousands of experiments every year and get feedback from third-party Search Quality Raters, resulting in thousands of improvements, all of which are rigorously tested.

Along with our own testing, independent studies including by Stanford and The Economist have demonstrated there is no political bias in Search and News results. As the Economist concluded: “Google rewards reputable reporting, not left-wing politics”. Other UK publishers have also conducted their own research.

These questions come in from all sides and we’re always happy to explain how our systems work. As long as I keep getting these kinds of queries from every corner of the political spectrum, I'll know we’re doing our job.

Celebrating 10 years of Google for Startups in the UK

I remember clearly the palpable sense of excitement at the Google for Startups Campus in London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ when I first visited in 2012. My first startup, back in Krakow Poland, had shut down after three years of solid early traction, and I moved to London in pursuit of bigger opportunities, a community and capital to fuel growth. The UK quickly became home, and my London Campus experience was so positive I ended up joining Google six years later.

As we celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Google for Startups UK, we’re taking a moment to celebrate the entrepreneurs and teams who have blazed a trail, and looking ahead to ensure we’re helping create the right conditions for future founders.

The industry has grown exponentially since Google for Startups UK launched 10 years ago – this year, we’ve already seen UK tech startups and scaleups cumulatively valued at more than $1 trillion (£794bn); up from $53.6 billion (£46bn), ten years ago.

One area of the UK tech startup community that has flourished in particular is impact tech - defined as . companies founded to help address global challenges like climate change and help transform health, education and financial inclusion. Our new report created in partnership with Tech Nation, A Decade of UK Tech, shows that funding for impact tech startups has soared. In fact, since 2011, funding for impact tech companies addressing UN Sustainable Development Goals has risen 43-fold from just $74 million (£59 million) to $3.5 billion (£2.8 billion).

Graph: Investment into impact tech scaleups (2011-2021)

Graph 1: Investment into impact tech scaleups (2011-2021)

Source: Tech Nation, Dealroom, 2022

Startups are helping to solve global challenges, like climate change, education, health, food and sanitation, with agility, innovation and determination. And at Google for Startups, we’re proud to be supporting these businesses along the way by connecting founders with the right people, products and practices to help them grow. Because their continued success is vital not just for the UK’s future, but that of the world.

Enduring market barriers and perceptions of high risk can slow private sector investment. But even such challenges create a multitude of new opportunities for tech startups to leverage the UK's position as a financial services powerhouse. Elizabeth Nyeko
Founder of Modularity Grid - A deep tech startup

Google for Startups was launched in the UK with a mission to support a thriving, diverse and inclusive startup community. Here’s where we are a decade later:

  • Startups in our community have created more than 24,000 jobs
  • Startups in our network have raised £358 million
  • We supported 20 UK-based Black-led startups with the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund in Europe. Last year's European cohort went on to raise £64 million in subsequent funding and increase their headcount by 21%

Our work at Google for Startups is far from over. We’re committed to levelling the playing field for all founders, and closing the disproportionate gap in access to capital and support networks for underrepresented communities. For the impact tech sector to continue to grow and succeed, we must ensure funding is channeled towards the most innovative startups - no matter their valuation, funding stage or background.

Find out more at Google for Startups.

Google and news in the UK: The facts

Recent events have reminded us of the role that journalists play in helping us understand important topics as they unfold. The UK has a long history of great journalism, which has enriched our society, economy and democracy.

When people use Google Search to look for information about what’s happening in the world around them, they want links to reliable news sources. Likewise, publishers want to reach and inform more readers, helping everyone make sense of events. This has real benefits for publishers. In fact, the overall value of web traffic is estimated to be worth more than £500 million a year to news publishers in the UK.

Beyond this simple value proposition, we invest heavily in news – making us one of the UK's biggest financial supporters of journalism. For instance, at the beginning of last year, we brought Google News Showcase to the UK, which licenses content from more than 200 UK news publications.

Sharing some facts about how we work with UK publishers

Publishers choose if and how links to their articles appear on Google

Like other types of web pages that appear on Google Search, we provide links to news content. News publishers remain in full control over whether or not links to their web pages are included in Search and how much of a preview of their articles we show. Most decide to be included because it helps readers find their stories. Each month, people click through from Google Search and Google News results to publishers' websites more than 24 billion times around the world. This traffic helps publishers increase their readership, build trust with readers and earn money through advertising and subscriptions.

Google does not make significant revenue from news-related searches

In 2020, news-related queries accounted for under 2% percent of total queries on Google Search in the UK. And we don’t run ads on Google News or the news results tab on Google Search. Nearly all of the ads people see on Google are on searches with commercial intent like “toasters,” or “electrician,” rather than from news-seeking queries.

Publishers that use our ad products keep the vast majority of the revenues

Many of the top news companies around the world use Google Ad Manager to manage their digital advertising business and on average they keep over 95% of the digital advertising revenue generated on their sites with this tool. Between 2018 and 2020, we paid out over £245m to the top five UK news publisher partners alone in our ad network.

Google invests in products and programmes to help publishers make money online

Almost half of the overall decline of newspaper revenue has come from the loss of newspaper classifieds to specialist online players like Rightmove or Motors.co.uk. Yet innovative publishers are evolving, turning to new ways for distribution, analytics, advertising and subscriptions and the majority of publishers are optimistic about the growth of digital revenues. Google is providing support through products, programmes and funding, like investing £18m in training, partnerships and programming with news organisations in the UK.

We support new rules

Beyond our existing support for journalism, we have been engaging closely with the UK government and regulatory authorities over many months as they consider how to ensure a strong future for news and enable innovation. We support thoughtful regulation.

Addressing speculation on the value we gain from links to news

A few days ago, we saw new speculation about the value Google gains by providing links to news publishers on Google Search. However, this latest paper chose not to include any mention of the vast value that news publishers gain from reaching readers through our platform – leaving out half of the story.

Even setting this aside, the paper essentially alleges that links to news content are of vital importance to Google, and that their loss would have devastating consequences. In the framework of the paper (which is something of a black box), it is claimed that the quality contributed by these links enables Google to carry something like half of its ads. This is not just wholly implausible – it also flies in the face of the facts. In reality, Google does not make significant revenue from news-related searches. As we said earlier, in 2020, news-related queries accounted for under 2% percent of total queries on Google Search in the UK and we don’t show ads on the vast majority of searches.

The paper also features some fanciful estimations on the value of the “data” derived from the integration of links to news results in Search for Google’s revenues from YouTube and its ad tech products. Yet its calculation relies on something else – the impact on publisher revenues from the removal of third party cookies on non-Google sites. Confused? So are we.

Ultimately, both publishers and readers gain real value from the presence of links to news sources on Google Search. We must all work together to ensure that people have access to authoritative information online and we will continue to work with the government, publishers, journalists and readers on public policies that further strengthen journalism.