Google launches European Public Policy Blog

Google has launched a European blog on public policy

Google has launched a new blog to express its views on the latest European policy affecting the web.

The web giant said the European Public Policy Blog is to play a similar role to the US version, which aims to involve users in the position it takes in relation to public policy.

"You can expect to see us post about the benefits of the open internet, open standards, freedom of speech, innovation, competition, user information and user choice, along with a variety of pressing policy topics ranging from privacy, copyright and trademark protection, content regulation, and broadband policy," said Simon Hampton and Susan Pointer, Google directors for European public policy and government affairs.

"This rationale remains the same [as the US version], only now we're 'going local' and bringing the same Google style to public policy communications to Europe."

The blog already contains posts dating from more than a month ago, covering areas such as the UK government's official commitment to open source standards, the benefits of cloud computing and the importance of maintaining an open internet.
Google said it had been testing the blog internally "to limber up our blogging muscles".

"Now that we're going public, we thought it'd be fun to share our earlier internal posts," added Hampton and Pointer.