Google announces its endowment plans

Almost all big corporations have been doing something to give back to the society. Companies like Microsoft (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Wipro (Azim Premji Foundation), Infosys (Infosys Foundation) and host of others have been professing that they are actively involved in philanthropy and sharing their wealth with the lesser privilieged in society.

Now it is the turn of one of the most popular internet companies to step into this field. Google made an anouncement on Thursday that it had come up with a plan that begins to fulfill its four-year-old pledge to reserve 1 percent of its profit and equity to 'make the world a better place'.

Speaking on the occasion, Google officials said that, Google.org, the charity wing of the company, is expected to spend up to $175 million (Rs. 700 crore) in its first round of grants and investments over the next three years. While it is like other companies’ foundations in making grants, it will also be untraditional in making for-profit investments, encouraging Google employees to participate directly and lobbying public officials for changes in policies, company officials said.

Larry Brilliant, a medical doctor who took on the role of director of Google.org 18 months ago, said he could not even begin to count how many spending proposals he had seen. Dr. Brilliant, who moved to an ashram in northern India in the 1970s and went on to play a major role in eradicating smallpox in the country, likened his moral quandary in figuring out how to spend Google.org’s money to that faced by a saint wandering the streets of Benares.

It is interesting that Google has decided on several different initiatives and not gone on the beaten track such as funding education of girl children in India or any similar cause espoused by so many others in the world. Rather it has listed broad categories wihch it will take up and start funding.

One category predict and prevent, focuses on strengthening early warning systems in countries around the world to detect a disease before it becomes pandemic, or a drought before it becomes a famine. To attain that, DotOrg has made a grant of $5 million to a nonprofit group that Dr. Brilliant helped to set up. Known as Instedd, (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters), the group seeks to improve data and communication networks. An additional $2.5 million has been awarded to the Global Health and Security Initiative to respond to biological threats in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and China’s Yunnan Province.

The second initaitive being funded is titled the missing middle, refers to the missing middle class in Africa and South Asia and the missing middle level of financing between microcredits and hedge funds. The third initiative, information for all, is aimed at helping developing countries provide better government services by making information available on their efforts to improve health care, roads and electrification.

Google has been reputed as a company which is highly innovative in whatever it does. And in charity, it has set a new example, forged a new trail going away from the previous examples which are already existing in the world. Let us hope that their aim to 'make the world a better place' succeedes quickly. Personally speaking I would have preferred if they had set aside a few million for research on alternative fuels, eco-friendly technologies, afforestation and recycling etc, this would have helped make the earth a better place.

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