Google’s Philanthropy arm – Google.org

Google announced Dr. Larry Brilliant as the Executive Director of Google.org – it’s active Philanthropy arm. The current initiatives it would undertake include:

– Acumen Fund: Addressing global poverty.
– Techno Serve: Helping budding entrepreneurs with good business ideas transform their ideas to a profitable enterprise.
– Water Research: Addressing reserach into rural water supply in Kenya – the poor quality of which has been a reason for many deaths of children.
– Planet Read: Improve literacy in India by the means of adding subtitles to Bollywood films and popular folk songs.
– Google Grants: Gives free advertising to selected non-profit organizations.

One of the very good cases of how ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ is being handled by larger corporations.

I particuarly liked the vision of Sergey and Larry encapsulated in this statement:

‘We hope that someday this institution will eclipse Google itself in overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.”

Cheers to Google.org and their future social initiatives!!