March 12, 2009 | Read Time: 3 minutes
As Google.org, the technology company’s charitable arm, revamps its approach to philanthropy and changes its leadership, new questions are being raised about what’s next for the organization’s grant making.
Larry Brilliant, a physician with an eclectic background who was appointed to lead Google.org to much fanfare three years ago, will become “chief philanthropy evangelist,” while Megan Smith, the company’s vice president for new business development, will oversee the day-to-day operations of Google.org in addition to her current duties.
Google.org will now focus more on engaging Google’s computer engineers in developing technology to help solve social and environmental problems.
“While we have been able to support some remarkable nonprofit organizations over the past three years, our greatest impact has come when we’ve attacked problems in ways that make the most of Google’s strengths in technology and information,” Dr. Brilliant wrote on Google.org’s blog.
As an example, he pointed to the company’s effort to track influenza cases by collecting and examining the terms people entered into Google Internet searches, a project that could help health officials predict where the disease will spread each winter.
Dr. Brilliant said that the company is assigning more engineers to its charitable work and that despite the sour economy it will meet the pledge it made in 2004 to provide 1 percent of equity and profits to philanthropy.
A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment further on the changes.
‘All Over the Map’
Google.org created a big splash when it was founded, in part because officials said it would combine for-profit investing and traditional grant making to solve major world problems.
Since its inception, it has committed more than $100-million in investments and grants to further its goals.
Jeff Trexler, a professor of social entrepreneurship at Pace University, in New York, said the shift now under way could help to refine Google.org’s programs, which include supporting clean energy, global health, antipoverty work, and education.
“It’s all over the map,” Mr. Trexler said.
He said the bad economy may also have contributed to Google.org’s decision to rely more on its personnel for charity work, noting that the company has recently made cuts in employee perks and other operating costs.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia who is writing a book about Google, said the move to focus more on technology was not surprising, given the company’s “almost religious faith in the power of engineers to solve problems.”
He did caution that the approach may hamstring Google.org.
“If you think everything in the world is an engineering problem,” he said, “you’re approaching it with limited imagination and you’re probably also going to systematically reduce the variables in the problem.
“And most problems facing the human species are insanely complicated,” Mr. Vaidhyanathan said.
End to Small Loans
One cause the company will no longer contribute money to is efforts to build small businesses in Africa and Asia.
Google.org said in December that it would fulfill its financial commitments to such overseas entrepreneurial programs, but would not allocate more money to them.
One former beneficiary is TechnoServe, a charity with offices in Washington and Norwalk, Conn., that received about $5-million from Google to provide technical assistance to entrepreneurs in Tanzania and Ghana.
Bruce McNamer, the group’s chief executive, said he will miss Google’s financial support.
But he said he hoped to find other ways to work with the company, such as developing Google technology to help identify inefficiencies in agricultural supply chains.
“The money’s important, make no mistake,” he said. “But I think Google will continue to invest, just in a different form.”
