What is Google Ideas?

Google Ideas is a think/do tank that explores how technology can enable people to confront threats in the face of conflict, instability or repression. We connect users, experts and engineers to research and seed new technology-driven initiatives.

What do we tackle?

Google Ideas was founded on the principle that the next five billion to come online will face far greater human challenges than the first two billion. Many of these challenges are thorny and difficult to address, and include violent extremism, illicit networks and fragile states, among others.

What approach do we take?

Through events online and offline, we bring people with a diverse range of expertise and experience together. At our summits we convene people around a range of specific issues and use ‘labs’ — working breakout groups — to accelerate project development with strategic partners. We find new ways that connected technologies can offer solutions to people caught in these circumstances, use research to provide fresh insights and develop interactive data visualizations to bring information to life. Wherever possible we make the source code of our projects available for use by others under an open-source license.