Google Philippines to hold Pride Conversations online event on YouTube to honor the LGBTQ+ community

Tweet

MANILA, Philippines--As part of the concluding celebration of Pride Month, Google will hold an online event called “Pride Conversations” to create a discussion and champion some of today’s inspiring members of the Filipino LGBTQ+ community. This will be streamed live on Google Philippines YouTube channel on June 30, 2020 at 5:00PM. 

The speakers of the event continue to bring pride to the LGBTQ+ community through their achievements in their respective fields. Taking part in the discussion are Antipolo City Barangay Councilor Kristine Ibardolaza; Plastic, Reconstructive, and Aesthetic Surgery Fellow Dr. Berry Beriña; motorcycle enthusiast and vlogger Gaki Azurin, more popularly known as “GakiMoto”; comedian, host, and YouTube creator Mikey Bustos; and Google Philippines Program Manager Melai Lopez. 

“Google is committed to inclusion and this Pride month, we’re excited to share how we always support the LGBTQ+ community in a number of ways--from sustaining a diverse workplace culture, to providing grants, to hosting events around the world to continue the discussion on equality,” said Mervin Wenke, Communications and PR Head for Google Philippines. “We are glad to further show this commitment through our products like Google Maps which is helping enable a virtual Pride March initiative this year.” 

A home to LGBTQ+ employees

Google fosters a diverse and inclusive culture where LGBTQ+ employees are respected, celebrated, and empowered. The company ensures that they enjoy the same opportunity to shine, be heard, and succeed in the organization just as much as any other employee. Below are just some of the benefits for Google’s LGBTQ+ employees around the world including the Philippines:

• Same-sex health benefits: Google is committed to and provide same-sex health coverage for Googlers and their partners. 
• Employee assistance program: Google offers free emotional wellbeing support, 24/7, 365 days for Googlers and their dependents, as well as access to free expert information on legal, financial, and other topics. These services are confidential. 
• Parental leave: 
• A non-birth parent has at least 12 weeks of paid parental leave to spend with a new child (any parent who has a child born or adopted). 

• A ramp-back policy to help a non-birth parent transition back to work after a long leave is available. 

Googlers also have the freedom of establishing their preferred pronouns (he, she, xe, they) so colleagues will know how to best address a LGBTQ+ employee in the workplace to show inclusion and respect. 

“At Google, the use of preferred pronouns lives beyond work profiles and email signatures. Before a meeting begins, we may ask each other our preferred pronouns to address our colleagues accordingly and show respect. This demonstrates that LGBTQ+ employees are important and are always included in the discussion,” shares Melai Lopez, a trans woman and a Program Manager at Google Philippines.

Melai adds, “Google encourages us to form and participate in employee resource groups like Pride@Google. With this, I am able to use my voice to spark necessary conversations in the company and to contribute to the external LGBTQ+ community through high-impact programs and initiatives."

The “Pride Conversations” live event is part of Google’s initiatives for Pride Month, championing LGBTQ+ personalities whose stories serve as an inspiration for the community. Tune in on June 30, 2020 at 5:00 PM (Ph time) at Google Philippines YouTube channel.

About Google

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc.

Google launches doodle to celebrate Independence Day

Tweet

Manila, Philippines - June 12, 2016: Google Philippines joins the country as it celebrates 118 years of independence, with a special one-day only doodle on the Google.com.ph homepage. This year’s Independence Day doodle features the classic Filipino roadtrip showcasing a festively-designed multicolored jeepney filled with a mix of family and friends prepared for an adventure ahead.

The seventh Independence Day Google doodle is inspired by Filipinos’ love for adventure and pride for their country. The Philippines is home to thousands of tourist destinations, which they like to enjoy with their family and friends. The doodle reflects the importance of the family for every Filipino and their passion for discovering the beauty of their nation.

Clicking on the Google doodle will lead visitors to more information about the history of Philippine independence.

“Doodle” is the name used for decorative changes made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists. Doodles make searches even more fun as we learn new things with each new design.

This fun activity began in 2000 when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin asked their intern Dennis Hwang to create a doodle for Bastille Day. It was so well-received that Hwang was promoted to chief doodler and doodles began showing up more regularly. Through the years, doodlers have created over 2,000 doodles that brighten the Google homepage and bring smiles to readers all over the world.

Google Philippines crowdsourced “Miss Ko Na” OFW song first 360-degree video

Tweet

Tapsilog, Halo-halo and noche buena, among the things overseas Pinoys miss

Google Philippines recently launched  its crowdsourced song entitled “Miss Ko Na” for OFWs. Also, the music video of the song is the first 360-degree video in the Philippines.

Together with 5 well known bands and musicians, Google released the “Miss Ko Na” song featuring crowdsourced lyrics from Filipinos here and abroad. Sponge Cola, ItchyWorms and Kjwan, along with vocalist Ebe Dancel, and YouTube star Mikey Bustos worked together to put melody and structure to the answers to Google’s question “Anong namimiss mo sa Pilipinas?” (“What do you miss most in the Philippines?”) Google asked for submissions from OFWs using Google Forms and on their social media accounts using the hashtag #GoogleMissKoNa, which were then used as lyrics to the song.

The “Miss Ko Na” music video is also the first 360-degree YouTube video in the Philippines, which viewers on Chrome browser can tap on and drag to see different perspectives of the video. Viewers on Android phones using the YouTube App can simply move their phones to watch the video from different angles. 

The video found on https://youtu.be/gD8RPX3NoQs can also be saved on the YouTube Offline playlist for viewing within 48-hours without an internet connection. 

“The submissions of our kababayans were very inspiring and made it easy for us to come up with a song that speaks of their longing for home. “Miss Ko Na” is not only about the story of OFWs; it is also a story about sacrifice and selfless love that Filipinos are known for,” shares Kelley Mangahas of Kjwan.

The song captures famous Filipino traditions such as celebrating noche buena with family, going to fiestas with friends, playing basketball with relatives, and eating with bare hands, among others. It also showcased Filipino food that OFWs crave for such as halo-halo and tapsilog.

Yael Yuzon of Sponge Cola said “It’s a simple catchy song that captures the Filipino spirit. It reflects how we celebrate the good and we pummel through the bad with a smile and a positive outlook.” 

“We are very thankful for the participation of our kababayans in this initiative. To show our gratitude, Google and the collaborators donated a peso for every submission we got, and the overwhelming replies from Pinoys allowed us to donate Php 1 million to the Blas Ople Policy Center & Training Institute. This will be used to build halfway houses for overseas Filipinos in need,” says Ryan Morales Google Philippines country marketing manager.

Filipinos can sing-along using the YouTube Karaoke version at http://youtu.be/71ozeiT7Kq8. 

For National Heroes Day, five Pinoy musicians (Ebe Dancel, Itchyworms, Kjwan, Mikey Bustos, and Sponge Cola) wrote this song for OFWs, with a little help from Filipinos all around the world.

The song is exclusively available on YouTube.

Google celebrates Buwan ng Wika with Translate-a-thon

Tweet

Philippines kicked-off a month-long nationwide translation campaign called Love Your Language with it’s first translate-a-thon to improve the quality of Filipino and Cebuano translations online.

In celebration of Buwan ng Wika, Google invites every Filipino including translators, language lovers, and culture enthusiasts to contribute to the Google Translate Community to help bridge language barriers and bring the Filipino and Cebuano languages and cultures better representation online to share with the rest of the world.

"The Google Translate Community is a platform for Filipinos to express their national pride and love for our local language through their contributions," said Gail Tan, Google Philippines Head of Communications and Public Affairs. "Through this dedicated community effort, we believe that the Filipinos can build a web that truly works for them as they make Filipino and Cebuano languages better understood and appreciated online by both native and non-native speakers.”

Throughout August, Google is holding a series of Love Your Language translate-a-thons across the country through several community-led and campus-led events in Bacolod, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Dagupan, Davao, General Santos, Guimaras, Halsema, Iligan, Iloilo, La Union, Los Banos, Makati City, Pangasinan, Quezon City, and Zamboanga.

Individuals and organizations who want to help translate as part of Love Your Language in the Philippines can get more information and register at https://sites.google.com/site/loveyourlanguagephilippines/ or https://goo.gl/HPwI3Z. 

Participants are encouraged to share their Google Translate Community anecdotes through their social media channels using hashtags #LoveYourLanguagePH or #GoogleTranslatePH.

Love Your Language Campaign

Love Your Language is Google's way of empowering the communities to build high quality translations online for their languages using the Google Translate Community Tool so that native and non-native speakers can appreciate the language better.

Love Your Language in the Philippines  is NOT a contest.

Google is encouraging Filipinos to help improve the translation of Filipino and Cebuano languages online at their own leisure. But Google will recognize the top contributors in the country at the end of the month because their effort will surely bring better representation to these languages online, and they want to honor them for that.

Everone can be anywhere in the world. If you want your contribution to count towards the submissions coming from the Philippines, sign up here. Otherwise, you can use the Google Translate Community Tool without registering.

You have to sign in using a Gmail account to use the Google Translate Community Tool.  If you don't have a Gmail account, you can sign up for one here. 

Google advises to use only one account when you sign in to the translate tool so they can attribute the right measurement to your contribution. Google discourages the use of one Gmail account by multiple people for online security reasons.

Feel free to translate Filipino and Cebuano if you're knowledge of them. Your contribution count will be the total number of submissions coming from your Gmail account regardless of language. 

All the submissions made from your Gmail account from August 1, 2015, 12:00 am to August 31, 2015, 11:59 pm will be counted towards your total contribution, whether it's under Translate or Validate, Filipino or Cebuano.

Everyone can keep translating beyond August to continue improving Filipino and Cebuano on the web. But Google will only measure the contribution by organizations and individuals until August 31, 2015 as part of this month-long program. 

For more information, visit the Love Your Language site.

How to use Google Translate Community Too

Once you are a a registered participant (FORM), you may access the Google Translate Community tool at https://translate.google.com/community from your computer or mobile devices. Using the tool is very easy:

Step 1: Sign in with your Gmail. 

Step 2: Click on the bar lines at the left and then click on Languages. You may choose English, Filipino and Cebuano. You can also change your settings, check your badges and your stats from here 

Step 3: Select the translation you want to work on. 

Step 4: Translate or Validate. Have fun! 

(There is no English-Cebuano Validation yet. This feature will appear once we have enough English-Cebuano Translations to validate.)

Google Translate 

Today, websites, documents, emails and even instant messages can be translated into 90 different languages -- including Filipino and Cebuano-- instantaneously and for free through Google Translate.

Launched in 2006, Google Translate has become one of Google's most popular and useful products, processing a billion of translations a day. 92% of Translate's 500 million users are outside the USA. It currently supports text inputs in 90 languages and spoken translations in 42 languages. In its conversation mode, Translate can recognize a language being spoken and provide translation between the two languages for 32 languages. It can also recognize and translate text in an image in 36 languages through its Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology

Google Translate learns from the available material on the web and gets smarter as it receives more inputs.

Google Translate Community is a free feature on Google Translate that allows language enthusiasts to help improve the translation quality. This helps Google Translate to have quality translated words in 90 languages as well as help Google in launching new supported languages. 

With the new Google Translate Community tool, people can directly contribute in helping improve the representation, accuracy and understanding of their language online. Using this tool, people can generate new translations as well as to rate and compare existing translated words and phrases. 

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Teens train as Web Rangers to keep the Internet a safe place

Tweet

L-R: Ryan Morales, Google PH Country Marketing Manager; Gail Tan, Google PH Head of Communication and Public Affairs; Alex Long, Google Asia Pacific for Public Policy and Government Relations; Commissioner Earl Saavedra, National Youth Commission; Helena Lersch, Google Asia Pacific for Public Policy and Government Relations

Today, more than fifty Filipino teenagers gathered to train as Web Rangers in a workshop designed by Google Philippines to help them effectively utilize their creativity and social influence to promote a more responsible use of the Internet.

Google Philippines, in partnership with the National Youth Commission, aims to equip the youth to develop effective campaigns that will help address cyber concerns in a positive way and keep the Internet a safe place.

The participants will learn from a series of talks by creative and industry veterans, including Google country marketing manager, Ryan Morales; Trese writer, Budjette Tan; DM9-Digit managing director and Unbox founder, Carlo Ople; and DM9JaymeSyfu Chairmom and chief creative officer, Merlee Jayme. The topics will cover creativity and technology, superhero characters, Internet etiquette, and developing campaign ideas. NYC Commissioner Earl Saavedra will also deliver a keynote address to underscore the vital role that the youth play in influencing their peers to have better online behavior.

The Web Rangers will be divided into teams and be given three weeks to come up with their campaign. The group with the most impressive campaign will get a chance to visit a Google office in Asia to present to Google executives. Awarding will be on August 20.

The Web Rangers brainstorm to create the big idea for their online positivity campaign.

“Cyber threats and cyberbullying can have a negative impact in the lives of teenagers especially if they think they have no one to talk to about it. That’s why we created the Web Rangers program to train a group of teens who can be a positive influence online,” said Gail Tan, Google Philippines Head of Communications and Public Affairs.

Google Philippines created five Web Ranger roles that teens can identify with: The Transmitter, who shares positive content; The Guardian, who is vigilant against cyber threats; The Frontliner, who takes a stand against cyberbullying; The Uplifter, who is a source of positivity for the depressed; and The Creator, who creates inspiring and empowering creative content.

Visit: Web Rangers launched to help Pinoy teens promote Internet safety

The Most Popular Ads In the Philippines, Filipino cultural values reflected in top ten YouTube Ads

Tweet

Google Philippines released the 2014 YouTube Ads Leaderboard, revealing that not only do Filipinos respond well to culturally-relevant ads, but that the local advertising industry has gotten more accustomed to placing made-for-web content at the heart of their campaigns.

The leaderboard celebrates the top ten brands that performed best through a combination of popularity (organic views) and promotion (paid views).

Six out of ten of the ads have a distinctly Filipino flavor. Global brands like Coca-Cola — with their “Happiest Thank You” ad taking the #1 spot — use the power of heartwarming authenticity.

“‘The audience of today can't stand anything fake or pretentious," said Merlee Jayme, Chief Creative Officer of DM9 JaymeSyfu, noting that a great piece tells real stories, just as Google’s “Miss Nothing” tells a poignant story of Filipinos all over the world connecting via the web. 

Filipinos continue to show an interest in advertising that feature local celebrities as well. Angel Locsin appearing in Mang Inasal’s prank ad and Angela Nepomuceno’s how-to hair video from Unilever demonstrate the power of this approach. Jollibee Kids Club takes a slightly different track — the cute kids in its boyband might well be the stars of the future.

With an increasingly connected world, the Filipino audience is moved by the same stories as viewers from the rest of the globe. As the world was gripped by World Cup fever, Nike’s all-star ad featuring football stars Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar Jr., and Wayne Rooney, among others, captivated Filipino interest as well.

As smartphones continue to evolve and penetrate a wider audience, Filipinos were keen to watch an almost four-minute-long product showcase of Samsung Galaxy S5 showing the flagship features of the device. Air New Zealand entertained Filipinos with their in-flight safety video which featured characters from The Hobbit. KLM’s well-trained puppy lost and found service, on the other hand, received awe and admiration from Filipino animal lovers.

The leaderboard is largely populated by ads that were born to be digital, with formats created specifically with YouTube’s audience in mind. #AllergicAkoSa combines the nation’s affinity for music and sharing thoughts online. “Often, they will rant, rave, and actively talk and share about things that they like and dislike,” said Paolo Reyes, Johnson & Johnson’s Sr. Brand Manager of the awareness campaign they created about allergies.

Five of the ten videos are past the three minute mark, which offers a degree of creative freedom for brands — since viewers on YouTube will watch longer videos as long as there is a strong story.

“Recognizing that the digital space is practically bursting at the seams with content choices, it is critical that we offer content that people are actually interested in,” said Dorothy Dee-Ching, Unilever Hair Marketing Director. The content for All Things Hair was defined by the people they serve with, with the topic 'crowd-sourced' from top searches to make sure the content is just what people are looking for.

“The YouTube Ads Leaderboard is a good opportunity for brands to showcase their understanding of the importance of digital marketing in connecting with consumers,” Ryan Morales, Google Philippines Country Marketing Manager said. “We hope the list of creative ads that people choose to watch will encourage the industry to continue watching out for consumer trends and use them to create really good digital marketing campaigns.”

Here is the complete list:

1.	Coca-Cola - Happiest Thank You	3:11
2.	Samsung - Samsung GALAXY S5 - Official Introduction	3:45
3.	Unilever - DIY Fish Tail Braid - All Things Hair	3:41
4.	#AllergicAkoSa - #AllergicAkoSa Song	2:17
5.	Mang Inasal - Angel Locsin Ipinaglaban Ang True Love Niya	1:08
6.	KLM - KLM Lost & Found service	1:43
7.	Air New Zealand - The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made	4:38
8.	Google - Miss Nothing	1:40
9.	Nike Football - Winner Stays. ft. Ronaldo, Neymar Jr., Rooney, Ibrahimović, Iniesta & more	4:12
10.	Jollibee - Dito, MASAYA!	1:34