Google to donate £1m over four years to Internet Watch Foundation
Howard Lake | 13 June 2013 | News
Google will donate £1 million to the Internet Watch Foundation to help the charity in its efforts to remove online child sexual abuse content.
The sum, which as a whole would almost pay for a whole year’s running costs for the IWF, will be spread over four years. It will be used to increase the charity’s team of Internet Content Analysts from four and a half to nine and a half.
Susie Hargreaves, CEO at the Internet Watch Foundation, said: “This is an incredibly generous donation and Google is demonstrating moral leadership in the field. This contribution will significantly boost our work to meet our vision eliminating online child sexual abuse content. We are experts at doing this and like any organisation we can do more, with more resource.”
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Scott Rubin, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at Google, said: “The IWF are essential partners in our fight to rid the Internet of this illegal material by providing us with lists of web pages that we block from search results. Our donation should help them do their work more quickly and efficiently. This grant is part of a broader package of measures we are putting in place with other international agencies to help tackle this problem at a global scale.”
According to The Register, Google used to donate £20,000 a year to the IWF, but had stopped doing so.
Other tech companies make annual donations to the charity of between £5,000 and £20,000 including PayPal, Facebook, Nokia and Yahoo!
Google’s announcement of its increased support comes a few days before it and other major digital companies are to meet with Culture Secretary Maria Miller to discuss how they can do more to tackle the spread of offensive and illegal material online.
Photo: crime scene laptop by zimmytws on Shutterstock.com
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.