Google has launched a €10 million grant programme to support universities, social enterprises and research institutions in developing online security and data privacy solutions.

The European grant fund is the latest initiative from Google.org and will focus on the tools that technology companies can use to keep users safe online and tackle online harms such as extremism.

The initiative, called the Impact Challenge on Safety, will offer grants of up to €1 million to selected applicants from across Europe, with entries reviewed by an expert board of European safety experts and thought-leaders.

As part of the programme, Google will be running events and workshops from May onwards in countries around Europe.

The launch comes after Google launched a new Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) in Munich, as part of a strategy to double the number of privacy engineers in Munich to more than 200 by the end of 2019, making Germany a global hub for Google’s cross-product privacy engineering efforts.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai commented: “We believe that privacy and safety must be equally available to everyone in the world, and we bring that to life with products that empower everyone with clear and meaningful choices around their data.”

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