<p>On the roof: an assembly of nine cameras creating 360-degree panoramic digital images of the disaster zone to archive damage. <br /><br />It is one of the newest ways that Google has harnessed its technology to raise its brand and social networking identity in this country.<br /><br />Google was also quick in the early hours of the disaster to assemble a Person Finder site that helped people learn of the status of friends and relatives affected by the earthquake and tsunami.<br /><br />Analysts say it is too soon to tell whether Google’s efforts have translated into a larger share of search or online advertising since the quake. But after making serious blunders and raising privacy concerns in the past, Google is finally winning new friends in a country where it trails Yahoo.<br /><br />“I know we’d have nothing to worry about with these people,” said Shigeru Sugawara, the mayor of this northeastern city. After the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11, Japanese Google employees were jolted in their 26th floor Tokyo office. Within minutes, a small group of Google employees started work on what would become the first of various disaster-related services that Google has initiated in Japan.<br /><br />Person Finder was originally developed after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. In Japan, Google went live with its online Person Finder service less than two hours after the quake.<br /><br />On Person Finder, users with information about a missing person can create an entry that other users can search. People looking for a missing person can also create an entry in the hope that someone who has information will see it and post an update.<br /><br />There was one obvious drawback: without access to the Internet from the hundreds of evacuation centers, victims had no way to input their whereabouts on the Web site. Much of the information on missing people was instead taking the form of handwritten posters at evacuation centers. So Google began asking users to take photos of the posters and upload them on Google’s Picasa online photo sharing service. The company put its sales team of about 100 to work transcribing names from the photos onto Person Finder.<br /><br />Soon, almost 1,000 photos of names had been uploaded onto Picasa, and Google employees could not keep up. Then, in a development Google had not expected, anonymous users voluntarily started to transcribe the names on the photos, using Picasa’s interactive feature. <br /><br />Google also induced local authorities and other organisations with missing people information to share their data. One by one, people and organisations fed information into Person Finder. Overall, Person Finder has collected 616,300 records, Japan’s largest database of missing people from the disaster. <br /><br />For Google, the effort stands to improve a reputation that could use some burnishing in Japan. The Street View function for maps, which adds panoramic photos to the Google Maps Web site, so annoyed the privacy-conscious Japanese that the company was forced to reshoot its image stock with less intrusive cameras.<br /><br />The disaster in March has unexpectedly given Google a way to cast its technology in a positive light, company executives say.<br /></p>
<p>On the roof: an assembly of nine cameras creating 360-degree panoramic digital images of the disaster zone to archive damage. <br /><br />It is one of the newest ways that Google has harnessed its technology to raise its brand and social networking identity in this country.<br /><br />Google was also quick in the early hours of the disaster to assemble a Person Finder site that helped people learn of the status of friends and relatives affected by the earthquake and tsunami.<br /><br />Analysts say it is too soon to tell whether Google’s efforts have translated into a larger share of search or online advertising since the quake. But after making serious blunders and raising privacy concerns in the past, Google is finally winning new friends in a country where it trails Yahoo.<br /><br />“I know we’d have nothing to worry about with these people,” said Shigeru Sugawara, the mayor of this northeastern city. After the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11, Japanese Google employees were jolted in their 26th floor Tokyo office. Within minutes, a small group of Google employees started work on what would become the first of various disaster-related services that Google has initiated in Japan.<br /><br />Person Finder was originally developed after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. In Japan, Google went live with its online Person Finder service less than two hours after the quake.<br /><br />On Person Finder, users with information about a missing person can create an entry that other users can search. People looking for a missing person can also create an entry in the hope that someone who has information will see it and post an update.<br /><br />There was one obvious drawback: without access to the Internet from the hundreds of evacuation centers, victims had no way to input their whereabouts on the Web site. Much of the information on missing people was instead taking the form of handwritten posters at evacuation centers. So Google began asking users to take photos of the posters and upload them on Google’s Picasa online photo sharing service. The company put its sales team of about 100 to work transcribing names from the photos onto Person Finder.<br /><br />Soon, almost 1,000 photos of names had been uploaded onto Picasa, and Google employees could not keep up. Then, in a development Google had not expected, anonymous users voluntarily started to transcribe the names on the photos, using Picasa’s interactive feature. <br /><br />Google also induced local authorities and other organisations with missing people information to share their data. One by one, people and organisations fed information into Person Finder. Overall, Person Finder has collected 616,300 records, Japan’s largest database of missing people from the disaster. <br /><br />For Google, the effort stands to improve a reputation that could use some burnishing in Japan. The Street View function for maps, which adds panoramic photos to the Google Maps Web site, so annoyed the privacy-conscious Japanese that the company was forced to reshoot its image stock with less intrusive cameras.<br /><br />The disaster in March has unexpectedly given Google a way to cast its technology in a positive light, company executives say.<br /></p>
