This time of year is a time of giving — both thanks to the holiday season and the end of claimable tax benefits from donations. It’s unsurprising, then, that Google is feeling especially charitable as we reach the end of 2010.
According to a message sent to Google users (and accompanied by an official video), the search engine giant is giving twenty million dollars to charitable organizations. The groups they’ve chosen this year are APC.org, ASHOKA, the Bharti Foundation, Connecting Up, Global Strategies for HIV Prevention, LASA, NatureBridge, NPTech, NTEN, and UNICEF. The video itself goes over the precise contributions they’re expecting these donations to open up, including figures like online tools for 1.5 million aid organizations and 50,000,000 more Polio vaccinations.
Google’s giving spirit is also visible in a recent announcement to the open source community. Google announced on their official code blog that they were giving the code for two proprietary Java Eclipse projects to the Eclipse Foundation. The donation of the source code and IP content for these projects represents handing more than five million dollars in intellectual property over to the open source community.
The two Java Eclipse projects, WindowsBuilder and Code Pro Profiler, are both significant. The Code Pro Profiler is recognized as a highly valuable tool, designed to help developers catch performance issues in the early stages of development. However, WindowsBuilder is of even greater note. This program, a graphic user interface (GUI) builder for Java programs, allows developers to create user-friendly UIs more quickly than ever, and works in conjunction with other popular Java tools.
In 2009, WindowsBuilder was given an award for being the “Best Commercial Eclipse Tool,” and Mike Milinkovich, the Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, has stated that “this product has always filled a much needed gap in the Eclipse offerings.”
