Google pledges $25m grants to businesses for empowering women, retains targeted ads

*The global tech giant discloses the grants are intended to help remove systemic barriers faced by women during their entrepreneurial pursuits, and teams have until April 9 to submit applications

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

In a move intended to help remove systemic barriers faced by women during their entrepreneurial pursuits, Google has announced it will be sharing $25 million in grants to nonprofits and social enterprises focused on empowering women and girls.

ConsumerConnect gathered that the company announced its new “Impact Challenge” on the 2021 International Women’s Day (IWD).

The global tech giant disclosed the grants are intended to help remove systemic barriers faced by women during their entrepreneurial pursuits.

Jacquelline Fuller, President of Google’s charitable wing Google.org, in a blog post Monday, March 8 said: “Women and men remain on unequal footing ─ and these inequalities have worsened in the wake of COVID-19.”

Google has put out a call for applications from teams with a feasible plan for a project or innovation that will “create pathways to prosperity for women and girls or empower them to reach their full economic potential.”

The company stated that applicants should have a proposal that is “grounded in research and data about the problem and the solution.”

Grant recipients could receive between $300,000 and $2 million, as well as opportunities for mentorship and additional support from Google.

Fuller noted: “Whatever these teams need, we are going to be alongside them and help carry out their vision.”

The tech giant has started accepting applications from teams aligned with its mission. The deadline to submit is April 9. Applicants will be judged by a panel that includes U.S. Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, Google Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker, musician Shakira, and others.

In a related development, the tech giant has said that Google Chrome’s recent privacy policy change will not stop targeted ads on Web sites.

Recall that after word from Google Headquarters suggested that it was planning to axe third-party tracking cookies and stop selling ads based on tracking in its Chrome browser, reports are yet circulating that targeted ads are not disappearing completely.

“You’re 100 percent still being targeted,” Elizabeth Renieris, an affiliate of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, told Yahoo Finance. However, Google approaches its detour a bit softer.

David Temkin, Google’s Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust, wrote: “People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising.

“And advertisers don’t need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising,”

Renieris said that while Google won’t replace cookies with other tools that track you individually, she believes the company is looking at alternatives that will lump users into bigger groups that have similar interests, which advertisers can buy ads for.

An example might be a cosmetics blog where Revlon could take the contextual ad approach and pitch products like lip gloss.

Privacy purists can moan about this all they like, but the fact remains that advertisements are the lifeblood of almost every site you visit. If there were no ads at all, it’s likely that websites would either have to set up paywalls for content or go to a subscription model, report said.

“The simple fact is that subscription and paywalls don’t work for all publishers, and perhaps more importantly, they don’t work for all consumers.

“Based on a recent survey we conducted on 5,000 U.S. residents as part of research for our 2021 adblock report, only 15 percent of respondents said that they are likely to purchase a paid subscription to access content,” Blockthrough’s Vishveshwar Jatain told ConsumerAffairs.