Google has provided the first details of how it will carry out its commitment to devote a share of its lucrative public stock offering to charity and social causes, according to an article in the New York Times. It said it had donated $90 million to a new charitable foundation it started and would give another $175 million to nonprofit groups and what it considers socially useful businesses over the next two to three years.

Sheryl Sandberg, a Google vice president for sales who is also coordinating the foundation and related programs, said the company would focus its charitable efforts in two areas: global poverty, and energy and the environment. She said the two priorities were selected by Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

In comparison, Intel said it donated $72 million in cash and $17 million in equipment last year worldwide, while Microsoft said it donated $47 million in cash and $363 million in software to nonprofit organizations. Google's most direct rival, Yahoo, said it makes modest cash contributions and focuses its charitable efforts on providing publicity to groups ranging from the Red Cross to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Google is just beginning to make grants with these funds. It has given $5 million to the Acumen Fund, a New York group that encourages entrepreneurs in developing countries to create businesses that can assist in providing health care, housing and other needs of the poor.

And it gave $2 million to the One Laptop Per Child program started by Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which seeks to develop a $100 computer to give to children in the developing world.

Google also gives free advertisements - worth $20 million so far this year - to organizations it feels worthy, in areas like human rights, environmental causes and poverty. These moves represent the first actions by the rapidly growing and highly profitable search company to make good on the promise its founders, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, made in the unusual letter to prospective shareholders that was part of its initial stock offering in August 2004.

In Google's annual report, filed in April, Mr. Brin and Mr. Page said they had decided to put the money into a broader range of initiatives including investments in "socially progressive corporations" and "influencing public policy."

As a result, the company has said it will not explicitly donate shares to the foundation. Rather, over the next 20 years, it will give or invest money equivalent to the market value of three million shares - a sum that doubtless will fluctuate with the stock price. The overall effort, supplemented by the share of profits, will be known as Google.org. The outlays announced yesterday were the first installment.

Source: New York Times, 10/12/05