Google funds culture, education programmes to remake its image

New York

A YEARLONG digital training course for Irish high school teachers started in 2014. A fund to help European news outlets adapt to the Web popped up in 2015. And in March, a virtual reality exhibition began at a Belgian museum to showcase a Renaissance painter.

All these projects are aimed at supporting European culture and education, helping the region embrace the fast-changing online world. And all are financed by Google.

Google has been staging a full-court press in Europe to finance everything from startup offices to YouTube-sponsored music concerts, trying to remake its image in the region as it battles a mounting list of regulatory woes.

Those efforts represent a campaign of "soft lobbying" where instead of, or alongside, paying registered lobbyists to advocate its case in the corridors of power, a company looks to change the minds of the public at large. In Google's case, experts said, its push to sponsor digital skills training, museum exhibitions and other programmes equates to an almost unprecedented effort by a US tech company to change the perceptions of Europeans, many of whom still see it as an America…