Google Will Double Your Ebola Donation

Everyone's favorite search engine just got better. In a giving campaign that started on Monday, every $1 donated to fighting Ebola through Google will be doubled by the company. Additionally, Google will give $10 million to relief and medical nonprofits immediately, and their separate family foundation will donate $15 million. All this news comes to us via a nonchalant blog post from Google CEO Larry Page. Google is the coolest.

The company will match donations until it reaches $7.5 million ($2.5 million from user donations and $5 million from its matched donations) through its Network for Good fundraising platform, a new site it launched on Monday specific to the cause, or though Google Wallet. The donations will be divided equally between four organizations — Doctors Without Borders, Partners in Health, Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee. The immediate gift will go toward those four groups and also the InSTEDD and U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Google will match donations at the $10, $25, $50, $250, $500, and $1000 levels.

Wrote Page:

Today, Google is launching a public giving campaign to fight Ebola. For every dollar you give, Google will donate two dollars. In addition, we’re donating $10 million right away to support nonprofits such as InSTEDD, International Rescue Committee, Medecins Sans Frontieres, NetHope, Partners in Health, Save the Children and U.S. Fund for UNICEF. These organizations are doing remarkable work in very difficult circumstances to help contain this outbreak, and we hope our contribution will help them have an even greater impact.Separately, our family foundation will also be giving $15 million. Our hearts go out to everyone whose lives have been touched by this tragedy

Google is joining other giant tech players in the fight against Ebola. In October, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife announced that they would give $25 million. Additionally, Facebook's giving campaign has put a banner encouraging Facebook users to donate at the top of personal newsfeeds. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen also put up a hefty sum when he pledged $100 million in October.

Donations from tech companies have been an invaluable benefit to Ebola victims, whose cause has been slow to take up. The New York Times reported in October that donations to fight for proper care for victims and finding an eventual cure have been almost nonexistent. News coverage of the crisis gave groups such as Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, a spike in donations, but even that didn't come until August, when an American missionary and a doctor were infected and taken to Atlanta for treatment.

As The Times reported, there is no clear reason why donations have been slower for the Ebola crisis. Experts suspect that it could have something to do with a lack of visual aspects that might come with a natural disaster of some sort, which usually causes surges of donations toward relief groups. Regardless, big ups to the big tech companies for (hopefully) jumpstarting donations to fight this awful disease, even after all of the U.S. patients have recovered.

Images: Screenshot/Google