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"Keep being the best country in the world."
"Japón es una nación de gente valiente."
On Google's new website, messagesforjapan.com, those words of encouragement are spread out over the globe like cherry blossoms, coming from computer users in hundreds of countries expressing solidarity with the victims of the earthquake and tsunami.
Google employees in Japan and elsewhere had been hearing about people from all over sending their support, but they wanted a way to get all those messages to aid workers and victims in Japan, even those who didn't speak any language besides Japanese. So they put together a quick app marrying Google maps and translating technology to make Messages for Japan.
"There are so many people around the world who are thinking about Japan, but there isn't a way for all the people in Japan to get all of those messages," Arielle Reinstein, a Google marketing employee who was in Japan when the earthquake hit, told AOL News. "We're hoping that this positive message of world solidarity can get across to the people that are suffering."
For Naoki Sadakuni, product marketing manager at Google Japan who had worked on previous earthquake relief efforts, the words from around the world helped give him the strength to continue through painful and strenuous labor.
"One of the things that helped him and other aid workers was just knowing that the world was thinking about them, and sending not only financial but also emotional support," Reinstein says.
The tech giant also hopes that the website will aid its fundraising efforts, which so far have raised over $5 million for relief and rebuilding.
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Google has harnessed its massive Internet presence in crisis situations from New Orleans to Haiti with an emergency response center that tries to pump as much navigable information as it can out to the public. In Japan, it has helped with a person finder as well as updates on blackouts and transit outages.In the future, Reinstein thinks that a program similar to Messages for Japan could be deployed to lend support to people suffering from other disasters.
It's sakura, or cherry blossom, season right now in Japan. The site is designed so that when all the messages come on screen at once, it starts to look like a cherry tree. A 7.0 aftershock struck Tokyo early Monday, but private citizens, corporations and governments alike have rallied to show their support for the island nation in their time of crisis.
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