On Friday, Google executives, including executive chairman Eric Schmidt, visited Yoani Sánchez, an award-winning blogger and the creator of 14ymedio, Cuba's first independently owned newspaper in five decades.

Executives Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, Brett Perlmutter of Google Ideas, and Dan Keyserling, chief of staff at Google Ideas, reportedly sought out Sánchez, who started 14ymedio in May. The online newspaper features a small team of workers, including Sánchez and her husband Reinaldo Escobar, who serves as editor-in-chief.

"Last night, Google knocked on our door," Sánchez said via Huffington Post. "This isn't a metaphor, the searcher came to find us. There were several representatives of the most popular of the search engines, peering into our lives and work."

According to Sánchez, the executives shared hugs and laughs while in the Havana office. The blogger said the executives described Internet access in public places as "slow, very slow."

"Then we started talking about the future, their commitment to Cuban internauts and the relief of knowing they were aware of the information difficulties we are facing on the island," Sánchez said.

Sánchez just briefly described her encounter with Schmidt.

"[I] understood that something of the sharpness of his eyes and the certainty of his words could already be guessed in the simple wisdom of Google's homepage," she said. "We had the immense good fortune of standing in front of the magic mirror, but we didn't ask questions nor did we want answers, we just described who we are and where we are going."

According to The Verge, a Google spokesperson confirmed nothing more than that Schmidt went to Cuba in order to encourage an open Internet in Cuba.

Sánchez wrote on 14ymedio that that the Google executives "made the trip all the way up to the 14th floor to have a chat with us, in an editorial office without an Internet connection but with a strong commitment to reporting on Cuban reality today," according to a Havana Times translation.
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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