January 12, 2021Google announced the open fund in mid-January. Google’s news and information credibility lead, Alexios Mantzarlis, said they received more than 300 applications from 74 countries in the three-week application window. The scope of the winning projects is pretty remarkable. The audiences targeted include a range from Catholics to Pekeño 77 fans, the elderly to 18- to 26-year-olds, people with disabilities in Spain to wet market workers in Indonesia. Mantzarlis served as director for Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network and managing director of the Italian fact-checking organization Pagella Politica before arriving at Google. He says many of these projects mark the first time — as far as he or Google knows — that fact checking will be done in these formats.