Moments ago, Google chambered the mother of all bombshells: Reader, as soon as next week, will become part of Google+. It will be impossible to use Google Reader as a standalone product, and many of its social features (friending, following, sharing) are being buried in favor of Google+ equivalents.
CEO Larry Page keeps suggesting there's something more to today's announcement of Google's $12 billion dollar acquisition of Motorola Mobility than just Android phones. On a conference call with investment analysts, Page noted that Motorola is also a "leading home device maker" and that Google plans to work with them to "accelerate innovation." Google's blog post on the deal also gives a big nod to Motorola's history of innovation, calling the company "a market leader in the home devices and video solutions business."
Douwe Osinga, a software engineer, recently left Google after seven years. He's written a series of blog posts explaining why he left and also describing what it was like working there, and he dispels some of the many myths about Google.
Google Wallet is officially live starting Monday. The company announced its digital wallet in May. Now Google Wallet can be used anywhere MasterCard PayPass terminals are used. To test out how easy it is to use Google Wallet, I went wandering around my neighborhood on a tiny shopping spree. (And I say tiny because I was using the $10 that Google is giving to all early adopters of the Google Wallet that they can use until the end of the year.)
Last week I wrote an rather controversial article saying that newfound social network Google Plus was essentially a bust, and I was flooded by responses from fans saying that I had gone about experiencing the site the "wrong way" to be able to make that sort of judgment call. Wait for your friends to show up? Please. Post things privately? How silly! Google Plus is about contribution, and unless you're putting in the work to be social and interesting, you'll get nothing out of it, I was told.
Google has always tried to keep a very open policy with the general public, but it can't always be entirely forthcoming, as is the case with Google Maps. Google has very little say in what gets censored and what doesn't, be it for personal privacy or national security. Finding censored objects on Google Maps isn't the easiest task, as most look like imaging anomalies, rather than some big black bar with "CENSORED" written in large text.
So says noted tech writer Steven Levy, who spent much of the past three years playing anthropologist at one of the Internet's most interesting villages and set of inhabitants - the Googleplex and the tribe of Googlers who inhabit it.
First of all, we'd like to thank all of our loyal users of Google Toolbar for Firefox. We deeply appreciate all of the feedback over the years that helped to make the product so useful. As we all know, over the past few years, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the browser space.
Well, that might be a bit of a stretch -- developer Any.DO, which just released a task management app by the same name, received $1 million in backing from Schmidt’s venture capital firm, Innovation Endeavors.
Google Apps is probably one of the most (if not the most) recognizable cloud-based platform these days. Universities are starting to use this and replace old email and calendar systems with the help of cloud-solution provider Appirio.
Apple is the world's most valuable brand with a value of $153.3 billion, according to Millard Brown Optimor's annual "BrandZ: Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands" study released today. In just one year, Apple's brand value has increased by 84 percent, the study said.
Apple and its App Store will remain king when it comes to mobile app revenues for years, according to new research that expects the overall paid app market to double by 2014.
It's chest-beating season in the download race between Apple's App Store and the Android Market. In the latest dose of braggadocio, Apple said in a press release Thursday that it reached the 15 billion mark for total app downloads from the iTunes App Store.
Few companies have made a splash in the tech industry as big as Google has. Launched by Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Page's Stanford University dorm room in 1998, the company became a $27 billion titan overnight when it went public six years later. Soon it was the darling of Silicon Valley, sweeping competitors aside and taking Microsoft head on. For a while, at least, it seemed Google could do no wrong.
Chinese search giant Baidu has launched its own web browser, aping Google's Chrome with web applications and aspirations of becoming a desktop replacement.
Steven Levy has a new book on Google based on two years of unprecedented access to the company. After catching up with Levy, here are highlights of the book's most important issues.
Belgium became Thursday the latest European country to investigate Google's Street View picture map after cars taking pictures for the programme collected private data.
Google won a civil lawsuit in Germany lodged by a woman who contended its roving camera cars that shoot photographs for Street View violated her privacy.
When you're in this business long enough, you get a little jaded about "the next great thing." Because the fact of the matter is, most folks who write about the tech industry are foremost fans --and fans, as we all know, can be irrationally positive about something they're excited about.
Bing, Microsoft's little search engine that could, has taken 30 percent of the U.S. search market share, posing a serious threat to Google's dominance in the field.
Looking at the overall search engine market from May 2010 to May 2011, Compete found that Google has lost close to 16 percent of its share, dropping to 63.6 percent from 73.9 percent. At the same time, Microsoft grew its share by 75 percent, jumping to 17 percent from 9.7 percent.
The latest Comscore results are in and Bing managed to gain slightly on both Google and Yahoo. While not a significant gain, Bing climbed from 14.8% to 15%, Yahoo fell from 15.2% to 15.1% and Google kept its commanding lead but was down slightly from 65.6% to 65.4%.
Apple's release of iOS 5 and the unveiling of Siri has everyone talking excitedly about the benefits of a digital assistant that can understand natural language. Having seen the demo of what Siri is capable of, though, I cannot help but think of how much better Google's implementation of a similar service might be. More than that, with the raw data Google has access to, there's no reason Big G shouldn't unveil a competing service --and a couple reasons it should.
A state-run newspaper in China has written a blistering condemnation of Google's assertion that the Chinese government was behind recent attacks against Gmail users in the US government and elsewhere. China called Google's accusations "political gaming" and said that the US search giant was trying to harm China/US relations.
China has angrily denounced Google's claims that it has uncovered a sophisticated spear phishing attack on key US individuals which originated from the heavily firewalled country.
China's top newspaper and mouthpiece for the country's Communist Party, the People's Daily, published a story today taking aim at the search giant, Reuters is reporting. And the statements indicate that there might be some political trouble ahead for Google.
China said Wednesday it had renewed Google's licence to operate in the world's largest online market, after the US company last year moved its Chinese search engine overseas in protest over censorship.
The state-run newspaper of China made a stern warning to Google today in the wake of Google's announcement that an attack on a number of Gmail accounts came from that country. Reuters reports that the People's Daily newspaper made the warnings in a front page commentary today, saying that, "Google's accusations aimed at China are spurious, have ulterior motives, and bear malign intentions."
Google co-founder Larry Page on Monday takes back the reins of the Internet powerhouse that he and Sergey Brin created as Stanford University students some 13 years ago.
Google faces an increasing tide of criticism over its decision to tightly weave Google+ into its search results, with at least one legal expert saying that its behavior may be grounds for antitrust action. Twitter is the most vocal critic so far, with General Counsel Alex Macgillivray describing the Mountain View, Calif. company's move as "a bad day for the Internet".
IDC's quarterly survey of mobile developers couldn't have come at a better time for Google, soon after its Plus service opened on an invite-only beta basis. Developers -- 2,012 surveyed from July 20-22 -- are enthusiastic about Google+. "Two-thirds of respondents believe that Google can catch up to Facebook in social with Google+", according to the report.
Google stole the limelight Thursday with its plans to turn Android smartphones into Google Wallets with near-field communications, as reported Thursday by Phil Hornshaw in Appolicious.
Bladder cancer is the fourth-most-common cancer in men and one of the most expensive cancers to treat from diagnosis to death. After initial diagnosis and surgery, patients must return to the urologist at least yearly for a costly, time-consuming and uncomfortable bladder scan. Tumors recur in more than half of patients.
According to Arrington, "multiple sources" say Google "may have paid" as much as $150 million in stock grants to retain employees Sundar Pichai and Neal Mohan. Both Pichai and Mohan were offered the role of product development leader at Twitter, yet both declined -- thanks to Google's offer of $50 million and $100 million in stock grants, respectively. Pichai is a vice president of product management at Google, and responsible for desktop strategy and leads the Chrome OS team. Mohan is also a vice president of product management at Google, where he runs DoubleClick, the Internet ad company.
Patents related to shipping logistics normally aren't the concern of the public. But when Google receives a patent for electronic shipping notifications, one has to wonder what that means for online merchants, like Amazon, and major shipping companies, like UPS.
The Department of Justice approved Google's purchase of travel data provider ITA Software with conditions. Specifically, the DOJ will require Google to develop and license travel software, firewall data and continue to develop ITA products.
In a couple of weeks, Larry Page will take over from Eric Schmidt as the CEO of Google (GOOG). I think he and Google investors are in for a rude awakening. The next 6 months are bound to be bumpy for him as he figures out what's required from a CEO.
The head of a consumer online privacy watchdog says U.S. regulators should look into Google's new personalized search to see whether there are antitrust or privacy issues.
It's not often an exec is this honest about his/her own faults, but Google's Eric Schmidt admitted that not only did he "clearly knew I had to do something and I failed to do it," but that he "screwed up" when it came to social networking.
Google's business model is forcing EU regulators to take "special care" in their assessment of whether the search giant is abusing its market dominance in breach of EU laws, Europe's Competition Commissioner has said.
One of the first reactions to March's devastating quake-and-tsunami combo was Google's Person Finder—a database of missing individuals. But even for the search king, it wasn't easy. And the fact that Google's still unknown to many didn't help.
Google faces a total of nine antitrust complaints which EU regulators are now investigating, two sources said on Tuesday, as rivals ramped up the pressure on the world No. 1 search engine.
Google has increased its dominance in the UK search sector, according to the latest numbers, but search itself --though growing in absolute terms --now accounts for a lower proportion of the traffic hitting websites than it formerly did as social networks make their presence felt.
It looks like Facebook is in the center of another PR gaffe--a Facebook spokesman has confirmed to The Daily Beast that Facebook has been participating in a "smear campaign" against Google.
The amount of activity on Google+ is falling, according to the latest data from web monitoring firm NetApplications, with Facebook massively ahead of the competition.
In a move that is surely a shot across the bow of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Facebook announced Wednesday they are integrating Skype into their platform, allowing Facebook users the opportunity to video chat with their friends. This comes a little more than a week after Google unveiled its own version of Facebook, dubbed "Google+", making a direct attempt to go after Facebook's core user base.
We're in the middle of uploading a couple songs to Google Music Beta, the new streaming music service Google announced today at the Google IO developer conference.
Last month, I wrote about Google's aggressive strategy to fine tune Chrome as a gaming interface that will run future HTML5 as well as traditional C++-based games. The Chromium revision log is a treasure trove for those who want to follow Google's activities in this space, but my attention was specifically caught by a proposal to lock your mouse cursor.
Remember that Google TV thing we all cared so much about? When was that? Last year I think? I feel so old. Well if you want to dust yours off, now might be the time: TNT and TBS channels unlocked.
In one of the largest settlements of its kind in U.S. history, Google agreed last week to pay the U.S. government half a billion dollars for allowing its advertising system to be abused by Canadian Internet prescription drug peddlers illegally importing their wares into the country. The size of the settlement wasn't the only eye-opener in the case. The settlement agreement contained some surprises, too, especially in some admissions made by the company whose motto is "Do no evil." Here are four of them.
The Federal Trade Commission may finally launch an anti-trust probe against Google to decide whether the company's massive search and advertising business unfairly snuffs out competition.
With its Chromebooks, Google has been trying to revolutionize computing by switching to a browser-centered model. As a result, it doesn't necessarily require the beefy parts that a Windows-based laptop needs to deliver the fastest performance possible, relying on an Intel Atom N570 processor to power systems instead.
Usually when I see the words "free music," I expect a smattering of indie tracks from artists I've never heard of. And that's exactly what I expected from Google Music's free songs promotion on Android Market.
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is now Google Goggles-enabled. In other words, using your Google Googles smartphone app to take a picture of any of the permanent paintings in their collection opens up a plethora of new information.
On July 1, Google removed the entire co.cc subdomain from its search results in an effort to combat the spread of malware and spam. Co.cc is infamous for hosting malware landing pages and spam distribution services and Google decided that taking the whole lot of them off of search results caused more benefit than harm. Obviously not too happy about the 10 million or so websites being taken down, the General Manager of the co.cc subdomain, Jason Kim, decided to express his dissatisfaction with the actions Google took.
Kevin Purdy shows you how you can make and receive multiple calls using Google Voice features in your Gmail account. You can even put calls on hold if you want.
You're on your way to out of the office, free as a bird for the next two weeks. Except that you forgot to set your Gmail auto-response and your phone keeps blowing up with messages. The Google webapp adds features that will help keep you sane.
In June, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt publicly asserted "we're a law abiding company." Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will test that public representation when Mr. Schmidt testifies publicly under oath for the first time. Overwhelming evidence belies Google's 'Don't be evil' credo and corroborates that Google has become the 21st century's quintessential robber baron. No "law abiding company" has this long of a rap sheet.
The online merchant who notoriously bullied his customers--in hopes that they would be inspired to leave him bad online reviews and subsequently up his Google PageRank--pled guilty to several counts against him on Thursday.
Google plans to open an office in Indonesia soon as it looks to tap the country's huge growth in Internet users, the office of the country's vice president said Friday.
Google Inc on Monday accused the Chinese government of making it difficult for Gmail users to access the service in the country, the latest development in a rocky relationship between the two.
Officials from Microsoft and Google sparred at an event on Tuesday over Google's accusation that Microsoft copies Google search results and feeds them into its Bing search engine.
As patent lawsuits become ever more frequent, companies are building up their portfolios in an effect to protect themselves from litigation. Google is no stranger to this practice, as it confirmed on Friday it had purchased 1,030 patents from IBM. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition will give Google content synchronization know-how and technology, and a company that is already familiar with its Android smartphone operating system. PushLife's software automatically synchronizes content on a phone with that stored on a computer in iTunes or Windows Media Player, according to a FAQ posted on PushLife's website. PushLife released versions of its software for BlackBerry and Android phones in January, and said the platform was also compatible with phones running Nokia's Symbian operating system.
Google has acquired restaurant review authority Zagat, publisher of a popular line of dining out guidebooks. The news came in a post to the Google blog and poem on Google+ from Marissa Mayer, the company's vice president of local, maps and location services.
Google started rolling out a new feature for Google Calendar users, making it easier for groups and co-workers to collaborate. Called appointment slots, the Google Calendar functionality allows you to set up times and dates in your calendar, so collaborators can pick and choose the most convenient times for them as well.
Using Google to search for airline flights just got a little easier. The search giant announced Friday that it's adding flight schedules to travel-related searches.
Google has started rolling out to its Analytics accounts a new feature that displays graphically for Web publishers how people are moving across their sites.
Users of Google's Android OS on their Nexus S smartphones can now smile a little more as their friends will be able to see it; Google has (finally) added video and voice chat as a part of a native Android app. Third party apps that let users video chat on their Android phones (Fring, Qik, etc.) have been around awhile, as has a native app on the iPhone (FaceTime); with this move, Google is finally catching up with everyone else by adding both video and voice to Google Talk; something users have been able to do on their personal computers for quite some time.
Google on Thursday announced the addition of current weather information and cloud data from around the world to its Google Maps application, by an arrangement with The Weather Channel's weather.com and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
A BBC investigation has found that illegal adverts sold through Google's advertising programme may eventually be shut down, but the search giant keeps the profit generated.
Google says it's working to keep the virtual lights on for businesses that are being incorrectly labeled as "closed" on Google Maps. The issue was raised in a New York Times article that profiled a handful of businesses that had been temporarily labeled closed on Google Maps, apparently due to what Google product manager Ethan Russell calls "malicious or incorrect labeling."
Google's Map Maker, an online application that lets people annotate and add cartographic drawings to Google Maps, is finally available for the U.S., after debuting in 183 countries since its launch in 2008.
Citing "people familiar with the matter," the Journal reported today that Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com, and DirecTV are among the companies interested in acquiring the video service. Although none of the companies has made an offer yet, the Journal's sources said the bids are expected to range from $500 million to $2 billion.
What double-dip recession? Despite the worsening economy, online ad spending rose sharply in the second quarter, according to a report released today by IgnitionOne. The online ad management firm, known until recently as SearchIgnite, said spending rose across the three channels it tracks: search ads, display ads, and Facebook.
As the Internet becomes more of a media delivery system, Google, OpenDNS and Content Delivery Networks have joined forces to improve Internet video's Domain Name System speed.
Now that the economy has recovered to robust health and unemployment is back below 5%, the U.S. Senate has ample time and resources to spend investigating "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?"
Earlier today Google announced "Google Catalogs" a free application, which allows tablet users to browse digital versions of their favorite print catalogs. The application enables users to subscribe to paper-free versions of their favorite catalogs and be informed whenever a new issue has been released.
It's already coming up to that time of the year, advertisers are getting ready, and you could almost ?get your Christmas tree out and get away with it. Google has announced today their Christmas retail trends for 2011, and the company claims that they've seen a 220% jump in shopping searches coming from smartphones.
Google has confirmed as true allegations made on Friday by a Kenyan provider of online business listings, Mocality, that Google staffers attempted to undermine its business by lying to its customers and improperly mining its data.
Google has moved "most" of its online services off the Google File System that has underpinned its famously distributed back-end infrastructure for a good ten years, according to Google senior vice president of operations Urs Hölzle.
This week, Google announced several updates to its Google Apps online productivity suite. Improved migration tools and the ability to paginate Google Docs were followed by an new administrator interface. And yes, I did just say that Google announced pagination.
Google made it a point to make a big deal about the amount of money its competitors were about to spend in order to ensure it didn't get its hands on a set of patents, but that apparently doesn't extend to the company's acquisition efforts.
Google's plan to offer a super fast Internet broadband service in Kansas City continues to make progress. This week the official Google Fiber blog site has announced that residents of the Midwest city "may notice a few engineers walking around, consulting maps and surveying your street or neighborhood." That means that Google has started the next phase of bringing a 1 Gbps Internet service to the people of both Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas.
Google's iOS Books app that was quietly removed from the Apple App Store over the weekend reappeared late Monday, fully compliant with the new App Store rules. The Google Books iOS app, introduced in December, is now in line with Apple's newly enforced rules that ban links bypassing Apple's own in-app purchase mechanism.
Search engine giant Google on Thursday formally launched the construction of a new data centre in Singapore to cope with the explosive growth of Internet traffic in the Asia-Pacific region.
AT&T and Verizon subscribers have noticed in recent days that Wireless Tether, a tethering app (formerly) available via the Android Market, has disappeared. Users are, however, able to find the app via the online version of Android Market, signaling that individual carriers may be to blame for the disappearance.
Figures released by industry tracker comScore credited Google with being the first online operation to attract more than a billion visitors in a single month.
Who says Google favors its own properties? When the company's Safe Browsing service checked Google.com, it found that 50 pages resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent.
Google may want to insist that it is not interested in building a social network, but that didn't stop the company from buying a pair of start-ups yesterday that just so happened to be covered in social goo.
Google has bought Beatthatquote.com, a British website for comparing prices of insurance, utilities and legal services, the companies said Tuesday. Google paid £37.7 million (US$61 million), according to Beatthatquote.
Google+ is a strong statement that Google doesn't like Twitter's 140-character limits, but apparently the company still thinks there's a strong need to shorten Web addresses as much as possible.
There are plenty of very smart people at Google, but sometimes it's easier to just buy smart things that other smart people are doing. Especially when you've got more money than Jesus Christ and Michael Jackson combined. The Google Way.
Google has announced that it will buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. It has been approved by the directors of both companies and should pass regulatory approval by the end of the year. With some 19,000 employees, revenue of $11 billion, and assets of $6 billion, Motorola Mobility is certainly not the biggest manufacturer of its kind --both Samsung and Nokia are many times larger, both in terms of revenue and market share --but this doesn't make Google's purchase any less significant. For a start, $12.5 billion is almost half of Google's cash reserves --but more importantly, Motorola Mobility inherited some 17,000 patents when it was separated from Motorola Inc. in January 2011, and these patents will pass directly to Google.
As most of you now know, Larry Page, CEO of Google, announced in a blog post yesterday morning that the company has agreed to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This is a huge announcement for the mobile community especially since Android already controls a little under half of the mobile market. Now, with the patent power of Motorola, little will hinder Android's growth.
Google has acquired The Dealmap, a local deals aggregation service with more than 2 million users. The Dealmap, which announced the transaction Monday in a blog post, launched service in May 2010. Terms were not disclosed.
Although mobile commerce continues to grab increasing shares of the holiday shopping market, most of Google's largest advertisers are blowing their chances of fully exploiting that trend because they don't have mobile sites.
The aim of Google's latest app is to save the environment --at least when it comes to printing paper catalogs. Instead of stacking these handheld shopping guides next to your couch, you can now access many of the big-name books via your iPad in the app Google Catalogs.
When you use a search engine to find information on a topic, you hope that the search results would offer the most up to date and relevant info on your subject. Sadly, sometimes that hasn't been the case when a person uses Google's search engine. But now Google claims that it has come up with a new algorithm for its search results that it claims will give users much more timely info than before.
The newest version of Google Chrome now has an option to print any webpage using Cloud Print and multiple profile support for users on one computer to maintain separate settings. The additions are available in version 16 for Windows, Mac and Linux users. Here's a quick look at what's new to Chrome 16.
Google is laying down some rules on what Android carriers are allowed to do with the platform and what they're not. Jack Wallen looks at the new restrictions and what they mean to the spirit of open source.
Google has been cleared of misleading web users in a court case brought by an Australian watchdog that accused the Chocolate Factory of mixing adverts into search results. However, Trading Post --the country's top online classified ads site --was rapped for buying ads on Google using keywords for brands it didn't own.
Google is shutting down the Marketplace forums which have, until now, required Android developers to resolve their problems in public and without much in the way of official support.
One of App Engine's most requested features has been a simple way to develop traditional database-driven applications. In response to your feedback, we're happy to announce the limited preview of Google Cloud SQL.
At Google's I/O 2011 conference, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has used harsh words to criticize Microsoft's Windows operating system, outlining why Google is tackling Microsoft in the heavily one-sided OS market. Captured by GeekWire during a press conference, Brin said:
Google's attempt to purge copyright from header files has put mobile developers at risk of being forced to reveal their own source code, according to legal experts.
The search engine behemoth bought 1,023 patents from IBM in August, according to records filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office's website, and originally reported on the SEO by the Sea blog.
The search giant has been dubbed the most attractive employer by more than 160,000 people looking for the right place to work, according to a study released yesterday by employer branding company Universum.
After waiting for more than a month, Google has unveiled its mysterious Dart programming language... and you're going to kick yourself for getting so preemptively excited. Dart is a new programming language that looks like Java, acts a lot like Java, runs inside a virtual machine (VM) like Java... but ominously, it also has a tool that converts Dart code into JavaScript.
Google said today that it will buy power from a planned 100 megawatt wind farm in Oklahoma located near a data center now being built, another step in the company's goal to be carbon neutral.
Google Inc hit the U.S. bond market on Monday with its high grade market debut, selling $3 billion of 3-year, 5-year and 10-year notes that take advantage of low borrowing rates.
Google makes its money from advertising, and promotes such advertising through the use of its many popular free services. These include a search engine, Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger, and the list goes on
Despite economic worries in Europe, Google was still expected to post strong earnings today, but the Mountain View, Calif.-based enterprise didn’t hold up to estimates and stock prices plummeted after hours.
Yesterday's Google Doodle celebrated the 450th anniversary of St Basil's Cathedral in Russia, so it's kind of fitting that the day after is the birthday of a man renowned for building them.
Google this week told Chrome users to switch to outdated versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox if they want to access Gmail when they're not connected to the Web.
Google has released Google Earth 6.2 to smooth over earlier versions' unsightly patchwork caused by stitching together widely varying satellite photographs.
Google Earth software has been downloaded more than one billion times, and that stellar achievement was marked Wednesday with a website showcasing ways the interactive replica of the planet is used.
The Google eBooks affiliates program kicks off today. Retailers, bloggers, book publishers and other website owners are welcome to participate and join the Google Affiliate Network (GAN).
Like almost every other Android user on the planet, I'm eagerly awaiting an Ice Cream Sandwich update on my handset. Google employees, however, have no such wait: they're lucky enough to have received it as an update on their Nexus S handsets.
No details are available about how the system would work, but a reasonable assumption is that it'll be designed around the Google Android platform, and integrate with the existing Google Talk service. Google recently added video chat to Android, akin to Apple's Face Time, and the new service might build on this.
Google abuses its dominance in the U.S. search market by burying competitors deep in Google's search engine rankings in categories such as local information, travel, shopping in favor of the company's own products. That's the gist of what several companies are expected to say Wednesday afternoon during a senate hearing examining whether Google behaves in an anti-competitive manner.
Google is fighting to hide an email in which it seems to admit to knowingly infringing the Java patents, but with the text already public it will be a hard fight to win.
Late last week, there were conflicting reports as to how close Google was to finalizing a deal to buy Admeld. Now, it's official. Google confirmed the acquisition on its official blog, noting that it will give the Goog a bigger boost in developing interactive display ads:
Taipei said Monday it had fined Google Tw$1,000,000 ($34,600) for refusing to grant customers a seven-day trial period when they download apps for their cell phones.
Google has disabled a feature that could allow people to remove websites from its search index following a problematic discovery by an astute observer.
A worrying trend for Microsoft's search engine was revealed last Friday: Bing's market share remained flat over the last two months while Google clawed back web surfers.
Google has agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that Google Buzz, the social network launched in 2010, violated the FTC Act.
The Justice Department's antitrust authorities have approved Google's $900 million bid for 6,000 Nortel patents and patent applications, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
Google is sifting through the photos and commentary on its blossoming social network so its Internet search results can include more personal information.
Google has unveiled the next step in its plans to push into the market for online financial services with a price comparison site for mortgages and bank accounts.
Google has introduced a new monthly report to give developers on the Android Market more information about users of their paid applications. The reports will contain information from each purchase, but will not contain and data that could be used to individually identify users. Instead, basics like what device was used and what currency the purchase was made in will be recorded.
Pittpatt was spun off from the University of Carnegie Mellon in 2004 following 10 years of research by Dr Henry Schneiderman, now the company's president and CEO.
DailyDeal, started by brothers Fabian and Ferry Heilemann at the end of 2009, has reportedly grown fast, with Fabian saying in April that the company expected a turnover of €30m to €40m for 2011 after selling over 250,000 vouchers in the first three months of the year. At the moment, the site only operates in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
It's the confluence of two phenomena: Google is on a hiring binge and the company is increasingly under regulators' antitrust microscope. So the search giant is looking to hire a new antitrust lawyer.
The French online shopping website Twenga has filed a complaint against Google at the European Commission, accusing the Internet search giant of abusing its dominant position to eliminate any competition.
Like so many developer conferences, Google I/O is a big deal even if you've never programmed a line of code. With Google's software tentacles extending to smartphones and tablets with Android, televisions with Google TV and laptops with Chrome OS, Google I/O should be packed with news for the consumer tech world. Here's what to expect from Google I/O, a two-day conference that begins on May 10:
At the end of 2009 Google announced that it was introducing its very own short URL service using the name and URL goo.gl. At the time Google limited it to Google-only services, but its functionality has steadily expanded to a point where last September it was opened up for use by anyone.
Since the RIAA ended its catastrophic strategy of suing end users in 2008 (although not everyone has noticed), copyright enforcers have focused on the middlemen. Google is not only one of the biggest infringers in the world (if not the biggest) but the most trusted middleman, a global brand. The Chocolate Factory's new strategy is to make life difficult for the casual user --the hardcore pirate will easily find what they want, and would do so even if Google was 100 per cent free of any links to infringing material. You don't need Google if you know where to go.
The verdict documents in the case of Bedrock Computer Technologies, LLC, vs. Google, Inc., became public yesterday, but have received remarkably little attention. While the settlement in Bedrock's favor is a mere $5 million, the case should have Google, Linux developers, and Android developers worried.
How curious. The Government's review into IP and growth may have been set up by mistake, or at least on a false premise. On announcing the review last November, Prime Minister David Cameron said something quite curious. Cameron explained that the review was a response to Google's concerns...
Google is tying its Analytics and Webmaster Tools applications more closely together in an effort to give Web publishers a joint view of internal site traffic and search engine optimization (SEO) data.
Google has the search, mobile, and advertising markets covered, but now, the company is once again branching out into low-income housing developments, according to a new report.
Google IO starts in just six days, and the official app has finally hit the Android Market. It's a must-have if you're going to be at Moscone West next week (hey, that's us!), as it has a schedule of the keynotes and sessions, map of the venue (all three levels of it), sessions lists, bulletins, real-time tweets and more. Heck, even if you can't be in San Francisco next week, check it out just to follow along. Download links are after the break.
Late yesterday, Google announced perhaps the biggest change it has ever made to its massive network of web services: Starting in March, your search and surf habits across all of Google's products will be combined to form the mother of all behavioral profiles.
In total, Google spent $917 million on capital expenditures in the second quarter, the company reported in its quarterly earnings yesterday. The "majority" of the money went on "land and building purchases," the company said.
Google Inc. added to its cash hoard Monday by issuing $3 billion in corporate debt at low interest rates. It's the first time Google has tapped the corporate bond market for money.
With so much headline space being devoted to Google+ in recent weeks - and Google itself admitting that its new social networking product isn't ready for businesses just yet - business users may have been feeling a bit unloved by the company of late. But while Google+ may not be the best home for businesses right now, a new Google initiative renews the company's commitment to driving growth in small businesses through online opportunities.
Google has launched a new portal in China that catalogs group buying deals, a return to activity there after pulling back from its operations in China more than a year ago.
Google has launched its own quarterly online magazine, Think Quarterly, out of its operations in the U.K. and Ireland, saying that "in a world of accelerating change, we all need to take time to reflect."
Google has developed a paid version of its Analytics website usage monitoring service that offers better performance, more sophisticated features and broader technical support than the free product, the company said on Friday.
Getting more small companies wired will help their businesses grow, and help their country fight unemployment, officials said Thursday as Google launched a project that makes it easy to showcase South African entrepreneurship on the Internet.
In its ongoing quest to make the Internet all that much faster, Google is once again turning to the techies - this time to give a test run to the latest addition to its Page Speed family, called Page Speed Service. The service, which makes web pages load faster, has produced speed improvements of 25-60 percent on some site.
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Tim Porter, Google's patent counsel, argued that the patent system is broken and that all the lawsuits and countersuits between tech companies waste time and resources. While this might be a popular opinion among tech professionals and consumers, it's both a little surprising and enlightening to hear this stated by a lawyer, especially one in the employ of Google itself.
Macy's is to join the growing list of American retailers who'll accept payment with the tap of the telephone, or card, but no one is talking about the latter these days.
Workers at the search giant earn an average mid-career pay, for workers with 10 years' experience, of $141,000, which is 23 percent higher than the IT industry's market pay, the PayScale survey found.
Top search engine Google on Thursday introduced an experimental feature which continues its mission to chip away at undesirable search results and information from "content farms": the ability to block all results from a particular URL.
It had to happen at some point considering it was noted during Google Q3 earnings call on Thursday. Google Buzz, the short-lived social service that was never widely used and flawed from the start has been put to rest. Along with it, Code Search and Jaiku will soon be wiped from the interwebs. As noted on the Google Blog:
Google technicians want an overhaul of the Web's TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) transport layer and are suggesting ways to reduce latency and make the Web faster.
A round of celebratory cheers from Google fans went up yesterday after the company announced a new feature addition to its search pages. It all started when the company noticed an abnormal amount of traffic was still targeting a datacenter that had been taken offline for maintenance.
Google Maps just got a sizable update, with a slew of new features that those of you in major metro areas are going to want to check out. First and foremost is the addition of Transit Navigation. It's in beta (of course), but gives you directions via public transit in more than 400 cities worldwide, tying it all into turn-by-turn directions.
There is an allowance for small sites -- the first 25,000 map-loads a day are free. The toll has been on the way since Google updated the Maps API's Terms of Service in April and was scheduled to kick in at the beginning of October. It could be significant cost for developers: an app using the JavaScript Maps API for mobile and clocking in 100,000 users will now have to shell out $300 a day.
Google continues to plug in public transportation information with a new update for its Maps for Android app that includes stop-by-stop transit navigation.
One of the central tenets of the Google Mothership's model is "free." Everything's free! Free, free, free. Except, um, when it gets too popular? Starting January 1st of next year, developers will be charged when their apps access the Google Maps API more than 25,000 times in a day.
That's because Google has partnered with four U.S. cities and two European cities to add a new live transit feature to Google Maps that can tell you whether your train or bus is running late.
Google Maps is moving you off the street and inside local businesses with a new feature called Business Photos that shows you 360-degree images of store interiors using Street View technology. Business Photos lets you peek inside select stores in 10 U.S. cities and surrounding areas including Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Washington, D.C. The new feature is also available in Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand and the U.K.
A new Google Maps update is now available. This version -- v5.5.0 has only three changes listed in the changelog but it brings some stuff that users have been asking for all while addressing some privacy concerns within Latitude. The full changelog is as follows:
The US Federal Trade commission is considering a broad antitrust investigation of Google's search business, according to a report citing two people familiar with the matter.
Google is holding talks with major retailers and shippers about creating a service to have goods delivered within one day (or sooner) for a low fee, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing "people familiar with the matter."
While folks in the U.S. have had Google Movies rental service on their devices for quite a while now, Canadians have been thus far left in the dark from having it appear on the Android Market. Now though, numerous reports have confirmed the service is slowly rolling out handsets along with the Android Market 3.1.5 update.
Google's long awaited music store is on schedule for launch this quarter, and the major labels are starting to spread the word to their subsidiaries and partners.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google Music will launch in the next two weeks--regardless of whether or not Google has inked deals with the four major record label giants. That's a ballsy move, Google.
Google has been pretty quiet about music since unveiling a cloud service in May, but now the search company is reportedly seeking to launch an MP3 store.
Google recently unveiled its long-awaited music store that will offer more than 13 million tracks, instant access to purchased music in your online storage locker and several free music promotions. The search giant also announced that Google Music has graduated from its beta testing period and is now available for public sign-ups in the United States.
Google is prepping for a big announcement here in Los Angeles today and the rumor mill is buzzing about what the company could possibly be unveiling. I'll be covering the event later this afternoon, but we have a pretty good idea about what Google's next venture will be: A final version of Google Music with a full-fledged music store.
Google is close to reaching a settlement with the Justice Department over allegations it made hundreds of millions of dollars by accepting advertisements from online pharmacies that break US law, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The new News site features a one-column default view, rather than the two-column view the site previously used. The Top Stories section now includes six or more stories, rather than three, to offer more diversity.
Google has started warning some search users of malware on their computers, after it found unusual search traffic coming through a small number of intermediary servers called proxies.
Gmail is emerging as a threat to the big boys in the enterprise email industry, despite holding just one per cent of the market and Google's refusal to tweak its service to suit individual customers. The Chocolate Factory also faces a bitter battle with Microsoft in the email cloud space - a war that could trample over other providers, an analyst has warned.
Google is now indexing AJAX and JavaScript content, which means pages that use this programming--for example, Facebook comments--are now open to being searched.
Google and some of its retail partners have rolled out an updated experience to the four-week old Google Wallet payment-by-phone system that now includes coupons and rewards points, which can all be redeemed with a single tap of the user's NFC-enabled smartphone. Google is calling the updated experience "SingleTap."
Google Offers, Google's answer to Groupon and its entrance into the popular online coupon market, will begin a test run in Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday, the first step in an expected U.S. and global rollout.
Google has given the owners of Wi-Fi routers around the world the right to opt out of a registry that the search giant uses to locate mobile phone users.
Google has open sourced a framework for realtime video and audio inside the browser. Known as WebRTC, the framework is based on technology the company acquired with its $68.2 million purchase of Global IT Solutions last year.
Google has open sourced the compression library used across its backend infrastructure, including MapReduce, its distributed number-crunching platform, and BigTable, its distributed database.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy joined Google to cut the ribbon on its new Paris headquarters, even as the European Commission has the search giant under antitrust scrutiny.
In a blog post yesterday, product manager Peter Birch said the update added support for fully textured 3D buildings, as well as a new action bar making it easier to search the imagery and navigate layers of information. Google Earth started life as the company's virtual globe, but now incorporates street-level imagery and even extends out to space.
Google may have spent an estimated $1.5m on the Colombian domain name g.co earlier this year, but it was outbid on g.co.uk in a recent auction by a domain investor.
Google spent more than $500 million to acquire another 27 companies during the third quarter, ensuring this year will be busiest shopping spree in the Internet search leader's history.
Matt Cutts, head of the Web spam team at Google, confirmed at the SMX Advanced conference this week that Google Panda will receive an update to version 2.2. This is good news for original content creators who are seeing their original works outranked by sites that blatantly copy (or "scrape") them.
Google has admitted that they have also passed on European user data to United States intelligence agencies, much in the same way that Microsoft's UK managing director, Gordon Frazer said that they have been compelled to do, when the US government requests it, no matter where the data is hosted around the world.
Google has acquired a U.S. patent for its popular cycling logo system, also known as "Google Doodles." Patent 7,912,915 was granted on Tuesday, nearly 10 years after its initial submission in 2001 by Sergey Brin.
Google is planning to launch a music download service to complement its music locker, the company's Android chief Andy Rubin said today at the All Things Digital AsiaD conference in Hong Kong.
After a so-far fruitless three-year effort to settle the case, Google and the plaintiffs suing it for alleged book-related copyright infringement apparently are moving away from seeking a friendly solution.
The ongoing saga of Google's attempt to "get" social media has been full of so many disappointments--and more recently, so much silence--that sometimes it seems like the company has just given up on it entirely.
Google has modified the encryption method used by its HTTPS-enabled services including Gmail, Docs and Google+, in order to prevent current traffic from being decrypted in the future when technological advances make this possible.
Google is merging its Checkout and Wallet electronic payment services to consolidate them into a single product that works both on Web browsers and mobile devices.
Whether someone who is always flying around the country, like our very own Phil Nickinson, or just a casual traveler, we all know the pain that is had when searching for and comparing flights. Google hopes to make things easier for us with their latest application OnTheFly.
Ever wondered how regularly Google is requested to remove or show content? In another move intended to highlight the company's transparency, the search giant released statistics on Monday, June 27th. The statistics displayed are broken down to a country-by-country format, and displays the number of requests made within the second half of 2010. Between July and December, the United States requested the most information, with 4,601 requests made. As reported by Ars Technica, the Google information can be viewed here.
Mozilla, the maker of of Firefox, today announced that it has struck a new three-year deal with Google in which Google will remain the default search engine in the browser.
Google Inc., under scrutiny from privacy watchdogs for changes it made to its search engine, is launching a splashy ad campaign designed to alleviate privacy concerns.
Google took a slap at Microsoft on Tuesday, saying the software giant's patent lawsuit against bookseller Barnes & Noble's Android-based e-reader stifles innovation.
Changes in what's displayed in search results announced Tuesday by Google has one prominent privacy advocate ready to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Changes in what's displayed in search results announced Tuesday by Google has one prominent privacy advocate ready to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Google changed the web analytics market forever with the introduction of Google Analytics in 2005 (for a dose of nostalgia check out Brett Crosby's original blog post). It was easy to use, delivered as a service, integrated with Google AdWords, and most of all it was FREE! This was revolutionary, and in the beginning it was an exciting way to democratize analytics, giving companies of all sizes access to tools that had traditionally been the domain of large, well funded corporations. It's no surprise that in terms of sheer adoption, Google Analytics became --and still is --the most popular web analytics tool on Earth, serving hundreds of thousands of businesses.
Google provides a useful document that helps users understand what's under the Chrome browser's hood, especially as it relates to keeping hackers at bay.
Although smart boxes and other devices connected to your television have been providing access to YouTube for sometime, the same can't be said of Roku's streaming-only setup. A private channel created by an end user seemed to be the solution - until this week, when Google caught wind and shut it all down.
A year ago, Google acquired an up-and-coming maker of apps that plugged into social networks like MySpace and Facebook called Slide. Yesterday, it decided to hang an out-of-business sign on the operation.
Google has announced that Gmail and Picasa as well as its Chrome browser are now using WebP, the image compression format it open sourced last fall in an effort to replace the aging JPEG standard.
Google has managed to spend around $1.5bn on acquisitions in the last nine months, including $265m in the month of September alone, according to a regulatory filing.
Launched today as the latest experiment in the Google Labs playground, Google Talk Guru offers you a chat session through which you can ask certain questions and receive responses from an automated bot set up on the back end.
According to the 12th Annual Harris Interactive U.S. Reputation Quotient survey, Google booted Berkshire Hathaway as the country's most reputable company. Johnson & Johnson was ranked No. 2 followed by 3M at No. 3. Among tech companies Apple and Intel were ranked No. 5 and No. 6 respectively. Amazon was close behind.
Google is working to restore offline storage capabilities for its Apps productivity software and should have it done by the end of the year, according to a senior company official on Wednesday.
Google, a company with $36.6 billion in cash stuffed under its mattress, is about to offer up 3 billion dollars worth of Bonds. This offering is a first for the company and is also a bit curious, considering how much money they actually have at their disposal.
Google's role as archivist for important videos that capture history in the making will not be removed from YouTube just because they portray police officers behaving badly.
Beginning September 15, Google will require all developers to use SSL connections for all requests through its Google Documents List, Google Spreadsheet, and Google Sites APIs. In other words, these APIs will only accept requests via HTTPS. If you make a request to an old HTTP address, such as http://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/full, it will no longer work. You must use https://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/full.
Mark Zuckerberg recently referred to Google+ as Google's "own little version of Facebook." Bradley Horowitz responded by saying "we are delighted to be underestimated."
Governments are eager for the benefits of high-speed Internet access, but if they really want it, they need to reform regulations to help those who would build it, a Google executive argued today.
South Korea's telecommunications regulator said Tuesday it had signed an agreement with Google Inc. for the Internet giant to help nurture local start-ups and promote their advances into overseas markets.
Google is merging its Checkout and Wallet electronic payment services to consolidate them into a single product that works both on Web browsers and mobile devices.
Google plans to start selling advertising space in 50 top newspapers, expanding the Internet search engine's efforts to provide services off the Web and making it easier for companies advertising online to also show off their products in print.
In a new post on the official Google Research blog, 20 professors spanning 3 universities --Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and Technion --have just been awarded research grants to "advance the understanding of market algorithms and Internet economics."
Despite the fact that browser toolbars are loathed by geeky types everywhere, they're still used by a huge number of people. Among the most popular, of course, is the Google Toolbar --which has been upgraded to version 7 and sports a wide array of new features.
In addition, the roster of independent booksellers participating in the program has grown from about 100 to about 250, while the number of publishers has increased from about 5,000 to about 7,000, Google said Monday.
Google's executives have a vision of what television and the Internet can be like if they were merged together in one big screen device for the living room. In 2010, it offered up the first version of Google TV, software designed to be licensed to television and set-top makers. The general idea was to give consumers a way to offer a seamless way to access video and other Internet content on your TV.
Google TV rolled out the latest update over the past few days. The latest release serves to correct some system issues as well adds some new features to the services overall. Despite Google TV now sitting at v1.3 it still lacks the Android Market Google stated was coming soon.
Google is being scrutinized by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for allegedly deceptive practices when it comes to online search and search advertising. A new report agrees--outlining ways that Google stifles competition, but is Google really a predatory monopoly, or just an American success story?
Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt will take center stage at a Senate hearing Wednesday into whether the Internet giant is abusing its dominant position in online search.
Google's Street View is heading down the Amazon to capture pictures of "some of the most remote and biodiverse areas in the world", according to its official blog.
Google on Thursday unveiled a mobile wallet platform and field tests in New York and San Francisco that will let people with special phones pay for goods in retail shops by tapping the phones against a payment terminal.
Google on Tuesday unveiled Swiffy, a free tool for developers to convert some Flash files (.SWFs) into HTML5 code. The upshot? It's now easier than ever to get Flash content visible on platforms that don't support Adobe's Flash Player—like the iPhone and iPad.
Until now, users who ported their numbers to Google Voice, changed their Google Voice numbers or merged their numbers with Sprint only had a 90-day grace period to hold on to their original Google Voice numbers.
A new feature from Google for Google Voice takes the power of the "Report Spam" button and multiplies it exponentially. Google is applying the collected data from thousands of Google Voice users to automatically identify telemarketers and other unwanted calls and send them directly into the spam folder.
This article is a continuation of our Google Voice series. In this article, we'll look at how you can make and receive Google Voice phone calls from any old wired phone (including cordless phones) you may have lying around your house.
Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express have all signed onto US operator consortium Isis, leaving Google Wallet with just MasterCard as a payment partner.
While Google had some notable partners at the launch of its mobile payment platform, the companies that weren't there could end up determining the success of the project.
Google Wallet, which the company hopes will convince consumers to ditch their old leather wallets for its own virtual "tap-and-pay" smartphone system, has been spotted in the wild and there are some reports it could launch as soon as Monday. Google announced the new service months ago, but now that it may be imminent, some key questions need to be answered.
Google announced its wireless payment system on Thursday called Google Wallet that makes it possible for you to turn your phone into a wireless credit card. Sounds great, but experts say billfolds and credit cards aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Google unveiled details of Google Wallet this week. Google Wallet is an ambitious mobile payment plan designed to let your Android smartphone be your wallet, but you should consider very carefully just how secure your credit card data will be in Google Wallet.
On September 19, Google launched Google Wallet, an Android app that allows consumers to replace their credit cards with cell phones. Instead of swiping plastic, buyers can hold out a phone and pay for purchases without making contact. Critics and commentators seem frustrated by Google Wallet's current limitations, but don't let their cynicism sweep you away. Revolutions take time.
Google has issued a stern warning to Web publishers that carry its ads after noticing that some of them are improperly altering ad formats, behavior and targeting.
Since April 2010, French music rights and anti-piracy group SNEP has been engaged in legal action against Google. SNEP felt that Google should censor search terms such as torrent, RapidShare and MegaUpload. Having been decided once already in Google's favor the case went to an appeal. This week the Court of Appeal decided that Google can't be forced to filter.
Google has created a facial recognition app that can provide all kinds of personal information on the people around you, but says it's not releasing the technology due to privacy concerns.
Forget Google's Senate hearings: our coin-op Congress can't find the cloakroom door unless a lobbyist greases the way. Look back on the once-great Google in 10 years and these will be its greatest failures.
Google today launched an experiment called "+1," a small button alongside links in search results that it says users can click "to give something your public stamp of approval, so friends, contacts, and others can find the best stuff when they search."
January this year Google started censoring various 'piracy-related' keywords from two widely-used search services. According to Google, the anti-piracy filter is an attempt to curb online copyright infringement. Although the actual search results are not affected, a look at the search volumes reveals that the number of people searching for the censored keywords has indeed dropped significantly.
On June 28th, Google announced a new project, Google+, a social networking service which will put the company head-to-head with one of the other biggest names on the internet—Facebook. Although Google+ is still in a limited field trial, in the time since the announcement, Google's brand perception has begun to soar, led by a lift among the 18-34 age group.
Google's cloud-hosted search application for e-commerce sites has been upgraded with on-the-fly results that drop down from the query box as shoppers type their search terms, the company announced on Tuesday.
Google's contribution to the review of the intellectual property created to please Google was always going to be an important document. And here it is, typos and all; what a shame Google didn't review it on the way out of the door - some parts are unreadable.
At a time when Google defies the global economic slowdown by posting a 26% rise in net profits for the last quarter, it may seem curious to challenge the behemoth's future. As Larry Page, Google's co-founder and chief executive, declared "we had a great quarter", before going onto highlight the progress made with Google+: "People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started."
Google Inc.'s quarterly lobbying expenses surpassed $2 million for the first time during the spring and early summer amid U.S. government scrutiny that hatched a wide-ranging investigation into the Internet search leader's business practices.
I'm not the only one troubled by Google's new Search Plus Your World--Google's aggressive push to include social results in its search that seems to favor Google+ over other social media services. So is the FTC.
In October, Google announced that it would begin charging heavy commercial users of its Google Maps service in 2012, in order to “secure the long term future of the APIs [application programming interfaces] as location aware applications become ever more ubiquitous."
Google thinks it's time to look beyond JavaScript, the programming language that gives Web applications their brains. The company's project to do so behind closed doors with a new language called Dart, though, has spurred something of a backlash.
Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt met with the European Union's antitrust commissioner on Monday amid rumors that the Internet search giant will be hit with major objections by the European Commission early next year.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt will testify before a U.S. Senate hearing on antitrust and when he appears it'll be a nice opportunity to hone the company's messaging amid a glaring regulator spotlight.
According to reports and the schedule of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Google's power will be under the microscope. The hearing schedule lists the subject as: "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?"
In an attempt to allay fears that Motorola Mobility would receive special treatment following the completion of Google's acquisition, the search giant's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said that competitors have nothing to fear.
Building an internet within the internet isn't as easy for Google as it once was - and critics of Mountain View's latest efforts to make its search estate more "social" are becoming increasingly vocal.
Google is about to undergo yet another antitrust investigation for its alleged monopolistic business practices, this time in Seoul, Korea. Regulators from the Korean Fair Trade Commission raided their Seoul offices yesterday as the first salvo in the probe.
Google's method of obtaining info for its Street View feature in Google Maps has also had a fairly scary side effect. According to a story at CNet's News.com, the cars that are used by Google to take pictures of and obtain info for the feature have also taken the locations of millions of WiFi enabled devices. That includes laptops, smartphones, tablets and others.
Google is preparing to turn Google App Engine --its Windows Azure cloud-platform competitor --into a fully supported product in the second half of September.
These days, patent lawsuits have become the big guns that tech companies use to battle their competitors. But when it comes to Google's WebM video technology, the company is trying to establish a neutral zone of patent peace.
More than 17,000 government e-mail users have migrated to Google Apps for Government, a secure cloud-based e-mail and collaboration platform, according to GSA Administrator Martha Johnson.
Google Maps mash-ups are just the breast, aren't they? Especially when they're as time-sucking as James Bridle's Rorschmap, which turns satellite images of the world into kaleidoscopes worthy of being stuck at the end of a plastic tube.
Jerry and Phil wrap up Day 1 of Google IO. We've got Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 3.1, Google Music Beta, Android Open Accessory, Android @Home, demos, the new Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Jane's Addiction. Listen in!
A Belgian appeals court has upheld an earlier ruling that Google infringes on newspapers' copyright when its services display and link to content from newspaper websites, according to press reports.
Today's Google doodle honors choreographer Martha Graham's birthday--and with animated dancers revealing it, the doodle also showcases the company's push to build a more dynamic Web.
A U.S. senator resurrected year-old questions about Google Street View cars sniffing Wi-Fi networks Tuesday, when he questioned a company representative about a patent application covering a process to pinpoint location based on nearby Wi-Fi signals.
Let's say you're one of the largest players of a certain technology sector, be it computers or portable devices - specifically, your company authors software that goes on them. Let's also assume your product managed to build up an ecosystem around it, with different manufacturers taking your product and building their own designs with some reference specifications you provide them. Say a smaller competitor comes along and tries to compete with some bundled feature of your product. Would you be tempted to shut it down? If you've got enough money and wield enough influence for the manufacturers your product goes to - you sure as heck would, if you can get away with it, of course.
In just two weeks, Google's new social network, Google+, has amassed millions of early adopters. Whether you joined the site when it first launched or just received an invitation, there's a lot to learn, from setting up your account to adjusting your privacy settings.
Google+ has been dubbed "the Facebook Killer" and while that's very far from the truth, Facebook should seriously look at Google+ as a competitor because it's outperforming them in at least five ways.
Google+ (also known as G+, Google Plus or Plus) is the biggest trending topic online these days. So, what is it and why should you care about it? Simple --it's a new social media site that is directly tied into the most widely-used search engine on the planet, with looming search engine optimization (SEO) implications. If you care about your company's online reputation --what consumers are saying and where they are saying it --you need to read this post.
This week I've noticed the honeymoon with Google+ start to wane ever so slightly. Myself and others who were first enamored with the bright, shiny new social network Google+ have drifted back to check in on Facebook, to see what's going on back in the "real world," in a sense.
There has been plenty of to-ing and fro-ing around whether Google Plus is right for enterprise. Some colleagues are fearful that Google will move too quickly, others that it is moving too slowly. Whatever your position there is no denying that G+ is growing like topsy. And enterprising developers are finding ways to leverage it for their own purposes.
Most critics believe Google+ is gaining popularity online, but at least one study figures Google's latest social experiment is growing at rates that rival Facebook's. The search giant's two-week-old social network, currently in a limited field test, reportedly grew by 350 percent between July 4 and July 10 from 1.7 million users to 7.3 million. Google+ is also set to hit 10 million by Tuesday and 20 million by the weekend, according to one study.
It may not be dead, and it's entirely possible I'm shoveling dirt on something that's still writhing around, promising me it is in fact the next big thing, but I'm now deaf to its cries. Google Plus is a failure no matter what the numbers may say.
If you're a stranger who follows me on Google+, you might think I rarely use the service. That's because the majority of my posts have been limited to the seven circles I created for friends, acquaintances, family, Ars staffers, and other people I like to expose to various aspects of my personality. You had no idea? That's exactly the point.
Google wants you to feel it. The engineers, having created a new social network which they seemed to debut exclusively to, well, engineers, now want to seduce you--the ordinary, hungover, and unwashed.
Responding to Google's ban of +YourAnonNews on new social network Google+, "hacktivist" group Anonymous and Presstorm Media began discussing the possibility of a new social network called AnonPlus (or Anon+).
Google+, the presumptive Facebook killer, shows tremendous potential. As someone who warms up to any social network with the alacrity of a Galápagos tortoise, this, for me, is saying something.
Google has begun loading "verification badges" onto profiles created in its online estate, in a move to flush out imposters and solidify its ID-linking plans.
Google continues to stir up drama and controversy with its policy on using "real names" for the Google+ social network. It has evolved from a draconian system where users are kicked off with no notice, to a more reasonable system where users are warned first and given a grace period to address the situation. One way to resolve the problem is to change your name in Google+.
The world is already abuzz about Google+, even though it's not accessible to most. Still, many doubt that anyone, even the mighty one from Mountain View, can catch up to Facebook's half a billion (at least) active users. Unless, maybe there was a simple way to import your Facebook friends to your Google+ Circles. Indeed, there is an app for that. Actually, it's a Chrome extension.
An issue that had simmered for several weeks boiled over this weekend, as Google apparently accelerated deletions of Google+ accounts over the site's requirement that members use their real names.
Eric Schmidt may have been creeped out by the idea of using huge facial databases to identify individuals online, but that hasn't stopped Google from debuting its own version of the technology.
Available since just more than a month ago and still only in a testing mode, the Google+ social network has already convinced some developers that it will eventually catch up with rival Facebook.
Is Google censoring the use of dirty words in its new Facebook competitor, Google+? That's what many of the commenters on the tech-savvy internet community Reddit think, and some testing by people in my own Google+ circles tends to bear that conjecture out.
One of the biggest early draws to Google's new social network Google+ is the ability for users to break their list of friends into "circles" which each have their own level of communication. For example, if you want to post a message just for your old college buddies and not your co-workers, you can select the appropriate group and share that content without having to worry about the wrong people being involved in the conversation.
It might. The answer lies with Google. It won't take a lot of convincing for geeks to switch from Facebook to Google+ but for Ma and Pa Kettle, well, that's a different story. Huey, Dewey and Louie Kettle will use both for a while but will end up gravitating to Google+, which might well turn Facebook into the next MySpace. Why? Because Google+ is cooler. Much cooler. Or, at least it could be.
For those of us who like the fact that Google+ remains free of the clutter that games on Facebook cause to our news feeds there, we may soon find that reprieve short lived. More evidence surfaced Friday that Google does indeed plan to add some type of gaming functionality to its social network.
The biggest challenge to making Google+ a viable competitor to Facebook is that people must reproduce their social graph--their collection of connections--at the new service. But a Chrome extension makes that process a lot easier by automating the extraction of contact information that your Facebook contacts have shared.
It appears that Facebook does not want a certain Chrome extension from importing friends from their service to Google+. The 'Facebook Friend Exporter', a Chrome browser extension, intends to make the transition between the two services more simple. As ZDNet reports, Facebook has blocked the extension. Having been designed by a worker at Research in Motion, the extension was intended to import all the friends from Facebook to a file or another service. Information on the extension was posted earlier on Neowin, as well.
It's not much of a surprise to learn that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg created his own Google+ profile soon after Google had the limited launch of its new social networking service. But what does Zuckerberg really think about Google's latest attempt to muscle in on Facebook's business? Business Insider has some quotes from Zuckerberg on that matter from Wednesday's press event when Facebook announced the launch of its video chat feature.
FairSearch.org, a coalition of companies critical of Google's business practices, is urging all 50 U.S. state attorneys general to investigate the search giant over possible antitrust violations.
Ford Motor Co. has established a corporate presence on Google+, evidently securing a place in a test of how Google's social network site will extend beyond individuals.
Google+ has moved from invitation-only limited Field Trial to Beta mode open to the public. Along with the transition from Field Trial to Beta, Google also introduced a number of changes to the Google+ social network that might make it a more attractive platform for business use.
A Google engineer who accidentally published a long rant about the failings of Google+ has since issued an apologetic make-up piece, explaining why he has taken the piece down, how kind Google are for not immediately firing him and that really Steve Yegge is a lowly oompa-loompa who knows nothing and to whom nobody should pay any attention, least of all the media who have been lapping up his 4,700-word rant in a frenzied blood lust.
The Google +1 button just got a lot more useful -- and a lot more like Facebook's "Like" button -- by adding the ability to share +1 recommendations with other people on Google+.
Google Inc. said Thursday that it has started to gradually roll out games on Google Plus. The online search leader says it is looking to make games available for everyone on the network soon.
Google's new social networking site Google+, built to beat Facebook primarily on privacy features, has several privacy bugs the company is working to fix.
A Google software engineer who accidentally broadcast a 4,578-word rant about the company's failings saved his toughest criticism for the Google+ service. A list of features can't make up for a complete lack of vision and a company where "not getting it" is endemic.
Google has started pushing its Google+ social networking service further into Gmail with new features that let users add to their circles directly from their email accounts.
Google is accelerating a test of corporate accounts on Google+ after "thousands upon thousands" of businesses applied for a place in the program, a Google executive said.
If you've gotten an invite to Google's new social networking service, Google+, but you're having trouble keeping up with all of the latest developments, Google understands--which is why they've created a new "What's New in Google+" page in the Google+ help center.
Since Google launched its new social network Google+ last June, developers have been promised eventual access to the site's data through APIs. Today, Google+ developer advocate Chris Chabot announced that the first Google+ APIs are now available to the public.
Google’s social network is now ready for business. Google+ has grown at a decent pace to more than 40 million members, but Google was slow to open it up for businesses and brands. But, Google recently made Google+ available for Google Apps subscribers, and today it has finally rolled out Google+ Pages for businesses and brands.
Google+ is now officially welcoming teenagers and tailoring the experience of the social networking site for them by making it more restrictive and potentially safer.
There's a lot to like about Google+ and it has the potential to make a major impact on the future of the Internet. After just two weeks in closed beta, it already has 10 million users. Still, it's far from perfect. I've put together my list of the top 10 things Google needs to fix or add in Google+. Take a look at the list and then jump into the discussion and argue with me by adding the fixes that you think deserve more attention in Google+.
Earlier this month, CEO Larry Page said he wants Google+ to "transform" the company, while another Google exec said this week that part of that transformation is imminent.
Google's other social networking site, Orkut, which has been around for about seven years and has tens of millions of users worldwide, will continue to operate alongside the new Google+ for now.
Demand for Google+ business profiles has reached white-hot intensity, prompting Google+ leader Vic Gundotra to acknowledge the company has been caught off guard, but pledging a fix is being fast-tracked.
Google+ will not become the social network it wants to be until Google lets everybody in. Open the doors, Google. Take the heat. It's going to take some time to reach three quarters of a billion users.
Google didn't build its new Plus service simply to have an online hangout like Facebook. Rather, Google's new social-networking endeavor is about trying to gain valuable insights into people's lives and relationships. This could help the company do a better job of targeting ads so that advertisers would pay more and have less reason to spend their money on Facebook.
Google has already announced that businesses will have to wait a little while longer to establish a Google+ page since the company is developing a version of its new social networking service specifically for companies and organizations. However it appears that there has been so much interest in Google+ from the corporate world that Google has decided to speed things up in terms of getting companies ready to use the service.
After a disconcerting amount of Google+ users were kicked from the infant social network last week over enforcement of the "real name" rule, many are worried that the seemingly draconian measures taken to ensure that people aren't hiding behind pseudonyms is a potentially fatal step for the initially popular Google+.
The Google +1 icon is popping up across the Internet, one more button to click in the area where you go to Like, Tweet, Stumble, Share, etc., or comment on webpage. But it's still not everywhere --unless, you're using Google's Chrome browser. Yesterday, with no fanfare, the Google+ Button extension appeared in the Chrome Web Store, bringing you the ability to +1 a webpage, even if the site doesn't include +1 button in its sharing options.
Google's pivot from search to social technologies occurred last week and my early impressions of their new service Google+ are very positive, particularly around their efforts on allowing you to group your contacts. The giant global advertising company have many years experience analyzing your search and email history, and often display eerily accurate recommendations contextual based on your past online activities and threads.
Integrates with other massively used Google services, like Gmail, Gmail chat, Picasa. Easy to share content with only selected people. Generous (virtually unlimited) photo and video storage. Can easily download all your account data. Free.
Google+ only roughly represents real life's full range of interactions, but Google's social network just got a little more subtle with the new ability to ignore people.
You may recall that we had kind of a big problem with Google+'s policy of not allowing pseudonyms. Well, Google just announced they're finally going to open the doors for them, as well as Google Apps and brand names.
An unusually substantial amount of Google+ accounts have either been suspended or deleted in the past 24 hours, with talk from users suggesting Google is going tough on those not using their real name. The news comes as Google attempts to reinforce their community standards policy which prohibits people from using a nickname.
Say goodbye to your productivity and hello to a wave of silly memes. Why? Because good ol' Google+ has added a tool which will allow anyone to add captions to photos in seconds.
The Google+ team today announced the launch of its public data APIs. These APIs allow you to retrieve the public profile information and public posts of Google+ users in order to share content, profiles, and conversations across applications.
After releasing an initial set of basic APIs for Google+, the company is exposing more functions that external developers can access for the tools and applications they build for the social networking site.
The Google+ app has been updated and the development team has added the ability to reshare posts. It was one of the most requested features according to Lead Product Manager Pudit Soni. In addition, the app is now available in 38 languages, which should appease a lot of the international users who had complained.
The new app, which is a free download, is currently aimed at iPhone and iPod Touch users joins Google+'s Android application, giving users a way to keep up with happenings on the increasingly popular social network outside of the browser. At the launch of Google+, iPhone users had been left with a mobile browser-optimized version. A note by Google employee Erica Joy earlier this month noted that the iOS version had been submitted to Apple for approval.
Following last week's debut of Google+ Pages for business, the search giant is kicking off a couple of extra options to help companies promote themselves and their pages.
Captain James T. Kirk has faced Klingons, Romulans and Tribbles but the actor that portray's Star Trek's original captain, William Shatner, was apparently not able fight off Google's Terms of Service. Tech Crunch reports today that Shatner has had his personal Google+ account banned. Shatner revealed the ban via his Twitter page, stating, "My Google+ account was flagged for violating standards. Saying hello to everyone apparently is against the rules maybe I should say goodbye?"
The fastest growing website in the history of the internet has been causing more and more news every week, it seems. As Google continues to improve on their social networking project, Google+, we're seeing a faster adoption rate than has ever been seen before. Now, 25 million is still a far cry from 750 million, but Google is clearly doing all the right things to keep their project in the news and keep new people signing up every day.
Google+ just keeps getting stronger: Between the use of circles, the opening of its API to developers and the public availability of the service, Google+ has the opportunity to define "customized sharing."
Traffic exploded on Google+ after the social networking site opened to the public, shooting up 1,269 percent in one week, making the site the eighth largest social network on the Internet, according to Web analytics firm Hitwise.
Finally, Google has opened up Google+ to Gapps users. That means if your sole Google account (and we do realize there are some of you out there) is run through Google Apps, you can now use that account for Google+.
Google+ seemed like a boys club at first, but recent estimates point to a growing number of women using the Internet search giant's social networking service.
Google launched its social networking service Google+ in a limited form less than two weeks ago but the service has already suffered from its first major bug. The Next Web reports that a number of Google+ users on Saturday have received multiple email notifications, even when users have requested that those notifications be turned off. Some users have reported via Twitter that they have received as many as 50 notifications for just one friend being added to their Google Circle.
In case you were wondering if you should sign up for yet another social network, there's a compelling reason to use Google+ that you may not have thought of: Freedom.
Google+ picking up speed alongside social network giant Facebook as it attracts a large flood of traffic to its service, which opened up to the general public this week.
Google+ experienced a huge growth spurt after the social network opened to the public, indicating it may soon bypass more established social networks, including LinkedIn and Twitter.
Google+ --unlike Buzz and other failed Chocolate Factory experiments --may have graduated from the soon-to-be-defunct Labs wing of the ad broker's web estate, but questions remain about the company's plans to make it THE social network platform online.
Apparently Google is feeling more confident about expanding the population of its social network, because the "invite people to Google+" button has been visible for well over a day.
A day after Google unveiled its brand new social networking service Google+, the company decided to open up the invitation process late Wednesday afternoon to those lucky enough to have already been invited to participate in the service.
There are ways to get on Google+, the ubiquitous search engine's foray into social networking, if you haven't snagged an invite via the circles share exploit, which is working intermittently right now.
40 million users, and 3.4 billion photo uploads through Google+. Take a moment, let that settle into your system. Those are some pretty large numbers considering that Google+ was in closed beta for a while, and only went public a few weeks ago.
Many users of Google's new Google+ social-networking service, which is still in beta and mostly closed to the public, have been tweeting this afternoon about getting the same e-mail notification multiple times--some as many as 40 times...or more.
In a Google+ post published late yesterday, Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product for Google+, acknowledged that many of the violations from users of the Google+ name policy were "well-intentioned and inadvertent" and that for these people, the process can be "frustrating and disappointing."
Nerd Facebook Google+ has added another collection of decent features to its web interface, now showing "What's Hot" on the network and building "Ripples" infographics to show how posts have been shared with other users.
Almost immediately after Google launched its new, not-Facebook social network in late June, a hilarious and much-shared comic strip about the service popped up online.
Mountain View has added an "Ignore" option to its gestating Google+, just at the point when interest in the company's social network seemed to be on the wane.
That number, which appeared earlier this week as a third-party estimate, was confirmed today by Google CEO Larry Page, who spent the first few minutes of the company's second-quarter earnings call talking up Google+ and its features.
Google+ is taking its "real names" policy seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it threatened to suspend sex and tech writer Violet Blue's account. Google's only problem is that Blue's real name is Violet Blue.
Google has started integrating Google+ users' public posts into the search engine's social search results, one-upping Facebook by wielding its search strengths to boost its fledgling social network's features.
Google+ wants you to know that while yes, it indeed "screwed up" over how it handled businesses flocking to the fledgling social network (by dumping them), it is not all about dumping individuals using fake names willy-nilly.
After shutting down the invitation process late last week because of "insane demand" from people eager to try out Google's new social network, the company began to allow new members in last night.
Stats compiled by Ancestry.com co-founder and Google+ unofficial statistician Paul Allen show that Google's new social network may have hit the 18 million mark by the end of yesterday.
If there was any doubt Google was taking Google+ seriously, let's put those fears to rest right now. Not only did their android app for Google+ come out in the Market only a few days ago, it's already seeing its first update to improve it even more.
In just one month, Google+ has captured 25 million visitors, making it the fastest site to reach such numbers, according to data out yesterday from ComScore.
Google appears to have generated some social networking buzz with its Google+ effort, but Wall Street analysts are already wondering about return on investment and the hit to profit margins.
Well, this didn't take long: Google's mayonnaise on toast clone of Facebook is already catching heat for privacy problems. Nothing as egregious as Buzzgate, but Google+ seems to be allowing unfettered sharing of your stuff with anyone. Not good!
Google+ VP of Product Bradley Horowitz tweeted Friday that the service would be piloting a suggested user mechanism and asked people with more than 100,000 followers on Twitter to contact him.
Google is a latecomer to social networking but its new site, Google+, is growing much more rapidly than Facebook, Myspace and Twitter did in their early days, technology experts said.
The Other Social Network, Google+, has announced that it will be rolling out in the next few days a feature automatically suggesting tagging friends in photos posted to it.
I have been using Google+ for a few days now, and so far I have had had a few complaints about the new Google social network. Google+ is not without its merits, though, and there are some hints and tips Facebook could pick up from Google+ that might improve the user experience.
Users of Google's new social networking service Google+ have so far been asked to reveal their gender as part of their public profiles. But it seems that privacy concerns from its users have made Google take a second look at that stance. Late on Tuesday night, a Google+ post from Google team member Frances Haugen announced that sometime later this week Google+ users will be able to keep their gender private if they choose to do so.
Although there’s plenty of doubt about how successful Google+ is yet, the social network has recorded its third biggest week in traffic since launching.
Google+ has suffered a setback after a month of meteoric growth. Traffic to Google+ declined last week, as did the amount of time people spent on the site, according to Experian Hitwise.
Looks like Android's Google+ app just got a nice little update to add some more features -- including the ability to search! -- and squash some bugs. Here's the full changelog:
The time people spend on Google+ is declining as well as traffic to the site, if we are to believe the latest third-party usage numbers on the nascent social network. Accurate or not, for me the statistics ring true as I examine my own arc of interest in Google+.
It didn't take long for a link shortener for your Google+ profile to debut. More than 64,000 Google+ accounts have been entered at the site, gplus.to. All that's required is copying and pasting the long string of numbers from your Google+ profile URL and picking a nickname for your new, snappier link. For example, Tom Anderson of MySpace fame was quick to snag gplus.to/MySpaceTom.
Want your kids to migrate from Facebook to Google+ with you? Now they can. Previously only open to users older than 18 years old, Google has recently allowed everyone above the age of 13 to join its social network. The company even introduced additional security boosts to better protect your children on Google+.
After surging during the first couple of weeks of July, the number of weekly visitors checking out Google+ has since been falling, according to data released this week by Experian Hitwise.
Estimates for the social network's user base run as high as 5 million, websites are quickly adopting the +1 button, and the service is getting accolades from critics. It's not clear if Google+ is here to stay yet or will end up another piece of refuse in Google's social networking trash heap along with Buzz, Wave, and Orkut. But for now things are looking up for Google's latest social experiment.
Google recently launched Google+, the company's latest attempt to get social networking right after its social disaster, Google Buzz. After trying out Google's new social network for several hours, I think Google may have finally figured out how to do social.
As Google+ grows in popularity -- now with more than 20 million users -- the new social network is triggering a number of questions with legal implications from businesses about potential policy changes, data retention issues and more, according to Joshua Kubicki, senior director of legal and corporate practices at Applied Discovery, an e-discovery provider that works with corporations preparing for and responding to legal actions.
Google+ has officially moved out of its infancy, the social project's product manager Bradley Horowitz said at the All Things Digital AsiaD conference today.
Forgive me for being skeptical of Google+. The service is, however, the company's fourth attempt at a social network. Orkut bombed nearly everywhere except South America, Buzz received considerable backlash for being forced onto everyone, and Friend Connect has made little impact beyond the hardcore Google fans. What makes Google+ so special?
Looks like Google+ is following Twitter's lead on the whole "Verified Account" thing, letting you know for sure if you have the real Kim Kardashian in your circle or not. But, considering their stringent "real names" policy, what's the point?
With all this talk about Google Plus and real names I thought I'd ask someone who actually has both an important online identity and trouble with keeping the public out of her private life: Groklaw's Pamela Jones.
When Google rolled out Google+ and made the decision to kick out every user pseudonym, even names that "looked like" false identities, claiming their new "real name" policy, it seems they opened a kind of Pandora's Box.
Nearly four months to the day after Google first unveiled its social network to the masses, the search giant on Thursday opened up Google+ to users of its Google Apps platform. While users of standard Google accounts have been able to sign up for the service without an invite since late September, those registered under a Google Apps account remained logged out.
Google+ has a hidden feature that lets people who start a hangout evict others from the video-chat feature, raising the prospect that Google's social network will get better moderation tools.
I've been using Google+ a lot the last few days, and I like it--especially the circles idea that lets me put people I might want to address into specific groups.
The wannabe Facebook, the Twitter killer, the next great thing in social media, went live just over a month ago. And already tech fashionistas are looking for the next thing.
Sorry folks, I don't have any Google+ account invites to give away. I wish I did. Google+ is great. But, there are some ways that appear to help you move up the Google+ queue.
This week I gave a talk on Web 2.0 and teaching to a group of higher-education faculty ("cloud" isn't yet pervasive in academia). I won't bore you with the details, but I made the basic argument that using cloud-based tools could help educators create better learning environments for their students through the collaboration, mobility and engagement opportunities the cloud affords. I gave examples of several different tools that could help do this, like collaborative documents, mobile video broadcasting, and group citation indexes. Then I ended with what they all really wanted to talk about: social media.
Google has recently taken some flak for its "real names" policy on Google+ -- a number of users have had their Google+ accounts (and, sometimes, all related accounts) suspended for failing to use their real names.
It's no secret. I like Google+ a lot. Lot of people love Google's new social network. But, I think it noteworthy when someone like Steve Kille, a former Senior Research Fellow at University College London and one of Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)'s authors writes, "Google+ is very impressive. I reckon Facebook is toast."
For the past few days I've been a more regular Google + visitor, at the same time becoming more puzzled about Google +. What's it for? Is it even a social network? The answer seems to be that Google + is evolving in to a mature forum, or multiple forums, where members curate content, exchange ideas, and engage in discussion at a rather civilised place.
Google's previous social attempts have been unmitigated train wrecks, if we're being completely honest. Open Social failed because Google couldn't get Facebook and other social networks to buy into the idea of a shared social identity. Google Wave missed the target by not being useful enough to attract any users. Google Buzz freaked people out by naively overstepping its bounds on privacy.
Google+ has taken the social network world by storm and created significant demand in a relatively short period of time--and that is just for the invitation-only beta version. While clicking around my Google-verse, though, I stumbled upon something which seems to indicate that Google+ is just Google Buzz with a fresh coat of paint.
There is a new app (free) on the Chrome Web Store that exports all your Facebook photos to Picasa so you can use them with Google+. Seems pretty straight forward. Has anyone used this yet? What do you think? If not, how did you move you photos?
I've been using Google+ a lot since it was announced last Tuesday, but I haven't written much about it yet. There are a number of reasons why I've been semi-mum. For one thing, I have a lousy track record when it comes to gut reactions about Google social services. I thought Buzz was intriguing, and I didn't instantly figure out the privacy issues. And I had visions of Google Wave leading to an epic war between Google and Microsoft.
I hope your torches and pitchforks aren't nearby, because Google — the Company That Claims It Does No Evil — is doing something that might make you want to reach for 'em. Apparently the search engine giant is now forcing new Google account users to join Google+ and Gmail.
Maybe Google knows it's never going to top Facebook at the social game, because when asked, its description of Google+ makes very little sense! AllThingsD chatted up Google+ exec Bradley Horowitz, and he sounds... confused.
Google's work to integrate its Google+ social networking site broadly with its other services could raise red flags for users who want to closely guard their privacy.
After major privacy failures in its Buzz and Street View services, Google has hit the right notes with its deliberate, measured roll out of its new Google+ social networking site, according to privacy experts.
Either Google+ is the North Korea of social media, or things aren't going quite as well as we'd hoped. Public posting on The Hermit Network has fallen 41 percent per user from August to September, from 0.68 to 0.40.
For Google+ to unseat Facebook as social networking leader, Google would have to deliver a steady stream of innovations and Facebook would need to let its site deteriorate, Internet icon and Facebook shareholder Sean Parker said on Monday.
A statistical analysis by Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com and chief executive of Facebook app maker FamilyLink.com, concludes that the Google+ population reached 7.3 million on Sunday, July 10, and likely will reach 10 million today.
Much has been made of Google+'s women problems --namely that its members are primarily men. Paul Allen recently made the case that Google+ is pinker than has been portrayed.
The latest issue of Wired contains an essay arguing that social media isn't social. Oddly, the piece inadvertently nails why I'm skeptical about Google Plus:
Congratulations, Larry Page. You are officially the most popular person on Google Plus, the social network your company launched four months. As accomplishments go, that's a little like winning the limbo contest at your own bar mitzvah. But there's a bigger problem: It seems you might only be winning because no one else in your peer group is playing the game.
The buzz is growing for Google+, including yesterday's glowing review by David Pogue in the New York Times. The stakes are certainly high, which is why Google CEO Larry Page took the time to point out on yesterday's earnings call that he was "super excited about the amazing response to Google+." The ultimate test, however, will be whether the service can rival Facebook in users, dwell time and loyalty. At this point, Google+ seems poised to fail that test—primarily because of how poorly it supports groups.
So young, so promising. It was in its prime, and stood to reap the rewards of all of Facebook's flaws—and in a weird twist, made Facebook copy Google+ for some of its newest "changes."
Can Facebook rest on its 750 million user-base laurels? We'll find out this week at the social network's F8 Developer Conference, which takes place in San Francisco on September 22. Buzz on what's expected ranges from new Read, Listened, Watched, And Want Facebook Buttons to a first-ever Facebook iPad app.
If you have anything to do with media and you haven't discovered Klout yet, you're behind the curve. Klout is the measure of your online influence. Very low scores (<30), need help fast. But, you won't be able to pump it up with Google+ because they're not connected. So, for me, that means I'm not posting anything to Google+ until it is. Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn are all Klout connected. Google, if you want more acceptance, you're going to have to have Klout or you're dead to me.
For better or worse, Google's brand new social networking site Google+ has today seen its gaming section grow thanks to the help of Zynga's super-popular CityVille game. The game is so popular that it is, in fact, the number one game on Facebook, and now Google+ users will be able to use up their time online via the social game.
Hackers accessed personal information from 43,000 faculty, staff, students and alumni of Yale University all through Google. It's called dorking. Specifically, Google dorking. And it's scary easy what you can do.
Author J.K. Rowling's website devoted to fictional wizard Harry Potter will feature a bit of Google magic when it debuts later this year in the United States, according to the Internet titan.
The new Google+ social networking site, out in limited beta release since late June, is growing its usage very quickly, but it remains far from a leadership position, according to Hitwise.
This weekend I spent some time reading Steven Levy's "In the Plex," an account of the history of Google based on Levy's deep embedding within the company (see Kara's video interview with Levy from last week). The book as a whole is captivating, so I thought it might be worth highlighting a couple anecdotes about internal Google conflicts that previously never saw the light of day.
Ask cloud evangelists that question and they sit back, purse their lips, and say, "No, of course not ... but ..." The thing is they tend to come from disk storage-biased suppliers or consultancies and are in love with virtualisation, the placing of abstraction layers between server apps and hardware and between server apps and disk storage hardware.
One of the more interesting additions to Google Maps 5.7 is the ability to download map data locally to your phone. That's a godsend if you're traveling somewhere that has a spotty connection, or if you're overseas and trying to avoid roaming charges.
Strangeloop --a Vancouver-based outfit offering an online service for accelerating website load times --has embraced Google's SPDY project, a new application-layer protocol designed to significantly improve the speed of good ol' HTTP.
A strong bipartisan letter to the FTC, which calls for a "thorough investigation" of allegations of Google antitrust violations from Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Kohl and Ranking Member Lee, the FTC's official Senate overseers, has several significant under-appreciated implications.
A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the U.S. may spell the end of the "pay-up-or-else-schemes" that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person.
A mobile phone that never materialized and the late co-founder of Apple found their way onto the list of the 10 most popular searches at Google this past year.
Broader adoption of the Internet will keep governments on their toes as wired-up citizens exercise their newfound power to check rights abuses, Google chief Eric Schmidt said on Saturday.
Well, this is bad. OpenStreetMap, the Wikipedia of world maps, has been vandalized, with someone deliberately screwing up its data. Worse, the offending IP addresses seem to be coming from a set belonging to Google India. Careful where you drive.
Google managers and employees gave generously to President Barack Obama's candidacy. Chairman Eric Schmidt stumped for the president and is a member of the White House council for science and technology. Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president, hosted an Obama fundraiser. Former Google employees now hold high-ranking positions with the administration.
Google is reportedly in early talks to offer cable television services to residents in Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS. The new offering would be part of Google's one gigabit-per-second experimental fiber-to-home network currently being built in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area and slated to go live by early 2012.
Logitech dropped a bombshell last week when it said that its Google TV-powered Revue set-top box was not performing well, which is a bit of an understatement. Sales were so bad that the company's acting CEO Guerrino De Luca said on its earnings call that he had decided to slash the Revue's price from $249 to $99.99, which comes a couple of months after the price was reduced from $299.
James Gosling, the notable programmer who founded Java at Sun Microsystems, has joined Google, a company locked in a lawsuit over how the technology is used in Android.
There's some rough news for Topeka, Kan., the city that courted Google's ultra-high-speed municipal broadband project by changing its name to Google. The Mountain View, Calif., tech giant announced Wednesday that the lucky city that gets to be its broadband guinea pig not only isn't Topeka, but it's Kansas City, Kansas--just an hour's drive away. Ouch.
For me, the primary characteristic of Google CEO Larry Page is ambition. I can thank Steven Levy and his book In the Plex for that. In Levy's insider account of Google we learn about a Larry Page who came to Stanford with ideas so big and bold that his academic advisors referred to them as "outlandish" and "more science fiction than computer science." Page personally drove home to Levy that he's surprised people aren't being more ambitious in this amazing new era because there are unbelievable possibilities that have never existed before. That tells you a lot about the kind of company Page wants to build at Google in the years ahead. He wants to take "moonshots" like Google Books and self-driving cars.
Google+'s high surge of popularity in the last few weeks has caused a number of people who had Facebook accounts to also sign up for Google's new social networking service. However it seems like Facebook doesn't care for people who place ads asking for new Google+ friends on Facebook's site. TechCrunch reports that Michael Lee Johnson, a web developer, got all of his Facebook ads banned after he posted up a noticed that requested people friend him on his Google+ page.
Chief Executive Michael Dell, who has been spending a lot of time in the Google+ video chat rooms called "hangouts," has raised the possibility that Google+ might be useful for customer service.
I've had a number of readers ask me whether Microsoft will follow Google in dropping its electronic-health records technology. It looks like the answer is no --especially given Microsoft's attempt to woo soon-to-be-disenfranchised Google Health users and developers.
Google's ambitions to organize the world's information by digitizing every book ever published has hit a snag: a New York Judge has rejected a $125 million legal settlement Google had reach with publishers and authors as part of its years-long attempt to create the world's largest library and bookstore. Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement would give Google a "de factor monopoly," according to the New York Times, allowing it to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners.
Google announced today that it is acquiring Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, a whopper deal that gives Google important handset know-how and patents.
Motorola Mobility and Google first announced plans to merge the two companies back in August for a cool $12.5 billion. That's a lot of money no matter how you look at it. Today Motorola Mobility revealed that during a special shareholders meeting, owners of the company's stock voted overwhelmingly to approve the merger deal with Google.
This morning, as I write, the US House of Representatives is conducting a hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act. Senate version of the bill is PROTECT IP. Either bill would dramatically change how Americans use the Internet, by granting power to shut down sites for many reasons -- in the case of SOPA simply for linking to another site or content that may be pirated.
Apple buying T-Mobile. Microsoft buying Adobe. We're all used to reading stuff by tech pundits talking about seismic, world-changing acquisitions in a somewhat fanciful manner. But Google buying Motorola Mobility, the recently-spun-off part of Motorola that makes phones and other consumer hardware, is real—and the most potentially world-changing acquisition in many years. (Compared to this, HP buying Palm was positively humdrum.) If I'd been drinking anything when I read the headline this morning, I would have done a spit-take.
French navigation data provider NavX filed another lawsuit against Google last Thursday, renewing its accusations that the company abused its dominant position in online advertising and tripling its claim for damages.
Just days after taking over in Google's CEO seat , Larry Page sent out a company-wide memo informing employees that bonuses are now tied directly to the company's social media success, according to a report from the Business Insider, which said it received a copy of the memo .
People always complain about how Microsoft never had an original idea and essentially stole ideas and strategies from other companies. This goes back to the early days of the company. It seems as if the idea worked. Look at how well Microsoft did.
Rejoice, sea lovers and Cousteau wannabes, because Google Earth now allows you to explore the ocean seafloor. It's quite the trip, even if it doesn't cover the entire planet yet.
Modern captchas are effective at keeping bots and algorithms from accessing Web sites made for humans. They also generate collateral damage and keep up to 25 percent of humans out, too, according to Ron Moravek, COO of NuCaptcha. He says he has a better, more flexible technology for filtering humans from bots.
The judge can order Oracle's Larry Ellison and Google's Larry Page to talk in closed court all he wants, they're not going to settle Oracle's lawsuit over Android and its alleged infringement on Java.
Google's just realized their dream of putting printer drivers in the cloud, as their Cloud Print service has now gone into beta. This means that you can print from any device, whether it's a laptop, tablet or even cellphone, to any printer—theoretically.
News broke earlier this week that Google had set aside $500,000 to settle a mysterious Department of Justice investigation of "advertising by certain advertisers," and now a report indicates the badvertisers were "rogue online pharmaceuticals."
Is Google changing the way we think? At least one researcher thinks so: Columbia University researcher Betsy Sparrow says that search engines like Google are changing human thought patterns. For example, we're remembering less on our own, but we know where to go and find it on the Internet.
The sight of a sleek, shiny automobile conjures a fantasy, nurtured by countless TV commercials, Hollywood movies, and spontaneous joyrides, of the wind in your hair, your troubles behind, your destiny ahead. The appeal is all about becoming master of one's own fate, taking control of a chaotic world. So imagine my surprise when I got an even bigger buzz from a car that drives itself.
A recently leaked confidential diplomatic cable has revealed that not only is the United States government unhappy with the level of intellectual property rights enforcement carried out by Russia, but also that the reverse is true. Russia's Deputy Minister of Economic Development said that not only do U.S. sites continue to offer pirated Russian movies, but that YouTube and Google should be shut down for not respecting local laws.
Last week, SAP and Google made an announcement about a partnership based on Google Maps that is reflective of a refreshing new openness at SAP to doing things that were essentially unthinkable under past management regimes.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt admitted to a US Senate antitrust panel yesterday that his company was a monopoly, even though he has publicly claimed otherwise. But he also defended Google's business practices and claimed that the online giant wasn't another Microsoft.
Apple and Google have been recently scrutinized for secretly recording people's location. This has raised peoples concerns over their privacy and today Senator Al Franken has called up both Apple and Google to attend a hearing with the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law so that consumer privacy can be discussed.
The problem with a calendar on a desktop computer--even one that keeps its data in the cloud--is that you need a connected web browser to access it. A one-hour reminder that you have a 7:00 appointment won't do much good if you're away from your computer at 6:00.
The recent senate hearings on Google were political theater based on the unsettling fact that Google has achieved a natural monopoly in search and possibly the brokering of Internet ads. In an almost exact replay of Microsoft's 1998 Senate hearing, senators accused Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt of serving up "cooked" search results that hurt smaller rivals.
Google News can do a lot more to help you keep on top of the news you watch for your career, along with the news of the world outside your monitor. Kevin Purdy explains some of the ways it can do this.
Sophos has apologised after its security screening technology went awry and began falsely warning users when they visited websites running Google Analytics.
In September, Google said it hoped to bring its then-new Google Instant search feature to users of the Opera browser "shortly." A half-year later, there's still no sign of it.
Google's sweeping changes to Web site rankings have roiled the Web industry, including the company's announcement last week that its algorithms now incorporate more "user feedback signals."
Google's Android is now in almost half the world's smartphones --but licensees are finding that quod eos nutrit eos destruit --or what nourishes them destroys them.
Systematic theft may be the most anti-competitive and monopolistic practice in which a company can engage. Systematic theft generates an unbeatable cost advantage by avoiding the standard cost of propertied goods for which law-abiding competitors must pay. It creates an unfair, jump-the-gun, time-to-market advantage, by ignoring the rule of law standard of securing permission from property owners before use in the marketplace, a business practice that law-abiding competitors must respect.
Usually one of the hardest things to prove in an antitrust case is anti-competitive intent and motive, but Google’s new CEO Larry Page has made that much easier for antitrust authorities by unabashedly tying and leveraging Google’s search dominance with Google+ in a myriad of overt and covert ways.
Five of the Dead Sea Scrolls—the world's oldest biblical documents—are now viewable online as searchable, high-resolution images thanks to Google. Talk about some priceless Google Docs.
Android apps have proven great supplements to the mobile experience, and third party markets want in on this growing sector of consumer activity. With Amazon's recent launch of its Appstore, the flood gates for indie app markets have been opened. AT&T is pondering its own position in this marketplace evolution, though the widespread availability of mobile apps is a rising concern for safety and privacy.
According to NBC Bay Area, the Federal Government issued a secret court order to Google and ISP provider Sonic.net to handover account data from Jacob Applebaum, a Wikileaks volunteer who they believe was involved in the leaking of classified docs.
In advance of today's Senate Judiciary hearing, "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?," we assembled a list of fallacies you're likely to hear, either explicitly or implicitly:
Users are becoming increasingly frustrated that Google has been locking out users from Google Groups as the result of changes it made when it separated Google Apps accounts from Gmail and other consumer accounts around six months ago.
Fellow geeks, rejoice! What was once believed to be a cesspool of men and sausage is now teeming with female life! That's right, lads—Google+ has a sizable female presence after all!
Late last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected several of the claims in a patent that Oracle has cited in its infringement case against the search giant. According to Groklaw, which obtained the notice, 17 of the 21 claims in Patent No. 6,192,476 have been rejected by the USPTO, following a re-examination the agency conducted earlier this year.
The U.S. Department of Justice has asked Google for more information about its planned $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, potentially slowing the transaction, Google said in a blog post Wednesday.
Nortel Networks has obtained court approval to accept a US$900 million bid from Google for the entirety of its remaining patent portfolio, it said Monday.
Two US lawmakers have asked Google chief Larry Page to brief congress on changes to the Internet search giant's privacy policies, citing concerns about collection and sharing of personal data.
Google said Wednesday the US Justice Department has asked for more information about its bid for Motorola Mobility but expressed confidence the $12.5 billion deal will get the green light.
User satisfaction with Facebook is low enough that the social networking site risks losing significant market share to Google+, according to a new study.
Google has stealth-launched WDYL.com, short for What do you love? Basically, you answer the titular question, and it pops up with results from what appears to be every single Google product, from Google Maps to Google Products to Google SketchUp.
Google is introducing a new feature in Google search results today: +1. But what is it? A new social network? A social thingy? A social search engine? Is it even social?
If Google is weary of waiting to license music from the top record companies and wants to wade into digital music without delay, then acquiring Pandora could be the answer.
I've long complained that Google is convinced that I'm an older gentleman. Every time I visit Google's Ad Preferences Manager, it tells me my gender is male and that I'm well over the hill. (Inaccurate on both counts, I swear!) Given Google's big privacy policy change this week, many others have been checking out what Google knows about them, including Casey Johnson of Ars Technica and Torie Bosch of Slate.
Ya know, I'm just amazed sometimes at how tech companies - led by some of the smartest folks on the planet - do the dumbest things. I mean, really, where's the common sense?
Google Autocomplete suggests, in real time, ways to complete your searches. The algorithms behind the feature rely on a number of factors when determining what to show you, but it's safe to say that for requests that are not regional or about breaking news, the primary criterion is simple popularity.
Google India's benevolent initiative of driving an Internet connected bus into deep villages of India has helped many Indians see what the Internet is for the first time. Yahoo India is also working with schools to setup labs that will help students learn about Internet technologies.