Gemini Live preps big upgrades with ‘Thinking Mode’ and ‘Experimental Features’
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Google deal with LyricFind makes finding song lyrics a pleasant experience again
If you’ve ever Googled for song lyrics, you know what a messy experience it can be – half the sites proving to be just links to other sites, others looking really sketchy. For those in the US, though, things should be much simpler. Google has licensed lyrics from LyricFind, which in turn licenses them from labels, so that a search for a song title with ‘lyrics’ on the end should generate an immediate link.
Of course, Google is arriving rather late to the party …
Google is currently working on bringing ‘Gboard’ search features to Android
After announcing Gboard for iOS, the team behind it had a chat on the curation site Product Hunt to discuss the new keyboard. When asked about Android support, product manager Bri Connelly said Google is currently working on porting over the features.
Google testing black links instead of blue in search results
For many, many years, whenever you search for anything on Google, chances are that you see a sea of blue unread links fill your web browser. Unless you’re in China, that is, in which case you see red ones.
Still, blue web links have been a feature within Google Search for a long time. So it comes as something of a minor shock to see that the company is now testing a new color: black.
Google focusing on search, AI, and more in Founders’ Letter from Sundar Pichai
Every year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin write a Founders’ Letter to inform stockholders of recent developments and their vision for the future. For 2016, Page had recently-anointed Google CEO Sundar Pichai write the letter as a majority of ‘bets’ are under his purview. The letter focuses on six main areas.
Google Photos for Android drops FAB for a search bar in latest update
Update: According to a post on Google+, this update adds the ability to customize automatically created movies with your own music, photos, and videos. It’s also now possible to rename or delete device folders and manage photos on SD cards.
Rolling out to users now, version 1.19 of Google Photos brings quite a few design tweaks to the Android app. The biggest change replaces the floating action button (FAB) with a search bar that is reminiscent of a recent A/B test to Play Music.
Canada ends investigation into anti-competitive search and ad practices by Google
With imminent troubles looming in Europe, Canada just closed its three year investigation into anti-competitive practices involving Google’s search and advertising business (via The Verge). The country’s Competition Bureau ultimately “did not find sufficient evidence” that Google’s practices harmed local rivals.
Google can now play animal sounds directly from search
Very often, Google realizes that there’s a common search query that it can make more convenient for users by adding its own content directly to the search engine. The perfect example was last year, when Google effectively sherlocked dozens of lyrics-dedicated websites by adding its own lyrics directly to the top of search results for many songs. I don’t think as many websites are going to feel the brunt of this change, but Google has now added animal sounds to Search…
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Google somehow got through China’s firewall for nearly two hours last night
For a brief spell last night, uncensored Google search was alive and kicking within China’s borders. For roughly 105 mins, according to the South China Morning Post, residents inside the People’s Republic had free, unrestricted use of Google’s popular search domain.
You can now add a shortcut to your homescreen to quickly access weather info in the Google app
Google is rolling out a new feature that allows users to more easily access one of the most commonly searched terms. With this rollout, if a user searches for the weather in their location or another location, Google will ask if that user would like to add a shortcut to their homescreen to “access weather instantly from your homescreen.”
Google is giving another ranking boost to mobile-friendly pages
Google announced in April of last year that it tweaked search results to give a ranking boost to sites that offer mobile-friendly versions, and now the Mountain View company is prepping to give even more ranking weight to these sites. The company is planning a change that “increases the effect of the ranking signal” for mobile searches to put even more mobile pages on the top…
Latest Google app beta adds OCR image recognition to Now on Tap
For all the features the Google app has added, it still does not have any image recognition capabilities. Google Goggles from 2010 could recognize book covers, landmarks, and even solve Sudoku, but was ultimately discontinued due to a lack of use. However, Now on Tap has gained some of those features in a recent update.
Google searches for ‘How to move to Canada’ spike in response to Super Tuesday results
It goes without saying that the American people aren’t exactly ecstatic about the prospective options for the US presidency, but just how unexcited are they? In response to the Super Tuesday results, which showed both Republican frontrunner Donald J. Trump and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton both winning 7 of 11 states, it looks like many Americans are looking for a way to jump ship. And by jump ship, I mean head north to Canada…
Play Music for Android will now show related YouTube videos in search results
A Google Play Music update is rolling out that allows users to search for music-related YouTube videos from within the app. The video search feature is available to all Play Music users, including those who don’t subscribe to the streaming service.
Google wins UK court case against antitrust accusers, Streetmap
Google has won a UK court case filed against it by a European mapping company named Streetmap.EU, which claimed the search giant had been skewing results in its own favor. Streetmap will appeal the decision, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Google to start showing anti-ISIS ads in search results relating to extremism and radicalization
According to a report from The Guardian, Google will soon start showing anti-ISIS ads in search results. The report claims that when a user searches for a topic relating to Islamic extremism or radicalization, they will see ads that encourage them to view the “counter narrative” to their search query.
Longtime Search SVP Amit Singhal leaving Google after 15 years, head of AI taking over
Google’s longtime Senior Vice President of Search Amit Singhal is leaving the company after 15 years. In a Google+ post, he said that February 26th would be the last day and that he would be looking into philanthropy in the future. Re/Code is reporting that the Search will be merged with the company’s other artificial intelligence and machine learning efforts.
Google reveals how much it paid to get Google.com back last year
You may remember last year a story broke stating that someone had managed to buy the Google.com domain name. Sanmay Ved had only owned it for about one minute, but he owned it nonetheless. As a result, he was rewarded generously by Google …
Google’s new Australian voice can better pronounce names and understand phrases
Google is now further localizing the voice in their apps for Australian users. The new accent will sound more familiar to those down under and be better able to pronounce place names and understand local colloquialisms for tasks and actions.
Google rolling out HTTPS cached website pages for HTTPS-enabled sites
HTTPS has become the rule, rather than the exception to the rule, in recent years. And in an effort to usher in the encrypted and more-secure communication protocol, Google announced last month that it would begin prioritizing HTTPS sites over HTTP sites when indexing the web. Unsurprisingly, Google is also slowly-but-surely making sure all of its own web properties use HTTPS over standard HTTP. Google’s cached pages available on the search site are now part of the club…
Google blocked more than 17M fake ‘software system warning’ ads, 12.5M misleading medicinal ads in 2015
Google has published a blog post revealing just how many bad ads it removed from the web in 2015. Spoiler: they removed a lot.
There can be all kinds of bad ads, whether they’re ads which falsely claim to help weight loss, or phishing sites that trick unassuming web users to submit personal information. Thanks to a team of some 1,000 employees, and some clever computer algorithms, the company was able to remove a ton of ads and ban a huge number of misbehaving advertisers…
Google search data shows what people in each state searched for most in 2015
The Google searches people make can reveal a great deal about their interests and concerns. When that data is aggregated, it can reveal general trends in society. For a long time, Google used such trend data to monitor for flu outbreaks for instance. Estately, a real estate blog, mined Google Trends to reveal what terms people in each state search for the most this year.
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Searching ‘bubble level’ in Google Search now presents you with an interactive level
One Googler took to Reddit last week to tell the world about a new feature that his team (presumably) added to Google search. Now, if you search for “bubble level” in search from the Google app or Chrome on your mobile device (yes, including the iPhone), you’ll get access to an interactive bubble level mini-app directly from the results page itself.
And that’s about it. This doesn’t need much explaining, does it? Personally, I think this is a pretty nifty little feature to have whenever I need it. That said, I wouldn’t use this for any professional jobs that need exact precision. At least in my experience, this little widget isn’t nearly as accurate as the standalone apps on the Play Store or the iOS Compass app.
Google wants to make Hangouts better at Hangouts, planning to strip SMS support to do so
The well-connected Derek Ross took to his Google+ profile yesterday, sharing a post entitled “Things that’ll piss people off”. In said post, he details something that — indeed — will piss people off. According to Ross (who has a pretty good track record when it comes to Google software), the Mountain View company is planning to strip SMS support from Hangouts in an effort to make the app better at its job…
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Google’s latest awesome interactive Doodle celebrates Beethoven’s 245th year
Google’s Search Doodles can often be fun, especially when they’re interactive. Today’s is one of my own personal favorites. In remembrance of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s 245th year, the Google Doodle team created an interactive game in which you help Beethoven rescue sheet music so that he can make it to the concert venue. If you’re not into classical music, or don’t know how to read sheet music, this may not be your ‘cup of tea’.
There are four ‘levels’ in the game, each of which involves arranging sections of a famous piece of music in the correct order. Even if you’re not a Beethoven nut, you should recognize all four of them. The game takes apart the most well-known phrases from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, Für Elise, Moonlight Sonata and Ode To Joy. Chances are, even if you didn’t know they were Beethoven’s music, you’ll have at least heard them before.
If you’ve never read sheet music, don’t worry, each section has a little sound icon which you can press to preview the phrase, before you decide where it needs to go.
To help poor old Beethoven retrieve and rescue his precious music, head on over to the Google homepage and enjoy (make sure you have your speakers turned up too).