Alphabet

In this week’s top stories: Galaxy Note 7 launch details, Nexus (and Nexus Launcher) leaks, the best Android phones for August, and much more. 
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The long-time CTO and director of Alphabet’s self-driving car project is leaving the Mountain View company, according to a report this afternoon from Recode. Urmson has been on the project for seven years, and two other early — and crucial — members of the project, including Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson are also leaving the project reports say…

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Google last year took the title of world’s favorite company from Apple, but this year has lost out heavily – potentially on a technicality.

Each year, FutureBrand looks at the world’s 100 largest companies and asks 3,000 consumers and industry professionals to score them on a range of factors, and to explain how they feel about their preferred companies. However, with Google’s reorganization, only parent company Alphabet is big enough to make it onto the top 100 shortlist – as CNET notes, Google itself doesn’t qualify.

As for Alphabet, that only managed 21st place, likely due to not having the same brand awareness as Google. There was also more difficulty in attributing specific qualities to such a diverse company – as evidenced by the feelings respondents had toward the company …

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In this week’s top stories:  A first look at the iris scanner on Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 7, new Huawei devices, hands-on with the Moto G4 and G4 Plus, and the Pokemon Go craze continues. 
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In this week’s top stories: Our roundups of the best Android phones and best budget Android phones for July, Pokemon GO’s official release takes over the app charts, Android One launches in Japan, and much more. Head below for these and the rest of this week’s most shared stories.

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In Google’s self-driving car report for June 2016, the Mountain View company has detailed — alongside the latest stats/metrics and a couple of accident reports, of course — how its autonomous vehicles share the road with cyclists…

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The goal of last year’s Alphabet re-org was to effectively turn Google’s many research divisions into startups that make profitable products and services. To better incentivize executives and employees, a new report (via Bloomberg) says that Alphabet is implementing a new type of stock compensation whose value is tied to the performance of each company.

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In this week’s top stories: Specs for the rumored HTC ‘Sailfish’ Nexus device leak, more on the OnePlus 3, Google’s new Prompt two-factor feature, we review Sony’s Xperia X, and much more.

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In a post on the official Google blog this evening, Google has announced a new Pride for Everyone initiative to encourage everyone to “be who you are and love who you love.” As part of the initiative, Google has released a new 360 degree video that contains footage from Googlers in 25 countries marching in local Pride parades.

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Boston Dynamics is still owned by Google/Alphabet as of today (as far as we know), and that means that the company’s latest developments are still relevant here at 9to5Google. That’s probably going to change soon, but for now, the latest creepy and unnerving robots that the company shows off in its videos are still attributable to the Mountain View company. The latest is a miniature version of its Spot robot with the addition of a giraffe-like neck. Yep, it’s not getting any less creepy…

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Energy companies in California are set to move customers over to Time of Use plans over the next couple of years, and that’s going to mean that you — the California resident — will be paying for energy based on its exact price at any given moment. Some times of the day are cheaper than others. This is great for some, but it’s going to mean that many are going to have to more closely monitor their energy use if they want to stay in budget.

Nest today has announced that it is bringing a feature, called Time of Savings, to the Nest Thermostat to help you manage your Time of Use energy usage and keep your costs to a minimum…

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In this week’s top stories: What’s new in the Android N Dev Preview 4, the official OnePlus 3 launch and first impressions, Android apps come to Chromebooks in Chrome OS Dev 53, and much more. Head below for the handy links to these and the rest of this week’s top shared stories.

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The CEO of Google’s parent company, Larry Page, once invited Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to Google’s campus to make him an offer for Twitter. That’s according to a Vanity Fair article, which says that Page “sat eerily close to Dorsey” and “whisper[ed] his acquisition pitch into his ear”…

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Nest today has added some new views to the Farsight feature of its flagship thermostat product. Rolling out to all thermostats soon, users will soon be able to show the current temperature and a new animated weather screen from across the room:

People love Farsight. But we heard from a lot of customers who wanted it to show the current temperature in big numbers you can see from across the room. So now, it can. And we’ve also added an animated weather screen. (You know, to satisfy meteorology fans.) Just go to Display Settings on your thermostat and choose your view.

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In this week’s top stories: We breakdown the best Android phones you can buy right now, get a closer look at upcoming Android devices including the OnePlus 3, Galaxy Note, and Project Tango devices, and give you the latest app news and updates alongside our picks for the best 5 Android apps you should download this month. 
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Earlier this year, we wrote a profile on an interesting startup, Zee Aero, developing a battery-powered vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft near Google’s X lab. The company caught our attention when it started hiring talent from NASA, Tesla and Stanford.

At the time, we couldn’t confirm where the money was coming from, but today we learn that Alphabet’s billionaire CEO Larry Page is secretively behind the electric aircraft startup, reportedly financing it with over $100 million, and even setting up a competing startup, Kitty Hawk, to test another model.

The group’s proximity with Google led a lot of people to believe it was financed by the tech giant, but in fact, Page is financing the initiative himself and not through Alphabet or Google Ventures. 
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According to a report from Tech Insider today, Google is nearing a deal with Toyota to sell its Boston Dynamics robotics division to the car maker. This follows a report from two months ago suggesting that Alphabet was planning to sell the division known for its super-creepy animal-like and human-like robots due to lack of a ‘marketable product’ in the next few years…

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In this week’s top stories we round up all of our coverage from Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference where it also took the wraps off a number of upcoming hardware and software products. Android N Developer Preview 3, the Play Store comes to Chrome, Google Assistant, the new Daydream VR platform and much, much more.
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Google shared some updates on company stats today while kicking off its Google I/O developer conference including updates on Chromecast, active users, new Android phones, Google Play installs and more.

In addition to showing off its new chatbot-style Google Assistant, Amazon Echo-like Google Home device, new Allo and Duo messaging apps, and Daydream VR platform, the company also announced 25 million Chromecasts sold, 200 million Google Photos users, 600 new Android phones launched over the last year, and 65B Google Play installs.

Head below for the roundup of all the numbers Google announced during I/O today and check back for more as the event unfolds.

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We had heard that the EU was planning to levy a substantial fine on Google for its alleged favoring of its own services in search over those belonging to competitors last year already, and the Telegraph is reporting that the European Commission is now estimating a hefty €3 billion ($3.4b) tag…
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