Google

The folks behind the Android version of Google Chrome made an announcement earlier today that they’ll be hosting an AMA on Reddit later this evening. The term ‘AMA’, for those less well versed in Internet terminology, stands for “asking me anything.” You’ll, well, be able to ask them anything you’d like—be it about Chrome for Android, the team’s favorite desert (ice cream sandwiches, perhaps?), or whatever else.

The AMA won’t start until 3PM Pacific Daylight Time/6PM Eastern , which is about 20 minutes from the time of posting this. The team says they’ll being answering questions until 5PM PDT. You can, however, queue up your questions here early and cross your fingers that they’ll answer yours. They ask that you report all bugs through the bug tracker.

Updates for Google Docs & Slides let you insert & quickly edit images on Android/iOS

Jordan Kahn May 13 2015 - 11:31 am PT

Google is today rolling out updates to its Google Docs and Slides mobile apps bringing the ability to insert images directly from the app on both phones and tablets.
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Google Fit updated with new home screen widget, Android Wear watch face

Tom Maxwell May 13 2015 - 11:14 am PT

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Google cares about your health and wants to help you stay in shape, which is why the company today released a set of updates and new features for the Google Fit platform across Android smartphones and Wear watches that make it easier to track your daily progress and fitness goals…

HTC ‘H7’ low-end tablet teased for release by next month

Jordan Kahn May 13 2015 - 7:49 am PT

Google’s HTC-made Nexus 9 tablet

HTC appears to have a new tablet on the horizon as often reliable leaker @upleaks claims a new tablet called “HTC H7” is currently planned for a Q2 release. That means that, if accurate, we should see the tablet introduced by the end of next month in order to meet the currently planned second quarter timeframe for release.
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‘Perimeter security’ for corporate networks is outdated, says Google, as it adopts new model

Ben Lovejoy May 13 2015 - 7:22 am PT

Google is in the process of a radical change in its approach to IT security, reports the WSJ, moving its data from protected internal networks out onto the Internet.

At first glance, it sounds like a crazy move: moving corporate data from protected internal systems, only accessible within Google buildings and via VPN, to publicly-accessible servers. But Google engineering manager Rory Ward believes that the conventional ‘perimeter security’ model no longer reflects the realities of today’s world.

The perimeter security model is often compared to a medieval castle: a fortress with thick walls, surrounded by a moat, with a heavily guarded single point of entry and exit. Anything located outside the wall is considered dangerous, while anything located inside the wall is trusted. Anyone who makes it past the drawbridge has ready access to the resources of the castle […]

However, with the advent of a mobile workforce, [this approach is] fraught with danger.

In other words, if half your workforce is accessing resources from outside the network anyway, you need a different mindset …
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Google reveals easy & difficult ‘Right to be forgotten’ cases, as possible compromise emerges

Ben Lovejoy May 13 2015 - 4:18 am PT

The controversy over the ‘right to be forgotten‘ by Google has often seemed destined to run forever, Google arguing that it was being asked to make “difficult and debatable judgements” based on “very vague and subjective tests,” while European courts said that the company wasn’t fully complying with the law.

Google said that it was complying with court orders by removing “outdated or irrelevant” sensitive information about individuals from its European sites, while leaving the .com site untouched. European courts want Google to remove results from google.com also.

A piece in the WSJ suggests that a compromise may be reached, however, as Google revealed examples of what it described as easy and difficult cases …
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Google makes progress toward goal of 100% renewable energy in latest Greenpeace report

Jordan Kahn May 12 2015 - 9:33 am PT

Greenpeace today released an update to its “Clicking Clean: A Guide to Building the Green Internet” report, and while Apple continues to lead for renewable energy efforts, Google once again increases its score thanks to new initiatives.
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Google admits Hangouts doesn’t use end-to-end encryption, conversations can be wiretapped

Ben Lovejoy May 12 2015 - 7:09 am PT

Following a Reddit AMA on government surveillance, Google has admitted that while it does encrypt Hangouts conversations, it does not use end-to-end encryption, meaning the company itself can tap into those sessions when it receives a government court order requiring it to do so. This contrasts with the end-to-end encryption used by some services, like Apple’s FaceTime, which cannot be tapped even by the company offering the service.

Motherboard noted that Google has always been vague about the level of encryption offered for Google Hangouts, and that when pressed by principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union Christopher Soghoian, the company would say only that messages were encrypted “in transit” …
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Swype Keyboard update adds two word phrases, times and dollar amounts to prediction bar

Tom Maxwell May 11 2015 - 4:15 pm PT

Nuance Communications today released version 1.9 of Swype Keyboard for Android, “the world’s most powerful keyboard,” which now includes easier number entry and two-word phrase prediction, among other improvements.

New Chrome extension solicits user feedback about the browser

Tom Maxwell May 11 2015 - 2:59 pm PT

Google today launched a new extension for Chrome that’s intended to directly help the company improve its browser. It’s called Chrome User Experience Surveys, and the gist is that users with the extension installed will occasionally get a pop up survey in their browser window when something unusual or unintended occurs in their browsing experience; these surveys should typically take less than 2 minutes to complete and are capped at appearing a maximum of four times per week.

In the company’s product forums, the Chrome team has proactively provided answers to some concerns they anticipate to be raised, including whether or not the company will collect and store browsing history with this extension (answer: no), and whether or not the extension will impact a user’s browser performance (again, the answer is no). “The only data this extension sends to Google is when these infrequent events occur and your survey responses,” the team states in the post. Keep in mind that if you use other Google services like Search and Gmail, they probably already have a lot of data about you anyway.

AP report reveals Google’s self-driving cars have been “involved” in three accidents since September

Mike Beasley May 11 2015 - 10:41 am PT

Google’s self-driving test cars have been involved in a total of three fender-benders since being licensed for use on public roads last September, a new AP report revealed today. All four of the accidents have been at speeds of 10mph or lower, so there hasn’t been any serious damage done yet.

One other autonomous car created by Delphi Automotive has been involved in a low-speed collision. The big difference between the two companies’ situations is that while Delphi only has two cars on the road right now, Google is currently running fifty of them. Strictly speaking in terms of percentages, Google has had much better luck.

Elon Musk doesn’t have a place in the Valley, often sleeps at Larry Page’s house

Stephen Hall May 11 2015 - 8:45 am PT

From Electrek:

Elon Musk, although CEO of a company based on Silicon Valley, often finds himself without a place to sleep when he’s away from his $17 million home located in Los Angeles. According to statements from Google CEO Larry Page given to Ashlee Vance for his upcoming book on the Tesla CEO, Musk is “kind of homeless,” and sometimes sleeps over at Page’s house when he’s in town.

“He’s kind of homeless, which I think is sort of funny,” Google CEO Larry Page said. “He’ll e-mail and say, ‘I don’t know where to stay tonight. Can I come over?'”

Larry Page hasn’t “given him a key or anything yet,” though, for his 8,000 square-foot, six bedroom home in Palo Alto. He owns another 6,000 square-foot environmentally friendly mansion on the same property. But maybe it won’t be long—it would make sense that maybe Musk’s focus is more to build out his business relationship with Google. It’s not like he couldn’t afford to sleep in a nice hotel.

The Washington Post put together some other notable quotes from the book.

After introducing Google+ Collections, Google sunsets YouTube Collections

Stephen Hall May 11 2015 - 7:04 am PT

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While Google just recently introduced the Pinterest-like Google+ Collections feature, it appears that another “Collections,” feature, YouTube Collections, will be getting the axe later this month. YouTube Collections currently lets you organize and group your subscriptions into different folders to more easily find videos you want to watch, but Google says that it’s retiring the feature on May 20th to “focus on other efforts to make your subscriptions more enjoyable.”

“Easy come, easy go” is the usual with many of Google Services (and features therein), so it’s not exactly surprising when we find that Google is planning to ditch a feature in one of its products—no matter how useful it might be to any number of people. It’s possible that Google is soon introducing a new, better, way to peruse through your subscriptions, and they might even be retiring the feature partially to prevent confusion with the other “Collections” feature.

Our thoughts: As someone who isn’t exactly the most hard-core YouTube user, I didn’t even know this feature existed. Actually, now that I do, I kind of wish Google was leaving it so that I could start using it to organize my 50+ subscriptions.

Google has removed the Shared Circles feature from Google+

Tom Maxwell May 9 2015 - 1:09 pm PT

Google+ Collections is a neat new way to follow and share curated sets of Google+ posts based on your interests, and it started rolling out as recently as May 4th. Google perhaps believes Collections to be so neat, in fact, that when they axed the ability to share set groups of people and pages earlier this week, they did so with nary an announcement (via Google Plus Daily). That, or so few people actually used this “Shared Circles” feature that the announcement of its removal wasn’t really necessary.

Since Google never even mentioned this change, we can’t know the exact reason behind the feature’s removal. But the feature as of late was used mostly for spamming, with lots of posts on the network soliciting users to add a Circle and reshare, which resulted in little to no engagement from new followers and lots of junk content in your feed. Again, the Google+ Collections tool has a similar intended use, allowing you to see groups of related content — but, not necessarily users. It’s definitely worth checking out if you were someone who used Shared Circles.

Google executives voice support for USA Freedom Act, recent NSA ruling in Reddit AMA

Chance Miller May 8 2015 - 2:27 pm PT

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Several Google executives held a question and answer session on Reddit today to address (and avoid) a variety of different topics. Perhaps most notably, the Google executives voiced their support for the federal appeals court ruling on Thursday that said bulk collection of telephone records by the NSA is not lawful.

Video ad viewability is 54% across the web, but as high as 91% on YouTube (Infographic)

Tom Maxwell May 8 2015 - 12:00 pm PT

Advertisers want to know that when they pay for a video ad on YouTube or elsewhere across the web, that the advertisement can actually be seen by viewers. A lot can effect an ad being seen, such as the viewer never scrolling to the part of the page where the ad is placed, or users simply scrolling past the ad too quickly to really catch a glimpse. Taking a look into these things, Google recently published the results of a study identifying the “5 factors of viewability,” or, in other words, the things that impact the chance of a video ad being seen.

Unsurprisingly, YouTube and Google’s video ad strategy seems to be strong compared to the rest of the web…

You can now order takeout in the U.S. from your Google search results

Chance Miller May 7 2015 - 5:51 pm PT

In a post on Google+ this evening, Google has announced that it is adding a new feature to its search engine that will make it incredibly easy to quickly order food on the go. Google says that starting today, if you search for a restaurant that is integrated with Seamless, Eat24, GrubHub, Delivery.com, MyPizza.com, or BeyondMenu, you will be able to order a meal directly from the search results.

Truecaller’s spam-blocker and caller ID technology are coming to Cyanogen OS

Tom Maxwell May 7 2015 - 2:14 pm PT

Incessant calls from unknown numbers are frustrating and can at times be immensely distracting, which is part of why companies like Facebook and Google have as of late introduced new Android dialers with which they hope quash this problem. Both essentially crawl their respective social network and search databases for the number calling you trying to find a name or business match. In Facebook’s case, it allows you to “block” individual numbers, which really just sends calls from unwanted callers straight to voicemail.

It was announced by Truecaller today that Cyanogen, the popular Android OS based on the AOSP, will be getting the company’s caller ID service baked in, specifically to be part of the Cyanogen OS dialer.

Google is rolling out Android 5.1 to the Nexus 9 starting today

Stephen Hall May 7 2015 - 9:45 am PT

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Google has announced today that it is beginning its rollout of Android 5.1 to the Nexus 9 at some point today. It has been a long time coming for the Nexus 9, with the flagship Google tablet just earlier this week receiving its update to 5.0.2—which first hit the Nexus 7 in December of 2014. Now, finally, it looks like Android 5.1 (more specifically Android 5.1.1) will be coming to the Nexus 9 very, very soon.

YouTube Creator Studio version 1.3 brings Material Design, more

Stephen Hall May 7 2015 - 7:20 am PT

YouTube Creator Studio, Google’s mobile app made for YouTube users to manage their channel, has today been updated with Material Design—including a new hamburger button and slide out drawer—among other minor changes.
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Google Street View now lets you explore the world’s most unusual island: Madagascar

Ben Lovejoy May 7 2015 - 5:48 am PT

Madagascar is an island off the coast of Southeast Africa, formed around 88 million years ago, its plants and animals forming in relative isolation from the rest of the world. Over 90% of its wildlife is found only on the island – and you can now take a virtual trip there thanks to the latest Street View imagery from Google’s Trekker system …
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10 things the Google I/O schedule tells us we’re going to see at the event

Chance Miller May 6 2015 - 5:10 pm PT

Google this morning officially shared the schedule for Google I/O 2015, and as you would expect, the schedule offers a handful of hints as to what we can expect to see at the event. We already told you about a few of the things Google has up its sleeve for this year’s I/O, but now we’re going to breakdown 10 things at which today’s schedule release has hinted…

Google to use robot-crane hybrids to construct new ‘hackable’ Mountain View headquarters

Chance Miller May 6 2015 - 3:06 pm PT

According to a recent report from Architects Journal, Google is looking to use a robot-crane hybrids to assist in building its new Mountain View headquarters. The report includes several mock-ups of the machines, which will be used to lift and shift the “pre-fabricated” components inside the structure.

Google Classroom mobile app update lets teachers grade assignments on the go

Stephen Hall May 6 2015 - 1:12 pm PT