Google

A report from Business Insider today says that a Google employee has tested positive for the coronavirus. Google is a large company with more than 100,000 employees across many countries, and BI says that the employee had been in the company’s Zurich office before displaying symptoms…

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When you Google someone’s name, if they’re famous enough, a full Knowledge Graph card will appear with their description, social media, and more. In India, Google is testing letting far more people create their own “profile card” to appear in Google searches for their name, as well as in Chrome.

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Last year’s Google Pixel 4 saw one of the heaviest leak seasons of any smartphone, partially due to a change in Google’s production that saw the device manufactured in part out of Vietnam instead of China. Now, a fresh report is confirming that both Pixel 4a and Pixel 5 will be produced in Vietnam, with the low-cost model starting production in April.

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Google today began alerting users of a planned update to its terms of service (ToS) on March 31. There are four primary changes dealing with “improved readability” and “better communication,” as well as adding Chrome/OS and Google Drive to the ToS. According to the company, there are no changes to its Privacy Policy.

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Last year, Google announced that it had plans to acquire the popular wearable maker Fitbit, something that’s raised both hope and concern from users. This week, the European Data Protection Board is raising flags regarding Google’s Fitbit acquisition, calling it a privacy risk.

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Being the biggest Android OEM, Samsung and Google are generally close partners. Google’s Project Zero, though, is tasked with finding bugs and security exploits. This week, Google is calling out Samsung for an issue on the Galaxy A50, specifically mentioning Samsung’s “unnecessary changes” to Android’s core kernel.

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Earlier this year, the Google app rolled out a new menu where you can volunteer to test out new features in the app. The latest of these Labs has brought Google Doodles to the home screen search widget of more Android phones, once a Pixel exclusive feature.

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Jigsaw is an Alphabet company focussed on tackling global security challenges through technology. According to a new report today, Jigsaw has been moved back within Google.

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This week, the web and browser development community voiced concerns over “X-Client-Data,” an alleged “tracking ID” sent by Chrome to all Google sites. Google has denied the tracking allegation and pointed to the actual, more benign purpose for this special ID.

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Alphabet today announced Q4 2019 earnings with $46.075 billion in revenue. These numbers range from October to December, and includes the busy holiday shopping season for Made by Google’s hardware efforts.

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Huawei has been in a really tough situation for months now after a US ban cut off the company’s access to Google apps. In a recent interview, a Huawei representative made the bold claim that even if the government ban lifts, Huawei wouldn’t get back on board with Google apps.

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In recent days, the global tech industry has been responding to the coronavirus. Google today announced that it’s temporarily shutting down offices in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, while instituting travel restrictions.

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Following some EU orders and fines, Google has made changes to Android in countries where users can choose a search engine while setting up their devices. However, one search engine, DuckDuckGo, isn’t content with Google’s search-choice screen on Android, and has suggested a change.

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Google wants us to use our phones less, or at least curb our smartphone usage. This has led to a number of standalone Digital Wellbeing apps that all have weird and wonderful notions of how we should be using our phones in a healthy manner.

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Google Search is the company’s best-known product — it’s what made Google a household name. Over time, though, the search engine has evolved functionally and visually. Recently, Google changed search results to show icons on different sites, and everyone seems to have a different opinion about it.

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Google has a powerful suite of tools for digital wellbeing built into the past couple of versions of Android, but now the company is experimenting with other ideas. Today, the company has launched 5 new digital wellbeing experiments on Android and they’re all available as apps for you to try.

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In his first big public move since being appointed the CEO of Alphabet last month, Sundar Pichai today called for AI regulation to govern how the promising new technology is leveraged.

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Since the start of this week, investors have been waiting for Alphabet to hit a market value of $1 trillion. Google’s parent today joins only three other companies to ever hit that marker.

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