Google

A long-standing criticism of Google has been its two-tier workforce where half of employees are contracted out. Compared to full-time Googlers, these other workers do not get the same benefits or privileges. Google is now mandating a $15 minimum wage, health care, and paid parental leave for them.

Expand
Expanding
Close

YouTube has been at the center of a few different controversies and apparently, executives were warned that something like that might happen. According to a report from Bloomberg, Susan Wojcicki and other executives at YouTube ignored warnings that led to toxic video recommendations and much more.

Expand
Expanding
Close

After years of living in the shadow of the social media behemoths, Google’s ill-fated Google+ social network closes its doors today for good. I’d be hard to convince that G+ will be missed by the masses, but none can deny that a certain subset of Google fans and Android users found a community there unlike any other. Here’s what Google+ meant to us.

Expand
Expanding
Close

While other brands might just do one or two jokes, Google goes all out for April Fools’ Day. It’s a very serious and long-running affair with major product teams partaking in fun feature announcements. April 1, 2019 falls on a Monday, with many of the pranks beginning to appear on Sunday.

Expand
Expanding
Close

In this week’s top stories: we learn how fast the four most recent versions of Android are on the original Google Pixel, preview how the Play Store’s new “squircle” shaped icons will look, lament the seemingly permanent disappearance of the $599 Pixel Slate, and more.

Expand
Expanding
Close

To kick off Made by Google 2018 last October, the company aired a great video that showed its various services helping users. Appropriately  set to “Help!” by The Beatles, a slightly updated version was just uploaded to YouTube and is likely one of Google’s best ads to date.

Expand
Expanding
Close

According to a report from Reuters this week, the US Government is enlisting the help of some tech giants for the 2020 census. In an effort to fight “fake news” from affecting the census, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all committing to help prevent interference with the count.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The U.S. military and other Washington officials are still upset over Google pulling out of Project Maven last year. However, another sticking point was Google’s work — at the time — on censored Search in China. That criticism recently reemerged with Sundar Pichai meeting President Trump and other top military brass today to allay fears about Google’s relationship with China, especially in regards to AI.

Expand
Expanding
Close

In this week’s top stories: Inbox by Gmail gets an official date for its shutdown, we get exclusive details on the Google Pixel 3a and 3a XL, Google unwraps its Stadia game streaming service, and more.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has been fined $1.69 billion after EU regulators claimed that the tech company abused its own search system to essentially force third-party sites to use the AdSense network over other rival online ad serving companies.

Expand
Expanding
Close

In this week’s top stories: Android Q Beta 1 arrives for all Pixel phones with a plethora of new feature, LineageOS Nightlies give the original Google Pixel an extended life, we learn about teens using Google Docs as a way to mask talking in class, and much more.

Expand
Expanding
Close

March 14th has arrived, aka Pi Day. To celebrate, Google is showcasing an impressive feat by one of its employees. Emma Haruka Iwao, a cloud developer advocate at Google, recently calculated the value of Pi accurate to over 31 trillion digits in length.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google said that it removed a total of more than 2.3 billion bad ads last year – more than a quarter of a million per hour. The company has also introduced an almost complete ban on cryptocurrency ads, though allows regulated cryptocurrency exchanges to advertise in the United States and Japan.

The company added that it removed ads from almost 28 million web pages, and 1.5 million apps …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Passion can drive people to do some pretty crazy things, and that definitely seems to be the case with one YouTuber from Maine. Kyle Long was apparently arrested outside of Google’s headquarters in Mountain View for trying to “settle his beef” with the company regarding his YouTube channel which he believed the company had shut down.

Expand
Expanding
Close

In this week’s top stories: Android Slices appear in the Google app for Pixel users, Google Duplex expands to 43 states, the March security patch arrives on Pixel and Essential phones, and much more.

Expand
Expanding
Close