Google

Since launching its latest wave of products back in October, Google has been going nuts with the number of advertisements on television, online, and in print for Assistant. Walking into Las Vegas for CES 2018, it’s clear that the search giant isn’t going to hold back on making sure everyone knows the phrase “Hey Google.”

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Whether you’ve been there in person, seen it in pictures, or watched a comedy about it, you’re probably quite familiar with the multi-colored bikes that can be found all over Google’s Mountain View campus. Designed for the company’s employees, these bikes are available to grab on the campus at any time, but there’s a problem — people keep stealing them.

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Last July, OnePlus was in the news for running a survey on user phones, asking them what they thought of the device. Then, today, Google began doing something very similar but instead of making it a dismissable notification, the company added a pop-up to a Pixel 2 XL’s settings menu.

Do you think companies should be allowed to add notifications or pop-ups to its smartphones asking customers to answer surveys?

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Back in July of 2017, OnePlus owners were upset when the company began running a “survey” on the phone asking users how they liked its latest handset. Now, it seems as though Google is doing the same thing with the Pixel 2, with a survey popping up in the handset’s settings menu…

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Back in October of last year, Google announced a cleaned up and refreshed version of Google Calendar for the web. On top of receiving a fresh coat of paint, Google worked to add features to the online calendar to make it easier to add events, format calendar invites, and much more.

As the new design will automatically replace the outgoing version starting on January 8, we wanted to know if you prefer the look of the 2017 redesign more than the version from 2006 leaving the web in a couple of days…

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Google claims that the latest version of its AI-powered speech synthesis system, Tacotron 2, is almost indistinguishable from human speech – and has put some comparative examples online to demonstrate.

Tacotron 2 works directly from written text, and Google says it can use context to correctly pronounce identically-spelled words like ‘read’ (to read) and ‘read’ (has read), responds to punctuation and can learn to stress words …

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A recent report from The Information details Google’s efforts to grow its chip development efforts, which in turn is costing Apple some considerable talent. The report explains that Google has hired several key chip engineers from Apple, including well-regarded chip designer John Bruno…

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If you’re anything like me, you have noticed that the holidays are now upon us and you haven’t bought gifts for everyone just yet. Thankfully, there is still time to pick up or order some last minute gifts. Here are a couple of items that are still in stock and can be at your door in time for the big day…

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The Home Max is now available for purchase which means Google now sells three different smart speakers, all serving separate purposes. The Max, being the largest of the three, is intended to be a premium quality speaker which just happens to have Google Assistant built-in.

But at $400, the Home Max can be a difficult purchase to make. Are you buying one for your house?

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At long last, Google has finally launched its first implementation of ARCore on the Pixel 2 handsets in the form of AR stickers. These sticker packs include characters from Star Wars, Stranger Things, and several of the company’s own creations. Here’s a quick hands-on to show you how they work…

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Early last month, Broadcom announced a $105 billion offer to buy Qualcomm. The latter chipmaker has rejected the initial bid in an attempt to possibly get a better offer. However, a new report today reveals that Google and others in the industry are worried about such a deal due to innovation concerns, as well as the purchase aiding Apple.

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As we move forward into December, we are quickly approaching the holiday season. As it’s 2017, there are applications and smart home products that can help you not only get into the holiday spirit but also help you control your decorations using your phone and Google Assistant. Here are just a handful of apps and products to help you make it through the festivities…

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Despite mocking the iPhone last year over the lack of a headphone jack, Google decided to remove the 3.5mm port from its latest flagship smartphones. Because of this, users either have to convert to USB-C or Bluetooth headphones or use the included USB-C to 3.5mm adapter. But what if you want to charge and listen to music at the same time with wired headphones? Moshi has you covered, but it won’t come cheap…

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Leading up to Google’s October 4 event, we knew that Google was planning to introduce a pair of wireless earbuds that would compete with the likes of Apple’s AirPods. The key differentiator for Pixel Buds — besides Android optimizations — is the Google Assistant. They seemed more sophisticated and feature packed than the competition even with the wire connecting the buds.

As we wrote in the Pixel Buds’ review, these are the smartest earbuds you can buy, but with some clear flaws. Unfortunately, though, those flaws were enough for me to return my personal set and switch back to using AirPods with my Pixel 2…

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Following reports of sexualised videos of children attracting hundreds of comments from suspected pedophiles, YouTube has announced that it will be boosting its content moderator team to 10,000 people – but only by the end of 2018. The current team is reported to be around 8,000 people.

A Times investigation first uncovered the scale of the problem eleven days ago, with volunteer flaggers claiming that YouTube wasn’t taking the problem seriously …

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Google is officially off-setting 100% of its energy usage with either wind or solar power. The company signed contracts on three wind power plants in recent days to bring them over 3GW of production capacity.

Google’s energy infrastructure investments have totaled over $3.5 billion globally, with about two-thirds being in the US.

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Brits who used an iPhone between June 2011 and February 2012 could receive as much as £500 ($672) each from Google as compensation for the search giant bypassing Safari privacy settings between those dates.

A British campaign group has launched a ‘representative action’ (the UK equivalent of a class action lawsuit) on behalf of the 5.4M iPhone users in England and Wales affected by what is known as Google’s ‘Safari workaround.’ The lawsuit could cost Google as much as £2.7B ($3.63B) in total …

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