Google

Alphabet Class A shares ($GOOGL) hit new record highs today, soaring past the $1,000 per share mark. Alphabet Inc Class A is up 7.80 points on the day, or 0.78%. Alphabet Inc Class C, on the other hand, is straddling the line just below the $1,000 mark, sitting at 983.28 at the time of this writing and up nearly the same amount.

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Despite being a rather popular Android smartphone, there aren’t as many great cases available for the Google Pixel as there are for the Galaxy S8 or LG G6. Although late to the game, Mophie has finally released a version of its Juice Pack battery cases for the Pixel XL. The Juice Pack does add a bit of thickness to the handset but it also almost doubles its battery life and adds wireless charging.

But is it worth the $99 pricetag?

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Google’s plans for a new London campus have taken a while to come to fruition, but the company has now submitted a formal planning application for the redesigned building. It will be situated directly opposite Kings Cross station, close to the Eurostar terminus.

Initial plans were filed back in 2013, but the company later decided the design lacked ambition. In 2014, Google asked for an all-new design, and later commissioned the team behind its Mountain View campus to carry out the work …

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For those that actually use Google+, its flaws aren’t exactly a secret. The site is plagued with spam, and many still haven’t adjusted to the relative sluggishness of its new web interface. And, with the recent refocus on Communities, Collections (and most recently, Topics), the site in general is getting somewhat confusing to anyone but seasoned G+ veterans (of which there aren’t many).

Now, one Google+ Engineering Manager Leo Deegan has come out on Google+ (appropriately) to let us know that Google is aware of the network’s flaws and is working on a variety of improvements.

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Over the last couple of years, Google I/O has become less of a spectacle where people are literally skydiving onto the top of the Moscone Center and more of a place for Google to talk directly to developers. Because of this, people have started calling Google dull. Do you think that this year’s Google I/O developer conference was boring?

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Nest, an Alphabet-owned company, is known for its high-tech smart home devices — like its thermostat and smoke detector. In particular its descendants-of-Dropcam home WiFi security cameras have been popular for the last couple years, thanks to being extremely user-friendly. Now, Nest is reportedly prepping to release a 4K indoor security camera to add a new option to the top of the lineup…

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Google I/O 2017 might have ended last week but if you missed any of it, don’t worry as Google has now posted its yearly highlight video to showcase the best things to happen at this year’s developer conference…

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The Google Pixel and Pixel XL are arguably two of the best Android smartphones on the market, but unlike other major handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG G6, there aren’t that many cases out there for it. Today, there’s another option on the market as mophie, a well-known battery accessory company, has announced the availability of a battery case for the Pixel XL…

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One struggle felt by all developers is getting users to pay for mobile applications. This issue affects developers creating $0.99 games as well as those coding $5 photo editing applications. To make up for lost revenue, developers have turned to using in-app purchases as well as subscription-based models. To make subscriptions a more viable option for companies and individual developers alike, Google has introduced several new tools within the Google Play Console…

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Today is day three of I/O 2017, and that means that we are nearing the end of this year’s Google developer conference. So far we have seen the company announce new features coming to Android, VR, a bunch of new tools for developers to help them make great apps, and much more.

However, if you missed any of the keynotes or sessions, don’t worry at all because Google recorded every single one of them so that you can go back and watch them when you’re ready…

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For years now, Google’s emoji have stood out from the crowd because they didn’t share the typical round design seen on other smartphones. Many called these emoji “blobs” because of their shape and it was pretty hit or miss as far as if someone liked them. Now that they have been updated in Android O, do you miss them or are the new emoji better?

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One of the main issues with mobile VR such as Daydream or Samsung’s Gear VR is that even the top of the line smartphones just don’t have the processing power required to smoothly render graphically intense visuals. To help with this, Google has created Seurat, a tool that takes full 3D environments and turns them into scenes that can be viewed on mobile VR, all without losing huge amounts of quality…

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We’ve known for a while that a web view for Google’s Allo is coming, but the company hasn’t given us too many details about when it would actually debut. Recently, Google’s VP of product management, Nick Fox, has given us a more concrete timeframe for when it will make its debut.

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The legal basis for the transfer of 1.6 million patent records from the UK’s National Health Service to Google DeepMind has been described as ‘inappropriate’ by a leading data protection figure in the NHS. The data was given to Google for one of several AI projects designed to use machine learning to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of conditions.

Sky News reports that view was expressed in a letter written by Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian at the Department of Health …

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Google has announced today a couple of initiatives to make AdSense more transparent for publishers. Not only is Google announcing a new ‘Policy Center’ today that will serve as a “one-stop shop” for publishers to control policy actions on their site, but the company says that soon policy actions will happen on the page level by default, leaving ads on non-offending parts of a site alone…
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Google Assistant is a powerful voice assistant platform that I personally use every day on my phone and my Google Home. Among other things, I use Assistant to turn on my music, change the brightness or colors of my LIFX connected lightbulbs, add items to a grocery list, ask random trivia questions, and more, all using just my voice.

It’s been rolling out to Android Nougat devices over the past few months, and to put it into even more users’ hands Google has recently released the Google Assistant SDK. Thanks to this extensive post by Mishaal Rahman on XDA Developers, many enthusiasts, including myself, have gotten it up and running on Mac, Windows, and Linux computers.

Keep reading to find out how you can install it as well…

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Having instant access to the sum total of human knowledge is a wonderful thing most of the time, but there are times when it can be counterproductive. A new study suggests that Googling your child’s symptoms when they are ill can be one of those times.

Arriving at an appointment thinking you know more than a trained medical professional isn’t likely to endear you to your child’s doctor, but a study carried out by the American Academy of Pediatrics showed that it can actually be dangerous …

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Last year it was revealed that Google had another new operating system in the works called “Fuchsia.” In the time since, we haven’t heard much about the OS, but it seems work has continued in the background. Now, it’s been discovered (via ArsTechnica) that an actual user interface for Fuchsia is in its earliest stages, and luckily, we can take an early peek…