Google

We are in the midst of the holiday season which means that many of you are getting brand new devices. If you happen to have received or picked up one of Google’s brand new Pixel phones, you might be considering a case to protect your new handset. If so, look no further than the five cases that we’ve handpicked below.

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There are nearly 1.5 million applications currently on Google Play and with so many to choose from, finding interesting new experiences can be a hassle. As we have the last several months now, today we’ll be showing you another 5 Android apps that you should definitely give a shot…

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Just over a year ago, Google announced plans to put free, high-speed, public Wi-Fi into over 400 railway stations across India. However, that is an ongoing process that is far from over. Google wanted to expand the coverage to 100 stations by the end of 2016, and now with just a few days left in the year, it has lived up to that promise.

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As Apple defends its own actions related to its Ireland tax maneuvering, new filings from Google show that it saved $3.6 billion in worldwide taxes during 2015 by using infamous Dutch & Irish tax loopholes. The move is a continuation of a scheme Google has been running since 2004.

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Software often handles delicate and private information, requiring some level of encryption to help protect information from attacks. Unfortunately, no matter how good cryptography is, new vulnerabilities are found almost daily, requiring constant patching. Project Wycheproof hopes to make it easier for software engineers to find bugs by letting them test their software libraries against previously identified vulnerabilities and then fix them before they might be exploited…

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If it wasn’t clear enough, AI, and more specifically the machine learning sub-branch, is a big deal — and not just for Google. It’s not much of a “next big thing” aimed at supplanting everything that has come before it from above, but rather a more silent revolution branching out from underneath.

And it’s being used everywhere…

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An electric self-driving Chrysler Pacifica is Google’s first confirmed partnership

Google has long said that it has no plans to manufacture self-driving cars itself, instead partnering with auto makers, but it had been thought that it might press ahead with cars without steering wheels or pedals. However, a new report from The Information suggests that parent company Alphabet has now ‘backed off’ these plans in favor of something more conventional.

The report also echoes a much earlier one on the company’s intentions for the self-driving car project …

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Google chairman Eric Schmidt represented the Mountain View company in an agreement signed with the Cuban government’s telecom monopoly ETECSA today, which will hopefully provide residents of the island faster access to Google’s sites and services through the Google Global Cache network (via Reuters).

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For some reason, until now, asking to change your house’s temperature with a Nest thermostat worked just fine with Google Assistant on a Home device, but not from a Pixel. However, as Android Police reports, this should not be the case anymore…

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Update: Google has made these updates official on its blog.

Google is currently trying to sell people on the idea of a world in which everything can be controlled by their voice. To do this, though, they have to convince customers to purchase their $130 Google Home with built-in Assistant. Just three days ago, Google launched Actions which will allow third-party developers to start integrating their services into Google Assistant.

Based on what we’re seeing now, it would appear that Netflix and Google Photos are the first to take full advantage of this opportunity…

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When it comes to my phones, I tend to be a little weird. I don’t like cases because it takes away from the premium build and feel that the manufacturer had in mind when crafting the handset. The same goes with plastic screen protectors. Even without those items, though, I still baby my devices because I want to keep them as pristine as possible. So when I noticed this weird “bubble” like object forming under the glass on my Pixel, I decided to contact Google’s customer support…

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I’ve talked about this time and time again, but it seems today Google is giving me another opportunity: smartwatches just aren’t compelling. I haven’t always been this skeptical (many will know that I was on the “wearables are the next big thing” bandwagon for quite some time), but they’ve become little more than a way for smartphone makers to upsell you on an add-on. I don’t entirely hate them as products, but they’re not going to become — at least in their current form — anything close to a fundamentally useful new computing platform the way smartphones did.

And Google just so happened to announce its new “Magic Minute” marketing campaign for Android Wear today, and it only further proves to me that these watches just don’t have anything close to a killer app. In this new campaign, Google has enlisted a bunch of popular online figures and YouTubers to make one minute videos showcasing their use cases for Android Wear. But really, they’re videos showing some really cool things that they already do in real life without a smartwatch, and they are using their Android Wear watch to… time themselves.

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Google is giving its usual employee holiday gifts to charity this year, the Mountain View company has confirmed. This follows last year, when Google gave all of its employees the option of either the company’s Nexus 5X smartphone (in any color) or a donation to charity.

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Android is a popular and powerful operating system thanks at least in part to its customizability and adaptability. To demonstrate how this can help in business world, Google has built a new website and produced a video showing off how the enterprise market can take full advantage of the company’s mobile OS…

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Over the last month, we have seen applications such as YouTube and Hulu gain support and add features for Google’s virtual reality platform, Daydream. Today, Google is expanding Daydream’s platform by introducing 10 new applications including both HBO GO and NOW, Netflix, Need for Speed, and much more…

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