Google

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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In the midst of looking back at its year, YouTube is under attack by the music industry, which believes the over $1 billion that it has been paid in royalties over the last 12 months isn’t enough. The IFPI, an organization that represents musicians worldwide, believes that Google ad revenue doesn’t make up for the huge number of people streaming music for free…

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Google‘s cloud services and Slack are among people’s favorite productivity tools, and thousands of professionals around the world use them every day. The two companies, well aware of this, have decided to team up to offer an even deeper integration of Google Cloud within Slack, so come along after the jump for a rundown of what’s coming…

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For most people, downloading and updating applications on their phones is a task that takes place while using WiFi, as the files can sometimes be large and use chunks of their monthly data plans. With a new update method being introduced into the Google Play Store, the size of application updates should be dramatically smaller…

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If there’s one thing that New York City and the Christmas festivity have in common, magic is surely it. Its streets get decorated with specially-themed ornaments of all kinds, and the retail stores’ windows are tweaked accordingly, as well.

And Google, with its latest initiative, wanted to capture that magic as best as it could…

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Despite its tentacular nature, which even brought it to build its parent company, Alphabet, Google is still heavily focused on search. That’s its main business, after all, and likely the reason why the company tries to put it everywhere it can. Today, it seems, is the turn of Twitter…

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Google has announced that its entire operations will be powered entirely by renewable energy in 2017.

[We’re] thrilled to announce that in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations — including both our data centers and offices. We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy. That’s bigger than many large utilities and more than twice as much as the 1.21 gigawatts it took to send Marty McFly back to the future.

The achievement will by a significant one, The Verge noting that the company’s worldwide operations consumed almost as much power last year as the entire city of San Francisco. And Google believes the move will benefit consumers as well as the environment …

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I typically review Android phones, so looking at Google’s new non-phone products this year — including its Daydream VR headset, Google Home, and now Google Wifi — has been a nice change of pace. Over the last month, though, these posts have only gotten further and further from being phone reviews. The Daydream View uses an Android phone to function, while the Home is an always-listening Chromecast without the screen — although it functions very similarly to using Assistant on the Pixel.

The Google Wifi, as you probably already know, is a router. It’s what Google hopes will replace that little gray box that probably sits in the corner of your office, collecting dust since the cable guy came a couple years ago. Thankfully this isn’t just any router, though. This is the successor to the OnHub, and that means we get an attractive design, as well as a delightfully user-friendly app that lets you “set it and forget it” if you want to, but puts all the most important features at your fingertips if you ever need them…

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