Google

In Google’s self-driving car report for June 2016, the Mountain View company has detailed — alongside the latest stats/metrics and a couple of accident reports, of course — how its autonomous vehicles share the road with cyclists…

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Google has been rolling out more and more instant answers – where the search-engine provides the answer immediately, rather than requiring you to click on an external link. Just yesterday it added song lyrics, and it now appears to be testing a built-in Internet speed test …

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Alongside the announcement of some new social plugin buttons, Facebook has today announced a couple of new Chrome extensions: Share to Facebook and Save to Facebook. As you might expect, the former allows you to Share content you find on the web to Facebook, and the latter lets you save things to come back to later.

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VR is slowly taking over the tech space as more and more companies make their attempts to steal your content-consuming eyeballs. As you may know, Google was among the first to debut a mobile VR experience with Google Cardboard, but it was pretty barebones to say the least.

At Google I/O 2016 we got a sneak peek at what Google has in store for virtual reality in the coming months with Google Daydream. And right around the corner from the full Android N release, Google has debuted a set of developer tools to allow anyone with a Nexus 6P to test out Daydream right now…

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If you’ve ever Googled for song lyrics, you know what a messy experience it can be – half the sites proving to be just links to other sites, others looking really sketchy. For those in the US, though, things should be much simpler. Google has licensed lyrics from LyricFind, which in turn licenses them from labels, so that a search for a song title with ‘lyrics’ on the end should generate an immediate link.

Of course, Google is arriving rather late to the party …

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The European Union has already filed two sets of antitrust charges against Google, the first accusing it of manipulating search results to favor its own products, the second alleging that Google forces Android device manufacturers to install its own apps and set Google search as the default.

Last summer, it was reported that the company may face a third antitrust case in Europe, this time for abusing its dominant position in advertising, and the WSJ reports that the EU is currently preparing to files these charges, possibly next month …

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According to a report today out of The Information, Google’s recently-formed partnership with Fiat Crysler to make 100 self-driving minivans is nothing more than the automobile company getting “a seat at the table” with Google. This comes as the Mountain View company struggles to find a path to actually market its self-driving technology, juggling a variety of not-so-great options that include licensing the tech to struggling automakers and entering the ridesharing business…

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Cybersecurity is one of the most important — and talked about — aspects of our digital lives, and a high priority amongst tech companies. Just this past week, Google made it easier for users to adopt its two-factor authentication system, but ironically, it was none other than its CEO Sundar Pichai that saw his account hacked earlier today…

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There have been several reports over the last year mentioning Google’s interest in building a smartphone. Although the company does have its own Nexus program to showcase the best the Android platform has to offer (and, at least as was true at first, provide some baseline devices for developers), it still needs to somewhat compromise on hardware here and there by much less directly impacting the engineering process.

However, it looks like this may not remain the case for much longer, with a new report — once again — suggesting that Google plans to launch something much more home-grown than in years previous…

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According to a report this morning out of Android Police, Google is working on an app for live support on Nexus devices. Tentatively named “Google Support,” the app — think Amazon’s Mayday button — will allow users to quickly get help with their phones. This app also reportedly features the ability to share your screen with the real agent on the other end, making getting help just that much easier…

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We told you across several exclusive reports last year about not-so-new Google Glass hardware that the Mountain View company has been privately testing within the Project Aura group and with external clients, but we were also the first to tell you that the device is internally known as “Enterprise Edition”.

Now, public-facing support pages we discovered on Google’s servers confirm the “Enterprise Edition” moniker as well as reveal regulatory and warranty information for the device…

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Google Trends tells the story of the result of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. Trending searches include a 500% spike in ‘buy gold,’ a doubling in searches on getting an Irish passport and some people apparently wondering what just happened …

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In a post on the official Google blog this evening, Google has announced a new Pride for Everyone initiative to encourage everyone to “be who you are and love who you love.” As part of the initiative, Google has released a new 360 degree video that contains footage from Googlers in 25 countries marching in local Pride parades.

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Boston Dynamics is still owned by Google/Alphabet as of today (as far as we know), and that means that the company’s latest developments are still relevant here at 9to5Google. That’s probably going to change soon, but for now, the latest creepy and unnerving robots that the company shows off in its videos are still attributable to the Mountain View company. The latest is a miniature version of its Spot robot with the addition of a giraffe-like neck. Yep, it’s not getting any less creepy…

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Google’s machine-learning head, Jeff Dean

A long-form Backchannel post by Steven Levy gives a fascinating insight into Google’s vision of the future of machine-learning. While it’s currently a specialist field, Google believes that one day it will be used by all software engineers no matter what the field, and that it will ‘change humanity.’

Google is starting small. It invites just 18 software engineers a year to join its Machine Learning Ninja Program, where they work alongside expert mentors for six months before going back to apply the approach to their own work. But Google’s machine-learning leader Jeff Dean estimates that around 10% of its 25,000 developers are proficient in the field, and he’d like that number to be 100%.

What’s notable is that all involved, from those in the Ninja program to the company’s key experts in the field, see machine-learning as something transformative …

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We know that Samsung has slowly begun investing more into its own Tizen OS platform as of late (and recent rumors suggest that it could begin moving in that direction even more). But now it appears that yet another Android OEM has begun building its own mobile OS: Huawei. The Chinese company  “doesn’t want to be on the crutch of Android,” according to a report today from The Information, although people familiar with the project say it’s still early days…

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