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After picking up new updates on both Android and iOS earlier this week, Google Hangouts is now picking up a new feature for group chats — the ability to join via a unique link…
After a tragic attack in Nice, France, Google has announced tonight that it will be offering free voice calls to the country. These free calls will be available through Google Hangouts (Google Voice) as well as Project Fi. For those in the area, Google will also be pushing Google Now cards with critical updates on the situation.
Following a proposal by Google earlier this year, the Unicode Technical Committee today approved a new set of emoji that aims to improve gender equality.
More than 90 percent of the world’s online population use emoji. But while there’s a huge range of emoji, there aren’t a lot that highlight the diversity of women’s careers, or empower young girls…. the emoji representing women aren’t exactly, well, representative. So we’ve been working to make things better.
Update: Google has confirmed that Hangouts v11 removes the ability to merged SMS and Hangouts conversations into a single thread. Google says they have done this “because it caused user confusion and had low usage”.
After what seems like an eternity, Google has finally updated Hangouts for Android with video messaging capabilities with version 11 of the app. Hangouts for iOS gained this same functionality early this year and after months of waiting, Android users finally have access…
After making some major improvements to its coverage in the US, Project Fi is turning its focus to international markets with some huge updates today. Starting today Fi customers will have access to faster data speeds worldwide, thanks in part to help from Google’s partnership with European carrier Three.
Update: Niantic has issued the following statement:
We recently discovered that the Pokémon Go account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon Go only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected.
Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google profile information, in line with the data that we actually access. Google has verified that no other information has been received or accessed by Pokémon Go or Niantic. Google will soon reduce Pokémon Go’s permission to only the basic profile data that Pokémon Go needs, and users do not need to take any actions themselves.
Google lets you see the apps connected to your account at the My Account section of its website, and today we noticed something interesting: Pokémon Go, the new hit smartphone game that’s pretty much taking over the world, is getting full access to many users’ Google accounts. That’s the same privilege that Google Chrome and Chromecast get. Currently, this appears to affect those that have used the Google sign in feature in the iOS app…
This is one of those features that has had a slow and tedious rollout, but now it appears to be visible more widely. If you try searching for weather results with Google Now, you should now be seeing — if you weren’t already — a pair of new hourly Wind and Precipitation graphs…
According to Mercury News, a man behind a series of attacks on Google’s Mountain View campus was charged with arson last week. Fearing that Google was tracking and watching him, Raul Murillo Diaz threw Molotov cocktails at a Street View vehicle, shot the windows of several buildings, and possibly burned a self-driving car.
Update: Shortly after publishing this article Huawei provided us with this statement:
It has recently been highlighted that an image posted to our social channels was not shot on the Huawei P9. The photo, which was professionally taken while filming a Huawei P9 advert, was shared to inspire our community. We recognise though that we should have been clearer with the captions for this image. It was never our intention to mislead. We apologise for this and we have removed the image.
The cameras on our smartphones just continue to get better and better with improved sensors, powerful software, and impressive low light capability. But there are certain things they just can’t do.
With its P9, Huawei implemented an advanced dual-camera system to improve quality of the shots you take, and while they can be certainly impressive, as noted in our full review, Huawei’s marketing department might think just a bit too highly of this camera…
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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After nearly two years of construction, Google along with a consortium of telecom providers announced the completion of the FASTER broadband cable system that links Japan and the United States. The cable system is the fastest of its kind and stretches nearly 9,000 km across the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
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 …
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…
Most watches have received the Android Wear 1.5 update at this point, but now we’ve spotted the first report of the update hitting the Fossil Q Founder. Still based on Android 6.0.1, the Android Wear 1.5 update contains just a few incremental tweaks…
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 …
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…