Google

Albeit not being full-fledged PCs, Chromebooks are becoming increasingly interesting machines for a lot of people, given that the extremely simple and lightweight Chrome OS generally leads in reliability, ease of use and usually highly affordable prices.

However, a few of these computers have stood out for things like higher-end specs and interesting industrial designs — namely Google‘s own Pixels — and it looks like HP may have found a really sweet spot with today’s announcement. Partnering with the Mountain View company, the two are today unveiling the Chromebook 13, an all-metal machine with truly impressive specs and price…

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After its most recent update, the Google app now opens search results as Chrome Custom Tabs. This feature has been a long time coming, but it appears that pages suggested by Google Now still open up in the default browser.

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There’s a reason that I suggested the iPad Air 2 as the “Android tablet” to buy last holiday season. The HTC-made Nexus 9, which was the successor to the much-more-successful Nexus 7 series, just wasn’t a great tablet. We thought it was probably the best way to get pure Android in tablet form when it launched, but consumers never loved it, I never loved it, and tablets as a whole have become less and less useful for the general population as smartphones have gotten bigger.

Now, the Nexus 9 has finally died a silent death in its disappearance from the Google Store…

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Google seems to be under fire lately. Less than a week from the European Union’s charges against the Mountain View company regarding supposedly unfair practices towards its hardware partners, TIME is reporting that the famous stock photo agency Getty Images is now accusing the technology giant of “promoting piracy” with its Images search engine…

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Albeit having been released months ago, much like all of its predecessors, the latest Android version, Marshmallow, is still running only on a relatively small number of devices. Much of it can be attributed to carriers and third party manufacturers, which often take a lot of time to properly re-skin, release certifications, and eventually give the green light to updates.

Fortunately for Verizon customers, however, it looks like Google‘s latest software is beginning its rollout for the Droid Turbo 2. In a note released on Tuesday on Google Plus, Motorola‘s David Schuster confirmed that the upgrade is in “full deployment”…

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Google has long held close ties with politicians in Washington, D.C., and according to new data, nothing has changed. Watchdog group Campaign for Accountability has recently released new data detailing visits to the White House by various companies in the tech sector and other industries. According to the data, Google’s head of public policy Johanna Shelton has met with White House officials 128 times since President Obama took office in January of 2009.

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As we told you would be the case, LeEco held an event in China last week to announce a few new Android phones, a new all-electric vehicle concept, the next-generation of its SuperTV line, and a VR headset. While the Le 2 and the Le 2Pro are great handsets for the price, the phone that really caught my eye was the highest-end Le Max2. The Le Max2 is also a great phone for the price, but it brings specs and performance comparable to the latest-and-greatest Android flagships from Samsung, LG, and others.

Follow after the break for our hands-on video…

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I’ve said it time and time again over the last couple of years, but maybe this will make you finally believe it. Glass isn’t dead, and as I told you across across several exclusive reports last year, there’s even new hardware being field tested right now.

To further prove this morning that Google’s troubled head-mounted display device isn’t done yet, Glass for Work startup Augmedix — which deploys wearable solutions for healthcare systems and hospitals — announced that it has raised $17 million in funding from five leading healthcare systems across the U.S. And CrowdOptic has announced that it has now surpassed 10,000 Glass livestreams…

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Baidu, China’s most popular search engine, like its US-based counterpart Google, is heavily investing in autonomous driving technologies and today it officially announced the launch of a self-driving car R&D center in Silicon Valley, right in Google’s backyard.

The company expects its team will grow to over 100 researchers and engineers by the end of the year. The company already moved several of its staff from its newly-created Autonomous Driving Unit (ADU) to Sunnyvale and recently hired a Tesla Autopilot software engineer.
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While English is without a doubt the most common and prominent language in the world, it goes without saying that it’s not the only one, and that people often travel and want to understand what the words around them mean.

Multilingual dictionaries and translation apps come in handy, of course, but much like Google last year, Microsoft is taking a step ahead with its Translator app, giving it a few new features that will allow it to scan and translate on the fly…

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As previously rumored, in a press release published today, the EU has filed yet another antitrust movement against Google. This time it centers on Android, the company’s wildly successful mobile operating system, which the EU thinks is in breach of the continent’s antitrust rules. In short, the European Commission thinks Google is using Android to deliberately restrict other mobile operating systems, browsers and search engines.

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With imminent troubles looming in Europe, Canada just closed its three year investigation into anti-competitive practices involving Google’s search and advertising business (via The Verge). The country’s Competition Bureau ultimately “did not find sufficient evidence” that Google’s practices harmed local rivals.

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For both Google and Apple, the operations on their virtual stores are hugely important, as they account for millions of dollars. However, there has historically been a disparity between the number of downloaded applications and the actual money generated by them, a trend that seems to have peaked in the first quarter of this year.

According to App Annie‘s Index Market for Q1 of 2016, in fact, Google’s Play Store saw a number of downloads that roughly doubles that of the iOS App Store, which in turns represents the platform with the highest profitability, with over 90% more revenue generated over its counterpart…

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Google-backed Magic Leap has uploaded a fresh demo of its head-mounted VR (technically AR) on YouTube, and gives us hope that Microsoft’s HoloLens won’t have the augmented reality market all to itself.

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