Stay up to date on news from Google headquarters. Be the first to learn about plans for Android, Google Plus, Google Apps, and more!
Stay up to date on news from Google headquarters. Be the first to learn about plans for Android, Google Plus, Google Apps, and more!

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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Microsoft and Google have reached an agreement to stop complaining about each other to regulators. Speaking to Re/code, the companies have said they will attempt to work out any issues between themselves in the future, before getting regulators involved.

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…

Google’s Sundar Pichai has made TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People List this year after taking over as CEO of Google last summer following a long run heading Android, Chrome and other notable projects at the company.

Funding data published by the Federal Elections Commission reveals that the largest donors to Bernie Sanders’ election campaign PACs were employees of tech companies. Employees of Google parent company Alphabet donated the most, at a little over a quarter of a million dollars.

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.

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.
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…

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.
Expansys offers the Google Chromebook Pixel (i5-3427U) 1.8GHz/4GB/32GB for $399.99 shipped. That’s about $600 less than the Google Store currently charges and the lowest we can find for one. It has a 3rd Gen Intel Core i5-3427U processor with dual-core and a 1.8GHz processor speed. It also has 4GB DDR3 memory and offers a 32GB solid state drive with fast read/write times. You also get 1TB of Google Drive cloud storage for 1 year (that’s a $120 value!) Rated 4.2/5 stars from 31 Amazon shoppers.

Re/code today reports that Silicon Valley icon and longtime Google advisor Bill “The Coach” Campbell has passed away at age 75 after a long battle with cancer. The unfortunate news comes from “many prominent tech players,” following earlier unconfirmed reports. Campbell was a mentor to many tech leaders, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos.

Android N is on its way, and as each new Developer Preview is released, we get a clearer picture of what Google has in mind for its next (and future) versions of Android. One major, albeit fairly inconspicuous drive is one towards a mobile-based VR platform, but one that everyone can access. Within Android N, we finally see some actual evidence that — at its inner most core — going forward the smartphone platform is going to be built for Virtual Reality.

The Financial Times reports that tight deadlines given to four lawyers suggest that the European Commission’s Android anti-trust case against Google could see formal charges finalized this week, possibly as early as Wednesday.
A few months ago Google launched a free high-speed public WiFi network in Mumbai Central Station, and now the company announced that similar networks are coming to nine more train stations across India.
Huawei has today introduced a VR headset for its flagship smartphones (via Weibo). And, as you can tell, it looks a lot like Samsung’s Gear VR headset. This comes hot on the heels of the Chinese company’s introduction of its latest P9 and P9 Plus smartphones, and you might guess, this headset is fully compatible with them. It also works with Huawei’s previously-launched Mate 8…
We’ve recently argued that the Galaxy S7 edge may represent the culmination of the “Smartphone 1.0 era”. It won’t please everyone about everything — and no such thing will likely ever exist — but it’s indubitable how all of the cornerstones of a modern smartphone have been tackled cleverly by the Korean giant, and all its positives can even justify its hefty price tag. Actually delivering something that steps up the game in a significant way, in fact, looks like a very tough challenge. Perhaps we will have to wait until true, Project Ara-like modular smartphones show up before radically rethinking the way we look at hardware, but the software roadmap seems to be getting clearer, with a future studded with bots.
Microsoft is betting big on them as a major part of the future of computing, and so is Facebook. There is a case that could be made for them to become the new apps — and this certainly is how these two firms are pitching the concept. Chances are that Google will follow sooner than later, and I think that if the general idea of bots we have been so far given remains valid, the owning of a platform as popular as Android may leave the Mountain View behemoth with quite an interesting card up its sleeve, which could give them a notable lead in the upcoming war for bots dominance, were they to play it cleverly…
Google has recently launched a Chrome extension for its under-the-radar Pocket-like service for saving photos, articles, and other online content. The extension is appropriately called “Save to Google,” and lets you easily put some of your favorite web content in the same digital folder as all the other stuff you’ve saved…
Almost two years ago, evidence of a custom Moto Maker-like service for creating custom cases for Nexus phones surfaced supposedly called “Google Workshop”. Today, Google has finally made the long-awaited custom case product official. You can now order a customized “Live Case,” which is notably the same moniker Google used for the special lineup of Skrillex cases launched last year…

There has been quite a bit of press surrounding the behind-the-scenes aspect of Alphabet companies over recent weeks, mainly centered around Nest and Tony Fadell. Earlier today, it was reported that Fadell appeared at Google’s all-hands meeting two-weeks ago to address the stream of negative press. In addition to Fadell defending Nest, Re/code now reports that executive Sergey Brin also defended the company’s life science unit, Verily, at the meeting.

In a post on its Research Blog, Google today announced that it is making some significant improvements to TensorFlow. For those unfamiliar, TensorFlow is the company’s open source machine learning software that powers things like Google Translate and many Photos features. Today, Google revealed that it is adding the ability for TensorFlow to run across multiple machines at the same time with distributed computing support.
Waze is known for adding special voices to its app to help you navigate while on the road, and the latest is the addition of Shaq’s voice to commemorate the 2016 NBA playoffs. This follows the Google-owned navigation app featuring the voice of Morgan Freeman in February to mark the release of London Has Fallen…

Following a number of recent controversies surrounding smart-home accessory maker Nest, Recode reports that CEO Tony Fadell defended the company while addressing the reports at a recent Google meeting.
First acquired by Google, Nest is now under Alphabet, the same parent company as Google following a restructuring last year.
At the weekly Google meeting, Fadell reportedly addressed recent reports of troubles on the Nest team that followed comments from Dropcam’s former CEO Greg Duffy regarding Fadell’s brash management style. Those comments led to a public response from Fadell and a number of mainstream media outlets picking up the story, while a report last week from Recode added that the company was under-performing financially and that its future at Google could be in jeopardy.
Here’s an excerpt from Fadell’s talk with Googlers addressing the reports:

The latest iteration of Google+ heavily revolves around Collections and Communities. To help prevent spam and inappropriate content, Communities now have more aggressive content controls and filters that will flag posts. Google is gradually rolling out the new filters to existing communities…

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