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!

Google has never been a company to shy away from the big challenges in life, whether it’s creating self-driving cars, beaming the Internet from balloons, making human skin or abolishing death. Its latest example is a summit at the company’s Campus London space to try to figure out how world poverty could be eradicated within 15 years.
While it may sound a huge challenge, much progress has already been made. In 1990, the United Nations set a goal of halving global poverty levels by 2015, and the goal was actually reached five years early in 2010. Google now wants to complete the job – starting with an afternoon’s worth of ideas from tech entrepreneurs.
Google for Entrepreneurs is co-hosting a Tech Against Poverty summit on January 22 from 1pm to 6pm at Campus London, a Google shared office space specifically created for start-ups. Its partner in the event is Dreamstake, a support and investor platform for start-ups.
Google and Dreamstake want to test the hypothesis that the start-up culture will have a major positive impact on the poorest communities in the world. The event is open to Scientists, inventors, engineers, artists, thinkers and doers, and hopes to create some effective new thoughts in this space, with Google for Entrepreneurs actioning any ideas they see as innovating and taking a step closer to solving the problem.
The event is free, and you can register to participate at Dreamstake’s Solve for X website.
As of today, the ability to cast content to your Chromecast from the desktop comes in the form of a Chrome extension called Google Cast. As of the latest beta build of Chrome, though, you can now cast content from the web without said extension installed. All you have to do is right-click the content and use the “Cast…” menu…

Google’s secretive Google X division is getting a new focus at the company that includes rebranding and a new logo, Recode reports.
Among the changes for Google X, according to the report, is a rebranding to simply “X” and the new butter-like yellow logo pictured above. But perhaps more importantly, behind the scenes there will also be a renewed focus including a team put in place specifically to “steer moonshots through the life-or-death throes.”
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Update: The first business card for a Project Aura team member has popped up on Instagram.
We know that Project Aura is the successor to Glass — or at least a project that’s being built by some of the same people that built Glass — but now we have our first look at the logo that Google designed for this new venture. A person familiar with the project tells us that the logo is meant to resemble a new wearable device that wraps around the head…

Apple for a time led the tech market in education, even making education-specific Mac models. More recently, the company made a big push on iPads, signing a $30M deal (that would eventually have been worth a quarter of a billion dollars) in 2013 to equip every student in the LA Unified School District with an iPad.
If that program had succeeded, it would have created a template for rolling out similar ones across the whole of the USA. Instead, it failed catastrophically, and it now appears that Chromebooks are winning where iPads have failed.
CNBC reported last month that Chromebooks now make up more than half of all devices in U.S. classrooms, while Apple’s share of classroom purchases more than halved between 2012 and 2015. Why is that, and what – if anything – can Apple do to reverse the trend … ?

Google has announced that YouTube watchers in Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will start seeing a new homepage from this week. While YouTube has been available in Nepali, Sinhalese and Urdu for a while, the new pages have tailored content specific to those three countries. They also have country-specific domains.
Most-watched videos like Nai Nabhannu La 3 in Nepal, the Coke Studio channel in Pakistan and the Amazing Sri Lankan Spiderman will now show up in the top content for their respective countries, making them even easier to find.
With more local content finding their way to their viewers’ home-pages, YouTube hopes it will help inspire more local creators to get involved, and help them get discovered more easily.
While Google is keen to advertise its ‘tailored’ new home pages, there is a more interesting sub-plot here. YouTube has been banned in Pakistan since 2012, a ban which was re-inforced last February when the government said it would remain banned indefinitely. At the time, a Pakistan official said that “no tool or solution has been found which can totally block offensive content, that is why YouTube remains blocked and it will remain so indefinitely.”
With a dedicated Pakistan home page, perhaps Google is hoping it can persuade the government to lift the ban.

Google published today its annual report on disengagements of autonomous mode for its self-driving car program (SDC), which is required by California’s DMV. The report details events where Google’s test drivers have taken control over the car’s autonomous system, whether it’d be because of a shutdown due to technology failure or for safety reasons.
After having driven over 1.3 million miles in autonomous mode, Google’s self-driving cars were involved in 17 reported accidents, but the company prides itself of not having been at fault in any of them. But with today’s report, we learn the self-driving cars would have caused 10 accidents during the past year if test drivers wouldn’t have disengaged the system and taken controls.
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In his very first public comments, John Krafcik, chief executive of Google’s self-driving car division (which is still within Google[X] at the time of this writing), reiterated Google’s focus on achieving full autonomy in contrast to the incremental approach being taken by just about every other company pursuing the technology…
Mobile World Congress is still more than a month away, but that’s not keeping LG from sending out invitations to its upcoming press event in Barcelona. The company’s keynote is scheduled for February 21st, according to the invite, at 14:00 local time. Beyond that, though, there’s not much to learn here. The invite shows what looks to be a jack-in-the-box along with the slogan “Play begins.”…
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According to a report today out of The Wall Street Journal, Ford, as part of its plan to reinvent itself, is planning to create a separate business unit dedicated to its ambitions in autonomous cars for “ride-sharing and fleets.” Of course the company is seeking partnerships in this space, and it just so happens that, just as was reported by Yahoo Autos a few weeks ago, Alphabet Inc.’s Google is a big part of this move…

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Update: You can now view full video from the Ubiquity dev summit on YouTube here.
As we told you a couple of weeks ago, Google’s Ubiquity internet of things-focused dev summit is kicking off today at around 10 AM PT. Google has several technologies including Brillo and Weave that are geared for this trend in computing (which we will surely hear about), but the official schedule mentions everything from Chromecast to CloudSpin to Android Auto…
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Google has been releasing monthly reports about its self-driving car program for quite some time now, and now December’s report has hit the interwebs. This report was delayed due to the holidays (they usually hit around the 1st of the month), and it also just so happens to be one of the most bare-bones we’ve seen so far. The company does note what they’re doing to combat the rain in California (say what?), though…

Update: Google has officially announced the refresh, as well as the ability to add and save multiple locations.
It seems Google is testing a new version of its weather cards in Google Now. Rather than seeing the usual, plain white Material-designed card that we’re used to seeing, some users are noticing a brand new richer design. The cards are colorful, and have far more functionality…

Google’s virtual reality offering is doing more than just providing users a new way to watch videos and game. According to a new report from the NY Daily News, surgeons recently used Google Cardboard to help repair the lungs and heart of a four-month-old child. Teegan Lexcenher was born with half a heart and one lungs and her parents were initially told that she couldn’t be operated on, until Cardboard come into the picture..
Huawei announced a lot of stuff yesterday. Press day at CES 2016 started with a huge press conference from Huawei, featuring the Mate 8, MediaPad M2, the Huawei Watch, and a gold Nexus 6P, and the day ended with Huawei’s Honor brand announcing the Honor 5X and the Honor Band Z1. It’s a lot to take in, and we’re only just now starting to dig in so that we can bring you full reviews for these products over the coming weeks. We did get some hands-on time with some of these devices yesterday and today, though, and you can find that video below…
Samsung is up next for CES press day, following a very Android- and Google-heavy Huawei event. This event isn’t expected to be nearly as exciting, however, as Samsung has a wide variety of products spanning many categories to mention. Just like last year, I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard about Samsung services, some connected home products, some televisions, and maybe a new variant of a smartwatch (the Gear S2 this time, likely)…
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For Google fans, Hauwei’s press conference this morning is likely to be one of the most interesting of CES 2016. The company has boldly entered the United States market this year with the launch of the Huawei Watch and the Nexus 6P, and just about everyone — myself included — is excited to find out what the company has in store for 2017. From what we’ve heard, the company is planning to launch the Mate 8 for the United States, as well as introduce a new smartwatch (and some other things)…

A recent report suggests that Google and Ford are planning to announce a joint venture to build self-driving cars. The announcement is expected to be made at Ford’s CES presentation, which is set to start at 7:30AM PST.
You can watch a livestream below.
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According to a new report out of The Information, Facebook has been putting a variety of contingencies in place behind the scenes to ensure that should it ever feel the need to pull out of the Play Store, it could survive. The report details a variety of practices Facebook has engaged in recently to attempt and reduce its reliance on Google, the Play Store, and built-in Android features.
2015 saw many announcements and developments within the Mountain View company. It was a big one. While we may not have seen as many of the flashy moonshot projects we’ve seen announced over the last few years, like Google Glass, Project Loon, Project Titan, and others, 2015 came with some big changes, upgrades, products, and services. From Google being completely restructured to be a new huge conglomerate called Alphabet to the recent launch of the company’s Nexus line, 2015 wasn’t a boring one for Google by any stretch of the imagination.
Here’s are some of Google’s most important announcements, in no particular order…

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Earlier this year, we told you across several exclusive reports that new Google Glass hardware was on the way, namely a device Google has been working on for more than a year aimed at the workplace. Now, several months later (and with many interesting reports about Google’s mysterious Project Aura having surfaced since), we have our first look at the device in the flesh…