Since the start of 2019, the CDC has recorded 555 cases of measles in 20 states across the U.S. A Googler in Mountain View was diagnosed earlier this month, with employees last week warned about the infectious disease.
Google this morning announced the winners of the I/O 2019 ticket drawing. Starting May 7th, this year’s annual developer conference in Mountain View features a notable logistics change related to parking and helping the surrounding area.
Whether you’ve been there in person, seen it in pictures, or watched a comedy about it, you’re probably quite familiar with the multi-colored bikes that can be found all over Google’s Mountain View campus. Designed for the company’s employees, these bikes are available to grab on the campus at any time, but there’s a problem — people keep stealing them.
We told you last week that registration for Google’s 2016 I/O developer conference opened up to the public, and now it appears those that entered the drawing are receiving acceptance and denial emails. The lucky lottery entrants that have been accepted this time around, though, are apparently getting an error preventing them from registering…
Google’s expansion plans for its Mountain View HQ have been progressing rather slowly, but the company has now given the go-ahead for local planning officials to release the renders of the structures it hopes to build next to its existing Googleplex head office.
The company originally submitted plans for a combination of one dome-like structure and a second building looking like a giant tent. As BizJournals now reports, the latest version appears to have abandoned the dome in favor of a lower-profile structure designed to blend into the local environment (more images below).
Once the campus is complete, you’ll be able to take a walk through it …
Earlier this month, details regarding Google’s upcoming “hackable” headquarters in Mountain View emerged, suggesting that the building will be built partially by “crabots.” The crabots are a mash-up between cranes and robotic machinery and will be used extensively in designing the interior of the company’s new headquarters. The Sillicon Valley Business Journal now reports that Google has submitted plans at Mountain View City Hall for these headquarters. The translucent domed building is expected to be 595,0000-square-feet and located near the company’s existing headquarters.
According to a recent report from Architects Journal, Google is looking to use a robot-crane hybrids to assist in building its new Mountain View headquarters. The report includes several mock-ups of the machines, which will be used to lift and shift the “pre-fabricated” components inside the structure.
In a move that could reportedly threaten Google’s campus expansion plans on its home turf in Mountain View, California, BizJournals reports that LinkedIn has won a bid for valuable real estate that Google was hoping it to use for a previously announced futuristic campus:
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Google has announced that it will be powering its Mountain View headquarters with wind power from 2016–or, more precisely, that it will be purchasing enough wind-generated electricity to cover the power used by its HQ.
The agreement with NextEra Energy Resources will help to repower an iconic Bay Area wind farm at California’s Altamont Pass with new turbines that will pour 43 MW of electricity onto the grid starting in 2016 […]
Even though the electrons follow an untraceable path through the California electricity grid, we can be sure that we’re offsetting the electrical consumption of our North Bayshore headquarters with the renewable energy from the new turbines.
Google has been a carbon-neutral company since 2007, and already uses renewable energy to power its data centers (winning praise from Greenpeace), but this is the first time the company has made a direct commitment regarding its offices. Google also runs a free electric shuttle bus service for local residents.
Google shared the news the day after Apple announced that it is building a solar farm to offset all its California operations, including its new campus building currently under construction.
We told you earlier this week about a letter sent from WikiLeaks to Google, asking why it took so long for the Mountain View company to notify them of federal warrants for their personal data. Google apparently stood up against the gag orders preventing them from doing so (via The Washington Post), saying it “challenged the secrecy from the beginning.”
First announced in July of 2014, Google has this week launched—in partnership with Motiv and the city of Mountain View—a free shuttle service to help residents of the Santa Clara city get around town. Besides being completely free to the public, the service touts the fact that its first four shuttles are completely electric, can seat up to 16 passengers, have free WiFi for all riders, and have bike racks as well as wheelchair access.
Google is giving back to the community that it has called home for the past eight years, agreeing to cover the costs of four electric shuttle buses for public transportation in Mountain View. According to the local newspaper Mountain View Voice, Google has provided the city with a large contribution that will help fund the shuttle bus project for at least two years.
The community shuttles are expected to be operational by the fall, with a proposal that they run every 30 minutes on weekdays and every hour on weekends in areas where public transportation is lacking. Mountain View Mayor Chris Clark claims that the buses are not intended for daily commuting, but rather for short trips across town and recreational or leisure purposes.
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Google X director Babak Parviz founded and led both the Google Glass and contact lens projects at Google, but it appears he has now left the Mountain View corporation in favor of Amazon. This news comes shortly after just two months ago stepping aside to let former Old Navy and Gap marketing VP Ivy Ross take the Google Glass helm.
Project Ara, the modular phone project announced by Motorola’s ATAP team last year, will be getting its own developer conference this April. Google announced the event on the Project Ara website (via AndroidPolice) and noted that a live stream with “interactive Q&A capability” will be available online for those that can’t attend. The conference will take place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View and Google says there will be a limited number of attendees. The event will focus heavily on a new Ara Module Developers’ Kit that will be released online in early April:
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San Jose Mercury News reports Mountain View City Council last night approved a new five-year deal with Google that will see the company revamp its aging free WiFi network in the city:
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One of the cornerstones of Google’s reputation for innovation – its 20% Time scheme – is now effectively gone, according to a report by Quartz, citing anonymous Google employees.
Google’s 20% Time allowed engineers to spend the equivalent of one day a week working on a personal project without having to justify it to anyone. Gmail, Google maps, Adsense, Google Talk and many other products were born from this scheme. Adsense alone is responsible for around 25 percent of Google’s annual revenue.
Now, says the report, it is all but dead …
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The latest numbers from Android’s Current Distribution page reveal somewhat exciting results for the folks in Mountain View. Android 4.1 – 4.2 Jelly Bean has now crossed the 10 percent threshold for all Android devices on the market. It now sits at 10.2-percent. Additionally, Gingerbread has dropped below the 50 percent mark for the first time in over a year, as Ice Cream Sandwich made gains to get close to 29.1-percent total share. Maybe this is how things should have always been. But, at any rate, sales from the Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC One X, and more seem to be paying off.
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The Wall Street Journal just published a lengthy report detailing how Google convinced Nevada state assemblywoman Marilyn Dondero Loop, as well as other states’ transportation committees, to introduce legislation that would help legalize its driverless cars for streets.
“This will save taxpayers countless millions of dollars and revolutionize driving as we know it. No more being distracted, no more accidents, and not another DUI attorney again.”
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company persuaded lawmakers, according to The Wall Street Journal, with “demonstrations and rides in its exotic cars,” and it subsequently earned “legislative wins” in Nevada, California, and Florida. There are even bills pending before legislators in Hawaii, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and the District of Columbia:
In the process, the Mountain View, Calif., company is building its credentials as an astute political operator. Google has been “pretty savvy” at navigating state capitols, said Frank Douma, a transportation-policy author and associate director at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. With its self-driving cars, Google “knew what they were doing by moving forward in Nevada” before approaching bigger states, he said. “If you blow it in the first state, you’ve really got problems.”
Success at legalizing self-driving car technology has broader implications for Google. Skills learned from lobbying state lawmakers could aid other endeavors that will require local policy-making, including the potential expansion of its Google Fiber Internet and TV service into markets dominated by cable companies.
Google spent roughly $9 million during the first and second quarters of 2012 lobbying in Washington and coaxing lawmakers and U.S. Department of Transportation officials, but Google did not disclose how much went toward lobbying state officials.
About 5,000 new words are created each year.
Of course, that is Google’s own statistic. The folks in Mountain View took to the official Google Translate blog to explain how its, well, Google Translate tool now offers example sentences for those newly created words. The examples are aggregated from “fresh new stories around the web,” wrote Google Associate Product Manager Etienne Deguine.
To use the feature, type into the left-hand text box of Google Translate, and then click on the example sentence icon on the bottom right (screenshot above).
Google is reportedly close to buying social startup Meebo at roughly $100 million, AllThingsD reported this evening. Citing “two sources familiar with the matter,” the publication said the deal is close to going down.
Meebo launched in 2005 and has had many products over the years like a web-based and smartphone-based IM client and a tool bar that can be loaded on websites to provide readers with social links. These types of toolbars can be found on TMZ, TV Guide, and more. Most recently, the startup launched a new homepage that lets you “create an interest profile to get new and timely information about the things that matter to you.”
Over the years, the Mountain View, Calif.-based (how fitting) startup raised $60 million in funding to date. It most recently raised a monster round of $25 million from Khosla Ventures in 2010.
If the acquisition goes through, Google will most likely use the team and technology to boost its social network/heavy Facebook competitor Google+. More recently, Google bought out Digg-founder Kevin Rose and his team of employees from their endeavor called “Milk.” Rose and his former team are currently assigned to work on Google+, which we expect to be the same fate for the Meebo team.
In February, the story broke that Google and other advertising companies were bypassing iOS Safari’s privacy settings and continuing to track users without their consent. Google quickly disabled its code responsible for the tracking after a story from The Wall Street Journal published, and Apple then claimed it was “working to put a stop” to the issue.
Now, a new report from Mercury News claimed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is considering whether to fine Google over the incident. The decision is expected in the next 30 days:
The Federal Trade Commission is deep into an investigation of Google’s actions in bypassing the default privacy settings of Apple’s (AAPL) Safari browser for Google users, according to sources familiar with ongoing negotiations between the company and the government… Within the next 30 days, the FTC could order the Mountain View search giant to pay an even larger fine in the Safari case than the penalty the Federal Communications Commission hit Google with Friday, say the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The report is referring to Google being recently fined $25,000 by the FCC after it allegedly “deliberately impeded and delayed” an investigation related to Street View cars. The heart of the Safari bypassing investigation is whether the company is violating a previous privacy agreement made with the FTC following controversy over the failed “Buzz” service. The report claimed Google could face up to $16,000 per violation per day for violating the agreement. Google said to Mercury News today it would “cooperate with any officials who have questions” and explained making its +1 compatible on mobile Safari created the issue:
With Microsoft and numerous regulatory bodies nipping at Google’s heels and decrying the Internet giant of shady advertising practices and loose privacy standards, one would think the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company might lie low for a while.
Well, that is not the case: The Next Web reported on a Google patent today that introduced technology for analyzing the environmental conditions (or background sound) of phone calls. The action would essentially allow Google to exhibit advertisements based on the clamor its science heard.
The patent, called “Advertising based on environmental conditions,” described how the method recognizes signal outputs from environmental conditions using a sensor coupled with the remote device (such as a smartphone). Google would then serve personalized ads based on the data gathered. In other words, if Google noticed a NASCAR race in the background of a phone call, it would then promptly offer ads for motor sports…
The “Googleplex” has been Google’s hallmark offices for years and rates as one of the top places to work by many magazines. According to a new report from the Mercury Times, Google is expanding on its already large Googleplex. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company reportedly plans to spend $120 million to add new advancements to its sprawling headquarters, from a new museum to new testing labs for the secret Google X projects.
Google plans to open a new Experience Center as a museum not open to the public. The Experience Center would show Google’s history to special invited groups. Some of the products shown off could potentially be confidential. The focus here would be selling products to groups, such as school districts.
There has been much in the news lately regarding Google’s “Project X.” In Project X, the team is reportedly working on new HUD glasses, which we exclusively told you last month. As part of its new $120 million addition, Google is attaching new additions to that sector. Google is also adding to its “Google/@home” initiative. As part of @home, Google is reportedly developing a new streaming home-entertainment device. This break through into consumer electronics could be announced tomorrow, according to a teaser from the Google TV team.
Undergraduate students from universities across the U.S. and Canada spent a week at Android Camp, Google’s “Android Development 101” course. The program was somewhat like an internship. Students, most of which who are in school for computer science, spent the week at Google’s Mountain View campus and got hands-on help from engineers. Students were assigned teams and began to hammer away at creating an Android app. Google notes a few of the applications developed:
At the end of the week, each group presented its application to other Android campers and Google engineers. Applications spanned a variety of categories: recipeBEAR provides people with a list of meal recipes based on ingredients they have on hand; Blazin’ Contacts uses QR codes to automatically collect contact information from a large group of people and input it into your mobile device; OnTime combines Google Maps with the device’s alarm to help people gauge how much time they’ll need to arrive somewhere; The Shake Race, as you may imagine, was the most entertaining of the bunch—group members demonstrated the game by shaking their Xoom Tablets furiously to race their characters across the screen.
This new program is going to be annual for college freshman and sophomores. Sign-ups for next year’s camp will go up in November.
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