Google Home isn’t smart enough yet to come up with its own responses to questions, which means that pretty much everything that the device says to you was written by a human. A piece this morning from The Wall Street Journal mentioned how Google and other companies working on intelligent voice assistants — like Amazon — are trying their best to make them as relatable and human-friendly as possible, and one tidbit reveals that Google has even gone as far as to hire writers from Pixar and The Onion to make that a reality…
Back in February, Apple and Disney teamed up on a new app called Movies Anywhere that allowed iOS users to access their library of purchased movies—whether bought on the iTunes Store, DVD, or other media (with the appropriate redemption code in the box).
Today, Disney has launched the same service for Android users. Movies Anywhere owners will now be able to access their movie library featuring titles from Disney, Pixar, and Marvel from any of their devices. Because this is a cross-platform solution, movies previously purchased on the iTunes Store will now be available to users on Android devices, and iOS users will be able to watch Disney movies they’ve purchased from the Google Play Store.
A federal judge ruled that a lawsuit against Google and several other companies can proceed as a class-action suit today after determining that a significant number of employees across the tech industry were hurt by “do-not-hire” arrangements between their employers and other companies. The policies in question were practiced by Google, Apple, Adobe, Pixar, and more as a way of keeping their own employees from defecting to competitors for higher pay. Essentially the agreements barred two companies from offering jobs to competing employees for a higher salary. Because doing so gave employees leverage with which to bargain for higher pay at their own jobs, employers were often faced with the decision to either pay any given employee more to keep them around or lose them to a competitor willing to pay more.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been ordered by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose to give a deposition related to an ongoing private lawsuit that claims Apple, Google, and others entered “no-poach” agreements, as reported by Bloomberg. Cook isn’t the only executive named in yesterday’s order. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt will also be deposed on Feb. 20, as well as Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini later this month.
The judge said she was disappointed that senior executives at the companies involved hadn’t been deposed before yesterday’s hearing over whether she should certify the case as a group lawsuit. The class would include different categories of employees whose incomes, their lawyers argue, were artificially reduced because of the collusion. Koh didn’t rule on class certification.
At Koh’s request, the lawyers also agreed that Google Chairman Eric Schmidt will be deposed Feb. 20. Lawyers for the employees will depose Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini later this month, lawyers said.
Reuters reported that a judge rejected Google and Apple’s bid last night to have an antitrust lawsuit dismissed. The lawsuit claimed the companies illegally entered “no-poach” agreements in an effort to stop competitors from stealing talent:
District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, rejected the companies’ bid to dismiss claims brought under the Sherman Act and California state law, in a decision released Wednesday night. […] The proposed class action lawsuit was brought by five software engineers, who accused the companies of conspiring to depress employee pay by eliminating competition for skilled labor.
Other defendants in the case included Intel, Adobe Systems, Intuit Walt Disney Co’s Pixar, and Lucasfilm.
In October we reported that Google was in the process of investing approximately $100 million into funding original TV quality content for YouTube. Major media companies like Warner Bros and News Corp were in talks with the company to provide the content, which would appear on “dozens of free channels with professional-grade shows” sometime in 2012. Ahead of those plans, Academdy Award winner Ron Howard is getting set to debut his new film, When You Find Me, on YouTube this Friday at 12:00 p.m. EST.
The film’s storyline is inspired by a selection of photos Howard selected from a contest held by Canon. He took eight photos from the nearly 100,000 to choose from and shot the entire thing using Canon gear. The film will continue being available to stream until Monday, December 19 (trailer above), and will eventually land in film festivals next year. Below you can see the eight winning photos that inspired different aspects of the film such as “Setting”, “Character”, “Relationship, “Goal”, etc. The film will most likely be available here, when it becomes available tomorrow.
We already knew that Google has been making a serious push into beefing up the content offerings on YouTube from Hollywood studios and the film industry as a whole. In May they announced plans to add 3,000 Hollywood movies to YouTube as rentals, and in September the WSJ reported Google was spending $100-$200 million on licensing more premium content. Just last month YouTube begun rolling out move rentals from Pixar, Disney, and DreamWorks.
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