The WSJ is reporting that Google has begun removing search results following a European court decision that individuals have a right to require Google to remove links to information which is “outdated or irrelevant.”
Following the ruling – known as the ‘right to be forgotten’ – Google created a webpage application and announced that each would be evaluated by hand on a case-by-case basis, balancing the right to privacy against legitimate public interest. The company now says that it has begun acting on these requests … Expand Expanding Close
If you’ve ever been on a trip, taken tons of photos and then done nothing with them afterwards, or shot a bunch of video that is still just sitting on your phone, Google has launched a couple of new services aimed at you: Google+ Stories and Google+ Movies.
No more sifting through photos for your best shots, racking your brain for the sights you saw, or letting your videos collect virtual dust. We’ll just gift you a story after you get home. This way you can relive your favorite moments, share them with others, and remember why you traveled in the first place.
Stories will be available this week on Android and the web, with iOS coming soon …
In Google’s annual Founders Letter, Larry Page revealed that Google was handling more than 100 billion searches a month, but said that the service was still “a million miles” from the service he’d like to see Google become.
In many ways, we’re a million miles away from creating the search engine of my dreams, one that gets you just the right information at the exact moment you need it with almost no effort. That’s partly because understanding information in a deep way is a hard problem to solve …
Registration for Google’s I/O developer’s conference, originally due to open today, has been pushed back by a week, now opening on 15th April.
Google hasn’t offered any explanation, though its brief statement suggests that a problem in the registration process has been spotted at the last minute … Expand Expanding Close
On the Google Cloud Platform blog, Google has announced that it has now publicly released its ‘Andromeda’ virtualization stack to all Platform users. Users on its US central and western European servers should see ‘major’ performance gains automatically. Google is rolling out the same changes to its other zones in the coming months, so all users will benefit from the same efficiency gains.
Andromeda’s goal is to expose the raw performance of the underlying network while simultaneously exposing network function virtualization (NFV). We expose the same in-network processing that enables our internal services to scale while remaining extensible and isolated to end users. This functionality includes distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, transparent service load balancing, access control lists, and firewalls. We do this all while improving performance, with more enhancements coming.
Hence, Andromeda itself is not a Cloud Platform networking product; rather, it is the basis for delivering Cloud Platform networking services with high performance, availability, isolation, and security. For example, Cloud Platform firewalls, routing, and forwarding rules all leverage the underlying internal Andromeda APIs and infrastructure. Our site presents the details of these and other advanced network capabilities.
A new Google+ addition, rolled out (confusingly) in the midst of AprilFool’s season, makes view counts optionally visible on your profile. Both profiles and pages can now show the number of times content on your Google+ has been viewed. The view count applies to all content, totalling the number of views across your profile, posts and photos.
The stat can be optionally hidden. To change the visibility, go to your Google+ settings (plus.google.com/settings) and toggle the checkbox labelled ‘Show how many times your profile and content have been viewed’.
Judging by the number of posts made on the first day (assuming they’re not all made by Google employees), it looks like it could prove a popular resource. Though a good starting-point for anyone new to the dongle is our own how-to setup guide.
Google has confirmed in a regulatory filing with the SEC that it has completed its $3.2B acquisition of Nest Labs after the deal was officially cleared by the FTC. The company revealed that it had previously held a 12 percent stake in Nest.
It has been rumored that the Nest team will form Google’s core hardware design group, with an unlimited budget. Google has issued only a brief statement on the reason for the buy-out, promising more home devices to follow.
We expect that the acquisition will enhance Google’s suite of products and services and allow Nest to continue to innovate upon devices in the home, making them more useful, intuitive, and thoughtful, and to reach more users in more countries.
Finding a playable music video can sometimes involve a bit of trial-and-error, where the top link might be only a short clip, or indeed something unrelated that was mislabelled. To solve this, Google is now offering prioritised links to the first playable music video in a separate box above the remaining search results … Expand Expanding Close
If you’re finding that app data is using up more and more of the storage capacity on your Android phone, Google has just rolled out something that is likely to help: an API that allows developers to store app data on Google Drive instead of in your phone’s flash memory.
It will also mean that data created by apps using the API will be automatically synced between device.
The change will be completely invisible to users – it will Just Work. When an Internet connection isn’t available, data will be cached locally until it can again reach Google Drive. There will be some impact on data usage, but for most apps this is likely to be trivial.
Exploring cities in Google Maps or Google Earth can be a great way to get a sense of a place leading up to a planned trip, as well as a way to enjoy a vicarious visit to places you’re never likely to visit in person. Exploring Tokyo in Google Maps just got a whole lot more interesting thanks to 3D imagery just added by Google … Expand Expanding Close
If you’ve ever cringed as you’ve watched someone type facebook.com into the Google searchbar, you’ll likely enjoy this two-minute video depicting how a human version of google might react to some common searches …
There’s a commonly-held myth that any image found in Google images is fair game for anyone who wants to use it. In reality, most images are copyrighted by default and usage generally requires permission – especially for commercial use.
Google’s Matt Cutts has tweeted that you can now filter images by usage rights. If you want to find images you can use commercially, for example, just do your search, click Search Tools and then select ‘labelled for commercial use’ from the pull-down.
It’s not immediately apparent how Google identifies the permissions associated with an image. We’ve reached out to Google and will update when we have a response.
I’m not always in full agreement with Wired’s Mat Honan, but his I, Glasshole piece definitely struck a chord with me and my mostly similar experiences with Google Glass. I can agree with almost everything he’s said on the experience of owning and operating them, at least to an extent.
The biggest point to bring home is the outward awkwardness, but I wouldn’t characterize it as 100% negative across the board like Honan’s experience. He said that even in a room full of Wired writers he’s still ostracized for wearing them. That may be true, but at certain events like his Google event image, they felt pretty normal. I wasn’t at the one pictured, but at Google I/O every 4-5 people at the show were wearing them, even if Google’s own presenters weren’t. No one was uncomfortable in that environment. I imagine it isn’t uncomfortable at Google or any number of the places that are beta testing the Glass in large numbers relative to the population.
At home or in the general public, I agree – it is definitely jarring wearing them around. You get the same kind of attention that you’d get if you had a massive headwound at the grocery store or if you were waving a light saber around on the way to the coffee shop. The attention isn’t entirely negative, but it is certainly one of discomfort and curiosity. Some people ask about them and want to find out what the experience is like. I’ve let tons of people wear mine, and those who’ve tried have usually thought they were ‘cool’.
I’ve found a good way to mitigate the attention is to wear a low lying baseball cap coupled with the Oakley Blades wrap around shades attachment. With this setup, about 90% of the people don’t notice the Glass and just think you are some dork wearing Oakley Blades from 1987. Clearly, Google could innovate here – getting them on normal glasses hides the appearance. They’ve already promised a prescription lens attachement and even shown off some demos.
The 2014 model Glass, as I am now calling them, won’t do much for the appearance. The inclusion of a mono or stereo headset is just going to complicate the setup rather than simplify it. Note the left stereo earpiece comes out of the same right side hole as the right side ear piece.
I feel a little claustrophobic looking at them, and I imagine the final consumer version will have the earpiece coming out of either the back or the other side of the glasses.
Google does a lot well during the year, but perhaps one of the things Google does best is its year-end Zeitgeist. For the unfamiliar, Google’s Zeitgeist wraps up all the top searches for various categories during the 2013 calendar year in combination with a video, dedicated set of web pages and enough information to keep you interested for hours.
The world called for another aspect of our Google lives to be invaded by Google+ and voila…Google+ inside Google Play. Google just announced via…where else…Google+ that a new version of the Play Store is rolling out to “make it easier for you to find and share recommendations with your friends and family.”
Google is rolling out support to its take out service for exporting email and appointment data from its Gmail and Google Calendar services, the company announced today.
While Google often supports data exporting when sunsetting a service, the company says in this instance it’s simply allowing users the ability to better archive personal data and switch to other services with less friction. Expand Expanding Close
If a Glass Explorer friend has been making you jealous while you wait impatiently for your chance to get hold of the gadget, now would be a good time to buy them a drink. Selected Glass Explorers have been given the opportunity to purchase a second headset for a friend in an email from Google, reports Glass Almanac.
Explorers were given the opportunity to invite up to three friends in September, but this is the first time Google has allowed them to actually purchase a second Glass. Explorers will also be given the chance to trade in their own units for the second generation model, but it’s not yet known what – if anything – this will cost.
There’s still no news on when Glass may go on public sale, beyond a widespread assumption that it will be sometime next year.
In its Explorer Story: Young Guru [through Google Glass], Google shows a lot of new features of the Google Glass upgrade and expected upgrades including the hardware addition of the stereo headphones.
In a blatant attempt to liken Google’s automated scanning of email keywords to generate targeted advertising to the NSA scandal, Microsoft refers to it as an ‘invasion of your privacy.’
Google goes through every Gmail that’s sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads. And there’s no way to opt out of this invasion of your privacy.
Microsoft has reportedly spent a seven-figure sum on its Scroogled campaign. Perhaps if it had invested a bit more cash on modernizing its offerings a few years ago, it wouldn’t need to be spending so much on this embarrassing nonsense today …
If an existing Google Glass Explorer has sent one of their three invitations to you, the good news is you no longer have to travel to Google’s offices in NY or LA to collect your gadget in person.
For the first round of Explorers, Google had insisted on personal collection so that a member of staff could talk them through the product and assist them with setup. Those accepting invitations now are being offered a 45-minute one-to-one on Google Hangouts … Expand Expanding Close
After-hours trading saw Google’s stock price jump 8 percent to $959.65 as investors responded to its 23 percent revenue gain in its Q3 results. This potentially puts the stock in sight of the exclusive $1000 per share club, reports the Telegraph … Expand Expanding Close
I recently heard word that Google was putting the finishing touches on a Watch product. Details are slim but the person seemed to think that Google Now functionality would be at the center of the product.
Thinking about this, Google could put a lot of the functionality of Google Glass in the watch product. Push a button, ask a question, get a response as the watch talks to the Now-enabled smartphone. Also, the ‘serendipitous’ information that Google Now shows you on your phone could come up in the watch. Time to get home, Calendar alarms, emails, SMSes, etc. all could get pushed to the watch’s display
We’d heard earlier some details from Artem Russakovskii, which I can’t confirm, but considering my info now bears repeating:
Google will announce a Nexus watch, codenamed Gem, likely together with the KitKat announcement. The date I have, which, once again, is about a month old, is also October 31st.
My source also seemed to think “sooner rather than later.”
