Silicon Valley

We’ve covered the Chinese search engine giant Baidu before, commonly referred to as “China’s Google”, the search engine is one of the leading sites in web traffic in the country. Looking to further support its title as “China’s Google”, Baidu today made a significant hire. First reported by Technology Review, Baidu has hired Andrew Ng to oversee a new artificial intelligence research lab it is opening in Silicon Valley.

Andrew Ng is a Stanford professor who is most well known for his position at Google, where he was a key component in the company’s “deep learning” field. Ng also cofounded the online education company Coursera.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BIu9dpwHU]

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shocked Charlie Rose on Cyber Monday Eve (great timing for the PR-savvy retail giant) by showing him the future of delivery services – autonomous drones that will pick up and deliver wares from fulfillment centers. From which we can conclude that Charlie Rose doesn’t read 9to5Google, where the concept is old news.

We mentioned way back in February that Google was already working on drone delivery services:

Along with Glass, Google will have an opportunity to demonstrate other upcoming and Google X projects like driverless cars and mini-drone delivery systems at its stores.

We reference it again when the company launched the trial of its ‘Google Shopping Express’ same-day delivery service to Bay Area residents:

Google, in the long run, plans to use self-driving cars and flying drones as means of delivery.

And again:

9to5Google also heard this service was coming, and we have some more somewhat wild information on the program. Google, in the long run, plans to use self-driving cars and flying drones as means of delivery. We also heard Google’s delivery project came from the Google X incubator headed by cofounder Sergey Brin.

Clearly there are a lot of hurdles to jump on the way to this vision (privacy, theft, accidents, visual pollution, etc, etc). but it’s equally clear that these two Silicon Valley heavy-weights are prepping to battle in the skies above.

Google might have gotten there first, but Amazon definitely wins the PR battle so far: a short concept video for a service which doesn’t yet exist, and which even optimistically it doesn’t expect to launch for a couple of years, got everyone talking about them. Including Charlie Rose. Video below …

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HP and Google combined to create two new Chromebooks which were launched early last month: The $299  Intel Haswell-powered Chromebook 14 and the smaller Samsung Exynos ARM-powered Chromebook 11. Both machines mark new territory for Google and HP. The Silicon Valley neighbors have been getting closer and closer since Meg Whitman took over as CEO, including an expanding array of Android tablets as well. The initial HP Chromebooks were clearly re-purposed Windows laptops. These clearly are something entirely different…
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Mega-agent Ari Emanuel (you know—the conceited big shot who Jeremy Piven played in the hit HBO show “Entourage“) just wrote an open response to Google asking for the company, along with Silicon Valley and Hollywood, to join forces and develop a solution to the country’s piracy and copyright issues.

Emanuel appeared at the AllThingsD D10 Conference with hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher on Wednesday, where he called out Google and YouTube during the interview for filtering child pornography, but allowing pirated media content.

In lieu of Emanuel’s assertions, Mossberg asked Google’s advertising head Susan Wojcicki today why the search engine does not find and filter copyrighted material. She called Emanuel “very misinformed,” and then said the problem with filtering content is not technical, but rather a complicated business problem.

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/7yBemw0eW9g]

Google announced it is introducing a new initiative today to reinvent online measurement for brand marketers.

“Today at the Ad Age Digital Conference we’re introducing the Brand Activate initiative, a new effort to re-imagine online measurement for brand marketers and—crucially—to help brands turn measurement into action, immediately,” explained Google’s Vice President of Display Advertising Neal Mohan on the Official Google Blog. “We’re working with the industry and supporting the IAB’s Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) coalition on this project.”

The coalition is committed to developing brand-building online metrics and measurement solutions. Meanwhile, the Ad Age Digital 2012 combines marketing, technology, and media in one place: Chelsea’s Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. The events start today and end April 18. It is a melting pot of the world’s biggest brands and newest startups.

The conference intends to “connect the dots” between Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley, while highlighting 700 high-level attendees, two days of keynotes, workshops, and networking with celebrated guest speakers.

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Google has just signed a deal to lease a new Sunnyvale campus that, as Silicon Valley reports, will be the company’s “largest presence in Silicon Valley outside of Mountain View”.

The deal could see GOOG moving up to 2,900 employees for the long-term onto the new campus that totals 715,000 square feet at the Technology Corners complex at 11th Avenue and Innovation Way in Sunnyvale. This contributes to the over 1.9 million square feet of real estate the company has already committed to this year.

“As we continue to grow, it’s important to find space for our future employees close to our headquarters,” said David Radcliffe, vice president of real estate and workplace services for Google. “That’s why we’ve leased space at Moffett Park’s Technology Corners.”

Google has good reason to expand their presence in the Valley. The report notes Google plans on hiring more new employees this year than ever before with an additional 6,000 new members joining the team worldwide. Other companies, notably Apple, have been buying up land with big plans to accommodate their own growing employee base.

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