Items tagged with NASDAQ: GOOG
When Google introduced its goo.gl URL shortener in 2009, it came at a time when the web wasn't littered with similar services. Since then, many companies have emerged to offer similar functionality. And that's a good thing, because if you did like goo.gl, you're going to have to find an alternative very soon. In a new blog post, Google has announced that it's shuttering its goo.gl URL shortening service on March 30, 2019, paving the way for developers to shift their focus to its Firebase Dynamic Links API. Users and developers alike have the one-year period to continue using the service, though if you've never used goo.gl before April 13, you can count yourself out beyond that date. Fortunately,...
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There's a lot that Google's Assistant can currently do, from quickly figuring out who that actor or actress was in a movie you vaguely remember, checking a stock price, or seeing what's new in the world. Thr Google's Assistant will be able to do a lot more in the future, and according to the big G, the sky's really the limit. At SXSW in Austin, the company will be showing off some of what's possible. How about having a robot that sorts your sock drawer? Or one that fetches some soda from the fridge and brings it to you - all so you don't have to miss any of the game? Not even Google knows all of what's possible, and it's for that reason that the company is rolling out new "Custom Actions" for...
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A handful of Apple engineers fell from Cupertino's tree and into Google's hands earlier this year, and apparently 2017 wasn't about to end without another notable move taking place. Talented engineers commonly move around the industry, so many employer changes are uneventful, but when the person involved in a move is a top chip designer at a major player like Apple, things become a little more interesting. The man in Google's crosshair this go-around is experienced chip designer John Bruno, whose tenure at Apple lasted five-and-a-half years. Before that, Bruno spent over eight years at AMD, working on northbridges and their IGPs in his earlier days, and then moving on to deliver the Comal platform...
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When Google announced Chrome nearly a decade ago, one of its promises was to deliver a more stable browser. The company used sandbox techniques to make sure that if a process in a tab goes screwy, it won't take down the rest of the browser with it. At first, it did almost feel like the browser was uncrashable, but the reality is, nothing is uncrashable. Eventually, once user apps began tying themselves into Chrome, the browser immediately became more vulnerable to crashing. It's not hard to understand why: if you inject code into a running application, there's no reason to expect that it's going to handle it gracefully. Google says that folks running apps that inject code into Chrome are 15%...
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If you're one of the lucky relative few who have Android 8.0 'Oreo' on their device, there are a couple of reasons to be pleased about its first major update, appropriately versioned 8.1. That's especially true if you happen to be using a device lacking storage, or simply hate battery-draining apps (and who doesn't?). Storage space comes at a premium in smartphones, but if you're using a high-end device, chances are you're not feeling the same kind of pain that those using lower-end phones are. In today's landscape, even 8GB is a paltry amount of storage - the kind that prevents people from taking advantage of such luxuries as YouTube and Netflix offline viewing. Read our look at the Android...
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With all of the stresses from life reported in the daily news, it's refreshing sometimes to hear something light-hearted that isn't serious or impactful in any way, but instead is just entertaining or playful. Case in point: the absurd hamburger emoji that's plagued Android for some time. If there's one thing people don't like other people messing with, it's their hamburgers. Shame on you, Google. As a bit of a refresher, media analyst and Twitter user Tomas Baekdal posted to the social media service at the end of October, drawing comparisons between the hamburger emoji used in iOS, versus the one in Android. If the problem somehow isn't obvious, you may just be one of those people who puts...
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Are you a little too anxious for the upcoming launch of Google's highly anticipated Pixel 2? If so, or you simply love the idea of getting an early look at how Google setup Oreo on its new flagship smartphones, we think we have a new weekend project for you. But don't fret, this one couldn't get much easier. As long as you own an Android phone, at least. In fact we set it up ourselves in just a few minutes. Google's upcoming Pixel 2 XL Android Flagship Smartphone In advance of next week's Pixel 2 launch, an APK of the same launcher used for both the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL has hit the Web. Now, we normally don't recommend you download APKs from just anywhere, and even if you download from...
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Just a couple of weeks ago, we took a look at the [then] forthcoming version 61 of Google's Chrome, which introduces some notable features, including support for a slew of new APIs. Chrome 61 is now available in the release channel; if you're using Chrome right now, chances are you can update simply by restarting your browser. The exact version out today is 61.0.3163.79, and it's available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It's really hard to weigh one of the updated features over another, as what's more useful really depends on your usage case. But one of Google's outed feature is new JavaScript module support, streamlining how JS can be developed. But that's just the start. For the most fervent...
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If you already find yourself glued to Apple's Siri assistant, then you may be glad to learn that it's only going to become an even bigger part of your life going forward. That is, as long as assumptions are correct with regards to the latest shuffling around of executive responsibilities at Apple. Since 2012, Apple's Senior VP of software and services Eddy Cue has been overlooking Siri. Cue has a long history with Apple, and much success to gloat about. He's played an important role in securing streaming deals with content companies, and if that's not enough of a job in itself, he also oversees iCloud. In a subtle change made to the biography pages at Apple's website, we learn that the company's...
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From the ongoing IFA event in Berlin, we learn that the Google Assistant will soon be integrating into a large number of products that might just wind up in our homes. IFA is dedicated to consumer electronics as well as appliances, and probably not too surprisingly, Google's Assistant finds a home in both. At its blog, Google tells us that three speakers are going to soon be launching that bundle its Assistant in, including Zolo Mojo, by Anker; TicHome Mini, by Mobvoi; and also the GA10, from a "little known company" called Panasonic. The big G assures us that these three are just the start, with more to be added before the week is through. Mojo, by Anker With these speakers, your dream...
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It's been an unfortunately busy few weeks for Android vulnerabilities. Earlier in the month, we wrote about SonicSpy, a grandiose piece of malware that could gain an incredible amount of control over your device - including, of course, being able to record your audio. Just last week, we followed-up with another story talking about the 500 apps Google obliterated from the Play Store that bundled an exploited ad network. Today, WireX is the name of the game, a piece of malware whose sole purpose is to turn our innocent mobile devices into a DDoSing bot network. On August 17, WireX hit many content providers, as well as content delivery networks, with a surge of traffic to render them useless....
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Just last weekend, we wrote about SonicSpy, a grossly robust piece of malware that infected hundreds of apps on the Play Store. Google is always quick to remove this awful junk when it is detected, but the fact that we keep talking about the issue means it's not going away. It was security research firm Lookout that informed us of SonicSpy, and apparently, the company has been working overtime, as it now introduces us to yet another piece of Android maliciousness, an ad network called lgexin. This issue has impacted many apps on the Play Store, although it's not guaranteed that all of them unleashed their full capabilities. lgexin is an advertising SDK which had some versions equipped with a...
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The latest beta version of Chrome, version 61, has just dropped, and it brings with it a healthy collection of enhancements and new features. This beta is relevant seemingly for every platform it's regularly offered for, except iOS. Android, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and of course Windows are all taken care of with this update. Arguably, the most notable addition to Chrome 61 is support for the Payment Request API, which will let websites send a payment request to the browser (securely), allowing people to pay via Android Pay on the desktop. Ultimately, when a wide rollout happens, it means that buying things online - as long as you're setup for Android Pay - will be easier than ever. Perhaps a...
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It's starting to look like Google's upcoming Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones could become some of the most alluring Android phones the company - or any company, for that matter - have released in a long time. A couple of weeks ago, we pored over the details of what was believed to be an accurate render, and today, we see another collection of renders from a party that seems to agree on most of the devices' visual cues. Credit: MySmartPrice In the aforementioned post, the design seen was believed to be the XL model, but based on these new renders, it would have actually been the non-XL. The differences are subtle: on the XL, the rear glass isn't as tall, and the camera lens is found to the...
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We talked yesterday of an example of how deep learning and artificial intelligence can be used to put words in people's mouths, creating video proof of something someone said, even if they didn't really say it. Prospects like that are downright scary, but so too are the realities of the jobs AI will be able to take away from humans. Case in point: professional photography editing. This is a bit of an odd one, as most photographers will edit their own photos, so maybe we should consider this an example of how AI could help someone get through their workflow more efficiently. And perhaps even deliver a better result in the end. Using AI to apply a variety of filters to a photo and calling...
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A current smartphone trend has seen vendors put fingerprint readers on the backs of our devices, which also might beg the question, "what else could we put back there?" According to a newly granted Google patent, a touchpad could be in the cards for the Android creator's future branded Pixel smartphone devices. If that sounds a bit bizarre, bear in mind that many patents may appear odd at first glance, but often are the sparks of true innovation. Google foresees the use of a touchpad on the back of a smartphone to grant the user additional interaction possibilities. As seen in the example image from the patent below, the touchpad would settle below the camera, and could be of equal size. It'll...
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The Google/European Union saga continues and could potentially lead to heavy consequences for Google. The corporation could face fines above €1 billion, with some estimating a fine as high as $1.4 billion USD. Google could also be forced to change how it manages its services and operations in the EU. The EU currently has three cases against Google, which will all be resolved separately. This particular case insists that Google diverted traffic from competitors to its own shopping sites. The company is said to have used its online search to lead users to its own other services like restaurant recommendations or maps. Google has also been accused of paying smartphone OEMs to exclusively pre-install...
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A board game like "Go" might not look complicated on the surface to the untrained eye, which could lead the uninformed to believe that it wouldn't be all that difficult for a computer to best a human player in a head-to-head match. We've seen many examples in the past where that hasn't been the case (IBM's Watson is a good start), and it's because despite their simple nature, the number of solutions/moves at any given time is sometimes astronomical. Last month, we wrote about Google's DeepMind and its challenge of going up against the world's best Go player, Ke Jie. Fast-forward to now, and we learn that DeepMind's AlphaGo helped it secure a win against the Grandmaster on the very first...
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Despite Google's best efforts to protect its users who download apps from its Play Store, some malware inevitably slips through the cracks. While it might be easy to assume that most of that malware is found in obscure software that people shouldn't be downloading anyway, this latest case is proof that if malware does manage to get through, it could impact millions of people. Research firm Zscaler, and its threat-hunting team ThreatLabz, recently discovered an app on the Play Store that included the Android spyware SMSVova. Looking at the image below, it's hard to imagine why anyone would fall for such an app. Yet, millions of people downloaded this tool which promised to update their device....
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If you've been eagerly anticipating the release of Samsung's Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones, we've got some good news for you. Apparently, a shipment of Samsung's new top-end devices are going to ship early, courtesy of T-Mobile. Outside of actually shelling out the cash for a new high-end phone, the worst part of a pre-order is waiting for your new device to arrive. Someone at T-Mobile seems to understand that and the company jumped the gun with initial shipments. According to reports from some customers, T-Mobile has begun shipping out S8 and S8+ units five days ahead of April 19, which was the day all pre-orders were originally expected to be shipped out. Even that day would...
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Silicon Valley is pushing back against Washington D.C., and for good reason. A lobbying group representing tech titans such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Microsoft recently released a document in favor of net neutrality. The Internet Association (IA) indicated that it supported the 2015 Open Internet Order. The IA’s report stated, “The internet industry is uniform in its belief that net neutrality preserves the consumer experience, competition, and innovation online. Consumers want and need their internet experience preserved and protected, regardless of the legal or regulatory mechanism.” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has argued that he would prefer for broadband...
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If you're not sure whether or not you'd be classified as "cool", a quick way to find out is to open up that wallet and fund your own study. That's just what Google did with a study titled: "It's Lit: A Guide To What Teens Think Is Cool". The result were not too surprising. With the help of a scatter chart highlighting results from Gen-Z kids (post-millennial), we can easily see which brands reign supreme, and which ones fall flat on their faces. Because "10" is too even a number, Google decided to cap "Most Cool" at 9, with YouTube coming closest to that high mark. Right behind it: Google, and Netflix. Again, not too surprising. Google's Lit Or Cool Brand Scatter Plot - Click for full view What...
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