Google News

Federal antitrust charges against Alphabet Inc.’s Google; advertiser and user boycotts of Facebook Inc.; increasing scrutiny of Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. by the news media and government regulators — all in the middle of a pandemic. Yet, when Big Tech reported earnings en masse Thursday, most of the effects felt by those companies appeared to be positive: Amazon AMZN, +1.52%, Apple AAPL, +3.70%, Facebook FB,

There are any number of VPN services you can use to help protect your privacy and security with an encrypted internet connection, and now Google has its own. Well, technically, it already did, but only for Google Fi cellular subscribers on Android smartphones. Now, the company’s announcing it’ll throw in an Android-based VPN free of charge to any 2TB Google One cloud storage subscriber in the US — and will expand to iOS, Windows and Mac and other countries “in the coming… Source link

(Credit: Google) In a bit of irony, Google is launching a VPN service to protect users’ privacy.  The VPN will be a free perk to the $9.99-a-month 2TB plan on Google One, the company’s cloud storage service. Soon, the Google One app for Android will display a new function that can activate a VPN over the user’s smartphone.  The company is offering the VPN as a safeguard to prevent hackers from snooping on users’ unencrypted web traffic if their phone is ever connected to a public… Source link

Google parent company Alphabet’s third quarter revenue increased 14 percent from the year before, led by a rebound in advertising revenue for both Google and YouTube. YouTube brought in $5 billion in advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2020 — a sign that advertisers who pulled back on their spending because of the coronavirus earlier in the year may be returning to something resembling normal. YouTube now has more than 30 million music and premium paid subscribers — 35… Source link

The Black List has teamed with Google Assistant to launch the inaugural Storytelling Fellowship. The Black List & Google Assistant Storytelling Fellowship will provide financial and creative support to five writers in the development and execution of a new original feature film script or television pilot that highlights contemporary stories and perspectives from historically underrepresented communities. The five chosen writers will each receive $20,000 for the purpose of supporting… Source link

The tech giant’s parent company, Alphabet, reported revenue of $46.17 billion for the three months ending in September — a 14% increase from the same period last year — highlighting its continued dominance even while facing numerous obstacles. The company also reported net income for the third quarter of $11.2 billion, blowing past analyst estimates. Alphabet (GOOGL) stock rose more than 8% in after-hours trading on Thursday. The earnings came a day after Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai,… Source link

Google is testing a new feature that could improve discovery for Android apps on Google Play. The company confirmed it’s experimenting with a “Compare Apps” option that would allow Google Play users to quickly and more easily understand the slight differences between otherwise similar apps by comparing specific features and metrics — like star ratings or total downloads, for example. The feature was first spotted by Android Police, which found it at the bottom of an individual… Source link

There’s an AR ghost on Google Search. There’s a dancing skeleton, set of creepy jack-o’-lanterns, and costumed cats and dogs, too. Ahead of Halloween weekend in the U.S., Google has launched a set of fun, augmented reality-powered features on Google Search which appear as an option when you search for specific Halloween terms using a mobile device. For example, if you search for the word “Halloween” and scroll down the search results page, you’ll see a box that prompts you… Source link

The antitrust lawsuit against Google filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and eleven state attorneys general has the potential to be the most important competition case against a technology company since the DOJ’s 1998 suit against Microsoft. The complaint is broad, covering Google’s power over search generally, along with search advertising. Instead of asking for money damages, the complaint asks for Google to be restructured and its illegal behavior restricted. This suit flows from… Source link

SAN JOSE — A large residential complex that’s being developed in downtown San Jose near Google’s proposed transit village has landed some key financing from a unit of the tech titan. McEvoy Apartments, a complex that’s being developed in downtown San Jose by First Community Housing, has obtained a loan from Google Endeavor LLC, a subsidiary of Google, property documents that were filed on Oct. 27 show. The development is expected to consist of 365 residential units and will be… Source link