Before Android, before the iPhone, and before GoPro became a known brand, the Flip Video camcorder took the world by storm, allowing millions to shoot digital home videos one-handed and easily save, share, and upload them to a nascent YouTube, thanks to an iconic flip-out USB port. What you probably didn’t know: the Flip Video was almost a Google-branded camera, internal Google emails revealed by the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust sub-committee show. It would have been… Source link
Read More »Google’s Plan to Resume Reviews Rankles Employees With Children — The Information
Life won’t start looking normal for most Google employees before next July, the earliest the company expects its workforce to be able to return to its offices. Yet Google is resuming some suspended business functions, including a high-stakes review cycle that has made at least one group of employees—parents—particularly anxious. Many Google employees who have kids said they expect the upcoming assessments to show that their job performance suffered in recent… Source link
Read More »EU will reportedly open full investigation into Google’s Fitbit acquisition
Google’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit will reportedly face greater scrutiny from EU regulators. Reuters reports that the deal will face a full-scale antitrust investigation, which the European Commission will reportedly open next week. Regulators and consumer advocacy groups have shared fears about Google’s planned acquisition of Fitbit, related to the search giant gaining access to sensitive data like fitness activities, heart rates, sleep patterns, and more. Consumer groups… Source link
Read More »Google’s ‘no choice’ screen on Android isn’t working, says Ecosia — querying the EU’s approach to antitrust enforcement – TechCrunch
Google alternative Ecosia is on a mission to turn search clicks into trees. The Berlin based not-for-profit reached a major milestone earlier this month, having used ad revenue generated by users of its privacy-sensitive search engine to plant more than 100 million trees across 25 countries worldwide — targeted at biodiversity hotspots. However these good feels have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Ecosia has seen its monthly revenues slashed by half since COVID-19 arrived… Source link
Read More »Alphabet grows up – Google’s problems are bigger than just the antitrust case | Briefing
Jul 30th 2020 MOUNTAIN VIEW TO GET A good look at Google, climb a barren hill in front of the online giant’s Silicon Valley headquarters—or rather, both of them. To the right lies the old HQ, a clump of low-slung office buildings ringed by dozens of similar boxes. To the left a brand-new corporate centre is rising. From outside it resembles an oversized circus tent, but the inside is still undetermined: pillars, wooden panelling and hardly any walls. The bare-bones structure is meant to… Source link
Read More »Google’s Sundar Pichai grilled over ‘destroying anonymity on the internet’ – TechCrunch
Google’s Sundar Pichai faced an awkward line of enquiry during today’s House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing related to its 2007 acquisition of adtech platform DoubleClick, and how it went on to renege on an original promise to lawmakers and regulators that it would not (nor could not) merge DoubleClick data with Google account data — automagically doing just that almost a decade later. By linking internet users’ browsing data, as harvested via the DoubleClick cookie, to… Source link
Read More »Google’s business model ‘is the problem,’ David Cicilline says
During Wednesday’s tech antitrust hearing, Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) tore into Google CEO Sundar Pichai over the company’s dominance in search and its use of data to monitor would-be competitors. “It is Google’s business model that is the problem,” Cicilline said, alleging a pattern of anti-competitive behavior that allowed Google to grow while smaller businesses were crushed. “Our documents show that Google evolved from a turnstile to the rest of the web to a walled garden… Source link
Read More »Google’s Stock Headed Down Next?
Google logo is seen through the broken glass in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on … [+] February 28, 2020. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) NurPhoto via Getty Images After rising nearly 45% since the low in late March, at the current price of around $1,500 per share, we believe Alphabet’s stock (NASDAQ: GOOG) has hit a ceiling with no more room for growth. Google’s stock has increased from $1,057 to $1,500 off the… Source link
Read More »Why Google’s new WFH plan is a game changer
Google employees don’t have to head back to the office until next summer … or maybe even later. And it won’t be surprising if we see more companies, particularly Google’s Silicon Valley neighbors, make similar announcements. Google just set a new benchmark for other tech companies, said Arran Stewart, co-founder of Job.com. “These guys are all about a battle of talent. They can’t afford not to do at least the same or more, or people leave.” One expert told me that Monday’s announcement takes… Source link
Read More »Google’s new ‘for context’ links could give you the big picture around big news stories
If you’ve recently spotted a little secondary box underneath a Google News story that gives you a big-picture understanding of the news, you’re not alone: Google confirms it’s launching a new “for context” feature in Google News, one which that links to a second, broader story on the same topic. Spotted earlier by Valentin Pletzer on Twitter, the feature appears to be live on mobile phones for some very specific search results: It’s a smaller box in Google’s news box It’s… Source link
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