Tag Archives: TechCrunch

Google Fi, Google’s cell network provider, has dropped the pricing for its mobile plans by $5 to $10 per month, depending on the customer’s plan. The company decreased the price for its Simply Unlimited plan from $60 to $50 per line for one line, $45 to $40 a line for two lines, $30 to $25 a line for three lines, and from $30 to $20 per month for four lines. These plans also come with 35 GB of high-speed data, an increase from 22 GB, and include 5 GB of hotspot… Source link

More positive news for phone owners looking to take matters into their own hands. Google this morning announced that it’s teaming with iFixit to offer a suite of tools for fixing Pixel handsets. At launch (later this year), kits will be available for common repairs like replacing batteries, displays and camera modules. Along with those bundles, the company says it’s opening up third-party repair options to include more hardware devices like Chromebooks. Currently Pixel owners who… Source link

Google announced today that it’s rolling out a new “multisearch” feature that allows users to search using text and images at the same time via Google Lens, the company’s image recognition technology. Google first teased the functionality last September at its Search On event and said it would be launching the feature in the coming months after testing and evaluation. Starting today, the new multisearch functionality is available as a beta feature in… Source link

Google is preparing to clear its Play Store of outdated apps. The company warned Android app developers that starting on November 1, 2022, it will hide apps and block their installation to users’ devices if developers haven’t kept up with the latest Android OS releases. Specifically, Google said apps that don’t target an Android API within two years of the latest major Android release version will no longer be able to be discovered or installed by new users whose devices run… Source link

At its Cloud Data Summit, Google today announced the preview launch of BigLake, a new data lake storage engine that makes it easier for enterprises to analyze the data in their data warehouses and data lakes. The idea here, at its core, is to take Google’s experience with running and managing its BigQuery data warehouse and extend it to data lakes on Google Cloud Storage, combining the best of data lakes and warehouses into a single service that abstracts away the underlying storage… Source link

Google Maps is getting an update that will add toll road prices and more map details like stop lights and stop signs, Google announced on Tuesday. The company is also adding iOS improvements, including a new pinned trip widget and the option to get directions on Google Maps directly from your Apple Watch. The company says it’s adding toll prices on Google Maps for the first time to make it easier for users to make the choice between taking toll roads or regular… Source link

Over a decade ago, a group of employees at Yahoo were struggling to compete with Google Maps as the younger firm aggressively outspent its rivals and scaled its offering with a grand vision and unmatched risk-appetite. “We didn’t have the same kind of budget and they ultimately won. But as a competitive person that was deeply frustrating to me,” said Ariel Seidman, who served as a product manager at Yahoo. Soon enough, Siedman co-founded Gigwalk and attempted to use smartphones to… Source link

Google announced a major update to Google Meet today that includes a number of long-requested features and plenty that you didn’t even know you needed. There is a long list here, but the main additions are likely in-meeting reactions to give immediate updates to the Meet companion mode, emoji-based feedback, the ability to use Meet right inside of Docs, Sheets and Slides, as well as a new picture-in-picture mode so you can more easily ignore a meeting and the ability to stream a… Source link

Google is adding a new “highly cited” label in Search results to direct users to trusted sources, the company announced on Thursday. The new label, which will appear in the Top Stories carousel, is designed to help users identify stories that have been frequently cited by other news organizations. The highly cited label is launching soon on mobile in the United States and will roll out globally in the coming weeks. The label will be placed on investigative… Source link

Google has just announced the next stage of trials of its Privacy Sandbox proposal — focused on ads relevance and measurement. The Sandbox refers to an evolving — and now very closely overseen — ad targeting tech stack which Google has proposed for replacing tracking cookie based targeted advertising in Chrome by (at the earliest) the second half of 2023 with alternatives which it argues will be better for users’ privacy yet still effective for generating ad revenue. Writing in… Source link