Finally, Google have stepped it up and delivered the kind of awesomeness we’ve come to expect from them! Their initial Olympic doodle was a bit of let down, offering no real interaction or fun Easter Eggs, today’s however is right up there with the best of them.
Google has recently moved into their third new office building in London. This one was designed by the Penson Group – the same guys that were behind the futuristic London Engineering offices. Check it out inside!
Google Fiber is Google’s latest stab at getting into the digital television market. With an insanely fast 1Gbps fiber network, it will likely see other companies and other ISP’s sit up straight and have a good think about upping both service quality, and pricing.
YouTube has just introduced face-blurring technology that will enable users to hide their identities in video footage they post online.
Google has launched a text message-based version of its email service targeted at users in Africa. So far, the service has been made available in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya.
In its latest display of awesome, Google has unveiled its Universal Orchestra Experiment, built by Google Creative Lab. The online experiment is the beautiful lovechild of science-fiction and high art and will allow multiple visitors to play real instruments in London’s Science Museum in real-time via the Internet.
Hipsters take note, there is a new smartphone personal assistant on its way: Google Now. It’s a search-centric, voice-powered digital assistant for the upcoming version of Android that launches mid-July.
According to a bold, but accurate claim made by vice president for Chrome and apps Sundar Pichai, chances are you’re using Google Chrome to view this page. This is what Pichai announced yesterday at Google’s I/O, and in celebration of launching the most popular browser in the world, Google created and posted a commemorative video tracking their rise. Click through for the fun, informative video.
So hey, we’ve had a pretty cool look at the future thanks to Google’s I/O Keynote yesterday – where they covered the new Nexus 7 tablet, the Nexus Q media orb, and the awesome, skydiving-filled Project Glass demonstration that you’re really, really going to want to watch, after the jump.
Google had it’s big developer conference recently, and with the rise of the technology giant, it’s exciting to see what’s coming in the future. The two most exciting technologies on display were most certainly Google Glass, a pair of wearable internet glasses. Google has also launched its own tablet, the Nexus 7, which may just give the iPad a run for its money.
The internet is obsessed with cats. Completely and utterly obsessed. In Google’s secretive X labratory, scientists have developed one of the largest neural networks for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors. What did it do? Watched Youtube, and worked out what a cat is.
We sometimes underestimate the importance of language, especially when swimming in the ubiquitous sea of English. Language is bound tightly with identity, and when you imagine a language going the way of the Dodo, it is scary to think what else is lost with it. Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has launched the Endangered Language project, a website devoted to preserving languages that are close to dying out.
As the American government continues its internal adoption of cloud computing services, Google and Microsoft have been scrambling for contracts – what with their being lucrative and influential and such. Sucks to be Google, then, because the FAA just awarded $91 million to Microsoft to have their platform transition to the Microsoft Office 360 cloud service.
American tech companies are increasingly wary of a growing movement to hand control of the Internet over to the United Nations, led by China, Russia and Arab states. They are worried that this could empower foreign governments to restrict free speech and civil rights, not to mention negatively affecting the bottom line for Silicon Valley giants including Google and Microsoft.
Google recently put out an ad for a full-time doodler, and it seems they may have filled that position. Today’s doodle celebrates the 78th birthday of Robert Moog, creator of the famous “moog” synthesisers, in their best tribute yet. But what sets it apart from your average doodle?
I know, today was supposed to be Facebook’s special moment, but when a sovereign state threatens to sue a corporation like Google, it’s sort of a thing. Especially when a sovereign state sues a corporation because of a disagreement over how a map should be labelled. Seriously.
So Google’s trying to change things, again. For those of you who decide that this is the last straw and that you’re going Bing, farewell and good luck finding anything. For those of you wanting to find out what exactly Knowledge Graph is and why it isn’t as terrible as G+, click on through.
Microsoft announced today that they are preparing to roll out a revamped version of their net-based search engine Bing, after spending nearly US$6 billion on the service over its three year existence. They’re attempting to increase Bing’s market share of search engine revenues globally. But how is Facebook involved? Before you all go Google what a “Bing” is, read on…
Venture capitalist, Peter Theil’s dream of an artificial island utopia for tech start-ups is inching closer to reality off the coast of San Francisco. Riding a wave of investment capital from Thiel, the project has a name – “Blueseed” – and a website, as well as a lengthy lineup of tech companies that want to get on board.
Hey there, people who like free online storage. As expected, Google’s potential Dropbox-killer, Google Drive, has gone live – offering users 5GB of free online storage, with the potential to upgrade to 25GB for $2,50 per month. The service is available on PCs, Macs, Android phones – and is coming soon to iOS.
Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel – among other companies – have been accused of restricting salary increases and restricting career development by agreeing not to poach each other’s staff; California District Judge Lucy Koh has found that there’s enough evidence to support trial for antitrust injury. Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm are also involved.
Time-tested wisdom says the sky’s the limit. However, a group of billionaires are looking to change that as they launch the first ever venture to mine asteroids, in space. For real. Click through for the details.
Are you a really good illustrator? Does your mind overflow with creativity? Not afraid to have your work judged by literally millions of people? Your dream job is waiting at Google, click through for details.
Google’s long-anticipated cloud storage service, Google Drive, is set to launch some time next week – in yet another attempt to move in on a service that other companies have been occupying for years. What’s interesting here is that Google is planning on starting everyone with 5GB of free storage, easily trumping Dropbox’s 2GB base quota.
Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder everybody keeps forgetting about except when he talks about stuff like this, has pointed to a handful of “threats to internet freedom” – Facebook, Apple, the entertainment industry, and governments that censor their citizens. By which I guess he means threats to Google.
April Fool pranks played by people tend to be either cruel or embarrassing. April Fool pranks played by tech companies, however, are charming and endearing attempts at being funny for one day every year – and this year’s haul of PR stunts is actually pretty good. Check them out after the jump.
Last month we told you about Nevada legalising self-driving cars. But how do they work exactly? Check out this video of Google’s self-driving Toyota Prius being “driven” by a guy that is 95% blind.
Last year, Google announced that it was sending its Street View team to the Amazon basin – and images from that trip are are now being made available on Google Maps. You probably won’t end up using it for directions, but there are some awesome panoramic images on display.
Another alternative to Apple’s iCloud popped up this week, with Google has announcing that it will be combining the Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore into a new cloud-based service called Google Play, allowing users to access all of their media across all of their Android devices.
Google’s new privacy policy – the one allowing the company to combine data from all of its sites into a single profile – officially takes effect today. The new policy collapses 70 separate policy documents from various Google services into a single unit – which also happens to make it easier for Google to know things about you.