Wavety.com
Google Wave, News, Reviews, Gadgets and Robots.
‘Google News’ Category
-
Google Ready To Take On iPad?
The New York Times has claimed that internet search and advertising company Google, is planning to take on Apple’s iPad tablet device by launching its own Android based tablet device, which, according to ‘reliable sources’ will a ‘reader with computing capabilities.’
According to the NYT article, which highlighted Apple’s potential competitors in the tablet device market, Google’s Chief Executive Officer Eric Schimdt, who had once openly praised Steve Jobs for his genius, confided the company’s plans to some friends in an L.A party. Sources reported that Schimdt let it slip that the company is working on its own version of the iPad, which will run on its popular Android operating system.
Meanwhile, the paper also reported that sources working in the top secret project claimed that Google was operating in ‘Stealth Mode’ in order to make deals with several publishers and media houses to provide content for the device.
This would not be first time Google tries to enter Apple’s domain. One time partners, Apple and Google, had a falling out when the latter introduced its Android operating system which directly challenged Apple’s iPhone smartphone device.
-
Google Acquires Visual Search Engine Plink
Search engine giant Google, the California based company behind the popular Android OS, has acquired mobile visual search technology maker Plink, making it its first UK takeover ever. The acquisition is a part of Google’s plan to acquire at least one company every month.
Plink, which was founded by Mark Cummins and James Philbin, is the creator of PlinkArt, a visual search app which is designed to analyse and recognise paintings of famous artists and allows users to share the photo with their friends and even buy a poster version of the art work.
With the acquisition of Plink, Google will look to expand is Google Goggles visual service, which allows users to search via clicking pictures from their Android smartphones.
Interestingly, according to the developers of the app, PlinkArt had seen 50,000 downloads within 6 weeks of being launched .The company was also said to be in talks with several major art galleries and museums for a possible partnership.
Commenting on the acquisition by Google, the developers of the app, who will be working with the Google Goggles team, wrote on the official PlinkArt blog that “Google has already shown that it’s serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up.”
-
Google To Consider Site Speed When Delivering SERPs
Google is set to use site speed more prominently in its overall assessment of how websites will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) according to a blog post published on Friday.
Its authors, Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer at Google Search Quality Team, say that Google will include site speed as a new signal in their search engine algorithms.
Improving site speed creates a virtuous circle; faster speed improves user stickiness, which in turn causes them to spend more time on the website as they hop from one link to another.
This not only drives traffic significantly up but also, according to Oreilly, reduces operating costs and the chance of them going elsewhere to get either services or news.
Currently Speed will only count towards a small percentage of search results. Both Google execs reckon that less than 1 percent at this stage and it will only apply to visitors searching in English from Google.com.
There are already questions however over the use of speed to determine whether or not a site should rank higher than another. Google is quick to point out that speed will never rank higher than the relevance of a page which forms the cornerstone of Google’s Pagerank.
-
Vietnam Rejects Google Claims Of Cybercrime
The government of Vietnam has refused to acknowledge the ‘groundless’ accusations made by Google’s Neel Mehta and McAfee Chief Technical Officer George Kurtz.
They had both hinted that the government was involved in cyber attacks on blogs and websites belonging to protesters of a controversial mining project in the country.
The blog post made by Neel Mehta, who is a member of Google’s security team, suggested that the Vietnamese government had used a malware, in the form a Vietnamese language keyboard driver, which was then used to hack into the websites and systems of unsuspecting activists.
However, the Vietnamese government broke its silence by declaring that the claims made by Google and McAfee were baseless.
Commenting on the allegation made by the companies, Nguyen Phuong Nga, a government spokesperson said in a statement that “We have on many occasions clearly expounded our view on issues relating to access to and use of information and information technology, including the Internet.”
Interestingly, the Vietnamese cyber attacks were discovered by the two companies during their investigation into last years sophisticated cyber attack on Google which was said to be originated from China. The attack had prompted Google to pack its bags and leave the country for good.
-
Vietnam Rejects Google Claims Of Cybercrime
The government of Vietnam has refused to acknowledge the ‘groundless’ accusations made by Google’s Neel Mehta and McAfee Chief Technical Officer George Kurtz.
They had both hinted that the government was involved in cyber attacks on blogs and websites belonging to protesters of a controversial mining project in the country.
The blog post made by Neel Mehta, who is a member of Google’s security team, suggested that the Vietnamese government had used a malware, in the form a Vietnamese language keyboard driver, which was then used to hack into the websites and systems of unsuspecting activists.
However, the Vietnamese government broke its silence by declaring that the claims made by Google and McAfee were baseless.
Commenting on the allegation made by the companies, Nguyen Phuong Nga, a government spokesperson said in a statement that “We have on many occasions clearly expounded our view on issues relating to access to and use of information and information technology, including the Internet.”
Interestingly, the Vietnamese cyber attacks were discovered by the two companies during their investigation into last years sophisticated cyber attack on Google which was said to be originated from China. The attack had prompted Google to pack its bags and leave the country for good.
-
Google Buys Video Firm Episodic For Youtube
In an attempt to widen its hold on the online video market, search engine giant Google has acquired online video platform Episodic, which will be merged with Google’s popular YouTube video service, to provide better services to its users.
Episodic, which announced the acquisition on its official blog, is a US based online video platform used for broadcasting live and on-demand video to the web or any web-enabled device, which was started by Noam Lovinsky and Matias Cudich.
According to the blog post made by the start-up’s co-founders, the company was in talks with Google for a while before agreeing on the terms of acquisition and will work together with the company in order to merge Episodic’s technology with that of YouTube for delivering an innovative video platform.
The acquisition will see Episodic staff members joining Google offices from next week and will not affect the quality of services being offered to existing customers.
However, the company has stopped taking in new customers, but has allowed them to register themselves with the website so that they can be contacted once the acquisition process is over.
-
Google To Follow Bing With Cashback Feature
Google is set to emulate Microsoft’s trial two years ago of a cashback offering that will allow people to earn tax-free money simply by purchasing products listed in Google Shopping (formerly known as Froggle), from any of the partners listed.
According to plans drawn up following the arrival of the former Microsoft VP of Web Business Development, Scott McPherson, Google will offer up to five percent cashback on some purchases.
Users will get the money through their Google Checkout account directly in the same way as millions do through Google Adsense. They will also be able to access a dashboard that will show them how much they made and what are the latest deal.
Shares of major affiliates companies such as Affiliates4U, Tradedoubler and Webgain fell significantly on the news as it is understood that the worldwide roll out of the scheme could literally put them out of business.
A source at Google said that for years now, Google wanted to launch such a solution but it was under the impulse of McPherson that the project finally turned from a pet project to a fully fledge Google major.
Google did not reveal any specific time window other than sometimes in Q3 2010. It has not said whether this new cashback feature will be somehow tied with the Google Comparison that was trialled in the UK at the beginning of the year.
-
Google To Purge Index, Introduce “Super Caffeine”
Search giant Google is on the verge of cleaning its giant index and is set to introduce a new version of its algorithm called “Super Caffeine” (more about Caffeine here).
According to snippets of information gathered from sources at Google UK’s HQ in London, a “significant portion” of the 10 billion or so pages will be downgraded because they are either no “longer relevant” or because they are considered as “potentially harmful”.
Rather than deleting them, Google will apparently move them to a secondary index and will push them completely down the queue in search engine results page.
Simultaneously, Google will proceed to a crackdown on so-called scrapper websites that generates millions of near-useless pages.
Bizarrely, we heard that some price comparison websites or sites that only rely on third party feeds could be affected by this.
Our Google sources showed us a SERP using the old algorithm and the new one side by side and there is a significant difference for a search on Intel Q8300 reviews.
Gone are the endless pages that promise reviews without actually delivering them. There were a lot less pages (roughly half the original number) but at least they were pertinent.
Apparently, the search giant is responding to the growing threat of Microsoft’s Bing and will focus on quality rather than quantity.
We’ve been told that it is all part of making Google much better and to a certain extent, going back to its roots.
-
Google Reports Yet Another Cyber Attack
According to a recent research conducted by Google, a new cyber-attack, somewhat similar to the one that targeted the search giant, has been reported.
It was implemented with the intention of hacking into the computers of critics of a Vietnam-based mining project.
In a post on the official Google online security, Neel Mehta, member of the security team, wrote that in order to a hack into the computers of the activists protesting against the mines, cyber criminals infected ‘potentially tens of thousands of computers’ belonging to Vietnamese speaking people around the globe.
Mr. Mehta explained on the blog that the hackers had used the infected machines in order to spy on their owners and target blogs which criticised the Vietnamese mining project, that was backed by the People’s Republic of China.
Google also reported that the malware used to infect the computers wasn’t a sophisticated one, but was nonetheless harmful.
Meanwhile, internet security company McAfee, confirming Google’s findings, reported that the cyber criminals, who mounted the attacks, may have been working for the government of Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
McAfee’s reported declared that “This incident underscores that not every attack is motivated by data theft or money. This is likely the latest example of hacktivism and politically motivated cyberattacks, which are on the rise.”
-
Google To Solve Android Fragmentation Through Selected Downloads
Technology blog Endgadget has reported that Google is planning to end the fragmentation problem faced by its Android mobile OS by making its core features downloadable so that Android device users are able to access them on time.
As of now, there are 20 Android based smartphones in the market, which feature different versions of the operating system, based on what the service providers have to offer. This has resulted in some Android users having old versions of the popular device.
Quoting people familiar with the matter, the article on Endgadget reported that Google will begin separating core Android applications and features from the main OS, allowing users to equip their old Android OS with new features.
However, it is still not clear how the company plans to offer rest of the updates to users, as updates for apps will only update the specific apps and not the whole OS.
Interestingly, Google’s Android OS, due to being open source, has been modified several times in order to make it compatible with various devices such as eBook readers and tablets.
Google is expected to begin the process of individually updating Android app with the launch of the next version of Android OS, which is code-named Froyo.
- Nokia Hires Microsoft's Elop As New Boss http://dlvr.it/51Lyy
- Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 Preview http://dlvr.it/51KHM
- Microsoft Issues Apology For Cloud Service Outages http://dlvr.it/51FsS
- Samsung Galaxy Tab v2 May Come With AMOLED Screen http://dlvr.it/51Fsd
- Bebo Hires Xbox Co-Creator As Chief Product Officer http://dlvr.it/51D9c
ITProPortal Network
© Copyright Wavety.com 2010