Tag Archives: Google

Google employees will hold Twitter campaign to end forced arbitration | Mashable

Posted on January 15, 2019 by | Leave a comment

Google CEO Sundar Pichai might just want to check his Twitter tomorrow.

A group called Googlers for Ending Forced Arbitration will hold a tweetstorm on Tuesday, Jan. 15 to educate the public about forced arbitration agreements and advocate for their removal from the tech industry. The group, which says it’s run by organizers of the Google Walkouts and dozens of other employees, announced the plan in a Medium blog post to inform people about “how forced arbitration denies 60 million Americans access to their civil rights.”

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Congress Blew Its Hearing With Google CEO Sundar Pichai | WIRED

Posted on December 12, 2018 by | Leave a comment

ON TUESDAY, THE House Judiciary Committee had the opportunity to question one of the most powerful people on the planet—Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, the company that filters all the world’s information. And they blew it.

Over the course of three and a half hours, the members of the committee staked out opposite sides of a partisan battle over whether Google search and other products are biased against conservatives. Republican members largely criticized the company for burying conservative websites in search results and amplifying criticism of conservative policies—accusations that Google has repeatedly denied. Democrats only poured fuel on the fire by spending their allotted five minutes helping Pichai shoot down those trumped-up claims, which are hard to prove either way thanks to the company’s black box algorithms. The rhetorical tennis match left precious little time for committee members to explore in any detail the urgent questions around Google’s interest in building a censored search engine for China, the company’s bulk data collection practices, its recent security breaches, or issues related to competition and antitrust regulation.

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Here’s how Lyft envisions self-driving cars communicating with pedestrians | TechCrunch

Posted on December 12, 2018 by | Leave a comment

The question of how self-driving cars will interact and communicate with humans is one that has come up before, but the answer is still up in the air. Google has been looking into this at least since 2012, and earlier this year, Uber filed a patent for using flashing lights and sounds to talk to pedestrians. Now, the United States Patent Office has granted Lyft with a patent for what it describes as an autonomous vehicle notification system.

Lyft’s solution entails developing a predetermined message to display on the most visible car window. In one example, each window includes a projector, a see-through screen or another display device to communicate the message.

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Google to kill Google+ early after exposing personal data of more than 50 million | Mashable

Posted on December 11, 2018 by | Leave a comment

Google will end the consumer version of its ill-fated social network Google+ in April, four months earlier than expected, after finding another security issue impacting more than 50 million people.

In a blog post Monday, Google said that a November software update caused the Google+ API to inadvertently make users’ personal information viewable to developers, even if they had opted to keep their details private. The bug was addressed after six days, and users’ passwords and financial data were not impacted, according to the company.

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Why Are Toronto Residents Suspicious About City’s Smart Project | Digital Trends

Posted on December 7, 2018 by | Leave a comment

It is touted as a unique opportunity to build a smart city within a major city, literally from the ground up. Environmental remediation, new infrastructure, digital electrification plans, new-age mobility options — the whole shebang.

If only people would stop complaining about privacy issues.

Up in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, there’s been much ado about what will happen to all the data that the future Sidewalk Toronto project will generate. The focus of the debate has been, predictably, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) whose Sidewalk Labs is the primary partner in the project. And yet, for all the sturm und drang about personal information, not a single spade-full of dirt has been spilled yet.

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Google ‘Arbitration Optional’ Harassment Plan Limits Groups | WIRED

Posted on November 9, 2018 by | Leave a comment

GOOGLE ANNOUNCED CHANGES to how it will handle claims of sexual harassment among employees, including making arbitration optional for individual harassment and sexual assault claims. While additional transparency and protection for workers is a sign of progress, the change is incremental rather than transformative, because Google’s arbitration provision still prohibits collective action. Harassment claims will no longer be forced into private arbitration, but only individuals can now bring their claims before a jury.

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Google Assistant Helps You Kickstart The Day With A Visual Snapshot | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

Posted on October 19, 2018 by | Leave a comment

When Google launched the Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL on October 9, it announced a number of new features coming to Assistant — but only on Pixel phones. Now, however, it’s revealing a few new features coming to Google Assistant as a whole, meaning all Assistant-enabled phones will get them.

Perhaps the most interesting new feature is the ability to see a “snapshot” of your day, similar to how Google Now operated back in the day. Now, when you activate Google Assistant, you can swipe up on the display to see things like event recommendations, show recent notes and lists, reminders, and so on.

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Here’s Why It’s Good That The Google Home Hub Lacks A Camera | Digital Trends

Posted on October 11, 2018 by | Leave a comment

It’s official: The Google Home Hub, a smart speaker with a screen, is here, and it enters into a smart display market that is getting very crowded lately. Everyone seems to want to sell you a screen for your counter. Even Facebook is in the game with the Portal and Portal+, two smart displays you can use to talk to your friends on the social media platform.

But while other manufacturers are adding bells and whistles like large, 10-inch crystal clear displays, built in smart home hubs, roving cameras, and stellar sound, Google surprisingly has kept it simple with its Home Hub. No huge screen like Facebook’s Portal+ 15-inch display. No built-in Zigbee smart hub like the Amazon Echo Show. No incredible sound like the JBL Link View. Just a simple, seven-inch touch display, which is now available for pre-order at a very reasonable cost of $149.

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Google+ Shuts Down Over Breach as Google Offers New Privacy Features | WIRED

Posted on October 9, 2018 by | Leave a comment

GOOGLE ANNOUNCED ON Monday that it is shuttering its Google+ social network, following revelations in a Wall Street Journal report that the company did not disclose a recently discovered bug that had exposed data from up to 500,000 Google+ users users since 2015. In the same breath, the company introduced new tools to give users more control over the data they share with apps and services that connect to Google products.

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China splits the internet while the U.S. dithers | TechCrunch

Posted on September 25, 2018 by | Leave a comment

There are few stories as important right now as the internet being ripped asunder by the increasing animosity between the U.S. and China. Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Alphabet, said last week at a private event in San Francisco that “I think the most likely scenario now is not a splintering, but rather a bifurcation into a Chinese-led internet and a non-Chinese internet led by America.”

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