Google may soon face a record €3 billion fine from the European antitrust authorities over how it abused its control of the online search market in the EU.

This will be the highest fine the European Commission has ever issued as an antitrust punishment. In addition to the fine, Google will be banned from manipulating its search results to favor itself over its rivals.

Continue reading →

Digital media is arguably making its analog counterparts less important. For instance, an old vinyl album or rare CD can be streamed -- the physical version just takes up space and can be a burden. The same can be said for books -- having a house full of bound sheets of paper is sort of pointless nowadays -- get a Kindle, y'all.

One thing that is not easily represented in the digital world is paintings. Sure, you can always view a captured image of a work of art, such as the Mona Lisa, on your computer, but it was never the same. Why? You need to experience it in person to truly see the detail, like brush strokes. This is changing, however, thanks to Google's new invention -- the Art Camera.

Continue reading →

Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge are slowly but surely losing ground in the desktop space. In fact, according to web analytics company StatCounter, for the first time Mozilla Firefox has more usage share than the two other browsers combined. However, Google Chrome still reigns supreme

Google Chrome is now the most popular desktop browser according to all the major web analytics companies. NetMarketShare was the last one to crown it king earlier this month -- Google Chrome surpassed Internet Explorer in its rankings with a 41.71 percent usage share to the latter's 41.33 percent.

Continue reading →

Google is introducing a new way to share content with a group. Spaces is a collaborative tool that Google wants people to use to share everything from articles and images to YouTube videos and messages.

So keen is Google for a huge take up of Spaces, that the service is launching in mobile and desktop web versions, as well as iOS and Android apps. It's billed as an alternative to group conversations, and Google wants to help streamline sharing by eliminating app switching -- this is achieved by integrating Google Search, YouTube, and Chrome into a single tool.

Continue reading →

As Google prepares to deploy its self-driving car fleet to Chandler, Arizona, the company is hiring local drivers to test its vehicles.

The company intends to hire local drivers in Arizona who will act as "vehicle safety specialists" that will be behind the wheel of its self-driving cars and ready to take over should an unforeseen problem or circumstance arise.

Continue reading →

If you're a fan of keeping notes and lists then you really have two main choices -- Evernote and Microsoft's OneNote. Both can be good methods of keeping track of things. For instance, keep a tab open in your browser to add items to a grocery list as you think of them, then arrive at the store and the list is on your phone.

Now Evernote is teaming up with another powerhouse in business, Google. The company is announcing that it will work with the search giant's cloud storage service, Drive.

Continue reading →

By the end of 2016, Google aims to switch Chrome users away from Flash in favor of HTML5. The writing has been on the wall for Flash for some time now, with a seemingly endless torrent of security issues pushing increasing numbers of people toward HTML5.

Google says that by Q4 2016, it wants to make HTML5 the primary user experience. Flash support will still be built into the browser, but it will be disabled by default. Ten sites, however, will be given a year's reprieve.

Continue reading →

Even though I own an iPhone, I am not an Apple "fanboy". I use both Linux and Windows on the desktop, and embrace most of Google's services. Quite frankly, if Google pulled its offerings from iOS, I would probably switch to Android. In other words, I am deeply entrenched in the search giant's ecosystem.

Today, Google releases a new keyboard for the iPhone. Called "Gboard", it drastically improves the typing experience on Apple's smartphone in many ways, including "Glide Typing", emoji search, and animated GIF search to name a few. If you own an iPhone, stop what you are doing and install it now. Trust me, folks.

Continue reading →

In recent years Google has started to tighten up on the products that can be promoted through its services. After cracking down on porn, the latest victims of the ban hammer are payday loans and other high interest finance services.

Starting July 13, it will no longer be possible to advertise such products through AdWords. Ads for loans with repayment deadlines of under two months are now outlawed, as are ads for loans with high interest rates.

Continue reading →

Some people still have the perception of open source being for hobbyists and Linux enthusiasts. I can understand this wrong viewpoint, however. After all, Microsoft has long had a stranglehold on both home and business workstation computing. That company has historically been a closed-source champion. Over time, open source ideology has matured, being embraced by many major companies -- the Windows-maker included.

Today, the Google-owned Nest makes a big announcement. Its 'Thread' networking protocol is now open source. Dubbed 'OpenThread', the source code is now available on GitHub. Will it see a large scale adoption?

Continue reading →

Google workers feel that emoji could be used to promote gender equality. A quartet of employees have put forward a new set of emoji that portray women in a number of different professional roles such as technology engineer, mechanic, and farmer.

In a bid to balance things out a little, the emoji proposal sees women portrayed in more roles than ever before, including those traditionally thought of as being male-dominated. A set of 13 new emoji have been submitted to the Unicode Consortium for consideration. They may later be added to the official emoji set.

Continue reading →

Both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are starting to ask the questions that Android users have been asking for years: why do updates and upgrades take so long to roll out?

If you're in possession of a flagship or recent handset, the chances are you're in line to receive timely updates for the foreseeable future. But Android's fragmentation means that older handsets quickly drop off the radar, get forgotten and remain unpatched. The FCC and the FTC both want to know why security patches are slow to hit phones, and the agencies have launched separate, but parallel, investigations.

Continue reading →

Soon enough, you can expect Google’s AI to start sending you love letters. And judging by the information you are just about to read, those might be some of the best love letters ever written, in the history of robotkind. Or humankind. Or both, I guess.

Here’s what’s going on. Google says its AI engine’s answers to human questions are too factual. Imagine the answers as being purely robotic. Subject, predicate, adverbial clause. Google, on the other hand, wants those answers to be more human -- it wants the robot to be able to answer the same question in different words, to change the tone and personality from time to time.

Continue reading →

A number of major webmail services have suffered one of the largest security breaches in recent years. The account details of Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Mail.ru are just four of the services affected.

Security firm Hold Security says that it has been contacted by a hacker in possession of 272 million unique pairs of email addresses and unencrypted passwords. This is far from an insignificant number, and the situation is made all the worse as the data is being freely shared for just about anyone to access.

Continue reading →

Google Chrome has just passed Internet Explorer to become the most popular desktop web browser, according to web analytics company NetMarketShare. Based on the latest figures, the former has 41.71 percent usage share as opposed to 41.33 percent for Microsoft's longstanding PC browser.

NetMarketShare is the last major web analytics company to crown Google Chrome as the most popular desktop web browser. Other players in this field have it pegged as the leader with an even more comfortable lead over Internet Explorer.

Continue reading →