Google

The likes of PayPal have long made it possible to send money to friends, family, and businesses via email. The same is true of Google Wallet, but a new update means that an email address is no longer needed -- a text is all it takes.

If you have someone's mobile number, you have everything you need to send them money. Google assures payers that the SMS-based system is secure, but it remains to be seen how popular an option it proves to be.

Google is succeeding in keeping Apple at bay in Europe. The latest figures from Kantar show that Android is growing in popularity in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain (known collectively as EU5), while iOS growth is slowing.

The data covers smartphone sales in Europe's five largest markets in the three months ending October 2015. Android's popularity had been falling over the previous year, but sales in the last quarter see a return to growth that Google will hope to see continue into 2016 and beyond.

Ho. Ho. Ho. Google gives early Christmas presents this holiday, by focusing on ways that families (or roomies) can better share that which is contextually precious: music, photos, online, payments, and videos. But Big G also trails Apple, which already offers its customers many of the same benefits.

Fresh today: Google Photos Shared Albums, which applies collaborative concepts that Apps users should find familiar. "People receiving the shared album can join to add their own photos and videos, and also get notifications when new pics are added", according to the official announcement. "You can even save photos and videos from a shared album to your Google Photos library, so that you can hold onto them even if you weren’t the one holding the camera".

Not all devices need to be innovative to make an impact. Sometimes a product can simply be bred from commonsense and recognizing customer need. The pièce de résistance, however, is competitive pricing. All of these things are traits of the very cool Chromecast Audio dongle.

If you aren't familiar, it is a $35 device which allows you to easily stream music from your devices to a speaker. It is hardly revolutionary, but exceptional in its execution. Today, Google announces new features -- just in time for the holidays -- which make the inexpensive product even better.

With Google/Alphabet having search so deeply ingrained in its DNA, it is somewhat surprising that the search capabilities found in Drive have been so limited. Now that changes. The cloud storage service, at long last, has a search tool that's worth using.

As well as rolling out to the web, Google Drive's new search options are also making their way to iOS and Android devices. Apple users in particular have something to look forward to thank to support for 3D Touch and deeplinking.

Today, Google started selling its first homegrown tablet, Pixel C. You can buy one directly from the company—until they sell out! Google typically struggles stocking new devices, like Nexus smartphones and the Chromebook Pixel. On November 30th, I asked: "Where is Pixel C?", which was promised to arrive before the holidays. Now we know.

I hope to have the 10.2-inch tablet in possession within a few days and will subsequently post first-impression and full reviews. If you can't wait for that, and shouldn't, larger tech news sites already have their takes online. Search for the name, and you will find them. Don't wait on me, if you're thinking about one for Christmas!

When it comes to keeping on top of appointments, Google Calendar is certainly a useful tool -- but it's a long way from perfect. It's very capable at helping you to keep track of what you have to do and when, but there's one area in which it has always fallen short: to-do lists.

Today (or at least this week) this changes. Google is adding Reminders to the iOS and Android version of the Calendar app, with the promise that the same feature will make its way to the web soon. The name might not be quite right, but Reminders is the to-do list support users have been waiting for.

Responding to a spate of Android vulnerabilities and exploits, Samsung was one of the first companies to announce a move to monthly security updates for its handsets. This is great news for those concerned about the security of their phone, but for people running Lollipop there has been no way to check that the latest updates are installed.

Now this changes. Samsung is bringing the previously Marshmallow-only "Android security patch level" information to Lollipop handsets such as the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+. With just a few taps, it is now easy to check which month's security updates have been installed.

Google is experimenting with a way to make Android-based ads less irritating and more useful. Trial Run Ads are a new type of interactive ad that lets you try out games by streaming them rather than installing them. It's a format that Google and developers hope will help to drive installations, the thinking being that try-before-you-buy makes things easier for the would-be customer.

The new ads came about after research showed that mobile users' attention spans have shortened, and a quarter of downloaded apps are never used. Google is also introducing beta support for HTML5-based Interactive Interstitial ads which can be used for regular apps and not just games.

The ruins of Machu Picchu are perhaps the most familiar and enduring reminder of the once mighty Inca empire. Thought to have been built in the 1400's, the city is a spectacular site thanks to its location high atop a peak in the Andes mountains. Reaching it is part of the adventure.

It is, no doubt, on many bucket lists, but the journey is not for everyone. Now Google has partnered with Peruvian Ministry of Culture to bring you this fantastic location that few will ever see in person.

Chromebooks are viewed by many people as the Windows Phone of laptops, paling into insignificance when compared to Windows machines and MacBooks. But the cheap and cheerful nature of (most) Chromebooks has seen the share of certain markets rocket -- particularly in the classroom.

Back in 2012, less than one percent of devices in US schools was a Chromebook -- now the Google-powered laptops account for more than half of the market. Google's interest in education is not new, but the inroads it has managed to make in such a short space of time has caught many people off guard.

This week saw the big climate conference in Paris, bringing together numerous world leaders to discuss the changes occurring in our world. What we hope to get is improvement in the increasing amount of climate change, an effort to protect the environment for us and the wildlife that depend on it.

One answer is now coming from Google, which has long been a proponent of the need for change. The search giant has long backed renewable energy and now it claims to be the largest consumer of it. Well, the largest that isn't classified as a power company.

This fall we saw the release of iOS 9 from Apple just before the company launched the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.

The success of these new models along with an uptick in the adoption rates of iOS 9 showed how quickly Apple users were to upgrade their devices. So far iOS 9 has an adoption rate of 70 percent which is significantly higher when compared to Marshmallow’s adoption rate.

Google got accidentally DDoSed by an unnamed European network carrier, sending its cloud service offline on the old continent for about an hour.

The incident occurred last Monday, but it is only now that Google has decided to explain exactly what happened.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation claims that Google is gathering data about school children, including their web searches. In a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission about the search giant, the EFF gives details of the deceptive usage tracking it says was uncovered while conducting research for its Spying on Students campaign.

The campaign, which launches today, aims to "spread the word about companies collecting students' data and launching a campaign to educate parents and administrators about these risks to student privacy". At the center of the controversy are Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education.