The launch of Cloud Storage Nearline brings Google firmly into the battle against Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and all the other cloud platforms currently available, but, unlike search, Google is way behind the competition.

To gain some early customers, Google is offering an enormous 100 petabytes (100 million gigabytes) of storage for free. To a single customer, that is enough to last a lifetime, but for a medium sized business it may last a few months.

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If you're a Google Voice user, you'll almost certainly have experienced its frequently insane attempts at voicemail transcriptions. There are times when these offer some hilarious relief in the middle of a dull day, but they also stand in the way of, you know… actually understanding what's been said.

Transcriptions that are not accurate are less than helpful, and Google has taken steps to up its game. Using sample voicemails from volunteers, it has been possible to improve voicemail transcriptions so there are far fewer errors. The new and improved system is available right now, and Google is keen for you to try it out.

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As shown by the Window Insider program and the development of Windows 10, Microsoft is now all ears. Under Satya Nadella, this is now a company that wants to listen to, and be guided by, its customers. Google may dominate the search arena, but Microsoft is keen for Bing to eat into its market share by giving people what they want.

This is precisely why the Bing Listens program was created, giving people an opportunity to make suggestions about changes and additions they'd like to see made. Today Microsoft not only thanks people for providing feedback, but also reveals some of the suggestions it has acted on. Have your idea been used?

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Mongolia seems to be a country largely forgotten by the outside world. Aside from Genghis Khan it appears few people know much about the Asian nation. That's a shame because it has a beautiful countryside with deserts, rivers and mountains.

Now Google wants to take you on a rather long journey through the country -- 5,000 km to be exact. All the way across Mongolia, including those beautiful Steppes.

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Anyone reliant on Office for their day to day computing just gained two new weapons in their arsenal. Google has created a plugin that adds built in support for Google Drive, and automation fans will be pleased to learn that Office 365 channels have now gone live on IFTTT. But this is not the only new cloud-based tool.

It has long been possible to use Google Drive in conjunction with Office, but it has meant having to use the middleman of a local folder synchronized using the Google Drive app. The new plugin lets you cut straight to the chase and save directly to Google Drive -- handy if you don’t want or need a local copy.

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Google is everywhere, you cannot run and you cannot hide. Well, maybe I am being a bit dramatic, but if you use Android or any of Google's services, it is compiling data to track your actions and behaviors. The search giant may know your favorite restaurants, sexual tastes, plus home and work locations too.

If you use Google Maps and location services, the search giant is even tracking your movements. While that can lead to powering some useful solutions, it is also creepy as hell. Today, Google announces "Your Timeline", which is a tool for Android and desktop that shows you all the places you have been. While it is sort of cool, it is also a reminder that Google is watching you.

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An ex Google employee says her bonuses were blocked by management because she created a crowd-sourced spreadsheet which revealed inequality in pays.

Erica Baker worked at Google for nine years before switching to Slack. She recently took to Twitter to explain what she did. On a boring Sunday afternoon at work, Baker and a couple of colleagues created a spreadsheet that would list everybody’s salaries as an experiment in radical transparency.

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Wielding its axe above its head, Google today prepares to sever another limb from Google+. It's only a couple of months since Google Photos launched, and we knew back then that the writing was on the wall for the Photos component of Google+. Now we know that the axe drops on August 1.

From this date Google+ Photos will be no more. The service will shut down first for Android users, followed quickly by the web and iOS versions. If you want to continue to take advantage of cloud photo storage, editing, and sharing, you'll need to make the switch to Google Photos.

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Google’s self-driving car has been involved in yet another accident and the company has said it wasn’t the autonomous vehicle’s fault.

The car was rear-ended at a crossroads, and the company laid the blame on the human driver behind it.

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The tablet market has felt a bit stale lately. Apple's iPads are in need of a refresh, while the Android options have been yawn-worthy too. Other than the Nexus 9, there really hasn't been anything to fire up the Android community.

Today, Samsung hopes to change this with the all new Galaxy Tab S2 tablets. Consumers can choose between a 9.7 inch screen or an 8 inch variant. In other words, Samsung is offering options with its tablets -- much like Apple with the Air and mini -- which is rather smart. After all, one size does not fit all when it comes to tablets.

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Italian security and surveillance company Hacking Team was most famed for supplying monitoring tools to governments around the world, but a recent security breach revealed the inner workings of the outfit. Sifting through the leaked data revealed not only spying tools and Flash vulnerabilities, but also Android apps with backdoors.

Security experts from Trend Micro found that spyware from Hacking Team was released to Google Play, bypassing checks that are usually performed. BeNews was a fake news apps -- now removed from the store -- that could be used to download remote access software to Android devices running anything from Froyo to KitKat.

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Google is preparing to make shopping online even easier, by cutting out the middle-man and allowing customers to shop directly on the search engine.

Called Purchase on Google, a small list of retailers will allow Google to show their products on the search engine, with a Buy button for quick sales. Once the user clicks the buy button, it will take them to a mini-site with the look and feel of the real site, and advance straight to payment.

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Google has had enough of websites that present viewers with annoying adverts that try to trick users into downloading downright ridiculous tools on their computers. The Mountain View-based giant announces today that it will now more aggressively block unwanted software (UwS) over the coming weeks in Chrome.

Over the years, these unwanted tools have aggressively grown on the web, especially on shady websites. The fraudsters behind these tools use misleading adverts to trick users into downloading and installing their bogus applications.

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The likes of Google Drive make it easy to collaborate on projects, harnessing the power of the cloud to provide people with access to files. While it's handy to be able to work on files with other people, there are times when you want to ensure that the documents you share are not misused.

With this in mind, Google has now added new permission options to shared files. With the added ability to prevent the copying, downloading, and printing of files, it's now safer to share confidential documents. As Google says, it's "perfect for when the file you're sharing contains sensitive information that you don't want shared broadly or leaked".

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For a long time, Google Cloud Platform has been a Linux-only affair. Now that has changed. Recognizing that many of its customers work in mixed platform environments, Google has added Windows Server support into the mix.

Specifically, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2 are now supported, after seven months of beta support. During the beta period, Google made a number of Windows-specific tweaks to the Compute Engine virtualization stack.

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