Articles about Google

Ford and Google are to create a new partnership designed to accelerate the automobile giant’s digital transformation, and reinvent the connected vehicle.

The two firms are creating a new collaborative group, called Team Upshift, to leverage the talent and assets of both companies and unlock personalized consumer experiences and data-based opportunities. These will potentially include new retail options and ownership offers based on connected vehicle data.

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Later on in the year Google will be taking the wraps off the next version of its mobile operating system -- Android 12.

Exactly what new features and innovations will be introduced remains to be seen, but typically the search giant focuses on evolution rather than revolution.

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Chromebooks are great laptops, and I recommend them all the time. Long gone are the days where a Windows computer was necessary. Quite frankly, most homes would be better served by a computer running the Linux-based Chrome OS than any Microsoft operating system. While power users and gamers may want to stick with Windows (for now), the average user should without question buy a Chromebook instead.

Best of all, Chromebooks are no longer just underpowered laptops -- many have great specifications and elegant designs. For instance, last year, Samsung launched the beautiful Galaxy Chromebook. Today, the company unveils the sequel, and it is quite impressive. Called "Galaxy Chromebook 2," the convertible laptop has a QLED touch display with FHD resolution. Samsung promises an enhanced audio experience too.

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Late last year Salesforce acquired Slack for $27.7 billion, a deal that has caused major waves within the enterprise software market as pundits try to forecast how the chat app fits under the Salesforce umbrella and whether this is an attempt to challenge Microsoft for the enterprise.

We spoke with CoreView CEO Shawn Lankton, whose company is not only a Microsoft Gold partner but whose SaaS management platform supports enterprises that operate cloud and hybrid environments. He gave us his thoughts on Salesforce's motivation behind the sale and how it will shape the enterprise software world.

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Yeah, I know, 2020 sucks. We have all seen the memes about how it has been a terrible year. Sadly, we have lost more than 300 thousand Americans to the deadly COVID-19 virus, and many people have suffered financially as a result of business shutdowns. It is terrible and tragic. With that said, at least the 2020 presidential election went well, as the best candidate, Joe Biden, defeated the much-maligned Donald Trump in a landslide victory.

Understandably, many folks are eager for 2020 to go away, and with New Year's Eve fast approaching, there are sure to be many celebrations to ring in 2021. If you want to get your 2021 partying started early, I have some great news -- Google Assistant has a secret 'New Year Song' that is absolutely adorable.

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Google users around the world struggled to connect to many of the company's services as a huge outage struck the search giant.

Problems started in the early hours of the morning in the US, and around lunchtime in Europe, with thousands of users experiencing error messages when attempting to use the likes of Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive and Google Maps.  The company issued a series of statements saying it was aware of problems "affecting a majority of users".

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Reading books is for nerds, right? Well, that depends on your definition of "nerd," I suppose. While I must confess to not being a regular reader, I greatly admire those that are. Reading is surely a better way to spend time than mindlessly watching sports on TV -- something I am quite guilty of doing.

So no, reading is not for nerds, nor is it nerdy -- it is quite the respected hobby, actually. And thanks to technology, many folks now read eBooks -- paper books are so last century. While Amazon is likely the most popular company for selling digital books via Kindle, it should not be forgotten that Google does this as well. In fact, Google Play Books (the search giant's book store), is celebrating a 10th Birthday this week. Time really flies, eh?

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Believe it or not, you really can use just some Apple devices without buying into the ecosystem entirely. Using myself as an example, I own an iPhone and iPad, but I don't own a Mac -- I instead use Linux and Windows on the desktop. I also don't have an Apple Watch or AirPods. I do, however, own a couple of Apple TV boxes for media.

For smart home assistants, I chose Google rather than the Siri-enabled HomePod. The problem, however, is I am a hardcore Apple Music user, and while I can use that service on pretty much any platform, it has not been available on Google Assistant-enabled devices such as the Nest Audio or Nest Hub. This means I haven't been able to call upon Google with my voice to play my favorite tunes from Apple Music. Thankfully, this finally changes today!

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Emoji are well-loved, and every time new ones are released, they are received with much excitement. But how about the idea of creating your own emoji?

This is what Google made possible earlier this year when it released Emoji Kitchen. While this does not let you design your own emoji from scratch, it does give you the chance to combine existing emoji to create new, strange and funny creations. Now the tool has been updated to make it even better than ever.

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I’ve switched between owning an iPhone and various Android handsets over the years, but for me iOS remains easily the best mobile operating system (and iPhone 12 Pro the best smartphone). It would take something very special to tempt me back to Android.

Something like this stylish vision of Android 12.

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Security researchers from Palo Alto Networks have discovered that apps produced by Chinese firm Baidu have been leaking sensitive data about users.

Baidu Search Box and Baidu Maps -- which have been downloaded more than six millions times in the US alone -- were found to be sending details such as MAC addresses, phone models, IMSI and IMEI to a server in China. The researchers warned Google about the activity of the Android apps which were then removed from the Play Store.

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Banking is great for the bankers, but not so much for their customers. For many people, dealing with a bank can be a nightmare -- full of overdraft fees, poor service, and terrible location hours. Quite frankly, even the customers with huge balances aren't making out too good these days, as interest rates are almost non-existent.

And so, Google is looking to reinvent banking with a focus on regular folks -- the ones that aren't wealthy. Called "Plex," it is a special mobile-focused bank account coming in 2021 that does away with the predatory fees that seem to target middle- and lower-class people. These fees are why many people in America don't even have a bank account -- a sad reality. No, Google isn't becoming a bank with Plex -- it is instead partnering with several financial institutions to offer these accounts.

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The smart features of Gmail -- such as Smart Compose and Smart Reply to help speed up email composition -- are certainly handy, but they come at a price. Privacy.

As is often the case with Google products, sharing personal information with the company is par for the course. While it could be argued that some features simply could not function properly, or be personalized correctly, without such data-sharing, not everyone is happy with giving up their privacy in this way. Now Google has introduced an option that gives users greater control.

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Google's Pixel line of smartphones provides the purest Android experience, but for whatever reason, they aren't huge sellers. For many consumers, it is Samsung or nothing, and that is totally understandable -- that company does make good phones. If you prefer regular and timely Android updates, however, you pretty much have to go with a Pixel.

We are now halfway through November, and Christmas shopping is in full swing. Many people will be buying new smartphones for loved ones -- or themselves. And if you want a Pixel, you have a very hard decision -- do you opt for the Pixel 5 or Pixel 4a 5G? Both are 5G smartphones, yes, but they are not the same.

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Google's Project Zero is very quick to point out security flaws in other company's products, but the search giant is far from being perfect itself. Two recently discovered zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome have just been fixed with a new patch.

CVE-2020-16009 and CVE-2020-16010 are remote code-execution and heap-based buffer overflow flaws respectively and affect both the desktop and Android versions of Google's web browser.

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