Articles about Google

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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Security issues are frequently exposed by Google's Project Zero; just days ago, security researchers revealed details of an actively exploited Windows Kernel Cryptography Driver security flaw.

Now Project Zero has released details of a serious security flaw in another Microsoft venture -- GitHub. The bug relates to GitHub Actions' workflow commands and is described as being high severity. It was discovered back in July but, as per the standard 90-day disclosure period, details are only just now being made public.

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Google has shared details of a bug in the Windows Kernel Cryptography Driver (cng.sys) which is currently being exploited in the wild by hackers.

The Project Zero team had already privately shared details of the security flaw with Microsoft a little over a week ago, but now that it is being actively exploited the company has gone public. The zero-day flaw is being tracked as CVE-2020-117087, and it is not likely to be addressed by Microsoft for a couple of weeks.

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One of the best things about modern smartphones, is that they pretty much all have excellent cameras. This means you can take a high-quality photograph at any time by merely pulling the phone out of your pocket. Thanks to cloud storage, your photos can be safely backed up without effort too, so you never have to worry about losing them.

As someone who lost their home in a fire once, I prefer everything to be digital and in the cloud. Things I owned like like music CDs, books, and photographs were lost forever. Nowadays, all of that media is safe and secure online. I would never bother putting photographs in a photo album either -- I'd rather view them on my iPad or Android tablet.

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Cloudflare is best known for its security and DNS services, but now the company is branching out with a new tool to rival Google Analytics.

The site traffic analytics offered by Google are used by millions of people around the world, but Cloudflare wants to unseat the search giant with its own Cloudflare Web Analytics. What makes the services stand out is a focus on privacy, with Cloudflare neither storing not profiting from data gathered about site visitors.

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Earlier today, Google had a special product unveiling. Called "Launch Night In," the search giant showed off a bunch of new devices, wrapping up the whole spectacle in 30 minutes. It was concise, focused, and largely without surprise. Nearly everything that was "revealed," was previously leaked. And so, there is nothing to be excited about, right? Well, not so fast.

At the Google event, the company unveiled a handful of truly interesting devices -- two phones, a speaker, and even a new media player. None of them are particularly cutting edge, but they all have something in common -- value. Yes, all the products are affordable, and in these uncertain times, consumers should greatly appreciate that.

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Many countries are in the process of rolling out "track and trace" mobile apps to make it easier for people to determine whether they have been in contact with anyone who has contracted coronavirus. Now Google has added a new layer to Google Maps that shows local information about COVID-19.

The optional layer shows a seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases for whatever area of the map you are looking at, and Google says that the aim of the new feature is to enable people to "make more informed decisions about where to go and what to do".

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Google has released Google Web Designer 9.0, the third major update of its HTML-5 content-producing tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux in just over a year. The tool is particularly popular among web advertisers thanks to its user-friendly WYSIWYG user interface and time-saving tools such as syntax highlighting and code auto-completion.

Version 9.0 introduces a host of useful new tools, including an eyedropper for easy color picking, several image-processing tools, support for masking, and the ability to set up custom keyboard shortcuts.

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I consider myself to be rather privacy conscious, but I am not overly paranoid. Do I want Google having microphones in my home? Not really, but the convenience of being able to summon the Google Assistant with my voice outweighs my concerns. And so, I have a few Google Nest devices in my home -- including a Nest Hub smart display in my bedroom. Ultimately, consumers need to weigh the pros and cons before putting, say, an Amazon Echo or Nest Mini in their homes.

Now, Google is partnering with some hotels to put Nest Hub smart displays in their rooms. In other words, when guests enter their room, they will be confronted by the smart device. While some privacy pundits will decry this partnership, I welcome it. First of all, the functionality does not require the guest to login -- it will work without that. While the Nest Hub smart display has a microphone, it can be totally disabled via a hardware switch. Best of all, Nest Hub has no camera, so there is no risk of it recording video of your... adult activities. The search giant promises no audio recordings are stored either. Seems all good to me!

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The latest update to Chrome has rolled out, and Google has done a lot to improve and evolve the browser. The company says that there are massive improvements to page load times as well as improvements to resource usage by open tabs thanks to Tab Throttling.

But this is not the only change to come to tabs. Google has also made tabs touch-friendly, added tab previews, and introduced a new option to collapse grouped tabs to save space. This last option is currently in beta, however, and you'll have to enable hidden setting to enable it.

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Numerous Google services have been plagued with server issues causing problems for users around the world.

As well as being unable to send emails in Gmail, people are complaining that they are unable to upload files to Google Docs. Other services affected by the outage include Google Meet, Google Voice, and Google Keep.

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The stage is set for the 2020 US Election. We finally know the makeups of both tickets -- Trump and Pence (Republican) against Biden and Harris (Democrat). It is largely expected that the Democrats will win given Donald Trump’s horrible performance as president, but hey, you never know. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was considered the front runner, and we know how that turned out.

That’s why, if you want Joe Biden to be your next president, it is very important that you vote this year -- don’t become indifferent because you assume he is going to win. If you are a first-time voter or just someone intimidated by the voting process, I have good news. Google is making it very simple to learn how to register to vote and what is required to actually cast your ballot.

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When all of your devices are Apple, you can live quite happily knowing that everything works well together. When I owned a MacBook Pro, for instance, it was wonderful to get my text messages and phone calls on my laptop -- I didn't need to run and find my iPhone. The same goes for iPad -- I can get my iPhone calls and texts on the Apple tablet too. When my friends and family are nearby, and they use iPhone, I can easily share things with them using AirDrop.

If you aren't familiar, AirDrop uses a mixture of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to allow you to wirelessly share things like files, photos, URLs, and more with other nearby Apple devices -- no need for an internet connection. This isn't just helpful for sharing with others, but with yourself too. When you want to transfer photos from your iPhone to your Mac, for example, you can use AirDrop instead of a USB to lightning cable. Many have wanted Google to copy AirDrop, and now, the search giant has thankfully done exactly that. Called "Nearby Share," it is coming to both Android devices and Chromebooks.

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