Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter team up on open source Data Transfer Project to ease your data moving woes
Four giants of the technology world have joined forces in an attempt to make it easier for people to move data between services. The collaboration between Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter takes the form of the open source Data Transfer Project, the aim of which is to make it possible to "transfer data directly from one service to another, without needing to download and re-upload it".
The four companies joining announced the data portability platform which currently makes use of public APIs to offer support for photos, mail, contacts, calendars and tasks from the founders as well as other companies who are encouraged to get involved.
Who cares what Trump thinks about Europe's record fine for Google?
It's just days since the Europe hit Google with a record fine for what it described as "very serious illegal behavior" in an antitrust case about the company's abuse of Android to dominate the competition.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of people have an opinion not only about the way Google has acted, but also of the European commission's ruling itself. Among those with an opinion to share is none other than Donald Trump who used the fine as a way to paint the US as a victim at the hands of Europe.
EU hits Google with record €4.34bn fine for 'very serious illegal behaviour' in Android antitrust case
The European Commission has fined Google a record €4.34 billion ($5 billion) in an antitrust case that saw the company accused of using Android as a "vehicle to cement its dominance as a search engine".
The Commission said that Google forced phone makers to pre-install its software on their handsets, taking advantage of Android's popularity, and breaching European antitrust rules. The EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager summed things up by saying Google has been "denying rivals a chance to innovate and compete on the merits".
YouTube TV offers heartfelt apology for World Cup outage, promises free week of service
If you haven't heard, YouTube TV experienced an ill-timed outage yesterday. Well, I suppose there is never a good time for a service disruption, but still, this was during a rather important sporting event. What game was it? The big World Cup match between England and Croatia. I'm not a fan of soccer, but I can understand how having your TV service disrupted during such a major game could be annoying. If it was during the World Series or Super Bowl, I'd be rather upset.
YouTube TV apologized profusely on Twitter, and ultimately, the service was restored long before the match was over. In other words, subscribers were able to experience England's crushing defeat. If you weren't satisfied with the apology, YouTube TV is offering something that should make up for the inconvenience -- a free week of service.
Chrome's RAM usage is higher than ever as Google introduces Site Isolation to fight Spectre
Google's Chrome browser may be popular, but you'll find a lot of its users complain about high memory usage. With Chrome 67, things just got even worse.
If you've noticed that Chrome on the desktop is using more RAM, you're not imagining it. Google has enabled a Site Isolation feature in Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS to help mitigate against the Spectre vulnerability -- and it's a bit memory-hungry.
Leaked: The P in Android P stands for...
For a little while now it has been thought that the P in Android P stood for Popsicle -- based largely on speculation and the fact Google shared some popsicle-related images on Instagram. But it seems that this is wrong.
A new leak -- this time courtesy of Huawei -- suggests that Google has gone with a nutty theme for the upcoming Android 9.0.
Hide your viewing and search history with YouTube Incognito Mode
Chrome's Incognito Mode is handy for those times you want to hide your browsing history from others on a shared system -- whether it's because you want to keep a birthday gift secret, or there are just sites you visit that you’d rather keep private.
Now the same feature is coming to YouTube. Having already undergone a period of testing, Incognito Mode is rolling out to Android users around the world, making it easy to hide evidence of the videos you have been watching, or the type of content you have been searching for.
Google Pay gains support for tickets and boarding cards, friend and family payments, and a web app
Google continues to expand the capabilities of Google Pay, and today the company launched a new series of updates. Catching up with the likes of Apple Pay, Google's own digital wallet can now be used to store boarding cards and tickets.
While this is something that is already catered for by other apps -- such as those from airlines and box offices -- Google is clearly hoping that its "everything under one roof" approach will attract users. In addition to the new ticketing option, Google Pay is also combining the Google Pay and Google Pay Send apps.
How much does Google know about you?
We all know that Google collects data and uses it to sell adverts. But just how well does Google know you?
VPN service comparison site TheBestVPN has created a full guide to how the corporation tracks you and what it does with the information.
I declare independence from Apple (and mean it this time)
Six years ago today I penned my personal Declaration of Independence from Apple, nearly a month after pledging to boycott the company's products and services—and I did, only to quietly stop six months later. They say history repeats, eh? On this July 4th, I forsake the fruit-logo company once more. From Apple I return to Google, choosing one digital lifestyle over the other—and not for the first time, as some commenters will be quick to argue.
Past to present: By summer 2012, I viewed various patent assaults by Apple against Samsung and others as competition by litigation, not innovation. Weighing on my decision in 2018 is a newer—and more aggressive—attack against Qualcomm, which headquarters are in San Diego (my city of residence). While a Qualcomm customer, Apple also is a fierce chip competitor that seeks to bolster margins by paying less for patents—and by invalidating or diminishing them, destabilize competition from the Android Army.
Google responds to Gmail privacy concerns: 'we're not reading your emails'
Another day, another privacy concern. Following a Wall Street Journal story about the access third party apps have to Gmail data, we wrote about how to stop it. While the WSJ did not really make any major new revelations, it did manage to reignite the conversation about privacy, and Google has responded to storm that has built up around it.
The company has used a blog post to respond to the concerns raised by the Wall Street Journal, insisting that it carefully vets any third party that has access to sensitive data. The task has been left to Suzanne Frey -- director of security, trust and privacy at Google Cloud -- to limit the damage caused by the article.
How to stop your private Gmail messages being read by third parties
When Gmail first launched back in 2004, people were concerned about it because Google was scanning incoming messages in order to be able to present users with relevant, personalized adverts based on the email content.
The feature was finally dropped a year ago, in a move welcomed by privacy advocates, but it turns out employees of third-party app developers may well have been reading your private messages.
Open source champion Google now a Linux Foundation Platinum Member
Google is a huge proponent of open source. The company is constantly releasing projects on GitHub -- a huge win for the open source community. Not to mention, Google leverages one of the most important open source projects for its operating systems -- the Linux kernel. Both Android and Chrome OS, for instance, are Linux-based.
Today, Google becomes a Platinum Member of the Linux Foundation. This is big news, as not only will Google benefit from the platinum perks, but arguably more importantly, the Linux community will experience a huge financial win. You see, the annual cost for being a platinum member is $500,000!
Google Cloud Platform is gaining Cloud Filestore to offer a file system interface to users
Google has announced a new storage option for developers using Google Cloud Platform. The new Cloud Filestore is due to launch in beta next month, and it provides a managed NAS in the cloud.
Google describes Cloud Filestore as a "managed file storage for applications that require a file system interface and a shared file system", and the aim is to offer higher performance to users that need it than the existing options do.
Google rebrands its advertising line-up -- bye bye to AdWords and DoubleClick, hello to Google Ads
Google has acknowledged that its array of ad products has caused "a lot of confusion", and after listening to feedback has decided to roll out a rebrand. On the face of it, this is just a name change that sees AdWords and DoubleClick laid to rest, but there are also new tools being introduced.
Let's get the name changes out of the way first. AdWords has been rebranded to Google Ads; DoubleClick Digital Marketing and Google Analytics 360 now come under the Google Marketing Platform umbrella; and DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers are now called Google Ad Manager. But there's more.
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