Articles about Google

When Google established Alphabet as a parent company for itself, things got very confusing. The newly established company became obsessed with establishing sub-company names under all letters of the alphabet -- seriously. In other words, Alphabet was taking its namesake way too literally. It felt forced and not at all organic.

Ultimately, it was decided that Nest Labs would be separated from Google, so it could represent the "N" for Alphabet. This has proven to be quite foolish, as it has seemingly slowed Google's innovation in the smart home market. Since then, Amazon has been making huge strides in the smart home segment. Google has apparently had enough of having its lunch eaten by an online bookseller. As of today, the Google and Nest Labs hardware teams are together again.

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The world is currently undergoing a cord cutting revolution. Thanks to the internet, many consumers are being empowered to dump their cable provider and switch to a streaming option. This is sort of ironic, as quite often, the internet being used to stream is provided by the TV provider that is being dumped. Ultimately, the cable company becomes nothing more than an ISP. You know what? Maybe that is how it should be.

Cordcutters have many internet-based TV providers from which to choose these days, but one of the most attractive is offered by Google. The search giant’s YouTube TV service is quite intriguing thanks to its paltry $35 monthly fee (often much less than cable TV). Starting today, the service will become even more popular, as it is now available for Roku and Apple TV.

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The clandestine mining of cryptocurrency is something that we have seen in various forms over the last year or so, in website code and Android apps. A new discovery by security firm Trend Micro shows that hackers have found a way to inject Coinhive mining code into ads that appear on YouTube.

The crypto-jacking technique means that hackers have been able to profit by using other people's CPU time to mine the Monero cryptocurrency while they watch videos. Trend Micro reports that there has been a huge increase in Coinhive web miner detections in recent days, with hackers abusing Google's DoubleClick to distribute the code through big sites including YouTube.

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Using any smartphone means having to work within its storage limitations. The prevalence of cloud services has taken some of the strain off physical storage, but running out of room locally can still be an issue.

To help with this problem, Google offers Files Go. Now the company has updated the app to make it an even more powerful tool for freeing up space. The app can now handle SD cards and tablets, and includes a new option to change file associations.

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Google is a company that's synonymous with advertisements. It makes huge amounts of money from delivering carefully targeted ads, much to the chagrin of those on the receiving end. To make life a little more bearable -- although not ad-free -- the company is making changes to Ads Settings and the Mute This Ad feature.

The changes affect not only the millions of websites that are filled with ads delivered through Google, but also the myriad of apps that are ad-supported. The latest changes make it possible to mute ad reminders, and also increases the level of control users have over ad muting.

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Google has added a new audiobooks section to its Play Store. The announcement was widely expected, as over the weekend imagery came to light suggesting Google had plans to start selling audiobooks -- but no one knew quite how far off it might be.

There's some good news for anyone who has been put off by the likes of Audible in the past -- audiobooks in Google Play are being offered without a subscription. Available in 45 countries and nine languages, Google offers support for Android, iOS and Google Assistant.

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When out and about, you may well find that you use free public Wi-Fi connections. The chances are that you use more than one as you battle to find one that offers a decent speed. With Android 8.1 Oreo, Google has a new feature that will help to make your life easier.

As the company has been talking about for a little while, Oreo now lets you see the speed of a Wi-Fi connection before you decide if you want to connect or not.

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After you've used a messaging app, it's hard to go back to SMS. You can't share files, get read receipts, group chats or share emoji. It's archaic, but the good news is that there is an alternative.

It's called Rich Communication Services and it offers many of the features that we have come to love on messaging apps. Google is one of the biggest adopters, offering support for RCS in its Android Messages app. And, today, it announces that Huawei, one of the largest Android vendors, will integrate it in its Android smartphones.

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YouTube is to subject large numbers of videos to manual review in an attempt to ensure that they are "ad-friendly." Google says that "stricter criteria for monetization" will be introduced as it tries to avoid further controversies such as Logan Paul's video that featured a dead body.

The changes are likely to mean that some YouTubers will lose money when they are introduced in February. Google is also making changes to the requirements that need to be met to join the YouTube Partner Program.

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Whenever a business gets a new website it wants to see it ranking highly in search results. But getting to the top in Google and other search engines is a long game, according to SEO company Ahrefs.

UK web design company The Website Group has produced an infographic based on the Ahrefs research. It shows that -- based on random keywords -- the top 10 ranking pages on Google are on average more than two years old.

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Google has removed more than 60 games from the Play Store after security firm Check Point discovered they were laced with malware and serving up porn ads. Check Point claims that the games were aimed at children, but Google says this was not the case.

The AdultSwine malware was found to be bundled in a number of games, many of which had been downloaded millions of times. As well as displaying pornographic ads, the malware also tried to trick users into installing fake security tools, and also encouraged people to register for expensive premium services.

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A new beta of the Android tweaking tool Xposed Framework has been released. The big news is that the release brings support for Oreo, something of a surprise considering how recently Google pushed the latest version of its mobile operating system out of the door.

The latest Xposed Framework release comes mere months after Nougat support was added. While the Oreo-supporting release will be welcomed by mobile tweakers, the developer says it should be treated as a beta, and may be buggy.

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The Bitcoin bubble means there is a massive interest in cryptocurrencies, particularly from those looking for an easy way to make a quick buck. It's also led to secretive mining tools making use of people's CPUs without their knowledge, mining for profitable cryptocurrency for persons unknown.

We've seen this with both websites and browser extensions, and now a security researcher has discovered a series of fake Android apps harboring an undisclosed Coinhive cryptocurrency miner. The repackaged APKs take advantage of the CPUs of the smartphones the apps are installed on.

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Many people diss Chromebooks because they simply don't understand them. No, Chrome OS -- the operating system that powers these laptops -- is not just a glorified web browser. Actually, the OS is a full Linux distribution that is both extremely secure and easy to use. True, they can be deficient for some tasks, such as video editing and hardcore gaming, but let's be honest -- not everyone has those needs. If everything you do is in a browser -- email, web surfing, social media, YouTube, Netflix, etc. -- there is no reason to run Windows and open yourself up to malware and other bad things. Hell, Chromebooks even have Microsoft Office support these days!

Today, Acer unveils its latest Chromebook 11, and it is absolutely beautiful. The 11.6-inch Chrome OS laptop comes with 4GB of RAM by default, plus your choice of either 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage. There is even an optional touch-screen variant, which will come in handy for its Google Play Android app support. Road warriors will appreciate the impressive 10-hour battery life. The Celeron processor is passively cooled, meaning there are no fans to bother you with noise.

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The revelations about the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities affecting millions of processors around the world has raised a huge number of questions for many people. While businesses and large organizations are rushing to ensure that their systems -- and their data -- are protected, the average computer user has been left wondering what on Earth is going on.

While there are a lot of very technical write-ups about the implications of the Spectre and Meltdown bugs, as well as explanations of just how the exploit works, the average Joe has been left somewhat in the dark. To try to remedy this, Google has answered a series of questions relating to the security issues.

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