Uber and Waymo make surprise settlement over claims of stolen trade secrets
Uber has agreed to a settlement with Google's self-driving technology unit, Waymo, over claims that that the company stole trade secrets during the acquisition of Otto. Google's parent company, Alphabet, sued Uber a year ago, and now a payment of $245 million has been agreed.
The financial settlement to be received by Waymo includes 0.34 percent of Uber's equity based on a valuation of $72 billion. Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, expressed "regret" about the matter, and said he wanted to correct "mistakes of the past."
India hits Google with $21 million fine for search bias
Google is certainly no stranger to accusations of abusing its position to its own advantage, and the company has now been fined 1.36 billion rupees ($21.17 million) by India's antitrust watchdog.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) said Google was guilty of "search bias" and had been abusing its dominance in online web search and online search advertising. Particular criticism was leveled at Google's promotion of its own flight search page.
Google Chrome to mark all non-HTTPS websites "not secure"
While Firefox has been much better lately, Chrome remains the best overall web browser. Quite frankly, it isn’t a very fair fight, as Google essentially has unlimited resources to innovate. Chrome is fast, feature-full, and very secure. It does a great job of delivering the web to consumers while also helping to keep them safe.
Continuing its trend of protecting Chrome users, Google today makes a big announcement regarding web safety. Starting in July of this year, all HTTP websites will be marked as "not secure." This follows the company marking just some sites this way.
Google and Nest Labs are together again, and Amazon should watch its back
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.
Google brings YouTube TV to Roku and Apple TV
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.
Hackers hijack YouTube ads with Coinhive to mine Monero cryptocurrency
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.
Google tweaks Files Go to make it easier to free up space on your Android device and change file associations
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.
Google grants users more control over ads
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.
Now you can buy audiobooks from Google Play
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.
Android 8.1 Oreo shows the speed of public Wi-Fi before you connect
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.
Huawei will preload Android Messages on its Android smartphones
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.
YouTube updates its video review process yet again to avoid another problem like Logan Paul
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.
Getting a good Google ranking is a long game
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.
Google kicks over 60 games out of the Play Store for serving up porn ads via AdultSwine malware
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.
Xposed Framework beta adds support for Android Oreo
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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