Articles about Google

Amazon rolled out a selection of new Echo products a week ago, in a move designed to cement the company’s position as the leader of voice assistant technology.

At its hardware event today, Google announced its Echo Dot competitor, called the Home Mini. A companion to the Google Home, it will offer much the same functionality, but in a far smaller, cheaper package.

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Google has unveiled the latest collections of best games and apps for Android. The company introduced the Android Excellence program earlier in the year, and now it has taken the wraps off the lists for Fall 2017.

These are not necessarily new titles, so as you browse through the collections you're likely to see a number of familiar names. In all, there are dozens of Android Excellence Apps and Android Excellence Games.

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Google’s Pixel smartphones were among the best Android flagships released last year, and Google is expected to announce their successors today.

In addition to the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones, we’re also expecting the search giant to reveal other products, including a new Google Home, a new Daydream headset, and a new Chromebook.

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Google has released a new beta version of Android Wear, but it's an update that's going to be of interest to a very limited number of people. For testing in the real world, the beta is only compatible with the LG Watch Sport.

While this may sound like a serious limitation -- well, it is really -- Google is quick to point out that anyone can try out the beta by installing the Android emulator. But what can you expect to find in this new release?

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Google has announced changes to the requirements it places on websites that provide news on a subscription basis. With a large number of news sites locking content away behind a paywall, Google had required publishers to provide people with access to three free articles per day or face demotion in search results.

Scrapping what was known as the First Click Free Policy, Google is dropping any such requirement to provide free access to content. A new approach -- Flexible Sampling -- lets publishers decide how many, if any, free articles they provide.

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It recently came to light that Google had killed off NFC Smart Lock in Android -- without telling anyone. Now the company has come clean about just why the feature was given the chop.

Google says that "in the case of NFC unlock, we've seen extremely low usage," adding that there are now many more ways of unlocking Android devices. But while Google points to features such as On-Body detection, fingerprint scanning and Trusted Places, fans of the missing feature say that none of these are comparable.

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As Android is based on Linux, the existing two-year lifecycle for Long Term Support (LTS) kernels is restrictively short. But, during a presentation about Android's Project Treble, Google's Iliyan Malchev announced that this is going to -- appropriately -- treble to six years.

This will address what has become a serious issue for chip-makers. During the production process, they need to pick the most recent LTS kernel to work with to ensure longevity, but the length of time it takes to design and produce chips means that much of the two years of support is used up by the time of release.

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After a period of beta testing, Google's new parental control system for Android and iOS -- Family Link -- has been launched to the public. Google says that the feature makes "Android better for kids and families," and it places parents in control of what their kids can do.

The feature is available to everyone in the US without the need for an invite (the beta period was invite-only), and Google describes the tools as being a way to bring kids and their parents into the Android ecosystem. It can be used from an Android phone or an iPhone to control kids' use of an Android device.

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Android users have been slowly discovering that Google has killed off NFC Smart Unlock. The feature, which makes it possible to unlock a phone with an NFC device such as a ring or bracelet, has been discontinued without explanation.

Earlier in the month, Android users started to post messages on Google's Issue Tracker website, indicating that the feature was no longer available to them. Three weeks later, Google has finally responded, indicating that NFC Smart Unlock has been deprecated.

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Google Cloud Platform has introduced per-second billing for App Engine, Cloud Dataproc, Compute Engine and Container Engine users, following a similar announcement made by rival AWS last week.

However, while Amazon's cloud arm announced that the new pricing scheme, which involves a one-minute minimum, will apply to EC2 customers starting October 2, the per-second billing on Google Cloud Platform's aforementioned cloud services is live now. Previously, customers were billed by the minute.

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If you have heard Alexa utter the message "Currently, Google is not supporting YouTube on Echo Show," you'll be aware of the issue: Google has pulled YouTube from the Amazon Echo Show.

Google says that Amazon's Echo-with-a-screen creates a "broken user experience", and it seems the company would rather there was no customer experience than a broken one. A war of words has erupted between the two companies, and neither is particularly forthcoming with detail.

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Employees given one of the most popular choices of Android smartphones can now expect their devices to arrive preconfigured, meaning they can use them out of the box without the typical tedious -- albeit necessary -- setup process.

A new tool rolled out by Google, called zero-touch enrolment, aims to result in less work for both administrators and end-users. Admins will be sure all corporate policies are always in place, and end users only need to log in to start using their new smartphone.

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Apple is switching from Microsoft Bing to Google search to power Siri and Search in iOS, and Spotlight in macOS. The changeover is taking place right now, and should be complete by the end of the day.

The search switch coincides with the launch of macOS High Sierra, but Mac users will find that Bing will still be used for image searches in both Siri and Spotlight.

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Updating Android can be a painful experience depending on the handset you have and the carrier you're with. You might hear that an update is available, but find nothing shows up when you hit the Check For Update button. Now this should be changing... and not just for Oreo users.

Many Android users will have experienced the frustration of knowing full well that there is an update available for their device, but it's not offered up automatically. Even more annoyingly, it's often the case that even when performing a manual check, updates remain unavailable for download. Google has announced that: "the button in Settings to check for an update actually works now," so there should be no need for sideloading OTA updates.

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All of the major players have been busy creating "lite" versions of their apps and online experiences. Microsoft has LinkedIn Lite, Facebook has both Facebook Lite and Facebook Messenger Lite, and Google has its Search Lite app.

Back in April, Twitter decided to get in on the lite action by launching Twitter Lite, a cut-down, data-friendly version of its mobile website. Now the micro-blogging service has gone further and released a Twitter Lite app.

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