Articles about Google

When you head away on your travels, we always recommend hiring a car to find the best locations and get away from the tourists. But, hiring a car and driving around a new city can be time-consuming and stressful when you look for a location to park your car.

We’re not sure about everyone else, but we have a tendency to over-rely on the fantastic Google Maps and/or Waze when travelling as both apps will direct you to your destination, usually offering the quickest method available, whilst you focus on your driving.

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Hurricane Harvey has proven to be quite the devastating storm for Texas. The flooding and high winds have damaged property, but even worse, it has caused injuries and fatalities too. Yes, people actually died as a result of Harvey -- heartbreaking. Remember, folks, you can replace belongings, but not your life. Here at BetaNews, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the deceased.

Thankfully, many people and organizations are donating both money and resources to help those affected by the hurricane. One of those businesses, Google (which has 450 employees in Texas), is stepping up in a big way. The company is donating $250,000 plus matching employee donations up to the same amount. When the company's donations are added to its employee donations, it could potentially be more than $750,000 when all is said and done. Money aside, the search giant is leveraging its technologies to spread information and assist where needed, such as with its SOS Alerts on search results and a specialized "Harvey Crisis Map."

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Google recently extended its Google Lunar X-Prize deadline to March 31, 2018, apparently giving the five remaining teams a little longer to vie for the $20 million top prize. But there’s a mystery here that suggests two vying reasons for the change -- one sincere and the other cynical. The final answer may turn out to be a combination of both.

The Google Lunar X-Prize was announced in 2007, giving teams five years to put their landers on the Moon and drive around, sending back live HD video of the action. Though 30 teams eventually signed-up, none of them made it to the Moon by 2012. Or 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, or so far in 2017.

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Through the use of an advertising software development kit contained in 500 apps on the Google Play Store, cybercriminals were able to spy on users and even infect their mobile devices with malware.

That's according to security firm Lookout, which discovered that the Android apps in question all had the lgexin ad SDK built into them which gave unauthorized third parties access to user devices.

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To make it quicker to perform searches using Google Maps, you might want to consider adding the site as a search engine in Chrome. This will save you having to manually visit the site before you start a search, and it's a pretty neat option.

In fact, we’re going to show you how to add Google Maps to Chrome as a search engine in a couple of ways. The first is a simple option to look for a place on Google Maps. The second enables you to search for directions from your home address to your desired destination. Here's what you need to do.

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With the Pixel and Pixel XL on the market for nearly a year and Android 8.0 Oreo launched this week, it will not be long until Google takes the wraps off the second-generation Pixel smartphones. Question is, when can we expect the big announcement to be made?

Considering that Android 8.0 Oreo arrived one year after its predecessor, it is likely that Google will wait until early-October to unveil the Pixel 2 and Pixel XL 2. Last year, that's when it announced the first-generation. And a tweet from famous leaker Evan Blass lends credence to this theory.

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In an effort to better compete against Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud computing space, Google will this week reveal the technical details of its new Titan computer chip designed to protected the data centers powering its cloud services.

Apparently the chip is the size of a small stud earring and the search company has already installed it in many of the servers and network cards that comprise its own massive data centers. Titan scans network hardware to detect if any unauthorized changes have been made and if so the chip will prevent it from booting up.

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Chromebooks are gaining traction because they are simple, easy to use and offer great value. For consumers, they can be fantastic options. For enterprises, however, Chrome OS needs to go the extra mile in order to become more attractive.

Google is well aware of the longer list of needs that enterprises have, as compared to consumers, which is why it has introduced a new plan, called Chrome Enterprise, that adds a whole host of new features designed specifically with business customers in mind.

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When you install Google Chrome Beta or Dev versions on your Windows computer, it overwrites and replaces the stable version. This keeps things fairly simple and neat, as home users won't have multiple versions of Chrome on their PC. The problem with that, however, is the Beta and Dev versions really aren't intended for home users -- even though some still use them. Those unstable versions are intended for testing, meaning having them run side-by-side, like with the Canary builds, would actually be preferable.

Thankfully, Google has now decided to change the default behavior on Windows so that Google Chrome stable can run side-by-side with both the Beta and Dev variants. This means a web developer, for instance, can easily test their page with all three builds at the same time. When you include Canary, that means you could have, in theory, four variants of Chrome at different development stages running at once. Unfortunately, macOS users are excluded from this side-by-side fun -- for now at least.

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Yesterday Google finally revealed Android 8.0, also known as Oreo. Aside from the name, release date and the question of whether individual handsets will be treated to an upgrade, the query on most Android users' lips is "what's new?".

Google says that one of the primary aims with Oreo was to create "fluid experiences," as well as improving speed and efficiency. The company says that it is "smarter, faster, more powerful and sweeter than ever" -- but what does this actually mean in terms of new features?

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Look, we all knew Android 8.0 would probably be called "Oreo," and we now have confirmation. Today, Google releases 8.0 of its Android operating system and officially names it "Oreo" after the sandwich cookie. This is the search-giant's second time partnering with a brand for a dessert name, with the other time being "Kit Kat". Strangely, Google even used the solar eclipse to promote the Oreo name.

Truth be told, it does feel kind of cheap and commercialized to have a corporate product tie-in. After all, if Windows 10 was named "Slim Jim," for example, and Microsoft urged you to snap into its operating system, consumers would be up in arms. When Google does, it, however, people celebrate.

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To make it easier for people to access up to date information about what is going on the world, YouTube is adding a "Breaking News" section to its website and mobile apps.

The new section takes the form of an additional video carousel, and it provides access to new stories from a number of sources. At the moment, not all users are seeing the Breaking News carousel, and Google has not made an official announcement about it, but it does seem to be spreading out at the moment.

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Google is undeniably the best search engine for results -- concerns about privacy be damned. Alternatives such as Bing and DuckDuckGo aren't terrible, but the optimal experience still comes from Google -- for now.

Today, Google announces a cool new search feature for its Android operating system. When using either the Chrome web browser or the official Google app, you will now sometimes see video previews in results. In other words, rather than needing to click a video to load it entirely, you can instead see a brief snippet, allowing you to see if the video should meet your needs.

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Box has revealed a major upgrade to its cloud content management systems thanks to a new partnership with Google.

The online storage giant will now use Google's Cloud Vision platform to improve its image recognition capabilities, allowing enterprises a quicker way to identify key insights from the images uploaded into its service as part of unstructured data.

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On Monday August 21, there are two big events to look forward to: the total solar eclipse, and the launch of Android O. Google is tying the two together with the launch of a new site counting down to the two events.

With the launch of the eagerly anticipated Android O (will the name be Oreo, Oatmeal cookie... or something else?), another waiting game starts. Mobile owners around the world will be playing the "will my handset get the update this time around or not?" game. In the meantime, check out the site for eclipse and Android O live streams.

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