Articles about Google

When you update apps over a cellular network you go through your data plan more quickly -- and there is nothing that you can do about that. However, Google has found a way to make sure that Android users reach their data limit later rather than sooner.

Using the File-By-File patching technique, Google says that it is able to reduce the size of update files by an average of 65 percent. And, in some cases, the reduction can even exceed 90 percent. But how much data can you actually expect to save?

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Faced with competition from the likes of Microsoft Teams, Slack is strengthening its partnership with Google to bring greater cloud integration to users.

The beloved communication tool is teaming up with Google Cloud to improve Google Drive support, but there's also support for bots in the form of Drive Bot. Security and sharing is also in line for improvements, and the recently-announced Team Drives from Google will also be supported.

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If you have a 4K TV or monitor, you can enjoy Ultra HD content from the likes of YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon. You can get 4K Blu-rays, but you’ll need a compatible player, and they aren’t that cheap.

Starting today, Google is offering a new way to get your hands on the latest 4K resolution movies.

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Big companies like to be seen to be doing their bit, particularly when it comes to the environment, and tech companies are no different. Google -- being one of the biggest companies in the world -- has huge energy requirements, and it's looking to help address the problem of climate change.

The company has already done a lot to increase the energy efficiency of its data centers, but in 2017 it is going further. It says that it will be fully powered by renewable energy from next year, and that includes both data centers and offices.

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Terrorism is a daily threat to our freedoms. It is unfortunate, as we used to be able to go throughout our days without the thought of violence. Now, it dominates the news. Heck, when I am in Penn Station in NYC, I see soldiers with machine guns. Sigh.

Unfortunately, terrorists thrive on the internet too. Using social media and video platforms like YouTube, these evil-doers look to recruit new members while sharing propaganda. Today, Google announces that it is partnering with some major players -- Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter -- to fight online terrorism with a special database. The partners will look to protect user privacy in the process.

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If a query becomes popular enough on Google, it will show up as an autocomplete suggestion after you type the first words. For instance, if you write "what's my" one of the things that Google will propose is "what's my IP". That's to help you find what you are looking for more quickly. But there's a dark side to it: if left alone, it can expose you to some pretty offensive searches.

Case in point is "are Jews evil", which my colleague Mark Wilson wrote about earlier. Yes, a high enough number of users searched for those exact terms that it showed up as an autocomplete suggestion -- until Google decided to do something about it. Mark strongly believes that's wrong, but his arguments are childish. Why? Well, because if Google does nothing, your young children can also see "how to rape a woman" or "how to murder your mother" as autocomplete suggestions after writing "how to" in Google, just because some people wanted to make those queries popular. Think about it, and I mean really think about it, and let me know if that's something you would like to see happen. Could you live with it if, for instance, your easily influenced six year old stabs someone, as a result? Scary thought, isn't it?

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The announcement that Netflix now allows viewers to download videos for offline viewing caused understandable excitement among subscribers. Of course, the key concern -- particularly with mobile devices -- is storage space. But thanks to a tweaked codec, Netflix has your back.

If you were worried that you might not be able to fit many episodes of your favorite shows on your phone or tablet, fear not. For Android users, Netflix opted to use the super-efficient VP9 codec, but as this isn’t supported by Apple, it had to think outside the box a little and ended up plumping for a custom H.264/AVC High codec for iOS users. The space savings are impressive.

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Google is making it easy to share your location with your friends and family, introducing a new Android app, called Trusted Contacts, that lets select contacts know exactly where you are at any given time.

Google has designed Trusted Contacts so that if you do not manually accept a request within five minutes it will automatically share your location with that contact. This should come in handy when you are unable to pick up your smartphone or cannot hear it ring.

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Over the last few days there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the discovery that if you type "are Jews" into Google, one of the suggested searches is "are Jews evil". The same is true for the search "are women" and "are Muslims" ("bad" being the suggestion in the third instance). Or at least it was the case.

Following cries of anti-Semitism, the search giant folded like a moist tissue and remove the "offensive" suggestion. Clearly Google is able to do -- by and large -- whatever the hell it wants... but that doesn’t make it right. And the removal of the "are Jews evil" suggestion is not only wrong, but also worrying and dangerous. If you disagree you can let off steam in the comments and cast a vote in the poll, but hear me out first.

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As the year draws to a close, it's traditional to look back and pick out some highlights. This is precisely what Google has done, drawing up a list of the 'Best of 2016' from Google Play.

Covering books, TV shows, movies, streaming songs, apps and games, there are lots of big names listed in the rundown of what has been trending throughout the year around the globe. The likes of Pokémon GO make an unsurprising appearance, as do Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Justin Bieber, Deadpool, and The Girl on the Train -- but did your favorite make the list?

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As it does every year, Google has just launched its Santa Tracker in the run-up to Christmas. Despite the name, this is about much more than watching Santa make his journey around the globe -- there's a bunch of fun and games to be enjoyed too.

As well as the online version of Santa Tracker, there's also an Android app, and even an app for Android Wear smartwatches. As we make our way through December, the Santa Tracker serves as an advent calendar, with a new treat revealed each day.

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While 1080p may look "good enough" to you, once you move to a higher resolution display, it is hard to go back. Prices for both 4K monitors and televisions continue to drop, meaning more and more consumers are buying them. During this past Black Friday, there were many such TVs being offered with big discounts.

Now that there are a healthy amount of these displays in the wild, content creators will be more motivated to release content in that resolution -- movies, TV, and video games. While Google added 4K playback to YouTube years ago, it did not offer live video streaming in that resolution. Today this changes, as the video site finally gets 4K live streaming -- including 360-degree streams. Best of all? Watching the streams won't require Microsoft Edge!

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Researchers at cyber security company Check Point have uncovered a new malware variant that has breached more than a million accounts and is infecting over 13,000 Android devices a day.

Called Gooligan, the malware roots Android devices and steals email addresses and authentication tokens stored on them. With this information, attackers are able to access users' sensitive data from Gmail, Google Photos, Google Docs, Google Play, and G Suite.

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Diabetes is a hell of a disease. While many people view it as nothing more than the inability to eat sweets, it is actually much more devastating than just that. If untreated, having high glucose levels can wreak havoc on a patient's body -- these folks can go blind, have limbs amputated, or worst of all, die.

Diabetic eye disease is caused by retinopathy. Affected diabetics can have small tears inside the eye, causing bleeding. Over time, they can lose vision, and ultimately, they can go blind. Luckily, Google has been trying to use machine learning to detect diabetic retinopathy. Guess what? The search giant has seen much success. Not only are the computers able to detect the disease at the same level as ophthalmologists, but Google is actually slightly better!

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Google and photography seem to go hand in hand. The company's new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones take very high-quality pictures, while its Photos app for Android and iOS is a brilliant way to both store and categorize images in the cloud.

Today, Google takes its passion for photography to another level with an all-new app for macOS. Dubbed 'Featured Photos Screensaver' it creates a screensaver using images that are sourced from user photos which were uploaded to Google+. Don't worry about privacy, folks -- these are images that users have agreed to share. Google+ photographers can choose to opt-out if they prefer.

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