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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Everyone has a digital footprint these days, and it can be terrifying to think about the amount of personal information stored online in various accounts. You may have resolved to clean up your act and close a few of your accounts, and this is where Deseat.me can help.

The site takes advantage of the fact that many of your online accounts are linked together by a common thread -- Google. By signing into the site with your Google credentials, Deseat.me will find all of your linked accounts and give you the option of wiping them out in one fell swoop.

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Google Sites recently underwent something of a redesign and it was made available to a select group of testers. Now the website building tool is available for everyone to use.

For anyone who has used any of Google's online apps, Sites will be immediately familiar. Like so many web building tools, it eschews HTML in favour of a WYSIWYG interface, meaning that even web novices can get a site up and running easily.

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Google has announced that it has acquired Qwiklabs in order to train developers how to use its cloud services.

Qwiklabs is designed as a way to give developers and IT professionals a hands-on learning platform from which they can gain experience with cloud platforms and the way in which they operate. The company launched in 2012 and its primary focus is teaching its customers how to use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

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Google is no stranger to working with user data, but its latest partnership with the National Health Service sees the company entering unchartered waters. Having already been granted access to the records of more than 1.6 million patients in London, Google's DeepMind will be used by the NHS to alert medical staff to the condition of people under their care.

Given Google's track record of using data gathered from its users as part of its ad business, there are understandable concerns from privacy groups about the company's involvement. But data shared with DeepMind will not make its way to Google itself, and will also be encrypted as an extra level of security. But is artificial intelligence really the future of medicine?

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Black Friday can be a great way to bag yourself a bargain, but it can also be a nightmare in terms of stress. If you're looking to save a few bucks in the run-up to Christmas but want to avoid the Black Friday crowds, Google could just be able to help.

Google Search and Google Maps now not only show you the times of day that a particular store, bar or other location tends to be busy, there's now also real-time updates about just how busy places are. Armed with this information you can time your shopping trips more effectively. But Google has more to offer to ease the pain of Black Friday shopping trips.

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Google has announced that early next year it will be adding graphics processing units (GPUs) as a service to its Cloud Platform in order to better compete with its rivals.

GPU as a service is already available on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM's Bluemix, but Google's Cloud Platform will seek to differentiate itself by offering a variety of GPUs for customers to choose from. The company will allow users the option to use two AMD FirePro S9300s or either a Nvidia Tesla P100 or K80.

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Fake news stories are on the rise, spreading across the internet via social media. They spread at a quickening rate thanks, in large part, to well-known people sharing them. Now some services are cracking down on these stories, but is it too late?

Just recently we learned that both Google and Facebook are clamping down on the spread of fake news stories, with Google withholding ads that appear on sites it deems to contain misleading content.

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Google has just announced that it will be offering free digital skills training to everyone in the UK with the aim of ensuring that the country's population is able to take advantage of its online tools.

The company's CEO Sundar Pichai offered further details regarding Google's latest program, saying: "No matter where you live, no matter where you're from, no matter what your job is – you deserve access to all the information, education, and opportunity the web has to offer. Our aim is to make sure that every individual and business in the UK has the support they need to make the most of online tools to innovate, compete and have fruitful careers in the digital age".

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Despite the name, smartphones are generally used for anything but traditional phone related activities -- and one of the most popular usages of the devices is snapping photographs. But while an entire generation of photographers has grown up with digital photography, there are plenty of physical photos out there waiting to be digitized.

Google thinks it has the answer in the form of PhotoScan. The app is available for iOS and Android, and it transforms your smartphone into a scanner so you can preserve old photos. Unsurprisingly, it is packed with smarts to simplify the whole process, and it all ties in neatly with Google Photos.

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The internet has made the world feel smaller, connecting people all over Earth. The problem? Many of us speak different laguages! Sure, some of you speak multiple languages, but for many of us -- including yours truly -- one is all we know.

Thankfully, translation services -- such as Google Translate -- removes barriers, allowing people to more easily communicate despite language differences. Today, the search giant announces that it has massively improved its service thanks to Neural Machine Translation technology.

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