Salon.com > Google http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Google antitrust claims dropped by FTC http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/google_antitrust_claims_dropped_by_ftc/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/google_antitrust_claims_dropped_by_ftc/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 20:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13161136 WASHINGTON -- Google is agreeing to license certain patents to mobile phone rivals and stop a practice of including snippets from other websites in its search results as part of a settlement to end a 19-month investigation into the search leader's business practices, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday.

U.S. antitrust regulators added that they have found no evidence to claims that Google unfairly favors its own services in search results.

Google did agree to license patents deemed to be "essential" for rival mobile devices such as Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and smartphones running on a Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software. Some of the patents in question came as part of Google's $12.4 billion acquisition of device maker Motorola Mobility Holdings earlier this year.

Regulators say Google is also promising that upon request, it will exclude snippets copied from other websites in its summaries of key information, even though the company had insisted the practice is legal under the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Despite the fair-use practice, Google already had scaled back on the amount of cribbing, or "scraping," of online content after business review site Yelp Inc. lodged one of the complaints that triggered the FTC investigation.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/google_antitrust_claims_dropped_by_ftc/feed/ 1 Top 10 Wikipedia pages of 2012 http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/top_wikipedia_pages_of_2012/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/top_wikipedia_pages_of_2012/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:29:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13156051 Johan Gunnarsson, a computer science student in Lund, Sweden, has assembled a list of the most viewed Wikipedia pages of 2012.

The Daily Dot speculates, probably correctly, that the top two answers, "Facebook" and "Wiki" owe their popularity more to clumsy computer users than genuine curiosity. The rest of the list, though, can be read as a guide to the things people want to know about that they don't want others to know they want to know about. Except maybe Google.

1) Facebook

2) Wiki

3) Deaths in 2012

4) "One Direction"

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/top_wikipedia_pages_of_2012/feed/ 3 Android surge shakes Apple http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/android_surge_shakes_apple/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/android_surge_shakes_apple/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:27:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13155690 Android phones are taking a bite out of Apple.

As Apple stock continues it’s a long steep slide, investors and market watchers are speculating about whether the Cupertino, Calif.-based company can regain the mojo that made it a market favorite. But a report in today’s Financial Times (subscription required) suggests that the Android platform, now installed on three out of four smartphones sold worldwide, is exercising a gravitational pull on app developers.

Google’s Android has long lagged behind Apple in the number of available apps and the number of apps sold, but the balance appears to be shifting. “Android is the platform of growth,” Misha Lyalin, CEO of Zeptolab, which puts out the popular game “Cut the Rope” told the paper.

The article quotes one techie who personifies the platform rift:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/android_surge_shakes_apple/feed/ 9 Google rescues iPhone 5 maps http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/google_rescues_iphone_5_maps/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/google_rescues_iphone_5_maps/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:24:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13123661 It's always heartwarming when one wildly profitable technology company can come to the assistance of an even more wildly profitable technology company.

In the second most embarrassing tech flub of the year, (Facebook's IPO) Apple's iPhone 5 included a new but comically flawed maps program. The release resulted in the firing of an executive and a rare public setback for the company. In cartography, it turns out, experience matters and now Google has released a new maps app for sometimes rival Apple's flagship phone. In a near worshipful review, New York Times gadget fiend David Pogue finds that Google's maps app is accurate:

Hundreds of Google employees have spent years hand-editing the maps, fixing the thousands of errors that people report every day. (In the new app, you report a mistake just by shaking the phone.) And since 2006, Google’s Street View vehicles have trawled 3,000 cities, photographing and confirming the cartographical accuracy of five million miles of roads.

Now iPhone users won't be bumping into each other because they're lost, they'll be bumping into each other because they're staring at the maps app on their iPhones.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/google_rescues_iphone_5_maps/feed/ 5 Drones for catching poachers http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/drones_for_catching_poachers/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/drones_for_catching_poachers/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 20:03:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13123013 The media conversation about drones tends to be couched in stories about shadow wars, civilian deaths or creeping surveillance. As such, it's all too easy to frame drone technology itself as per se a source of harm. But like any technologies, drones are simply apparatus for a plethora of tasks. Some we might like -- such as combating the poaching of endangered species.

As the Altantic reported Tuesday, Google is giving $5 million to fund a drone program for the World Wildlife Fund. The WWF has already piloted the program, using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to scan large areas of Nepal for poachers. With new funding, they can expand the program into sites in Africa and Asia where poachers are known to operate.

Across Africa and Asia illegal trade worth $7 to $10 billion annually threatens to annihilate elephants, rhinoceros, tigers and other endangered species, the Atlantic noted:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/drones_for_catching_poachers/feed/ 4 Apps for kids are secretly collecting information http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/apps_for_kids_are_secretly_collecting_information/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/apps_for_kids_are_secretly_collecting_information/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:52:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13120545 The Federal Trade Commission released a report Monday, which shows that most mobile apps for children are secretly collecting information and sharing it with third parties.

Of the Google Play and Apple Store apps reviewed, only 20 percent disclosed any information about the app’s privacy practices, while almost 60 percent of the apps were found to be transmitting information from a user's device to third parties, such as the app developers, advertising networks or analytics companies. Fourteen apps out of hundreds surveyed were also found to transmit the location of the device and the phone number, the FTC found.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act requires online service operators for children under 13 to get consent from parents before collecting and sharing personal information. Based on its findings, the FTC announced Monday investigations to determine if certain mobile apps developers have violated COPPA.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz commented in a written statement:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/apps_for_kids_are_secretly_collecting_information/feed/ 2 Google broke my heart http://www.salon.com/2012/12/04/google_broke_my_heart/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/04/google_broke_my_heart/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13111556 We were going to get married the following year, and I was going to continue writing while he got his new business off the ground, and we were going to be deliriously happy. That was the plan – well, that was my plan. His plan, if he ever had one, remained a mystery to me, and the whole romance faded away in a series of incremental withdrawals and muted hurts. He didn’t know he’d bewitched me with his playful intelligence, his unfairly beautiful body, his dogged search for higher meaning. He had no idea that he was the first man I’d ever genuinely loved, or that I wanted to have 10 kids with him. Worse, maybe he did know. Maybe he knew and didn’t care. I never could figure that out.

The relationship ended after just over a year, not terribly long by relationship standards. Except that it never really ended – not for me, anyway. We went separate ways, to be sure, severing all ties. But I continued to wonder what had become of him, and I filled in the blanks with the only resource available to me: my imagination. This was before Facebook, even before the Internet, and so I envisioned him doing it all – working hard, reading good books, grappling with life’s inevitable sorrows, and, yes, dating women whose faces and breasts were nicer than mine.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/04/google_broke_my_heart/feed/ 11 Bing vs. Google: Where should you shop? http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/bing_vs_google_where_should_you_shop/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/bing_vs_google_where_should_you_shop/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13110665 Tut, tut; this isn't what we call the Christmas spirit. Just in time for the full-throated final stretch roar of the holiday shopping season, Microsoft has launched a nasty attack on Google, accusing the search giant of betraying its principles by including paid advertisements for retail outlets in its Google Shopping search results.

In the beginning, Google preached, "Don't Be Evil" -- but that changed ... when Google Shopping announced a new initiative. Simply put, all of their shopping results are now paid ads ...

... We say that when you limit choices and rank them by payment, consumers get Scroogled. For an honest search result, try Bing.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/bing_vs_google_where_should_you_shop/feed/ 6 Google reveals government surveillance on the rise http://www.salon.com/2012/11/13/google_reveals_government_surveillance_on_the_rise/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/13/google_reveals_government_surveillance_on_the_rise/#comments Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:52:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13071411 Since 2010, Google has periodically published statistics on the number of government requests the tech giant receives. Its most recent Transparency Report -- the sixth in two years -- was released Tuesday and, according to Google's official blog, "one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise."

"In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts," wrote Google senior policy analyst Dorothy Chou. In the first half of 2011, by comparison, there were fewer than 16,000 such requests.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/13/google_reveals_government_surveillance_on_the_rise/feed/ 1 Polling place locator http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/polling_place_locator/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/polling_place_locator/#comments Mon, 05 Nov 2012 20:07:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13063227 The Pew Center on the States teamed up with Microsoft to provide voters with this polling place locator. Just enter your address.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/polling_place_locator/feed/ 7 Is Wikipedia going commercial? http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/is_wikipedia_going_commercial/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/is_wikipedia_going_commercial/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13049427 When it began 11 years ago, Wikipedia represented utopian ideals: power dispersed more evenly than any democracy, participation open to anyone and work done solely for the promotion of knowledge. But utopian ideals often become diluted when put into practice on a large scale and inevitably fail. Today, to the dismay of many die-hard Wikipedians — the tenacious, voluntary editors who are the site’s backbone — the site also attracts profit-seeking writers.

One such writer is Soraya Field Fiorio, a 27-year-old entertainment-relations consultant who has a sideline in writing commissioned Wikipedia articles for musicians and writers. “Just like when I write press releases, clients say, ‘I want this. I don’t want that.’ So it’s really part of a promotional package,” she said. She charges $30 an hour to edit an existing article, and will write a page from scratch for around $250. It’s not surprising that musicians, writers, artists or anyone else seeking a spot in the public eye will pay for the service: The website is often the No. 1  hit on Google, and the articles can function as the key component of a publicity strategy.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/is_wikipedia_going_commercial/feed/ 11 Dumb tweet: Things we Google http://www.salon.com/2012/10/22/dumb_tweet_things_we_google/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/22/dumb_tweet_things_we_google/#comments Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:51:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13049035 [embedtweet id="260379954091536384"]

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/22/dumb_tweet_things_we_google/feed/ 5 Google shares see huge drop http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/google_shares_see_huge_drop/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/google_shares_see_huge_drop/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:13:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13044655 NEW YORK (AP) — Google Inc.'s stock plunged suddenly on Thursday afternoon after a contractor released the search company's third-quarter earnings report early, by mistake.

The stock fell $68.19, or 9 percent, to $687.30 before trading was halted to give investors a chance to digest the news. Google's report had been slated for release after the close of regular trading Thursday.

Google said printer R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. filed Google's quarterly statement early to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The printer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the regulatory filing, Google said it earned $2.18 billion, or $6.53 per share, during the three months ending in September. That compared with net income of $2.73 billion, or $8.33 per share, last year.

The earnings would have been $9.03 per share, if not for Google's accounting costs for employee stock compensation and restructuring charges related to the acquisition of Motorola. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting $10.63 per share, on average.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/google_shares_see_huge_drop/feed/ 0 FBI warns of malware targeting Androids http://www.salon.com/2012/10/16/fbi_warns_of_malware_targetting_androids/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/16/fbi_warns_of_malware_targetting_androids/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:38:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13042452 The FBI is warning Android phone users about a new type of malware (short for "malicious software") that targets the devices' operating systems. According to Mashable Tech, "The malware lures victims in different ways. One advertises itself as a 'work at home' opportunity that promises a lucrative payday just for sending out email; an attached link then leads to a website that spreads Loozon [the malware] to its target."

According to a release from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) -- a partnership between the FBI and the Nation White Collar Crime Center -- the malware steals contact details from the user's address book and phone number. Another malicious application noted by IC3, "FinFisher," works to remotely control and monitor an infected device.

However, ZDNet's Stephen Vaughan-Nichols has been swift to decry FBI warnings as "badly written," noting that the malware has little to do with a problem in Android security, but relies on user mistakes:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/16/fbi_warns_of_malware_targetting_androids/feed/ 1 Europe calls out Google over privacy http://www.salon.com/2012/10/16/europe_calls_out_google_over_privacy/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/16/europe_calls_out_google_over_privacy/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:50:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13041998 European regulators announced Tuesday that Google's collection and use of user data violates Europe's privacy standards.  In a letter to the Internet leviathan, regulators from 27 EU countries told Google that legal action and fines could follow unless it was more transparent with users about what personal data is collected and how it is used. According to the New York Times:

The regulators couched their requests as “practical recommendations.” But when asked what regulators would do if Google did not accede and make changes, Jacob Kohnstamm, head of the Dutch data protection authority, said national regulators probably would take legal action to compel changes. “After all, enforcement is the name of the game,” Mr. Kohnstamm said.

European concerns flared earlier this year when Google introduced a new policy that collects user information across sites including Gmail, Google + and YouTube. The overhaul, which users cannot opt out of, enabled advertisers to better target users but riled privacy advocates and regulators.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/16/europe_calls_out_google_over_privacy/feed/ 0 Dumb tweet: Googling punctuation http://www.salon.com/2012/10/12/dumb_tweet_googling_punctuation/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/12/dumb_tweet_googling_punctuation/#comments Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:34:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13039168 [embedtweet id="256855943420203009"]

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/12/dumb_tweet_googling_punctuation/feed/ 4 Search for “completely wrong” in Google images right now http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/search_for_completely_wrong_in_google_images_right_now/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/search_for_completely_wrong_in_google_images_right_now/#comments Thu, 11 Oct 2012 18:11:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13037213 For those of you who did not listen to the headline, here are the Google search results for "completely wrong," via CNN:

They are almost all Mitt Romney. Pages and pages of image results, of Mitt Romney being "completely wrong."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/search_for_completely_wrong_in_google_images_right_now/feed/ 9 Asteroid mining start-up seeks interns http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/asteroid_mining_startup_seeks_interns/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/asteroid_mining_startup_seeks_interns/#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2012 20:36:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13028086 The job posting for Planetary Resources' asteroid mining intern might sound like a hoax or a sketchy Craigslist ad. Look a little closer and you'll see that it's backed by big-time investors like Google CEO Larry Page and executive chairman Eric Schmidt. (Director James Cameron is an advisor, even though "Avatar" took a bold stand against plundering extraterrestrial wealth.)

Planetary Resources wants to expand humanity's natural resource base by looking for essential materials, like water and  metals, in non-Earth surfaces, then transport them back to Earth. The company hopes to achieve this through the creation of highly specialized robots, satellites and space telescopes, and believes the industry will "add trillions of dollars to the global GDP."

Until now, the company, which has been around since 2010, has kept things pretty hush-hush. But now it's ready to let a few college students inside. According to a recent job posting, the company needs interns "to assist in the development of new systems and technologies for the commercial robotic exploration of near Earth asteroids."  Cool, right?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/asteroid_mining_startup_seeks_interns/feed/ 2 Google Maps releases Google sea view http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/google_maps_releases_google_sea_view/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/google_maps_releases_google_sea_view/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:41:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13022688 Google has partnered with the Catlin Seaview Survey to bring underwater panoramas to the Internet company's  street view feature. The images include sea turtles, coral reefs and other marine life in the Great Barrier Reef, and islands in Hawaii and the Philippines.

[slide_show id=13022641]

 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/google_maps_releases_google_sea_view/feed/ 0 Users attack Apple’s new maps app http://www.salon.com/2012/09/20/users_attack_apples_new_maps_app/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/20/users_attack_apples_new_maps_app/#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:53:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13017292 Google Maps has been trending on Twitter all day. That's because Apple's new iOs 6 operating system -- released with the new iPhone 5 and also available as an update for the iPad -- replaces the search giant's map app with its own. Apple's map system, which includes 3-D city views and voice navigation, was supposed to deliver an upgrade. But some hilariously bad map images and incorrect locations, some of which are compiled on this Tumblr, has resulted in a public relations mess for Apple.

As BuzzFeed reports, the unreliable maps are more than inconvenient -- they can be dangerous:

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