NEW YORK, 3:14 PM, FRI MAY 16 | 27 POSTS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS | tips@consumerist.com | SUBMIT A TIP | RSS
Posts Tagged “

Google

fail

General Outage Hits GrandCentral

Google's telephone service GrandCentral has been down all morning. The service's first general outage affects all customers; any calls to GrandCentral numbers are immediately disconnected. More »

privacy

Google's Street View Is All Up In Your Driveway Looking At Your Basketball Hoop

A Pittsburgh couple has sued Google seeking the removal of photographs that were a little to up close and personal for their tastes.
The couple, Aaron and Catherine Boring, have succeeded in getting the photos yanked from the site, but the industrious minds over at the Smoking Gun found another even more intrusive set of photos taken by the search giant. More »

contact info

How To Find Executive Contact Information Using Google Finance And Your Brain

People often write to us and ask "Hey do you have such and such a company's email address? I didn't see it on your website." More »

great wireless auction

Verizon, Not Google Is The Big Wireless Spectrum Winner

Choke back the tears, kids—Verizon, not Google won the majority of the wireless spectrum actioned off by the FCC. More »

worst company in america

Round 4: Google Vs Sony

Google is like the elephant that never forgets... and it knows all of your personal information. Do you trust it not to be "evil?" Or is Google just a nice name for "Big Brother?" Let's not forget how they bowed to Chinese government demands that Chinese users be prevented from seeing certain search results, like information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Sony is a member of former Worst Company in America winner, the RIAA. When its not fake blogging, it can be found installing a rootkit on your computer and finding lots of ways to void your warranty.

This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2008 series. Keep track of all the goings on at consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america/

STILL OPEN FOR VOTING: Ticketmaster vs Wachovia, Facebook vs The American Arbitration Association, Comcast vs Menu Foods
(Photo:Jeff Sanquist)


how to

Use Wildcards In Google To Uncover Company Email Address Formats

One of the stumbling blocks when launching an EECB is figuring out the company email address format. There is actually a very easy way to do this. Just use wildcards in Google. What are those? We'll tell ya, inside... More »

deals

Get Your Free GrandCentral Number

Woohoo, you can now get GrandCentral numbers again. GrandCentral is a great, free, service that lets you create a new phone number that you can have forward to other numbers. Possible uses include: making it so you only have to give out one phone number, using the phone number to mask your real phone number, setting up an internet voicemail box, recording incoming customer service calls, and saving big-time on incoming calls on your Tmobile cellphone.

the great wireless auction

Google Thought To Be Out Of The Running In The Wireless Spectrum Auction

Analysts are saying that Google is probably out of the running for the "C Block" of wireless spectrum that it had been bidding on. More »

Yahoo is re-opening talks with Google about a possible business alliance in an effort to rebuff Microsoft's takeover proposal, which Yahoo says undervalues the company at $31 a share. [Reuters]

the great wireless auction

FCC Auction: Bidding Tops $4.7 Billion! We Have A Winner!

The New York Times is reporting that the auction for the C-block of wireless spectrum (Read: the Google part) has may have been won by someone... but we don't know who. Oh, the suspense! More »

the great wireless auction

$2.7 Billion Bid So Far In Wireless Spectrum Auction

After the first day of wireless spectrum bidding, the FCC announced that $2.7 billion has been offered so far. The NYT explains:
Bidding for the national franchise in the C block started at $1.037 billion in the morning and was raised to $1.245 billion in the afternoon. The reserve price for the national C block is $4.6 billion. (Google has said it will bid at least $4.6 billion for this block, but there is no requirement that it place a bid in that amount at first.)
More »

complaints

The Problem With Using "Free" Online Services: Random Censorship

Laura used Picasa to share photographs of her mastectomy with members of her support group, as well as family and friends. Now they're gone, deleted without warning because some anonymous jackass flagged them as inappropriate. [Update: Pics are back up! Google apologized and reinstated the entire album, along with comments.] The first problem with this is that it's hard to figure out which category of "inappropriate" surgical pictures fall under: obscenity, pornography, promotions of hate, incitement of violence, spam, malicious code, or viruses? More »

phone numbers

Reach Blogger Executive Customer Service

The Blogger free blogging system is owned by Google and they usually like their customers to talk to robots, but if you have an extreme issue, like all of a sudden your blogs were deleted (this has happened to at least a couple Consumerist readers), here are some executive honchos you can talk to get you fixed up:

Salar Kamangar, VP Blogger Product Management
650-253-0000

Urs Hoelzle
650-930-3507
urs@google.com
Google Inc
2400 Bayshore Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94043


privacy

Google Raises Privacy Concerns With Ill-Conceived Sharing Feature

The other day we woke up to find that a story we'd accidentally "shared" on Google Reader was now being automatically broadcast to a wide swath of strangers who were listed in our Gmail contacts and had been "auto- added" to Google Talk . It was startling, but no big deal because we didn't use the "share" feature on Google Reader and therefore had only to delete the single "United Airlines does something boring that no one actually cares about" AP story that we'd accidentally clicked sometime last year. More »

settlements

Google, Yahoo! And Microsoft Reach Settlement Over Illegal Internet Gambling

The Department of Justice says that Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have reached a $31.5 million dollar settlement for promoting illegal gambling, according to Reuters.

The companies were accused of receiving money from online gambling businesses to advertise illegal betting from 1997 through 2007.
More »

The official list of bidders for the 700 mhz spectrum is out. Google Airwaves, LLC joins Verizon, Cox and AT&T in the ultimate spectrum battle. Get your popcorn ready. [Ars Technica]

FTC head said she won't recuse herself from the review of Google's acquisition of the DoubleClick online advertising firm, despite petitions by some consumer groups alleging conflict of interest. [AP]

privacy

Do You Care About Privacy Or Just Unpleasant Surprises?

Seth Godin thinks that for all the talk about privacy, what people really object to is being "surprised."
If your credit card company called you up and said, "we've been looking over your records and we see that you've been having an extramarital affair. We'd like to offer you a free coupon for VD testing..." you'd freak out, and for good reason.
More »