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.”
Verizon, Not Google Is The Big Wireless Spectrum Winner
By 3.21.08
Choke back the tears, kids—Verizon, not Google won the majority of the wireless spectrum actioned off by the FCC.
Use Wildcards In Google To Uncover Company Email Address Formats
By 3.10.08
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…
Get Your Free GrandCentral Number
By 2.29.08
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.
Google Thought To Be Out Of The Running In The Wireless Spectrum Auction
By 2.6.08
Analysts are saying that Google is probably out of the running for the “C Block” of wireless spectrum that it had been bidding on.
By 2.4.08
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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.
FCC Auction: Bidding Tops $4.7 Billion! We Have A Winner!
By 1.31.08
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!
$2.7 Billion Bid So Far In Wireless Spectrum Auction
By 1.25.08
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.)
The Problem With Using "Free" Online Services: Random Censorship
By 1.17.08
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?
Reach Blogger Executive Customer Service
By 1.10.08
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:
Google Raises Privacy Concerns With Ill-Conceived Sharing Feature
By 12.24.07
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.
Google, Yahoo! And Microsoft Reach Settlement Over Illegal Internet Gambling
By 12.20.07
The companies were accused of receiving money from online gambling businesses to advertise illegal betting from 1997 through 2007.
By 12.19.07
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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]
By 12.14.07
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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]
Do You Care About Privacy Or Just Unpleasant Surprises?
By 12.12.07
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.
Google Thinks Spammers Might Be Giving Up
By 11.29.07
Brad Taylor, Google’s chief spam “watchdog,” suspects that spammers may actually be giving up as filters becomes more sophisticated and fewer of their messages get through.
Google won’t disclose numbers, but the company says that spam attempts, as a percentage of e-mail that’s transmitted through its Gmail system, have waned over the last year. That could indicate that some spammers have gotten discouraged and have stopped trying to get through Google’s spam filters.
Other experts disagree, claiming that spam is on the rise.
By 11.19.07
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Considering Google’s penchant for automated emails and redirects to Help files when things go wrong, what would you do if someone hacked your Gmail account and had access to all your emails, Google documents, etc etc? [Google Blogoscoped]
