As technology companies compete with each other to gain not only individual customers but entire businesses and large organizations, Google has fired a shot against Microsoft designed to steal a share of their software business: if a company or government agency is fed up with using and paying for Office, Google will give them their competing suit of similar software — word processing, spreadsheets, email, calendar, etc — for free. Heck, they’ll even pay those companies and agencies to cover the cost of the switch. [More]
Google Will Give Companies, Government Agencies Free Software If They Ditch Microsoft Office
By 10.19.15
Authors Guild Says Google Books Is “Serious Threat To Writers”
By 10.19.15
Last week, a federal appeals court upheld a district court ruling that Google Books — the search engine that uses scans of actual books for its results — is a legal “fair use” under U.S. copyright laws. This decision is not sitting well with the professional authors trade group that sued Google, and which intends to take its argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. [More]
Google Drops “OK Google” Voice Prompt For Desktop Search
By 10.16.15
If you’ve been shouting at “OK Google” at your laptop all morning long, unsuccessfully trying to voice-activate a Google search, it’s not a problem with your computer. [More]
Appeals Court Says Google’s Book-Scanning Project Is Legal Fair Use
By 10.16.15
A federal appeals court has sided with Google in a lawsuit filed by the nation’s largest trade group for professional writers, ruling that the Internet giant’s large-scale book-scanning project is a legal fair use of these texts and not a violation of the authors’ copyright. [More]
Google Bestows “Bug Bounty” On Guy Who Successfully Bought And Owned Google.com (For A Few Minutes)
By 10.12.15
We all know the old saying: ‘Tis better to have owned a major technological giant’s domain name briefly and lost it, than to have never owned a major technological giant’s domain name at all. A guy who successfully purchased Google.com and held onto it for a few minutes was rewarded for his efforts by way of a “bug bounty” from Google. [More]
Toyota Plans To Have Self-Driving Car For The Masses By 2020
By 10.7.15
Toyota attempted to break away from the self-driving car fanfare last month by announcing it would instead invest $50 million into creating “life-saving intelligent” vehicles that weren’t necessarily autonomous. Today, the company made it clear that it’s also pursuing the fully driver-less route, revealing plans to release a commercially available self-driving car by 2020. [More]
Google To Officially Become Part Of “Alphabet” Holding Company This Afternoon
By 10.2.15
Nearly two months after Google announced its plan to restructure its entire business under a new holding company called “Alphabet,” that transition is minutes away from happening. [More]
Amazon To Prohibit The Sale Of Apple TV, Google Chromecast
By 10.1.15
Amazon appears to be taking a page out of Apple’s playbook by removing competitors’ products from its virtual shelves. The e-commerce giant said today that would prohibit the sale of video-streaming devices from rivals Google and Apple that aren’t compatible with its own Prime video service. [More]
Paramount Pictures Copyright Bot Falsely Accuses Forum Commenters Of Piracy
By 10.1.15
UPDATE 10/2: Jeremy Zweig, Vice President, Corporate Communications and Corporate Affairs for Viacom provided Consumerist with the following statement:
“Online piracy remains a concern and we undertake a variety of methods to mitigate its impact. During a short time on September 22, a vendor that assists with our content protection efforts mistakenly identified a small number of URLs as infringing, and sent copyright notices in error. These notices represented about 0.01% of the total notices they sent on our behalf that particular day, the remainder of which were correct and accurate.
No action was actually taken on these erroneous notices, and no links were removed, but we’re disappointed by the error and apologize for any inconvenience this caused. We put a lot of time, care and effort into ensuring this complicated process works correctly, and nobody is more bothered than us when it doesn’t. The issue has since been remedied, and necessary steps have already been taken to ensure this does not happen again.”
ORIGINAL TEXT:
Even though the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal for a copyright holder to knowingly file a bogus copyright claim against someone else, that hasn’t stopped some of the biggest stakeholders in the entertainment industry from carelessly registering takedown complaints with Google for content that in no way infringes on anyone’s copyright.
Microsoft And Google Decide To Kiss, Make Up And Drop All Those Pesky Patent Lawsuits
By 10.1.15
Giant technology companies — they’re just like us! Instead of continuing to duke it out over a slew of patent infringement claims in court, Microsoft and Google have decided that peace is the answer, and have announced they’re dropping all pending litigation against each other. [More]
Chromecast Audio Turns Any Speaker With An Audio Input Into WiFi Streamer
By 9.29.15
If you’ve got a nice, wired home audio setup and have been reluctant to spend money on adding streaming solutions like a $349 Sonos Connect or the $499 Connect Amp, Google is hoping you’ll be more tempted to try its $35 Chromecast Audio. [More]
E-Book Subscription Service Oyster Shutting Down
By 9.22.15
E-book subscription service Oyster (otherwise known as “the Netflix of books” because that’s how everyone describes things now) will be shutting down after two years. [More]
Android Bug Can Let Basically Anyone Bypass Your Lock Screen If You Use A Password
By 9.16.15
It is just not a great year for Android security, it seems. Researchers in Texas have discovered that some devices running Android version 5 (Lollipop) can be unlocked and accessed basically by just mucking around with buttons on the lock screen long enough. [More]
Google Fiber May Expand Again: San Diego, Irvine, Louisville Now On List
By 9.11.15
Google has once again lengthened their shortlist of cities that could someday soon see Google Fiber service. If all the plans pan out, the next expansions will come in California and Kentucky. [More]
Google Confirms That Android Pay Is Rolling Out This Week
By 9.10.15
Though McDonald’s and Subway have been able to accept Android Pay — Google’s answer to the iPhone’s Apple Pay digital payment platform — for weeks, the actual app has yet to become available for the millions of Android device owners who might want to try it. The company is now finally confirming that Android Pay is rolling out in the coming days. [More]
Waze Accused Of Stealing Map Data From Competing Traffic App
By 9.3.15
How do you catch someone who you think is stealing your map data? Just put locations on the map that don’t exist, and then look for those locations to show up on the alleged thief’s maps. That’s what traffic-alerting app PhantomAlert did when it believed that competitor Waze was stealing its location database. Now PhantomAlert is suing Waze, which has since been purchased by Google. [More]
Judge Signs Off On $415M Settlement To Resolve Tech Industry Anti-Poaching Conspiracy Case
By 9.3.15
More than three-and-a-half years after a group of workers in Silicon Valley filed a lawsuit claiming that some of the technology industry’s biggest bigwigs were involved in a secret, anti-poaching pact to prevent their employees from switching jobs and thus, keeping their salaries down, a judge has approved a $415 million settlement to lay that case to rest. [More]
Google Won’t Consider Sites Mobile-Friendly If They Use Those Annoying, Full-Screen App Install Ads
By 9.2.15
There you are, searching for the perfect cheese dip recipe on your phone, and you think you’ve finally found the cheesiest of the cheesy. You click on the Google search result, excited, anticipating, ready to gain knowledge — and you’re faced with a plea to install that site’s app that covers your entire screen and forces you to find the tiny “X” to close out of the thing and move on with your life. Hate that? You might see it less often, as Google says sites that use those full-page app install ads will soon not be considered “mobile-friendly” sites. [More]
