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Google under fire as 38 US states turn up Street View heat

The search seraph seems to be in hot water over alleged snooping while photographing on the streets of the US, having previously faced demands from European governments. Thirty-eight states in America have bound together to push Google over claims it illegally collected personal data from unsecured wireless networks while conducting its research for Google Street View. The most recent development in the action has been a call to name the engineers who wrote the code that intruded upon the wireless networks, according to a BBC report. The coalition of states also has demanded to know whether Google tested the Wifi code before sending the Google fleet out for reconnaissance. “Google must come completely clean, fully explaining how this invasion of personal privacy happened and why,” Connecticut Attorney General and head of the coalition Richard Blumenthal said. “We are asking Google to identify specific individuals responsible for the snooping code and how Google was unaware that this allowed the Street View cars to collect data broadcast over Wifi networks” Mountain View has previously duked it out with Germany’s privacy officials, where it was made to turn over details collected from the networks, and has apologised several times publicly for the “mistake”

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Google under fire as 38 US states turn up Street View heat

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On its first birthday, Bing continues to eat at Google’s share of the search cake

One year ago, Microsoft retooled and rebranded its search facilities - renamed a ‘decision engine’ - as Bing, in the hope of giving market leaders Google and Yahoo! a run for their money. And, twelve months down the road, the venture continues to grow at a steady pace against the Mountain View tech giant - though search stalwart Yahoo! has kept up at a relatively similar speed, according to the latest figures from comScore. Microsoft’s Bing still finished third in June’s search engine rankings, handling 12.7 per cent of search queries on the web on its first birthday. Perennial runner-up Yahoo! was the destination of choice for 18.9 per cent of searchers, while Google remains just short of two-thirds of the market at 62.6 per cent. These figures may seem daunting for search underdogs, but the trends of the past year give hope to the upstarts. As Microsoft dropped its Live Search - sitting at eight per cent of the market in May 2009 - Bing debuted to an 8.4 per cent share in July 2009, meaning it has gained 4.3 percentage points in the past year, or grown 50 per cent of its original share. In comparison, Google has seen its share nipped and pecked away at, coming down 2.4 percentage points from 65 per cent of the market. Officials and executives at Microsoft may suffer no delusions about toppling the search kingpin, though they remain positive about remaining a key player in the sector

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On its first birthday, Bing continues to eat at Google’s share of the search cake

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Google nixes ‘Nexus Two’ plans

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has revealed that the company will not be going ahead with the rumoured successor to the Nexus One. In a move similar to Apple’s static iPhone product, Schmidt said Google’s superphone has proven such a success that no tweaking of the format would be necessary. Rumours of a forthcoming ‘Nexus Two’ have abounded since the Google phone’s launch in January , with many believing it to be aimed at enterprise customers to rival the Blackberry . However, Schmidt recently told Nexus fans that they shouldn’t expect a sequel any time soon. “The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did,” the Google boss told the Telegraph. “It was so successful, we didn’t have to do a second one.

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Google nixes ‘Nexus Two’ plans

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Google retools search index with Caffeine

Not content to stay in the shadows while competitors such as Apple steal the spotlight with their latest innovations, Mountain View, California-based Google has recently announced it has completed an entirely new way to index the web. Named ‘Caffeine’, the new system provides 50 per cent fresher search results than the current Google indexing system, the search giant said in an Official Google Blog posting. The post said this would make it easier to find relevant news stories and blog content closer to its publishing time. Explaining the current system, software engineer Carrie Grimes said the company’s search results were not necessarily representative of the “live web”, but rather that the configuration rested upon several ‘layers’ of web content, with each being refreshed at different rates. Base layers, she said, would only be refreshed every few weeks. “With Caffeine, we analyse the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally,” Grimes said. “As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. “That means you can find fresher information than ever before - no matter when or where it was published.” She explained that the new system would index hundreds of thousands of pages every second, comparing it to a pile of paper growing three miles taller every second. The new system is meant to improve the already dominating search engine in a time of integration with social media sites, tweets, and video and audio postings.

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Google retools search index with Caffeine

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Google sets ‘late autumn’ release date for Chrome OS

A Google vice president has announced that the company’s Chrome operating system will be launched in the “late autumn” of this year, and will initially be targeted at users of laptops and netbooks. The company’s first step into the OS market, Chrome OS will compete directly with Windows 7 on its release, by offering users speedy access to online applications such as Gmail and Google Docs from a simplified operating system. Initially to be released with netbooks and laptops in mind, Chrome OS hopes to appeal to workers and net fans on the go, by stripping down and streamlining to make an operating system that’s fast and focused on connectivity. PC Pro reports that the Mountain View giant has not yet revealed which partner companies it will be working with to develop Chrome-ready netbooks and tablet computers , though it has denied earlier rumours that Acer was working on developing a Chrome netbook. Sundar Pichai, head of the Google Chrome project, told attendees at the Computex PC show: “We will be selective on how we come to market because we want to deliver a great user experience. “We’re thinking on both the hardware and software levels.” Recent developments like Google’s acquisition of 3D desktop software BumpTop indicate that the company is looking to make a big splash with its new operating system, despite Microsoft’s recent dismissal of its competitor’s plans for an open source operating system, which it claims will mean software developers need to create numerous versions of applications to work on different systems. “Chrome OS is one of the few future operating systems for which there are already millions of applications that work,” Pichai explained

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Google sets ‘late autumn’ release date for Chrome OS

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Google Squared bounds ahead on its one-year anniversary

Launched 12 May 2009, Google Squared, currently still in beta , has had several of its features injected into the primary Google search, but has also received a few additional upgrades of its own from the techies at the Mountain View wonderland. Originally launched as an advanced fact-finding arm to the traditional Google search, Squared now brings up simple facts, such as significant dates in history, birthdates of important people or ‘Who’s the prime minister of Canada?’ (A: Stephen Harper) “Three months ago we began using Squared technology to highlight answers for these types of searches in snippets,” wrote technical lead John Provine in an official Google blog posting. “Today we’re expanding that effort so that when you’re looking for this kind of simple fact in search, we give you more accurate answers right at the top of your results, sourced from across the web.” This would mean, then, that users searching for simpler queries would be more satisfied with first-page results, possibly doing away with the need to click through to further web pages. Whilst not fully functional on its Google .co.uk portal , the blog posting said that a sources list would be available, where users could also verify a fact’s validity across a number of channels. A second feature added to the main Google search is a “Something Different” option, where a search can be opened up to include things similar to that previously searched.

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Google Squared bounds ahead on its one-year anniversary

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Google ‘Goggles’ take on new role as pictorial translators

With its forays of applications becoming ever more daring and futuristic, Google has taken another bold leap into the world of ‘augmented reality’ - a rising phenomenon previously reported by bigmouthmedia news . This time, the Mountain View, California-based juggernaut - which commands a healthy influence on mobile devices thanks to its Android software - has upgraded its Goggles application, a search-by-photo service for smartphones, to include a translator. According to an official Google Mobile blog posting, using the service will be simple. Users can direct the phone at a particular set of words that interest them and, using the ‘region of interest’ button, select the text of their choosing. Next, users will press the shutter button, and Google Goggles will then give the option to translate the text into their native language. The posting said the service has been in the works for that past few months, though has only been made available this week. “The first Goggles translation prototype was unveiled earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and could only recognize German text,” software engineers Alessandro Bissacco and Avi Flamholz wrote in the blog posting “Today Goggles can read English, French, Italian, German and Spanish and can translate to many more languages.” The pair of developers said that the Google Goggles team is working on extending the service to include more Latin-based languages in the near future, with the ultimate goal of incorporating non-Latin languages, such as Hindi, Chinese and Arabic.

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Google ‘Goggles’ take on new role as pictorial translators

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Yahoo! knocks Google again in new TV ad

Not long after Yahoo! boss Carol Bartz criticised Google for its lack of diversity , the Silicon Valley company has mocked its competitor further in a new TV advertising campaign promoting the Yahoo! homepage. The $85 million campaign contrasts the range of services offered on the Yahoo! site with the ‘blank’ and ‘anonymous’ alternative of a search engine homepage - one that Chris Matyszczyk of CNET News points out “looks mightily like that of Google .” The TV voice-over tells viewers: “When you look at this home page nothing looks back at you. You come to this place so you can leave.” This is then directly contrasted with Yahoo!’s multi-faceted homepage, which “doesn’t hustle you out the door” and where users can find “your favorite stuff all in one place.” It’s a minor sleight to the Mountain View search seraph, but a telling one if Yahoo! is looking to further promote its diverse services to take on the competition. Yahoo! already has a global audience of over 200 million users, with 70 websites and services in 20 languages worldwide, and if Carol Bartz’s recent comments to BBC News are anything to go by, the company may even be looking to take on Facebook as a leader of the social web - all accessible from the convenient hub of the Yahoo! homepage. “Yahoo’s mission now is to convince consumers that Yahoo! is the place where you go to navigate the entire Web,” said Jeff Goodby, co-founder of the agency that produced Yahoo!’s latest ad. Earlier this year, Microsoft similarly lampooned the public’s familiarity with Google , in its TV ad for Bing in the UK that contrasted the “information overload” of Google search results with the more personalised results of the Bing ‘decision engine.’ Digg | delicious | Reddit | Google | Twitter | Sphinn | StumbleUpon | YahooBuzz | Facebook | Mixx | Contact bigmouthmedia

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Yahoo! knocks Google again in new TV ad

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Google’s new look likely to increase profits

We’ve been noticing it for some time, but it now seems that Google’s new look is being pushed out to more and more users for testing. Over the last week or so, this number appears to have increased dramatically, suggesting a full launch could be imminent. Some of the subtle changes by Google could have big effects on web marketing, Google’s profits and the fortunes of start-up search engines . The new look includes a left hand, side bar navigation with icon and text links to images, video, maps etc. as well as links to other things that are usually hidden under a single plus sign and “Show options…” text - for example, the Wonder Wheel, sites with images and time filters (’past 2 days’, etc.) Related searches have not been moved but have more prominence, due to the removal of the light blue bar at the top of the page. This provides a cleaner look to the page and draws the user’s eye straight to the paid advertising and search results. It also means a larger number of results can be seen ‘above the fold.’ Showing more results at the top of a page could make a big difference to marketing efforts.

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Google’s new look likely to increase profits

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Google acquires 3D desktop software for Chrome OS

Adding to its ever-growing portfolio of acquisitions, Google has bought one of the most talked-about technology start-ups in Canada - makers of 3D desktop organising software that the Mountain View giant may be looking to utilise in its Chrome operating system. BumpTop allows users to convert the traditional desktop into a 3D environment in which files, photos and documents can be stacked and sorted, rather than simply laid out side-by-side. The Vancouver Sun reports that the software was originally developed as part of student (later Bump Technologies Inc. CEO) Anand Agarawala’s master’s thesis at the University of Toronto, and aims to recreate the experience of stacking books and folders on a physical desktop. Both companies are keeping tight-lipped about the deal, which is believed to have cost Google between $25 million and $35 million (

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