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2015

Dan Fredingburg dies in avalanche

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Fredinburg dies from head injuries after being hit by an avalanche. Other climbers with him are being treated at the Everest base camp. Google lawyer:

Dan Fredinburg, a long-time member of the Privacy organization in Mountain View, was in Nepal with three other Googlers, hiking Mount Everest. He has passed away. The other three Googlers with him are safe and we are working to get them home quickly. Google’s Crisis Response team has launched Person Finder for Nepal, and is working to get updated satellite imagery to aid in the recovery effort. Google.org is committing $1M to the response, and we’ll have gift-matching available soon.

23 Apr, 2015

First Quarter EPS below estimates

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For the sixth straight quarter, Google’s earnings fell below analyst estimates, with earnings per share of $6.57 against analysts expectation of $6.61. But investors were pleased with a healthy bump in the number of paid clicks on Google ads and comments from executives about the growing popularity of ads on YouTube, sending shares up 4% to $567.45 in after-hours trading.

22 Apr, 2015

Project Fi

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Google launches wireless carrier service named Project Fi.

Project Fi enables us to work in close partnership with leading carriers, hardware makers, and all of you to push the boundaries of what’s possible. By designing across hardware, software and connectivity, we can more fully explore new ways for people to connect and communicate. Two of the top mobile networks in the U.S.—Sprint and T-Mobile—are partnering with us to launch Project Fi and now you can be part of the project too.

Project Fi: Innovating in connectivity and communication

24 Mar, 2015

Hired by Google

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Porat is hired as Google’s CFO, two weeks after the previous CFO, Patrick Pichette, announced his decision to retire from the role in a candid memo about work/life balance. She will start May 26. Page:

We’re tremendously fortunate to have found such a creative, experienced and operationally strong executive. I look forward to learning from Ruth as we continue to innovate in our core—from search and ads, to Android, Chrome and YouTube—as well as invest in a thoughtful, disciplined way in our next generation of big bets.

Porat:

I’m delighted to be returning to my California roots and joining Google. Growing up in Silicon Valley, during my time at Morgan Stanley and as a member of Stanford’s Board, I’ve had the opportunity to experience first hand how tech companies can help people in their daily lives. I can’t wait to roll up my sleeves and get started.

 

3 Mar, 2015

Android Pay announcement

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Android-PayGoogle announces Android Pay at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The new feature is not a new product but a framework that allows secure payments support from other companies which works in physical stores and also apps. It also supports NFC and biometrics.

We are doing it in a way in which anybody else can build a payments service on top of Android. So, in places like China and Africa we hope that people will use Android Pay to build innovative services.

11 Dec, 2014

Closing engineering office in Russia

Announcement0 Comments

Google is closing its engineering office in Russia, but will continue to have employees in the country to focus on other areas. Google declines to comment on the reason for the closure or how many employees will be affected, but says it is still committed to its users in Russia.

We are deeply committed to our Russian users and customers and we have a dedicated team in Russia working to support them.

21 Nov, 2014

Basecamps shut down

Announcement0 Comments

A Glass Explorer, Spencer Kleyweg, reports that the Google Glass Basecamps in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and New York are closing. The Basecamps served as a place for Glass users to get support for their devices, as well as for potential customers to see the device demonstrated in person. Google does not release a statement regarding the closing.

https://plus.google.com/111749081843589527939/posts/RKnokcy2XBz

28 Oct, 2014

More trust NSA with private data than Google

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A Survata survey finds that respondents give a score of 7.39 for how much they fear Google having their private data, on a scale of one-10 with 10 being the highest level of fear. The same respondents give a score of 7.06 for the fear level of the NSA having their private data. Just over half of the respondents, more of whom are female than male, are aged 13-24. Company official:

Survata was surprised to see respondents said they’d be more upset with a company like Google seeing their personal data than the NSA…One guess is that respondents assume the NSA is only looking for ‘guilty’ persons when scouring personal data, whereas a company like Google would use personal data to serve ads or improve their own products.

23 Oct, 2014

Assange: Google worked with State Department

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Assange writes in When Google Met Wikileaks that he met Schmidt while under house arrest in in mid-May 2011 in Norfolk. Schmidt had requested the meeting. He says Schmidt and Cohen, the head of Google Ideas and a former State Department official (government bio here), were writing a book and wanted an interview. Schmidt, his (then) partner Shields, Cohen, and book editor Malcomson, who would later join the State Department as a speechwriter, turned up at their mid-June appointment:

At this point, the delegation was one part Google, three parts U.S. foreign-policy establishment, but I was still none the wiser.

They talk about geopolitics and Schmidt refuses a request to leak to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks later attempts to contact the State Department to give a heads-up on the early publication of the group’s book. They are eventually contacted by Shields. Assange:

It was at this point that I realized Eric Schmidt might not have been an emissary of Google alone. Whether officially or not, he had been keeping some company that placed him very close to Washington, D.C., including a well-documented relationship with President Obama. Not only had Hillary Clinton’s people known that Eric Schmidt’s partner had visited me, but they had also elected to use her as a back channel.

24 Sep, 2014

On mobile revolution

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Schmidt discusses the impact of mobile technology in the world, and the competition between Apple and Google, in a “Bloomberg TV” interview.

Ten years ago, nobody in our audience was sitting with a mobile phone next to their bed. The internet access was largely in people’s offices and occasionally in homes. The internet has helped improving connectivity. This connectivity and mobile revolution has changed everything.

Eric Schmidt: Mobile Revolution Has Changed Everything

10 Sep, 2014

Five million passwords leaked

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At least five million Gmail addresses and passwords appear on a Russian Bitcoin forum site. Google says they have no evidence of a server breach, and the list appears to be a collection of passwords exposed in previous hacks and are likely on users’ own computers, not Google’s systems. Google spokeswoman Caroline Matthews:

We have no evidence that our systems have been compromised.

The company also says that the authenticity of the list has not been proven. Google is warning affected users to take steps to further protect their Gmail accounts, like creating a stronger password and using an extra security feature called “two-step authentication.”

3 Sep, 2014

Teams with Abbvie and Calico

Announcement0 Comments

Google teams with Abbvie and Calico in order to develop new treatments for diseases prevalent among the elderly. Arthur Levinson:

Our relationship with AbbVie is a pivotal event for Calico, whose mission is to develop life-enhancing therapies for people with age-related diseases. It will greatly accelerate our efforts to understand the science of aging, advance our clinical work, and help bring important new therapies to patients everywhere.

Google Now

Announcement0 Comments

Google provides the option to speak with your smartphone. The  feature to chat with your phone is called Google Now and is available for download in the app store for both Android and Apple devices.

Once you sign up and register, Google guesstimates your interests with Google Now “cards” that show up in the Google app, spotlighting everything from weather, local movie showtimes, articles Google thinks you’ll be interested and upcoming concert info.

Martinis joins Google

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Martinis joins Google, to aid in a project to build a quantum computer. The computer will be able to use quantum physics to solve problems more quickly than conventional computers. Martinis has spent more than a decade working on improving quantum computing, and has built some of the largest, most error-free systems of qubits, the basic building blocks that encode information in a quantum computer.

We would like to rethink the design and make the qubits in a different way. We think there’s an opportunity in the way we build our qubits to improve the machine. Martinis has taken a joint position with Google and UCSB that will allow him to continue his own research at the university.

2 Sep, 2014

Leaves Google for SpaceX

Hired0 Comments

Wyler leaves Google to work with Space Exploration Technologies Corp. In his departure, he takes rights to certain radio spectrum that could be used to provide Internet access. This could hurt Google’s aspirations in this area in the short term, but there are many alternatives to spreading Internet connectivity globally.

19 Aug, 2014

Gmail for kids

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Google may give out accounts to kids under the age of 13 for GMail and YouTube. This will allow children to use the features without lying about their age. The Company may also  installing a dashboard for parents to oversee their kids’ activities, as well as a change to Google’s current policy of entering birth dates only on personal computers. Google would expand the birth date requirement onto its Android software for those signing up for an account. YouTube would see similar parental control add-ons for children’s accounts.

Call Conversions launch

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Adwords launches Call Conversions to identify and measure the amount of calls that are placed from ads on a companies business post or blog. The system allows advertisers to see which keywords and which ads are bringing in the most clients and customers.

Prior to website call conversions, we didn’t have the ability to track ROI when prospects clicked through our ads and called our sales center. Website call conversions [have] enabled us to better attribute lead and sales activity to the correct AdWords campaign after seeing a 79 percent increase in the total calls attributed to AdWords.

13 Aug, 2014

Changetip tipping

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Changetip is now available for You Tube. This is a bitcoin feature that allows anyone to send a reward or tip for a great video. Nick Sullivan, ChangeCoin’s founder and CEO:

We believe people are basically good and we let them show their appreciation directly in everyday social media interactions. That’s why we call ChangeTip a ‘love button’ for the Internet.

12 Aug, 2014

Non-latin email address characters

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After announcing it is the first major email provider to adopt Internet Engineering Task Force’s standards for accepting e-mail addresses that contain non-Latin characters the Company announces it will reject some email address requests that might be spam using  the Unicode Consortium’s specification for mixed-character sets as a guide. The Company notes that to be able to offer email addresses in any character set would requires every web form and email provider to accept them:

That’s obviously a tough hill to climb. The technology is there, but someone has to take the first step.