YouTube penalizes Logan Paul after suicide video post

LOS ANGELES | YouTube said Wednesday it is removing popular American vlogger Logan Paul from its Google Preferred platform and putting future projects with him on hold, after Paul posted a video on the platform of a suicide victim in Japan.

“In light of recent events, we have decided to remove Logan Paul’s channels from Google Preferred. Additionally, we will not feature Logan in season 4 of ‘Foursome’ and his new Originals are on hold,” Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, said in a statement.

Google Preferred features YouTube’s most popular content in packages for sale to advertisers. Paul, 22, is one of YouTube’s top content creators, regularly drawing millions of views from his mainly youth-orientated audience.

Paul also had projects in the works with YouTube’s premium subscription service, YouTube Red, and appeared on the platform’s web series “Foursome.”

Representatives for Paul did not immediately return requests from Reuters for comment.

Paul apologized in a YouTube video titled “So Sorry” last week for posting the video that showed him and his friends laughing about the body they filmed hanging on a tree in Japan’s “suicide forest.”

Paul said he had made a “huge mistake” and was ashamed of himself, and he deleted the video after it caused a social media backlash.

YouTube in an open letter on Tuesday said it was “upset by the video that was shared last week,” saying that “suicide is not a joke, nor should it ever be a driving force for views.”

The company said Paul’s video violated its guidelines and it was “looking at further consequences.”

Paul has not posted any videos in the past week, saying he was “taking time to reflect.”

Paul’s channel, Logan Paul Vlogs, which has more than 15 million subscribers, is still active on YouTube and advertisers can still choose to advertise on his videos, or they can opt out.

source: interaksyon.com

Can Europe create the next Google?

LONDON, ENGLAND — Europe is making major strides to eliminate barriers that have held back the region from developing tech firms that can compete on the scale of global giants Alphabet Inc’s Google, Amazon.com Inc or Tencent Holdings Inc , a report published on Thursday shows.

The region has thriving tech hubs in major cities, with record new funding, experienced entrepreneurs, a growing base of technical talent and an improving regulatory climate, according to a study by European venture firm Atomico.

While even the largest European tech ventures remain a fraction of the size of the biggest U.S. and Asian rivals, global music streaming leader Spotify of Sweden marks the rising ambition of European entrepreneurs. Spotify is gearing up for a stock market flotation next year that could value it at upward of $20 billion.

“The probability that the next industry-defining company could come from Europe – and become one of the world’s most valuable companies – has never been higher,” said Tom Wehmeier, Atomico’s head of research, who authored the report.

Top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in the region told Reuters they are increasingly confident that the next world-class companies could emerge from Europe in fields including artificial intelligence, video gaming, music and messaging.


“What we still need to develop is entrepreneurs who have the drive to take it all the way – I think we are starting to see that now,” said Bernard Liautaud, managing partner at venture fund Balderton Capital, who sold his software company Business Objects to SAP for $6.8 billion a decade ago.

The Atomico report is being published in conjunction with the annual Nordic technology start-up festival taking place in Helsinki this week and set to draw some 20,000 participants.

Stronger fundamentals

Capital invested in European tech companies is on track to reach a record this year, with $19.1 billion in funding projected through the end of 2017 – up 33 percent over 2016, according to investment tracking firm Dealroom.co.

The median size of European venture funds nearly tripled to around 58 million euros (£51.1 million) in 2017 compared with five years ago, according to Invest Europe’s European Data Cooperative on fundraising investment activity.

Beyond the availability of funding, Europe has a range of technical talent available to work more cheaply than in Silicon Valley, enabling start-ups to get going with far less funding.

With a pool of professional developers now numbering 5.5 million, European tech employment outpaces the comparable 4.4 million employed in the United States, according to data from Stack Overflow, a site popular with programmers.

London remains the top European city in terms of numbers of professional developers, but Germany, as a country, overtook Britain in the past year with 837,398 developers compared with 813,500, the report states, using Stack Overflow statistics.

While median salaries for software engineers are rising in top European cities Berlin, London, Paris and Barcelona, they are one-third to one-half the average cost of salaries in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is more than $129,000, based on Glassdoor recruiting data.

Pushing up against the limits

Big hurdles remain. A survey of 1,000 founders by authors of the report found European entrepreneurs were worried by Brexit, with concerns, especially in Britain, over hiring, investment and heightened uncertainty in the business climate.

Although Europe has deep engineering talent, many big startups focus on business model innovation in areas such as media, retail and gaming rather than on breakthrough technology developments that can usher in new industries, critics say.

Regulatory frameworks in Europe put the brakes on development on promising technologies such as cryptocurrencies, “flying taxis” and gene editing, while autonomous vehicles and drones face fewer obstacles, the report says.

A separate study by Index Ventures, also to be published on Thursday, found that employees at fast-growing tech start-ups in Europe tend to receive only half the stock option stakes that are a primary route to riches for their U.S. rivals. Yet their options are taxed twice as much.

The Index report said employees in successful, later-stage European tech start-ups receive around 10 percent of capital, compared with 20 percent ownership in Silicon Valley firms.

“There is quite a gap today between stock option practices in Europe and those in Silicon Valley,” Index Ventures partner Martin Mignot said in an interview. “There are other issues where Europe is behind, but we think stock options should be at the top of the agenda.”

Another factor holding back Europe is that regional stock markets encourage firms to go public prematurely, Liataud said.

“Europe has markets for average companies. In the U.S., going public is hard. You have to be really, really good. You have to be $100 million, minimum, in revenue,” the French entrepreneur-turned-investor said. “Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange have not lowered their standards.”

source: interaksyon.com

Tech executives head to US Congress under harsh spotlight

WASHINGTON – Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google head before US lawmakers on Tuesday for two days of grueling hearings on how Russia allegedly used their services to try to sway the 2016 US election.

At stake for the Silicon Valley companies are their public images and the threat of tougher advertising regulations in the United States, where the technology sector has grown accustomed to light treatment from the government.

Facebook, the world’s largest social network, added fuel to the debate on Monday when it told Congress in written testimony that 126 million Americans may have seen politically divisive posts that originated in Russia under fake names.

That is in addition to 3,000 US political ads that Facebook says Russians bought on its platform.

Google and Twitter have also said that people in Russia used their services to spread messages in the run-up to last year’s US presidential election.

The Russian government has denied it intended to influence the election, in which President Donald Trump, a Republican, defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

US lawmakers have responded angrily to the idea of foreign meddling, introducing legislation to require online platforms to say who is running election ads and what audiences are targeted.

“The companies need to get ahead of the curve here,” said James Lewis, senior vice president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. If they can, he added, they might avoid regulation.

Lewis, speaking during the Reuters Cyber Summit in Washington, said he expects European officials to watch the US hearings closely.

The US Senate’s crime subcommittee will be the first of three committees to hold hearings on Russia. Its hearing is set for 2:30 p.m. ET (1830 GMT).

Facebook and Twitter are dispatching their general counsels, Colin Stretch and Sean Edgett, to appear before the subcommittee, while Google is sending its director of law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado.

“Our goal is to bring people closer together; what we saw from these actors was an insidious attempt to drive people apart. And we’re determined to prevent it from happening again,” Stretch will tell lawmakers, according to an advance copy of his remarks.

Facebook and Twitter have taken steps toward self-regulation, saying they would create their own public archives of election-related ads and also apply more specific labels to such ads.

Google followed on Monday, saying it would create a database of election ads including ones on YouTube.

The companies have meanwhile disclosed new details about the extent of Russia-based material, raising alarms about a sector that once inspired idealism.

“The internet was seen as a great engine for promoting democracy and transparency. Now we are all discovering that it can also be a tool for hijacking democracy,” said Karen Kornbluh, a senior fellow for digital policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

source: interaksyon.com

Google relaxes rules on free news stories, plans subscription tools

SAN FRANCISCO — Google announced on Sunday that subscription news websites would no longer have to provide users three free articles per day or face less prominence in search results, relaxing its rules following complaints from media giants like News Corp that their sales were suffering.

For the last decade, Google’s “first click free” policy helped ensure that non-subscribers wouldn’t be stifled by paywalls when they clicked on news articles from searches.

Google, the largest component of Alphabet Inc, had contended that free samples would lead to increased subscriptions.

But apart from a few publications, online subscriptions haven’t taken off as intended, and media companies such as Wall Street Journal parent News Corp. increasingly complained that freeloading users were cutting into sales.

This year, the Wall Street Journal stopped abiding by Google’s policy, corresponding to a drop in search rankings but an increase in subscriptions.

“Over the last year, we got clear indications that, yes, it was going to be important for publishers to grow subscription revenues,” said Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president for news.

He said the number of news outlets with paywalls had reached a critical mass in the last year, to the point that it made sense for Google to start developing tools for them.

Google is now counting on the relaxed rules and subscription software that is under development to stop the Wall Street Journal and other publishers from holding back valuable content.

From hereon, publishers will be able to choose how many, if any, free articles they want to offer to Google searchers.

Google also plans to launch free software in the coming months for publishers that enables users to pay for content with credit card information that they’ve previously supplied to the search giant.

The goal is to facilitate fast purchases that could take as little as a single click, Gingras said. Customers’ names and emails would be shared with the publishers.

A separate tool would give publishers data on how to maximize sign ups with personalized offers. Gingras said Google hasn’t determined whether it may charge a fee to recoup costs of that program.

“Google search is valuable because there’s a rich ecosystem out there,” Gingras said. “To the extent the web is healthy, that’s very good for our core business. Our objective is not for this to be a new line of business.”

Facebook, Alphabet’s top rival in online advertising, is working on similar subscriber registration tools. Apple released support for subscriptions within its News app last year.

source: interaksyon.com

Augmented reality: A battle between Apple and Google

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — Alphabet Inc’s Google on Wednesday unveiled tools to make augmented reality apps for mobile devices using the Android operating system, setting up its latest showdown with Apple Inc’s iPhone over next-generation smartphone features.

Phone-based augmented reality (AR), in which digital objects are superimposed onto the real world on screen, got a huge boost from the popularity of the Pokémon Go game. The game, launched in the United States in July last year, sent players into city streets, offices, parks and restaurants to search for colorful animated characters.

Analysts expected the game to make $3 billion for Apple over two years as gamers buy “PokéCoins” from its app store.

Google’s take on the technology will first be available on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Google’s own Pixel phone. The company said in a blog post that it hoped to make the system, called ARCore, available to at least 100 million users, but did not set a date for a broad release.

Apple in June announced a similar system called ARKit that it plans to release this fall on “hundreds of millions” of devices.

Google and Apple will jockey for the attention of customers and software developers who will build the games, walking guides and other applications that would make AR a compelling feature.

Many tech industry leaders envision a future in which eyeglasses, car windshields and other surfaces can overlay digital information on the real world. Google and Microsoft Corp have already experimented with AR glasses.

“AR is big and profound,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told investors earlier in August. “And this is one of those huge things that we’ll look back at and marvel on the start of it.”

Apple and Google have had to make compromises to bring the technology to market.

In Apple’s case, the Cupertino, California-based company decided to make its AR system work with devices capable of running iOS 11, its next-generation operating system due out this fall.

This means it will work on phones going back to the iPhone 6s, which have a single camera at the back and standard motion sensors, rather than a dual camera system found on newer models such as the iPhone 7 Plus or special depth-sensing chips in competing phones. That limits the range of images that can be displayed.

Google initially aimed to solve this problem with an AR system called Tango that uses a special depth-sensor, but only two phone makers so far support it. With ARCore, Google changed course to work on phones without depth sensors.

But the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem presents challenges. To spread its AR system beyond the Galaxy S8 and Pixel phone, Google will have to figure out how account for the wide variety of Android phone cameras or require phone makers to use specific parts.

Apple, however, is able to make its system work well because it knows exactly which hardware and software are on the iPhone and calibrates them tightly.

Michael Valdsgaard, a developer with the furniture chain IKEA, called the system “rock solid,” noting that it could estimate the size of virtual furniture placed in a room with 98 percent accuracy, despite lacking special sensors.

“This is a classic example of where Apple’s ownership of the whole widget including both hardware and software is a huge advantage over device vendors dependent on Android and the broader value chain of component vendors,” said Jan Dawson, founder and chief analyst of Jackdaw Research.

source: interaksyon.com

Google faces hefty EU fine in shopping case by August: sources

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM | EU antitrust regulators aim to slap a hefty fine on Alphabet unit Google over its shopping service before the summer break in August, two people familiar with the matter said, setting the stage for two other cases involving the U.S. company.

The European Commission’s decision will come after a seven-year investigation into the world’s most popular internet search engine triggered by scores of complaints from both U.S. and European rivals.

The EU competition authority accused Google in April 2015 of distorting internet search results to favor its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers.

The Commission and Google declined to comment. The U.S. company has in the past rejected the charges, saying that regulators ignored competition from online retailers Amazon and eBay Inc.

Fines for companies found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules can reach 10 percent of their global turnover, which in Google’s case could be about $9 billion of its 2016 turnover.

Apart from the fine, the Commission will tell Google to stop its alleged anti-competitive practices but it is not clear what measures it will order the company to adopt to ensure that rivals get equal treatment in internet shopping results.

The regulator could set out general principles or specific instructions for Google to follow, said an observer.

The Commission’s tough line is in sharp contrast with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission which settled its own web search case with the company in 2013 by requiring Google to stop “scraping” reviews and other data from rival websites for its own products.

Google made three unsuccessful attempts to settle the case with the previous European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia in a bid to stave off a possible fine and a finding of wrongdoing.

May’s lead falls to 3 percentage points, YouGov poll shows a week before election
Almunia’s successor Margrethe Vestager, however, has shown no willingness to settle with Google.

The company has also been charged with using its Android mobile operating system to squeeze out rivals and with blocking competitors in online search advertising related to its “AdSense for Search” platform.

The platform allows Google to act as an intermediary for websites such as online retailers, telecoms operators or newspapers. The Commission has warned of massive fines in both cases.

source: interaksyon.com

Google challenges Apple’s Siri by opening digital assistant to iPhone

Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Wednesday it would make its digital assistant available on Apple Inc’s iPhone, making a play for the higher end of the smartphone market and challenging Apple’s Siri feature on its own devices.

The announcement heralds a step by Google, whose Android system runs on the majority of the world’s smartphones, to get a foothold on Apple’s phones, which have smaller market share but are used by people who tend to spend more on technology.

It comes as Google, Apple and Amazon.com Inc are competing to establish the dominant voice-powered digital assistant, which many in the industry believe will supplant keyboards and touch screens as a primary way that users interact with technology.

Speaking at an annual developer conference in Mountain View, California, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai touted the company’s progress with the Google Assistant, which allows users to complete various tasks through voice commands.

“Humans are interacting with computing in more natural and immersive ways,” he said. “We’ve been using voice as an input across many of our products. We’ve had significant breakthroughs.”

The Assistant debuted last year on Google’s own hardware, and the company has gradually extended the tool to devices from other manufacturers running on its Android operating system.

Google, which gets most of its revenue from its dominant search engine, also released a host of new features for Google Home, a speaker released last year. Users will soon be able to make phone calls using the device, and the HBO Now streaming service, owned by Time Warner Inc, will be integrated as well.

In addition, the company announced that it will offer physical photo albums through its photo app.

source: beta.interaksyon.com

Google takes on Apple, Amazon with new hardware push

SAN FRANCISCO — Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday announced a new “Pixel” smartphone and a suite of new consumer electronics products for the home, planting itself firmly in the hardware business and challenging Apple Inc’s iPhone at the high end of the $400 billion global smartphone market.

The string of announcements – including the $649 Pixel, a smart speaker for the living room dubbed “Home,” a virtual reality headset, and a new Wi-Fi router – is the clearest sign yet that Google intends to compete head-to-head with Apple, Amazon.com Inc and even manufacturers of phones using its own Android mobile operating system.

Company executives, echoing Apple’s longstanding philosophy, said they were striving for tighter integration of hardware and software.

“The thinking is that if we can work on hardware and software together, we can innovate much better,” Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh said in an interview with Reuters, citing a recent reorganization that united once-disparate hardware teams.

Under the new structure, the company has begun to take a much more integrated approach to things like supply chain management and design, added Mario Queiroz, a vice president of product management.

“The learnings from one product are benefiting another product,” he said.

Unlike earlier Google phone efforts under the Nexus brand, the Pixel devices are designed and developed by Google from the start, although Taiwan’s HTC Corp will serve as the contract manufacturer.

Swipe at Apple

Taking another page from the Apple playbook, Google said it would work exclusively with a single carrier in the United States, Verizon Communications Inc, on the Pixel, emulating Apple’s agreement to launch the original iPhone with AT&T Inc. That deal gave Apple unprecedented control over the look of the phone and how it worked.

Shares of Alphabet closed up 0.3 percent, while Verizon fell 1.2 percent.

The phone comes in two sizes, and its high-end camera is one of few distinguishing features, analysts said. The phones come in black, blue and silver and will be able to get up to a seven-hour charge in 15 minutes. Pre-orders begin on Tuesday.

“Aside from the camera, the new Google Pixels are pretty undifferentiated compared to Samsung and iPhone seventh generation phones,” industry analyst Patrick Moorhead said.

While the new phones are clearly aimed at competing with the iPhone – Google executives took several swipes at Apple in their on-stage remarks – analysts said Android rivals like Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) could be the biggest victim if the Pixel takes off.

Google’s strategy of licensing Android for free and profiting from embedded services such as search and maps made Android the dominant mobile operating system with some 89 percent of the global market, according to IDC.

But Apple still rules the high end of the market, and Google has long been frustrated by the emergence of many variations of Android and the inconsistent experience that has produced. Pushing its own hardware will likely complicate its relationship with Android licensees, analysts said.

 All-purpose assistant

Google Kicked off the event Tuesday by touting the Google Assistant, the company’s voice-activated artificial intelligence system and its answer to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. The presenter showed how a customers could make a restaurant reservation with a few phrases spoken into the phone.

The assistant will be embedded into the Pixel and Home products and is being positioned as the central feature in a family of integrated hardware and software products.

It is one of a handful of similar assistants that are vying for supremacy as more people search the web and make purchases online using voice commands, which may eventually supplant keyboards and touchscreens as the primary means of controlling digital devices.

While Google is often cited as the leader in artificial intelligence, Amazon stole a march on the company with its Alexa-powered Echo home speaker system, a surprise hit. The Home device and the Echo have many of the same features.

Google’s “Daydream View” virtual reality headset, meanwhile, puts the company in competition with Facebook Inc, owner of Oculus. The device, which works with an Android phone, is far cheaper and simpler. It will be available in November for $79, in time for the end-of-year shopping season.

Home will also be available in November for $129, including a six-month trial of ad-free YouTube.

Google also unveiled a new version of its Chromecast digital media player and a router dubbed Google Wifi, both boasting the same sleek, minimalist design as the Home product.

“These look like products from a single company,” said Queiroz, the Google executive.

source: interaksyon.com

Google autonomous car project teams with FiatChrysler

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Google parent Alphabet on Tuesday announced that it has partnered with Fiat Chrysler in a major expansion of its fleet of self-driving vehicles.

The Google autonomous test fleet would be more than doubled with the addition of 100 new 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans, with the companies aiming to have some on the road by the end of this year.

The collaboration with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) marks the first time that the California-based Internet giant has worked directly with an automaker to build self-driving vehicles.

“FCA will design the minivans so it’s easy for us to install our self-driving systems, including the computers that hold our self-driving software, and the sensors that enable our software to see what’s on the road around the vehicle,” the car team said in a post at the Google+ social network.

The minivan design also provides opportunity to explore the potential of large self-driving vehicles that could be used mass-transit style with features such as hands-free sliding doors for getting in or out, according to the post.

Alphabet said it was not licensing its autonomous car technology, nor would it be selling the self-driving minivans.

The move signals that Google has a particular interest in “people mover type vehicles” with the potential to autonomously shuttle passengers about in settings such as college campuses, cities or shopping districts, Kelley Blue Book analyst Karl Brauer told AFP.

“I’m confident that Google feels that is where the greatest mission potential for the autonomous vehicle is.”

Google began testing its autonomous driving technology in 2009, using a Toyota Prius equipped with the tech giant’s equipment. It now has some 70 vehicles, including Lexus cars adapted by Google and its in-house designed cars unveiled in 2014.

FCA will design and engineer minivans uniquely built for self-driving technology that Google will integrate into vehicles, according to the carmaker.

Accelerating efforts

The companies will position engineering teams at a facility in Michigan to accelerate the design, testing and manufacturing of the self-driving Chrysler Pacifica.

“The opportunity to work closely with FCA engineers will accelerate our efforts to develop a fully self-driving car that will make our roads safer and bring everyday destinations within reach for those who cannot drive,” said Google Self-Driving Car Project chief executive John Krafcik.

The US agency in charge of highway safety early this year provided feedback indicating that a bubble-shaped autonomous car built by Alphabet could qualify as being its own driver.

In a written response to a query from the Silicon Valley-based technology firm, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that since the self-driving cars lacks steering wheels or other controls for humans, it is “more reasonable to identify the driver as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving.”

While the administration’s response didn’t change rules of the road, it is seen as a green light of sorts for getting autonomous vehicles to market.

Packed starting line

Google has been testing self-driving cars on California roads for a while, and an array of automobile makers including Audi, Ford, Mercedes, Lexus, Tesla and BMW are working on building self-driving capabilities into vehicles.

FCA chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne said the partnership may help boost innovation in the sector.

“The experience both companies gain will be fundamental to delivering automotive technology solutions that ultimately have far-reaching consumer benefits,” he said.

The US administration pledged in January to help clear the way for autonomous vehicles with an investment of $4 billion to fund research and testing projects.

A Chinese auto firm revealed last month that it was buying two foreign companies and their self-driving technologies for more than $1 billion.

Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp. said it signed an agreement to buy US-based Key Safety Systems (KSS) Holdings Inc.

Ningbo, which provides driver control systems to auto giants such as General Motors and Mercedes-Benz, also plans to buy the car navigation business of Germany’s TechniSat Digital GmbH.

Chinese tech giant Baidu, which has opened a California research center for autonomous driving, has said it is planning to produce driverless cars by 2020.

The Alphabet-FCA collaboration could “easily encourage an Apple, an Uber or another technology company to follow the same path and work more closely with an auto maker,” according to Kelley Blue Book’s Brauer.

source: interaksyon.com

Google developing virtual reality headset — WSJ

Google is developing a virtual reality headset that works without a smartphone or computer, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The headset will include a screen, high-powered processors and outward-facing cameras, the Journal reported, citing one person.

Alphabet Inc’s Google currently sells a virtual reality device made of cardboard into which users slide in their mobile phones.

Since the launch in 2014, Google has shipped five million Google Cardboards.


The company declined to comment on the Journal report.

source: interaksyon.com