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

Daimler CEO mulls joint ventures with Apple, Google — magazine

BERLIN — Daimler’s chief executive said “different types” of cooperation with Apple and Google are possible as carmakers realize next-generation autos cannot be built without greater input from telecoms and software experts.

“Many things are conceivable,” Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said in an interview with quarterly magazine Deutsche Unternehmerboerse published on Friday.

The emergence of self-driving and connected cars has made software a key component in future cars, opening the market to new entrants like the U.S.-based technology giants.

“Google and Apple want to provide system software for cars and bring this entire ecosystem around Apple and Google into the vehicle,” Zetsche said. “That can be interesting for both sides.”

His comments echoed those of German rival Volkswagen, whose chief executive Martin Winterkorn has urged collaboration with technology firms to make future cars safer and more intelligent.

One option could be for Daimler to build cars as part of a joint venture by using the digital expertise of its U.S. partners, Zetsche said, but added that his comments were “purely theoretical”.

Zetsche said Daimler would not allow itself to be demoted to the role of dumb supplier, simply producing cars for the Silicon Valley giants.

“We don’t want to become contractors who have no direct content with customers any more and supply hardware to third parties,” he said.

source: interaksyon.com

Google propels Nasdaq to another record high close

NEW YORK - A major rally in Google pushed the Nasdaq to a second straight record high on Friday while weak energy stocks weighed on the Dow and S&P 500.

Google surged 16.26 percent to end at an all-time high of $699.62, a day after reporting strong ad revenue growth. It was Google's largest one-day percentage gain since April 2008.

Facebook rose 4.53 percent to a record high of $94.97 on hopes that it could mirror Google's ad growth. Etsy spiked 30 percent thanks to a nod from Google during its conference call.

But a drop in oil prices limited gains on the broader stock market, with the S&P 500 energy index down 1.07 percent to its lowest level since January 2013. Chevron lost 1.4 percent. The utilities index dropped 1.06 percent.

Wall Street insiders were cautiously optimistic about upcoming quarterly reports after some results this week came in above expectations.

“It’s going to be better than what the consensus numbers were pointing to,” said Kurt Brunner, a portfolio manager at Swarthmore Group in Philadelphia. “Our economy is doing okay. We’re not growing at 5 percent but we have slow, steady growth and I think that continues.”

The Nasdaq Composite added 46.96 points, or 0.91 percent, to end at 5,210.14, its second straight record high close.

The S&P 500 gained 2.35 points, or 0.11 percent, to end at 2,126.64, just shy of its record high of 2,130.82.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 33.8 points, or 0.19 percent, to end at 18,086.45.

Boeing fell 1.11 percent and was the biggest drag on the Dow after it said it will take a second-quarter charge related to problems with its KC-46 aerial refueling tanker aircraft program.

General Electric shares rose 0.74 percent after raising its 2015 outlook for its industrial manufacturing businesses.

The technology index was the sole gainer among the 10 major S&P 500 indexes, up 1.75 percent, mostly because of Google.

For the week, the Dow gained 1.8 percent, the S&P added 2.4 percent and the Nasdaq rose 4.3 percent, its largest weekly gain since October 2014.

The dollar saw its biggest weekly gain in two months due to expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike this year. However, a strong dollar reduces the value of U.S. companies' overseas income.

U.S. companies have been expected to post their worst sales decline in nearly six years in the second quarter, in part due to the strong dollar. Profit is expected to have fallen 2.9 percent, according to Thomson Reuters estimates.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,000 to 1,076, for a 1.86-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,676 issues fell and 1,115 advanced for a 1.50-to-1 ratio favoring decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 21 new 52-week highs and 25 new lows; the Nasdaq saw 107 new highs and 87 new lows.

Volume was a bit light, with about 6.1 billion shares traded on U.S. exchanges, below the 6.6 billion average so far this month, according to BATS Global Markets.

source: interaksyon.com

Google super-fast US Internet service spreads

SAN FRANCISCO — Google’s super-fast Internet service — up to 100 times quicker than basic broadband — is heading for four more US metropolitan areas as the technology titan ramps up pressure on cable service giants.

A Google Fiber program launched nearly five years ago will expand to 18 cities in the Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham areas.

“We can’t wait to see what people and businesses across the southeast US do with gigabit speeds,” Google Fiber vice president Dennis Kish said in a blog post announcing the expansion Tuesday.

Google Fiber is live in Kansas City, Provo and Austin.

Google is meanwhile working on a new generation of applications designed to capitalize on Internet speeds available using Fiber, but did not disclose details.

“Today, we aren’t the only ones talking about gigabit broadband,” Kish said.

“From the White House to main street, a chorus of new voices is standing up for speed.”

Some US telecommunications firms stepped up with higher-speed Internet plans of their own after Google started weaving Fiber into cities.

Expansion of the Fiber program comes amid media reports that Google is getting ready to sell wireless telephone services directly to US consumers after reaching deals with carriers T-Mobile and Sprint.

The move would have a big impact on the US wireless industry, potentially resulting in price cuts and improved speeds.

Google is already in a powerful position in the wireless world, with its Android operating system running on more than 80 percent of the world’s mobile phones.

US cellphone service is currently dominated by Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.

source: interaksyon.com

Android co-founder Andy Rubin to leave Google

Google Inc said on Thursday that Andy Rubin, co-founder of its Android mobile business and head of its nascent robotics effort is leaving the company.

Rubin will start a company to support startups interested in building technology-hardware products, Google said in an emailed response for comment on a Wall Street Journal report about his move.

James Kuffner, a research scientist at Google and a member of the robotics group, will replace Rubin, the company added.

Last year, Google’s browser and applications chief Sundar Pichai replaced Rubin as head of the Android division, bringing the firm’s mobile software, applications and Chrome browser under one roof.

Rubin built Android into a free, open-source software platform now used by most of the world’s largest handset manufacturers, from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd to HTC Corp.

source: interaksyon.com

Google starts quantum computing research project

Google Inc said a research team led by physicist John Martinis from the University of California Santa Barbara will join the company to start a project to build new quantum information processors based on superconducting electronics.

The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab is a collaboration between Google, NASA Ames Research Center and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) to study the application of quantum optimization related to artificial intelligence.

“With an integrated hardware group, the Quantum AI team will now be able to implement and test new designs for quantum optimization and inference processors based on recent theoretical insights as well as our learnings from the D-Wave quantum annealing architecture,” Google’s director of engineering, Hartmut Neven, said on its research blog.

Google, which is working on projects including self-driving cars and robots, has become increasingly focused on artificial intelligence in recent years.

Earlier in January, Google acquired privately held artificial intelligence company DeepMind Technologies Ltd.

source: interaksyon.com

Google considering YouTube, Gmail accounts for kids: reports

Google Inc is considering allowing online accounts for children under the age of 13 and give their parents control over how the service is used, according to media reports.

Google has been working on a version of YouTube, its video-sharing site, for youngsters and is considering other child-friendly accounts such as its Gmail system, the Financial Times reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Internet companies such as Google and Facebook Inc do not offer their services to children under 13, but it is tough to catch users who sign up by providing false information.

A U.S. law called Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, imposes strict controls on the collection and use of information about children under 13.

Google’s effort is partly driven by the fact that some parents are already trying to create accounts for their children and the company wants to make the process easier and compliant with the rules, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the effort.

Google’s move was first reported by technology news website The Information.

Google spokesman Peter Barron declined to comment on what he called “rumors and speculation”.

source: interaksyon.com

YouTube weighs funding efforts to boost premium content – sources

LOS ANGELES — YouTube has embarked on a new round of discussions with Hollywood and independent producers to fund premium content, two sources with knowledge of the talks told Reuters, a move that could bolster a three-year-old multimillion-dollar effort that has had mixed success so far.

The talks underscore Google Inc’s desire to complete YouTube’s transition from a repository for grainy home videos to a site sporting the more polished content crucial to securing higher-priced advertising.

Over the past two months, YouTube executives have begun making the rounds, talking to Hollywood producers to explore the kinds of support it could offer its content creators and produce more must-see programming, according to the two people.

Executives did not lay out exactly how a program would be structured. One of the two people said the site may offer between $1 million and $3 million to produce a series of programs, and might contribute marketing funds as well.

The second person said the site was interested in videos shorter than the 30-minute, TV network-quality Web shows that Amazon.com Inc and other online sites have recently funded.

“We are always exploring various content and marketing ideas to support and accelerate our creators,” a YouTube representative said in an email. The site declined to comment on the meetings.

The latest round of discussions is in its initial phases and actual measures may never materialize, the sources said.

YouTube is by far the world’s most popular location for video streaming, with more than 1 billion unique visitors a month, far surpassing Netflix Inc and Amazon. But it is trying to lure more marketers for premium video advertising, boosting margins as overall prices for Google’s advertising declines.

YouTube set aside an estimated $100 million in late 2011 to bankroll some 100 channels, though it never confirmed amounts spent or other details. Beneficiaries of that largesse included Madonna and ESPN, as well as lesser-known creators. Reuters was one of the companies that received funds for a channel.

But few of those have garnered much mainstream attention.

“Over 115 of the channels launched as part of that initiative are now in the top 2 percent most-subscribed to channels on the platform,” a company representative said in an email.

YouTube has continued to provide backing for its content creators. It provides production facilities for creators, offers tips on how best to create content, and provides small amounts of funds for creators to test ideas.

The site also provides marketing support for online celebrities, including paying for billboards and TV ads for the likes of beauty blogger Michelle Phan and baker Rosanna Pansino.

source: interaksyon.com

Google launches Glass in London

Google have launched their wearable goggles, Glass, in London. The Guardian are set to be stocking up in a bid to look ahead of the game while the Daily Mail are furiously writing 1,000 op-ed pieces about how evil the whole idea is.

The internet giant has launched their Explorer Programme which now allows anyone over the age of 18 to buy a pair of Glass(es), despite still being in the prototype phase.

And it’ll cost you £1,000.

That won’t matter to tech-savvy Londoners with money to burn – soon, they’ll be annoying everyone on the train or in coffee shops by talking to their specs by saying “Glass, which is the most annoyingly named craft beer I can buy?” as well as; ”Glass – search dominatrix services in the Shoreditch area”.

Of course, it isn’t all about looking for dark sexual gratification – you can watch videos, read emails and other stuff which you can do with your phone or tablet. However, Glass leaves your hands free to rub your thighs and give people the middle finger.

At the UK launch, Marketing Director of Google Glass Ed Sanders said: “One of the reasons we’re here in the UK is the country’s spirit of innovation. The consumers, developers and inventors in the UK have a very rich heritage of embracing new technology.”

“Glass is not a finished product yet and part of the spirit of the explorer programme is so that we can work closely with developers and consumers in the UK at a local level to find out what will take the product forward.”

However, the fact that British people are a little more reserved than our American cousins may mean that this device is hamstrung initially.

We await the first arrest from someone using Glass while driving.

source: bitterwallet.com

Google to buy satellite company Skybox Imaging for $500 million

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc said on Tuesday it is acquiring satellite company Skybox Imaging for $500 million in cash, the Internet company’s second high-profile acquisition of an aerospace company this year.

Google said that Skybox’s satellites will provide images for Google’s online mapping service. Google, the world’s No.1 Internet search engine, said that Skybox’s technology could also eventually be used to provide Internet access and help with disaster relief.

The acquisition of the five-year old company comes as Google and rival Facebook Inc are racing to snap up satellite and drone companies in an expensive effort to expand the reach of their businesses.

In April Google acquired Titan Aerospace, a New Mexico-based maker of solar-powered drones, for an undisclosed sum. Google has also launched a small network of balloons designed to deliver Internet access over the Southern Hemisphere.

Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network, announced in March that it had created a special “Connectivity lab” project tasked with developing satellites, drones and other technology that could be used to beam Internet connectivity to people in underdeveloped parts of the world.

Skybox has built satellites packed with sensors and camera electronics that take high-resolution images and video of the earth but which it says are smaller and lighter than traditional satellites. The company, which like Google is based in Mountain View, Calif, has launched one satellite and had planned to launch a constellation of 24 satellites, according to the company’s website.

“The time is right to join a company who can challenge us to think even bigger and bolder, and who can support us in accelerating our ambitious vision,” Skybox said on in its Website on Tuesday in a message announcing the deal with Google.

Google said the deal’s closing is subject to regulatory approvals in the United States.

Shares of Google were down less than 0.5 percent at $568.07 in midday trading on Tuesday.

source: interaksyon.com

Google takes steps to comply with EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling

Google Inc has launched a service through which European citizens can request that links to what they deem as objectionable material be taken off search results, the first step to comply with a court ruling affirming the “right to be forgotten.”

The world’s largest Internet search engine, which processes more than 90 percent of all Web searches in Europe, said on Thursday that it has made available a webform through which people can submit their requests, but stopped short of specifying when it would remove links that meet the criteria for being taken down.

Google (GOOGL.O) also said it has convened a committee of senior Google executives and independent experts to try and craft a long-term approach to dealing with what’s expected to be a barrage of requests from the region’s roughly half-billion occupants.

“In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information,” reads the webform that Google made available on Thursday.

Google says in the form that when evaluating requests, it will consider whether the results include outdated information about a person, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information, such as information about professional malpractice, criminal convictions and the public conduct of government officials.

The form includes space for users to submit objectionable links and a box for the person to explain why the link is “irrelevant, outdated, or otherwise inappropriate.”

To make a request, a person must submit a digital copy of an official identification, such as a valid driver’s license, and select from a drop-down menu of 32 European countries the appropriate country whose law applies to the request.

The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union places Google in a tricky position as it strives to interpret the EU’s broad criteria for objectionable links, and to remove certain content from its search engine while preserving its popularity as a resource for users to find all manner of information.

Google will also face a logistical challenge in processing requests in various languages, some of which are in countries that Google does not even have operations in.

Failure to remove links that meet the EU’s broad criteria for take-down can result in fines.

Since the ruling, Google has received thousands of removal requests, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Google has said it is disappointed with the EU ruling, and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said the balance the court struck between privacy and “the right to know” was wrong.

Among the members of the special advisory committee Google is forming to study the issue are Jimmy Wales, co-founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, and Frank La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression.

The committee will be co-chaired by Schmidt and Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.

Google said in a statement on Thursday that it will work with data protection authorities and others as it implements the ruling.

Still, it is not clear when Google will begin to actually remove any links. In the webform, Google says it is “working to finalize our implementation of removal requests under European data protection law as soon as possible. In the meantime, please fill out the form below and we will notify you when we start processing your request.”

Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) which also operates a search engine in Europe, has previously said it is “carefully reviewing” the decision to assess the impact for its business and its users. Microsoft, which operates the Bing search engine, has previously declined to comment on the ruling.

source: interaksyon.com

Disney joins online distribution biz with acquisition of large YouTube network

LOS ANGELES - The Walt Disney Co has agreed to buy Maker Studios, one of YouTube's largest networks, for $500 million, a deal that makes Disney a major online video distributor and should help draw more teens into the Disney entertainment empire.

The price tag could rise to $950 million if Maker hits certain performance milestones, Disney said, confirming what a source told Reuters earlier on Monday.

Maker, founded in 2009, is one of the largest video production networks on Google Inc's YouTube. Its producers target the younger millennial generation, known for its high appetite for online video.

"This gives a presence online to reach the millennial group that is increasingly getting its video online," said Kevin Mayer, Disney executive vice president for corporate strategy. "And it gives us a lot of data to help promote our other businesses to them."

The deal will be "mildly dilutive" to earnings per share through fiscal 2017, Mayer said. Disney's fiscal year closes at the end of September.

Maker helps produce and distribute videos to more than 380 million subscribers worldwide across more than 55,000 channels. Its videos now collectively garner some 5.5 billion views every month, according to the source.

The company, whose backers include Time Warner Investments, Upfront Ventures and Greycroft Partners, is partners with PewDiePie, the online persona of 24 year-old video gamer Felix Kjellberg. Kjellberg has more than 25 million subscribers and is YouTube's single most-subscribed star.

"Short-form online video is growing at an astonishing pace and with Maker Studios, Disney will now be at the center of this dynamic industry," Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement.

The deal is expected to close in Disney's third fiscal quarter.

source: interaksyon.com

Google fixes Gmail after brief outage around the world

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc suffered a service outage on Friday that briefly took down Gmail, the email service used by hundreds of millions of people and many businesses across the globe.

Google, which first acknowledged the outage at 11:12 a.m. Pacific Time (1412 ET), said a little over an hour later that the problem with Gmail had been resolved.

As of late Friday, the company did not offer an explanation for the outage, which affected users in at least India, Britain and the United States and prompted a stream of complaints on Twitter from users in many more countries.

“We’re investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly,” the company said on its “App Status” dashboard online, which tracks the state of various Google services.

Google Docs, the cloud-based productivity application that competes against Microsoft Corp’s Office suite, also suffered a service disruption, according to the Google dashboard. Other Google properties, the social network Google Plus, and YouTube, appeared to load slowly as well.

Gmail, which includes calendar and chat features, has soared in popularity over the past decade to become one of Google’s most successful product offerings. With more than 420 million users, it has begun to make small inroads against Microsoft Exchange in the battle to provide email services for corporate customers as well as individual consumers.

Yahoo Inc, which also runs a rival Internet mail service, seized the moment to post a screenshot of the Gmail error page to Twitter. Yahoo later apologized for the barb and deleted the tweet.

Google users attempting to sign on saw a “temporary error” message and a brief note: “We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes.”

source: interaksyon.com

Google buys ‘smart’ thermostat maker Nest for $3.2-billion

SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Monday announced that it is buying smart thermostat start-up Nest in a deal valued at $3.2 billion.

“They’re already delivering amazing products you can buy right now — thermostats that save energy and smoke/CO alarms that can help keep your family safe,” Google chief executive Larry Page said in a press release.


“We are excited to bring great experiences to more homes in more countries and fulfill their dreams.”

The big-ticket buy continues a move by the California-based Internet titan into consumer electronics hardware, adding smartphone-synched thermostats to its Motorola Mobility smartphones; Nexus mobile devices, Chromecast, and the promise of releasing Google Glass eyewear some time this year.

“Google has the business resources, global scale and platform reach to accelerate Nest growth across hardware, software and services for the home globally,” Nest co-founder and chief executive Tony Fadell.

“And our company visions are well aligned – we both believe in letting technology do the hard work behind the scenes so people can get on with the things that matter in life.”

Nest co-founder Tony Fadell is a former senior vice president of the Apple division behind iPods and iPhones. Fellow co-founder Matt Rogers was a lead iPod software engineer working with Fadell at Apple.

Nest’s vice president of technology Yoky Matsuoka was once head of innovations at Google.

Inspiration for Nest came when Fadell was building an environmentally-friendly home in Northern California and discovered that thermostat technology was stuck in a bygone era. Fadell pulled together a team to bring the thermostat into the mobile Internet age.

The sleek, disk-shaped thermostat is controlled by turning an outer ring. A black display screen showing the temperature turns blue to indicate cooling or red to show rooms are being heated.

Machine learning built into thermostats lets them adapt to patterns in homes within a week of regular use. The more users adjust their Nest thermostats, the more precisely the devices learn preferred comfort levels in homes.

Sensors in the thermostat assess whether lights are on or there is movement, determining when people are away and then shifting to energy-saving settings.

A green leaf appears on-screen to prompt users to save energy and money by altering their usual thermometer setting by a barely noticeable degree.

Learning Thermostats also tell people how long it will take to get rooms to desired temperatures, letting them assess whether they will be home long enough to justify the process.

Nest thermostats have Wi-Fi connectivity to link up to the Internet, and a free smartphone application lets people manage home climates from afar or mine data about energy used for heating or cooling.

Nest launched in late 2011 with its smart thermostat and later added a carbon dioxide detector to its line.

“This means firmly and clearly that Google is getting into connected homes,” Forrester analyst Frank Gillett said of the acquisition.

“It once again demonstrates that the industry is going in the direction of Apple; deciding it is darn important to control the hardware.”

“Smart” homes, featuring “intelligent” objects such as door locks, lamps, refrigerators and washing machines, were among the hot trends at an international Consumer Electronics Show extravaganza that ended on Friday in Las Vegas.

source: interaksyon.com

Google may let you use computer with ‘hand gestures’

MANILA, Philippines — U.S. tech giant Google, now awash with millions of cash due to its booming income, has filed a patent application on a user interface that allows users to transmit computer commands through mere hand gestures.

In its application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last Oct. 15 innocuously titled “Hand gestures to signify what is important,” Google sought to own first dibs on a technology that enables people to execute commands on a wearable computer device, such as the much-touted Google glass.

In a drawing sheet, the company illustrated that the technology may be used to grab video stills by making hand gesture of a heart over the video.

“In accordance with example embodiments, hand gestures can be used to provide user input to a wearable computing device, and in particular to identify, signify, or otherwise indicate what may be considered or classified as important or worthy attention or notice,” the company said.

The technology may be seen to complement the further maturity of its Google glass device, which now allows users to record videos and snap pictures through voice commands.

In its patent filing, Google indicated that the hand-gesture technology will be used on a “wearable computing device, which could include a head-mounted display (HMD) and a video camera.”

“Particular hand gestures could be used for selecting portions of a field of view of the HMD, and generating images from selected portions,” Google said.

“The HMD could then transmit the generated images to one or more applications in a network server communicatively connected with the HMD, including a server of server system hosting a social networking service,” Google added.

This is not the first time, however, that Google toyed with the idea of a hand-gesture operated technology, only its first one was an April Fool’s prank. Google Motion, publicized in April 1, 2011, reportedly allows users to use gmail with body movements.

Google has not released an official statement about the hand-gesture technology and it may also be possible that the patent application may just be an attempt to ward off patent trolls

With the company’s balance sheet swimming in a sea of liquidity, due to a steady stream of ad revenues that propped up its third quarter income by 36 percent over last year to $3 billion, Google has been more and more ambitious in pursuing frontier technology, or “moonshots” as the company calls it.

The Internet search company even has a dedicated facility called Google X specifically tasked to develop and study the viability of these projects, which right now include a driverless car, a high-altitude helium balloon that will beam down broadband internet to remote areas, and the Google glass.

The company is also studying how to extend the human lifespan through its biotech company Calico.

source: interaksyon.com

Google stock hits new high as mobile bets pay off

Google Inc shares jumped to an all-time high above $1000 after the search engine giant reported a surge in mobile and video advertising that helped drive quarterly revenue up 23 percent.

At least 16 brokerages raised their price targets on the stock to between $880 and $1,220, with Deutsche Bank bumping up its target price by 26 percent.

The shares rose 13 percent to $1007.40 after the opening bell on the Nasdaq, before easing back a few dollars.

Google said paid clicks increased by a quarter in the three months ended September 30, from a year earlier, the highest rate of growth in the past year.

This offset an 8 percent fall in average cost-per-click, the price advertisers pay Google when consumers click on their ads.

“We view solid paid clicks growth to be a good indicator of demand, driven by the continued shift to mobile,” J.P. Morgan analysts said. They had expected 21.5 percent growth.

In contrast, analysts say Yahoo, which this week reported a tepid quarter, has lost market share in display and search advertising in the face of strong competition from Facebook Inc and Google.

Google shares have climbed 38 percent this year, rewarding investors such as Fidelity Investments’ $101 billion Contrafund.

Contrafund added to its stake in Google in the third quarter and got a big lift from the surging performance of Facebook and Tesla Motors Inc as well. The fund, managed by star stock picker Will Danoff, returned 8.94 percent in the third quarter, easily beating the 5.24 percent advance of the S&P 500 Index.

Facebook is expected to report its third-quarter results on October 30.

To counter declines in cost-per-click rates, Google rolled out in February a service to help advertisers market through a mix of smartphones, tablets and desktops.

The J.P. Morgan analysts said this drive was a major opportunity for Google in the upcoming holiday season.

Analysts also highlighted Google’s ability to generate revenue from its video-streaming website, YouTube.

YouTube branded video-ads grew more than 75 percent in the quarter, from a year earlier, with 40 percent of traffic now coming from mobile devices.

“We estimate that Google’s key YouTube asset generated approximately $4 billion in revenue in 2012, positioning Google extremely well for the strong growth in video advertising,” RBC Capital Markets analysts wrote in a note.

Analysts at Jefferies said Google is best positioned to benefit in mobile with one billion Android activations. The company sells applications and content through its Google Play Store.

The Mountain View, California-based company – known for its Google Maps service, Chrome browser and Nexus line of smartphones and tablets – reported a 32 percent jump in revenue from the rest of world (excluding UK) during the quarter with growth coming from Japan, South Korea and Australia.

” is an encouraging bright spot. Google should be a good play off any European and Emerging Markets recovery,” analysts at RBC Capital markets said.

“We think the worst is behind Google from a sentiment perspective,” Deutsche Bank analysts said.

source: interaksyon.com

Lady Gaga, Eminem to headline first YouTube Music Awards

LOS ANGELES | Pop singer Lady Gaga and rapper Eminem will be the headline performers at the first YouTube Music Awards, the Google Inc-owned online video steaming site said on Tuesday.

The November 3 award show in New York, which will be live-streamed, will honor the top songs and artists that were viewed on the website in the past year.

Nominees will be announced later this month and voting by the public will determine winners, YouTube said.

Canadian rock band Arcade Fire will also perform at the awards show. The show will be hosted by actor-musician Jason Schwartzman while film and music video director Spike Jonze will serve as creative director, YouTube said.

The video streaming website has become a crucial way for musical acts to share music in recent years and has also helped launch the careers of little-known artists such as Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen and South Korean pop star Psy.

source: interaksyon.com

Google launches streaming music service ahead of Apple

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc launched a music service on Wednesday that allows users to listen to unlimited songs for $9.99 a month, challenging smaller companies like Pandora and Spotify in the market for streaming music.

With its new service, announced at its annual developers’ conference in San Francisco, Google has adopted the streaming music business model ahead of rival Apple Inc, which pioneered online music purchases with iTunes.

Google’s “All Access” service lets users customize song selections from 22 genres, ranging from Jazz to Indie music, stream individual playlists, or listen to a curated, radio-like stream that can be tweaked. It will be launched for U.S. users first, before being rolled out to several other countries.

Google unveiled a string of improvements to other services, including new mapping features and a voice-activated search, at the conference. The focus was on giving more options to users of mobile devices using its Android software, the operating system that now runs three out of every four smartphones sold.

Shares of Google, the world’s largest Internet search company, jumped more than 3 percent while Pandora Media Inc shares were down more than 1 percent on Wednesday afternoon.

Google’s new music service amps up the competition in the nascent market for subscription-based, streaming music. Amazon.com Inc and Apple are among the Silicon Valley powerhouses sounding out top recording industry executives, according to sources with knowledge of talks.

Pandora is spending freely and racking up losses to expand globally. Even social media stalwarts Facebook and Twitter are jumping onto the streaming-music bandwagon.

All these companies see a viable music streaming and subscription service as crucial to growing their presence in an exploding mobile environment. For Google and Apple, it is critical in ensuring users remain loyal to their mobile products.

With a music service, Google further “locks” consumers into its sphere of products and services, said Chris Silva, an analyst with Altimeter Group.

“They’re trying to sell an ecosystem,” he said. “The more things I’m doing, the more things that tie me to Google services.”

At $9.99 a month, Google’s service is costlier than the $3.99 required for Pandora, but on par with Spotify.

The music service features millions of tracks from Universal Music, Sony Entertainment Group and Warner Music Group, as well as from thousands of independent labels, according to a Google spokeswoman.

Some analysts said the new service allowed Google to catch-up to offerings from the likes of Spotify, but did not offer anything unique. Forrester analyst James McQuivey said combining the service with video or game content might have made it stand out.

“You don’t dismiss Apple, you don’t dismiss anyone. But that is not the point,” said Rich Tullo, an analyst at Albert Fried & Co. “Pandora is the market share leader in the space and their platform is so disruptive — it’s very hard to disrupt them. When you have 70 million people use it – they are the disruptors.”

CEO appearance

A procession of Google executives described and showed off a litany of new features and software updates at the annual “I/O” developers’ conference, from picture touch-ups on Google+ and re-designed Maps that spot when a user is walking or driving, to Star Trek-like voice-activated search that understands a users’ sentences and figures out what he or she is looking for.

“We haven’t seen this rate of change in computing for a long time — probably not since the birth of personal computing,” said CEO Larry Page, who began his address reflecting upon a significant moment in his life, when his father got him into a robotic science fair.

“We’re really only at 1 percent of what’s possible,” said Page, whose on-stage appearance came a day after he acknowledged suffering from a rare nerve problem affecting his vocal cords. The problem, which affects his breathing and makes it difficult for him to speak at length, sidelined Page from public speaking engagements last summer, though Page spoke for 45 minutes on stage on Wednesday.

Decrying a “negativity” in the technology industry which he said impedes progress, Page singled out competitors Microsoft Corp and Oracle Corp, criticizing the companies for not being sufficiently collaborative with Google and other companies. Google was sued by Oracle last year, and companies affiliated with Microsoft have complained about Google’s practices to European antitrust regulators.

“Most important things are not zero sum,” Page said.

Lack of Glass
The conference comes as Google’s Android software has become the most popular operating system in both smartphones and tablet PCs. Executives said Wednesday that some 900 million smartphones and tablets running Google Android software had been activated since the platform’s inception in 2010

Google’s popular mapping service, a mainstay of Android devices, features tighter integration with reviews off Zagat, the popular dining-reviews brand that Google bought last year. It also sports more pictures from inside important buildings, sourced from user-uploaded photos. It can now even display the earth realistically as viewed from outer space, something Page said he personally requested.

Shares in Yelp Inc, which like Zagat is built off users’ personal reviews, slid 3.8 percent to $29.80 in the afternoon.

Conspicuously absent from the more than three-hour opening keynote session was any mention of Google Glass, the wearable computing device that the company began distributing to a limited set of early users and developers last month.

The futuristic-looking device has elicited admiration from many technology-lovers, but some have questioned whether the stamp-sized electronic screen mounted on eyeglass frames will appeal to mainstream consumers.

While many enthusiastic attendees and Google staffers strolled about the conference center sporting the Glass devices, executives spent little time discussing it on stage.

Google missed an opportunity to “show that they think they’re onto something big,” said Forrester’s McQuivey.

source: interaksyon.com

Google to sell second-gen Nexus 7 tablet from July: sources

TAIPEI — Google Inc will launch a new version of its Nexus 7 tablet powered by Qualcomm Inc’s Snapdragon processor around July, two sources told Reuters, as the software giant pushes deeper into the cut-price mobile hardware market.

Google is aiming to ship as many as eight million of the Asustek-made tablets in the second half of the year, throwing down the gauntlet to other low-end tablets such as Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle Fire and Apple Inc’s iPad mini, the sources with knowledge of the new product said.

This is the first time details about the timing and sales targets for Google’s new tablet have been unveiled, although the company has not publicly released any information.

Google, which gets almost all of its revenue from online advertising, wants the aggressively priced Nexus tablets to be a hit as more Nexus users would mean more exposure for Google’s ads.

The latest version will have a higher screen resolution, a thinner bezel design and adopt Qualcomm’s chip in place of Nvidia Corp’s Tegra 3, which was used in the first Nexus 7s released last year, the sources said, declining to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

In a blow to Nvidia, Google weighed both U.S. chipmakers’ processors but finally decided on Qualcomm’s for power reasons, one of the sources added.

Qualcomm and Nvidia are competing aggressively in the tablet market as they seek to expand from their traditional strongholds of cellphones and PCs respectively.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on its new tablet. Qualcomm and Nvidia also declined to respond to questions.

Google and other traditionally non-hardware companies like Amazon and Microsoft Corp have begun making inroads into mobile devices as consumers increasingly access the Web on the go.

Google introduced its first tablet last June, hoping to replicate its smartphone success in a hotly contested market now dominated by Kindle Fire and iPad.

The Nexus 7 joined the ranks of smaller, 7-inch tablets popularized by Amazon and Samsung Electronics, among others.

Pricing is yet to be determined and Google’s plans are fluid, the sources said. Market leader Apple is expected to launch new iPads this year as well, possibly forcing its competitors to change their assumptions.

Google may choose to sell the new gadget for $199, the same as the first generation rolled out last June, while the old model may be discounted, one of the sources said. Alternatively, the new tablet could be priced more competitively at $149 and the previous model discontinued, the source added.

The cheapest iPad mini goes for more than $300.

Core strengths

Though pricing has not been finalized, discounting could play to Google’s and Amazon’s strengths by getting cheaper hardware into more consumers’ hands to drive revenue from their core Internet-based businesses.

“This is the ‘zero margin strategy’,” said Fubon Securities analyst Arthur Liao. “Ninety-seven percent of Google’s revenue comes from advertisement, so it needs to sell more mobile devices in order to reach more consumers.”

The Internet search giant, which has never disclosed tablet sales, plans to ship six to eight million of the new Nexus 7s in the second half of this year, the sources said. That compares to an estimated 4.6 million Nexus 7s sold in the same period last year, according to Enders Analysis mobile industry analyst Benedict Evans.

The large volume could help to accelerate development of tablet-specific applications for its Android operating software.

Asustek, a netbook PC pioneer, will continue to co-brand with Google on the new Nexus 7. The Taiwanese company has said it aims to ship over 12 million tablets this year, almost double last year’s shipments.

Asustek could not be reached for comment.

source: interaksyon.com

YouTube says has one billion monthly active users

Google Inc’s YouTube said on Thursday the number of unique users visiting the video-sharing website every month has reached 1 billion, about six months after social media company Facebook Inc also said it had the same amount of users.

“Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube,” the video website said in a blog post.

Facebook said it had passed the one billion user mark in September, a level of global penetration that has made its quest for sustained growth more challenging.

source: interaksyon.com