Google co-founder Larry Page says US online spying threatens democracy

VANCOUVER, March 20, 2014 (AFP) – Google co-founder Larry Page on Wednesday condemned US government snooping on the Internet as a threat to democracy.

His comments came during an on-stage chat at a prestigious Technology Entertainment Design gathering, where a day earlier fellow Google founder Sergey Brin had a virtual encounter with National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

A photo of Brin smiling with a robot remotely controlled by Snowden from a refuge in Russia, where the wanted man is in hiding, was tweeted by TED curator Chris Anderson and became an instant online hit.


“It is tremendously disappointing that the government sort of secretly did all this stuff and didn’t tell us,” Page said.

He reasoned that details of suspected terrorist threats should remain cloaked but that the parameters of what US intelligence agents do, along with how and why they do it, should be public.

“We need to have a debate about that or we can’t have a functioning democracy; it is just not possible,” Page said.

“It is sad that Google is in the position of protecting you and our users from the government doing secret things nobody knows about; it doesn’t make any sense.”

Spying backlash peril

As smartphones and sensors synched to the Internet obtain and share increasing amounts of data about where people are and what they are doing, Page said it was critical for people to be given choices of how it is used.

He was concerned, though, that privacy fears and a backlash to online spying would result in blocking uses of personal information for beneficial purposes.

He noted how shared medical information, on an aggregate scale and made anonymous, could help researchers develop treatments and patients select doctors or map medical care.

“We are not really thinking about the tremendous good that can come from people sharing the right information with the right people in the right ways,” Page said.

Page gave the example of going public with details of trouble with his voice.

“On your show, I kind of lost my voice and I haven’t gotten it back,” Page joked with Rose.

“I am hoping that by talking to you I am going to get it back. Get out your Voodoo doll and do whatever you need to do.”

Web bill of rights

Earlier in the day, on the same TED stage, the father of the World Wide Web urged those in the conference’s influential and innovative community to fight to keep life on the Internet free and open.

Tim Berners-Lee rallied support for creating a bill of rights for the Internet this year in the wake of revelations about extensive government surveillance.

Berners-Lee launched his Web We Want campaign last week as the Web turned 25 years old.

He has repeatedly called for fewer controls on the Web, and has praised Snowden for revealing details of how the US government collects masses of online data.

Berners-Lee conceived the Web 25 years ago in his spare time at Geneva-based CERN, Europe’s top particle physics lab.

“I want to use this anniversary to think about what kind of Web we want,” Berners-Lee said, referring ideas to a Webat25.org website.

NSA to respond

Former intelligence contractor Snowden emerged from his Russian exile Tuesday in the form of a remotely-controlled robot to promise more sensational revelations about US spying programs.

The fugitive’s face appeared on a screen as he maneuvered a wheeled android around the TED gathering, addressing an audience in Vancouver without ever leaving his hideaway.

“There are absolutely more revelations to come,” he said. “Some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come.”

Snowden used the conference to launch a global call to fight for privacy and Internet freedom.

He endorsed Berners-Lee’s quest for a global Magna Carta laying out values and rights on the Internet.

Berners-Lee briefly joined Snowden’s interview with TED curator Chris Anderson, and put the leaker in the hero camp.

National Security Agency Deputy Director Rick Ledgett will appear at the TED gathering early Thursday via video link as a counterpoint to Snowden’s talk, according to Anderson.

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 results miss; shares dive after premature report

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc’s quarterly results fell well short of Wall Street’s expectations after its core advertising business slowed, stunning investors accustomed to consistently rapid growth from the Internet giant and wiping more than 9 percent off its market value.

The disappointing numbers on Thursday came hours ahead of schedule in a rare instance of premature filing. Google blamed the misfire on an unauthorized filing by its financial printers, RR Donnelley & Sons Co, and later confirmed the numbers’ accuracy.

The earnings report, which had not been expected until after the market close, revealed a weakening in Google’s core Internet advertising business and persistent losses at its recently acquired cellphone business, Motorola Mobility.

Shares of Google, the world’s No. 1 Internet search engine, finished Thursday’s regular trading session down 8 percent at $695 after a brief trading halt. Some analysts said the inadvertent results release spurred confusion and exacerbated its stock price decline.

Google executives maintained in a conference call on Thursday that the company’s various businesses continued to benefit from healthy growth and that Google was well-positioned to capitalize on consumer’s increasing use of mobile devices.

Chief Executive Larry Page, speaking on his first earnings call since an unspecified voice ailment sidelined him from public speaking in June, said that Google’s mobile business was now generating revenue at an annualized run rate of $8 billion.

Page acknowledged that mobile ad rates were below the rates that Google garners for ads that appear on its standard website. But he said the variety of Web-connected devices used by consumers is creating “a huge new universe of opportunities for advertisers.”

“We’re uniquely positioned to get through that transition and to really profit from it,” Page said, citing Google’s Android mobile software, the world’s top operating system for smartphones by market share.

Google, which has been struggling to turn around a Motorola Mobility hardware business it bought for $12.5 billion, reported a 20 percent dive in net income to $2.18 billion. Excluding certain items, it earned $9.03 a share, vastly underperforming the $10.65 analysts had expected, on average.

“We have been saying this thing was ripe for a pullback. It’s not like they’re Google not being Google, but you still have some major issues,” said BCG analyst Colin Gillis.

“Click prices declined for the fourth consecutive quarter after rising for eight consecutive quarters before then. That’s a negative. This is the mobile problem.”

“The other bit is the Motorola millstone had been ignored by the market, and – boom – now you’ve got weak revenue from Motorola. When you acquire a business and you’re about to whack all kinds of people and close offices, you know what happens to the employees? They take their eye off the ball. Sales are down,” Gillis explained.

Net revenue growth at Google’s main Internet business increased 17 percent year-over-year, the first time growth in that business has fallen below 20 percent since 2009. Google Finance Chief Patrick Pichette stressed on the conference call that the revenue growth rate was higher if the impact of foreign currency exchange rates was backed out.

“It was just too rapid a deceleration,” said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser. “Many of the same underlying trends drive Facebook advertising.”

Shares of Facebook Inc, which headed south shortly after Google’s inadvertent filing, closed down 4.6 percent. Google’s snafu recalled Facebook’s debut, which was marred by technical glitches that also spooked traders and contributed to the stock’s first-day decline.

The decline in Google’s shares come after a three-month run-up in its stock, which reached an all-time high of $774.38 earlier this month.

A bad miss?

Google reported net revenue – excluding traffic acquisition costs – of $11.3 billion for the third quarter, below Wall Street’s expectations for about $11.9 billion.

For the fourth consecutive quarter, the company reported a decline in average cost-per-click (CPC), a critical metric that denotes the price advertisers pay Google.

Average CPC declined 15 percent from a year ago and 3 percent from the second quarter of this year. Analysts say that Google, like many of its peers in the Internet industry, has been struggling to adapt to the rapid consumer uptake in mobile devices. Advertisers pay far less for ads on smartphones and tablets than for similar ads on desktop computers.

“The core business seems to have slowed down pretty significantly, which is shocking,” said B. Riley analyst Sameet Sinha. “The only conclusion I can look at is, search is happening more and more outside of Google, meaning people are searching more through apps than through Google search.”

“That could indicate a secular change, especially when it comes to ecommerce searches. The big fear has always been, what if people decide just to go straight to Amazon and do their searches? And potentially that’s what could be happening.”

But Ryan Jacob, chairman and chief investment officer of Jacob Funds, said he viewed Google’s results as only “minorly disappointing,” with most of the weakness coming from Motorola as expected.

“Unfortunately, by dropping an 8K in the middle of a trading day, people kind of shoot first, ask questions later,” said Jacob, whose fund owns Google shares.

JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a note that the Google results were “light” but not as bad as they appeared at “first blush.”

Filing snafu

Google, which recently overtook Microsoft Corp to become the second-largest U.S. technology company by capitalization, had been due to release its results after the market close.

The second paragraph of the press release merely read “Pending Larry quote,” suggesting that space was reserved for comment from CEO Larry Page.

“Earlier this morning RR Donnelley, the financial printer, informed us that they had filed our draft 8K earnings statement without authorization,” Google said in a statement. “We have ceased trading on NASDAQ while we work to finalize the document. Once it’s finalized we will release our earnings, resume trading on NASDAQ and hold our earnings call as normal at 1:30 PM PT.”

Shares of RR Donnelley, the U.S. printing services company, slid as much as 5 percent. They closed down 1 percent at $10.76.

Reed Kathrein, a plaintiff lawyer with Hagens Berman who sues companies on behalf of investors, said investors would not have a claim against either Google or RR Donnelley because the earnings disclosure was likely a mistake.

“There’s no fraudulent intent here,” Kathrein said.

However, Google could have a negligence claim against RR Donnelly to recover any additional costs it incurred in responding to the incident, Kathrein added.

“Everyone is trying to figure out if there’s any legal issue with respect to RR Donnelley,” said Michael Matousek, senior trader at U.S. Global Investors Inc, which manages about $3 billion in San Antonio.

source: interaksyon.com

Google, Apple CEOs in secret patent talks

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc Chief Executive Larry Page and Apple CEO Tim Cook have been conducting behind-the-scenes talks about a range of intellectual property matters, including the mobile patent disputes between the companies, people familiar with the matter said.

The two executives had a phone conversation last week, the sources said. Discussions involving lower-level officials of the two companies are also ongoing.

Page and Cook are expected to talk again in the coming weeks, though no firm date has been set, the sources said on Thursday. One of the sources told Reuters that a meeting had been scheduled for this Friday, but had been delayed for reasons that were unclear.

The two companies are keeping lines of communication open at a high level against the backdrop of Apple’s legal victory in a patent infringement case against Samsung, which uses Google’s Android software.

Last Friday, a jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages and set the stage for a possible ban on sales of some Samsung products in a case that has been widely viewed as a “proxy war” between Apple and Google.

One possible scenario under consideration could be a truce involving disputes over basic features and functions in Google’s Android mobile software, one source said. But it was unclear whether Page and Cook were discussing a broad settlement of the various disputes between the two companies, most of which involve the burgeoning mobile computing area, or are focused on a more limited set of issues.

Competition between Google and Apple has heated up in recent years with the shift from PCs to mobile devices. Google’s Android software, which Apple’s late founder Steve Jobs denounced as a “stolen product,” has become the world’s No.1 smartphone operating system. The popularity of the software has been in tandem with patent infringement lawsuits involving various hardware vendors who use it, including Samsung and HTC.

The latest complaint was filed by Motorola Mobility, now a unit of Google, against Apple at the U.S. International Trade Commission claiming some features of Apple’s devices infringe on its patents. A previous lawsuit between the two in a Chicago court was thrown out by a federal judge, who said neither side could prove damages.

Apple in recent months has moved to lessen its reliance on Google’s products. Apple recently unveiled its own mobile mapping software, replacing the Google product used in the iPhone, and said it would no longer offer Google’s YouTube as a pre-loaded app in future versions of its iPhone.

Cook took the helm at Apple a year ago, and Page stepped into the top job at Google a few months before that.

The conversation between Page and Cook last week did not result in any formal agreement, but the two executives agreed to continue talking, according to one source.

Google’s Larry Page, who sat out several public speaking engagements earlier this summer because of an unspecified medical condition affecting his voice, has continued to run Google’s business.

Apple and Google declined to comment on any discussions.

source: interaksyon.com