Breitbart, “Google-sponsored satellite sends first image”
A Google-sponsored satellite has beamed its first picture back to Earth in a successful test of a camera that will supply images for the Internet giant’s free online map and navigation services.
The high-resolution color image from GeoEye-1, which was launched September 6 from a US air force base in California, was of a university campus in Pennsylvania, satellite operator GeoEye Inc. said in a statement.
The Dulles, Virginia-based company provided a link to the image at its website: www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/Default.aspx
Continue reading ‘Google’s new satellite takes first image’
TechCrunch, “Google Stock Falls $200 As Market Closes”
Apparently more than a few traders had heart palpitations today. As the market closed, Google’s share price appeared to fall apart, falling to $200 from an opening price of $396. At least that’s what the Nasdaq ticker showed.
That was $62 billion in market cap that was zapped away in the last four minutes before the fiscal quarter ended and the markets closed, and it was automatically reported by Google Finance and other sites (the comments here on MarketWatch’s uncorrected article show how freaked out some people were).
Continue reading ‘Glitch causes Google stock to fall $200 (~50%)’
Breitbart, “Google phone to cost $179, debut Oct. 22”
NEW YORK (AP) - The first cell phone running Google Inc.’s mobile software looks something like Apple Inc.’s iPhone and has a large touch screen, but it also packs a trackball, a slide-out keyboard and easy access to Google’s e-mail and mapping programs.
Google made its debut as a cell phone software provider Tuesday at an event where wireless carrier T-Mobile said it will begin selling the G1 phone for $179 with a two-year contract. The device hits U.S. stores Oct. 22 and heads to Britain in November and other European countries early next year.
Continue reading ‘Android hits the streets to combat the iPhone’
TechCrunch, “Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For “Around $200 Million””
Google’s on and off negotiations with Digg have been back on in a big way for the last six weeks, we’ve heard from multiple sources inside of Google, and the two companies are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property. The acquisition price is in the $200 million range, says one source.
We first wrote about the Google-Digg negotiations in March. Despite a vigorous denial by Digg CEO Jay Adelson the negotiations continued, although Google’s Marissa Mayer reportedly cooled on the company for a period of time.
Continue reading ‘Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For “Around $200 Million”’
FOXNews, “Anti-Obama Bloggers Question Why Google Froze Their Accounts”
Some bloggers opposed to Barack Obama say they suspect Obama’s supporters — with the assistance of Google — may have tried to censor them when the Internet giant froze their Web sites for five days last month.
Seven blogs run by Democrats who oppose Obama’s nomination for the presidency were incorrectly flagged as spam sites by Blogger, the hosting service Google has owned since 2003. Google says it was an automated response from a spam filter.
But the bloggers believe that Web surfers who support Obama took advantage of a loophole in Blogger’s system that allows readers to report spam blogs, the artificial Web sites that abound on the Internet and are used to promote other sites.
Continue reading ‘Anti-Obama Bloggers Question Why Google Froze Their Accounts’
Mail Online, “Big Brother: The Google cars that will photograph EVERY front door in Britain”
Plans by Google to photograph millions of British homes and publish them online have been condemned as a ‘gross invasion of privacy’.
The internet giant’s StreetView website will allow anyone in the world to type in a UK address or postcode and instantly see a 360-degree picture of the street.
It will include close-ups of buildings, cars and people. Critics say the site is a ‘burglar’s charter’ that makes it easy for criminals to check out potential victims.
The pictures also show people leaving and entering hospitals, health clinics, adult shops and hotels. Although their faces are deliberately blurred, many could still be recognised by their clothing and hair colour.
The site was launched in major American cities last year.
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Continue reading ‘Has Google’s StreetView gone too far?’
Wired, “Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom”
Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google’s liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.
Viacom filed suit against Google in March 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages for allowing users to upload clips of Viacom’s copyright material. Google argues that the law provides a safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright takedown requests.
Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users’ privacy, the judge’s ruling (.pdf) described that argument as “speculative” and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.
Continue reading ‘Google ordered to turn over all users’ YouTube data’
The New York Times, “Google Co-Founder Books a Space Flight”
Space tourists are getting their own ride. Space Adventures, a Virginia company that arranges passage for wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station, plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more.
A new investor is likely to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures’ 2011 flight: Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google. He made a $5 million investment in the company that will serve as a deposit on a future flight.
Continue reading ‘Google Co-Founder Books a Space Flight’
United Press International, “YouTube won’t take down all Islamist video”
WASHINGTON, May 20 (UPI) — Google has refused a request from U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind.-Conn., to remove videos produced by terrorist groups from its video-sharing site YouTube.
In a statement posted on the YouTube blog, the company said that it had taken down some of the videos identified by Lieberman’s staff because they contained hate speech, gratuitous violence or in other ways violated community standards.
“Senator Lieberman stated his belief, in a letter sent today, that all videos mentioning or featuring these groups should be removed from YouTube — even legal nonviolent or non-hate speech videos,” the statement said. “While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view.”
In his letter, sent Monday, Lieberman said that radical Islamist groups use YouTube to share recruiting and training videos.
The New York Times, “Google Offers Personal Health Records on the Web”
After a year and half of development, Google began offering online personal health records to the public on Monday.
The Internet search giant’s service, Google Health, at www.google.com/health, is the latest entrant in the growing field of companies offering personal health records on the Web. Their ranks range from longtime online health services like WebMD to the software powerhouse Microsoft to start-ups like Revolution Health.
Continue reading ‘Google opens medical records service’
Bloomberg, “Google Soars Most Since IPO; Profit Trumps Estimates”
April 18 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc. posted the biggest gain since its initial public offering after profit trounced analysts’ estimates, spurred by overseas growth and a bigger-than-predicted jump in the number of users clicking on text advertisements.
Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, advanced $89.87, or 20 percent, to $539.41 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares debuted in August 2004.
Continue reading ‘GOOG up 20%, largest gain since IPO’
Herald Tribune, “CIA enlists Google’s help for spy work”
Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.
Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.
Google is also providing the search features for a Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia, on which agents post information about their targets that can be accessed and appended by colleagues, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Continue reading ‘CIA enlists Google’s help for spy work’
BBC News, “Pakistan lifts the ban on YouTube”
Pakistan’s telecoms regulator has lifted the restrictions it imposed on video-sharing website YouTube.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has told internet service providers (ISPs) to restore access to the site, according to a spokeswoman.
Google, the owner of YouTube, confirmed service had been restored in Pakistan.
The attempt to block the site, reportedly because of a “blasphemous” video clip, caused a near global blackout of the site on Sunday.
Continue reading ‘Uhh.. nevermind’
Yahoo! News, “AP Google Assails Microsoft Over Yahoo Deal”
But Google is painting a starkly different picture, asserting that Microsoft will be able to stifle innovation and leverage its dominating Windows operating system to set up personal computers so consumers are automatically steered to online services, such as e-mail and instant messaging, controlled by the world’s largest software maker.
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| Jerry Yang (Yahoo! CEO) |
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| Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) |
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc. raised the specter of Microsoft Corp. using its proposed $42 billion acquisition of Yahoo Inc. to gain illegal control over the Internet, underscoring the online search leader’s queasiness about its two biggest rivals teaming up.
The critical remarks, posted online Sunday by Google’s top lawyer, represented the Mountain View-based company’s first public reaction to Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo since the offer was announced Friday.
“Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote. “This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.”
Google’s opposition isn’t a surprise, given that Microsoft views Yahoo as a crucial weapon in its battle to gain ground on Google in the Internet’s booming search and advertising markets.
Continue reading ‘Google assails Microsoft over Yahoo! bid’
