Google

Google search engine’s latest innovation technology that allows users to search for information in real time does not come without its own challenges. For example, how do you prevent children from seeing adult related content while conducting a live search? Howbeit controversial, the solution, it appears, is by restricting a group of search terms so that they do not function with the new instant search feature. Consequently, users will not be exposed to viewing pornographic, hate, violent or disturbing results when conducting searches. This means that inasmuch as Google Instant was designed to simplify search and make finding information quicker on Google, no one will see results deemed to be offensive in nature by the Google team, unless they want to. Users will therefore have to hit enter to confirm a search query once Instant search stops delivering new results due to these restrictions. ...

FOXNEWS: That big old hard drive in your computer? Google says you don’t need it anymore. The company is also betting you won’t need that Windows, Macintosh or Linux stuff either. No, Google wants you to access, operate, and edit all your files on the Internet. To help with that, the company has developed a lightweight operating system of its own, the first new competition for Windows and Macs in years. It’s called Chrome OS. And it could have a profound effect on the way we work with computers. ...

In a CNN interview Monday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt responded to questions about what Google knows about people by saying that if people don’t like having their homes photographed for Google Street View for the world to see, they can “just move.” The comment came during an interview on the Parker Spitzer show. “With Street View, we drive by exactly once, so you can just move,” said Schmidt, eliciting uncomfortable laughter from interviewer Kathleen Parker. “The point is, we only do it once. This is not a monitoring situation.” ...

Google knows it’s going to have a tough time convincing users to switch to its TV platform. As a result, over the next few weeks, the search giant is handing out 10,000 free Google TV units to developers in hopes of “empowering the developers of the world to make Google TV an even better experience, through websites that have been built with the TV screen in mind.” 3,000 Google TV devices (specifically, Logitech Revues) were already given away to attendees of the Adobe MAX conference. ...

Believe it or not, Google hasn’t forgotten about Feedburner. The RSS feed service has received an experimental new interface that better matches Google Analytics and looks like it might actually integrate into other Google AdSense and Webmaster tools. The interface doesn’t work for every component of Feedburner — if you need to access feed management or change certain settings, you can continue to use the old interface. The new interface — which is accessible via feedburner.google.com/gfb/ — shows real-time stats for clicks, views and podcast downloads from across your feeds. This is really powerful, especially if you use the Feedburner Socialize service to auto-ping Twitter when you publish a post. This can let you track how users are referred and what RSS clients are being used to access feeds. ...

The Internet is growing fast, but Google is growing even faster. According to online security company Arbor Networks, Google now represents an average 6.4% of all Internet traffic. This is a new record for Google, as it gained more than 1% of all Internet traffic share since January. Now, only one global ISP handles more traffic, and a lot of that traffic is – unsurprisingly – Google’s traffic. ...

If you want to improve Google’s results and report spammy web pages, there’s a Chrome extension for you.Google Webspam Report adds a link next to each Google search result and automatically fills the spam report form with information like the URL of the page and your query. You can also use the button from Chrome’s toolbar to report pages. The most interesting feature is the integration with Chrome’s browsing history that lets you select recently visited pages and recent Google searches. ...

(Reuters) – Google Inc said its “Street View” cars around the world accidentally collected more personal data than previously disclosed, and that it was changing its privacy practices. Regulators in some of the more than 30 countries where the cars operated are looking into the issue. Google’s Street View cars, which are well known for crisscrossing the globe and taking panoramic pictures of the city’s streets, collected the data. The company displays the pictures in its online street maps. ...

Google News continues to integrate with Twitter and other micro blogging services. After testing a section that shows newsworthy tweets from your subscription, Google started to add to the Google News Onebox the number of times a story has been shared. For example, Google’s Onebox shows that this article about Google TV has been shared by more than 50 Twitter users. Google links to the real-time results for this article, but the page only includes 10 results. ...

Google Docs adds a feature that’s already available in Gmail: you can now upload images using drag and drop. Open a new document and drag an image from your desktop or from a file manager. This feature only works in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari because it requires HTML5’s File API. Unfortunately, you can’t upload multiple images and Google Docs doesn’t show a placeholder image or a progress bar. ...

Google Official Blog: In May we announced that we had mistakenly collected unencrypted WiFi payload data (information sent over networks) using our Street View cars. We work hard at Google to earn your trust, and we’re acutely aware that we failed badly here. So we’ve spent the past several months looking at how to strengthen our internal privacy and security practices, as well as talking to external regulators globally about possible improvements to our policies. Here’s a summary of the changes we’re now making. ...

Google’s ultra high speed fiber network — which the company says can offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — is about to get its first trial outside of the Googleplex. The trial is fairly small and not too far from home; the company will be deploying its network at Stanford University to “a group of approximately 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus. “ Google also points out that this isn’t part of its call for small-to-mid-sized communities to submit proposals to get “Google Fiber” in their towns. That competition sparked an amusing social media battle earlier this year between dozens (if not hundreds) of towns ranging from Topeka, Kansas, to Huntsville, Alabama. Google says that they, “still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year.” ...

BERLIN — Google on Thursday said 244,000 people in Germany had asked the company to remove images of their houses and apartments from its Street View maps, but that the requests would not derail its plans to activate the service this year. The figure was in line with what German data protection officials had previously estimated. The officials predicted that several hundred thousand people would opt out. In a blog posting on its Web site, Google said 2.9 percent of the 8.5 million households in Germany’s 20 largest cities had opted out of the service. ...

Google has no plans to resume using its Street View cars to collect information about the location of Wi-Fi networks, a practice that led to a flurry of privacy probes after the company said it unintentionally captured fragments of unencrypted data. The disclosure appeared in a report on Street View released today by Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, who said that “collection is discontinued and Google has no plans to resume it.” Assembling an extensive list of the location of Wi-Fi access points can aid in geolocation, especially in areas where connections to cell towers are unreliable. ...

Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 has been released to the stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Updates from the previous stable release include: Hundreds of bug fixes An updated HTML5 parser File API Directory upload via input tag More information on these and other changes in Chrome 7 can be found on the Google Chrome blog. Download Chrome today! [Standalone / Offline setup here]