Google specializes in internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software. Beyond its core search engine, Google offers online productivity software including email (Gmail), a cloud storage service (Google Drive), an office suite (Google Docs) and a social networking service (Google+). Desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and instant messaging. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system and the browser-only Chrome OS for its netbook offering, Chromebook. Its mission statement from the outset was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Microsoft is expanding the line of Skype services with a new video messaging app called Skype Qik. The cross-platform software works on iPhones, Android handsets and Windows Phone with video messages… Read more »
Are EU regulators over-estimating Google’s influence? Chairman Eric Schmidt pointed to new competitive threats, including Amazon, in a speech in Berlin. Read more »
Google announced on Monday that its Sheets spreadsheet application in Google Drive can now fill in missing table values using machine learning. The new Chrome Store add-in, called Smart Autofill, utilizes Google’s… Read more »
The Mother hub offers a different approach to the smart home that’s more about intelligence and less about automation. We review the $300 system here. Read more »
The new “Dronecode Project” will make it easier for developers who want to build systems or tools for unmanned aircraft system to have access to a common platform. Read more »
From personal apps to big data mining and real-time interactive maps of outbreaks, the effort to revolutionize the public’s understanding of influenza has been extremely tech-driven. Read more »
The week in cloud: Amazon has said that live migration would not have averted last month’s cloud reboots. But folks are betting it’s working on the technology just the same. Read more »
There are few things riskier than recommending a security or privacy measure that turns out not to work — a fact that applies to app vendors and security-focused journalists alike. Read more »
As journalist/programmer Stijn Debrouwere has argued in a persuasive essay about the challenges facing the news business, journalism isn’t being disrupted just by different forms of journalism — it’s being disrupted… Read more »
There are plenty of services today that will let you make a voice call from your PC, but Jibe wants to make the browser a seamless extension of your mobile phone… Read more »