Tag Archives: Google

Google has hired a veteran of the videogame industry, Noah Falstein, to head up its Game Design division, presumably to work on a new Android title/platform/series – maybe even something that will run on Google Glass headwear. Falstein has been in games design since the 80s, becoming one of the …

Being the dominant search engine for over a decade has seen Google face-off against many commissions for potential anti-competitiveness practices. If you're on top, this is bound to happen. Now though Google has agreed with a regulator ruling, that suggested it was a little covert about links that sent people to …

Movie studios aren't keen on having people share their content illegally online, they've made a big point about this. However, now they're claiming that their takedown requests are actually infringing themselves, with several asking Google to remove them from the transparency reports. In an effort to name and shame companies …

Google has continued its recent trend of shutting down some of its services, with today's Blocked Sites following on from Google Reader earlier this month. However, the search giant is at least offering an alternative this time: the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension – though of course you'll need to be …

Go almost anywhere in the world and ask people what kind of building they want to work in – and Google's creations are discussed early on and with passion. The company prides itself on integrating humanity into one happy unit. KitGuru wonders how this will work in Israel. Opening a …

Google makes the bulk of its revenue from advertising, almost £30 billion a year in fact. However that foundation of income could be threatened, as Ebay has just produced a new study that claims the adverts people are paying for, have almost no effect on sales. “Results show that brand-keyword …

Google might have taken a beating from the EIA this morning, but it's about to take another. Residents of one street in Carshalton, in Surrey, UK, have described the search giant as arrogant, after it had another streetview car drive the road outside their properties, summarily unblurring the images of …

Despite its own policies outlawing any items that come from endangered species, Google has been found by the Environmental Investigation Agency, to have thousands of ivory and whale products on the Japanese version of its shopping site. Surveying the site over a two and a half week period in February, …

Staring down at a screen is “emasculating”, according to Google Boss Sergey Brin, who has been talking up the Google Glass project that sees most of a smartphone's functions incorporated into a piece of semi-intrusive eye wear. The comment was made to an audience at a TED conference in LA about the …

Twitter could be set to get a big influx of users in the coming few weeks, as Ex-Google China head, Lee Kai-fu, has called for his 30 million+ followers on the Chinese social networking site Weibo, to do so again on his Twitter account, after he was banned from the …

Normally when I cover infringement stories here at Kitguru, it's to do with patent arguments between Apple and Samsung, or artists taking a pop at The Pirate Bay, but today it's two giant companies facing off which could end with fireworks. Google, has put BT in its sights, as part …

You might think that considering they individually own the rights to the two most competing smartphone operating systems in the world, Google and Apple would be at each other's throats and never likely to do business. In reality however that's far from the case. Back in 2009, Google paid $82 …

Google has been under the investigative eye of the European Commission for the past couple of years, where it has been threatened with anti-trust action, after claims that Google was using its search engine dominance to push its other products on consumers. Now though, Google has submitted a proposal that …

While Facebook is still far and beyond the world's most used social website, Google's own + service has now taken the second place medal, beating out both Youtube and Twitter by a few per cent of the world's population. According to new data from GlobalWebIndex, Facebook currently has over 50 …

During his humanitarian trip to North Korea, Google's Eric Schmidt has been shown how some of the country's most privileged access the internet. In such a strictly controlled society, only a select few are given access to the internet. Schmidt was shown how students work as part of his visit to an …

Microsoft has bought up R2 Studios, a startup from the makers of the Slingbox, in a deal that had both Apple and Google in the running for highest bidder. However it looks like Microsoft was able to secure the top spot, winning itself several patents in the process. Combined with …

As part of a call for a global crackdown on tax avoidance, it has been revealed that Google is one of the biggest culprits. In 2011, the search giant pushed 80 per cent of its revenue, some £6 billion, through the island of Bermuda, thereby avoiding over £1 billion in …

It's not often that a company can say that they made an entire class of products viable, single handedly. IBM did it with the PC, Apple with the tablet and Asus with the netbook. Sometimes the new class is defined by features and functionality (as is the case with the …

Google receives a lot of takedown requests from companies around the world. Most of these are from large movie studios that don't want torrent links to their works appearing in the search engine's results, but sometimes these groups go way overboard, requesting links to completely legitimate content be removed. Perhaps …

Google's social vice president Bradley Horowitz has taken a few swings at Facebook, as part of his suggestion that the time is ripe for Google's + service to become the dominant social network, citing what he considers to be a general distaste for Facebook's advertising practises as a major reason …

We know Google isn't the only one working on a glasses based, heads up display, but now we can add one more name to that list, with a published Microsoft patent showing that it too is keen to get in on the emerging scene. However the software giant's offering appears …

While Google might be ranked up there as one of the top companies to work for in the world, partly for its progressive stance on employment, it isn't quite so forward thinking when it comes to language – denying certain groups Google accounts when they try and use a domain …

Google has fired off a legal notice to online job search site, Doogle, suggesting that because of the similarities in name, it is harmful to the company's brand. The owner of Doogle, 22 year old Andries Maree Van Der Merwe, believes he has every right to continue its operation and …

As well as having a decidedly manly name, Bram Stoker was the figure behind the original Dracula novel and today, Google celebrates that fact with its Stoker inspired logo. 8th November 2012 is an apt date to do so as well, since it not only marks 165 years to the …

While that headline might sound like the British government is doing something noble, by cracking down on evil Google's practices, it's actually the other way around. Despite the search giant's removal of many millions of links that sent users through to websites that facilitated piracy, it apparently isn't doing enough and now …

Google has been ordered to make changes to its privacy policy after several EU organisations found it to be breaching European law, by not providing enough information to users on the amount and categories of data being collected about them and used for advertising purposes. The search giant revamped its privacy policy …

Digitimes is reporting that two new Nexus 7 models from Google and ASUS are on their way. According to their sources one will be priced at $199 USD, the other at an impressive $99 USD. Both models are expected to be available by the end of the year and will …

Iran no longer has access to the Google search engine, or the Gmail email system, with no explanation by officials as to if or when they will be reinstated and what the reason for their filtering was. The announcement for the digital blockade was made by an official named Khoramabadi – …

Google is continuing to update its social network API, this time adding the ability to private message your pals when you're in a Hangout. This brings the Hangout API to version 1.2, not only making it possible to communicate without others listening in, but also integrating new video and sound …

While PC users are warm and fuzzy with the idea that they are tracked all over the web, pretty much all the time, Apple users seem to have a much higher expectation of privacy. Google circumvented the Apple users' choice to remain anonymous and, now, will pay the $22.5m price. KitGuru fixes …