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How will technology influence the news in 2012?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - Predicting the next year's news is a fool's errand, but looking at technological trends could give us a hint At the beginning of 2011, aging dictators ruled Egypt and Libya, and despotism was the nearly unquestioned reality in most of the Middle East. The eurozone was seeing trouble at its edges, but wasn't heading toward collapse. News International had successfully covered up most of its rampant bad acts, and Rupert Murdoch was on the verge of even greater control over British media and politics. Anyone who might have predicted how utterly and rapidly those realities would change might have been branded a lunatic. Which is one reason why the annual journalistic ritual of making predictions about the year ahead is a fool's errand. With that in mind, let me offer instead some observations about the technology and media trends we've seen in past months, and how they might play out in 2012. In many cases, the trajectory is deeply worrisome. But I remain an eternal optimist in the face of ...

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HuffPost Goes Deep On Google : CJR

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Greg Marx - Sep. 27 (Editorial) - The Huffington Post trio of Ryan Grim, Zach Carter, and Paul Blumenthal dropped their 6,800-word take on “Google, Microsoft, and the War for the Web” Sunday night, and like all of HuffPost’s deep dives, the piece was chock-full of good reporting. Among the nuggets of news large and small: • Google’s influence-buying spree has pushed the number of lobbyists in its employ up to ninety-three, spread across eighteen firms. (An antitrust investigation of the company led by the Senate Judiciary Committee is jokingly known as the “Leahy Full Employment Act,” after committee chairman Pat Leahy.) And the company’s new commitment to bipartisanship means that not only GOP-aligned lobbying shops but conservative think tanks like Heritage Foundation and AEI are now getting Google cash.

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Spreading Freedom: Google And The War For The Web

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ryan Grim, Zach Carter, Paul Blumenthal - Sep. 25 (Special Report) - [Google] is now giving money to the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Republican Governors Association, the GOP firm The David All Group, Crossroads Strategies, the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican State Leadership Committee, among others. On Thursday, Google and Fox News cosponsored a Republican presidential debate.

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Google discloses carbon footprint for the first time

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Duncan Clark - Sep. 08 (News) - At around 1.5m tonnes of carbon, the energy usage of the online giant is on a par with the United Nations Google's carbon footprint is on a par with the United Nations, the internet giant revealed on Thursday as it published its energy usage for the first time. Google says that it emits 1.5m tonnes of carbon annually but claims that its data centres consume 50% less energy than the industry average. The emissions are slightly higher than the country of Laos in south-east Asia and equivalent to the UN's operational footprint. The company said that many of its "cloud-based" services for businesses, such as its popular Gmail system, can be up to 80 times less polluting than traditional alternatives , which require companies to operate their own, potentially more inefficient servers.

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Google+ launch: search giant closes 10 products

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Josh Halliday - Sep. 05 () - Internet firm focuses on new social network Google Plus by ridding company of 'inefficiencies' Google is to shut down 10 products, including the search company Aardvark, bought for $50m last year, as the internet giant focuses on new social network Google+ ahead of its public launch. The "fall spring clean" follows a pledge by Larry Page to rid the company of inefficiencies after he took over as chief executive in April. The products listed for closure include Aardvark , Desktop , Fast Flip , Google Maps API for Flash, Google Pack , Google Web Security , Image Labeler , Notebook , Sidewiki and Subscribed Links . Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice-president for engineering, announced the closures on the company's official blog . "Technology improves, people's needs change, some bets pay off and others don't. So, as Larry previewed on our last earnings call, today we're having a fall spring clean at Google. Over the next few months we'll be shutting down a number of products ...

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Google’s +1 Button Gets Its Treat: Now Lets You Share To Google+ Circles

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Jason Kincaid - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - Over the last several months you’ve probably come across Google’s +1 quite a few times. You may have even clicked it, only to wonder what exactly you’d just accomplished. Because, at least from the user’s perspective, there hasn’t been any reward from clicking on it. You’d push the button for the treat, only to leave empty-handed. That hasn’t stopped the +1 button from getting huge distribution — it’s now on 1 million sites and appears in 4 billion impressions every day, but that growth has had more to do with the fact that it’s Google than it does with the button being useful. The +1 button has always had a subtle purpose, of course: Google says that it impacts search results, so pages you +1 may show up in your friends’ queries more prominently than they would otherwise. But who knows how often that happens. And while these +1 clicks also get saved in your Google+ profile, they’re not anywhere your friends are going to see them.

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Why Google had to have Motorola Mobility

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Aug. 17 (Opinion) - The acquisition has provoked comment about defensive buying of patents, but Google surely has more ambition than that For several years now, Google has been following a vow made by former CEO Eric Schmidt: mobile first. New CEO Larry Page is taking that dictum to a new level by announcing a deal to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5bn . The implications of this deal depend entirely on how Google plans to use Motorola. If, as some claim, the deal is more about obtaining Motorola's mobile patent portfolio than anything else, we can expect escalating patent warfare between technology giants and limited innovation beyond that. If, however, Google intends to operate the business it is acquiring, we may see some broad and sweeping changes in the technology industry. If the deal is chiefly about obtaining Motorola's mobile patent portfolio, then Google would likely spin off the hardware end of the company and keep the software and patents. The patents would be vital weapons in its competition with ...

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Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Michael Arrington - Jul. 22 (Opinion) - If that headline looks familiar to you, you're probably remembering our story about Google offering to buy Path for $100+ million from earlier this year. Path turned that deal down. About the same time, multiple sources have confirmed, Google was also making a run for Color, the mobile social network founded by Bill Nguyen. This was well before Color launched, and Google was looking at the company's potential as well as the team. Google offered $200 million for the company, according to our sources.

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Google+: The Complete Guide

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mashable - By Ben Parr - Jul. 16 (Special Report) - This guide has everything you'll ever want to know about Google+. Updated regularly. Google+: It’s the hot social network on the block. In just three weeks, Google’s competitor to Facebook and Twitter has amassed more than 10 million users, and its users are sharing more than 1 billion pieces of content daily. It’s become a hotbed for early adopters, tech luminaries, marketers and businesses around the world. Google+ isn’t the easiest thing to understand, though. It has a lot of features that can confuse beginners. Even advanced users can miss a lot of the little gems and nuances that define Google+. That’s why we decided to dig into every aspect of Google+, from Hangouts to Circles, from Google+ for businesses to what’s next for Google’s social network. The result is an extensive guide on all of Google+’s key features, as well as an introduction to the service and the important things you need to know about it. We’ve included commentary, videos, photos and more in our in-depth guide. In addition, we will update this guide regularly with the newest information on Google’s Facebook competitor. So, without further ado, here is Mashable‘s complete guide to Google+

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U.S. lawmakers frustrated by lack of answers about Google Street View Wi-spying

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

iWatch News - Jul. 05 (News Report) - One year ago, following the German government’s demand for more information, Google representatives were forced to admit that the cars were gathering more than harmless pictures; they were systematically gathering data on anyone using a nearby, unsecured Wi-Fi network. If you were within range and surfing the Web without a password, Google took a little electronic snapshot of whatever you were doing.

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The Power Of Pull

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Alex Rampell - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - What makes email, Facebook, and Google so valuable? Answer: Visiting them is largely unprompted, notwithstanding the synapses that fire in your brain that make you check your email, your Facebook feed, or decide to research something on Google. In other words, people pull content themselves, rather than having that content be pushed — or foisted — upon them. The best way of looking at consumer web applications is as a complex stack of “pulls” and “pushes.” Lest these terms be confused with an earlier generation of push: a “pull” is an unsolicited action by a consumer, whereas a “push” is a solicitation by a seller/producer. The consumer ultimately “pulls” from a mobile phone or computer. Everything else is “pushed” to the consumer, through ads, e-mails or other marketing efforts from companies eager to get business and traffic.

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Google and antitrust: Searching for evidence

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - By Schumpeter - Jun. 25 (News Analysis) - When it comes to forging high-level political connections in Washington, DC, Google is something of an expert. Eric Schmidt, its executive chairman, sits on the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Marissa Mayer, a Google executive, has hosted a fundraiser in Silicon Valley for Barack Obama. And the company spends millions of dollars on high-powered lobbying firms. But such links have not deterred policymakers and competition watchdogs in America’s capital from looking into whether Google is abusing the clout that it has in certain markets.

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Positive Disruption

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Roger Cohen - Jun. 23 (Opinion) - Even in the men’s room at Google’s sprawling New York offices there’s no respite from the cascade of new ideas feeding the behemoth. Rather than gaze into space, I found before my eyes messages about “signal widgets” and the implication of hav

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Rick Santorum vs. the internet

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Concord Monitor - By Meg Heckman - Jun. 13 (News Report) - Shortly before launching his presidential bid Monday, Rick Santorum used Twitter to declare himself "ready to lead." In the days that followed, his Facebook page and campaign website were updated regularly, and hundreds of news outlets published stories online about his political ambitions. But for anyone who searched Google for "Santorum," those weren't the first items they saw.

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China rejects Google allegation of massive hacking breach as ‘fabrication’

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Cecilia Kang, Ellen Nakashima - Jun. 02 (News) - Google’s allegation that hackers based in China accessed hundreds of Gmail accounts, including some belonging to senior U.S. officials, drew angry denials from Chinese government officials on Thursday, with a foreign ministry spokesman calling the accusation “a fabrication out of thin air.”

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Google, Hollywood and the politics of piracy

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Jennifer Martinez - May. 21 (News Report) - Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on Wednesday said his company would not sit quietly by if Washington enacted anti-piracy legislation that forced search engines to police copyright law online — such as stopping illegally streamed movies or sporting events. If “we disagree with it, then we would still fight it,” Schmidt told reporters in London. Within hours in Washington, the comment set off a war of words between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over the rise of websites that illegally offer copyrighted movies, TV shows and music — for free. “Google seems to think it’s above America’s laws,” the Motion Picture Association of America charged. Google officials backpedaled and signaled the company would fight only if it thought the law violated free speech. The two powerful lobbies — entertainment and technology — have long been at odds over how to enforce copyright protections. Producers of America’s silver screen classics, chart-topping songs, and other content want help protecting their work from illegal distribution on the latest gadgets and platforms churned out of the tech mecca. But this time, the search engines are caught smack in the middle.

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Google's Eric Schmidt: Smartphones 'Remember Everything'

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Catharine Smith - May. 15 (Interview) - Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt sat down on Sunday with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for a segment on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" to talk innovation, Android tablets versus Apple's iPad, and the future of technology. Schmidt also commented on the data that users' phones store and how that data can serve the user. Said Schmidt: Today, you're phone knows who you are, where you are, where -- where you're going, to some degree, because it can see your path. And with that and with your permission, it's possible for software and software developers to predict where you're going to go, to suggest people you should meet, to suggest activities and so forth. So ultimately what happens is the mobile phone does what it does best, which is remember everything and make suggestions. And then you can be just a better human and have a good time.

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Facebook, Foe of Anonymity, Is Forced to Explain a Secret

Sat, 14 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Miguel Helft - May. 14 (News Report) - Now, Facebook is being taken to task for trying to conceal its own identity as it sought to coax reporters and technology experts to write critical stories about the privacy implications of a search feature, Social Circle, from its rival, Google. The plan backfired after The Daily Beast revealed late Wednesday that Facebook, whose own privacy practices have long been criticized, was behind the effort. It didn’t help that some of the technology experts who were encouraged to criticize Google dismissed the privacy concerns around Social Circle as misplaced.

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Google can't be trusted with our books | Simon Barron

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:43:12 -0700

The Guardian - By Simon Barron - Apr. 26 (Opinion) - The threat to Google Videos shows businesses are not suitable cultural custodians – they can't be held accountable to the publicGoogle announced last week that it would be deleting the content of the Google Videos archive. After a public outcry, it said it would work on saving all the video content and making it available elsewhere. In this instance, the public managed to change Google's mind and stopped the mass deletion of a unique digital archive but the situation raises concerns about data under Google's control, including the unique archive of Google Books.The reason cited for Google Videos' closure is that the company would like to focus on its raison d'être, search, "[the] ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted". Shifting its priorities is its prerogative as a company: the issue is that on the basis of refocusing its business priorities, its first impulse was to delete the gigabytes of content given to it by users.This situation has disturbing implications for Google Videos' sister project, Google Books, and the approximately 15 million scanned documents in the archive. In partnership with some of the greatest research libraries in the world – the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Harvard University Library, the New York Public Library – Google Books has built up a huge digital library containing thousands of unique documents.Google Books has suffered problems in the past: practical problems – lawsuits from publishers and authors, criticism of its inconsistent metadata – and philosophical problems involving the theoretical concerns of allowing a private sector company to control shared cultural resources. These concerns have remained abstract but now, with the company's disregard towards videos, become more concrete.As a private sector company, the core aim of Google is to make money. The Google Videos situation shows that in order to lower expenditure and adjust its priorities, Google was willing to delete content entrusted to it by users. Libraries have trusted Google with millions of documents: many of the books scanned by Google are not digitised or OCR-processed anywhere else and, with budgets for university libraries shrinking year after year, may not be digitised again any time in the near future. Google acted admirably by listening to users and working to save the videos but entrusting such vast cultural archives to a body that has no explicit responsibilities to protection, archiving and public cultural welfare is inherently dangerous: as the situation made clear, private sector bodies have the ability to destroy archives at a whim.Enabling access to digital information should be one of the key responsibilities of our cultural institutions and our public sector. Keeping these resources in the public sector and ensuring that they are freely available to everyone is the key to bridging the UK's widening digital divide: the chasm between those who can access digital information via internet access at home and the 27% of households who cannot. Last week, Amazon announced that it was working with libraries in the US to allow users to borrow Kindle ebooks. This mutual co-operation between the private and the public sector should allow more people to access shared digital resources and hopefully help bridge the US digital divide.As Peter Singer and others have argued, we need to develop a digital library that can make resources available in the same way as Google Books but that will be accountable to the public. Google Books is one of the largest digital libraries in the world but, as Robert Darnton has argued, we cannot trust it to be the sole custodian of our digital archives forever. A national digital library would be subject to regulations to protect our cultural heritage and would take responsibility for the artefacts placed in its care. Publicly funded libraries and archives are important precisely because they are not committed to the "market fundamentalism" of pursuing profit above all other motives. Some libraries and archives need to modernise and make resources digitally available but this requires support and the protection of our public sector libraries.Google's motto is "don't be evil". Not doing the evil thing is not the same as doing the right thing. In this instance, it has done the right thing: next time, it may not.GoogleDigital videoLibrariesInternetUnited StatesSimon Barronguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Is Donald Trump the first Google trends candidate?

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Catalina Camia - Apr. 20 (News Analysis) - For the last 30 days, according to Google's Insight for Search tool, searches for Donald Trump far exceed those for potential GOP presidential candidates Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann.

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Flipboard: Threat and Opportunity

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Monday Note - By Frédéric Filloux - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - Every media company should be afraid of Flipboard. The Palo Alto startup epitomizes the best and the worst of the internet. The best is for the user. The worst is for the content providers that feed its stunning expansion without getting a dime in return. According to Kara Swisher ‘s AllThingsD, nine months after launching its first version, Flipboard’s new $50m financing round gives the company a €200m valuation. Many newspapers or magazines carrying hundreds of journalists can’t get a €200m valuation today. Last year, for the Groupe Le Monde, an investment bank memo set a valuation of approximately $100m (net of its $86m debt at the time, to be precise). That was for a 644 journalists multimedia company – OK, one that had been badly managed for years. Still, Flipboard is a 32-people startup with a single product and no revenue yet. So, what’s the fuss about? The answer is a simple one: Flipboard is THE product any big media company or, better, any group of media companies should have invented. It’s an iPad application (soon to be supplemented by an iPhone version), it allows readers to aggregate any sources they want: social medias such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or any combination of RSS feeds. No need to remember the feed’s often-complicated URL, Flipboard searches it for you and puts the result in a neat eBook-like layout.

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Google's Larry Page Does Exactly The Right Thing: Says "Whatever" To Wall Street

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Business Insider - By Henry Blodget - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - In some people's minds, Google's Larry Page just committed the cardinal sin: He offended Wall Street. Wall Street has reacted to the first quarter in the Page regime by tossing the stock overboard. Larry Page is spending way too much, Wall Street says. Larry Page isn't communicating well enough. Larry Page couldn't even be bothered to spend more than a couple of minutes on the earnings call with Wall Street last night. So to hell with him! Lost under the outrage, of course, is that Larry Page may be doing exactly the right thing: Focusing on Google and Google's products and users, instead of Wall Street.

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Google Person Finder: a tool born of disaster, from Hurricane Katrina to Japan's quake, tsunami | Technology

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - Apr. 03 (News) -

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Larry Page is fostering Google's start-up spirit

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Jessica Guynn - Apr. 02 (News Report) - Larry Page wants to run Google Inc. like it's 1999. The co-founder of the Internet search giant has begun an unusual afternoon ritual of sitting and working with his top executives on small couches in an open area of the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. Employees, who used to have to stalk Page around campus, can drop by and grab a few minutes of his time.

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Microsoft files complaint against Google

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Tony Romm, Mike Zapler - Mar. 31 (News) - Microsoft asked European regulators Thursday to go after Google on antitrust grounds, accusing the search giant of trying to “entrench its dominance” on the Web.

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