Google to build new web addresses including '.lol'

Google has said it plans to run an array of new top-level domains, including ".google", ".youtube" and ".docs", as part of a major expansion of the web's addressing system.

The search giant would also run ".lol", a top-level domain that would refer to the common online abbreviation for "laugh out loud", as the firm thought that ".lol" had "interesting and creative potential".

According to The Telegraph, Google had kept its plans secret in an attempt to avoid rival bids until Thursday, when the deadline for applications passed.

In total Google has made more than 50 applications to Icann, which is the closest organisation to a governing body for the internet, for new alternatives to ".com" or ".co.uk".

It signaled to the fact that Google could offer each YouTube channel its own simple address. For instance, the current www.youtube.com/joebloggs could become www.joebloggs.youtube.

Vint Cerf, one of the inventors of the internet, who now works for Google, said that an expanded addressing system could make it easier for web users to find things online.

"By opening up more choices for Internet domain names, we hope people will find options for more diverse and perhaps shorter - signposts in cyberspace," he wrote on the firm's blog.

The full list of almost 2,000 applications is due to be published on 13 June, because of a delay caused by a technical glitch in the application system.

Google officially acquires Motorola Mobility.......!

After waiting months for the go-ahead to say so, Google CEO Larry Page today announced that his company now officially owns Motorola Mobility.

Google announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in August. Upon doing so, the companies had to clear regulatory hurdles to get the deal done. Regulators in both the U.S. and the European Union approved the acquisition back in February, but the companies were forced to wait for China. Over the weekend, China approved the deal, paving the way for Google to close it.

As part of the acquisition, Page announced today that Motorola Mobility chief Sanjay Jha has stepped down from his post. In his place, Google has named "long-time Googler" Dennis Woodside to be the mobile firm's new chief executive.

"I've known Dennis for nearly a decade, and he's been phenomenal at building teams and delivering on some of Google's biggest bets," Page wrote in the blog post. "One of his first jobs at Google was to put on his backpack and build our businesses across the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. More recently he helped increase our revenue in the U.S. from US$10.8 billion to US$17.5 billion in under three years as President of the Americas region."

It has been widely believed that the main reason Google acquired Motorola Mobility was for its patents. The search company and its vendor partners are currently waging legal battles around the world with a host of companies over claims that Android violates patents. Motorola Mobility holds thousands of patents and patent applications that could come in handy for any future legal proceedings.

For Motorola Mobility, the deal made perfect financial sense. The company is not the leading Android vendor, and has faced some trouble competing against Apple. When Google came along with a US$40-per-share offer, representing a 63 percent premium on its share price at the time of the deal, it just made sense.

Google has made it clear that Motorola will operate independently from its own operation, and the search giant/Android maker will not show any favoritism. However, according to reports, China was not so convinced of that, and forced Google to agree to keep Android open and free for a period of five years to ensure it didn't change its stance and give Motorola preferential treatment.

Still, Motorola's competitors haven't expressed any displeasure with the deal. In fact, J.K. Shin, Samsung's mobile head, said back in August that he was pleased with the acquisition, and believed that it "demonstrates Google's deep commitment to defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem".

But what about Motorola employees? TechCrunch reported yesterday, citing sources, that Google is planning to launch a "listening tour" at Motorola to see what the mobile company's employees actually do. Based on that information, the company could decide to lay off some Motorola employees. Although TechCrunch didn't say how many employees might be terminated, its sources said that the layoffs could come down "imminently".

Google declined CNET's request for comment on the matter, and Page made no indication in his blog post whether layoffs would be coming. Instead, he touted Motorola's success over the last several decades.

Google Revamps Search, Creates Knowledge Graph :-

The new feature is designed to make it easier for users to find what they're looking for and to offer additional related information.

Google on May 16 began rolling out the latest generation of its dominant search engine, introducing what officials are calling the Knowledge Graph.

The Knowledge Graph is designed to offer users an improved search experience by not only doing a better job of finding exactly what they are searching for, but also by then presenting the users with more information related to their searches. If a user searches for Leonardo da Vinci, they not only will get information about him, but information about his paintings and other works, and information about other Renaissance figures.

“The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query,” Amit Singhal, senior vice president of engineering at Google, said in a May 16 post on the search giant’s blog. “This is a critical first step toward building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the Web and understands the world a bit more like people do.”

Google’s unveiling of Knowledge Graph comes at a time when there is a lot of focus on the Web 2.0 market. Microsoft on May 11 rolled out a revamp of its own Bing search engine, which included the ability to feature social results from Facebook and Twitter in searches. Microsoft also made changes to Bing designed to make it easier to use.

Google continues to be the dominant search engine, with 66.5 percent of search results in April, according to numbers compiled by comScore. Microsoft’s Bing was a distant second, at 15.4 percent, with Yahoo in third at 13.5 percent.

Google’s move also comes the same week that social networking giant Facebook, a growing rival of Google’s for Internet ads, launches its initial public offering (IPO) of stock, an event that could shoot the company’s value to close to $100 billion. The Knowledge Graph, which reportedly has been talked about in the industry for months, could be seen by some as a way for Google to remind the industry that despite the hype around the Facebook IPO, it is still a significant innovator.

According to Singhal, Google is leveraging a database of more than 500 million objects, and more than 3.5 billion facts not only about those objects, but also the relationship between them. Google engineers have gone back and looked at what users have searched for and what they have been asking about for each item. “For example, people are interested in knowing what books Charles Dickens wrote, whereas they’re less interested in what books Frank Lloyd Wright wrote, and more in what buildings he designed,” he wrote.

Google search users in the United States should start seeing the Knowledge Graph in their searches over the next few days, according to Google officials. When they start their search by entering a query, the Knowledge Graph for their query will show up to the right of the search results. One example Google used was of the name “Taj Mahal,” which could refer to the ancient temple in India, the blues singer or the casino in New Jersey.

Once Google determines which Taj Mahal is being searched for—for example, the musician—the Knowledge Graph will list various other relevant topics, possibly from albums Taj Mahal has released to other singers in the same musical genre. Click on one of those singers, and related information to that person is then displayed.

“We’ve always believed that the perfect search engine should understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want,” Singhal wr,,ote. “And we can now sometimes help answer your next question before you’ve asked it, because the facts we show are informed by what other people have searched for. For example, the information we show for Tom Cruise answers 37 percent of next queries that people ask about him.”

It’s also a natural evolution for the company, according to Johanna Wright, product management director at Google.

“We’re in the early phase of moving from being an information engine to becoming a knowledge engine,” Wright said in a video about the Knowledge Graph.

Google reportedly was able to leverage the technology it inherited in 2010 when it bought Metaweb, which had developed a knowledge base, dubbed Freebase, in developing Knowledge Graph.

Driver-less Google cars soon on Nevada roads :-

Google’s self-driven cars will soon be appearing on Nevada roads after the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles approved on Monday the nation’s first autonomous vehicle license.

The move came after officials rode along on drives on highways, in Carson City neighbourhoods and along the famous Las Vegas Strip, the Nevada DMV said in a statement.

The Nevada legislature last year authorised self-driven cars for the state’s roads, the first such law in the United States. That law went into effect on 1 March, 2012.

Google’s self-driven cars rely on video cameras, radar sensors, lasers, and a database of information collected from manually driven cars to help navigate, according to the company.

The DMV licensed a Toyota Prius that Google modified with its experimental driver-less technology, developed by Stanford professor and Google Vice President Sebastian Thrun.

Google’s self-driving cars have crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and driven along the picturesque Pacific Coast Highway, according to the company.

Autonomous vehicles are the “car of the future,” Nevada DMV director Bruce Breslow said in a statement. The state also has plans to eventually license autonomous vehicles owned by the members of the public, the DMV said.

Legislation to regulate autonomous cars is being considered in other states, including Google’s home state of California.

“The vast majority of vehicle accidents are due to human error. Through the use of computers, sensors and other systems, an autonomous vehicle is capable of analyzing the driving environment more quickly and operating the vehicle more safely,” California state Senator Alex Padilla said in March when he introduced that state’s autonomous car legislation.

Other car companies are also seeking self-driven car licenses in Nevada, the DMV said.

What Google Drive offers and how it stacks up against the competition

Rumours of Google coming up with their own cloud storage service started as far back as 2006. Now that it has been officially announced, ET takes a quick look what it offers and how it stacks up against the competition

WHAT IS GOOGLE DRIVE?

Google Drive is the name for Google's new cloud-based storage service. It includes 5GB of free space while paid plans start as low as US$ 2.49 (Rs 130) per month for an additional 25GB. If you are already a paid subscriber of a Google storage plan for Gmail or Picasa, you automatically get 25GB on Google Drive instead of 5GB.

Like most cloud services, Drive offers Windows and Max OS X apps as well as mobile apps for Android devices (iOS support is expected soon). Drive will play a vital role in Google's Chrome OS operating system in the near future.

Like any other cloud storage service, you can use Google Drive to store and sync files across various devices. Not only can you store files safely, you can even open/view various supported files (HD videos, Photoshop image files, Illustrator design files and so on) within Drive's user interface in any modern browser.

Google has also incorporated optical character recognition in Drive - you can upload images/documents and use Drive to recognise objects or extract text. And since it works across Google services, you can upload files directly from one to other.

What makes Google Drive stand out is the fact it's not just a simple cloud storage service. Google leveraged their existing Google Docs platform for Google Drive - making it an always-accessible , document editing and cloud service.

Drive also tracks changes done to documents and keep revision copies of up to 30 days - you can choose to restore any version of the edited document if required. Google Drive is the only service that offers extensive file format support for viewing within its interface. And finally, Drive will soon integrate with all other Google products.

Google Bypassed Safari Privacy Settings To Track User Data:-

Introduction of Google Drive, Google steps up competition with Apple

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. stepped up competition with Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in cloud computing, enabling users to store documents, audio clips and videos through a Web connection.

The Google Drive service, beginning today, gives users online storage similar to a hard drive’s, allowing access to files from computers and other devices, said Sundar Pichai, Google senior vice president. As much as 5 gigabytes of cloud- based storage is provided free, while users may pay $2.49 a month for 25 gigabytes and higher fees for more.

Google’s service helps the company expand beyond its search engine and query-based advertising. Apple has a similar offering called iCloud, while Microsoft provides one called SkyDrive. Google, based in Mountain View, California, says its service will encourage users to spend more time online with features that, among other things, enable creation of Web-based documents and sharing of photographs.

“Drive is something we intend to be at the center of our users’ online experience,” Pichai said in an interview by video link. “We see this as a primary place for people to go to create and collaborate and live in the cloud across devices and across applications and have their important data available to them seamlessly.”

Google rose 1.2 percent to $604.52 in New York at 12:33 p.m. The shares had advanced 14 percent in the 12 months through yesterday.

File Sharing

Users can put a Google Drive folder on multiple computers, including those that run on Windows, Macintosh or Android programs. Any document, photo or other file that is dragged onto the folder becomes accessible from almost anywhere, such as from an Android phone or tablet. Google says compatibility with Apple’s iPhone will be added to the service soon.

Once a file is stored, the files can be shared with others or discussed online. In addition, Google Drive is open to third- party applications so users can create, open and share files from a variety of other software programs.

Google aims to make stored files easily searchable. Users can search by using a keyword, as when they use the search engine. The word could be anything from the title of the file to a term in the text of a scanned newspaper article.

The company may find users in the consumer arena, said Aaron Levie, chief executive officer of Los Altos, California- based Box Inc., which targets businesses with its online storage service. More than 100,000 businesses use Box.net and that will be a more-difficult market for Google to compete in, he said.

“We’ve been building a pretty substantial platform and base of enterprise customers over the past seven years; we think we’re in a very strong position,” he said. “GDrive, we think, is going to be just an interesting kind of complement to the market; we think it will be a very competitive product on the consumer side.”