The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Alphabet Inc

  • Belgium to sue Google for not blurring images of defense sites

    The Belgian defense ministry will sue Google for not complying with its requests to blur satellite images of sensitive military sites, a ministry spokeswoman said on Friday.

    Citing national security, the ministry said it had requested that sites such as air bases and nuclear power stations be obscured on Google’s satellite mapping services.

    “The Ministry of Defence will sue Google,” the spokeswoman said, without giving further details.

    Google has complied with similar requests from other governments over concerns its geomapping Google Earth, Google Maps and granular Street View services could compromise security.

    Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc said it had been working with Belgium for more than two years to respond to issues flagged by the defense ministry.

    “It’s a shame the Belgium Department of Defense have decided to take this decision,” said Michiel Sallaets, a spokesman for Google in Belgium.

    “We have been working closely with them for more than two years, making changes to our maps where asked and legal.”

  • Google overhauls gmail to lure businesses

    Alphabet Inc’s Google on Wednesday unveiled its first Gmail redesign since 2013, capping what the company said was an expensive overhaul.

    It will include offline functionality and resemble Microsoft Outlook.

    It is Google’s most extensive update to software in its G Suite workplace bundle.

    It is accelerating efforts to steal business from Microsoft Corp’s dominant Office workplace software suite.

    Previously, G Suite added instant-messaging and spreadsheet features.

    With Gmail, Google said it restructured email storage databases, unified three-dueling-systems for syncing-messages across devices and upgraded-computers underpinning the service.

    That shift to Google’s self-developed Tensor processing chips enables smart-assistant features such as “suggested replies” to messages and “nudges” to respond to forgotten emails.

    “This is an entire rewrite of our flagship, most-used product,” said Jacob Bank, Product Manager Lead for Gmail, which 1.4 billion people use each month.

    Unreliable offline access to email has long discouraged would-be customers.

    Meanwhile, recent high-profile corporate data breaches have increased desire to lock down email.

    Analysts estimate G Suite generated about $2 billion in revenue last year, 10 times behind Office.

    Google declined to specify costs associated with the redesign.

    But parent Alphabet reported on Monday that first-quarter capital expenditures nearly tripled year-over-year to $7.3 billion.

    Chief Financial Officer, Ruth Porat, told analysts that half of the spending resulted from hardware purchases to support expanding use of machine learning.

    This expansion describes automated programmes that can, among other things, identify spam and predict which emails users would find most important.

    Reuters/NAN

  • Facebook’s Watch goes up against YouTube for revenue in dollars

    Facebook’s Watch goes up against YouTube for revenue in dollars

    Facebook Inc launched its Watch video service to United States users on Thursday with plans to allow people to submit shows, as the No. 1 social media network vies with Alphabet Inc’s YouTube for advertising revenue.

    Advertisers are shifting more of their budgets from television to online as viewers have migrated to watching shows on smartphones and tablets.

    On Watch, which Facebook began testing earlier this month, users can see hundreds of shows from the likes of Vox, Buzzfeed, Discovery Communications Inc, A&E Networks, Walt Disney Co’s ABC, as well as live sports like Major League Baseball.

    Americans spend more than 73 minutes a day watching digital video, up more than seven per cent from last year, according to eMarketer data.

    TV watching has dropped 2 percent from last year to 244 minutes a day, a trend that is expected to continue.

    Facebook is initially paying some content creators for shows to drive interest.

    The company is paying 10,000-35,000 dollars for shorter form shows and up to 250,000 dollars for longer shows, sources told Media in May.

    The company declined to comment on how much it was spending on shows.

    Facebook does not intend to make buying content a core piece of its strategy, Dan Rose, vice president of partnerships at Facebook, told Media.

    “We are not focused on acquiring exclusive rights,” he said. “The idea is to seed this with good content.”

    Facebook plans to eventually open the platform to everyone to submit shows for approval and share 55 percent of ad revenue, Rose said.

  • Wal-Mart to enter voice-shopping market

    Wal-Mart to enter voice-shopping market

    Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) is teaming up with Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google to enter the nascent voice-shopping market, currently dominated by Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), adding another front to Wal-Mart’s battle with the online megastore.

    Google, which makes the Android-software used to run most of the world’s smartphones, will offer hundreds-of-thousands of Walmart-items on its voice-controlled-Google-Assistant platform from late September, Walmart’s head of e-commerce, Marc Lore, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

    Lore, who joined the world’s largest retailer after it bought his e-commerce company Jet.com, said Wal-Mart would offer a wider selection than any retailer on the platform.

    Amazon, whose voice-controlled-aide Alexa allows users to shop from the retailer, has the lion’s share of the United States voice-controlled device-industry, with its Echo-devices accounting for 72.2 per cent of the market in 2016, far ahead of the Google Home-gadget’s 22 per cent, according to research-firm eMarketer.

    Amazon has also dominated Wal-Mart and other brick-and-mortar retailers in online sales.

    Wal-Mart has begun pushing back aggressively, however, offering discounts to customers who buy online and pick up in-store, and free two-day shipping for purchases of 35 dollars or more.

    The latter move even forced Amazon, which rarely imitates the competition, to lower its threshold for free shipping.

    Lore said that Wal-Mart was also integrating its quick reordering tool into Google’s same-day delivery service.

    “One of the primary-use cases for voice shopping will be the ability to build a basket of previously
    purchased everyday essentials,” he said in an interview.

    He added that Wal-Mart has bigger plans for voice shopping next year that will involve capitalising on its 4,700 U.S. stores to “create customer experiences that don’t currently exist within voice shopping anywhere else”.

    Customers might be able to use voice shopping to pick up a discounted order in-store or buy fresh groceries across the country, he said.

    But while both Amazon and Google’s voice-controlled speakers are gaining in popularity, people still mainly use them for such basic tasks as placing phone calls or playing music.

    To boost voice purchases, Amazon has started offering Alexa-only shopping deals.

    “We’re still in early days, but shopping isn’t yet one of the big uses of the devices,” Victoria Petrock, principal analyst at research firm eMarketer, said on Tuesday.

    “Obstacles to people using the devices to shop are cost and privacy. A little more than six in 10 people are concerned that these virtual-assistants are spying on them”, she said.