Google

Google is taking advertising to new levels by partnering up with popular television icons and inventors. Soon Google's AdSense network will feature online videos from Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the animated TV show "Family Guy," as well as ... Raven Symone, who stars in the show "That's So Raven." The company supporting the projects, Media Rights Capital, financed last year's Brad Pitt flick, "Babel." It sounds entertaining, but if you fear change then these ads might not impress you. What's more, if you were hoping to spend time on Google with the Griffins, think again. MacFarlane will ... (view more)

Although it seems like Google has been receiving buckets of praise while rival Yahoo has been struggling in their game of catch up, the tables may be turning. Yahoo recently beat out Google for bragging rights in customer satisfaction, receiving a ... rating of 79 by the University of Michigan's American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Although Google scored a respectable 78 on the 100-point scale, the two companies' changes in scores from the previous quarter is more telling than the raw scores themselves. Last time, Google received a score of 82, meaning that the company's tally decreased 4 ... (view more)

Google has unveiled a new feature for its popular Google News: comments. The new addition, now in beta, is sparking talks of the ethical implications of journalism and how Google is "stepping it up a notch" on that front. As Google software ... engineers Dan Meredith and Andy Golding explained on the official Google blog, adding comments may equate to adding integrity. "As always, Google News will direct readers to the professionally-written articles and news sources our algorithms have determined are relevant for a topic...But we're hoping that by adding this feature, we can help ... (view more)

The European Union's executive branch has approved a grant of 120 million euros (about $166 million US) to help fund the German government's next-generation Internet search engine, code-named Theseus. (Source: arstechnica.com ) The grant will be ... distributed among different companies, including SAP AG and Siemens AG, as they begin research on the Theseus project. The project aims to develop "new search technologies for the next generation Internet," including "semantic technologies which try to recognize the meaning of content and place it in its proper context." Semantic technologies are ... (view more)

In a move that will surely please many privacy campaigners, Google has changed its cookie policy dramatically. How so? Instead of having cookies expire in the year 2038, they will expire two years after the page has last been viewed. (Source: ... betanews.com ) The announcement comes shortly after the search engine giant revealed that it will erase search logs after 18 months, a reduction from the previously uncapped time limit. The cookie reduction announcement came via an official Google blog entitled "Cookies: Expiring Sooner to Improve Privacy." In the post, Global Privacy Counsel Peter ... (view more)

Many people have turned to Google to answer various questions, like how to loop a necktie or how to change a tire. As it turns out, the helpfulness of Google is not limited to law abiding citizens; two robbers in Colorado used Google to help them ... crack a safe and take off with $12,000. Here's how the heist goes: The burglars had broken into an indoor amusement center known as Bigg City. Although the robbers knew the codes for the safes, they were unable to get them open after several tries. To solve their problem the bandits consulted a computer in the next room and searched "how to crack a ... (view more)

Google has lost the Gmail name battle in Germany. The winning party, German entrepreneur Daniel Giersch, has had his own Gmail trademark in the country since 2000. Google, on the other hand, launched its Gmail service more recently in 2004. This ... specific trademark case is not the first of its kind. In 2005, Google quarrelled with a U.K financial firm that had been offering a Gmail service to currency investors since 2002. It is not surprising that Google lost this overseas case as well; after all, Google's Gmail "does not appear to be an active domain in a number of countries including ... (view more)

On Friday, Google employee Lauren Turner created a post on the official Google blog which criticized Michael Moore's new film "Sicko." The post caused so much outrage that Turner has since posted another note which apologizes for her controversial ... suggestions. In the original post, Turner not only panned the movie but also offered health care advertisers a way to fight back by placing Google ads so that when a user searches for Sicko, their health care ad pops up. "We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding ... (view more)

Two of Google's Antiphishing and Antimalware employees have announced that the company is releasing its Safe Browsing API to the public. Meaning? The public will be able to access Google's updated blacklist of suspected phishing and malware-infected ... websites. Brian Rakowski and Garrett Casto explain that developers could use the API to prevent users from posting phishing links on a blog, or to notify users that links lead to sites with malware. "The API is still experimental, but we hope it will be useful to ISPs, web hosting companies and anyone building a site or an application that ... (view more)

After a haze of uncertainty further blurred by the acquisition of YouTube, Google Video is beginning to resemble a legitimate video search engine. When Google Video was first announced, its plans and purpose remained a mystery; not only to the ... public, but also to Google. Even Google co-founder Larry Page admitted, "We're not quite sure what we're going to get, but we decided we'd try this experiment." (Source: outer-court.com ) However, the ambiguity was cleared up in January, when Google announced its plans to mould Google Video using one of the company's definite strengths: search. Months ... (view more)