Google just shot out an email to folks who signed up for its Glass Explorers program at I/O last year, and it’s spreading word that Glass units have begun to roll off the production line for participants. The roughly 2,000 devs who pre-ordered the spectacles won’t be getting them all at once, however, as Page and Co. say they’ll be delivered in waves. Mountain View notes it could have waited for every unit to be ready, but decided to send them out as they’re made to speed things up. Presumably, winners of the #ifihadglass contest are in line to receive theirs after those who attended the developer powwow, but they’ll have to travel to Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco to pick them up. Hit the break to live vicariously through the search titan’s guinea pigs adventurers by reading the email in its entirety.

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Google I/O may still be a solid month away, but folks on Mountain View’s social network are already stumbling across leaks and notifications hinting at what might be in store. Google Play’s 4.0 redesign, for instance, briefly appeared on a YouTube employee’s profile before being deleted, matching the holo-themed leak we saw last month. The update shows a landing page we didn’t see in the previous walkthrough, and includes a message introducing the redesign that promises to make it “easier to browse and discover new favorites.” Google’s rumored Babel chat rebranding is making the rounds too, apparently surfacing in Gmail when certain messages are moved to trash. Neither are surefire announcements for I/O, but the timing is about right. Skip on past the break for a screen grab of the Babel notification.

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Source: Droid Life , Google+

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From 2008 to 2010, Google’s Street View team collected personal data without consent.

For a company that earned more than $ 50 billion in consolidated revenues last year, a $ 7 million fine is the very definition of a slap on the wrist, but hey, it mostly goes to lawyers anyway. That’s the amount Google agreed to pay to settle a Street View privacy lawsuit with 37 states and the District of Columbia, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced today. In addition to the fine, Google agreed to secure and destroy information it improperly collected from March 2008 to March 2010.

During that time, equipment attached to Google’s fleet of Street View vehicles inadvertently collected personal information over unencrypted wireless networks as they rolled through neighborhoods taking pictures. The data harvesting was never Google’s intent.

“We work hard to get privacy right at Google. But in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue,” Google said in a statement. “The project leaders never wanted this data, and didn’t use it or even look at it. We’re pleased to have worked with Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen and the other state attorneys general to reach this agreement.”

As part of the settlement, Google agreed to launch an employee training program to prevent something like this from happening again, and will conduct a national advertising campaign to educate consumers on how to protect their private information.

“Consumers have a right to protect their vital personal and financial information from improper and unwanted use by corporations like Google,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “This settlement addresses privacy issues and protects the rights of people whose information was collected without their permission. My office will continue to hold corporations accountable for violating the rights of New Yorkers.”

Since the investigation, Google has disabled or removed the equipment and software used to collect data.

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A report by auction website eBay has found that paying for advertising in the form of keywords on search engines has little effect on sales.

Platforms such as Google and Bing offer companies the option to “buy” words.

This means their websites appear more prominently if a person searches for a particular term.

The eBay study found that most people who clicked through as a result of this service were loyal customers who would have come to the site anyway.

“Incremental revenue from paid search was far smaller than expected because existing customers would have come to eBay regardless, whether directly or through other marketing channels,” said an eBay representative.

In carrying out the study, presented at an economics conference held at Stanford University, eBay removed its paid-search keywords from MSN and Yahoo platforms in the US, while retaining them on Google.

Natural search

They found that without the advertising, users still clicked through as the results appeared on the search engine anyway.

“Removal of these advertisements simply raised the prominence of the eBay natural search result,” read the report by Thomas Blake, Chris Nosko, and Steve Tadelis from eBay.

“Shutting paid search advertisements closed one (costly) path to a firm’s website but diverted traffic to the next easiest path (natural search), which is free to the advertiser.”

There is no suggestion that eBay now plans to change the way in which it currently spends on search engine advertising.

Google said that its own research suggested there was a significant increase in clicks as a result of search advertising.

But a company representative added: “Since outcomes differ so much among advertisers and are influenced by many different factors, we encourage advertisers to experiment with their own campaigns.”

Household name

Dr Philip Alford, director of the Digital Hub in the School of Tourism at Bournemouth University, told the BBC that the size of the brand made a big difference to the effectiveness of paid searches.

EBay has become a household brand name, they already have a highly engaged user base,” he said, adding that many people would search the website directly when shopping online.

“With Google ad words, particularly for smaller organisations, it can make a lot of sense because for some of them, their websites aren’t at a stage yet where they have been sufficiently indexed by Google, so they struggle to come up in natural searches for terms.

“The more click your ad gets, you get rewarded over time with a higher listing as you are perceived by Google as being relevant,” he added.

“But it is interesting that a lot of people still are paying for terms that actually appear quite high up the listings in the search results anyway.”
BBC News – Technology

Here’s to a hoopy frood who really knew where his towel was.

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Via: The Guardian

Source: Google

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All the hype of Google’s presence at this year’s SXSW has, not surprisingly, largely revolved around the company’s Glass project, but much to our surprise, the software giant used the show to take the wraps off yet another wearable. We spoke to a rep who kicked off the conversation with the express disclaimer that “Google is not getting into the shoe business,” so you can tamp down those expectations right now. Of course, the company is still firmly in the business of creating cool projects for the purposes of promoting creativity and supporting the developer community and ethos that are the driving forces behind its Art, Copy & Code project.

Filed under: Wearables, Wireless, Google

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Windows 8 may be struggling, but Internet Explorer is thriving.

For years Internet Explorer has been easy to pick on, but for once the Redmond based software giant is bucking the trend. Market share for Internet Explorer has reached an 18-month high, and it seems to have done so largely at the expense of Google Chrome. In February IE climbed 0.68 points to 55.82 percent. Chrome dropped 1.21 percent, and Firefox rocketed above 20 percent to settle at 16.27 and 20.12 percent respectively.

ARStechnica did an interesting analysis on what exactly this means for the browser market, and specifically Windows 8. The natural first instinct when looking at the numbers would be to attribute IE’s success to Microsoft’s newest version of Windows. Internet Explorer 10 and its new modern UI browser could reasonably explain away a bump in the numbers, however Windows 8 usage is at just 2.67 percent. This makes it bigger than any single version of Mac OSX, but still around half of Windows Vista.

Microsoft has stepped up its advertising budget for IE over the last several months, and perhaps we are finally seeing the results? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Video chat can be an empowering tool for hard-of-hearing internet citizens for whom sign language is easier than voice. Most chat software doesn’t easily bring an interpreter into the equation, however, which spurred Google into adding a Sign Language Interpreter app for Google+ Hangouts. The web component lets chatters invite an interpreter that stays in the background while they verbalize hand gestures. Google is also helping reduce dependencies on the mouse for those who can’t (or just won’t) use one during chat: there’s now keyboard shortcuts to start or stop chats, disable the camera and other basics that would normally demand a click. Both the interpreter app and shortcuts are available today.

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Via: The Verge

Source: Anna Cavender (Google+)

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 By: James Plafke

Even though it often feels like there isn’t anyone else in the web search game (sorry, Microsoft) due to the breadth of Google, and even though that very same breadth often makes Google feel like an unstoppable giant that bows to no man or corporation, it’s sometimes refreshing to know that even giants have to answer to someone.

Google is the default search engine on iOS, but Apple doesn’t see that as doing Google a favor, or as some sort of friendly team-up — Google has to pay Apple for that privilege. A new report by Morgan Stanley speculates that Google could end up paying an exorbitant amount of money to remain the default search engine on iOS in 2014.

Back in 2009, Google ponied up $82 million for its search engine to be default on Apple’s mobile operating system. Now, Morgan Stanley’s report says that Google could end up paying around one billion bucks to keep their search product there. If that seems like a ton of money, it’s most likely not a bad deal for Google — even though just four years ago it only cost Google a fraction of the reported 2014 price. Google makes the majority of its money from search, so it can’t lose out on being the default engine on devices with the kind of market penetration Apple has.

As Microsoft pushes Bing on the world — with it being the default search engine on the Xbox 360 and Surface, and Nokia and BlackBerry phones — Google has to do what it can to remain default on premiere devices. As for why Apple would consider switching, it’s no secret that Google and Apple are frenemies — in this case, competitors that also remain partners — and who wouldn’t love to kick an enemy to the curb? However, if the report ends up being accurate, Apple receiving one billion dollars for simply staying the course is a very easy way to make one billion dollars.

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Google TV still has a long way to go before it becomes as ubiquitous in the living room as Android has become in consumers’ pockets, but the search giant has at least taken a new step in the right direction. As of this week users are able to purchase and access video and music content [...]

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