Google's response to Euro's Anti-trust action?

Android’s Model of Open Innovation

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

We released the Android operating system in 2007.  A free and open-source operating system, supported by numerous hardware partners, the model was unlike any other that had come before it.  The first device didn’t foretell Android’s future success.  It was described as “quirky” …. having “a kind of charming, retro-future look; like a gadget in a 1970's sci-fi movie set in the year 2038.”  But we (and the thousands of other companies working on Android devices and apps) kept at it.

Since that time, Android has emerged as an engine for mobile software and hardware innovation.  It has empowered hundreds of manufacturers to build great phones, tablets, and other devices. And it has let developers of all sizes easily reach huge audiences.  The result?  Users enjoy extraordinary choices of apps and devices at ever-lower prices.  

The European Commission has been investigating our approach, and today issued a Statement of Objections, raising questions about its impact on competition. We take these concerns seriously, but we also believe that our business model keeps manufacturers’ costs low and their flexibility high, while giving consumers unprecedented control of their mobile devices.  That’s how we designed the model:   

• Our partner agreements are entirely voluntary -- anyone can use Android without Google. Try it—you can download the entire operating system for free, modify it how you want, and build a phone. And major companies like Amazon do just that.  
• Manufacturers who want to participate in the Android ecosystem commit to test and certify that their devices will support Android apps. Without this system, apps wouldn’t work from one Android device to the next.  Imagine how frustrating it would be if an app you downloaded on one Android phone didn’t also work on your replacement Android phone from the same manufacturer.  
• Any manufacturer can then choose to load the suite of Google apps to their device and freely add other apps as well.  For example, phones today come loaded with scores of pre-installed apps (from Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google, mobile carriers, and more).
• Of course while Android is free for manufacturers to use, it’s costly to develop, improve, keep secure, and defend against patent suits.  We provide Android for free, and offset our costs through the revenue we generate on our Google apps and services we distribute via Android.
• And it’s simple and easy for users to personalize their devices and download apps on their own -- including apps that directly compete with ours.  The popularity of apps like Spotify, WhatsApp, Angry Birds, Instagram, Snapchat and many more show how easy it is for consumers to use new apps they like. Over 50 billion apps have been downloaded on Android.

Our partner agreements have helped foster a remarkable -- and, importantly, sustainable -- ecosystem, based on open-source software and open innovation. We look forward to working with the European Commission to demonstrate the careful way we’ve designed the Android model in a way that’s good for competition and for consumers.

Posted by Kent Walker, Senior Vice President & General Counsel

original here >>

Google is in hot water in Europe over Android.

EU charges Google with abusing Android dominance



Published on 20 Apr 2016 - European Union antitrust regulators accused Google on Wednesday (April 20) of abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system in deals with phone makers and mobile network operators.

The charge, which came after a year-long investigation, could hit a cash cow for Google, a unit of holding company Alphabet Inc: last year, the tech giant made close to 10 billion euros from ad sales on Android phones with Google apps such as Gmail and Maps.

reverse takeover of google by Alphabet.

 
Google Inc is changing its operating structure by setting up a new company called Alphabet Inc, which will include the search business and a number of other units. Photograph: PAWEL KOPCZYNSKI/REUTERS


Google is now Alphabet. Temporary Holding Company Number Two is now Google. And “don’t be evil” is now one step closer to being a thing of the past.

Following the corporate reshuffle at Google, the world’s largest search firm is now owned by a holding company called “Alphabet” – which, confusingly, was temporarily a subsidiary of Google but then executed a “reverse takeover” of its parent company to become the new boss, at which point Google spun off a number of its own subsidiaries such as its life sciences subsidiary Calico and “moonshot” division X to sit under Alphabet.

The end result is that the Google we all know and love still exists, but sits under an entirely new company, with a new name, new brand, new website – and new ethics policy.

When Alphabet was revealed, it was made clear that Google’s pre-existing ethics policy would only apply to the search firm itself, rather than its parent company. But now that Alphabet has revealed its own Code of Conduct, and the words “don’t be evil” are nowhere in sight.

Instead, the holding company has a rather less pithy set of requirements for its employees, including “avoid conflicts of interest”, “ensure financial integrity and responsibility” and “obey the law”.

That means that Google’s own companies, including YouTube and Android, are still run with a code of conduct that includes the command “don’t be evil” (as well as the less well-known statement that “we like cats, but we’re a dog company”), while the companies that sit directly under Alphabet aren’t.

Alphabet’s other subsidiaries such as X, the division in charge of the company’s balloon-powered internet drone delivery projects, will still have the ability to set their own codes of conduct, just as Google itself has. But the company itself leads on the highly catchy requirement that “Employees of Alphabet and its subsidiaries … should do the right thing – follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect.”

It isn’t the first time Google has downgraded “don’t be evil” in its internal communications. In 2009, the company quietly dropped the line from “motto” to “mantra”, as part of a rebranding of its corporate PR – a far cry from the early noughties, where the phrase had even been included in the company’s 2004 intial public offering.

original here >>> 

original title : Where Google said 'don't be evil', Alphabet just wants employees to 'obey the law'

Facebook Just Declared War on Google: Meet Your New Search Engine

Today's big bad Facebook revelation is a search engine—not for the web, but for your life. And it's just another step in Facebook's attempt to conquer the entire Internet. Meet Graph Search.

Facebook's search has been convoluted and weak for years until now—it's hard to expect what you get when you type anything in, even if it's your best friend's name. People, pages, maybe places. Boring and often broken. But with today's search monster, Zuckerberg isn't just offering you a way to find your friends (or college frenemies). And it's beyond just some attempt at a Google replacement. It's an attempt to do what Google failed at doing—pulling all the information that matters to you within the context of your social life, skipping the results that are popular to The Internet, in favor of the results that are popular within a group you actually give a damn about. Not a horde of strangers. Everyone you know uses Facebook, and now those people are going to work for you when you search.

For example: searching for a sushi restaurant won't just bring up a well-linked list a la Google. Instead, your restaurant query will be answered with a little help from your friends, presenting you with suggestions based on where your relations have checked in. Or if you're looking for music, the recent selections of your pals will inform the results. For any occasion, the answer doesn't lie with some invisible algorithm pointed out toward the web void, but at the people you know, who are doing or have done the thing you're talking about. Your friends' experiences will give you answers to what you're wondering. At least that's the idea. And if it works, we'll have all the reason to skip opening a new tab headed to Google.com—an enormous victory for Facebook, and a profound change in how we all use the Internet every single day.

from Gizmodo : Sam Biddle -  read more >>

Facebook Starts Letting You View And Delete Your Facebook Search History

Even though search history on search engines like Google is totally private, some people still enjoy the ability to delete it. Now Facebook is following suit, allowing you to view and delete all or part of your search history through the profile Activity Log. The new feature will give you more transparency into what you do on Facebook, what it tracks, and make you feel like you’re more in control. The feature begins rolling out today and will reach everyone over the next several weeks.

The change could signal that Facebook wants to get deeper into web search, and is prepping for a release by adding new controls.

To see your search history, go to your profile, click the Activity Log on the right side, click the “All” drop down and you’ll be able to select to view your “Search” history in reverse chronological order. From there you can click through to re-search things you’ve looked for in the past, delete specific searches, or clear your entire history.

source here |  21 Sept 2012  >>>

Google to Pay Millions for Latest Privacy Lapse

Published on Aug 9, 2012 : The Federal Trade Commission says it hopes its record $22.5 million fine against Google will force the Internet search behemoth to pay better attention to its practices. The FTC says Google duped Web surfers who use Apple's Safari browser.

Google extends online search to email boxes

SAN FRANCISCO — Google has begun allowing users to extend online searches to include messages stored in accounts at Web-based email service Gmail.

"Sometimes the best answer to your question isn't available on the public Web -- it may be contained elsewhere, such as in your email," Google search senior vice president Amit Singhal said in a blog post on Wednesday.

"We think you shouldn't have to be your own mini search engine to find the most useful information; it should just work."

Google invited people to visit google.com/experimental/gmailfieldtrial to sign up to take part in the new feature, which was still taking shape.

"We're developing a way to find this information for you that's useful and unobtrusive, and we'd love your feedback," Singhal said.

The trial was limited to English language searches and messages in Gmail accounts.

Enhancements under development include a feature for organizing air travel confirmation emails so that a query of "my flights" would serve up results that include a concise list of bookings.

"These are baby steps, but important ones on our way to building the search engine of the future," Singhal said.

Those steps include upgrading Google search to look beyond query words to figure out what people are actually seeking online.

Original report : >>

Baidu : China's 'Google-killer'.

... looks to build its brand worldwide

Baidu (pic), China's biggest search engine, has quietly and successfully extended services 

to other countries in the developing world.

BEIJING, China — Everyone in China knows Baidu — the country’s biggest search engine, its very own, home-grown Google-killer. But outside China it’s far from a household name.

That's something the company wants to change. In a quietly ambitious plan, Baidu is taking its hard-won lessons from the Chinese market abroad in the hopes of becoming a major player the developing world.

In the last year, Baidu has quietly rolled out localized products in Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt, and as of late July, Singapore and Brazil, with new offices being built in Sao Paulo.

So far, most of these are adaptations of Baidu services that cater to older or less sophisticated users. In Brazil, users now can visit a version of Baidu’s Hao123 directory, which features links organized by category — movies, email, weather, sports, shopping, and the like. In Egypt, users can find an Arabic version of Baidu’s question and answer site, “Baidu Knows.” In Vietnam, Baidu offers Hao123 as well as a recently launched version of Tieba, which allows users to search social media.

As a further measure of its seriousness, in July Baidu signed a partnership in Singapore to create a joint research lab on natural language processing for Thai and Vietnamese, as well as Arabic and Portuguese.

While it’s a modest start, Baidu’s billionaire founder, Robin Li says that the goal is to “become a universally recognized brand in over half the world’s countries.”

Original report  >>

EC sets Google July deadline to answer competition concerns

The European Commission (EC) has given Google until July to submit proposals to address antitrust allegations about it abusing its dominant position in its online search rankings, or face regulatory action.

An investigation into complaints about Google, led by Europe's competition head Jaoquin Almunia, identified four areas of concern.

In May, Almunia said he would give Google an opportunity to offer remedies to address the concerns that he outlined in a letter toGoogle executive chairman, Eric Schmidt.

But Eric Schmidt said Google disagreed that the firm had done anything to breach EU antitrust law, at the company's Big Tent conference in Hertfordshire last month.

Schmidt said Google did not understand how the EC believes it has broken anti-trust laws and insisted the search giant had done nothing wrong.

In his letter to Google, Almunia identified four areas of concern:

• The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services differently from other, competing products;
• How Google copies content from other websites – such as restaurant reviews – to include in its own services;
• The exclusivity Google has to sell advertising around search terms people use;
• Restrictions surrounding portability of advertising content which prevents seamless transfer to other non-Google platforms.

But Schmidt said this is still insufficient information for the company to respond.

Now Almunia has set Google a deadline of early July for the company to negotiate remedies to protect competition or face potentially heavy fines, according to the Telegraph.

If Google fails to respond, European regulators will issue a formal statement of objections in response to complaints that it abuses its dominant position to promote its own secondary services.

Almunia has also warned that, if negotiations and proposals to address the EC's concerns are unsatisfactory, formal proceedings will continue through the adoption of a statement of objections.

Once adopted, the EC could impose fines of up to 10% of Google global revenues, reported at $37.9bn in 2011.

original full report 

Google inches up, Yahoo inches down.

full report :

What FACEBOOK and GOOGLE are Hiding from world.

Uploaded by thoughtawakening on 14 Sep 2011 :-

Venture Capitalist Roger McNamee: 'Google Is Done'.

Uploaded by ForaTv on 30 Dec 2011 : Roger McNamee notices a precipitous decline in Google's search business as a result of the iPhone and other mobile devices, which use apps to access the internet instead of the world wide web. "Because search is falling, I believe that we're being liberated," says McNamee.

 Roger McNamee is a managing director and co-founder of Elevation Partners. Prior to Elevation, Roger was a co-founder of Silver Lake Partners, the leading private equity fund focused on technology and related growth industries. He was a member of Silver Lake's Investment Committee and was involved in all aspects of that partnership. Prior to Silver Lake, Roger was a co-founder of Integral Capital Partners. Integral is a leading technology investor in late-stage venture and public company investments. Founded in 1991 by Roger, John A. Powell, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Integral pioneered the crossover investment strategy, which seeks maximum capital appreciation by making investments in expansion-stage private companies and growth-stage public companies in the technology and life science industries.

Google search goes personal!

How the net traps us all in our own little bubbles

An invisible revolution has taken place is the way we use the net, but the increasing personalisation of information by search engines such as Google threatens to limit our access to information and enclose us in a self-reinforcing world view, writes Eli Pariser in an extract from The Filter Bubble

A slide from Eli Pariser's TED Talk presentation which discusses how major internet players are tailoring information to individuals. Illustration: Justin Kemerling and Eli Pariser

Few people noticed the post that appeared on Google's corporate blog on 4 December 2009. It didn't beg attention – no sweeping pronouncements, no Silicon Valley hype, just a few paragraphs sandwiched between a round-up of top search terms and an update on Google's finance software.

Not everyone missed it. Search-engine blogger Danny Sullivan pores over the items on Google's blog, looking for clues about where the monolith is headed next, and to him, the post was a big deal. In fact, he wrote later that day, it was "the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines". For Danny, the headline said it all: "Personalised search for everyone".

Starting that morning, Google would use 57 signals – everything from where you were logging in from to what browser you were using to what you had searched for before – to make guesses about who you were and what kinds of sites you'd like. Even if you were logged out, it would customise its results, showing you the pages it predicted you were most likely to click on.

Most of us assume that when we google a term, we all see the same results – the ones that the company's famous Page Rank algorithm suggests are the most authoritative based on other pages' links. But since December 2009, this is no longer true. Now you get the result that Google's algorithm suggests is best for you in particular – and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google any more.

Chrome & Privacy - Browsers, Privacy

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 web browser goes live.

Microsoft has said the latest version of its internet explorer web browser puts it ahead of competitors like Google and Firefox.

The software giant, which is losing market share, made the bold claim as it unveiled what is known as the release candidate of IE9.

This is the final test drive for the new browser - a chance to catch any last-minute bugs before its debut.                                                               

Privacy and speed set IE9 apart, Microsoft said

Read more |  BBC News - 10 February 2011 

Continue reading the main story

Google accuses Bing of 'copying' its search results

Google created fake results for nonsense words such as 'hiybbprqag'

Google has accused Microsoft of cheating, following an investigation known as the 'Bing Sting'.

Google engineers created 100 nonsensical queries such as "hiybbprqag" and inserted a fake result for each.Google has accused Microsoft of cheating, following an investigation known as the 'Bing Sting'.

Within weeks, the same results began to appear on its rival Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Microsoft denies copying Google and accused Google of conducting "spy-novelesque stunts".

Harry Shum, vice president of Bing, said: "We do not copy google's search results. We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results," he added.

"Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites," he added.

Cheap imitation

Bing returned the same result for 'hiybbprqug'

But Google's Amit Singhal told industry blog SearchEngineLand.com that it was "plain and simply cheating" and he detailed the sting operation in a long blog post.

He said Google decided to conduct its experiment after mis-spelt words and results were replicated on Bing.

"A search for 'hiybbprqug' on Bing returned a page about seating at a theatre in Los Angeles. As far as we know the only connection between the query and result is Google's result page," he said.

BBC News | 2 February 2011 -  read full report