Jaikumar Vijayan

The Google Assistant, formally released this week amid a slew of hardware offerings, is central to Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s effort to align the company with what he sees as an epochal shift from mobile-centric to AI-centric computing. The Assistant is a voice-activated digital assistant similar to Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. It […]

Google is expected to release Google Home, its much-hyped rival to the Amazon Echo, along with several other hardware products, at an event in San Francisco Oct. 4. Google Home integrates Assistant, a virtual assistant technology released earlier this year that is similar to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa in function. Assistant is designed to […]

Google has introduced a free version of a tool designed to help organizations deliver more personalized experiences for users visiting their websites. The company’s new Google Optimize, released this week in beta form, allows website owners to test webpages and their entire site to discover opportunities for engaging visitors more effectively. With it, administrators and […]

Google and four other technology giants have launched a nonprofit initiative to develop best practices in the field of artificial intelligence and to advance public understanding of AI technologies. The group’s new Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society (Partnership on AI) will explore opportunities in this area that will benefit people and […]

Slightly more than one year after announcing its OnHub home router, Google this week took the wraps off some of the features it says makes the device more secure than most comparable consumer products. OnHub is a router that Google claims supports WiFi for more than 100 devices at the same time. It comes with […]

Google has released a new tool called CSP Evaluator that it says can help developers ensure that the polices they use for mitigating cross-site scripting errors are effective and work as intended. Cross-site scripting errors basically let attackers inject malicious code into a web application or webpage. Attackers often use it to insert malicious code […]

Google is reportedly developing a new Pixel laptop computer and a Nexus tablet featuring an operating system that will be a hybrid of its Android and Chrome operating systems. The devices are slated for delivery in the third quarter of 2017, the 9to5Google and Android Police blogs reported this week. The new Pixel laptop, code-named […]

Google this week released its new messaging application Allo as expected and almost immediately found itself under fire for allegedly backing off a commitment to a privacy feature that it had previously pledged. Allo is a mobile messaging application for Android and iOS devices powered by Google’s machine learning technology. Google is touting it as […]

Internet search engines have for some time now let people use conversational language and terms to search for things online. That same feature is now available to users of Google Drive. Starting this week, users will be able to search for files and content stored in Google Drive just as they would when using Google […]

Google has started marking websites that are optimized for viewing on mobile devices with an “AMP” icon in mobile search results. The idea is to give users a way to identify sites that will load faster on smartphones and tablets and provide what the company says will be an overall better viewing and navigating experience […]