Jaikumar Vijayan

A report this week that Google is compiling a list ranking Android handset makers by how quickly they apply updates to their devices has focused attention on the challenges the company faces in bolstering security across the fragmented Android ecosystem. Bloomberg on May 25 reported that Google is developing a ranking system designed to shame […]

Mobile users of Google Maps and Search could soon get more promoted content served up to them courtesy of changes the company has made to its Adwords advertising platform. In a post on Google’s Inside Adwords blog, Senior Vice President of Google Ads and Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy said the updates enable local marketers to better […]

Tax authorities in France raided Google’s Paris offices May 24 in a dramatic escalation of an ongoing investigation of the company’s tax payment practices in the country. The Guardian described the raids as taking place in the early morning and involving some 100 investigators, including 25 IT specialists and five magistrates. The purpose of the […]

Google’s efforts to build Ara, a customizable smartphone with swappable modules for different functions, such as those that let users add a high-resolution camera or an additional speaker to their phones, are taking shape. However, consumers will have to wait at least until next year before the first model becomes commercially available, Google executives informed […]

Google has released new application programming interfaces (APIs) that it says will make it easier for developers to connect their applications and the data in them to Google’s Slides and Sheets apps. The APIs will give developers a way to take advantage of some of the features in both the Slides and Sheets apps to […]

Google has formally appealed an order from French data protection authority CNIL that calls for the company to apply the requirements of the European Union’s Right to Be Forgotten mandate on a global basis. The appeal urged France’s Supreme Administrative Court to review the case and dismiss the CNIL order against the company. In a […]

Google is giving Website owners a new way to stand out in search results. The company has introduced a formatting feature in Google Search it is calling “rich cards” that it says will give site owners a way to present a better preview of their content in search results. Rich cards build on Google’s rich […]

Enterprises that are still using Web servers or email servers running the long obsolete SSLv3 or RC4 cryptographic protocols have one month to update to more recent versions if they want to continue to exchange mail with Google’s mail servers. After June 16, 2016, Google will formally disable support for both SSLv3 and RC4 on […]

Continuing a move it began last year, Google will phase out default support for the Adobe Flash multimedia player in its Chrome browser by the end of 2016. A slide presentation that Google apparently recently published shows that Flash Player would continue to be bundled with Chrome, even after the end of the year. However, […]

Google has made it easier for Website owners to see how their sites are faring in organic search results by more tightly integrating Search Console metrics with Google Analytics metrics. The integration will allow site owners to combine data from both sources more easily to get a holistic view of the factors affecting their Website’s […]

Mobile-device administrators at organizations that have signed up for the premium business version of Google Apps now have a new tool for auditing activities on managed Android and iOS devices. Google’s new Mobile Audit feature, announced this week, gives Google Apps administrators a way to audit activities like operating system updates, application installations, or removals […]

Nest on May 11 released Open Thread, an open-source version of the networking protocol that allows the company’s smart thermostat and other home automation products to connect to each other and to the Internet of things. Nest’s goal is to speed up the development of connected home products by eliminating the need for developers to […]