Jaikumar Vijayan

Consumers who purchased the smart-home hub from Google subsidiary Nest’s Revolv will find themselves the frustrated owners of a useless piece of hardware, or “brick” after May 15. That’s when, Revolv, a Colorado-based company, which Nest acquired in 2014, will formally shut down all services. The company’s $299 hub, purchased by an unknown (but likely […]

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has overturned a March 2014 jury verdict in Texas ordered Google to pay $85 million for violating a mobile notification patent belonging to SimpleAir, a technology licensing company In a relatively brief 21-page ruling last Friday the judges held that the […]

Google has joined Microsoft, Apple and Amazon in voicing support for the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan for reducing carbon emissions from U.S. power plants over the next several years. The Supreme Court in February stayed implementation of the plan and wants the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Columbia Circuit to rule on the […]

Customers of Google’s cloud computing services now have a way to resize their persistent block storage capacities on the fly without having to bring down virtual machine instances or create snapshots of them. The company on March 31 announced the general availability of online resizing of persistent disks, a capability that it said allows organizations […]

Subscribers to Google’s gigabit speed Fiber Internet and cable service will soon be able to add a home phone service to their plan as well. The company this week introduced Fiber Phone, a $10 per month option for customers signed up for its Internet service. The Fiber Phone option will give subscribers unlimited local and […]

Between $1 billion and $9.3 billion—that’s the range a California jury will have to consider in a trial to determine how much Google should pay in damages if it finds the company violated Oracle’s Java copyrights. Oracle sued Google in 2010 for using certain Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in its Android mobile operating system […]

A laser beam intrusion detection system, customized electronic access cards and biometric iris scans are just some of the multilevel security measures that Google has implemented to control access to its data centers. Other measures include dual authentication systems, vehicle-access barriers, high-resolution cameras, metal detectors, perimeter fencing and so-called circle-lock portals to prevent tailgaters from […]

A reference in an article in The Information this week about a plan by Google to develop a voice recognition system has led to considerable speculation that the company may be planning to release a rival to Amazon’s Echo voice-controlled speaker. The Information article is based at least partly on an interview with Nest CEO […]

Starting this week, Gmail users will begin to get a full-page warning when they click on a potentially dangerous link in an email message. The notification will inform users that visiting the Website the particular link is pointing to could harm their computer. The alert will provide a link to Google’s Safe Browsing diagnostic page, […]

Digital certificates are a key component of the modern Internet security. Browsers use them to authenticate Websites and to encrypt communications between client devices and Web servers for everything from high-value banking transactions to email. The certificates are supposed to assure users that Websites are bonafide and safe to visit rather than malicious sites created […]

Google will add as many as 12 new data centers around the world through the end of 2017 as part of a major planned expansion of its cloud computing capabilities. Two of the new data centers—one in Oregon and the other in Tokyo—will open later this year while the others will go online next year. […]

Google has made available for free a tool for quickly spotting similarities and differences in related binary files or software code. The BinDiff tool gives security researchers a way to identify and isolate fixes for vulnerabilities in vendor-supplied patches. It also gives them a way to disassemble and compare malicious software files for differences and […]