Jaikumar Vijayan

Google revealed that it acquired Timeful, a vendor of an iOS-only time-management application, for an undisclosed sum. The purchase gives Google access to technology designed to let people organize and schedule daily activities more efficiently. The software’s key feature is its ability to intelligently suggest times during the day or week for users to accomplish […]

Google has voiced its support for a surveillance reform bill introduced in Congress this week that, among other things, would allow Internet firms to disclose more details of secret requests they receive from the government for customer data. Susan Molinari, Google’s vice president for Americas Public Policy and Government Relations, called the bill, dubbed the […]

Google launched a new extension for its Chrome browser that is designed to discourage people from using the same password to log in to multiple online accounts. The open-source extension called Password Alert works by alerting users if they type their Google password into a non-Google site. The idea is to foster better security by […]

Google has launched its Person Finder Web app to help people report on or locate family members and others affected by the massive earthquake in Nepal over the weekend. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake is believed to have killed thousands of people and caused enormous destruction in the tiny Himalayan kingdom. Among those killed in the disaster […]

Patent owners will have a brief window of opportunity to sell their intellectual property to Google next month. From May 8 to 22, the Internet search giant will accept queries from patent holders willing to sell their patents to Google at a price they set themselves. Google will consider the patents and let submitters know […]

For the sixth time in the last nine quarters, Google reported revenues and earnings that were less than expected by Wall Street analysts. But investors themselves appeared largely unperturbed by the trend, pushing the company’s stock prices up by more than 3.5 percent following the company’s latest earnings report on April 23. For the first […]

Google’s new Project Fi wireless service, which the company announced April 22, has the potential to disrupt Verizon’s and AT&T’s cellular businesses more so than the company has been willing to admit so far. The service starts at $20 per month and provides subscribers with talk, text, WiFi tethering and coverage in more than 120 […]

Web pages that have not been specifically optimized for viewing on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices began receiving a lower ranking on Google Search on April 21. The company has tweaked its search engine algorithms to include a Web page’s mobile friendliness as a measure when returning results in response to search queries. Google […]

Most of the advertisements that Google serves up on its various online properties will be fully encrypted, starting later this year. The company has already moved all YouTube ads to the secure HTTPS protocol and is now working toward encrypting search ads across all its systems, two Google vice presidents wrote in a blog post […]

Google on April 15 strongly rebutted a formal complaint in the European Union that it has abused its market position to hurt rivals in the online search and Android marketplaces. In two blogs, Google executives insisted the company has done no harm to others and has actually fostered more choice and innovation in some of […]