Jaikumar Vijayan

The Supreme Court has asked U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli for the government’s opinion in a closely watched dispute between Google and Oracle over whether copyright protections should extend to application programming interfaces (APIs). Oracle sued Google back in 2010 over the latter’s use of certain Java APIs in its Android operating system. In its […]

Figures released by Google this week showing barely anyone using its new Android Lollipop mobile operating system even six weeks after its release is likely an embarrassment for the company. But there are a few reasons that might explain the slower than expected uptake, one analyst said Friday. Google released Lollipop in early November touting […]

Google Wednesday released a beta version of a software-debugging tool that it says will give application developers a way to quickly diagnose performance bottlenecks in production applications running on the company’s cloud computing platform. Google Cloud Trace works with applications running on Google App Engine or using a Google Cloud Platform managed virtual machine. It […]

Google’s share of the U.S. search market has dropped to its lowest level since 2009, as what appears to be the direct result of Mozilla’s decision in November to make Yahoo the default search engine on its Firefox browser. Figures released Jan. 7 by Website analytics firm StatCounter show that Google’s search market share in […]

A new report from investment bank and asset management firm Piper Jaffray holds mixed news for Google’s cloud services business. Piper Jaffray recently surveyed 112 Chief Information Officers on their IT priorities for 2015 and found that their enthusiasm for Google’s public cloud offering has waned a bit over the past year compared to offerings […]

Buoyed by the market response to its Chromecast technology for streaming video from PCs and mobile devices directly to the TV, Google this week released a similar product for streaming audio to speakers. Google Cast for audio is designed to let users stream music from their phone, tablet or laptop computer to speakers, receivers and […]

Google’s ambitions of becoming a key player in the home automation market appear to be taking shape with products from its subsidiary Nest Labs now able to interact with smart home products from more than a dozen vendors. Nest on Jan. 5 released a list of 16 vendors whose home automation products are now capable […]

State-run Chinese newspaper the Global Times Tuesday said that Google may be at least partly to blame for a Gmail service outage in the country for the past several days. In an opinion piece, the newspaper said that it was the Internet giant’s continuing unwillingness to obey Chinese laws that may have prompted the government […]

Google Gmail users inside China have been effectively cut off from access to their accounts for the fourth straight day on Dec. 29. Google’s Transparency Report Website, which provides real-time information on disruptions to Google services worldwide, shows the problems began late Thursday when traffic to the company’s Gmail servers for China suddenly plummeted to […]

Governments around the world appear to be using defamation claims as a reason to try to persuade Google to remove political content from its Blogger, Search and YouTube services. The company’s new Transparency Report released Monday shows that the U.S. government and law enforcement made a total of 481 content removal requests, involving 3,667 items, […]