Google

"Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?" asks Tom Waits in his song, "Who are you?"

It would be beyond surprising to see Google fling more of its hardware out of low-flying dirigibles, strapped to wingsuits and courageous stuntmen, at this year's Google I/O, which begins on Wednesday.

But make no mistake: Google knows exactly "who" it is, and it's taking the confidence earned from a year of solid hits and few misses, and a strong first quarter of 2013, to define the parameters that it wants other … Read more

Google is apparently beefing up gaming's presence on the Android platform.

The Web giant is pushing out a massive update to make games on the mobile platform more social, according to documents reviewed by the Android Police on Saturday. Tapping the Google+ social network, Google Play Services will sport multiplayer functionality, leaderboards, and cloud syncing, according to the prerelease version (v3.1.36) of the APK.

In addition to streamlining game development, the platform's social sharing capability is expected to make games more viral, perhaps attracting new users who play longer. The new service isn't yet fully … Read more

Google plans to finish defining its VP9 video codec on June 17, providing a date on which the company will be able to start using the next-generation compression technology in Chrome and on YouTube.

"Last week, we hosted over 100 guests at a summit meeting for VP9, the WebM Project's next-generation open video codec. We were particularly happy to welcome our friends from YouTube, who spoke about their plans to support VP9 once support lands in Chrome," Matt Frost, senior business product manager for the WebM Project, said in a blog post Friday.

WebM is Google's … Read more

The pallet full of mystery boxes above could be filled with USB drives, keychains, or even snap bracelets, though it's a good bet it's shiny, expensive gadgets instead.

Google teased the rather nondescript, and otherwise unexciting collection of boxes on Google+ Friday afternoon, saying only "Boom. Chrome swag has arrived. #io13."

Whatever's inside is expected to be handed out to the 5,000 developers who signed up to attend Google I/O, which kicks off on Wednesday. In the past, Google has handed out a dizzying array of gadgetry to attendees, from Android phones to … Read more

As Google gears up for its big week in the spotlight, it's making another notch in its business software belt. The city of Boston has decided to switch the e-mail provider of its 20,000 employees from Microsoft to Google, The Boston Globe reported Friday.

In addition to using Gmail instead of Microsoft Exchange, Boston will also swap in Google Docs for word processing and Google's cloud service for storing documents. The city will pay Google about $800,000 for the move but will save around $280,000 a year for dropping the Microsoft products.

Google told the … Read more

Some Google Drive users discovered their list of documents to be empty on Friday, though the documents themselves appeared to remain intact.

Several readers reported the problem, in which the Google Drive page was devoid of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files as well as other files stored in Google's cloud-synchronized, Web-based tools.

However, at least in some cases, open documents still worked, new documents could be created, existing documents could be found through the Web page's search bar, and local search on a person's computer could retrieve files stored on local hard drives.

Google's status … Read more

Performance improvements over the last year mean Web pages measured by the Google Analytics service load significantly faster for people using mobile devices.

The pages load 30 percent faster for mobile browsers now than they did a year ago, Steve Souders, Google's head performance engineer, said in a presentation earlier. And for desktop browser users, the pages load 3.5 percent faster.

Mobile Web performance -- often impaired by big Web pages, slower networks, and limited processors -- can be irritating. The slower a Web page responds, the less people use it, and that's a problem for a … Read more

Google set a pretty high standard of what I'll call "wow-ness" with last year's introduction of Google Glass to the world at its annual developers' conference, Google I/O. Glass-wearing stunt people took the brand new device skydiving, rappelling down the side of San Francisco's Moscone Center, and mountain biking through the crowds inside the conference center.

Can Google I/O 2013 possibly contain more wow-ness than that?

A year later, Glass is now in the wild, so it's always possible Google could have some new apps, features, and use cases it plans to … Read more

Google has some new additions to show off for its Wallet service. A physical card, however, won't be one of them.

The company is expected to update its rewards, offers, and loyalty points program to include a wider number of merchants at Google I/O next week. Google had also planned to introduce a physical credit card linked to Google Wallet, but the company has scrapped those plans, according to AllThingsD.

Google Wallet has been the company's attempt to breach the burgeoning -- but still nascent -- mobile payments business. But the service has seen limited adoption, partly … Read more