Google

To the end of the (Google) world

Google Street View has ways of getting places. There are its fleet of cars, its tricycles for places without roads, SCUBA divers for the ocean, and even user-generated content.

Nevertheless, there's always, inevitably, an end to the road. Naturally, sometimes this is because the land just plumb runs out. But there are a number of other reasons Google's cameras have not been able to proceed, from the natural to the man-made. The Atlantic's Alan Taylor took a pictorial look at the reasons why. See them in our gallery below. … Read more

How Google puts the kibosh on rogue pharmacies

Will annoying online drug pitches ever go the way of pop-up ads? Probably not. But Google revealed on Tuesday some behind-the-scenes techniques it uses to decrease the visibility of rogue online pharmacies.

"Rogue pharmacies continually adapt their online marketing practices, meaning this is an ongoing battle," wrote Google legal director Adam Barea in a blog post about how the company combats these pharmacies.

Google stringently scrutinizes online pharmacy ad buys, including using the third-party tool LegitScript to create a higher bar for pharmacies. Since 2010, only ads from accredited U.S.-based online pharmacies have been approved. The … Read more

Fast fiber: Apps coming at 70 percent the speed of light

In the movie "Iron Man 3," the titular hero struggles in what appears to be a rinky-dink backwater town to find an Internet connection fast enough and big enough to crunch data to find the terrorist villain. The town looks to be Nowhere, U.S.A., but we're told, it is actually Chattanooga, Tenn.

Known to some as "Gig City," the real Chattanooga would have posed less of a problem for Tony Stark's heroic data-analyzing needs. The modest city of half a million has more than 150,000 homes wired for affordable Gigabit Ethernet. … Read more

Google settles shareholder lawsuit over company control

Google has reached a settlement in a shareholder lawsuit that will effectively guarantee that founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin retain lifetime control of the company.

The settlement, which still requires court approval, allows Google to issue a new class of nonvoting shares to shareholders of its publicly traded stock. A complaint filed by Brockton Retirement Board had alleged that the plan cements Page and Brin's "iron-clad grip" on Google by maintaining their 56.3 percent voting stake.

The dispute began in April 2012 when Google announced its first stock split -- or it "non-voting capital … Read more

Google's low-cost Chromebooks coming to 6,600 more stores

While Google hasn't done a lot of promotion around its Chromebooks, there's no doubt that the company is still working on bringing the low-cost laptops to more people around the world.

The tech giant announced Monday that it's bringing Chromebooks to more than 6,600 new stores worldwide -- that's three times as many stores as before.

The lion's share will go to Walmart and Staples. Walmart will sell the $199 Acer C7 Chromebook in about 2,800 of its stores across the U.S. And Staples will bring Chromebooks from Acer, HP, and Samsung … Read more

Moto X phone's rumored specs don't mark the spot

Ever since Google bought Motorola, there has been hope for a perfect marriage between Google software and Motorola hardware. The upcoming Moto X smartphone just may not be that union.

Motorola moto x: 1.7GHz dual-core MSM8960 Pro, 720p, 2GB/16GB, 10MP/2MP, Android 4.2.2

— @evleaks (@evleaks) June 15, 2013

According to a Friday tweet from anonymous leaker @evleaks, the Motorola Moto X packs a 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 Pro processor with 2GB of RAM. That's nothing to sneeze at, but in the age of quad-core phones, it isn't exactly high end. The Moto … Read more

Google plans to wipe child porn from the Web

Photos and videos of child pornography on the Web have multiplied at an alarming rate over the past few years. In 2011, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said it received 17.3 million images and videos of suspected child abuse, which is four times more than 2007.

Google has announced that it wants to help curb this proliferation of child pornography. In fact, the Web giant plans to take it even a step further -- it wants to completely eradicate child porn from the Internet.

"Behind these images are real, vulnerable kids who are sexually victimized … Read more

Google's Father's Day doodle celebrates dads' multiple roles

Sunday is the day when fathers are celebrated for what they are: bankers.

Well, and stoics, gardeners, philosophers, carpenters, tap dancers, soccer coaches, barbecuers -- and, of course, miserable, grouchy men.

For all these reasons and many more, Google would like you to celebrate the man whose chemicals helped bring you into the world.

In another touching little doodle, you click Google's second "o" and you see in the "l" a compendium of different dads' roles and personalities, as if it's just one day in a dad's life.

Naturally, Google would like to … Read more

Meet Google's 'Project Loon': Balloon-powered Net access

Google has officially announced "Project Loon," its plan to connect the entire world to the Internet that uses a decidedly 19th century technology: Balloons.

According to a post on the official company blog:

We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It's very early days, but we've built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today's 3G networks or faster.… Read more