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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

Google challenges DOJ's surveillance gag order

Google has asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to lift a gag order, saying it has the constitutional right to clear its name by discussing government data requests.

The company filed a five-page motion before the court on Tuesday afternoon, arguing it has "a right under the First Amendment to publish" summary statistics about requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, sent an open letter last week to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for "transparency" -- but was unable to reach an … 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

How to sync iCloud Reminders with your Android device

For some users who are torn between switching from iOS to Android, the downside of giving up some iCloud features such as Calendar and Reminders (especially if there are shared calendars or reminder lists with other iCloud users) is too much to overlook.

Last July I covered an app called SmoothSync for Cloud Calendar that provided a solution for Android users to still have two-way sync with iCloud calendars. The app has been updated several times since last summer, with each update improving reliability, but until recently the option to sync Reminders was still missing. If you had set up … Read more

Digg Reader launching June 26

Digg will start rolling out its new RSS service next week with all users having access by June 26, the site announced in a blog post on Monday.

The first version of the reader -- which lets users import feeds and folders straight from the soon-to-be defunct Google Reader -- will have basic functions, along with a tool that allows users to push what they think are the most important stories to the top. Digg promises to add more over the next few months.

Google announced in March that it would sunset its RSS reader on July 1.

Digg said … Read more

Is cable holding back superfast broadband adoption on purpose?

The cable industry insists that it's ready and able to compete with Google Fiber when it comes to delivering ultra high-speed broadband.

Indeed, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts last week showed off a 3Gbps cable broadband connection at the industry's annual trade show in Washington, D.C. That's three times faster than Google Fiber, which itself is nearly 150 times faster than the current average broadband connection in the U.S. Armed with that capability, he confidently welcomed Google's challenge to deliver ultra high-speed broadband to consumers.

"I hope there's a demand for (Google Fiber),&… Read more