Daily Archives: January 29, 2022

One of Androids original founders, Rich Miner, is working on Android tablets, a fact that was recently revealed in a ComputerWorld report digging into Googles history with tablets. Miners LinkedIn page appears to confirm it, listing his current title as CTO Android Tablets, and says hes been in that role since March, 2021. Google told The Verge in an email that his specific role is leading software development for Android for large screens in the Platforms and Ecosystems team.

Given that someone pivotal to Androids history is now working on tablets, and some job listings Google has posted, it seems like the company may be doing something interesting with Android beyond phones and foldables. Miner worked on Android when it was being built by a company called Android, Inc., which would later go on to be acquired by Google. Hes done a lot of things in the time since (including helping Google figure out which startups to invest in), but it seems like now hes back working on Android, with an eye towards making it better for tablets.

Its not just Miners role that shows Google has a renewed focus on larger-screen devices. The upcoming Android 12L update, which is currently in beta, is focused on improving the tablet and foldable experience. A job listing for a Senior Engineering Manager, Android Tablet App Experience spotted by 9to5Google also says that Google believes the future of computing is shifting towards more powerful and capable tablets.

Thats a bit of an about-face for Google in 2019, the company said that its hardware team was done working on tablets, and would be fully focusing on laptops. While Googles hardware lead said that the Android & Chrome OS teams are 100% committed for the long-run on working with our partners on tablets, in the wake of the not-so-great Pixel Slate (which used Chrome OS instead of Android) it was hard to feel excited about the future for Google-powered tablets.

Now, with the hires and rumors that Googles working on its own foldable Pixel phone (which could basically end up being a phone that turns into a tablet), it definitely seems like the company is planning on returning to the tablet space in some way. Google said it didnt have a comment about whether it had reconsidered working on its own tablets.

but Miner himself has been making some interesting comments on Twitter. He retweeted ComputerWorlds article with the comment Definitely a sad story, but there is an indication of hope at the end. What is that [Rich Miner] guy up to... He also replied to a comment from Mishaal Rahman, saying that Android 12L, an upcoming update focused on larger screen devices, is a great start.

While the iPad is the main focus of conversation around tablets, Apple isnt completely dominating the market. According to market research firm IDC, Apple was the top tablet seller in the third quarter of 2021, with around a 34 percent share of the market. But that leaves plenty of room for competitors like Samsung (the second largest with around 18 percent market share in Q3 2021), Amazon, and more. While its very possible Google is just planning to focus on its relationship with tablet OEMs, it taking another crack at a Pixel tablet wouldnt be unwelcome especially to people with fond memories of the Nexus 7.

Update January 28th, 7:16PM ET: Added information from Google about Miners role.

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Google seems to be giving its Android Tablets division some attention - The Verge

A Google-produced coloring book may have just offered the first official mention of the Pixel 6A, the rumored affordable followup to last years flagship Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, Droid-Life reports. The coloring book was sent out alongside a Nest Audio smart speaker to members of Googles Pixel Superfans group, which was launched last year to provide a VIP experience for Pixel lovers including access to limited-edition swag.

Images of the coloring book shared by Droid-Life show a variety of black and white sketches of Google devices like phones, smart displays, and security cameras in need of some color. A table-of-contents lists a Pixel 6A, a phone which Google has never publicly mentioned. Unfortunately, turning to pages 6 and 7 doesnt show the phone.

This wouldnt be the first time an unreleased Google phone has been mentioned in an unusual place. For example, a reference to the Pixel 5A (itself an affordable followup to the Pixel 5) appeared in the metadata of a photo posted to one of Googles R&D blog posts. Google generally has an unusual approach to announcing its phones, tweeting images and confirming details months ahead of their official launches.

Of course, its perfectly possible that a mention of a Google Pixel 6A is just a typo. But as leaks have started to emerge about the unannounced device, it seems safe to assume that such a phone is on the way, especially given the Pixel 3, 4, and 5 were all followed up with more affordable A-series devices.

As for what form the Pixel 6A could actually take, leaked renders from November suggest itll have a similar overall design to the Pixel 6 with a black camera bar on its rear, but with a smaller overall design. Itll reportedly use the same Google Tensor processor as the Pixel 6, but will feature a lower-resolution 12.2 megapixel main camera, compared to the 50-megapixel sensor on the 6. Theres also no sign of a headphone jack, which is a shame given the feature has been a staple of Googles previous A-series phones.

Google did not immediately respond to The Verges request for comment. If youd like to try out the Google Pixel-themed coloring book (lacking the Pixel 6A mention), Google has an online version you can try out right here.

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Google leaks Pixel 6A name in, of all things, a coloring book - The Verge

Google Pay logo is seen displayed on a phone screen. (Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto ... [+] via Getty Images)

The revolving door to the office of the head of Google Pay is welcoming another new executive with Googles appointment of former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg. According to Finextra:

Google's president of commerce Bill Ready says Arnold's recruitment is part of a broader strategy to take a more nuanced approach to financial services and the payment industry, including cryptocurrencies. Google wants to become the connective tissue for the entire consumer finance industry, not just certain partners, according to Ready.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Ready said:

Were not a bank. We have no intention of being a bank. Some past efforts, at times, would unwittingly wade into those spaces.

Goldbergs got a lot of work to do. Android Police commented:

Despite relaunching in the US with a new app last year, Google has struggled to get a foothold in the market. Google is placing its bets on turning Pay into a comprehensive digital wallet that carries more than just your credit cards. Anything that has to do with the exchange of money, Google wants to be a part of it.

It might be good to start by identifying the things that arent causingor havent causedGoogles payment problems. Its not a lack of talented personnel and leaders, and its not a lack of solid, leading-edge technology.

Google Payments problem boils down to two things: 1) No strategy, and 2) No organizational alignment.

Readys comment that Google has no intention of becoming a bank shouldnt come as a surprise. Despite his remark that the company has unwittingly waded into the space at times, there has been a single initiative from Google that gave even the faintest hint that they wanted to be a bank.

The Google Plex checking led publications like MarketWatch to conclude that Google planned on becoming a bank when the product was announced in November 2019. By offering the product through financial institutions (and not against them), Google clearly indicated its desire to be a bank technology provider, not competitor.

Google Plex was a product for banks. Google Pay is a product for consumers. And more than 80% of Googles total revenue comes from advertisers.

Google 2020 revenue breakdown

As Bob Dylan once sang, youre gonna have to serve somebody, and Google Pays problem is it doesnt know who its serving.

Sure, banks are advertisers, but thats not why they wanted the Plex productthey wanted it because it was a better checking account.

Consumers want convenience and featuresbut they dont want their user experience marred by advertisements (he said, knowing full well that readers of this article are getting inundated with ads on this site).

If Google Pay wants to be part of anything that has to do with the exchange of money, it needs to first figure out how its going to make money in the world of money exchange.

Apple figured that out for itself. They take a small cut on Apple Pay transactions, and have launchedin partnership with Goldman Sachsa credit card. Both products are tightly integrated with the iPhoneand in fact, wouldnt be the products they are if they were standalone from the iPhone.

Google hasnt figured this out. As Android Police wrote:

[Google Pays] first priority is pivoting from the abandoned Google Plex project. Moving forward, Google doesn't want to compete in the retail banking market. Instead, it plans to deliver third-party banking services directly to consumers, becoming the nervous system of the emerging digital economy.

What does that even mean? What third-party banking services does Google think consumers want to get from the company that they arent getting or cant get from other providers?

Regarding Readys point about having no intention to be a bank, from a consumer perspective a company that provides a banking service is a bank. Consumers dont care about the legal nuances of bank licenses as long as they see FDIC insured associated with their account.

Becoming the nervous system of the emerging digital economy sounds like a bunch of gibberish to me. If its Googles belief that payments are the nervous system of the digital economy, then the company is going to have to make a strategic commitment that goes way beyond anything theyve done to date in payments.

And if the nervous system of the emerging digital economy is broader than just payments, then I dont see how that goal helps the Google Pay group figure out which direction it needs to go in.

Android Police writes:

According to Ready, Google is also toying with the idea of incorporating cryptocurrency into its digital wallet. It's partnered with Coinbase and BitPay to look at how they can allow customers to store their crypto on Pay while still allowing them to pay in traditional currency.

This underscores Google Pays lack of strategic direction. After seeing the success that Square and PayPal have had with their crypto offerings, now Google decides it wants to get into the crypto game?

The challenge Google faces here is that Squares and PayPals relationships with merchants are transactional, payments-based relationships. Googles merchant relationships are ad-based. Big difference.

Then theres the matter of the organizational challenge facing Google Pay.

Googles Cloud division sells cloud computing and AI-based lending tools to banks. The Plex productwhich, remember, was sold to banksfell under the Payments division.

If Google Pay wants to sell services to banks, it should be aligned with the folks in the Cloud group who already sell to banks (there are a lot of high-powered ex-bankers in that group).

If it wants to be the central nervous system of the digital economy, it should be spun out as a separate company, because achieving that will require levels of investment the payments division isnt going to get from a company that derives 81% of its revenue from ads.

Mr. Goldberg has a tall task ahead of him. Fortunately, he has a team of top-notch technologists to work with. With some strategic clarification and direction, he can avoid the Google Pay revolving door.

The first rule of order, however is restoring trust:

Want to know whats going on in banking? For a copy of Cornerstone Advisors report Whats Going On in Banking 2022: Rebounding From the Revenue Recession, click here.

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The Problem With Google Pay - Forbes

DENVER (KDVR) With a family of five dead in an unsolved house fire, night-vision images of the masked suspects haunted the Denver area for months until Google led police to the accused killers.

At age 16, Kevin Bui and Gavin Seymour along with another teen charged as a juvenile were arrested on counts of first-degree murder and more in the August 2020 killings in the citys Green Valley Ranch neighborhood. It took months before a break in the case, with many in the community fearful it was a targeted hate crime against the Senegalese immigrants who lost their lives.

But newly released arrest documents show how police connected the teens to the crime scene through their Google searches, placed them at the fire through their Snapchat location data and read their messages to conclude the arson was a case of misdirected revenge in a drug trafficking scheme.

Just before 3 a.m. on Aug. 5, 2020, someone set fire to a Green Valley Ranch home.

A baby, a toddler and three adults, all family members, were killed. Another three people a man, woman and child jumped from the second floor of the burning home and survived.

Police soon released night-vision surveillance images showing three suspects at the scene wearing hoodies and masks.

Through those images and evidence from the scene, investigators quickly realized the fire was the work of intentional arsonists, according to the affidavit. Neil Baker, the lead detective in the case, recognized that there is a reasonable probability that one or more of the suspects searched for directions to the victims address prior to the fire.

More than three months after the fire, on Nov. 19, 2020, a Denver County Court judge approved a search warrant for Google.

Google data going back to 2009 shows government requests for user data in the U.S. have been on a steady incline, with the number of requests more than doubling since 2017. Police can submit their information requests through the Law Enforcement Request System, known as LERS.

In the Green Valley Ranch case, police uploaded the warrant to the LERS database, compelling the company to find out who looked up certain search terms related to the crime scenes address. The warrant included specific search terms that Google would look for and compile a list for the police, according to the affidavit.

Within six days, the first results were in.

The affidavits redact a lot of what exactly the results produced, but by Dec. 4, the detective had asked for another warrant: to obtain the subscriber and account information for the anonymized Google identifiers for five (5) Google accounts that had been resolved to Colorado. In the warrant, the detective was also looking to obtain location information and IP activity.

Google produced more results on Dec. 9 and Dec. 23, according to the affidavit, with police ultimately looping in a digital evidence expert with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives the ATF for a take on what Google had found.

By this point, police had connected Bui to the crime. The results showed that days before the crime, the account subscribed to Bui searched for Truckee Street addresses days before the fire on July 23, July 28 and July 29 even pegging the specific times that he had done so.

Seymour and the third suspect had been connected to the case, as well. The detective began to look into the three. Police got a warrant on Dec. 31 for Seymours Facebook and Instagram accounts, which led them to his phone number, and they scoured social media, finding the three were known associates who lived in the Lakewood area.

Numerous photos have been located on these platforms with these individuals, or some combination of these individuals, in them, the affidavit reads. Another Google warrant was requested, this time to pull data specific to their accounts.

By Jan. 5, 2021, Google had provided the search histories for the teens dating back to July 1, 2020. The histories showed they had searched the targeted address, according to the bits of unredacted information in the affidavit. It also showed searches for news stories relating to the fire in the hours after the crime.

As the detective closed in on the suspects, a search warrant was granted on Jan. 12, 2021, for Buis and Seymours Snapchat accounts.

Snapchat location data placed Bui and another person near a Party City store near his home on the evening before the killings, and the store showed up in search data around the same time, according to the affidavit. Store surveillance video showed Buis car pull in the parking lot, and store logs showed someone paid cash for three masks like the ones used in the crime.

Hours later, according to the affidavit, Snapchat and cell site location data showed them leaving Lakewood around 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 5, 2020, entering the victims neighborhood around the time of the crime, and going back to the Lakewood area around 3:15 a.m.

Although the location data further tied the teens to the crime, its what police read in Snapchat messages that created a clearer picture of what led up to it.

In the Snapchat messages, police found much of Buis conversations were narcotics-related and determined that he was engaged in a drug trafficking business. One message, just three weeks before the killings, showed Bui telling Seymour I got robbed.

The two carried on a conversation about it. And just days before the crime, on Aug. 1, 2020, Bui messaged Seymour: #possiblyruinourfuturesandburnhishousedown

Police announced the arrests on Jan. 27, 2021.

Investigators believe that Kevin Bui somehow attributed the [crime scene] address to the people who robbed him, the detective concludes in the affidavit. Investigators believe that Kevin Bui recruited Gavin Seymour and [redacted] to help him seek his revenge against the people that robbed him by setting fire to their house.

As the lead detective, Baker testified in the November probable cause hearing for the teens. He said that on the day of the arrest, Bui admitted to planning and executing the crime with Seymour.

A year after a judge signed their arrest warrants, a judge denied Buis and Seymours requests to transfer to juvenile court. Their arraignments are scheduled for March. The district attorney is pushing to move the third suspect, who was 15 at the time of the crime, to adult court with his co-defendants.

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How Google, Snapchat led police to teens in deadly Denver arson - NEWS10 ABC

It seems like the world isnt getting enough of Wordle. Recently, Google surprised Wordle fans after it introduced a special animated feature that appears when one searches Wordle.

As one types the word, the search engine shows an animation on the left side of the screen. The animation mimics the Wordle pattern and shows words like GOALIE and COLUMN appear, which finally form into GOOGLE in green colour. The feature can be observed on computer screens as well as phones.

Many Wordle fans are thrilled at this simple yet fun feature. Expressing their delight on discovering the animation, a Twitter user said, When you google wordle the logo changes, this is bringing me so much joy yall dont even know.

Some people have also confused it as a Google doodle but while doodles stay for a day, this search based animated feature has been up for a few days now.

Wordle, which is believed to be the first big trend of 2022, saw an unexpected surge in popularity after it was launched last November by Josh Wardle, a Brooklyn-based software engineer. With Googles new animation, the crossword games viral status has only been strengthened.

On Monday, the netizens expressed their disappointment as they struggled with the particularly difficult Wordle puzzle of the day. The collective frustration of games enthusiasts caused Wordle 219 X to trend.

Earlier this month, the Mumbai Polices Twitter handle used a Wordle-inspired graphic to raise awareness about the impotence of wearing a mask to stop the spread of Covid-19.

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Wordle fans thrilled at Googles new search-based animation - The Indian Express

Automated classification with Google Workspace data loss prevention (DLP) and labels-driven sharing restrictions are now out of beta and are generally available for Workspace users, Google announced today.

These features were launched in beta last year to help users categorise content and enhance content protection at scale, with Google Drive labels. Drive labels were made generally available in December last year.

With the latest rollout, a new Admin console setting can now automatically apply up to five labels to all new files that users create, or to all newly created files owned by specific parts of their organisation.

End users will see a message prompting them to fill out required fields in the label manager, until the field is completed.

Automated classification can help organisations automatically add Drive labels to content based on administrator-defined DLP rules and predefined content detectors, Google explained in a blog post.

DLP administrators can also configure rules that show users a warning any time they attempt to share a file labeled as Internal, as well as rules that block external sharing or prevent downloads and printing for all confidential files, it said.

Additionally, Admins will also have the ability to allow end-users to change labels applied by DLPfor additional flexibility for their organisation.

Users can automatically apply labels to new files. When used alongside required fields in label manager, they can require users to classify their newly created Drive files, leading to strengthened data classification and protection.

Labels in Drive can also be automatically added to files with automated classification based on admin-defined DLP rules and predefined content detectors. This automated classification can help scale data classification and protection efforts by reducing the administrative burden and potential errors associated with manual labels, it said.

The feature will be Off by default and can be enabled at the domain, OU, and Group levels by admins. Before they can use this feature, they must turn on Drive labels for their organisation and publish at least one label in the label manager.

Each labels access controls can be managed at the user, group, and organisation level. There is no end user setting for the feature.

The feature will be available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, and Nonprofits. It will not be available to Business Starter, Education Fundamentals, and Frontline, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers.

Published onJanuary 29, 2022

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Google rolls out features for content categorisation, content protection at scale with Google Drive labels - BusinessLine