Category Archives: Google

With Apple setting the tone, the stock market rose until Wednesday, buoyed by a series of fairly upbeat earnings reports. They included:

Exxon Mobils disclosure that, thanks to soaring oil and gas prices, it had earned the most profit in seven years.

The declaration by Starbucks that it had raised prices and would keep doing so. We have additional pricing actions planned through the balance of this year, which play an important role to mitigate cost pressures including inflation, Kevin Johnson, the president and chief executive of Starbucks, said on a conference call.

Alphabet's report that it was earning far more than Wall Street analysts had anticipated. Its fourth quarter profit reached $20.6 billion, an increase of 32 percent over the same period a year earlier.

That mini rally was a welcome reprieve after a dismal January, when the S&P 500 briefly plunged more than 10 percent the territory that denotes a correction, a decline of moderate seriousness on Wall Street. There were a series of odd records: It was the worst January for that benchmark index since the financial crisis of 2009, and the worst month since March 2020, as much of the world shut down at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet on Jan. 3, the first day of trading in 2022, the S&P 500, also reached a high-water mark, after climbing to a new high 70 different times in 2021.

The stock markets direction has shifted, many times, already in 2022.

What should one make of these various, head-spinning records, and of the evident ephemeral influence of earnings calls?

I find them fascinating as an observer but irrelevant as an investor. Try to anticipate them at every step and you will eventually stumble. The markets constant swings in response to corporate disclosures are, in my estimation,an argument for using index funds to invest in the entire global market, not in individual stocks.

Instead of worrying much about any single company, you hold a small share of all of them in the hope that over the long run, the better performers will outweigh the weaker ones.

Whether that will be the case in the next year is questionable. U.S. stocks overall are still expensive and the supply of money in the economy is likely to be reduced, which could be a difficult combination for the stock market, especially in the United States.

You can understand these issues by taking the long view looking at the economy as a whole, without ever focusing on the struggles and profits of specific companies. But these companies matter. Grasp the details and you may have a richer understanding of a vibrant but precarious economy.

Original post:

Google, Facebook, Apple, Starbucks and Exxon Mobil Reveal Earnings - The New York Times

As Winter Olympics 2022 kick off in Beijing, China, on Friday, Google marked the occasion with an animated doodle.

Using adorable animations of various animals such as tigers and rabbits, the colourful doodle on the search engine homepage shows them participating in some of the winter events.

After clicking on the animated doodle that captures the excitement of all competing participants, users are directed to a Google search page showing news related to the Winter games and Olympics own website listing events and scheduling details, among other things.

The competitive critters featured in todays Doodle have gathered from all over the world under the winter sky to keep their cool and put their opponents on ice, the tech giant wrote on their blog accompanying the doodle for the two-week sporting extravaganza.

Who will be pouncing on victory and scurrying home an international legend? they asked.

With a motto of Together for a Shared Future, the Beijing Winter Olympics are taking place from February 4 to February 20 with around 3,000 athletes competing in 109 different events.

The Winter Paralympics hosted in Beijing will kickstart from March 4 and will conclude on March 13, with 736 competitors across 78 events.

While most events will be hosted in the title city of Beijing, some outdoor events are scheduled to take place in nearby cities of Yanqing and Chongli.

As the mega sporting events are being hosted amidst the pandemic, athletes and officials will be kept in secure bubbles with no spectator allowed.

While the game holds utmost importance to competitors, the event has has drawn criticism from various quarters. It is seeing protests from environmental groups over creation of artificial snow, while many countries like India are boycotting the event on diplomatic levels.

Continue reading here:

Beijing Games 2022: Google kicks off Winter Olympics with cute animated doodle - The Indian Express

The Austrian data protection authority (sterreichische Datenschutzbehrde; Austrian DPA) recently ruled that the use of Google Analytics violated Chapter V (transfers of personal data to third parties) of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in light of the Schrems II judgment issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on July 16, 2020.

Statements from the Danish and Norwegian data protection authorities (DPAs) indicate that other European DPAs are likely to take a similar view. Since the underlying complaint is one of over a hundred filed by None of Your Business (NOYB) across the European Economic Area, the decision of the Austrian DPA may well mark the beginning of a new chapter when transferring personal data to the U.S. as enforcement of the Schrems II judgment kicks off across Europe.

Max Schrems's non-governmental organization, NOYB, has filed complaints in all 30 of the European Economic Area (EEA) Member States against 101European companies following the Schrems II judgement in relation to companies allegedly transferring personal data to Google and Facebook in violation of the GDPR (NOYB published an article about the filed complaints). In response to these complaints, the Austrian DPA conducted a cross-border investigation into Google's and Facebook's data transfer practices.

On January 13, 2022, the Austrian DPA published its (partial) decision (Decision) based on one of those complaints. The complaint was directed against (1) an operator of an Austrian website (Website Operator) which used the Google Analytics tracking and analytics tool on its website, as well as (2) Google LLC as the provider of this tool in the U.S., to whom data was transferred through the tool.

Google Analytics is a web analytics tool which, when implemented on a website, collects information about the usage of that website by its users and shares that information with Google. Google then analyses that information and shares analytics data with the website operator, providing them with valuable insights about how users use their website.

Even though the Website Operator claimed that the data transferred from it to Google LLC through Google Analytics was not personal data under the GDPR, both parties had entered into Google's data processing agreement for its advertising services and the standard contractual clauses (SCC) published by the European Commission on February 5, 2010. The Austrian DPA noted that the Website Operator had not (i) (properly) activated the option to "anonymize" the IP Address of website users, which is generally available for Google Analytics, or (ii) asked its website users to give their consent in relation to data transfers to Google LLC.

The Austrian DPA ruled that:

Personal Data Transfer Finding

The Austrian DPA outlined that information constitutes "personal data" under the GDPR if it allows for the singling out of an individual user of a website. An immediate identification of someone's actual identity would not be necessary for information to be regarded as personal data.

In addition to the "IP anonymization" feature of Google Analytics not being properly activated (leading to the sharing of users' IP addresses with Google LLC), the Austrian DPA noted that further unique identifiers were transferred to Google. Given Google's technical abilities, it would have been able to link certain information to a user's Google account if that user was logged into its Google account when visiting the website at hand.

Hereby, the Austrian DPA indicated that the unique identifiers may, in and of themselves, already constitute personal data and that this would be true even more so for the complete information obtained by Google LLC.

Insufficient SCC and Supplementary Measures Finding

The Austrian DPA found that Google LLC qualified as an electronic communications services provider, and therefore was "clearly" subject to U.S. surveillance laws (i.e., FISA 702) and surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies. It also pointed to access requests outlined in Google's transparency report as further proof of this. On that basis, it reiterated the Schrems II judgement and determined that the SCC alone was not an adequate safeguard for the transfer of data to Google LLC in the U.S. because the SCC terms were not binding on U.S. authorities.

It further determined that the supplementary measures (including inter alia an encryption of the data transfer with Google holding the key, regular publication of transparency reports by Google, a possible notification of individuals affected by access requests) implemented by Google LLC was insufficient to remedy the inadequate protection afforded to users as identified by the CJEU, as they would not prevent U.S. surveillance agencies from accessing the transferred personal data.

The Austrian DPA's Decision does not prohibit the use of Google Analytics across the EU from a legal standpoint.

The Austrian DPA's competence is generally limited to the territory of Austria under the GDPR. Furthermore, the Decision of the Austrian DPA is based on the specific set of facts of the case at hand and is not final. It can still be appealed.

It should be noted that (i) Google Analytics could be implemented differently to a certain extent (please see below) and (ii) some of the facts underlying the Decision have changed since the filing of the complaint. In particular, new Standard Contractual Clauses (New SCC) have been released by the European Commission (Decision (EU) 2021/914 of 4 June 2021) since the passing of the Schrems II judgement, and in the meantime, Google LLC has been replaced with Google Ireland Limited as the contractual partner of EU customers (as stated in the Decision).

However, in any event, the use of the current version of Google Analytics in the EEA is likely to come with legal risks as set out below.

It seems likely that DPAs in other EU Member States are going to take a similar view.

NYOB filed 101 complaints across the EU, so more decisions on this point are likely to follow. It seems likely that other EU DPA's will come to similar conclusions as the Austrian DPA. The head of the Austrian DPA, Andrea Jelinek, is also currently the chairwoman of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB; EDPB - Who we are), the EU body which is composed of the heads of the EU data protection authorities (DPAs), which could influence a Europe-wide approach that reflects the Austrian DPA's decision.

Other DPAs in the EEA have already responded to the decision:

Further, since the complaint was filed, the Website Operator was acquired by a German company, and so the Austrian DPA has forwarded the case at hand to the competent German DPA, which will decide whether the Website Operator should be prohibited from sharing personal data with Google. This means that we will likely get to know another SA's viewpoint on the case at hand. On a side note, the Austrian DPA also stated that it will continue to investigate Google LLC for alleged violations in the case at hand.

Using the new SCC is not enough to satisfy GDPR requirements for international data transfers.

The European Commission has added certain clauses to the New SCC based on the Schrems II judgement, such as the requirement to perform a transfer impact assessment (TIA) and obligations on the entity in the third country (e.g., the U.S.) to provide information about government access requests (where legally possible).

However, the New SCC is unable to address the main shortcomings of the SCC identified in the Schrems II judgement and by the Austrian DPA. The SCC is "just" a contract between two companies whose terms are not binding on government authorities in countries outside the EU to which personal data is transferred. Therefore, a TIA will have to be performed and based on its results, an assessment will have to be made as to whether one may be able to address any possible shortcomings through the implementation of technical, organizational and/or contractual supplementary measures.

Turning on the "IP anonymization" feature of Google Analytics does not avoid the applicability of the GDPR in the eyes of EU DPAs.

Google Analytics includes a feature which allows for the so-called "anonymization" of the user's IP address by deleting several of its digits (Google - IP Anonymization (or IP masking) in Google Analytics). As stated above, the feature was not (correctly) turned on by the Website Operator. However, the German DPAs have already determined and the Austrian DPA indicated a similar view in its Decision that Google Analytics would even in cases of the activation of this feature still process personal data because of the collection of additional information which would allow for the singling out of a user (DSK Hinweise zum Einsatz von Google Analytics (in German).

That said, the feature should still be activated as a mitigation measure when using Google Analytics in the EEA.

Obtaining user consent might mitigate some risk, even if it can be complicated in practice.

The Austrian DPA clarified that consent was not obtained in this case and therefore did not pass judgement on such approach in its Decision.

Article 49(1)(a) of the GDPR includes a derogation which allows for the transfer of personal data to a third country (such as the U.S.) based on consent of the individual.

However, relying on such consent comes with the following challenges when it comes to Google Analytics:

Irrespective of these challenges, and since consent will have to be obtained from users when using Google Analytics in any case (usually through a cookie banner), adding language for international data transfers could be a reasonable mitigation measure.

Google Ireland (instead of Google LLC) being the contractual partner of Website Operators by itself does not justify a different result.

According to the Google Analytics Terms of Service (in German), Google Analytics is now provided by Google Ireland Limited in the EEA. However, based on section 10.1 of the Google Ads Data Processing Terms, which states that "Google may process Customer Personal Data in any country in which Google or any of its Subprocessors maintains facilities", the transfer of data collected via Google Analytics to Google in the U.S. (via Google Ireland Limited) seems probable.

In its Decision, the Austrian DPA considered that the Website Operator was the controller in relation to the personal data processed by Google Analytics and that Google LLC was its processor. German DPAs also took the view that the respective Website Operator using Google Analytics would be a controller, albeit assuming a joint controllership with Google (DSK Hinweise zum Einsatz von Google Analytics (in German)). In either case, the respective Website Operator cannot exclude itself from its responsibility to ensure GDPR compliance in relation to the processing of personal data (including applicable international data transfers to the U.S.) via Google Analytics, even if Google Ireland Limited is its contractual partner instead of Google LLC.

Mitigation measures that should be implemented if one may want to continue using Google Analytics in the EEA.

In summary, we recommend implementing the following mitigation measures when using Google Analytics in the EEA:

In the eyes of DPAs in the EEA, taking all the steps above may still not lead to (full) compliance with the requirements for international data transfers under the GDPR. However, they will allow an organization to show a DPA that several reasonable actions were taken to advance GDPR compliance, which can (significantly) improve its position if it intends to continue to use Google Analytics. In light of this risk, companies may also wish to consider Google Analytics alternatives, which ensures that the personal data of users remains in the EEA.

Google's reaction to the Decision.

On 19 January 2022, Kent Walker, the President of Global Affairs & Chief Legal Officer of Google published a blog post with a reaction to the Decision of the Austrian DPA (Google Blog Post). The blog post especially states that Google "has never once received the type of demand the DPA speculated about" and would not expect for such demand "to fall within the narrow scope of the relevant law"(which is likely a reference to FISA 702).

Mr. Walker challenged the decision of the Austrian DPA as not reflecting the Schrems II judgment. In his view, the CJEU's judgment was interpreted too restrictively by the Austrian DPA, while he considered the supplementary measures implemented by Google (Google - Safeguards for international transfers) at the time of the blog post to be appropriate.

He further emphasized the importance of the EU and U.S. governments coming to terms on a successor agreement to the invalidated U.S.-EU Privacy Shield framework.

Note: The EU and U.S. governments have been negotiating a replacement for the Privacy Shield since the Schrems II judgement. However, recent statements from representatives of the European Commission and the US Department of Commerce suggest that these negotiations may not conclude in the near future (Article from datenschutz-praxis.de about Privacy Shield Negotiations (in German).

Originally posted here:

The Austrian Data Protection Authority Ground-breaking Google Analytics Decision: Analysis and Key Takeaways - JD Supra

CONCORD, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) Google Fiber is apologizing for any disruption caused to Concord businesses and residents following a massive water main break Wednesday.

Water is back on and the water line has been repaired, but the road needs a lot more work. Crews probably wont even be able to start fixing the road until Monday, which leaves businesses losing even more money.

A flooded intersection isnt the only damage left behind.

Its unfortunate that businesses were affected, its a very costly mistake, said Sarah Dabbs, owner of Johnny Rogers BBQ and Burgers.

Road repairs are going to take more than a week, and the city doesnt even have a final tab on how much water leaked. Officials say Google Fiber hit a line, breaking a water main, sending water gushing, and knocking out water for customers.

The city doesnt yet know how much repairs will cost, but Johnny Rogers BBQ and Burgers has already done the math.

We lost about $2,000 in revenue, said Dabbs.

The massive water main break Wednesday caused the restaurant to lose water, and they had to shut down.

We didnt have any customers. Youre not open, youre not making money, said Dabbs.

The restaurant is open now, but worried customers will pass them by because the road closure is right on their doorstep.

As a business, you make a mistake you have to be held responsible for that, said Dabbs.

Download the Queen City News appto stay updated on the go.Sign up for QC News email alertsto have breaking news sent to your inbox.Find todays top stories on QCNews.comfor Charlotte, NC and all of the Carolinas.

Google Fiber also hit a gas line last week in a nearby neighborhood.

They didnt ask us if they can go in the yard and make any markings. They didnt even ask us if they can go in the yard and dig yet, said Steveison Ivory, who lives in a neighborhood close to the construction.

Ivory knows the digging will start soon in his yard.

We have a landscaper come through our yard so its definitely affecting the look and the curb appeal of our yard, said Ivory.

Hes hoping there wont be any more problems down the road.

If youre the one who ended up causing the issue, you should be the one taking the responsibility to get it fixed, said Ivory.

Queen City News asked the City of Concord whos paying for all of the repairs? They said right now theyre just focused on getting everything fixed.

NCDOT says the section of Pitts School Road and Concord Parkway will probably be shut down through next Friday.

Google Fiber released the following statement to Queen City News:

Google Fiber takes construction issues very seriously. We apologize for any disruption to Concord residents. We are working with the City of Concord to address the issue as quickly as possible. If you ever have a Google Fiber construction issue to report, please call (877) 454-6959.

Original post:

Massive water main break in Concord caused by Google Fiber leads to multi-day closure - Fox 46 Charlotte

Google today announced a new version of Workspace, the companys productivity service that you probably still refer to as G Suite. With the new and free Google Workspace Essentials plan, Google wants to bring more business users onto the platform by offering them the basic Workspace productivity tools with the exception of Gmail.

Until now, in order to use Workspace with a non-Google email address, you had to sign up for the $6/month/user Business Starter account after a 14-day trial. That paid plan is not going away, but all you now need to do is sign up with your work email and youre good to go. No credit card needed.

The new free plan is essentially the existing entry-level Business Starter plan, but with a reduced storage quota of 15 GB (down from 30). Otherwise, though, you can use Google Meet with up to 100 users for up to 60 minutes in each call, get access to Spaces for work collaboration and Chat for gossiping about their co-workers.All of the standard tools like Sheets, Slides and Docs are also included, of course.

Since you already have an email address from work, though, theres no Gmail included in this edition, which makes sense, given that it would be tough to send out emails with your work address from there, leading to all kinds of confusion.

Image Credits: Google

There is a little complication here, though. There is a cap of 25 users per Essentials Starter team account. But multiple team accounts can be created within the same company. So basically, somebody from your team needs to start an account and can then invite other team members if youre working in a larger company.

With this move, Google is opening up a whole new world for shadow IT and Google says as much in its announcement when it writes: With Essentials Starter, were making it easy for employees to choose their own productivity tools and bring modern collaboration to work. If IT doesnt make the choice, employees will make it for them.

This also opens up all kinds of questions about data governance and security.

Google Workspace Essentials Starter was designed for people to easily start using Google Workspace at work by themselves or with their team, a Google spokesperson told me when I asked about this. While it does include some lightweight admin controlssuch as the ability to invite users to their team granular IT controls and features like more advanced security are only available with paid Google Workspace plans.

Chances are, this will get any large enterprise that doesnt have a paid Workspace account yet to quickly sign up for one in order to block its employees from setting up their own.

Originally posted here:

Google Workspace goes all in on shadow IT - TechCrunch

Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) and Google CEO, Sundar Pichai.

REUTERS

While Facebook is in the midst of its biggest stock drop ever and is trading at an 18-month low, Google remains near a record and has easily outperformed all of its Big Tech peers over the past year.

The difference is Apple.

Google and Facebook are the two dominant online ad companies in the U.S. and have been for years. While the companies do very different things and have faced their own unique issues, the five-year stock charts look pretty similar.

Until you hit late 2021.

Facebook vs. Google since beginning of 2017

That's when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's longtime struggle to control his own destiny started hitting his company's financials.

Facebook's apps rely almost entirely on Apple and Google for distribution. So when Apple changed its privacy policy last year, limiting the ability of app developers to target users, Facebook was suddenly stripped of one of its most important assets.

Google also relies on ad targeting to connect marketers with users on many of its properties, but search advertising is a unique asset users tend to "self-target" as they're typing in a search query that explains exactly what they're interested in at that moment.

When it comes to targeting, Google has Android, the world's most popular operating system, giving it control over its own policies. And while Google still needs iOS distribution, it has a cozier relationship with Apple. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine on Apple's Safari browser.

Add it all up, and Facebook just told Wall Street that Apple's new App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature is expected to cost the social media company $10 billion in revenue this year. That's a big reason why Facebook fell well short of its revenue forecast for the first quarter and why the stock plummeted 25% on Thursday, its biggest ever drop, to the its lowest since August 2020.

Google, meanwhile, reported blowout fourth-quarter results earlier this week on the back of a 33% jump in ad revenue, compared to 20% for Facebook. Analysts expect Google parent Alphabet to hit growth of 23% in the first quarter, while Facebook is projecting expansion of just 3% to 11%.

Dave Wehner, the CFO of Facebook parent Meta, said on Wednesday's conference call with analysts that, when it comes to Apple treating search more favorably than other apps because of the Google deal, "the incentive clearly is for this policy discrepancy to continue."

Analysts see the correlation. Advertisers that can no longer get the level of targeting they want on Facebook are spending more on Google.

"Did Apple iOS changes trigger a market share shift from Facebook to Google?" MKM Partners' Rohit Kulkarni wrote in a report on Thursday. "Yes, we believe so." MKM has a buy rating on both tocks.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's operating chief and a former senior executive at Google, said Apple's changes are most harmful to small and medium-sized businesses, which are most reliant on personalization and targeting in their advertising.

"So we're definitely seeing that this has more of an impact forSMBs," she said.

Zuckerberg has been worried about this possibility for a long time. Without owning the device or operating system, Facebook can't fully chart its own path, and is always subject to the whims of other companies. About a decade ago, Facebook designed its own phone, but it was a disaster.

Here's what Facebook said in the risk factors of its IPO prospectus in 2012, which was still the early days of mobile for the company.

"We are dependent on the interoperability of Facebook with popular mobile operating systems that we do not control, such as Android and iOS, and any changes in such systems that degrade our products' functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products could adversely affect Facebook usage on mobile devices."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen fencing in the "Metaverse" with an Olympic gold medal fencer during a live-streamed virtual and augmented reality conference to announce the rebrand of Facebook as Meta, in this screen grab taken from a video released October 28, 2021.

Facebook | via Reuters

In 2014, Facebook acquired a nascent virtual reality headset company called Oculus for $2 billion, giving the company a shot at making the next generation of hardware and integrating its own software.

That acquisition is the foundation for the future that Zuckerberg so much desires. Late last year, he changed Facebook's name to Meta Platforms. In Thursday's earnings report, the company said its Reality Labs group, home to the virtual reality development, lost more than $10 billion in 2021.

Investors are rightly worried. Facebook's core business is losing users, and Apple is flexing in a way that's causing panic.

For Zuckerberg, the answer to his real world problems may be the virtual world. As much as anything, he wants to break free of Apple and Google, so his company gets to be the one making the rules.

CNBC's Kif Leswing and Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

WATCH: I'm not a buyer on Facebook

View original post here:

Facebook and Google stocks have diverged, and the reason is Apple - CNBC

Google has announced that Gmails new layout, which changes how Google Chat, Meet, and Spaces are integrated, will be available to try starting in February; become default by April; and become the only option by the end of Q2 2022. The view makes it so Googles other messaging tools, which are part of (but not necessarily limited to) its business-focused Workspace suite, are no longer just little windows floating alongside your emails, but get their own screens in Gmail that are accessible with large buttons on the left-hand side.

Google calls this the integrated view, and itll soon be familiar if you (or your employer) are a Workspace customer, or if you use Chat and Meet personally. Starting February 8th, Google says youll be able to start testing the layout for yourself. By April, anyone who hasnt opted in (Google shows that therell be a prompt at some point, encouraging you to do so), will be switched over to the new layout, but will be able to switch back in settings. That option will go away by the end of the second quarter, according to Google, when the new layout becomes the standard experience for Gmail.

The new view could be polarizing while managing chats and meetings can be a bit confusing in the current Gmail layout, it all happens on one screen, which is pleasing if you love data density. But for those looking to focus on one thing at a time, the new interface looks like itll give you easy access to other tools without having them always on the screen. There will, however, be ways to access your Chats from the email screen a Google support page describing the new layout mentions that new notifications will show up as a bubble in the left corner of the screen, and that youll be able to create a mini pop-up window within the interface that you can use to reply.

The company says that there will also be notification bubbles to let you know if other tools need your attention, which could be less distracting than, say, having a list of all your Chats living to the left or right of your emails.

Google has shown that it wants to deeply integrate all its work-related products together, and this layout gives us a taste of what that could look like, with tools like Spaces letting you jump into a spreadsheet without leaving Gmail. While it does seem like youre mostly already able to, as Google puts it when describing the new view, easily switch between your inbox, important conversations, and join meetings without having to switch between tabs or open a new window, its probably fair to argue that it all feels a little tacked-on. Googles screenshots of the new layout do make it seem like the new interface will be more put-together.

The services will also be more integrated Gmails search, for instance, will also turn up Chat messages in the coming months, according to the company (similar to how Hangouts messages also used to be searchable from within Gmail).

Google says that this new layout will be coming to anyone who uses Google Chat. According to Google spokesperson Amanda Lam, the focus of the new integrated view is for users who use multiple apps. By the end of the year, this means users would get this experience if they opt-in to Google Chat or Google Meet.

Update February 3rd, 2:55PM ET: Updated with information that Google has now decided that the layout will be available to anyone who uses Chat and Meet, instead of limiting it to a specific type of customer as was originally announced.

Visit link:

Gmails new integrated layout will take over inboxes soon - The Verge

Two members of Googles Ethical AI group have announced their departures from the company, according to a report from Bloomberg. Senior researcher Alex Hanna, and software engineer Dylan Baker, will join Timnit Gebrus nonprofit research institute, Distributed AI Research (DAIR).

In a post announcing her resignation on Medium, Hanna criticizes the toxic work environment at Google, and draws attention to a lack of representation of Black women at the company.

Prior to Timnits hiring, Google Research management had never recruited a Black woman as a research scientist, Hanna states. In one town hall around Googlegeist (Googles annual workplace climate survey), a high-level executive remarked that there had been such low numbers of Black women in the Google Research organization that they couldnt even present a point estimate of these employees dissatisfaction with the organization, lest management risk deanonymizing the results.

Gebru, the former co-lead of Googles AI Ethical research group, was fired by the company in 2020 after co-authoring a research paper that called attention to the potential risks of large-scale language models, a concept similar to the one Google Search employs. The search giant fired another AI ethics researcher, Margaret Mitchell, for her involvement in Gebrus paper shortly thereafter.

While the companys diversity report from last year showed an overall increase in the number of Black employees it hired, there was still an increase in the number of women of color that left the company at the time of the reports release, Black women made up 1.8 percent of Googles workforce. And in December, Californias Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) launched an investigation over Googles treatment of Black female workers.

We appreciate Alex and Dylans contributions our research on responsible AI is incredibly important, and were continuing to expand our work in this area in keeping with our AI Principles, Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel said in a statement emailed to The Verge. Were also committed to building a company where people of different views, backgrounds and experiences can do their best work and show up for one another.

Read the original here:

Two members of Google's Ethical AI group leave to join Timnit Gebru's nonprofit - The Verge

Did you know that Google Maps has a nifty little trick that lets you adjust zoom with just one finger? Because I sure as hell didnt until yesterday, when a tweet from Sketchfab CEO Alban Denoyel alerted me to its existence via a years-old YouTube video from 2013. The shortcut is simple: just double-tap the maps interface, but instead of lifting your finger after the second tap (the shortcut for zooming in), you leave it touching the screen. Then a swipe up zooms out, and a swipe down zooms in. Neat right?

With this knowledge you can say goodbye to awkwardly holding the phone and trying to use two fingers to reposition the map to check your directions when your other hand is busy holding a dog leash, coffee cup, shopping bag, or whatever. Personally Im looking forward to using it the next time Im on a bike and need to whip out my phone to quickly check directions. No more taking both hands off the handlebars for this guy. No sir.

I havent done an exhaustive search, but it looks like this feature is pretty commonplace across mapping apps. It works on Google Maps on both Android and iOS, and also works in other iOS mapping apps like Apple Maps and CityMapper. Have fun!

Go here to read the rest:

Today I learned a handy trick to zoom in and out of Google Maps - The Verge

Google explains how it keeps user-created reviews on Google Maps free of fraud and abuse in a new blog post and accompanying video. Like many platforms dealing with moderation at scale, Google says it uses a mix of automated machine learning systems as well as human operators.

The details come amidst growing scrutiny of user reviews on sites like Google Maps and Yelp, where businesses have been hit with bad reviews for implementing COVID-related health and safety measures (including mask and vaccine requirements) often beyond their control. Other reviews have criticized businesses for supposedly leading them to contract COVID-19 or for not keeping to usual business hours during a global pandemic.

Earlier today, Yelp reported that it removed over 15,500 reviews between April and December last year for violating its COVID-19 content guidelines, a 161 percent increase over the same period in 2020. In total, Yelp says it removed over 70,200 reviews across nearly 1,300 pages in 2021, with many resulting from so-called review bombing incidents where coordinated reviews are submitted from users who havent actually patronized a business.

Google explains that every review posted on Google Maps is checked by its machine learning system, which has been trained on the companys content policies to weed out abusive or misleading reviews. This system is trained to check both the contents of individual reviews, but itll also look for wider patterns like sudden spikes in one- or five-star reviews both from the account itself, as well as other reviews on the business.

Google says that human moderation comes into play for content thats been flagged by end users and businesses themselves. Offending reviews can be removed, and in more severe cases, user accounts can be suspended and litigation pursued. Weve found that we need both the nuanced understanding that humans offer and the scale that machines provide to help us moderate contributed content, Googles product lead for user-generated content, Ian Leader, writes.

Its an interesting look at the steps Google takes to keep Maps reviews usable. You can read more in the full blog post.

Excerpt from:

Google Maps review moderation detailed as Yelp reports thousands of violations - The Verge