Google and the New York Times have teamed up to bring you A Google A Day, a new daily trivia question that will run next to the crossword puzzle and, more importantly, online. What is the point of having a trivia question with a Google box right above it?
Google's coddled engineers better start hustling and finding new customers—starting with friends and family—new CEO Larry Page is telling the troops. First prize is an extra 25 percent bonus.
Meet Greg Coleman, Sundar Pichai and Neal Mohan. They are having an awesome week. A week that involves, collectively, roughly $150 million dollars in bonuses; monster severance for short-lived jobs; and orders to report to a new boss in Paris.
Employees at Google and AOL are among those going barefoot today to raise awareness of shoeless poor kids. If only there were some other way rich techies could help third world children, aside from disgustingly and dangerously removing their shoes!
A pristine Google results page is the season's must-have online accessory. "Online reputation managers" offer to scrub your internet footprint of revealing pictures or embarrassing blog posts—for a hefty price. We are entering a brave new world of social media status differentiation!
Google CEO Eric Schmidt once famously proclaimed that today's kids might all need to change their names to escape their embarrassing Internet trail. What about tech CEOs? A new book reveals Schmidt tried, and failed, to scrub his own Google results.
It's 1911 on YouTube! That's YouTube's April Fool's gag—push a little "1911" button on the screen, and you get an old-timey version of your video, complete with a piano-roll soundtrack. This joke is not appropriate for all videos.
Microsoft has just filed its first antitrust complaint, in the EU against Google. Let's try to get past the obvious fact that this is like Lady Gaga complaining that someone dresses weird and rips off Madonna while she hurls stones out of a glass house. This is important stuff. It could determine which massive tech corporation controls all of our data in the dystopian future!
Google co-founder Larry Page is set to take over as CEO of Google when Eric Schmidt steps down on April 4th. He's already started instituting some changes to streamline bureaucracy in an attempt to help the massive company return to its startup roots. And according to the Wall Street Journal, Page doesn't want Googlers distracted during meetings:
Earlier this week, Lady Gaga dropped by the Googleplex for a chat with Google VP Marissa Mayer. Luckily for the Internet, Google posted the entire 73-minute video to YouTube, in case you've got some dead time while marinating a skirt steak.
Google's VP of consumer products, Marissa Mayer, hosts an hour-long Q&A session with Lady Gaga during which they discuss Google's roll in her skyrocket to stardom. Watch the complete hour interview here.
Eric Schmidt has already expressed interest in a book deal and a TV show. But is politics where he's actually headed after his stint at Google is up in April? Rumor has it Obama is "close to naming" Google CEO Eric Schmidt as Secretary of Commerce. This would be an OK idea as long as Schmidt never opens his mouth or offers his weird opinion on anything. Maybe he'll know how to help Obama boost productivity by spying on idle workers in Google Street View.
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee simply does not care for Google. It dominates the search engine field with near-monopoly power. More importantly, corrupt Barack Obama is friendly with some people at Google. And so Lee wants to conduct "vigorous" antitrust oversight into the corporation, like a socialist.
During the TED 2011 conference Google gave rare demos of its auto-driving car in a large controlled empty parking lot. Here it displays getaway mode, something that could become valuable to anyone trying to get away quickly.
If you've never gotten excited about an algorithm before, now's your chance. Yesterday Google unveiled changes in their magical search formula designed specifically to weed out results from annoying content farms that churn out dumb articles like "How to Boil Water." Google says the change should affect around 11 percent of all searches and yield more useful information.
Glenn Beck was on Bill O'Reily's show last night, talking about his ongoing anti-Google crusade. (See video above.) Glenn Beck only pays attention to things insofar as they fit into his crazy conspiracy theories, and he suddenly became aware of Google a couple weeks ago as news emerged about the key role Google executive Wael Ghonim played in Egypt's revolution.
Apparently not content with his original musings on the popular uprising in Egypt (" The entire Mediterranean is on fire.") Fox News host Glenn Beck has expanded the scope of his theories to include the sinister engineers at Google, about whom he says:
Former senator and likely presidential candidate Rick Santorum has finally acknowledged his "Google problem," and the fact that there's nothing he can do about it.
The Times today has a fascinating account of the lengths some companies go to game Google's search algorithm and get their websites listed higher on results. Times reporter David Segal looked into why J.C. Penney was ranked No. 1 in a suspiciously high number of searches. Turns out they, or someone working on their behalf, were paying to have thousands of links to J.C. Penney planted on spammy backwater websites. Google unwittingly took these links as legitimate and J.C. Penney was catapulted to the top of the search ranks, just in time for the 2010 Holiday shopping season.
