Mark Zuckerberg Is Now Richer Than the Google Guys

How's your summer going? Probably not as good as Mark Zuckerberg's.

The Facebook CEO and cofounder's wealth has spiked in recent months as the company's stock price continues to reach new highs. On Thursday, he reached another milestone: With a fortune worth $33.3 billion, he's now worth more than Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to Blooomberg's Billionaires Index. Page is worth $33.2 billion. Brin's fortune is estimated at $32.9 billion.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Oracle confirms paying a blogger but Google names no-one

Oracle has disclosed two names after it and Google were ordered to reveal financial ties to people who might have influenced coverage of a trial.

The instruction had been given by a US judge following a copyright and patent lawsuit fought by the two tech firms.

Oracle said it had relationships with blogger Florian Mueller and Stanford University's Prof Paul Goldstein.

Google said it did not pay any "journalists, bloggers, or other commentators to write about this case".

However, the search giant added that it needed further guidance before being able to disclose others it had financial ties to.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google's New Favicon

Google has a new favicon that looks like the icon from Google's mobile search apps for Android and iOS. The same icon was also used for the Google Search app from the Chrome Web Store.

Most likely, Google wanted to use the same icon irrespective of the platform so that it becomes instantly recognizable.

Here's the new favicon:


... and the old favicon, which was launched back in 2009:

Read More Add Your Opinion

Teaming Gmail, Google Search Not Security Risk

Security experts say Google's new "Gmail in personal search results" service, which crawls through a person's inbox and presents results relevant to a regular web search, is not a risk to businesses.

Google started testing the feature Thursday, opening it up to only the first 1 million signees, a fraction of Gmail's 425 million accounts. People who join the pilot program would start seeing the Gmail results on the right-hand column of regular search results.

In some cases, answers from the inbox would be highlighted at the top of the page. For example, typing "my flights" in Google's search box would get flight information if an airline had forwarded a user's future itinerary to Gmail.

In general, Google is trying to add more personal information to search results. For example, if a person is searching for restaurants in San Francisco, then it might be helpful to also show that email a friend sent a long time ago, recommending a steakhouse in the city.

Security experts do not see the new feature opening up any new doors to attacks. Rather, some people may object to having their private email searched, and opt out for that reason. "It's not necessarily a big security risk, but it's kind of creepily invasive," Dan Olds, analyst for the Gabriel Consulting Group, said.

Another possibility from having one's inbox searched is more targeted ads from Google advertisers, Olds said. "I would hate to suddenly be bombarded with particular advertising messages or spam based on what I'm searching for."

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google antipiracy measure skips YouTube, says report

Google's new copyright-policing policy apparently won't affect Google-owned YouTube as it does other Web sites, despite the fact that YouTube has been known to play host to illegally posted copyrighted material.

The new policy, announced yesterday, knocks sites down in search results if Google receives a lot of "valid copyright removal notices" involving content on those sites.

But Search Engine Land reports that flagging supposedly illegal content on most sites involves using an online process that starts on a page labeled "Removing Content From Google," whereas flagging content on YouTube involves using the video site's baked-in "Copyright Center." And the removal requests Google will be considering as far as search-result positioning is concerned will be those made through the Removing Content page, not through YouTube's Copyright Center.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google upgrades Gmail video chat with Hangouts

Google will begin replacing Gmail's existing video chat system with a new, better one based on the Hangouts feature from its Google+ social networking service, the company said on Monday.

The swap will improve the quality and performance of Gmail video chats, and, if users have Google+ accounts, they will be able to communicate with multiple people-- up to nine participants as long as all have Google+ accounts. So far, Gmail's video chat feature has allowed only for one-to-one sessions.

Other new features for Gmail users who also have Google+ accounts will be the ability to watch YouTube videos simultaneously, collaborate on Google documents and do screen sharing.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Amelia Earhart's birthday celebrated in Lockheed Google doodle

The Amelia Earhart Google doodle. Earhart was born on 24 July 1897. She flew solo across the Atlantic in 1932, and disappeared in 1937 over the Pacific Ocean


An image of a Lockheed Vega 5b is currently adorning Google's homepage to celebrate the 115th anniversary of the birthday of the American aviator, Amelia Earhart.

Earhart flew the plane from Newfoundland in Canada to Culmore in Northern Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932.

She became as famous for her disappearance in 1937 over the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island as she tried to circumnavigate the world. No traces of her or her aircraft, a Lockheed Model 10 Electra, were found.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google's Mayer Takes Over as Yahoo Chief

Yahoo Inc. reached inside the ranks of rival Google Inc. in its latest changing of the guard, appointing longtime Web-search executive Marissa Mayer as its new chief and returning the struggling Internet company to a leader with deep technology experience.

Talks with the Google vice president increased in the past few weeks after an initial approach on June 18. The board felt that someone with Ms. Mayer's stature—she was employee no. 20 at Google and helped design the look of the now-dominant search engine—would especially help Yahoo attract new talent to develop new Web services, said the person familiar with the CEO search.Ms. Mayer, 37 years old, had long been on the Yahoo board's shortlist of CEO candidates, said people familiar with the matter.

In naming Ms. Mayer, Yahoo passed over interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, who had overseen the company following the exit in May of Scott Thompson, a former president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal, over some misstated credentials. Mr. Levinsohn, who couldn't be reached, has a background in media and ad sales.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google to pay $22.5M fine over Apple Safari

Google is poised to pay a $22.5 million fine to resolve allegations that it broke a privacy promise by secretly tracking millions of web surfers using Apple's Safari browser

Google is likely to pay the Federal Trade Commission's biggest fine yet over its Safari privacy policy

A person familiar with settlement said the fine has yet to be approved by the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees online privacy issues in the US. If approved by the FTC's five commissioners, the $22.5 million penalty would be the largest the agency has ever imposed on a single company.

Google, however, has $49 billion in the bank and will generate revenue this year of about $46 billion.

The case, nonetheless, raises further doubts about the company's credibility as it grapples with broader regulatory investigations into whether it has been abusing its influential position on the internet to stifle competition.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google “search by image” gets upgrade

Surely we’ve all experienced a time when we saw something – whether it was a landmark, an animal, a vehicle, etc – and wanted to find out more about it. But how do you Google something like that? I mean, you can’t just take a picture of something and run it through Google’s algorithms, right? If you think I’m right, then you obviously don’t know about Google’s “search by image” feature.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Can Facebook change the search paradigm?

In the world of search engine optimization, 2012 has been full of talk about the blurring line between search and social. With Big Brother Google unleashing Panda and Penguin to keep black hats in check, the industry has been forced to take a more holistic approach to SEO. Google’s acolytes are now paying attention to other players in the space, and Facebook is suddenly alone in the spotlight.

A Facebook social search engine, which is becoming more of a reality every day, would completely change the way we approach search. As an SEO specialist at The Search Agency, I’ve been closely monitoring this paradigm shift away from indexing billions of pages.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google Launching Custom Gmail Themes

Are you sick of all the themes that Google offers to spice up your Gmail? Well, now you can personalize your inbox with your own photos.

Google on Tuesday announced that it is rolling out a new custom themes section in Gmail "over the next couple of days" that will let users set their own background images. Google offered a similar option for Gmail before it launched its redesign of the service last year.

Now you'll be able to select backgrounds from your Google+ photos, upload your own photo directly, or paste any image URL. You can also browse Google's searchable Featured Photos section to find one you like. Google first added image uploading in April

Read More Add Your Opinion

Birds eye view with Google Maps

Google hosted a press event June 6 at its offices in San Francisco to unveil several coming new features in Google Maps.

Among those features were 3D enhancements to Google Earth. For starters, the search engine giant has added an additional element to its arsenal of cameras used in Street View.

Up until now, it used cars, trikes, snowmobiles and trolleys to capture the entire world. But now there's Street View Trekker --a camera system that's mounted on a backpack that enables Google to go into those hard to reach areas.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google warns Gmail users of 'state-sponsored' hacks

Google began warning users today of its Gmail online email services when it suspects they may be targets of "state-sponsored" attacks.

Google has begun putting this warning at the top of its Gmail page if it suspects that the user may have been targeted by what it called "state-sponsored" hackers.

It was the second time in the last two weeks that Google has deployed security-related alerts to a small fraction of those who use its services.

But the company was coy about how it knows whether a specific individual has been targeted by attacks paid for or designed by governments.

"You might ask how we know this activity is state-sponsored," said Eric Grosse, Google's vice president of security engineering, in a Tuesday blog. "We can't go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors."

The new warning states: "We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer." It will appear at the top of the Gmail page if the user has logged in with his or her Google account. The message is not limited to those who use Google's own Chrome, but will pop up in any browser.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Chrome steals second from Firefox in browser wars

Google's Chrome passed Mozilla's Firefox in May to become the world's second-most-popular browser, according to data released today by Web analytics company Net Applications.

The California-based firm was the second major metric company to track Chrome's run to second. In November 2011, Irish measurement vendor StatCounter said Chrome had passed Firefox in its estimates.

Net Applications' spot swapping came as a surprise: Earlier projections byComputerworld had pointed to a delay in Chrome's capture of second place, perhaps to as late as August.

But in May, Chrome gained 1.3 percentage points, more than double its average increase over the last 12 months, to climb to 20.2%, while Firefox lost six-tenths of a point to fall to 19.6%.

Last month was the first time that Chrome cracked the 20% mark -- thebrowser debuted in September 2008 -- and the first time that Firefox fell under that number in Net Applications' data since October of the same year.

Firefox, backed by open-source developer Mozilla, peaked at just over 25% in April 2010, and has been on a slow-but-steady decline in usage share since then.

For Microsoft, May was a return to a more traditional pattern: Internet Explorer (IE) lost half a percentage point to end the month at 53.6%. May's decline put an end to the two-month-in-a-row growth IE had experienced, and returned the browser to near the share it owned last March.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google World Wonders Project lets you explore ancient sites around the world

This week Google launched a new project called the World Wonders Project. The goal of the project is to let people explore ancient and cultural sites around the world up close. It sounds sort of like Street view for history and archaeology buffs. The World Wonders Project currently has 132 ancient and cultural sites located in 18 different countries for people to view.



The project uses Street View technology for an up-close view of locations, including sites such as Stonehenge, Pompeii Italy archaeological sites, and ancient temples in Japan. Google even get you closer to some of the monuments then you can get if you’re actually there. The images Google offers go inside the stones at Stonehenge, for example.

There’s been a rope preventing people from gaining access inside the giant stone slabs at Stonehenge for 35 years. Google says most of the filming of the World Wonders Project material was done using camera laden tricycles that pedaled up close to the monuments since cars aren’t able to get close enough. The official project site also has 3-D models and YouTube videos available that relate to each location.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Hands-on: Google Chrome OS

Samsung's Series 3 Chromebox is reminiscent of Apple's Mac Mini.

Google's Chrome OS just got vastly more useful, with two new Chrome OS devices announced today--a Chromebook laptop and Chromebox desktop from Samsung that clear up performance problems that sullied last year's debut of the browser-based operating system.

We found the first-generation Chromebooks usable but painfully slow. Unshackled from slow hardware though, Chrome OS now can stand on its own merits.

So how does it stand up? After a week of testing Samsung's new US$329 Series 3 Chromebox andUS$449 Series 5 550 Chromebook, which go on sale today, we think the new Chrome OS systems are workable for people like us, who spend a lot of time on Google's cloud. Chrome OS devices now can be a useful way to get to services such as Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, Google Docs, and Google Play, and the new hardware really helps.

"With this generation, we're addressing speed seriously," said Sundar Pichai, the senior vice president in charge of Chrome and Google Apps.

But for most people--those who need iTunes, Spotify, Skype, Photoshop, Portal 2, or other software that runs locally on Windows or OS X--Chrome OS isn't up to scratch yet, no matter how fast the hardware. And the new machines still aren't as fast as modern PCs, despite an upgrade from last-generation Intel Atom chips to more powerful Intel Core chips this time around.

Read More Add Your Opinion