Google Opens Alphabet Era With Report That Lifts Stock
San Francisco — Google received an “A” from investors for its third-quarter report that ushered the Internet search leader into a new era under Alphabet, its recently formed parent company. The numbers released Thursday indicated that Google is making significant strides in the increasingly important mobile-device market, with its earnings surging 45 percent to nearly $4 billion, or $5.73 per share. Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s chief...
Microsoft Steps Up To Stop Revenge Porn
Microsoft wants to help victims of revenge porn regain control of their images and privacy. Revenge porn — when someone, usually a spurned ex, shares private and sexual images of another person online without that person’s consent — is on the rise, and Internet companies including Google and Reddit have tried to combat it. Now Microsoft is stepping up. The company said last week that, when it is notified by a victim, it will remove...
Study: Google’s Search Favors Its Own Products
When you go to Google for anything, be it a weather report or a phone number or an explanation of string theory, you assume that the top results will always be the very best. Those are, at least, the only ones you click: Studies suggest it’s a rare, rare Googler who bothers scrolling past search result No. 5. But according to a highly critical new paper out from legal scholar Tim Wu, Harvard Business School professor Michael Luca and...
Tiny Robots Could Aid Search and Rescue
Berkeley, Calif. — At a University of California, Berkeley laboratory, engineers are building cockroach-like robots with a noble purpose — search and rescue. Smaller than the palm of a hand and weighing an ounce, the robots are fast, nimble, and equipped with microphones and thermostats to detect sound and heat. “Imagine there’s a warehouse that’s collapsed,” said Ronald Fearing, the director of UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems...
The Little Search Engine That Could
Redmond, Wash. — In Microsoft’s expensive, decadelong battle against Google’s search engine, no detail is too small. Derrick Connell, a Microsoft vice president in charge of the engineering side of the 4,000-person team that builds the company’s Bing Web search, takes work home with him every weekend. Connell reviews lists of common queries people type into the search boxes at Google.com and Bing.com. His team has spliced the universe...
