Todd R. Weiss

Google has officially announced that the tech-friendly, progressive city of Austin, Texas, is the second U.S. city that will get the company’s superfast Gigabit Internet service starting in 2014. Last week, Google and the city of Austin sent out notices about a joint announcement that would come on April 9, leading to reports and speculation […]

Google’s Play store app for Android smartphones and tablets now has a revamped look featuring larger images that “jump off the page” to help users find the content they are seeking. The brighter, image-centric look for the new Play Store app was announced in an April 9 post by Michael Siliski, the group product manager […]

Google’s controversial decision to end its 8-year-old Google Reader RSS news reader service is being criticized by its former product manager as a project that wasn’t given the proper resources to grow and thrive during its run. Brian Shih, who served as product manager for Google Reader from September 2008 to July 2011, called Google’s […]

Google is now being hit on a second regulatory front in Europe as a group of competitors, including Microsoft, has filed a complaint with European authorities that argues that Google’s free Android mobile operating system is illegally trying to dominate the market through deception and predatory pricing. The new complaint was filed by a group […]

Google is reportedly in negotiations to buy the popular cross-platform smartphone messaging app WhatsApp for as much as $1 billion, which would help Google bolster its unified communications capabilities for its global users. The deal, which was initiated “four or five weeks ago,” hasn’t yet happened because WhatsApp “is ‘playing hardball’ and jockeying for a […]

Google Maps APIs are always being used to create online maps for a myriad of fun, cool, creative and fascinating uses by developers around the world. Here are some of the most clever projects we’ve seen recently using the innovative API. Visit a New York Time Machine Recalling1993 is an incredibly unique public art project […]

Google’s Chrome team is releasing Chrome 26 for Android, the newest stable version of its free Web browser that fully integrates with the Android mobile operating system. The new Android version was announced in an April 3 post on Google’s Chrome Releases blog by Jason Kersey of the Google Chrome team. “Chrome for Android 26.0.1410.58 […]

Google’s Chromium products, from its Chrome browser to Chrome OS, need more flexibility than possible using its existing rendering engine, so the company’s developers have created a forked version that better meets the needs of the ongoing Chrome projects. The announcement to move to “Blink,” a customized, forked version of the existing WebKit rendering engine, […]

Google officials have sold the renowned Frommer’s travel book line back to its founder, just seven months after buying it to add to the search giant’s rich content and only two weeks after announcing that the print versions of the books would end. The dramatic move came to light with reports that Arthur Frommer had […]

Google has won an FTC Technology Achievement Award from government regulators who are seeking better technologies to fight annoying, illegal robocalls that harass consumers in their homes and on mobile phones. The robocalls inspire about 200,000 complaints to the Federal Trade Commission each month, which is why the agency announced the first-ever contest in October […]