Todd R. Weiss

Google wants to continue to improve the security of its Chrome operating system for users and is putting up $3.1 million in prize money to be paid out to smart developers who help find serious flaws in Chrome OS’s code. The prizes will be awarded in $110,000 and $150,000 increments to developers competing for the […]

Google Maps is for the first time getting map updates of little seen areas in North Korea through the help of a team of “citizen cartographers,” who are detailing areas where maps have traditionally included little data and features. The development was announced by Jayanth Mysore, senior product manager for Google Map Maker, in a […]

Google used Jan. 28—the date designated as worldwide Data Privacy Day—as the day to give more details about how it reacts if a government asks Goggle to give up information on its users. Google described the steps in a post by David Drummond, the company’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, on the Google […]

Google, six months after being fined $22.5 million by U.S. regulators for bypassing privacy settings on Apple’s Safari Web browser, is now being sued by a group of U.K.-based residents for allegedly “snooping” on their online search activities while they were using Safari. The lawsuit echoes a similar one filed early last year by Safari […]

Google Images search in the past meant perusing through page after page of online images as users sought just the right photo or illustration for a project. However, that process could be getting easier and faster now that Google has redesigned the images to appear on a multi-image panel that can be reviewed more quickly, […]

Google since 2009 has seen a more than 70 percent increase in requests from governments worldwide for information about its users and their possible criminal activities, according to Google’s latest biannual “Transparency Report” on such requests. For the six-month period ending Dec. 31, 2012, Google received 21,389 government requests for information about 33,634 users, including […]

Google is seeking permission from the Federal Communications Commission to build an intriguing yet vaguely worded experimental wireless network around its California-based headquarters. The FCC application was discovered Jan. 22 by Steven J. Crowley, an electrical engineer from Washington D.C., who routinely checks FCC applications as part of his work for clients. After finding the […]

Google Maps was the most popular mobile app in the United States in early 2012, but by the end of the year, it fell to second place behind Facebook’s mobile app, due largely to Google Maps being dropped from Apple’s iOS 6 operating system in September. That’s the word from digital analytics firm comScore, which […]

Google is moving its Google Cloud Platform (GCP) over to the GitHub collaborative development environment to make it easier for software developers to contribute and continue the evolution of GCP. Julia Ferraioli, developer advocate for the Google Compute Engine, announced the transition in a Jan. 22 post on the Google Developers Blog. “Today, we’re announcing […]

Google co-founder Sergey Brin took a pair of Google Glasses for a ride on a New York subway train Jan. 21, and the appearance of Brin and the still-in-development invention caught the attention of a “hardware hacker” who recognized him and posted a photo of the sighting on Twitter. “Yeeeah … I just had a […]