TheNewsGuru

Tag: Google

  • World’s most valuable brand: Google displaces Facebook, Apple

    World’s most valuable brand: Google displaces Facebook, Apple

    Google has displaced Apple to become world’s most valuable brand, according to analysis from global brand consultancy, BrandZ.

    TheNewsGuru reports a new study by BrandZ reveals Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., had a brand value of $302 billion, compared to Apple’s $301 billion.

    According to the analysis released by the global brand consultancy firm, the third and fourth brand values were also almost tied.

    Amazon.com Inc. had a brand valuation of $208 billion to Microsoft Corp.’s $201 billion.

    Rounding out the top 10, China’s Tencent’s valuation was $179 billion, followed by Facebook Inc. at $162 billion, Visa Inc. at at $146 billion, McDonald’s Corp. at $126 billion, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. at $113 billion and AT&T Inc. at $106 billion.

    No other brand value topped $100 billion.

    “This was the first year non-US brands grew faster than US brands. Fourteen Chinese brands appear in the Top 100 ranking compared to just one (ChinaMobile) in 2006.

    “The total value of China’s Top 10 grew year-on-year by +47%, more than double that of the US brands (+23%),” BrandZ commented on the rise of Chinese companies.

    Among the top 20 brands with surges in valuation, Amazon was up 45%, Tencent by 65% and Alibaba by 92%.

    Among the top 20 global brands, several lost ground in terms of valuation.

    AT&T fell 7%. International Business Machines Corp. was down 6% to $96 billion, and Verizon Communications Inc. lost 5% to $85 billion.

    Marlboro and Wells Fargo & Co. each lost 6%, to $82 billion and $55 billion, respectively.

    The brand that lost the most value was troubled General Electric Co., which was down 22% to $39 billion.

    The combined value of the top 100 rose 21% to $4.4 trillion, which means that Google and Apple represented 14% of the total.

    TheNewsGuru reports BrandZ ranking of brand valuations lists the brands making the largest absolute $ contribution to the total value of their respective parent companies, considering both current and projected performance.

    “This is the true value of brand building and we want to isolate and reward the brands making the largest contributions to the success of their parent companies.

    “A company may have huge overall business value but the absolute $ contribution made by the relevant brand(s) that the company owns may not be a comparatively large figure – at least not a large enough figure to qualify for the given BrandZ™ ranking of brand values,” the global brand consultancy firm said of its methodology.

     

  • Google launches Impact Challenge in Nigeria, commits $2m

    Google on Wednesday launched the Google Impact Challenge (GIC) Nigeria 2018 aimed at empowering the citizens to drive community impact.

    The Google Country Marketing Manager, Affiong Osuchukwu, said at the unveiling in Lagos that Google would commit two million dollars into the project in form of grants to non-profits using technology to reach their goals.

    The News Agency of Nigeria reports that a non-profit is dedicated to furthering a social cause or advocating a viewpoint.

    “This is the first time we are running a GIC in Africa. Many African non-profits are doing great work with real impact, and we are keen to shine a light on them and give a financial boost to innovative projects and ideas.

    “We believe technology can help local and national organisations to reach their goals better and solve some of the continent’s most pressing challenges.

    “We are eager to back people who are using technology in new ways to make a positive difference in their communities.

    “We also want to highlight the healthy state of social enterprise in Nigeria today, and encourage non-profits to consider how technology can help them to reach their goals,” Osuchukwu said.

    She advised non-profits in Nigeria to apply to receive from the two million dollars in funding.

    According to the official, four non-profits stand to win $250, 000 each, while eight runners-up will get $125, 000 each.

    She said that applications would be open for the next six months.

    She said that non-profits could apply online at https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/nigeria2018 or g.co/nigeriachallenge.

    Osuchukwu said that winners would be decided by a panel of local judges and a public vote.
    She said that the winning non-profits would also have free access to guidance, technical assistance and mentorship from Google.

    She listed the panel of judges to include the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Channels Media Group, Mr John Momoh; CEO, Zinox Technologies, Mr Leo Stan Ekeh; and ex-international footballer, Kanu Nwankwo.

    “The Google Impact Challenge Nigeria launches today and will close on the July 4. The final awards ceremony will be held during the week of Nov. 26.

    “At Google for Nigeria in July last year, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, announced Google’s commitment to providing $20 million funding to African non-profits over five years.

    “This is the first initiative aimed at realising that commitment,” she said.

    The official said that the Google Impact Challenge for Kenya and South Africa were also launched on Wednesday.

    She listed the criteria for selecting the non-profits to include registration, scalability, innovativeness and feasibility.

    According to Osuchukwu, other Google Impact Challenges around the world have supported ideas ranging from smart cameras for wildlife conservation to solar lights for off-grid communities and mobile application that helps to protect women from domestic violence.

     

  • Rebellion against military project by Google workers grows

    Rebellion against military project by Google workers grows

    An internal petition calling for Google to stay out of “the business of war” was gaining support Tuesday, with some workers reportedly quitting to protest a collaboration with the US military.

    About 4,000 Google employees were said to have signed a petition that began circulating about three months ago urging the Internet giant to refrain from using artificial intelligence to make US military drones better at recognising what they are monitoring.

    Tech news website Gizmodo reported this week that about a dozen Google employees are quitting in an ethical stand.

    The California-based company did not immediately respond to inquiries about what was referred to as Project Maven, which reportedly uses machine learning and engineering talent to distinguish people and objects in drone videos for the Defense Department.

    “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” the petition reads, according to copies posted online.

    “Therefore, we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicise and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology,” it added.

    ‘Step away’ from killer drones

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet rights group, and the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) were among those who have weighed in with support.

    While reports indicated that artificial intelligence findings would be reviewed by human analysts, the technology could pave the way for automated targeting systems on armed drones, ICRAC reasoned in an open letter of support to Google employees against the project.

    “As military commanders come to see the object recognition algorithms as reliable, it will be tempting to attenuate or even remove human review and oversight for these systems,” ICRAC said in the letter.

    “We are then just a short step away from authorising autonomous drones to kill automatically, without human supervision or meaningful human control.”

    Google has gone on the record saying that its work to improve machines’ ability to recognise objects is not for offensive uses, but published documents show a “murkier” picture, the EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Peter Eckersley said in an online post last month.

    “If our reading of the public record is correct, systems that Google is supporting or building would flag people or objects seen by drones for human review, and in some cases this would lead to subsequent missile strikes on those people or objects,” said Cohn and Eckersley.

    “Those are hefty ethical stakes, even with humans in the loop further along the ‘kill chain.’”

    The EFF and others welcomed internal Google debate, stressing the need for moral and ethical frameworks regarding the use of artificial intelligence in weaponry.

    “The use of AI in weapons systems is a crucially important topic and one that deserves an international public discussion and likely some international agreements to ensure global safety,” Cohn and Eckersley said.

    “Companies like Google, as well as their counterparts around the world, must consider the consequences and demand real accountability and standards of behaviour from the military agencies that seek their expertise – and from themselves.”

     

  • Fake news: Google relaunches news service

    Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced that the company is relaunching its news service facilitating the search of information from credible sources for its users as part of fight against fake news distribution, local media reported on Wednesday.

    According to the Business Insider news portal, the Google News service with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will also highlight the articles a user might be interested in and help in search for detailed information on particular subjects.

    “We are using AI to bring forward the best of what journalism has to offer … We want to give users quality sources that they trust,” Pichai said at Google developer conference on Tuesday as quoted by the news outlet.

    Following the launch of the updated service, every user will have personalized news channel based on their personal information available to Google, the Business Insider added.

    The relaunched news service is expected to operate in 127 counties,

    In recent year, the issue of fake news has caught the eyes of authorities and legislatures in many countries, especially since the U. S. and several other Western nations have claimed that their elections had been influenced by disinformation campaigns.

     

  • How Google is turning self-driving cars from science fiction into reality

    How Google is turning self-driving cars from science fiction into reality

    Today at Google I/O, Google’s annual developer conference, Dmitri Dolgov, CTO and VP of Engineering, shared details on how Waymo is using artificial intelligence (AI) to make fully self-driving cars a reality.

    TheNewsGuru report Waymo is an autonomous car development company and subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. Google began testing self-driving cars in 2009.

    “AI and machine learning (ML) have played a critical role in moving us closer to our goal of bringing self-driving technology to everyone, everywhere,” stated Dolgov.

    Here’s a quick recap of what Dolgov shared on how Waymo is using AI to turn self-driving cars from science fiction into reality:

    Jump-start in AI

    Many people know about Google’s early AI advances in image search and speech recognition. But did you know that Google’s AI researchers also helped give Waymo a jump-start on the road to truly self-driving cars? One example: as deep learning began to take off, our self-driving engineers worked side-by-side with the Google Brain team to apply deep nets to our pedestrian detection system. Even in those early days, the results were remarkable — within a matter of months, we were able to reduce the error rate for pedestrian detection by 100x, making our system safer and more capable on the road.

    Fast forward to fully self-driving

    Fast forward to 2018, Waymo’s advances in AI have helped turn self-driving cars from science fiction into reality. Today, Waymo is the only company in the world with a fleet of truly autonomous cars on public roads. Members of the public in Phoenix, Arizona have already started to experience these fully self-driving rides.

    AI everywhere

    AI plays a crucial role in nearly every part of our self-driving system. While perception is the most mature area for deep learning, we also use deep nets for everything from prediction to planning to mapping and simulation. With machine learning, we can navigate nuanced and difficult situations; maneuvering construction zones, yielding to emergency vehicles, and giving room to cars that are parallel parking. We can do this because we’ve trained our ML models using lots of different examples. To date, we’ve driven 6 million miles on public roads and observed hundreds of millions of interactions between vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.

    Beyond the algorithm

    It takes more than good algorithms to be able to put self-driving vehicles on the road and expand to more cities. Infrastructure plays a key role in training and testing our ML models. At Waymo, we use the TensorFlow ecosystem and Google’s data centers — including TPUs — to train our neural networks. With TPUs, we can train our nets up to 15x more efficiently. We also rigorously test our ML models in simulation, where we drive the equivalent of 25,000 cars all day, every day. With this robust training and testing cycle, we can rapidly improve our ML models, and quickly deploy the latest nets on our self-driving cars.

    Weatherproofing our driver

    We aim to bring self-driving technology to everyone, everywhere… and in all weather. Driving in heavy rain or snow can be a tough task for self-driving cars and people alike, in part because visibility is limited. Raindrops and snowflakes can create a lot of noise in sensor data for a self-driving car. Machine learning helps us filter out that noise and correctly identify pedestrians, vehicles and more.

    With our years of experience, collaboration with Google AI, and powerful infrastructure, we’re getting closer than ever to a future where transportation is safer, easier and more accessible for everyone.

     

  • Google reveals 13 ways you’re using AI in daily living

    Google reveals 13 ways you’re using AI in daily living

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is behind many of Google’s products and is a big priority for us as a company, according to Google AI expert, Christine Robson, who, ahead of Google I/O, shared how AI affects daily life in ways not known, and how people from all over the world have used AI to build their own technology.

    AI often sounds like some far-off science fiction concept, but it’s actually behind a lot of things encountered in daily life.

    “We train a software system with lots of examples so that it can pick up on patterns. Rather than telling the computer that all spam emails contain the phrase “new weight loss trick!,” you train it on millions of examples of spam, making small corrections until it can pick out the pattern on its own. This ability to learn patterns, called machine learning, makes your life easier in many ways,” stated Christine in a blog post.

    Fun stuff

    1. Search for “dogs” or “hugs” in your Google Photos library to find your favorite furry friends and (non furry) moments. Even if you haven’t captioned any of your photos, Google can surface the ones that have the object or action you’re looking for.

    2. Google Play Music delivers personalized recommendations to play the right music for any moment. By taking into account things like time of day or weather, Play Music can suggest the right music for cooking dinner or watching the sunset.

    3. Take a photo in Portrait Mode on Pixel 2, and it’ll perfectly blur the background of the photo. This system has been trained on almost a million portraits to learn how to pick out the subject of the photo and blur the background.

    4. Watch more than one billion YouTube videos with automatic captions, powered by machine learning algorithms that transcribe speech in 10 languages.

    Productivity and security

    5. Quickly respond to an email with Smart Reply in Gmail. Smart Reply saves you time by using AI to suggest three responses based on the email you received. Once you’ve selected one, you can send it immediately or edit your response.

    6. And with Nudging, Gmail uses AI to remind you to follow up or respond to messages that are older than two to three days, making sure you don’t drop the ball.

    7. Every day, Google Play Protect automatically reviews more than 50 billion apps, and even devices themselves, and takes action when it finds anything suspicious.

    Helping you out in the world

    8. Translate text on a sign or menu by holding your camera in front of it. Google Translate uses optical character recognition to figure out the words, and a translation system that has been trained on millions of examples of existing translations on the web.

    9. You can strike up a conversation with your Google Assistant in more than a dozen languages, and this year it’ll be available in many more.

    10. Estimate how hard it’ll be to park your car on Google Maps. It takes into account parking availability in a given area, and has learned the patterns of how different parts of a city get busy at different times.

    11. Find the right address on Google Maps, thanks to a system that learned to read street names and addresses from billions of Street View images.

    12. Search what you see with Google Lens, whether it’s landmarks, books, artwork, or your neighbor’s dog. It’s possible only with the latest in computer vision, using machine learning to identify objects and browse the world around you.

    13. A smart algorithm in Google Trips can help plan your next travel itinerary. It’s the classic “traveling salesman” research problem, applied to modern transportation and all the complex ways people move around.

     

  • Google overhauls Gmail

    Alphabet Inc’s Google on Wednesday unveiled its first Gmail redesign since 2013, capping what the company said was an expensive overhaul.

    It will include offline functionality and resemble Microsoft Outlook.

    It is Google’s most extensive update to software in its G Suite workplace bundle.

    It is accelerating efforts to steal business from Microsoft Corp’s dominant Office workplace software suite.

    Previously, G Suite added instant-messaging and spreadsheet features.

    With Gmail, Google said it restructured email storage databases, unified three-dueling-systems for syncing-messages across devices and upgraded-computers underpinning the service.

    That shift to Google’s self-developed Tensor processing chips enables smart-assistant features such as “suggested replies” to messages and “nudges” to respond to forgotten emails.

    “This is an entire rewrite of our flagship, most-used product,” said Jacob Bank, Product Manager Lead for Gmail, which 1.4 billion people use each month.

    Unreliable offline access to email has long discouraged would-be customers.

    Meanwhile, recent high-profile corporate data breaches have increased desire to lock down email.

    Analysts estimate G Suite generated about $2 billion in revenue last year, 10 times behind Office.

    Google declined to specify costs associated with the redesign.

    But parent Alphabet reported on Monday that first-quarter capital expenditures nearly tripled year-over-year to $7.3 billion.

    Chief Financial Officer, Ruth Porat, told analysts that half of the spending resulted from hardware purchases to support expanding use of machine learning.

    This expansion describes automated programmes that can, among other things, identify spam and predict which emails users would find most important.

     

  • YouTube deletes 5 million videos for content violation

    YouTube deletes 5 million videos for content violation

    YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O), deleted about 5 million videos from its platform for content policy violations in last year’s fourth quarter before any viewers saw them, it said in a new report that highlighted its response to pressure to better police its online community.

    YouTube has been criticized by governments that say it does not do enough to remove extremist content, and by advertisers, such as Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) and Under Armour Inc (UAA.N) that briefly boycotted the service when they unwittingly ran ads alongside videos the companies deemed inappropriate.

    YouTube said in the report Monday that automating enforcement through software “is paying off” in quicker removals. The company said it did not have comparable data from prior quarters.

    YouTube said it still needed an in-house team of humans to verify automated findings on an additional 1.6 million videos that were removed only after some users watched the clips.

    The automated system did not identify another 1.6 million videos that YouTube took down once they were reported to it by users, activist organizations and governments.

    “They still have lots of work to do but they should be praised in the interim,” Paul Barrett, who has followed YouTube as deputy director at the New York University ‎Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, said.

    Facebook Inc (FB.O) also said on Monday it had removed or put a warning label on 1.9 million pieces of extremist content related to ISIS or al-Qaeda in the first three months of the year, or about double the amount from the previous quarter.

    Corralling problematic videos, whether through humans or machines, could help YouTube, a major driver of Google’s revenue, stave off regulation and a sales hit. For now, analysts say demand for YouTube ads remains robust.

    The following are steps that YouTube has taken.

     

    EXTREMISM

    YouTube officials say the company removes videos that contain hate speech or incite violence. It issues “a strike” to the uploader in each instance and bans uploaders with three strikes in a three-month period. Also banned are government-identified “terrorist organizations” and materials such groups would upload if they could. YouTube shares the digital fingerprints of removed videos with a consortium of tech companies.

    Borderline videos get stamped “graphic” and stripped of features that would give them prominence. YouTube added options for advertisers to avoid sponsoring these videos last year.

    YouTube automated scans have sped up takedowns of videos tied to ISIS or al-Qaeda. But it has struggled to draw a line on views espoused by white right-wing extremists, who tend to know the rules well and stop short of overt hate speech.

    MISINFORMATION

    YouTube said it would be difficult to enforce a “truth” policy, leaving the company to look for other policy violations to remove videos with misleading information.

    For instance, YouTube could delete a fabricated news report by finding it harasses its subject.

    Since autumn, it has promoted “authoritative sources” such as CNN and NBC News in search results to push down problematic material. YouTube also plans to display Wikipedia descriptions alongside videos to counter hoaxes.

    But YouTube still is cited as slow to identify misinformation amid major global breaking news events when video bloggers quickly upload commentary. The company preserves other challenged clips that have public interest value or come from politicians.

    CHILD ENDANGERMENT

    YouTube last year began removing videos and issuing strikes when the filming may have put a child in danger or when a cartoon character is used inappropriately.

    YouTube does not alert law enforcement or intellectual property owners about these videos because YouTube says it cannot easily identify uploaders and rightsholders. Copyright owners that believe a video violates guidelines or infringes their copyright or trademark can report it to YouTube.

    The company last year begin stepping up moderation of comments that inappropriately reference children.

    Reuters

  • Google unveils Google Go to support one gigabyte RAM

    Google on Thursday unveiled Google Go, a new app built to support Android devices with one gigabyte Random Access Memory (RAM) and below.

    The Country Director of Google, Mrs Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, unveiled the app in Lagos.

    According to Ehimuan-Chiazor, the Google Go is available as at today in 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa through the Google Play Store.

    She said that it would come pre-installed on all Android Oreo (Go edition) devices and would be available for devices running Android v4.3 (Jelly Bean) and above.

    “Google Go provides a lighter, faster way to search, with everything you need just a tap away.

    “As more Africans come online every year, using mobile phones as their primary and sometimes only internet device, online is not somewhere they ‘go’ anymore but where they live, connecting with people, places and things that matter to them.

    “Weak data connectivity, high data costs and low RAM or storage space often makes it hard for people to get the most out of the internet; Google Go is built to handle these challenges,’’ she said.

    The official said that more than 70 per cent of Africans connected to the internet to get great experience and have information at their fingertips.

    “Google Go is designed to address these issues and provide a seamless experience irrespective of the device or network the user is on,” she said.

    The country director said that, with Google Go, one would easily search for information or see what was trending.

    “Taking up less than 5MB, the app is quick to download without using much data, and it takes up minimal space on your phone.

    “When there is no internet access, Google Go retries failed search requests in the background and lets you know as soon as the results are ready. Web pages load quickly, even in data-saving mode or on 2G connections.

    “Google has multiple points to search, but Google Go is built to support Android devices with one gigabyte RAM,” she said.

     

  • Google appeals Indian antitrust watchdog’s ‘search bias’ verdict: sources

    Online search giant Google has filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal against a judgment from India’s competition watchdog that found it guilty of search bias, official sources told media on Tuesday.

    The appeal was filed on Monday, one of the sources said.

    In February, the Competition Commission of India imposed a 1.36 billion rupees (20.95 million dollars) fine on Google, saying it was abusing its dominance in online web search and online search advertising markets.

    Google, the core unit of U.S. firm Alphabet Inc did not immediately respond to a media request for comment.

    A CCI official said that its judgment was robust and that the competition watchdog plans to defend its verdict at the NCLAT.

    Google was found to be indulging in practices of search bias and by doing so, it causes harm to its competitors as well as to users, the CCI said in its 190-page judgment.

    The Indian watchdog’s judgment is the latest antitrust setback for the world’s most popular search engine.

    Last year, The European Commission imposed a record 2.4 billion euro (three billion dollars) fine on the company for favoring its shopping service and demoting rival offerings.

    Google has appealed against the verdict.

    In India, the Commission found that Google, through its search design, had placed its commercial flight search function at a prominent position on the search results page to the disadvantage of businesses trying to gain market access.

    The CCI ruling brought to an end a probe first started by the watchdog in 2012 on complaints filed by matchmaking website Bharat Matrimony and a not-for-profit organisation, Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS).