industryterm:search result

Top 5 New #seo Trends For Your Website in 2019
▻https://hackernoon.com/top-5-new-seo-trends-for-your-website-in-2019-da84c3ac3a45?source=rss---

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*445yIGZAk_hXMZANfyJxQA.png

SEO Trends 2019Google has made changes regarding mobile responsiveness and website speed related efforts to make sure they’re delievering the most optimized search results. Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of these changes right away.Mobile-First IndexingProceeding from last years trend of mobile raking, Google is still doing much effort in looking at a mobile version of your website for the purpose of ranking and indexing. This does not matter whether you have a mobile version on your website. If not, Google still looks at a desktop version to rank your page. However, users with mobile devices won’t be able to navigate and read your page. This page is not displayed to them. For that case, you will need to update your website for mobile browsing. In this way, Google will be able (...)

#seo-trends-2019 #voice-search #seo-trends #ux-design

The Ultimate List of G2Crowd Alternatives and How To Select the Right Ones for Your #saas
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-ultimate-list-of-g2crowd-alternatives-and-how-to-select-the-right-on

What is G2Crowd?G2Crowd is one of the biggest software comparison websites with users reviews. Its business model is similar to those of Indeed.com, Monster.com, etc. Keeping it simple they usurp Google’s search result on a group of niche search terms like ‘Product name alternative’, ‘Product name pricing’ and many similar ones. Simply type-in any software name in ‘Product name’ and you got it.Why should you care?G2Crowd can be a source of social proof and new leads. I will focus on new leads part in this article. When passing the sales funnel your prospects usually go through the evaluation phase. To be more precise, your competition, pricing and value proposition is being checked at this stage. Prospects simply type ‘Your SaaS Name pricing’ in Google and are immediately transferred to the (...)

#marketing #g2crowd-alternatives #g2-crowd #saas-marketing

YouTube to Stop Recommending Conspiracy Theory Videos
▻https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/youtube-to-stop-recommending-conspiracy-theory-videos

https://www.bleepstatic.com/content/hl-images/2018/11/15/youtube-rectangle.jpg

This does not mean that this content will be removed from YouTube or banned from being uploaded in the future, but it does mean they will no long recommend them as videos that you may find interesting. YouTube feels that this create a balance between providing free speech on their platform, while not contributing to the spread of misinformation.

“To be clear, this will only affect recommendations of what videos to watch, not whether a video is available on YouTube,” the blog post continues. “As always, people can still access all videos that comply with our Community Guidelines and, when relevant, these videos may appear in recommendations for channel subscribers and in search results. We think this change strikes a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech and living up to our responsibility to users.”

▻https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/01/continuing-our-work-to-improve.html

Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube
Friday, January 25, 2019

When recommendations are at their best, they help users find a new song to fall in love with, discover their next favorite creator, or learn that great paella recipe. That’s why we update our recommendations system all the time—we want to make sure we’re suggesting videos that people actually want to watch. You might remember that a few years ago, viewers were getting frustrated with clickbaity videos with misleading titles and descriptions (“You won’t believe what happens next!”). We responded by updating our system to focus on viewer satisfaction instead of views, including measuring likes, dislikes, surveys, and time well spent, all while recommending clickbait videos less often

#YouTube #fake_news #Recommandations

#Facebook: The global censor - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/12/29/pers-d29.html

Facebook: The global censor
29 December 2018

The year 2018 has seen a vast intensification of internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Twitter, transforming them from tools for exchanging information and communicating around the world into massive censorship dragnets for policing what their users say, do and think.

In August 2017, the World Socialist Web Site published an open letter to Google charging that the company, in collusion with the US government, was working to shape political discourse by manipulating search results. The open letter warned that Google’s actions set a dangerous precedent for subverting constitutional protections of freedom of speech and demanded that the company cease what the WSWS called “political blacklisting” of left-wing sites.

Sixteen months later, the central argument of the open letter—that Google and its peers are carrying out political censorship—is undeniable. The regime that Google pioneered through its search engine has been expanded to all major US social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

#censure #réseaux_sociaux

Announcing #vscodethemes
▻https://hackernoon.com/announcing-vscodethemes-4544f50c2b5b?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1012/1*rvs5Jo0lREsn4LcAxU9xXg.png

Preview #themes from the #vscode marketplace.About 5 months ago I posted a side project to r/vscode that got relatively popular, and since then I’ve been working on making it useful.VSCodeThemes started as an excuse to learn some new tech and challenge myself across the full stack. I knew I wanted to build a web scrapper with AWS Lambda / SQS and try out Algolia, a search-as-a-service platform.I was probably browsing themes around the same time.Browsing the Visual Studio Marketplace for themes can be painful. The site is optimized for browsing extensions so you rely on theme publishers adding screenshots to the readme.The search results aren’t super useful either. The name, thumbnail and number of installs of an extension are poor indicators of a theme’s quality. Browsing results one by one, (...)

#announcements #vscode-marketplace

Disinformation Wars – Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/25/disinformation-wars

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/gettyimages-961373088.jpg

Russian disinformation has become a problem for European governments. In the last two years, Kremlin-backed campaigns have spread false stories alleging that French President Emmanuel Macron was backed by the “gay lobby,” fabricated a story of a Russian-German girl raped by Arab migrants, and spread a litany of conspiracy theories about the Catalan independence referendum, among other efforts.

Europe is finally taking action. In January, Germany’s Network Enforcement Act came into effect. Designed to limit hate speech and #fake_news online, the law prompted both France and Spain to consider counterdisinformation legislation of their own. More important, in April the European Union unveiled a new strategy for tackling online disinformation. The EU plan focuses on several sensible responses: promoting media literacy, funding a third-party fact-checking service, and pushing Facebook and others to highlight news from credible media outlets, among others. Although the plan itself stops short of regulation, EU officials have not been shy about hinting that regulation may be forthcoming. Indeed, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared at an EU hearing this week, lawmakers reminded him of their regulatory power after he appeared to dodge their questions on fake news and extremist content.

The recent European actions are important first steps. Ultimately, none of the laws or strategies that have been unveiled so far will be enough. The problem is that technology advances far more quickly than government policies.The problem is that technology advances far more quickly than government policies. The EU’s measures are still designed to target the disinformation of yesterday rather than that of tomorrow.
[…]
For example, stories from RT and Sputnik — the Russian government’s propaganda outlets — appeared on the first page of Google searches after the March nerve agent attack in the United Kingdom and the April chemical weapons attack in Syria. Similarly, YouTube (which is owned by Google) has an algorithm that prioritizes the amount of time users spend watching content as the key metric for determining which content appears first in search results. This algorithmic preference results in false, extremist, and unreliable information appearing at the top, which in turn means that this content is viewed more often and is perceived as more reliable by users. Revenue for the SEO manipulation industry is estimated to be in the billions of dollars.

#deep_fake

Le mot de la #Brookings_Institution sur les (gros) investissements à faire pour lutter contre la #désinformation.

Celle des Russes, en tous cas.

Google search results for abortion services promote anti-abortion centers
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/abortions-near-me-google-search-results-anti-pro-life-groups-promote

When users seek facilities for the procedure, Google Maps often presents ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ that discourage abortions Google searches for abortion services direct users to anti-abortion centers across the US, according to a new report that has sparked concerns from reproductive rights’ groups. In response to the question “Where can I get an abortion near me ?”, Google Maps frequently suggests “crisis pregnancy centers”, which are often non-medical facilities that provide counseling meant (...)

#Google #Maps #GoogleSearch #algorithme #manipulation

The meaning of AMP — « Très importante description de ce qu’est en vrai #AMP, le système de cache et d’accélération de pages de Google », dixit @vincib
▻https://adactio.com/journal/13035

So, to summarise, here are three statements that Google’s AMP team are currently peddling as being true:
– AMP is a community project, not a #Google project.
– AMP pages don’t receive preferential treatment in search results.
– AMP pages are hosted on your own domain.
I don’t think those statements are even truthy, much less true. In fact, if I were looking for the right term to semantically describe any one of those statements, the closest in meaning would be this:
A statement used intentionally for the purpose of deception.
That is the dictionary definition of a lie.

#vassalisation

Monopoly Men | Boston Review
▻http://bostonreview.net/science-nature/k-sabeel-rahman-monopoly-men

http://bostonreview.net/sites/default/files/bezosfinal1.jpg

Amazon. Google. Facebook. Twitter. These are the most powerful and influential tech platforms of the modern economy, and the headlines over the last few weeks underscore the degree to which these firms have accumulated an outsized influence on our economic, political, and social life. To many, including acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen, the status quo is great: the benefits to consumers—from cheap prices to easy access to information to rapid delivery of goods and services—outweigh greater regulation, lest policymakers undermine Silicon Valley innovation.

But the recent controversies suggest a very different perspective—that private power is increasingly concentrated among a handful of tech platforms, representing a major challenge to the survival of our democracy and the potential for a more dynamic and inclusive economic order. A growing clamor from both the left and right has created a sense of “blood in the water,” and suggests that Silicon Valley’s long honeymoon may finally be over.

The danger of the “platform power” accumulated by Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter arises from their ability to control the foundational infrastructure of our economic, informational, and political life. Even if they didn’t spend a dime on lobbying or influencing elected officials, this power would still pose a grave threat to democracy and economic opportunity. The fact that these companies provide enormously popular and useful goods and services is indisputable—but also beside the point. The central issue here is not simply the value for the consumer. Instead it is vast, unaccountable private power over the foundations of contemporary society and politics. In a word, the central issue is democracy.

It was this deeper problem of power—not merely the impacts on prices or the consumer experience—that motivated reformers such as Brandeis to develop whole new institutions and legal regimes: antitrust laws to break up monopolies, public utility regulation to assure fair prices and nondiscrimination on “common carriers” such as railroads, the creation of the FTC itself, and much of President Franklin Roosevelt’s early New Deal push to establish governmental regulatory agencies charged with overseeing finance, market competition, and labor.

But the late twentieth century saw a widespread shift away from the New Deal ethos. Starting in the 1970s, intellectual critiques of economic regulation highlighted the likelihood of corruption, capture, and inefficiency, while scholars in economics espoused the virtues of self-regulation, growth-optimization, and efficient markets. In these intellectual constructs big business and the conservative right found support for their attacks on the New Deal edifice, and in the 1980s and 1990s, we saw the bipartisan adoption of a deregulatory ethic—including in market competition policy.

These cultural currents—the skepticism of government as corrupt at worst and inefficient at best, the belief in private enterprise and the virtues of “free markets,” and a commitment to delivering for consumers above the broader social and political repercussions—suffuses our current political economic discourse. The Brandeis-ian critique of private power has been wholly absent in recent decades and nowhere is this absence more pronounced than in the worldview of Silicon Valley.

In our current moment, it is as if technological innovation has been divorced from the corporations that profit from it. Through these rose-colored glasses, technology is seen as a good in itself, promising efficiency, delivering new wonders to consumers, running laps around otherwise stale and plodding government institutions. Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have been able to resist corporate criticism (until recently, that is) by emphasizing their cultural and ideational commitment to the consumer and to innovation. They have casted themselves as the vanguards of social progress, the future’s cavalry who should not be constrained by government regulation because they offer a better mode of social order than the government itself.

But as the anxieties of the last few months indicate, this image does not capture reality. Indeed, these technology platforms are not just “innovators,” nor are they ordinary corporations anymore. They are better seen and understood as privately controlled infrastructure, the underlying backbone for much of our economic, social, and political life. Such control and influence brings with it the ability to skew, rig, or otherwise manage these systems—all outside the kinds of checks and balances we would expect to accompany such power.

This kind of infrastructural power also explains the myriad concerns about how platforms might taint, skew, or undermine our political system itself—concerns that extend well beyond the ability of these firms to lobby inside the Beltway. Even before the 2016 election, a number of studies and scholars raised the concern that Facebook and Google could swing elections if they wanted to by manipulating their search and feed algorithms. Through subtle and unnoticeable tweaks, these companies could place search results for some political candidates or viewpoints above others, impacting the flow of information enough to influence voters.

Given our reality, it would be helpful to think of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter as the new “utilities” of the modern era. Today the idea of “public utility” conjures images of rate regulation and electric utility bureaucracies. But for Progressive Era reformers, public utility was a broad concept that, at its heart, was about creating regulations to ensure adequate checks and balances on private actors who had come to control the basic necessities of life, from telecommunications to transit to water. This historical tradition helps us identify what kinds of private power are especially troubling. The problem, ultimately, is not just raw “bigness,” or market capitalization. Rather, the central concern is about private control over infrastructure.

At a minimum Equifax’s data breach suggests a need for regulatory oversight imposing public obligations of data security, safety, and consumer protection on these firms. Some commentators have suggested an antitrust-style breaking up of credit reporting agencies while others have called for replacing the oligopoly altogether with public databases.

#Plateformes #Monopoles #Vectorialisme

Pirate Bay ’borrows’ visitor CPUs to mine virtual coins
▻https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/16/pirate-bay-hijacks-cpus-for-digital-currency-mining

https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims?thumbnail=1200%2C630&quality=80&image_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fo.aolcdn.com%2Fimages%2Fdims%3Fcrop%3D3695%252C2463%252C0%252C0%26quality%3D85%26format%3Djpg%26resize%3D1600%252C1067%26image_uri%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fo.aolcdn.com%252Fhss%252Fstorage%252Fmidas%252Fc10690d7db82d0d79870282ff9b24625%252F201221567%252F171257957.jpg%26client%3Da1acac3e1b3290917d92%26signature%3Da15152507ab42f31cc701d591bb6f504db855f3b&client=cbc79c14efcebee57402&signature=e283b0c17d599749b2781b26ea0df941afa73d5d

« Si c’est gratuit, tu es le produit »

Piracy websites can’t really depend on ads, so how do they make money? By using your PC’s processor cycles, apparently — whether you want to or not. Visitors to The Pirate Bay have discovered JavaScript code in the website that ’borrows’ your processor for the sake of mining Monero digital coins. It doesn’t always happen (it mainly appears in search results and category listings), but you’ll definitely notice the sharp spike in CPU usage when it kicks in.

The site tells TorrentFreak that it was testing the feature for about 24 hours as a new way of generating revenue, and that it could eventually be enough to replace ads. In short, don’t be surprised if this becomes a mainstay of the site going forward. Users have found that they can block the miner through their browser settings or add-ons like ad blockers, so it’s not inescapable.

Without warnings, however, many inexperienced visitors won’t even realize what’s happening, let alone figure out how to stop it. And that’s the real concern. While there isn’t much sympathy to be had for pirate site hosts eager for revenue, the unsuspecting visitors are another story — they didn’t ask to bog down their systems.

#Monnaie_numérique #Pirate_Bay #confiance

These Pictures Show How GNOME Shell Search Is Improving
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/08/gnome-shell-search-improvements

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/gnome-release-date-350x200.jpg

GNOME 3.26 improves the appearance of GNOME Shell search results, making better use of screen space to show more results on screen. This post, These Pictures Show How GNOME Shell Search Is Improving, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

An open letter to Google: Stop the censorship of the Internet! Stop the political blacklisting of the World Socialist Web Site! - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/25/pers-a25.html

https://www.wsws.org/img/open-graph-icon.png

Gentlemen:

Google’s mission statement from the outset was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Its official code of conduct was proclaimed in Google’s famous motto: “Don’t be evil.” In recent years, you have seriously lost your way. You are now engaged in hiding the world’s information, and, in the process, are doing a great deal of evil.

Google, and by implication, its parent company Alphabet, Inc., are now engaged in political censorship of the Internet. You are doing what you have previously publicly denounced.

Google is manipulating its Internet searches to restrict public awareness of and access to socialist, anti-war and left-wing websites. The World Socialist Web Site (www.wsws.org) has been massively targeted and is the most affected by your censorship protocols. Referrals to the WSWS from Google have fallen by nearly 70 percent since April of this year.

Censorship on this scale is political blacklisting. The obvious intent of Google’s censorship algorithm is to block news that your company does not want reported and to suppress opinions with which you do not agree.

Ben Gomes, Google’s vice president for search engineering, attempted to justify the imposition of political censorship with a blog post on April 25, claiming that the changes to the algorithm were a response to “the phenomenon of ‘fake news,’ where content on the web has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information.”

Google, according to Gomes, has recruited some 10,000 “evaluators” to judge the “quality” of websites. These evaluators are trained to “flag” websites that are deemed to “include misleading information” and “unsupported conspiracy theories.” Gomes explained that the blacklists created by these evaluators will be used, in combination with the latest developments in technology, to develop an algorithm that will impose censorship automatically, in real time, across future search results.

Whatever the technical changes Google has made to the search algorithm, the anti-left bias of the results is undeniable. The most striking outcome of Google’s censorship procedures is that users whose search queries indicate an interest in socialism, Marxism or Trotskyism are no longer directed to the World Socialist Web Site. Google is “disappearing” the WSWS from the results of search requests. For example, Google searches for “Leon Trotsky” yielded 5,893 impressions (appearances of the WSWS in search results) in May of this year. In July, the same search yielded exactly zero impressions for the WSWS, which is the Internet publication of the international movement founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.

As stated above, since April, other left-wing publications that present themselves as progressive, socialist or anti-war also have suffered significant reductions in their Google search results:

alternet.org fell by 63 percent
globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
* theintercept.com fell by 19 percent

Google justifies the imposition of political censorship by using a loaded term like “fake news.” This term, properly used, signifies the manufacturing of news based on an artificially constructed event that either never occurred or has been grossly exaggerated. The present-day furor over “fake news” is itself an example of an invented event and artificially constructed narrative. It is a “fake” term that is used to discredit factual information and well-grounded analyses that challenge and discredit government policies and corporate interests. Any invocation of the phrase “fake news,” as it pertains to the WSWS, is devoid of any substance or credibility. In fact, our efforts to combat historical falsification have been recognized, including by the scholarly journal American Historical Review.

#Google #Censure #Fake_news #Appétit_géants

Hashtag | WP

#Hashtag, #Metadata_tag
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag

#Mot-dièse, marqueur de #métadonnées
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag

#Meta-Kommentierung
▻https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag

[...]

The pound sign [hashtag /oAnth] was adopted for use within IRC networks circa 1988 to label groups and topics.[9] Channels or topics that are available across an entire IRC network are prefixed with a hash symbol # (as opposed to those local to a server, which use an ampersand ‘&’).[10]

The use of the pound sign in IRC inspired[11] Chris Messina to propose a similar system to be used on Twitter to tag topics of interest on the #microblogging network.[12] He posted the first hashtag on Twitter:

How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
— Chris Messina, ("factoryjoe"), August 23, 2007[13]

Messina’s suggestion to use the hashtag was not adopted by Twitter, but the practice took off after hashtags were widely used in tweets relating to the 2007 San Diego forest fires in Southern California.[14][15]

According to Messina, he suggested use of the hashtag to make it easy for “lay” users to search for content and find specific relevant updates; they are for people who do not have the technological knowledge to navigate the site. Therefore, the hashtag “was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages." [16]

Internationally, the hashtag became a practice of writing style for Twitter posts during the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests; Twitter users inside and outside Iran used both English- and Persian-language hashtags in communications during the events.[17]

The first published use of the term “hash tag” was in a blog post by Stowe Boyd, “Hash Tags = Twitter Groupings,”[18] on August 26, 2007, according to lexicographer Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society’s New Words Committee.

Beginning July 2, 2009,[19] Twitter began to #hyperlink all hashtags in tweets to Twitter search results for the hashtagged word (and for the standard spelling of commonly misspelled words). In 2010, Twitter introduced “Trending Topics” on the Twitter front page, displaying hashtags that are rapidly becoming popular. Twitter has an algorithm to tackle attempts to spam the trending list and ensure that hashtags trend naturally.[20]

Although the hashtag started out most popularly on Twitter as the main social media platform for this use, the use has extended to other social media sites including Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and Google+.[21]

[…]

#Style

On #microblogging or #social_networking sites, hashtags can be inserted anywhere within a sentence, either preceding it, following it as a postscript, or being included as a word within the sentence (e.g. “It is [hushtag]sunny today”).

The quantity of hashtags used in a post or tweet is just as important as the types of hashtags used. It is currently considered acceptable to tag a post once when contributing to a specific conversation. Two hashtags are considered acceptable when adding a location to the conversation. Three hashtags are seen by some as the “absolute maximum”, and any contribution exceeding this risks “raising the ire of the community.”[24]

As well as frustrating other users, the misuse of hashtags can lead to account suspensions. Twitter warns that adding hashtags to unrelated tweets, or repeated use of the same hashtag without adding to a conversation, could cause an account to be filtered from search, or even suspended.

[…]

via ▻https://diasp.eu/p/5930657

#histoire_numérique #signe_fonctionel #fonction_formatique #usage #réseaux_sociaux #métadonnées

Everybody lies : how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
►https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/09/everybody-lies-how-google-reveals-darkest-secrets-seth-stephens-davidow

What can we learn about ourselves from the things we ask online ? US data scientist Seth Stephens‑Davidowitz analysed anonymous Google search results, uncovering disturbing truths about our desires, beliefs and prejudices Everybody lies. People lie about how many drinks they had on the way home. They lie about how often they go to the gym, how much those new shoes cost, whether they read that book. They call in sick when they’re not. They say they’ll be in touch when they won’t. They say it’s (...)

#Google #GoogleSearch #surveillance

The secret lives of Google raters | Ars Technica
▻https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of-google-raters

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/officecrowdfire-640x360.jpg

Who are these raters? They’re carefully trained and tested staff who can spend 40 hours per week logged into a system called Raterhub, which is owned and operated by Google. Every day, the raters complete dozens of short but exacting tasks that produce invaluable data about the usefulness of Google’s ever-changing algorithms. They contribute significantly to several Google and Android projects, from search and voice recognition to photos and personalization features.

Few people realize how much these raters contribute to the smooth functioning act we call “Googling.” Even #Google engineers who work with rater data don’t know who these people are. But some raters would now like that to change. That’s because, earlier this month, thousands of them received an e-mail that said their hours would be cut in half, partly due to changes in Google’s staffing policies.

Though Google boasts about its army of raters, the raters are not Google employees. Instead, they are employed by firms who have contracted them to Google, full time, for years on end. These raters believe that Google has reaped significant benefits from their labor without ensuring their jobs are secure and stable. That’s why 10 raters came to Ars Technica to tell the story of what their lives are really like.

Du #digital_labor derrière les requêtes Google (et de la politique salariale de cette dernière)

Google to Remove Private Medical Records From Search Results
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/google-now-scrubbing-private-medical-records-from-search-results

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has quietly started removing a new category of online content — personal medical records — from its search results, a departure from its typically hands-off approach to policing the web. Google lists the information it removes from its search results on its policy page. On Thursday, the website added the line : “confidential, personal medical records of private people.” A Google spokeswoman on Friday said that such information is only pulled when the company gets specific (...)

#Alphabet #Google #GoogleSearch #données #profiling #santé

##santé

Google begins removing private medical records from search results
▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/23/google-begins-removing-private-medical-records-from-search-results

Scrubbing medical records from search should help limit the damage caused by leaks, hacks and errors by medical institutions Google has started removing private medical records from its search results, after adjusting its policy regarding personal information. The change was made on Thursday to include the “confidential, personal medical records of private people” in the bracket of information Google may remove unprompted from search results. Other examples of such information include (...)

#Google #GoogleSearch #données #santé

##santé

Google ’faces €1bn-plus fine’ from EU over market dominance
▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/16/google-fine-eu-case-shopping-search-result

Tech giant could receive record penalty for favouring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages Google is reportedly facing a record-breaking fine from Brussels of more than €1bn (£875m) over alleged abuse of its market dominance. EU officials are expected to announce in the coming weeks that the tech giant has been guilty of manipulating its search engine results to favour its new Google Shopping service, which offers price comparisons on products. The unprecedented (...)

#Google #Shopping #domination #discrimination #procès

The Platform Press : How Silicon Valley reengineered #journalism - Columbia Journalism Review via @opironet
▻https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/platform-press-how-silicon-valley-reengineered-journalism.php

Avec une chronologie bien dense à la fin.

2000

October 23: Google AdWords launches.

2002

October 4—21: Harvard study finds 113 white nationalist, Nazi, anti-Semitic, and radical Islamic sites, and at least one fundamentalist Christian site, were removed from French and German Google listings.

2004

February 2: Facebook launches as a Harvard-only social network.

2006

January 23: Google News formally launches; had been in beta since September 2002.
January 25: Google launches Google.cn, adhering to China’s censorship policies until March 2010.
July 15: Twttr (later renamed Twitter) is released. “Tweets” can only be 140 characters.
September 5: Facebook News Feed launches and displays activity from a user’s network.
September 10: Google delists Inquisition21, a website seeking to challenge potentially incorrect child pornography convictions in the UK. Google implies the delisting is because Inquisition21 tried to manipulate search results.

2007

January 10: Facebook launches mobile site m.facebook.com.
April 16: Google’s Terms of Service unveiled, including provisions granting Google “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which [users] submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

2008

October 7: Apple launches iOS App Store.
October 22: Android OS Google Play store launches.
December 30: Facebook removes a photo of a mother breastfeeding babies, leading to protests.

2009

February 4: Facebook’s Terms of Service altered to remove the automatic expiry of Facebook’s license to use individuals’ names, likenesses, and images if an account was deleted.
February 24: WhatsApp, a mobile messaging app company, is founded, and the app is released in May of 2009.

2010

January 14: Links to Encyclopedia Dramatica’s “Aboriginal” article removed from Google after complaint; Google defended decision on grounds that the content represented a violation of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act.
March 22: Google announces it will no longer adhere to Chinese censorship policies by redirecting Chinese users to its Hong Kong domain.
October 6: Instagram, a photo-based social network, is released.
October 21: News Corporation axes “Project Alesia,” a potential competitor to Google News, over concerns about cost and readiness of proposed partners.

2011

September 26: Snapchat, a mobile app for disappearing messages, is released.
October 12: iOS Apple Newsstand app to read a variety of publications is released.
November 2: Twitter begins to “curate” results on its timeline.

2012

February 16: Facebook’s internal “Abuse Standards” leaked, including policy to filter out content containing images of maps of Kurdistan and of burning Turkish flags.
March 1: Fundamental rewrite of Google’s Terms of Service, adding rights for Google to “use, host, [and] store” any content submitted by users.
April 9: Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion.
May 31: Google launches a feature that informs Chinese users which keywords are censored. (The feature is removed in early December.)

2013

January 19: After backlash, Instagram scales back earlier announcement on changing Terms of Use to allow for selling user data.
June 20: Announcement that video is coming to Instagram
October 1: Canadian photographer Petra Collins’ Instagram account deleted because of a selfie which displayed visible pubic hair beneath her bikini bottom; challenged by Collins as it did not break Instagram’s terms.
October 3: Snapchat Stories, a compilation of “snaps” a user’s friends see, launches.
November 11: Update to Google’s Terms of Service, clarifying how profile name and photo might appear in Google products.
November 20: Android OS Google Play Newsstand app to read a variety of publications launches.

2014

January 30: Facebook launches Paper, an effort at personalized news, and Trending.
February 19: WhatsApp bought by Facebook for $19 billion.
April 1: Algorithm introduced on Instagram to tailor the “Explore”/“Popular” tab to each user.
April 14: Update to Google’s Terms of Service, including provision to automatically analyze content such as emails when content is sent, received, and stored.
April 24: Launch of Facebook Newswire, powered by Storyful. While it was eventually folded, it allowed publishers to embed “newsworthy” content from Facebook into own material, use platform for newsgathering and storytelling.
May 19: In Russia, Twitter blocks pro-Ukrainian accounts following threats to bar the service if it did not delete tweets violating Russian law.
May 30: Google launches tool that enables Europeans to request “right to be forgotten” in response to ruling by European Court of Justice.
June 13: Google ordered by Canadian court to remove search results that linked to websites of Datalink, which sold technology alleged to have been stolen from a competitor.
June 17: Snapchat Our Story, a public Story aggregating many users’ activity around an event launches.
June 23: Facebook News Feed algorithm altered to increase priority of video.
July 15: Geofilters on Snapchat are released.
July 25: Twitter blocks an account belonging to @boltai, a hacker collective that leaked internal Kremlin documents.
August 25: Facebook News Feed algorithm altered to reduce priority of clickbait.
October 22: German publishers concede defeat to Google in long-running dispute over attempt to charge license fees.
December 18: Google removes links to articles that criticized Australian organization Universal Medicine, an alleged cult.

2015

January 12: Instagram deletes account of Australian photo and fashion agency due to a photograph with pubic hair outside bikini bottoms. (Account reactivated January 21.)
January 20: Facebook News Feed algorithm altered to “show fewer hoaxes.”
January 21: WhatsApp Web launches.
January 27: Snapchat Discover launches. Selected publishers create a daily Discover channel, like a mini interactive magazine with an advertising revenue split arrangement where publishers can sell for 70 percent of revenue, or let Snapchat sell for 50 percent.
March 3: Instagram carousel ads launch.
March 9: Twitter acquires live streaming app Periscope.
March 31: Twitter rolls out Curator, which allows publishers to search and display tweets based on hashtags, keywords, location, and other specific details.
April 13: Snapchat gets rid of brand stories, also known as sponsored stories, after six months.
April 21: Facebook tweaks News Feed to emphasize family and friends because people are worried about “missing important updates.”
April 27: Snapchat hires Peter Hamby from CNN and announces plans to hire more journalists for the election.
April 27: Google announces Digital News Initiative with eight European publishers.
May 7: Facebook releases internal research on filter bubbles that finds “most people have friends who claim an opposing political ideology, and that the content in peoples’ News Feeds reflect those diverse views.”
May 7: Snapchat will charge advertisers 2 cents per view for ten second ads in between Discover slides (up to four slots) and during videos. This plan is called Two Pennies. It was previously 15 cents.
May 12: Facebook announces Instant Articles, faster loading articles on Facebook for iPhone,and original launch partners. Ads are embedded in article, and there is a 70/30 revenue share with publishers if Facebook sells the ad.
June 8: Apple News app announced to replace the Newsstand app. Like Facebook Instant Articles, a 70/30 revenue share with publishers if Apple sells ads against their content.
June 15: Facebook’s News Feed algorithm updated to prioritize time spent on a story above engagement.
June 22: Google News Lab announced to support technological collaborations with journalists.
June 23: Instagram changes Explore to allow users to follow real-time news more easily by sorting by location and recency.
July 1: Automatic bans imposed on Facebook accounts using an offensive slang term for Russians. Similar Russian insults towards Ukrainians (such as ‘hohol’) were not deleted.
July 27: Snapchat axes Yahoo! and Warner Music from Discover, replaces them with BuzzFeed and iHeartRadio.
Late July: Snapchat’s ad team starts selling against Discover.
August 5: Facebook Live video launches for public figures.
August 27: Snapchat Discover expands from 12 to 15 partners. In the past, they cut old partners to add new ones so all 12 fit on one screen.
September 9: Using the Facebook ad platform technology, Instagram’s advertising platform expands globally, allows for more targeting and ad format flexibility.
September 22: Facebook allows publishers to create Instant Articles in their own content management systems.
September 23: Facebook releases 360 video. Users can move their phones for a spherical view within a video.
October 6: Twitter Moments, curated tweets around top stories, launches.
October 7: Google announces Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project, which will allow publishers’ stories to load more quickly from search results.
October 21: Twitter announces partnerships with firms such as Spredfast, Wayin, Dataminr, ScribbleLive, and Flowics at its developer conference.
October 22: Google announces it has signed up over 120 news organizations for its Digital News Initiative, including the BBC, The Economist, and Der Spiegel.
October 27: Twitter announces it will discontinue video-sharing app Vine.
October 28: Snapchat Terms of Service updated: requests right to reproduce, modify, republish, and save users’ photos, specifically in relation to Live Stories.
October 29: Instagram allows businesses to use Facebook’s Ads Manager and to run campaigns across Facebook and Instagram.
October 31: Instagram conducts its first video curation for Halloween.
November 10: Instagram partner program launches; a group of 40 adtech, content marketing, and community management companies that work to help businesses on Instagram.
November 11: Facebook Notify, a real-time notification news app, is launched.
November 13: Snapchat launches Official Stories, Stories from verified brands or influencers.
November 23: Snapchat launches Story Explorer, which allows users to focus on a specific moment from a story, but from additional users and perspectives.
November 30: Snapchat allows publishers to deep link back to Snapchat content from elsewhere, like other social platforms.
December 3: Facebook releases Live video to the public.
December 9: Facebook tweaks News Feed so it works with poor connections, like 2G. Facebook also allows publishers to sell Instant Article ad campaigns instead of having to make those ads part of their own site package, to have one ad for every 350 words of an Instant Article (up from one ad per 500 words), and to control link outs at bottom of Instant Articles.
December 2: Snapchat makes a Story for live/breaking news during San Bernardino.
December 9: Google announces AMP rollout timeline; pages will go live in February.
December 15: German government strikes deal with outlets who agree to delete hate speech from their sites within 24 hours, in response to increasing racism online.

2016

January 5: Digiday reports that Snapchat, up to 23 Discover partners, is rumored to be building their own ad interface API, like Facebook, to target ads to users instead of publications.
January 11: Instagram publishes its first live video curation for the Golden Globes.
January 19: Nielsen expands Twitter TV Ratings to include Facebook conversations around TV shows, called Social Content Ratings.
January 21: Facebook opens Audience Optimization to publishers to target specific readers.
January 26: The Facebook Audience Network can be used by publishers to sell ads on their mobile sites.
January 26: Apple plans to make subscription-only content available in the News app; publishers can only post free articles or excerpts that drive people to subscribe.
January 27: Facebook reveals forthcoming “reactions” in the US, which had already been tested elsewhere in the world.
January 28: Facebook Live expands to all iPhone users.
January 28: Snapchat launches a show called “Good Luck America” with Peter Hamby.
February 4: WhatsApp increases group chat user limit to 256 people, aiming to increase enterprise appeal, including to publishers.
February 9: Google AMP announces solutions for subscription-supported publications, and Adobe Analytics integration.
February 10: Twitter changes algorithm to make sure users see tweets they are likely to care about.
February 10: On Instagram, publishers can now see video views and can do account switching. Instagram hits 200,000 advertisers, and 75 percent are outside of the US.
February 12: Reports that Snapchat will let users subscribe to Discover channels and that it will go from logo button to magazine cover look by May.
February 24: Google AMP articles go live.
February 25: Snapchat partners with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings to measure, transparently, the effectiveness of ad campaigns.
February 26: Facebook Live rolled out to all Android users.
February 28: Snapchat Live Stories, beginning with the Oscars, will be viewable on the web for special occasions.
March 1: Facebook changes algorithm to prioritize Live Video, especially Live video that is broadcasting.
March 15: Instagram announces that starting in May users’ feeds will be algorithmically driven, instead of real-time.
March 15: Apple News app opens to all publishers.
March 24: On Facebook, publishers can see daily activity around a video.
March 29: Snapchat Terms of Service updated to add the potential to incorporate third-party links and search results in Snapchat services.
March 31: Facebook creates option for publishers to autoplay and non-autoplay video ads in Instant; can have pre-roll video ads in any editorial video; and can have one more ad unit at the base of articles.
April 5: Twitter announces live video deal to stream NFL games, and begins pushing for live video deals with publishers.
April 7: Facebook allows Live Video within groups and events, live reactions from viewers, live filters, the ability to watch live with friends, a live map, and also live video in trending and search.
April 8: Branded content will be allowed as Facebook Instant Articles with the sponsor tagged.
April 12: Facebook makes several announcements at F8 that are relevant to publishers: the Live video API will be open for publishers who want to experiment/innovate; Instant Articles is open to all publishers; publishers will be able to use messenger bots to distribute stories.
April 21: Facebook tweaks the algorithm to focus on articles people are likely to spend time viewing.
April 28: Twitter moves to the News category in the Apple app store.
May 9: Gizmodo reveals details that Facebook’s Trending Topics is actively curated by people who “suppressed” conservative news.
May 12: Facebook releases a 28-page internal document outlining guidelines for staff curating Trending Topics, in response to media reporting suggesting potential bias.
May 19: Instagram adds video to carousel ads.
May 23: Facebook’s general counsel responds to Congress Republicans concerned about bias with a letter; the previous week, Facebook’s legal team met with Chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee John Thune.
May 24: Instagram adds media buying as fourth advertising partner category.
May 24: Facebook says it will revise the way it curates its Trending topics section, including no longer using external websites to validate a story’s importance.
May 24: Twitter announces changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters.
May 26: Facebook allows for their Audience Network to be used for ads to be seen off-Facebook, a move seen as competitive with Google.
June 2: Facebook Notify is shut down.
June 2: Google AMP launches in France, Germany, Italy, UK, Russia, and Mexico.
June 7: Google announces preliminary results from AMP showing that 80 percent of publishers are seeing higher viewability and 90 percent are seeing higher engagement.
Between June 6 and 12: Intel becomes the first brand to publish content directly to Instant Articles.
June 9: Facebook launches 360 photo. Users can move their phones for a spherical view within a photo.
June 16: Snapchat announces an online magazine called Real Life.
June 21: Twitter Engage launches, allowing for better insights and data. Also, the length of user video is increased from 30 to 140 seconds.
June 22: The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook has made deals worth more than $50 million with 140 video creators, including publishers, to use Live, since those partnerships were first announced in March.
June 29: Facebook’s algorithm changes to place further emphasis on family and friends and on creating a feed that will “inform” and “entertain.”
July 6: Snapchat introduces Memories.
July 14: Facebook Instant Articles can be posted to Messenger.
July 19: Google announces AMP for ads, to bring ads to the same load time as AMP articles.
July 11—12: Twitter announces multiple live video deals, including with CBS, Wimbledon, and Bloomberg.
August 2: Instagram Stories launches. A compilation of updates a user’s friends see; a Snapchat Stories clone.
August 4: Facebook tweaks the News Feed to reduce clickbait.
August 9: Facebook blocks ad blockers.
August 11: Facebook’s News Feed is modified to place emphasis on “personally informative” items.
August 26: Facebook Trending becomes fully algorithmically driven.
August 27: Apple changes its Spotlight feature so that articles open in-app, hurting publishers.
September 7: Snapchat axes Local Stories.
September 8: Google releases a study of more than 10,000 mobile domains showing that speed matters for engagement and revenue.
September 12: Twitter announces a live streaming partnership with Cheddar.
September 15: Publishers can sell subscriptions within the Apple News app; Apple keeps 30 percent of subscriptions made through the app, and 15 percent of renewals.
September 15: Improvements are made to call to action button on Instagram ads to make them more visible; with video, though, the destination URL opens first within Instagram with the video continuing to play at the top.
September 20: All Google search results, not just the carousel, now show AMP pages.
September 23: Snapchat announces Spectacles and becomes Snap, Inc.
September 29: Twitter opens Moments to everyone.
September 30: Updates to Google AMP so it better supports a variety of ad sizes.
October 12: Facebook also allows for additional ad formats for publishers in Instant Articles.
October 17: Signal, for newsgathering on Facebook, will include a Live Video column.
October 18: Snapchat switches from a revenue sharing arrangement with publishers on Discover to an up-front licensing arrangement.
October 20: Facebook allows 360 photo and video within Instant Articles.
October 28: Facebook rolls out a voting planner for users where they can view and save the initiatives and candidates they will select.
November 10: Instagram introduces ability to add “see more” links to Instagram Stories.
November 11: After controversy, Facebook will curb ethnic affinity marketing by advertisers focused on, for example, credit or housing, who target users based on whether Facebook has determined they are likely Latino or Asian American, for example.
November 11: Facebook buys CrowdTangle, which is used by publishers for analytics.
November 11: Vertical ads are allowed on Instagram.
November 16: Facebook will work with more third parties to ensure the integrity of their metrics after they miscounted publisher performance.
November 19: In response to post-election pressure, Mark Zuckerberg addresses Facebook’s role in fake news.
November 21: Instagram Stories introduces Live Stories for live video streaming.
November 22: To be allowed into China, Facebook built a censorship tool into its platform.
December 5: Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube partner to address terrorism content online.
December 5: In an effort to combat misinformation, Facebook prompts users to report “misleading language.”
December 5: Google updates its search bar so that there is no longer an autocomplete that reads “are Jews evil.”
December 12: Facebook launches Live 360 video. Users can have a spherical view of live video.
December 14: Facebook begins talks with video producers and TV studios for original content.
December 20: Facebook launches Live Audio. Allows for formats like news radio.
December 22: Business Insider reports that Twitter inadvertently inflated video ad metrics.

2017

January 9: Recode reports that Facebook will allow mid-roll video ads, with 55 percent of revenue going to publishers.
January 11: Facebook announces the Facebook Journalism Project, to work with publishers on product rollouts, storytelling formats, promotion of local news, subscription models, training journalists, and, on the fake news front, collaborating with the News Literacy Project and fact checking organizations. On the same day, TechCrunch reports Facebook agrees to censor content in Thailand at government’s request.
January 11: Instagram Stories will now have ads, and insights are increased, as the platform hits 150 million users.
January 12: Snapchat releases a universal search bar.
January 17: News that Facebook will end Live video deals with publishers in favor of longer more premium video.
January 19: Snapchat will allow ad targeting using third-party data.
January 23: Snapchat updates publisher guidelines: content must be fact checked and cannot be risqué, and will offer some an “age gate” and will require graphic content warnings.
January 24: Instagram makes Live Stories available globally.
January 25: News that Facebook begins testing Stories, like those on Instagram and Snapchat, at the top of the mobile app in Ireland. Facebook also updates Trending to show publisher names, identify trends by number of publishers and not engagement on a single post, and show everyone in a region the same content. In Thailand and Australia, Facebook will have ads like the ones that are in News Feed inside of Messenger.
January 25: Recode reports that more than 200 publishers have been banned from Google’s AdSense network in an effort to combat fake news.
January 26: Facebook’s News Feed algorithm will reward publishers/videos that keep people watching and mid-roll ads won’t play until 90 seconds.
January 26: Twitter’s Explore tab will allow users to see trends, Moments, Live, and search.
January 30: Twitter’s VP of engineering announces an effort to combat harassment.
January 30: Snapchat announces IPO.
January 31: Facebook updates the algorithm to prioritize “authentic” content and will surface posts around real-time/breaking news. Facebook also announces new and expanded partnerships with Nielsen, ComScore, DoubleVerify (for a total of 24 third-party entities) to give better insights into performance of ads.
February 1: Instagram introduces Albums feature in limited release. Widespread release later in the month.
February 2: Snapchat IPO documents show that media partners were paid $58 million, and that Snap-sold ad revenue was 91 percent.
February 6: Google allows for AMP articles URL to indicate the publisher’s name and not just Google.
February 6: News surfaces that a Syrian refugee identified as a terrorist pursues legal action against Facebook on grounds of “fake news.”
February 7: Twitter continues efforts to combat harassment and improve quality, by “stopping the creation of new abusive accounts, bringing forward safer search results, and collapsing potentially abusive or low-quality Tweets.”
February 8: News surfaces that French publishers complain of effort required for anti-fake news partnership with Facebook.
February 10: Facebook further pushes for transparency around ads and says it will allow for a third-party audit.
February 13: The Washington Post joins Snapchat Discover as Discover shifts to allow for breaking news.
February 13: TechCrunch reports that Twitter will reduce its support for ad products that are not drawing advertisers.
February 14: Facebook announces an app for Apple TV and Amazon Fire that will allow people to watch Facebook videos on their TVs.
February 14: Autoplay videos on Facebook will play with sound.
February 14: Google pulls two anti-Semitic sites off its ad platform.
February 16: Mark Zuckerberg writes a nearly 6,000 word manifesto, “Building Global Community,” on the future of Facebook and global civil society.
February 17: Facebook invites media companies to its offices to talk about products to come throughout the year.
February 20: Facebook allows users to send photos and videos from the in-app camera.
February 20: WhatsApp launches Snapchat clone, Status.
February 23: Mid-roll video ads begin on Facebook, following an announcement in January.

#journalisme
#médias_sociaux

Non, on n’a certainement pas encore touché le fond avec ces histoires de fake news. Continuons à creuser : Facebook and Google make lies as pretty as truth - How AMP and Instant Articles camouflage fake news
▻http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/6/13850230/fake-news-sites-google-search-facebook-instant-articles

The fake news problem we’re facing isn’t just about articles gaining traffic from Facebook timelines or Google search results. It’s also an issue of news literacy — a reader’s ability to discern credible news. And it’s getting harder to tell on sight alone which sites are trustworthy. On a Facebook timeline or Google search feed, every story comes prepackaged in the same skin, whether it’s a months-long investigation from The Washington Post or completely fabricated clickbait.

While feed formatting isn’t anything new, platforms like Google AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, and Apple News are also further breaking down the relationship between good design and credibility. In a platform world, all publishers end up looking more similar than different. That makes separating the real from the fake even harder.

A Visual Search Engine for the Aerial Patterns of Cities

▻http://hyperallergic.com/301858/a-visual-search-engine-for-the-aerial-patterns-of-cities

Terrapattern, developed at the Carnegie Mellon Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, is the first open-access visual search tool for satellite imagery. It is currently available for Pittsburgh, San Francisco, New York City, Detroit, Austin, Miami, and Berlin. This means you may scan these cities’ landscapes for common forms of your particular interest that are not conventionally labelled on a map: circular backyard pools or cul-de-sacs, perhaps, or even dilapidated nautical wrecks. All you have to do is find the tile of topography that intrigues you, and dozens of search results of similar views will arrive courtesy of machine learning algorithms trained to sift through images from OpenStreetMap. You can then export these images as a geographic text file.

http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/pools-in-pittsburgh.png http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/tennis.jpg http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/detroit-768x512.jpg http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/waves.jpg http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/culdesacs.jpg

Google uses its own deep learning chip for artificial intelligence (AI)

▻https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/05/Google-supercharges-machine-learning-tasks-with-custom-chi

Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), a custom ASIC we built specifically for machine learning — and tailored for #TensorFlow.

We’ve been running TPUs inside our data centers for more than a year, and have found them to deliver an order of magnitude better-optimized performance per watt for machine learning.

[...]

TPU is tailored to machine learning applications, allowing the chip to be more tolerant of reduced computational precision, which means it requires fewer transistors per operation. Because of this, we can squeeze more operations per second into the silicon, use more sophisticated and powerful machine learning models and apply these models more quickly, so users get more intelligent results more rapidly. A board with a TPU fits into a hard disk drive slot in our data center racks.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pv1QyUVlX20/Vz_iPo-qnQI/AAAAAAAACq8/mgLCTGT5M3QeM4nHZZBeiZp78GmuTWYowCLcB/s640/tpu.png

TPUs already power many applications at Google, including RankBrain, used to improve the relevancy of search results and Street View, to improve the accuracy and quality of our maps and navigation. AlphaGo was powered by TPUs in the matches against Go world champion, Lee Sedol, enabling it to “think” much faster and look farther ahead between moves.

#Google faces record €3b fine from European Commission : Report | ZDNet
▻http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-faces-record-3b-fine-from-european-commission-report

Google is facing a record antitrust fine of around €3 billion from the European Commission in the coming weeks, British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph has reported.

The European Union has accused Google of promoting its shopping service in internet searches at the expense of rival services in a case that has dragged on since late 2010.

Several people familiar with the matter told Reuters last month that they believed after three failed attempts at a compromise in the past six years, Google now had no plans to try to settle the allegations unless the EU watchdog changed its stance.

The Sunday Telegraph cited sources close to the situation as saying that officials planned to announce the fine as early as next month, but that the bill has not yet been finalised.

Google will also be banned from continuing to manipulate search results to favour itself and harm rivals, the newspaper said.

Google Censors Searches Involving Israeli Double Agent, Boris Krasny
▻http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2015/12/07/google-censors-searches-involving-israeli-double-agent-boris-kra

Israel’s democracy watchdog, 7th Eye, reports that Google’s Israel subsidiary, Google.co.il, is censoring search results related to Boris Krasny, the Israeli double agent originally recruited by the KGB in the 1970s. Krasny exploited his status as a Soviet agent in Israel to betray Russia’s longest-serving and most valuable spy in Israel, Marcus Klingberg. Neither of these facts, based on original reporting first published here, may be reported by the Israeli media. In fact, Globes credited me by name for reporting the story (without mentioning my blog name, Krasny’s name, or linking to my stories) and the military censor forced the removal of the article. An earlier 7th Eye article by the same reporter didn’t even mention my name. It attributed reports about Krasny’s identity to “foreign bloggers.”

But this new development is both ominous and (almost) unprecedented. As 7th Eye describes it, multiple searches involving Krasny’s name displayed messages noting that the results had been censored due to a “legal request”.

Predict your future - #google Fortunetelling
▻http://betagoogle.com

With our latest addition to Google we try to experiment with fortune-telling. Based on your previous search results and your profile, we try to make a good prediction of your future.(Permalink)