Google Archives - Page 17 of 37

Google can soon read your doctor’s bad handwriting

Many doctors prescribe medication in haste, thereby making it almost impossible for their patients to comprehend what they intended to write. This issue has existed for decades, and many tech companies have repeatedly tried to fix it without much to no success. Google is now attempting to translate those difficult-to-understand texts.

On Monday, at its annual conference, Google announced that it is partnering with community pharmacies to explore ways to recognize doctor handwriting.

The feature, which is currently in research and not yet available to the public, enables users to either snap a picture of the prescribed medication or attach one from their photo library. After processing the image, the application senses and highlights the medications mentioned in the note, as demonstrated by a Google executive.

“This will act as an assistive technology for digitizing handwritten medical documents by augmenting the humans in the loop such as pharmacists, however no decision will be made solely based on the output provided by this technology,” the company said in a statement.
Source: techcrunch.com

Google for India is the firm’s annual conference in the South Asian business, where a variety of brand-new developments are showcased. The corporation also stated that it is working on a single, unified model that will comprise more than 100 Indian languages including both speech and text in order to enhance the internet journey of the incoming millions of South Asians.

It has nearly five hundred million users in India which makes it an important business for the firm. However, it has also been one of the toughest years for Google in the South Asian business, where it has been struck twice over the past months by India’s antitrust regulator.

“We’ve started working on the complex process of identifying what’s written on medical prescriptions by building an assistive model to digitize it, using AI, for medical healthcare professionals”, said by Google India in a statement.
Source: 9to5google.com

A similar type of technology has already been used in Google Lens, a multipurpose object recognition tool powered by Artificial Intelligence that can detect and recognize data and translate different languages. The Google Lens application can currently be used to virtually encode handwritten notes, though the feature varied depending on how easily readable the handwriting was.

Suhani Jain

I am a student pursuing my bachelor’s in information technology. I have a interest in writing so, I am working a freelance content writer because I enjoy writing. I also write poetries. I believe in the quote by anne frank “paper has more patience than person

Microsoft eyes “super app” to challenge Apple and Google’s dominance of mobile search

Microsoft wants to boost its mobile efforts with a new “super app” for the iPhone that combines a variety of features into a single app. According to The Information, Microsoft hopes that such an app will assist it in breaking into the mobile search market, which itself is dominated by Apple and Google as of now.

This one “super app” would integrate purchasing, texting, internet research, newsfeeds, and other features into a single iPhone and Android app.

According to the report, this would resemble a mobile strategy that has worked for Tencent, referring to the hugely popular WeChat app. WeChat, on the other hand, combines messaging, buying stuff, news articles, and various games into a single app.

The report goes on to say that it’s not clear “whether Microsoft will ultimately launch such an app,” but it’s something that’s been internally considered. Microsoft’s push to better integrate into mobile products is being led by CEO Satya Nadella, who is particularly focused on “pushing the Bing search engine to work better with other Microsoft mobile products.”
Source: 9to5mac.com

Due to a major multibillion-dollar agreement between Apple and Google, Microsoft’s Bing is at an obvious disadvantage on Apple platforms. Apple has made Google’s search engine the default on its every platform as a result of this agreement.

The Information reports that Microsoft has previously bid on this deal but has always been beaten out by Google. “The negotiations have typically taken place directly between Nadella and top Apple executives behind closed doors,” the report says. This leaves “many top Microsoft executives in the dark about the process.”
Source: 9to5mac.com

The Google-Apple deal, on the other hand, is coming under increasing antitrust scrutiny. According to the report, an agreement between Microsoft and Apple may not garner as much regulatory attention because Bing’s contribution to the web search market is tiny in comparison to Google’s.

However, there is currently no evidence that Microsoft intends to aggressively pursue a deal with Apple to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone. Instead, the company’s efforts are focused on enhancing Bing’s compatibility with current Microsoft services and considering the possibility of a super app.

Suhani Jain

Google to shut down Duplex AI for web

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Suhani Jain

Google has announced the disappearance of its Duplex on the Web service which is a tool powered by AI that was released in 2019 to assist users with a wide variety of online tasks such as purchasing airline tickets or improving the efficiency of the check-in process for flights on airline websites.

“Any automation features enabled by Duplex on the Web will no longer be supported after this date,” said the update.
“As we continue to improve the Duplex experience, we’re responding to the feedback we’ve heard from users and developers about how to make it even better,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch.
“By the end of this year, we’ll turn down Duplex on the Web and fully focus on making AI advancements to the Duplex voice technology that helps people most every day,” the spokesperson added.
Source: business-standard.com

The service was first officially confirmed at Google I/O 2019 as just an extension to its call-automation Duplex technology. As well as, while its use case was primarily limited to purchasing movie tickets, the facility subsequently expanded to also include data breach protection and check additional help or aid on e-commerce online sites.

Google has not clarified the reason why it is closing down the service, but as per TechCrunch, the cost of training and fine-tuning resource-intensive AI models might be the reason. Besides that, if website owners prevent the crawler from indexing their content, the performance of Duplex on the Web may decrease badly.

The company plans to invest less in improving Google Assistant and Google Assistant-powered services for non-Google devices.

Google positions it as an assistant that can aid you with mundane activities which include bookings and reservations, where it can contact the location and handle the bookings for you.

In 2019, Google introduced Duplex for the web which was an offshoot of the assistant which would assist you in filling out web application forms to make the user experience more seamless.

Suhani Jain

The Pixel 7 Finally Gets Its Free VPN in Google’s Latest Drop

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

At the “Made by Google” event earlier this year, Google unveiled the Pixel and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones. The company launched free VPN services for its mobile devices via the Google One app in addition to the flagship phones and the Pixel watch.

Despite all of the wonderful features the Pixel 7 offers, up until now, it hasn’t received some of the most highly anticipated abilities. The most recent Pixel release from Google contains some of the much-heralded features of the new Pixel 7 including a free VPN via Google One.

Google has finally provided private browsing after previewing it at its Pixel presentation in October. Users of the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will now get free, no-cost, subscription-free access to this VPN via the Google One app. Before this only users of Google’s $9.99/month 2TB subscription were permitted to use it.

One’s internet activity is encrypted and their IP address is hidden when using a VPN by Google One. A VPN offers users safety while utilizing a public network and also prevents location tracking. Users of the Google One application can select “Use VPN” to immediately protect their location and browsing history.

Apple offers a comparable solution for iPhones called Private Relay, but it isn’t free for iPhone 14 users and requires a membership to either its iCloud+ or Apple One services. Private Relay, however, only shields user traffic that travels through Apple’s own internet browser, Safari.

With the most recent version, the Recorder app now has speaker labels that will give people in the recording their own labels automatically. Additionally, the software will insert a line break anytime the speaker in transcriptions changes.

The devices will also have Clear Calling activated, which will aid in lowering background noise and enhancing human voice quality. Pixel 7 will be able to distinguish between several speakers and create line breaks when necessary when users record lectures or conferences.

Owners of Pixel Watches will receive Sleep Profiles, a Fitbit Premium feature, even if they aren’t subscribed to Fitbit Premium. To assess one’s sleep, this tool keeps track of ten distinct factors, including the length of your sleep, interruptions, and regularity of bedtime.

New additions for other Pixel smartphones are included in this Pixel drop as well. The upcoming single portal for privacy and security settings will feature action cards with tips on how to make your software as secure as possible.

In January, phones using the Pixel Buds Pro will also get spatial audio. Google noted, “you can also turn on spatial audio with wired headphones.”

In a subsequent update, Google confirmed that the Pixel Watch Fall Detection will arrive in 2023 and that the redesigned tiles for sunset/sunrise and favorite contacts would be available.

Google just unveiled a ranking of the top games and applications available in India’s Google Play Store. Quest has been named the “Best App of 2022” in this yearly update to Google’s top applications and games. While the battle royale game Apex Legends Mobile has been chosen as the “Best Game of 2022.”

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Google and Microsoft announce new pacts to use renewable energy in the data center

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

Both Microsoft and Google have made fresh commitments to use renewable sources of energy in their data centers, reducing the carbon impact of their IT operations.

Microsoft and Google have made new commitments to reduce the carbon footprint of their IT operations through the use of renewable sources of energy in their data centers. In order to power its facilities in the UK, Google has entered into a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the French utility company Engie for 100 MW of energy produced by the Moray West offshore wind farm.

According to Google, the new agreements would help the business to nearer to its goal of completely running its cloud regions and UK offices on carbon-free energy by 2030. According to Matt Brittin, president of Google EMEA, consumers in the UK and Europe are growing more concerned about energy sources and climate change.

He stated that Google has similar worries and thinks technology will be crucial in resolving the energy crisis by lowering emissions both internally and externally.

Microsoft, meanwhile, publicly disclosed PPAs in Ireland that encompass more than 900MW of brand-new renewable power capacity to operate its data centers there. Microsoft did not identify the providers for its renewable power contracts, but other media has named two of them as Statkraft of Norway and Energia Group of Ireland.

The energy is derived from a combination of solar and wind projects. The Redmond powerhouse predicted that by 2025, all of the energy used in its Irish data centers would be renewable and sourced from new initiatives backed by PPAs like these. Microsoft already agreed to a 20-year contract with AES Corporation to operate its data centers in California using renewable energy.

The action follows past agreements by both businesses to purchase US renewable energy. While Microsoft signed a 20-year agreement with AES Corporation earlier this year to supply renewable power to its data centers in California from a portfolio of 110MW solar and 55MW four-hour storage projects, Google struck a deal with SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy for 900MW of solar energy for a datacenter in Texas.

Although these initiatives have admirable goals, they won’t necessarily reduce the carbon emissions of these megacorps, particularly if they are growing more quickly than they are acquiring carbon credits or making investments in renewable energy.

For instance, Microsoft acknowledged in its sustainability reports report for 2021 that although its personal CO2 emissions had decreased by around 17% year over year, its carbon emissions had increased due to considerable expansion during the same time. Microsoft stated that in addition to growing its data centers to accommodate customers’ requirements, it has also increased its commitment to decreasing carbon use and assisting in the bigger climate change challenges.

The series of announcements is a boost for the commercial power purchase agreement (PPA) market in Europe, which wind and solar industry organizations claimed last month had experienced a year-over-year decrease during the first three quarters of 2022.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Google to pay $391M to settle Android location tracking lawsuit

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Suhani Jain

Google has consented to pay 391.5 million USD to settle an android location tracking lawsuit filed by an alliance of 40 U.S. attorneys general.

“For years Google has prioritized profit over their users’ privacy,” said Attorney General Rosenblum. “They have been crafty and deceptive. Consumers thought they had turned off their location tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers,” he said in a statement late on Monday.
Source: bleepingcomputer.com

According to the android location tracking lawsuit settlement, the United States Attorneys General found while investigating a 2018 Associated Press article that Google swindled Android users and monitored their locations ever since least 2014, even when they assumed location tracking was not active.

While Android users were deceived into believing that disabling “Location History” in the smartphone’s settings would deactivate location tracking, this other account setting, “Web & App Activity,” which has been enabled by default, allowed the company to collect, store, and utilize the customers’ personal information i.e. location data.

The agreement reached today also requires Google to implement extra user-friendly account control mechanisms and restricts the firm’s use and storage of certain types of location data.

Google will also be required to be transparent with its users about its location data tracking and collection practises, such as displaying extra details when location-related account settings are toggled and displaying detailed information about what data it harvests and how it is used.

“The company’s online reach enables it to target consumers without the consumer’s knowledge or permission,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said on Monday.

“However, the transparency requirements of this settlement will ensure that Google not only makes users aware of how their location data is being used, but also how to change their account settings if they wish to disable location-related account settings, delete the data collected and set data retention limits.”
Source: bleepingcomputer.com

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission fined Google 60 million USD in August for deceiving and obtaining location data from Australian Android users for approximately two years which was between January 2017 to December 2018, using the same strategy.

According to the ACCC, Google has taken corrective measures to address the problems that resulted in these financial penalties by 20 December 2018, with customers no longer being shown inaccurate information implying that resetting location history stops gathering data regarding their location.

In January 2022, France’s National Commission on Informatics and Liberty charged Google $170 million for infringing on internet users’ freedom of consent by making it difficult to reject website tracking the cookies by hiding that option under multiple clicks.

The firm was also charged 11.3 million USD in November 2021 for aggressive data collection, €220 million in June 2021 for choosing its services over competitors, 1.7 billion USD in March 2019 for anti-competitive practices in online advertising and $2.72 billion in June 2017 for misusing its high position in the market to manipulate search results.

Suhani Jain

Google

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