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Google Plans to Spend $13 Bn for its Expansion in 24 Out of 50 US States

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The Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, announced on Wednesday that Google is planning to expand in various new locations in the U.S. The CEO broke the news through a blog post where he described that Google plans to invest in multiple data centres and offices.

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The news can be a good one for the citizens of the US, as this expansion of Google’s data centres and offices will generate more job opportunities for them. Currently, the company has only revealed the names of the cities, including Nebraska, Nevada, and Oklahoma, and the expansion will take place in 24 different states and 13 communities. In this expansion, even the construction work will generate over 10,000 construction jobs.

In the blog-post, Pichai wrote, “With this new investment, Google will now have a home in 24 total states, including data centres in 13 communities. 2019 marks the second year in a row we’ll be growing faster outside of the Bay Area than in it.”

The announcement is considered as the result of the criticism, that Google faced, in the past few years. Google was criticised about the fact that it is not contributing to the US economy, as much as the company of the previous era used to.

In this regard, last year, the company invested over $9 billion on the facilities and this year Google has planned to invest over $13 billion on the new offices and the data centres.

“Our expansion across the U.S. has been crucial to finding great new talent, improving the services that people use every day, and investing in our business,” Pichai wrote in the post. He said this will be the second year in a row that Google will grow “faster outside of the Bay Area than in it.”

Google is not the only Silicon Valley tech giant, which is expanding to the other parts of the US, but companies like Apple and Amazon are also crossing the boundaries. Apple is also investing $1 billion in new offices in Austin to spread its growing workforce across the U.S., such that the expansion may lead to over 15,000 new jobs. On the other hand, Amazon, too, is planning to open its new offices in New York City and Virginia, as well as is looking for a good location for its second headquarter in the US.

Gmail Will Now Block 100 Million More Spam Messages Every Day Using TensorFlow

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Going to the spam folder and deleting the Spam emails in the Gmail inbox is a regular thing for everyone, and it sometimes is quite annoying when you have to check whether any important mail isn’t there in the spam folder and you can’t simply delete all the emails directly.

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Image Source: gadgetryblog.com

Well, Google already has made various AI programs that according to Google are blocking 99.9 per cent spam. But even then we see many Spam emails in our inboxes.

Last week, Google rolled out the Material Theme for Gmail on Android, featuring company’s latest styling and a few other features. Google has just announced that the new Material Theme is also helping Google’s machine learning models TensorFlow, to block 100 million more spam messages, which will be targeting the remainder 0.1 per cent of the spam.

Gmail, at present, is serving over 1 billion-plus user and blocking 100 million spam messages every day may not help much, but it does not seem bad either. As even the company has built robust programs to block those spam messages, few of them slips through the Gmail’s protection.

From many years, the company has been using the rule-based algorithm to control the spam. The rule-based algorithms are set to follow some specifications in order to block the spam messages, leaving loopholes for the spam. Whereas the new machine learning framework will help it identify the spam based on new patterns. The ML framework uses the algorithms that identifies patterns in large datasets and offer personalized spam protections to account for users.

TensorFlow is an open-source machine learning framework, which was developed by Google in 2015. According to Google, integrating TensorFlow into Gmail will also allow it to better personalize spam filters, and besides spam, the framework may also help in preventing phishing, and malware from reaching inboxes.

Google is Working on Apple-Inspired Face ID Authentication & Privacy Protections

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Android Pie is still not available on all the Android Smartphones, and Google is all set to launch its another mobile operating system, i.e. Android Q. There have been various guesses about the release date and the features of this new Android OS, and last week the XDA Developers, also, published its findings through the leaked AOSP build of Android Q.

Android Q
Image Source: YouTube

The code obtained by the XDA developers includes various methods, classes and strings that reveals that the new OS may have the facial recognition. Even being late for the fingerprint technology on the iPhones, Apple was the first who introduced the face recognition technology on them. Now, along with the other guesses, this piece of code clearly shows that Google is all set to catch up with its rival company on the face recognition technique.

Although Android already has got a 2D-based “Trusted Face” face scanning-based authentication support, Android doesn’t offer any native hardware support. The new feature will be a secure biometric authentication feature similar to Apple’s Face ID.

Apple uses a depth sensing system, that projects a structured light from a dot project in order to recognise the user’s face. An array of 30,000 dots projected through True Depth, in a known pattern using a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) module, is processed and compared with the resulting image against secure reference data.

Mishaal Rahman, specially indicated towards the code it found related to facial identification on the XDA-Developers Portal site, writing, “dozens of strings and multiple methods, classes and fields related to facial recognition in the framework, SystemUI and Settings APKs”.

The Smartphone companies including Huawei and Xiaomi, already have incorporated the suitable hardware for such technology, but as they are using the Android OS on them, they were not able to make use of the hardware, until now.

The findings also indicated towards the new Android Q having better privacy for users, especially, involving the clipboard permissions. Usually, the apps can access a user’s clipboard, even having the most sensitive information on them, but now, the OEM may prevent the apps to access the information on the clipboard without permission.

Google Reveals its 2019 I/O Conference Dates Through a Fun Puzzle

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Google has admitted that it is going to organise its upcoming I/O 2019 Developer’s conference at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California from May 7 to May 9. Like every other year, the company is all set to showcase its new products and innovations at the conference.

On January 25, the company twitted a puzzle, an cryptic, 12-line block of a tweet along with a URL and an enigmatic video, having the narration for the tweet in it, from Google’s Google Developers Twitter account. The tweet hid the date and the venue of the event for the Twitterati, such that the netizens would decode it, like every other year.

Google, every year, put up such fun, puzzle tweets so that the netizens will do some brainstorming and find out the details about the I/O events.

Although a Twitter user, named Till Kottman, took only a few hours to solve the puzzle after the tweet was uploaded. Kottman spotted an early tweet from a now-deleted account, @internaltest189, that had posted a JSON code and had hidden Google I/O event dates in it.

After Kottman tweeted the right dates, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, also tweeted regarding the same confirming the dates and the venue of the event.

Although, the date and the place for the event are not much of surprise for people, as last year too, the conference held at the same place and during the first two weeks of the same month. Most of the times, the conference’s dates have been ensuring the same time of the month.

Last year, the company came across with its new OS, Android P, in beta, improved Google News, and even revealed its Duplex AI project, in the event. Google has not given any hints on what it may unveil on the conference, but we already have got an idea about a few things including the Android’s next emphasis, the Android Q, an updated Google Assistant, Google Lens, Maps, and News, etc.

The company is also anticipated to reveal the Pixel devices including, Pixel 3 Lite and Pixel 3 XL Lite. Google might also discuss its controversial Duplex project in the event.

France Fines Google €50 Million Upon Failing the GDPR Directives

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Due to the data breach allegations, 2018, proved to be an unfavourable year for tech giants like Google and Facebook. Now again Google is having troubles with the same issues as French regulators have fined Google nearly US $57 million for violating Europe’s tough new data-privacy rules.

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Image Source: marketingland.com

This is the first time when the European regulator has put such a huge amount as fine to a U.S. giant company since the regionwide regulations took effect last year.

CNIL, France’s top data-privacy agency, reported that Google has failed the tough new regulations, that were implemented last year in May, resulting in major data violation. It also said that Google was unable to explain how and why it was collecting the users’ data, and how the users could control the permissions.

Although seemingly, the amount looks huge, according to the GDPR rules, for a more serious offence, the fine will be maximum of four per cent of the annual global turnover of the offender.

A spokesperson form Google said, “People expect high standards of transparency and control from us. We’re deeply committed to meeting those expectations and the consent requirements of the GDPR”.

Soon after the GDPR regulations came into effect last May, two advocacy groups lodged complaints against Google, saying that it is difficult to understand and manage the preferences on how Google is using their personal information.

To file the complaint, almost 10,000 members from France’s Quadrature du Net group had signed an agreement against Google’s data consent policies. The None Of Your Business group also complained upon the tech giant against the forced consent its apps and software put on the users.

Since GDPR has been applied to the web, every tech company need to follow the same in order to run their services in the European region. Having faced a number of data breach charges last year, Google has been working on its data privacy regulations. Even though this time again it has failed the same to some extent, the company still has time to rectify these violations.

Google Assistant’s Expansion to Reach 1B Devices By the End of January

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The CES 2019 is already started, and even before Google’s real product launch in the conference, the company has made news with its announcement about the rolling out of Google Assistant, in more than a billion devices, by the end of January.

Google assistant

The google assistant is an AI assistant that runs on various Android and iOS devices, including the smart speaker, home hub, headphones, TV, smartwatches, etc. As of October 2018, the company introduced the same for the home gadgets and the home appliances such as dishwashers, oven, bulb, etc. According to the reports Google Assistant was already running on more than 500 million devices from 1000 different brands in May last year. And, for the last month, Google reported having over 900 million devices enabled with the Google Assistant.

It has been two years since Google Assistant was launched, in 2016, and following then Google is trying really hard to beat its rivals. In a revelation, Amazon has also reported that it sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices last year, making the competition further tougher for Google.

Google has also made some updates to the Google Assistant, along with the support for 22 new languages. From now on, it will also be available for 66 countries. It means, Google Assistant will be supporting 30 languages in total and will be actively working in 80 different countries.

There has been a significant change in the number of Google Assistant enabled devices since last January when the total number of users was over 400 million. The main reason behind the rising number of Google Assistant users may be the Android smartphones that also run the Google Assistant on them.

Manuel Bronstein, the Vice President of Google Assistant, said, “The biggest footprint right now is on the phones. On Android devices, we have a very, very big footprint.” Google Assistant has played a vital role in the growth of the company. Although the smartphone users may not be using the assistant actively, the home devices from Google are becoming really popular, and adopting the AI for its devices is really paying it off well.