Following employee protests at Google and Microsoft over government contracts, workers at Amazon are circulating an internal letter to CEO Jeff Bezos, asking him to stop selling the company’s Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement and to boot the data-mining firm Palantir from its cloud services.
The New York state Senate failed to vote on a revenge porn bill on Wednesday, and those advocating for the legislation blame Google and a tech lobbyist group for pressuring lawmakers to abandon it in the final hour.
Google faced a bunch of uproar from employees after it was revealed the company was offering its artificial intelligence tools to the Pentagon for a drone project. Now, after deciding not to renew the contract, the company is getting pressure from the other side as lawmakers are pressing Google over its relationship…
Mobile app subscriptions are usually a pain in the ass to cancel, but Google is doing its part to make it slightly easier to get out of the fees with its new Subscriptions Center. The feature, announced at Google I/O earlier this year, rolled out to most Android users Wednesday.
Lovers of quality audio content you’re probably not paying for, rejoice. Google has finally released its own Google Podcasts app, providing users a dedicated place to enjoy their shows, find personalized recommendations, and soon take advantage of upcoming accessibility features. It’s also one of the few Android-only…
A couple months ago, Google announced that it would be suspending development of yet another messaging app to focus on Android Messages and to help carriers adopt Chat, a new messaging protocol based on RCS that should make texting a whole lot better.
Google Translate is a useful tool for some quick and easy translations, but a federal judge in Kansas ruled this week that the machine translation service isn’t good enough to allow a person to consent to a police search.
Google, seemingly aware that people are unnerved by just how much ad networks know about us, today said it’s refining how it lets you control what ads you see. The company has updated its ad personalization settings page, and in the process, has kindly reminded us that it’s easy to turn off personalized ads altogether.
Both Google and Apple have started the long tease ahead of new software updates in the fall, with Android P and iOS 12 now available to users who are brave enough to take the plunge (and have a developer account, in Apple’s case). So which beta software looks most promising and gets us most excited? Here’s how they…
Google’s laptop-tablet hybrid Pixelbook has been given high praise by critics and users for its functionality and design, but the device suffers from one critical flaw: It runs Chrome OS, Google’s own, underpowered operating system. New reports suggest that may change soon, as Google is supposedly exploring the…
Translation apps can be incredibly useful tools when you need quick guidance on translating a phrase or word from one language to another. But tools like Google Translate often fall short when you’re traveling and can’t get online.
Facebook has been on the receiving end of a lot of government scrutiny in recent months, but it looks like Google’s turn is coming soon. According to a report from Politico, the European Commission is preparing to hand down its decision on an antitrust investigation into the search giant’s Android mobile operating…
Google is committing to not using artificial intelligence for weapons or surveillance after employees protested the company’s involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage. However, Google says it will continue to work with the United States military…
Google will not seek to renew its artificial intelligence contract with the Department of Defense after it expires next year, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene told employees last week. But despite the revelation that the contract has an end date, the pushback against it continues—within the company and externally.
It’s becoming clear that online companies can do some of the hard things they’ve fought against tooth and nail—they just have to be forced to do it, although they apparently won’t prepare ahead of time. Case in point: Google has paused the sale of political ads in Washington state while it gets itself in line with…
On Monday, Google’s Play Store released a standalone app version of Lens, its machine learning-powered tool for identifying objects captured by a device’s camera that comes integrated into the company’s search engine and virtual Assistant.
It was an exciting week here at Gizmodo, where senior editor Jennings Brown launched our first investigative podcast—a deep dive into one of the darkest spiritual movements on the internet—and senior reporter Kate Conger capped off nearly three months of reporting on Google’s work on Project Maven, a Pentagon program…
If you’re an Android user, grab your phone, pull up Google’s Search app or Google Assistant, and type “the1975..com” into the search bar to see a bizarre and recently discovered bug that will show your most recent text messages.
Google will not seek another contract for its controversial work providing artificial intelligence to the U.S. Department of Defense for analyzing drone footage after its current contract expires.
Recently, if you searched for the California Republican Party on Google, you might have read that the political party’s ideologies included conservatism, market liberalism, and nazism. The latter listing has since been removed, and Google is blaming the results on Wikipedia “vandalism.”