Researchers at Google and elsewhere have been having great success with self-driving cars. These cars have already driven hundreds of thousands of miles without being controlled by a human driver. It seems inevitable that self-driving cars will become ubiquitous within a couple of decades. How will this change the world? The first effect of the [more...]
When Google announced their Knol service in December 2007, it was clear that Google had high hopes for the project. It was announced by Udi Manber, Google’s Vice-President of Engineering, as a place for named writers to share “units of knowledge”, in the form of authoritative articles called knols. It was Google’s hope that when [more...]
Google launched their Chrome browser in 2009, to many people’s surprise. The following questions and answers were posted to Knol at the time, to address some of the misunderstandings that accompanied the launch. Obviously, the current version of Google Chrome differs from the version at launch. Is Google’s Chrome Browser based on Mozilla? No, it’s [more...]
Google Answers was a Question and Answer service operated by Google Inc. Customers could post a question and select a price. If a Google Answers Researcher could provide the answer, the researcher was paid 75% of the question price. History During August 2001, Google briefly provided a service called Google Questions and Answers where a Google employee would [more...]
A patent is a monopoly granted by the government to an inventor. For the duration of the patent, the inventor has the right to control who can make use of the invention described in the patent. If someone exploits the invention without licensing the patent, the patent holder can sue to recover the royalties they [more...]
Everyone thinks of Google as a search company. And I suppose they are. But no one pays to Google-search the internet. Instead, Google makes it billions from online ads…it's really an advertising company! And thank goodness for that, for Google's business model allows millions of small website owners to earn income through its Adsense program. [more...]
Those of us who have been using the World Wide Web for a dozen years or more can remember how incredible Google was when it first rose to popularity — it finally became possible to find what you wanted on the web, and quickly. Google became the powerhouse it is today because what it did [more...]
Everyone knows that Google is a search engine, but many people are unaware of just how many other free services are offered by Google. For some people, Google’s web services can completely replace the application software installed on their computer. Here are some of the things that Google can do for you, at no cost: [more...]
Google’s Street View was launched yesterday in the UK. Supplying 360 degree imagery of the streets and roads of London and 24 other cities from Aberdeen to Southampton, it follows on from successful launches in 9 other countries including United States, Japan, Australia and France. But when looking at the map of London, one area [more...]
Google Answers was a paid answers service operated by Google from 2002 to 2006. Customers could post a question, select a price, and wait to see whether a researcher could provide them with an answer. If not, they were not charged. Google recruited over five hundred researchers from around the world, by means of a [more...]
Because Google is such a large organization, there’s considerable interest in its energy consumption. Google has provided some figures, which they say take into account not just the query itself but also activities such as building the search index. That’s a reasonable way to approach the answer, and also one of the easiest to calculate [more...]
Google sure caused a lot of confusion here! Their very vocal announcements of the Android project on 5 November 2007 raised the expectation that Android phones would contain open software and be readily hackable, but the only Android phone released to date has been locked down. What gives? One cause for concern was that the [more...]