by admin | May 25, 2021 | Investing, Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Google will invest $13 billion in building new data centres and offices in over a dozen states in the US in 2019, the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai has said.
In a blog post late on Wednesday, Pichai said the investment would create tens of thousands of new jobs.
“Last year, we hired more than 10,000 people in the US and made over $9 billion in investments.
“We’re now announcing over $13 billion in investments throughout 2019 in data centres and offices across the US, with major expansions in 14 states,” Pichai wrote.
This would enable the creation of more than 10,000 new construction jobs in Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia.
Pichai said Google data centres make a significant economic contribution to local communities, as do the associated $5 billion in energy investments.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Markets, SMEs, Technology
Gurugram : Google and OnePlus were the only brands which shipped all their smartphones with the latest version of Android OS in 2018, a new report said on Monday.
According to market research techARC, 32 models of smartphones were launched by various original equipment manufacturers last year.
Overall, Vivo led the number of launches with 7 models having the latest Android OS version shipped out of the factory.
The second spot was taken by Nokia which launched four models, followed by Tecno (3), the report said.
“With stock Android becoming the preference of users, the OEMs are able to reduce the upgrade turnaround time for OS as it requires minimal integration from their end after Google releases one,” said Faisal Kawoosa, Founder and Chief Analyst, techARC.
Nearly 80 per cent of the launches with latest OS version had Android 8.1 (Oreo) pre-loaded when shipped for sale.
The remaining 20 per cent had Android 9.0 (Pie) version.
“The good news is that even for the entry level (sub-Rs 5,000), users could get a smartphone with the latest Android version, which were sold by Nokia and Lava,” the findings showed.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Markets, Online Marketing, Technology
San Francisco : Google is reportedly being slammed by security experts following the disclosure of a vulnerability that has exposed Android to the risk of being compromised by infected images.
Revealed in Google’s February security update, the flaw leaves Android systems compromised with a modified Portable Network Graphics (PNG) that could trick users into viewing an infected image, Android Headlines reported on Saturday.
PNG is a raster-graphics file-format that supports lossless data compression.
The security flaw affects devices running Android 7.0 Nougat and newer versions of the software.
According to experts, the root cause of this alarming vulnerability has been a light approach to media content on Google’s part.
The new firmware is currently only available on the Pixel handsets and a small number of Android One devices that run a stock version of the operating system (OS), the report informed.
However, Google’s February security update addresses the issue, but the global rollout of the security patch is expected to take more time.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Emerging Businesses, Markets, Technology
San Francisco : Riding on Google’s robust ad business, the parent company Alphabet has logged $39.3 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2018 — an increase of 22 per cent from the same period a year ago.
Google’s advertising business accounted for $32.6 billion of Alphabet’s overall revenue.
“In 2018 we delivered strong revenue growth, up 23 per cent year over year to $136.8 billion, and up 22 per cent for the fourth quarter to $39.3 billion,” Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet and Google, said in a statement on Monday.
Alphabet’s traffic and acquisition cost was $7.4 billion, up from $6.5 billion a year ago.
“With great opportunities ahead, we continue to make focused investments in the talent and infrastructure needed to bring exceptional products and experiences to our users, advertisers and partners around the globe,” Porat added.
The company which now has 98,771 employees globally reported a net income of $8.94 billion for the fourth quarter.
Other revenue — which includes hardware, Play Store, and Google Cloud enterprise efforts — reported $6.4 billion. Alphabet did not separately disclose how much its Cloud business contributed to this quarter’s revenue.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Google has deleted 29 malicious “beauty camera” apps that were sharing pornographic content and forwarding users, particularly in India, to phishing websites to steal their information.
Some of these Android apps have been downloaded millions of times and a large number of the download counts originated from Asia — particularly in India, said a report from US-based cyber security firm Trend Micro.
The apps have now been removed by Google from the Play Store.
“A user downloading one of these apps will not immediately suspect that there is anything amiss, until they decide to delete the app,” said Trend Micro.
The app will push several full screen ads when users unlock their devices, including malicious ads (such as fraudulent content and pornography) that will pop up via the user’s browser.
“During our analysis, we found a paid online pornography player that was downloaded when clicking the pop up,” the report added.
None of these apps gave any indication that they were the ones behind the ads, thus users might find it difficult to determine where they’re coming from.
Some of these apps redirected to phishing websites that asked the user for personal information, such as addresses and phone numbers.
“For example, the package com.beauty.camera.project.cloud will create a shortcut after being launched. However, it will hide its icon from the application list, making it more difficult for users to uninstall the app since they will be unable to drag and delete it,” Trend Micro noted.
Furthermore, the camera apps used packers to prevent them from being analysed.
—IANS
