by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Google has begun rolling out its spam protection feature for Messages after almost over six months of developing it for Android users.
Based on reports from a handful of tipsters, that spam protection feature is now going live, though not everyone seems to have it just yet, the Android Police reported late on Friday.
Several users were seeing a prompt called “New! Spam protection” soon after opening Messages.
“The change appears to be server-side and in a limited rollout for the time being, as other devices we’ve tested, including my own, don’t have it just yet. When it does hit your device, you should see a notification similar to that above when launching Messages,” the report added.
Once introduced, users can disable this feature in the Settings and then in the Advanced menu.
Data about spam messages is to improve the search engine giant’s ability to “detect future spam for users”.
The company has maintained that Messages is its primary communication solution for its users.
Earlier this week, Google announced it was planning to shift its Messages web app — which allows users to manage SMS/MMS messages on their phone from another device — from Android.com to Google.com.
The move is seen as the tech giant’s plan to minimise the use of the word “Android”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Google has said that its algorithms now use mobile-first indexing for over half of the pages shown in search results globally.
Google introduced mobile-first indexing about two years ago as it found that an increasing number of people were searching on Google using a smartphone.
This marked an important shift in its indexing as Google’s ranking systems earlier typically looked at the desktop version of a page’s content to evaluate its relevance to the user.
But with most people using mobile devices to search Google, the company announced that its algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in its results.
“In general, we move sites to mobile-first indexing when our tests assure us that they’re ready,” John Mueller of Google Switzerland wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
“When we move sites over, we notify the site owner through a message in Search Console,” Mueller added.
Google said it was looking forward to being able to index more and more of the web using mobile-first indexing in order to help more users to search the web using a smartphone.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : With efforts to reform a European Union tax law not bringing the desired results, France is going to introduce from January 1, 2019 a digital tax on technology giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon, the media reported.
The French government’s “GAFA” tax” is being introduced to combat attempts by the firms to avoid paying what is considered a “fair share” of taxes in the country, by taking advantage of European tax laws, Appleinsider reported on Monday.
The new tax regime is expected to bring in an estimated 500 million euro ($570 million) to the country’s cofferes for 2019, according to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, The Local Fr said in a report.
Major technology companies have come under the scrutiny of lawmakers in countries like France and Britain for allegedly routing profits through operations in countries with extremely low tax rates or other arrangements.
Earlier this year, the European Commission published proposals for a three per cent tax on the revenues of major tech companies with global revenues above 750 million euro a year and taxable EU revenue above 50 million euro, the BBC reported.
But to become law, EU tax reforms need the support of all member states. And some countries, including Ireland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland are yet to come on board to bring the reforms.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology, World
Canberra : The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on Monday proposed measures to counter the dominant market positions of Google and Facebook and strengthen monitoring on their access to information, advertising and consumers personal data.
The regulatory body, which recommended 11 preliminary measures in the report, was directed to conduct a public inquiry into the impact of digital search engines, social media platforms and other digital content in 2017 by then treasurer and current Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
“Acting as an intermediary between consumers and news outlets, platforms are inherently influential in shaping consumers’ choices of digital journalism,” said the report cited by Efe news.
This influential position and filtration of news items could place the consumer in a so-called filter bubble, increasing the risk of consumers being exposed to unreliable news, according to the report.
“The algorithms operated by each of Google and Facebook, as well as other policies, determine which content is surfaced and displayed to consumers in news feed and search results,” it said.
“The ACCC considers that the strong market position of digital platforms like Google and Facebook justifies a greater level of regulatory oversight,” Chair Rod Sims said.
The commission called for the creation of a regulatory authority with powers to monitor these digital platforms and recommended establishing an automatic mechanism to take down content that violates copyright.
The ACCC said consumers should be informed about the manner in which these platforms collect and use their data to create personalized advertising.
This would include a reform of privacy laws to require the user’s express consent to data collection and “enable consumers to require erasure of their personal information where they have withdrawn their consent”.
ACCC said that it found that “competition may have been distorted in multiple sectors where consumer data is used”.
Facebook has 17 million monthly users in Australia — 68 per cent of its population — while Instagram, second most popular site in terms of users – which is owned by Facebook, has 11 million users.
In 2017, Google registered 90 per cent of search traffic originating from Australian desktops and 98 per cent from mobile phones.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Google has released support for hashtags on Maps for Android devices that would help users to discover recommended as well as new places.
The company confirmed support for hashtags rolled out globally on Android devices, TechCrunch reported late on Monday.
The search-engine giant suggests that users can add up to five specific and useful hashtags per review and place them at the end of the review to make the text easier to read.
“Google says that general terms like #love or #food won’t be helpful,” the report added.
With this feature on Maps, users will also be able to add hashtags highlighting local attractions and accessibility features offered at the place, like a wheelchair ramp or an audio menu available.
“To use the new hashtags feature, you just tap the blue link when you see one listed in a review to be taken to a list of the other nearby places that have the same tag,” the report quoted Google as saying.
The company has not mentioned by when would the feature make its way to iOS or the web.
The search-engine giant has added many updates to the Maps recently including the new “follow” feature that allows users to track and stay updated about businesses and the revamped “My Business” app to let business owners update their profile pages on Maps with new content along with being able to respond to reviews and messages.
—IANS
