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Google is offering $3.14159 million in cash rewards for successful hacks of its Chrome operating system at this year’s Pwnium hacking contest.
The figure is a nod to pi, an irrational number that has intrigued mathematicians for thousands of years.
Previously Google has offered reward of $1 million and $2 million to crack its systems.
The most likely outcome is that multiple hacks momentarily compromise the system with several contestants earning up to $100,000 each, or $150,000 should their hack survive a system reboot.
For a hack to count, it must be delivered via webpages on a basic-model Samsung 550 Chromebook over a Wi-Fi connection.
“We believe these larger rewards reflect the additional challenge involved with tackling the security defenses of Chrome OS, compared to traditional operating systems,” Google Chrome developer Chris Evans wrote.
Google is offering $3.14159 million in cash rewards for successful hacks of its Chrome operating system at this year’s Pwnium hacking contest
Google’s previous contests – CanSecWest 2012 and Hack in the Box – focused on compromising the Chrome browser but not the same-named OS.
Pwnium was started last year as an alternative to the Pwn2Own contest after the latter temporarily changed its rules so that successful hackers didn’t have to show their methods.
For some commercial hackers who only sell their secrets to the highest bidder the change was welcome.
For Pwnium, contests can keep their true identities a secret. A teenager only identified as Pinkie Pie – a name shared by a My Little Pony character – has won $60,000 at each Pwnium.
While Google calls Chrome OS its most secure operating system its market share is so small it hasn’t yet faced a real world field-test.
However, the Pwn2Own prize for cracking the Chrome browser is $100,000 but only $60,000 for Firefox and $65,000 for Safari. Internet Explorer running on Windows 8 wins $100,000 and IE 9 on Windows 7 nets $75,000.
Pwn2Own winners also get to keep the contest provided laptops.
Pwnium hasn’t said whether winners will be able to leave with their Chromebooks but as they only run $450 is likely the company won’t lose sleep over the losses.
Google has never once paid out the full amount offered for a Chrome browser crack.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has urged North Korea to end its self-imposed isolation and allow its citizens to use the internet.
Speaking after a visit to Pyongyang, Eric Schmidt said North Korea would continue to lag economically unless it embraced internet freedom.
Eric Schmidt was part of a US delegation led by former state governor Bill Richardson.
They also urged North Korea to end nuclear and missile tests, and raised the case of a US detainee.
Bill Richardson, also a former US envoy to the UN, has visited North Korea several times in the past, most recently in December 2010. On two occasions he helped secure the release of detained US nationals.
Speaking at a media briefing in Beijing after arriving from North Korea, Eric Schmidt said he had been in Pyongyang to discuss a free and open internet.
Internet use is highly restricted in North Korea – few people have access to a computer and most users can only access a national intranet rather than the world wide web.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has urged North Korea to end its self-imposed isolation and allow its citizens to use the internet
“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world, their economic growth and so forth, and it will make it harder for them to catch up economically,” he said.
“Once the Internet starts, citizens in a country can certainly build on top of it. The government has to do something. It has to make it possible for people to use the internet which the government in North Korea has not yet done.”
Bill Richardson said the delegation had raised the case of detainee Korean-American Kenneth Bae, who was arrested in November in circumstances that are not clear.
North Korea has in the past released detained Americans after high-profile US visits, but Bill Richardson said he had been unable to meet Kenneth Bae.
“We strongly urged the North Koreans to proceed with a moratorium on ballistic missiles and possible nuclear test,” he also said.
The delegation’s Pyongyang trip comes less than a month after North Korea put a satellite into orbit using a three-stage rocket – a move condemned by the US as a banned test of long-range missile technology.
The US government has described the visit as “not particularly helpful”.
“We continue to think the trip is ill-advised,” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Monday.
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Google chairman Eric Schmidt and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson are in North Korea on a visit described as unhelpful by the US government.
Speaking in Beijing before flying to Pyongyang, Bill Richardson said the visit was “a private humanitarian mission”.
He said he planned to raise the case of a US citizen detained in North Korea.
Bill Richardson has visited North Korea several times in the past, most recently in December 2010.
On two occasions he helped secure the release of detained US nationals. After his most recent visit he said Pyongyang had agreed to re-open its nuclear facilities to UN inspectors, but this did not transpire.
The detained US national is Korean-American Kenneth Bae, who was arrested in November in circumstances that are not clear. North Korea has in the past released detained Americans after high-profile US visits.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson are in North Korea on a visit described as unhelpful by the US government
Google, meanwhile, has not commented on Eric Schmidt’s trip.
“This is not a Google trip, but I’m sure he’s interested in some of the economic issues there, the social media aspect. So this is why we are teamed up on this,” Bill Richardson said.
“We’ll meet with North Korean political leaders. We’ll meet with North Korean economic leaders, military. We’ll visit some universities. We don’t control the visit. They will let us know what the schedule is when we get there,” he said.
Internet use is highly restricted in North Korea, where few people have access to a computer and most users can only access a national intranet rather than the world wide web.
The visit comes less than a month after North Korea put a satellite into orbit using a three-stage rocket – a move condemned by the US as a banned test of long-range missile technology.
“We don’t think the timing of this is particularly helpful,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said late last week.
Bill Richardson said the delegation was expecting to be in Pyongyang for two and a half days.
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Toyota has given a taste of self-drive car safety technology ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on January 8-11, 2013.
Toyota revealed a video clip of a Lexus fitted with safety features designed to minimize car crashes.
The technology includes on-board radar and video cameras to monitor the road, the surroundings, and the driver.
The car can also communicate with other vehicles, according to a Toyota spokesman.
“We’re looking at a car that would eliminate crashes,” said the spokesman.
“Zero-collisions is our ultimate aim.”
The video shows a prototype Lexus LS fitted with what Toyota’s described as an “Intelligent Transport Systems” (ITS) technology.
Toyota has given a taste of self-drive car safety technology ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show 2013 in Las Vegas
The “advanced active safety research vehicle” prototype uses ITS and existing Toyota technology to monitor whether the driver is awake, to keep the car on the road, and to stop at traffic signals. The technology is designed to be used in conjunction with a driver, but the car can control itself, said the spokesman.
“Not the Jetsons yet, but our advanced active safety research car is leading the industry into a new automated era,” Toyota said in a Tweet on Thursday.
Toyota has also developed technology that lets a car communicate with a driver’s smartphone to offer augmented reality features. This would let the car know about places by the road letting it, for example. recommend an upcoming restaurant, said the spokesman.
Toyota is one of several heavy-weight car manufacturers and technology companies researching autonomous vehicles.
Audi is due to demonstrate a self-parking car at CES, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday.
Google was awarded an autonomous car patent in 2011, and secured a Nevada driving licence for its self-drive car in May 2012. In the same month Volvo tested a self-drive convoy on a Spanish motorway.
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The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided not to take legal action against Google at the end of a 19-month investigation into the search giant.
The FTC found Google had not biased its search results to favor its products.
Google has agreed to give advertisers access to more information about their campaigns and has agreed not to use other providers’ material such as product reviews in its search results.
Google is still awaiting a competition ruling from the European Commission.
Another key concession applies to how Google uses the patents it bought when it acquired Motorola Mobility last year for $12.5 billion.
Google has said it will charge “fair and reasonable” rates to companies that need to use its standard essential patents.
Standard essential patents are ones that are critical to industry standards, for example, the technology that allows devices such as smartphones and tablets to connect to the internet over Wi-Fi.
It has agreed not to take out injunctions forcing licensees to remove their products from sale if there are disagreements about how much a fair rate should be.
Rivals had called for stronger sanctions to be taken against Google.
Fairsearch, an organization representing several of Google’s critics such as Microsoft, said in a statement: “The FTC’s decision to close its investigation with only voluntary commitments from Google is disappointing and premature, coming just weeks before the company is expected to make a formal and detailed proposal to resolve the four abuses of dominance identified by the European Commission, first among them biased display of its own properties in search results.”
The FTC was asked to investigate whether Google was favoring its own products in search results.
Google has agreed to give advertisers access to more information about their campaigns and has agreed not to use other providers’ material such as product reviews in its search results
FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz told a press conference that the commission had found no evidence that Google’s search engine was biased towards its own services.
“Some may believe the commission should have done more, but for our part we do follow the facts where they lead,” he said.
“We do it with appropriate rigor. This brings to an end the investigation. It is good for consumers, it is good for competition and it is the right thing to do.”
One of the biggest changes to be implemented by Google will allow advertisers to copy ad campaign data to other search engines, such as Microsoft’s Bing.
Google is also promising that it will stop copying content from other websites to use in its summaries, even though the company had insisted the practice was legal under the fair-use provisions of US copyright law.
In response to the settlement, Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond said in a blog post: “The US Federal Trade Commission today announced it has closed its investigation into Google after an exhaustive 19-month review that covered millions of pages of documents and involved many hours of testimony.
“The conclusion is clear: Google’s services are good for users and good for competition.”
It does not mean that the search giant is out of the woods on the issue of anti-competitive practices.
Alongside the FTC investigation, Google is still under scrutiny from the European Union.
In December, the EU’s Competition Commission gave the search giant a month to address four key areas:
- the manner in which Google displays “its own vertical search services differently” from other, competing products
- how Google “copies content” from other websites – such as restaurant reviews – to include within its own services
- the “exclusivity” Google has to sell advertising around search terms people use
- restrictions on advertisers from moving their online ad campaigns to rival search engines
Google is expected to respond to these concerns shortly.
If found guilty of breaching EU anti-trust rules, Google would face a fine of up to $4 billion.
Two competing Santa tracking devices are racing to track Father Christmas as he travels the globe tonight.
Volunteers have again been watching Santa’ progress from 5:00 a.m. EST as part of the annual NORAD Tracks Santa Programme.
The system, run by the North American Aerospace Defense Command located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is in its 57th year and allows children to follow the sleigh online.
But this year it has a competitor – using its Google Earth and Google Maps products, the internet search giant is tracking Santa on its own this year with a new algorithm.
“While we’ve been tracking Santa since 2004 with Google Earth, this year a team of dedicated Google Maps engineers built a new route algorithm to chart Santa’s journey around the world on Christmas Eve,” the vice-president of Google Maps and Google Earth, Brian McClendon, wrote on the Official Google blog this week.
Meanwhile, NORAD revealed it takes hundreds of calls from those eager to know Saint Nick’s precise location and uses radar and satellite and even fighter jets to keep a track of his route.
For the past two years even the First Lady, Michelle Obama, has lent a hand answering calls from concerned children keen to keep tabs on Santa and his nine reindeer.
As the site explains: “The moment that radar indicates Santa has lifted off, we use our second detection system.
“Satellites positioned in geo-synchronous orbit at 22,300 miles from the Earth’s surface are equipped with infrared sensors, which enable them to detect heat.
“Amazingly, Rudolph’s bright red nose gives off an infrared signature, which allows our satellites to detect Rudolph and Santa.
“The third tracking system is the Santa Cam network…Santa Cams are ultra-cool, high-tech, high-speed digital cameras that are pre-positioned at many locations around the world. NORAD only uses these cameras once a year.
“The cameras capture images and videos of Santa and his reindeer as they make their journey around the world.”
NORAD and Google Santa Tracker competition to follow Father Christmas as he travels the globe
By 1:00 p.m. EST the tracking site had followed Santa across Australia and Asia.
Santa was spotted passing landmarks such as the Great Wall of China and the Sydney Opera House.
He was most recently seen above the skies of Afghanistan.
Last year, Michelle Obama, said she was delighted to be part of the project.
In a statement, the First Lady said: “It is wonderful to be part of this holiday tradition. I love answering calls from children who were anxious to learn where Santa was and when he would arrive at their home.
“I passed on to each child the current location of Santa and reminded them that he would come to their house only after they were in bed sleeping.”
In 1955, a Colorado Springs newspaper advert invited children to talk to Santa on a hotline.
But the number had a typo, and dozens of children mistakenly dialed the Continental Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, the predecessor to NORAD.
The officers on duty sprang into action and began passing along reports on Santa’s progress – and the tradition was born.
More than 1500 volunteers will answer calls in shifts until 5:00 a.m. EST on Christmas morning.
Last year NORAD received more than 100,000 calls and 7,000 emails.
Google’s new Santa Tracker is live on the web at http://www.google.com/santatracker.
Santa can also be tracked online using NORAD at www.noradsanta.org, www.facebook.com/noradsanta and https://twitter.com/NoradSanta.
An app can also be downloaded to Apple, Google Android and Microsoft phones as well as Windows PCs.
NORAD has seen more than 1.5 million app downloads already this year.
Calls are taken at 877-HI-NORAD (877-446-6723) or on 1 (719) 556-5211 from Colorado Springs or overseas.
Emails can be sent to [email protected].
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The battle between internet search engines for prominence on tracking down Santa’s route has taken a new turn, as a fresh war over who gets to officially “follow” Santa this year took a surprising turn.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) – which has been tracking Santa from 1958 – has announced its switching its annual Santa tracking partnership from Google to Bing.
For the last five years, Google was the official Santa tracking destination as it had a contract with the search engine giant, slashgear.com reported.
But now, after the two organizations decided to take “different paths”, NORAD has switched its allegiance to Bing, while Google has branched out and made a new route that charts Santa’s journey around the globe.
According to NORAD, they “coordinate with Santa’s Elf Launch staff” to follow the route, which they describe usually starting at the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean, before heading west.
They said: “Santa usually starts at the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean and travels west. So, historically, Santa visits the South Pacific first, then New Zealand and Australia.
“After that, he shoots up to Japan, over to Asia, across to Africa, then onto Western Europe, Canada, the United States, Mexico and Central and South America. Keep in mind, Santa’s route can be affected by weather, so it’s really unpredictable.”
NORAD, which has been tracking Santa from 1958, has announced its switching its annual Santa tracking partnership from Google to Bing
The tracking of Santa began in 1955, when the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD), began tracking Santa and then later switched to NORAD three years later.
NORAD is a U.S. and Canadian military organization, whose duties include aerospace warning, aerospace control, and maritime warning, around the clock every day.
NORAD says it uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites, Santa Cams and fighter jets.
But now Google says it will track Santa using a new algorithm created by Google Maps engineers.
Users will be able to log on and trace Santa’s route using Google Maps and Google Earth starting at 2:00 AM Pacific standard Time on Christmas Eve.
It remains to be seen whether both trackers will show the same route.
NORAD Tracks Santa
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Whitney Houston, One Direction and super hit Gangnam Style topped global searches on Google in 2012.
Whitney Houston, whose death in February shocked fans, was the most searched.
Teen heart-throbs One Direction topped the image search charts – with band member Harry Styles individually seventh most popular.
On Facebook, politics took centre stage – Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were the most discussed figures in the US.
The social network grouped its top trends in a special 2012 section.
In the US, the presidential election dominated discussion over the year, followed by excitement around the Super Bowl.
The London Olympics was the fifth most discussed topic in the US, whereas in the UK it understandably came out on top, beating chatter about steamy novel Fifty Shades of Grey into second place.
In third, Rylan Clark – a flamboyant yet divisive contestant on this year’s X Factor series.
Whitney Houston, One Direction and super hit Gangnam Style topped global searches on Google in 2012
Google’s results – which exclude pornography-related queries – give an honest glimpse into the psyche of the world’s internet users.
The company measures its chart by assessing what terms have had the greater increase of traffic when compared to 2011.
As it often does, “What is love?” topped the list in 10 countries, with “how to kiss” and “how to flirt” also popular for the presumably unlucky-in-love searchers.
The list also reveals some guilty pleasures. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, the reality show following the life of child beauty pageant participant Alana Thompson, was the third most searched for TV programme worldwide.
Topping the TV list was Big Brother Brazil and soap opera Avenida Brasil.
There were also massive spikes for people who until this year the wider public probably did not know anything about.
Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner, whose record-breaking skydive captivated millions around the world, placed sixth in the list of most discussed individuals.
While Amanda Todd, the US teenager who took her own life after posting a message about being bullied on YouTube, was the world’s third most discussed individual.
Top 10 search terms of the year, according to Google:
- Whitney Houston
- Gangnam Style
- Hurricane Sandy
- iPad 3
- Diablo 3
- Kate Middleton
- Olympics 2012
- Amanda Todd
- Michael Clarke Duncan
- BBB12
A flaw in the latest version of the Android operating system has resulted in the month of December disappearing from People app for storing information about contacts.
The flaw affects the “People app”, which is the default app for keeping contact information on Android devices.
The People app calendar goes from November 2012 straight to January 2013.
Android is Google’s operating system. Version 4.2 was launched in October 2012.
Other Google calendars are unaffected by the flaw.
Google’s Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet run on the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean version of the operating system.
The Nexus 4 was reported to have sold out within an hour of appearing on the Google Play website.
A flaw in the latest version of the Android operating system has resulted in the month of December disappearing from People app for storing information about contacts
The flaw was reported by an Android news website called Android Police.
“Christmas is ruined. Santa is dead. At least we’ll save money on buying presents, right?” wrote Android Police’s Artem Russakovskii.
“If you’re an early adopter you’re affected by it, but they will rush out an update very quickly,” said Stuart Miles, editor of technology news and reviews website Pocket-Lint.
“It’s quite a small bug. It’s the equivalent of spelling something wrong on the front page of a newspaper – it’s embarrassing and frustrating but ultimately it’s not going to end the world.”
Google declined to comment but according to Android Police the issue has been noted by Android developers.
According to Google’s Transparency Report, governments around the world made nearly 21,000 requests for access to its data in the first six months of 2012.
Google’s Transparency Report indicates government surveillance of online lives is rising sharply.
The US government made the most demands, asking for details 7,969 times in the first six months of 2012.
Turkey topped the list for requests to remove content.
Google, in common with other technology and communication companies, regularly receives requests from government agencies and courts around the world to have access to content.
It has been publishing its Transparency Report twice a year since 2009 and has seen a steady rise in government demands for data. In its first report in 2009, it received 12,539 requests. The latest figure stands at 20,939.
“This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: government surveillance is on the rise,” Google said in a blog post.
The report acts as a bellwether for government behavior around the world, said a Google spokeswoman.
“It reflects laws on the ground. For example in Turkey there are specific laws about defaming public figures whereas in Germany we get requests to remove neo-Nazi content,” she said.
“And in Brazil we get a lot of requests to remove content during elections because there is a law banning parodies of candidates.
“We hope that the report will shed light on how governments interact with online services and how laws are reflected in online behavior,” she added.
According to Google’s Transparency Report, governments around the world made nearly 21,000 requests for access to its data in the first six months of 2012
The US has consistently topped the charts for data requests. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK are also in the top 10.
In France and Germany it complied with fewer than half of all requests. In the UK it complied with 64% of requests and 90% of requests from the US.
Google said the top three reasons cited by government for content removal were defamation, privacy and security.
Worldwide authorities made 1,789 requests for Google to remove content, up from 1,048 requests for the last six months of 2011.
In the period from January to June, Turkey made 501 requests for content removal.
These included 148 requests related to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – the first president of Turkey, the current government, national identity and values.
Others included claims of pornography, hate speech and copyright.
Google has its own criteria for whether it will remove content – the request must be specific, relate to a specific web address and have come from a relevant authority.
Requests for user’s data
(January to June 2012)
- United States – 7,969
- India – 2,319
- Brazil – 1,566
- France – 1,546
- Germany – 1,533
- UK – 1,425
Source: Google
Requests for take-downs
(January to June 2012)
- Turkey – 501
- United States – 273
- Germany – 247
- Brazil – 191
- UK – 97
Source: Google
Brazilian newspapers accounting for 90% of the circulation in the country have abandoned Google News.
Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers says all 154 members had followed its recommendation to ban the search engine aggregator from using their content.
The papers say Google News refused to pay for content and was driving traffic away from their websites.
Google said previously that the service boosted traffic to news websites.
“Staying with Google News was not helping us grow our digital audiences, on the contrary,” said the association’s president, Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto.
“By providing the first few lines of our stories to Internet users, the service reduces the chances that they will look at the entire story in our websites,” he said, in an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
The National Association of Newspapers, known by its Portuguese acronym ANJ, carried out an experiment with Google that began in December 2010.
This allowed Google News to carry the top line of news stories, to raise curiosity and get readers to click on the full story on the newspapers’ sites.
But the ANJ says the experiment has failed.
Among the 154 titles that have pulled out from Google News are some of the country’s most important news sites, such as O Globo and O Estado de Sao Paulo.
At a recent meeting of the American Press Association in Sao Paulo, Google defended its decision not to pay for the headlines from news websites.
“Google News channels a billion clicks to news sites around the world,” said Google’s Public Policy Director, Marcel Leonardi.
He compared the ANJ’s demands to taxing a taxi driver for taking tourists to eat at a particular restaurant.
Brazil’s newspaper association said that, despite leaving Google News, many of the news organizations’ internet portals will still be listed by the aggregator.
Internet users using Google – but not Google News – will still be able to find content from most newspapers’ sites.
Analysts are already predicting Google’s demise as the world’s lead Internet search engine after it suffered a catastrophic nose-dive in its market value.
“[Google] could disappear in five to eight years and disappear in the sense that Yahoo used to be the king of search,” said Eric Jackson, the founder and managing member of Ironfire Capital, a technology-focused hedge fund.
“Now, for all intents and purposes, Yahoo has disappeared,” he said on CNBC Friday.
Google’s stock value plunged a hair-raising 10% this week – wiping out more than $24 billion from the company’s value – after its third-quarter earnings report, which revealed a 20 percent drop in profits over last year, was accidentally released three hours earlier than planned on Thursday.
The profit losses were driven by a decline in advertising revenue, according to its earnings report. The amount that advertisers paid Google on a click-per-click basis fell 15%.
Advertising revenues are falling – and will continue to fall – for Internet companies because consumers are increasingly migrating to mobile applications and advertisers aren’t willing to pay as much for a mobile ad.
“I keep saying Facebook isn’t the only one that has a mobile issue – Google does, too,” Colin Gillis, an analyst for Boston Consulting Group, told CNBC.com.
“If you are an investor in Facebook, mobile is priced into earnings. I don’t think mobile in Google is priced in.”
Google’s stock value plunged a hair-raising 10 percent this week
Advertisers aren’t willing to pay as much for mobile advertising because the platform is not as effective as advertising on a desktop or laptop computer, analysts said.
Other companies, such as Apple, will get ahead of Google in attracting advertisers to their mobile applications and Google’s dominance will eventually start to shrink, Eric Jackson predicted.
“I think that there is a big opportunity right now for someone to step forward and assert themselves for a new way of getting people information for doing search in a mobile world,” Eric Jackson said.
“I don’t think typing in a blue box is the ideal format for a mobile world. And I think the best opportunity out there to displace Google in this area is probably Apple’s Siri.”
For now however, despite its drop in earnings, Google remains dominant in online advertising with a 74.5% share of the U.S. search ad market, according to data from eMarketer.
Shares in Apple, the only technology company larger than Google in market value, fell by around 2.8% during trading on Friday.
Facebook, which is another technology stock heavily dependent on advertising for its revenues, saw its shares fall by 0.5% during trading.
The Dow Jones index of trading on Wall Street dipped more than 200 points.
Google blamed its printers for releasing the results by accident. Speculation was mounting on Friday night that Google could make a legal claim against R.R. Donnelley, the company it pays to put out its financial results.
Skydiver Felix Baumgartner smashed a number of records with his “edge of space” stunt – including for live streaming.
More than eight million people flocked to their devices to watch the 43-year-old break the speed of sound live on Google’s YouTube site.
It is the largest number of concurrent live streams in the website’s history, Google confirmed.
Austrian Felix Baumgartner also broke the record for the highest freefall.
He jumped from a capsule taken to 128,100ft (24 miles; 39 km) above New Mexico in the US by a giant helium balloon.
It took nine minutes for him to reach the ground.
The adventurer plummeted at an estimated 833.9 mph (1,343 km/h), hitting Mach 1.24.
“On the step, I felt that the whole world is watching,” Felix Baumgartner said after the jump.
“I said I wish they would see what I see. It was amazing.”
More than eight million people flocked to their devices to watch Felix Baumgartner break the speed of sound live on YouTube
The capsule from which the skydiver fell was equipped with cameras to provide a live internet feed to millions of people around the world.
A Google spokesperson confirmed that the number of viewers simultaneously watching the Red Bull Stratos stunt live on YouTube was the site’s highest.
“We congratulate Felix Baumgartner and the entire Red Bull Stratos team for their successful mission, and for creating a live stream with the most concurrent views ever on YouTube,” the company said on its blog.
In comparison, about 8.3 million people accessed the BBC’s sport website on the first day of this year’s Olympic Games.
Other technology used to record the event will have a more long-term application. Felix Baumgartner’s body was monitored during the jump using equipment from Equivital, a small UK company.
A system strapped to the skydiver’s chest wirelessly transmitted data about his heartbeat, respiration, skin temperature and other vital signs.
“It’s a major coup for Equivital, which, despite its small size – currently only 25 employees – provides the US Army with its human body monitoring system,” the company said.
The Red Bull Stratos scientists said the stunt had provided invaluable data for the development of high-performance, high-altitude parachute systems, and that the lessons learned would inform the development of new ideas for emergency evacuation from vehicles, such as spacecraft passing through the stratosphere.
“Part of this programme was to show high-altitude egress, passing through Mach and a successful re-entry back [to subsonic speed], because our belief scientifically is that’s going to benefit future private space programmes or high-altitude pilots, and Felix proved that today,” said Art Thompson, the team principal.
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It may take a sharp mind to work for Google, as author William Poundstone claims that the search giant requires its applicants to answer perplexing trivia questions and riddles.
William Poundstone claims to have unlocked the secret of acing an interview at Google and other top technology firms, and is revealing his secrets in a new book.
In Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google, William Poundstone describes several interview questions that he claims that his tips will increase an applicant’s chances of not only getting hired by Google, but anywhere.
He told ABC News: “HR departments are running scared, asking themselves, <<How can we make sure our questions have predictive power for how well someone will do on the job?>>”
William Poundstone claims that Google requires its applicants to answer perplexing trivia questions and riddles
William Poundstone outlines several of the brain teasers that are said to be used by actual Google interviewers, from “How much toilet paper would you need to cover Texas” to “Can you swim faster in water or syrup?”
He told ABC News that whether a job applicant can answer the question or not, it’s best to ask follow up questions to show that you recognize what is being asked.
Google would not comment on William Poundstone’s book, but some are quick to point out that the interview questions that have been circulating the web for several years are works of fiction.
Gayle Laakmann McDowell, the founder of CareerCup.com who has worked at Google, Microsoft and Apple, wrote in a 2010 blog post that “brain teaser”-esque questions are simply not used by Google.
He wrote: “Whatever the original source is, these questions are fake. Fake fake fake.”
GOOGLE’S BRAIN BUSTERS
Why are manhole covers round?
How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
How much toilet paper would you need to cover Texas?
You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown in a blender. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
How many vacuum cleaners are made a year?
Using only a four-minute hourglass and a seven-minute hourglass, measure exactly nine minutes – without the process taking longer than nine minutes.
Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.
How would you devise an evacuation plan for San Francisco?
What number comes next in this pattern? 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66
Can you swim faster in water or in syrup?
A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
How many times a day do a clock’s hands overlap?
Bettina Wulff, wife of former German President Christian Wulff, has included Google in legal action to stop rumors about her private life.
When the name Bettina Wulff is typed into Google’s search engine, suggested search terms include the words “prostitute” and “red light district”.
Google says the auto-generated text reflects what others are already searching for online.
Bettina Wulff denies she has ever worked as a prostitute.
Bettina Wulff, wife of former German President Christian Wulff, has included Google in legal action to stop rumors about her private life
German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Bettina Wulff had given a sworn declaration denying all allegations relating to prostitution or escort work before her marriage.
The rumors have spread both online and in various media outlets.
It has been reported they were started in order to disrupt her husband Christian Wulff’s political career.
German newspaper Die Spiegel reports she has spent over two years fighting allegations she was once employed as an escort.
“Her lawyers have already issued 34 successful cease-and-desist orders, including one against a prominent German television personality this weekend,” the paper notes.
The same paper says a defamation suit was launched against Google last week.
Google Northern Europe spokeswoman Kay Oberbeck said the site’s search terms were “algorithmically generated” and “include the popularity of the entered search terms”.
“All terms that appear have been previously entered by Google users,” she added in a statement.
The same text generates in rival search engine Bing.com.
In March 2012 Google was ordered to disable the autocomplete function relating to search results for an unnamed man in Japan, who said his name was being associated with crimes he had not committed.
Google has decided to base its first Latin American data centre in Chile, near the capital Santiago.
The computer server base is expected to cost $150 million and will employ up to 20 people, Google said.
Google said it chose Chile because of its reliable infrastructure and skilled workforce.
The country has been trying to become a tech hub, with initiatives such as Start-Up Chile attracting entrepreneurs from around the world.
The search giant said the data communications centre would make its products faster to access, and more reliable for the local population.
Google has decided to base its first Latin American data centre in Chile, near the capital Santiago
Chile’s selection is a coup for the nation bearing in mind Brazil has a much larger population, is more centrally located and contains a fast-growing tech sector.
“Chile… fosters an atmosphere of innovation, and in recent years has developed cutting edge policies and programs that encourage the growth of the internet,” Google said.
“As with all of our facilities around the world, we chose Quilicura, Chile, following a thorough and rigorous site selection process, taking many technical and other considerations into account including location, infrastructure, workforce, reasonable business regulations and cost.”
Google already has data centres in the United States, Finland and Belgium, and plans to build more in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan by next year.
The centre in Chile is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2013.
Opening a data centre in Latin America may help Google’s ambitions in the region.
Orkut, a social network operated and owned by Google, used to be number one in Brazil and several other places in Latin America.
But according to digital media analytics company Comscore, it has now slipped to third place, behind Facebook and Twitter.
Google has announced that it does not want the ruling in the Apple-Samsung patent lawsuit to “limit” consumers’ access to Android devices.
A US jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple over $1 billion on Friday after ruling it had infringed several of the iPhone maker’s software and design innovations.
Samsung said it intended to appeal.
There has been speculation that the news could encourage handset makers to install the rival Windows Phone system.
Google released its statement late on Sunday in the US.
“The court of appeals will review both infringement and the validity of the patent claims,” it said.
“Most of these don’t relate to the core Android operating system, and several are being re-examined by the US Patent Office.
“The mobile industry is moving fast and all players – including newcomers – are building upon ideas that have been around for decades. We work with our partners to give consumers innovative and affordable products, and we don’t want anything to limit that.”
Google has announced that it does not want the ruling in the Apple-Samsung patent lawsuit to "limit" consumers' access to Android devices
Apple has indicated it will seek sales bans on the 17 phones at the heart of the lawsuit at a hearing on 20 September.
The list does not include Samsung’s current flagship handset, the Galaxy S3, but does include earlier versions of the model.
However, Apple could also use the verdict to try to halt sales of other models that infringe its pinch-to-zoom patent.
During the court case Apple revealed it had licensed some of its technologies to Microsoft. Its lawyers also showed pictures of Nokia’s Lumia – which runs Windows Phone 7 – as an example of a handset that looked distinctive from its own.
In contrast, Apple continues to be involved in lawsuits against two other Android-handset makers: Motorola – which is owned by Google – and HTC.
Following the Samsung verdict, Bill Cox, marketing director for Microsoft’s Windows Phone Division tweeted: “Windows Phone is looking gooooood right now.”
Dell, HTC, Samsung, LG and ZTE have already created Windows Phone 7 devices, but only Nokia has concentrated its efforts on the system.
One analyst said that the US ruling presented Microsoft with an opportunity to convince others to put their weight behind the next version of its mobile system.
“I think this will force a reset on Android products as they are re-engineered to get around Apple’s patents,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the tech consultancy Enderle Group.
“[It should also] provide a stronger opportunity for both of Microsoft’s new platforms – Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 – because they come with indemnification against Apple, suddenly making them far safer.”
However, manufacturers will have to weigh up Android’s popularity before making a move.
According to recent data from analysts at IDC, Android had a 68.1% of the global smartphone market between April and June. Apple’s iOS had 16.9% and Windows Phone/Windows Mobile had 5.4%. The data was based on shipments rather than sales.
If Apple’s patents hold up under appeal Google could recode Android to ensure there was no potential infringement, or handset makers could seek to pay their rival a licence fee.
And there is another alternative: Apple could ultimately seek a patent cross-licensing deal with Google despite its late chief executive Steve Jobs’ vow to “destroy Android”.
Part-way through the Samsung case Google filed its first lawsuit versus Apple since taking over Motorola. It alleged seven patent infringements, one of which involves the technology used in the iPhone’s Siri voice-activated search tool.
Were Google to succeed it could call for a import ban on Apple’s iOS products, potentially forcing its rival into a deal.
The case is driving share prices in a number of technology stocks.
Samsung’s shares fell 7.5% in Seoul on Monday – their biggest drop since October 2008, wiping about $12 billion off the companies value.
Nokia’s shares rose about 10% on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
In New York, Apple’s stock was about 2% higher in pre-market trade, Microsoft’s about 1% up and Google’s about 1% down.
File-sharing websites The Pirate Bay and Isohunt claim the new way in which Google is organizing its search results will drive more direct traffic to their home pages.
Websites that have been flagged for aiding access to pirated content now automatically appear lower down on Google search lists.
The Pirate Bay and Isohunt both say that Google is not their main source of traffic in any case.
YouTube videos are also subject to the new rules, says the US search giant.
Isohunt’s owner had suggested that the Google-owned video clip site would be given preferential treatment because it was excluded from the firm’s Transparency Report list of sites that had provoked copyright removal requests.
A spokeswoman for Google said: “This update applies to all websites including our own – YouTube, Blogger, etc.”
Isohunt's owner had suggested that Google-owned video clip site YouTube would be given preferential treatment because it was excluded from its Transparency Report list of sites that had provoked copyright removal requests
However, since copyright flagging is just one of many factors which influence Google’s rankings, it is unlikely that it will have much impact on platforms dominated by user-generated content, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Google added that material on YouTube which infringed copyright would be removed from the website completely “in accordance with the law” if it became aware of it.
The new search results are organized according to the number of factors, including the amount of “valid copyright removal notices” Google has received about individual sites.
Those with more notices are likely to appear lower down.
“That Google is putting our links lower is in a way a good thing for us. We’ll get more direct traffic when people don’t get the expected search result when using Google,” said The Pirate Bay in a blog post.
“The thing we don’t like with this is… they’re dictating terms.”
Gary Fung, owner of BitTorrent Isohunt, said that only 21% of its traffic came from Google.
“We have plenty of torrent links to non-copyright infringing content, and we’ll be adding 1.4 million more from the Internet Archive soon,” he wrote on an Isohunt forum.
Gary Fung also queried the validity of the removal notices which he claimed could be spammed.
Those wishing to protect their copyright on YouTube are encouraged to use a free tool called Content ID which digitally fingerprints their work and notifies them if it appears on the site, Google said.
The copyright holder can then decide whether to leave it, have the content taken down or make money from it by adding adverts.
Motorola Mobility is to cut 4,000 staff worldwide as part of efforts to return to profitability.
The job losses are the equivalent of 20% of its workforce.
The firm, bought by Google last year, said it planned to close or merge about one third of its 90 facilities which include offices and factories.
US-based Motorola also announced a shift in emphasis away from low-cost non-smartphones to “more innovative and profitable devices”.
Motorola Mobility is to cut 4,000 staff worldwide as part of efforts to return to profitability
Two-thirds of the jobs will go outside of the US, Google said. It expects the cost of severance packages to be $275 million.
“Motorola is committed to helping them through this difficult transition and will be providing generous severance packages, as well as outplacement services to help people find new jobs,” a statement said.
Motorola has lost money in 14 of the past 16 quarters, Google said.
The company, which once dominated the mobile phone market, has fallen behind its competitors, including Apple and Samsung.
According to one industry watcher, Strategy Analytics, Samsung overtook Nokia as the world’s biggest seller of mobile phones earlier this year.
Samsung sold more than 93 million handsets in the first three months of 2012, giving it a 25% market share. By contrast, Motorola said it had sold almost 9 million mobile devices over the same period, including 5.1 million smartphones.
Its most recent financial results showed that Motorola Mobility recorded a loss of $86 million in the first quarter of the year. That was greater than the $81m net loss it made in the same period a year earlier.
Google bought Motorola Mobility last year in a $12.5 billion deal, giving it access to more than 17,000 technology patents.
Google has decided to change the way it calculates search results in an effort to make sure legal download websites appear higher than pirate sites.
The world’s biggest search engine announced the change in a blog post on its website.
The move has been welcomed by record companies in the UK and Hollywood film studios.
Google has decided to change the way it calculates search results in an effort to make sure legal download websites appear higher than pirate sites
Movie and music firms have complained in the past that Google should have been doing more to fight piracy.
They say searching for an artist, song or film often brings up pages of illegal sites, making it hard to find a place to download a legal version.
From next week, search results will take into account the number of “valid copyright removal notices”.
Sites with more notices will rank lower, although Google has not said what it considers a valid notice.
The BPI, which represents record labels in the UK, has welcomed the news.
Chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “We have argued for some time that sites with a lot of illegal content should feature lower in search rankings, based on the notifications we send to Google.
“Consumers overwhelmingly want and expect the top search results for entertainment content to feature legal, licensed services.
“We will look carefully at how much impact this change will have in practice, but we welcome the announcement from Google and will be pressing other search engines to follow suit.”
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said it was “optimistic” about the changes.
“We will be watching this development closely – the devil is always in the details,” said MPAA senior executive president Michael O’Leary.
Google is unveiling an enhanced version of Voice Search to its iPhone app that could rival Apple’s inbuilt Siri software.
Google announced on Wednesday that the new features will be added to its iOS app on iPhone and iPad (iOS version 4.2+) within the next few days.
Voice Search on iOS will be able to find map information, weather results, and information on individual people and topics.
“Often the most natural way to ask a question is by asking aloud” said Amit Singhai, Senior Vice President of Google Search, on Google’s official blog.
Google is unveiling an enhanced version of Voice Search to its iPhone app that could rival Apple's inbuilt Siri software
“So we’ve combined our speech recognition expertise, understanding of language and the Knowledge Graph so that Voice Search can better interpret your questions and sometimes speak the answers back as full sentences.
“You just need to tap the microphone icon and ask your question, the same way you’d ask a friend. For example, ask <<What movies are playing this weekend?>> and you’ll see your words streamed back to you quickly as you speak.
“Then Google will show you a list of the latest movies in theaters near you, with schedules and even trailers. It works for everything from celebrity factoids to the height of Kilimanjaro and more. When Google can supply a direct answer to your question, you’ll get a spoken response too.
“These are baby steps, but important ones on our way to building the search engine of the future – one that is much more intelligent and useful than it was just a few years ago. It’s a very exciting time to be working in this field.”
Google has to pay the largest fine ever imposed on a single company by the US Federal Trade Commission.
Google agreed to pay $22.5 million after monitoring web surfers using Apple’s Safari browser who had a “do not track” privacy setting selected.
The firm does not have to admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
The penalty is for misrepresenting what it was doing and not for the methods it used to bypass Safari’s tracker cookie settings.
Cookies are small text files that are installed onto a computer to allow it to be identified so that a user’s web activity can be monitored.
“No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement.
Google agreed to pay $22.5 million after monitoring web surfers using Apple's Safari browser who had a "do not track" privacy setting selected
The government agency launched its inquiry after a Stanford University researcher noticed the issue while studying targeted advertising.
He revealed that the search giant was exploiting a loophole that let its cookies be installed via adverts on popular websites, even if users’ browsers’ preferences had been set to reject them.
This allowed the firm to track people’s web-use habits even if they had not given it permission to do so.
Google said no “personal information” – such as names or credit card data – had been collected, and that the action had been inadvertent.
Apple’s browser automatically rejects tracking cookies by default. But Google got around this block by adding code to some of its adverts to make Safari think that the user had made an exception for its cookie if they interacted with the ad.
At the same time as using the exploit the search giant said on its help centre that Safari users did not need to take extra steps to prevent their online activities from being logged.
Google said the workaround had been employed to help it deploy its +1 button – letting users show their approval for something on the web – a feature it introduced for its Google+ social network.
“We set the highest standards of privacy and security for our users,” said a spokesman.
“The FTC is focused on a 2009 help centre page published more than two years before our consent decree, and a year before Apple changed its cookie-handling policy.
“We have now changed that page and taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers.”
But Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said it was right that Google should be penalized.
“It’s an essential part of a properly functioning market that consumers are in control of their personal information and are able to take steps to protect their privacy,” he said.
“The size of the fine in this case should deter any company from seeking to exploit underhand means of tracking consumers. It is essential that anyone who seeks to over-ride consumer choices about sharing their data is held to account.”
YouTube app is missing from the next version of Apple’s iOS6 operating system.
Apple said the app had been removed because its license to produce the program had expired.
The Apple-made version of the YouTube app has been a staple on the iPhone’s iOS since the device was first launched in 2007.
Apple said Google was developing its own version of the app which should appear soon.
The fourth test, or beta, version of iOS6 was released by Apple on 6 August. The final public version is expected to be ready in September prior to the rumored launch of a new iPhone.
YouTube app is missing from the next version of Apple's iOS6 operating system
Soon after the software was released many tech news sites noticed it lacked the YouTube app, even though the Apple-made version of this program has been available for years.
Not all YouTube functions have disappeared from iOS6 beta, said Apple in its statement, as users can still play video by visiting YouTube with a web browser. They can also still upload films to YouTube from a phone or tablet.
Financial terms of the licensing deal that let Apple create the YouTube app have not been disclosed.
Apple would not be drawn on whether it would be replacing the YouTube app with another pre-installed video sharing service. It has already taken a similar step with Google maps, as iOS6 will use its own mapping app.
No date has been given for when Google’s version of the YouTube app will appear.
“This is all about Apple removing Google from its operating system completely,” said Stuart Miles, founder and head of tech news site Pocket-lint. He wondered if the end result of this strategy would be for Apple to drop Google as its default search engine on iOS.
“In a couple of years you will just ask Siri for results and you will not care where that comes from,” he said.
Gaining control of the YouTube app was good for Google, he said, because it let it update and change the program as needed. It would also likely mean that ads would appear on clips.
“There’s no reason why you won’t start having pre-roll adverts, which is going to mean a worse experience for users.”
Samsung has admitted it made a mistake in releasing a software update that removed the search function from international versions of its Galaxy S3 smartphone.
The “stability update” disabled the Galaxy S3’s ability to search the web, contacts, apps and other on-device material through a single interface.
The move had been thought to be linked to Apple’s claim that the innovation infringed one of its US patents.
Samsung said a fix was imminent.
“The most recent software upgrade for the Galaxy S3 in the UK included the inadvertent removal of the universal search function,” it said in a statement.
“Samsung will provide the correct software upgrade within the next few days.”
The "stability update" disabled the Galaxy S3's ability to search the web, contacts, apps and other on-device material through a single interface
Users who downloaded the update had not been warned that it would remove the advanced search function when the software was installed on GT-i9300 (S3) models available in the UK and other places outside the US.
It appears the firm meant only to prevent some US models from being able to use a Google-powered search tool to show information sourced from within the phone’s memory in its results.
Apple has claimed the technology infringed its patent to a unified search interface which it uses in its Siri app to collate results from a range of sources.
The iPhone maker has launched a lawsuit over the matter in the US and had briefly secured a sales ban of another Samsung handset – the Galaxy Nexus – on the basis that the inclusion of the feature threatened “irreparable harm”.
A Washington-based court will review the case on 20 August.
Samsung has disabled Google local search function in an update to the international version of its flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone, following a patent dispute with Apple.
Once the software is installed the phones no longer search contacts, apps and other on-device material using software developed by Google.
Android Central, which revealed the news, noted that users were not told the update would disable the service.
It follows a similar move in the US.
Apple claims the innovation infringes its patent to a single search interface which it uses in its Siri app to collate results from a range of sources.
Apple had already managed to enforce a brief sales ban on another Samsung handset – the Galaxy Nexus – in the US because of the patent.
Samsung disables Galaxy S3 Google local search function following patent dispute with Apple
That dispute will be considered again by a Washington-based court on 20 August – but whatever the ruling, it would not have applied to the GT-i9300 (S3) model sold in the UK and other places outside the US.
A spokeswoman for Samsung was unable to provide more detail.
“Samsung may be doing this as a precautionary measure to prevent it having to pay damages on devices sold outside the US in case Apple prevails in the States and then pursues a similar suit elsewhere,” said Simon Clark, head of intellectual property at law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner.
“Generally speaking a multinational company like Apple will have patent protection in all its key countries, and the wording will be very similar in each area. Although patent law can vary across territories it’s quite likely that a ruling in one country will lead to similar decisions in others.”
The move marks the latest development in a long string of lawsuits between the two firms over the technologies and designs of their mobile devices.
Apple was defeated in a London court earlier this month when it tried to have Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets banned in the UK after it failed to convince a judge that the South Korean firm had copied the look of its iPad.
The California-based company was ordered to publish the fact that its competitor had not infringed its registered design on its website and in magazines as a consequence.
However, it was more successful in Germany on Tuesday when an appeals court in Dusseldorf extended a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7.7 across the EU because of a related claim.
The two firms are set to clash again in the US on Monday when a jury will hear patent infringement suits filed by both companies against the other.
According to a court filing posted on the Foss Patents blog, Apple is seeking $2.5 billion in lost profits and royalty fees but is offering a fraction of that amount – half a cent in damages for each handset it has sold that uses its rival’s technologies – to settle Samsung’s countersuit.
Samsung later responded with its own filing, alleging that Apple was trying “to stifle legitimate competition and limit consumer choice to maintain its historically exorbitant profits”.
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