For the first time in the search engine's history, Google revealed just how much electricity it takes to power its massive computing infrastructure. Google announced that for the year 2010, it used 2.6 million megawatt-hours of energy to run its data centers, search mechanisms, Gmail, YouTube and di...

Google is stepping up its efforts to improve computer security by adding warnings to users' search results when it suspects their systems might be compromised by a certain type of malware. Up to now, Google's security efforts have focused on the Chrome browser and the Android Market. These new alert...

The world's largest online search engine recently revealed its Google News Badge feature, a system through which readers can earn virtual badges based on their search and reading histories in the U.S. version of Google News. Someone searching for all the latest news on the NFL lockouts, for example...

The way search engines like Google make it almost effortless to find the answers to any question with a few taps of the fingertips could be changing the way our memory works, according to a recent study. The report, co-authored by Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor in the department of psychology...

Google's privacy-conscious initiatives are often born in Germany. Heeding the objections to Street View, which rained down from national authorities and wary Germans, Google introduced an opt-out feature that allowed people to officially request that their homes be blurred out -- nearly 250,000 appl...

Following Germany's reunification, victims and villains alike wanted to forget the country's past. And this, for everyone, required privacy. "I've jokingly talked about the privacy tree: It's brown and it has green leaves," said historian Konrad H. Jarausch, referring to Nazis (brown) and Leftists (...

From the clothing ads that dance around in epileptic flashes to the constant requests for your credit card number, email service from the German website GMX.net has some shortcomings. You can get 1 GB of memory, but you'll need a credit card for anything more -- a 5 GB allowance runs about $4.50 pe...

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt foresees more troublesome days ahead between the search engine giant and the governments of the world. Censorship is on the rise around the globe, he said Monday, at a Dublin summit on militant violence. It will step up considerably in the wake of the "Arab Spr...

The new search technologies Google unveiled recently put a mobile-flavored twist in the company's desktop search engine, including a new voice search capability. Google also announced the ability to search by an image and a feature called "Instant Pages" that leads to even speedier search results. M...

Google has launched what many see as its answer to the growing phenomenon of social search in general and Facebook's "Like" button in particular: the +1 button. It is similar in concept, although in Google's case it will eventually be included in search results. When users see something they like on...

Art Online and Beyond

A few years ago, several Google employees got together and asked a fateful question: What if they extended Google's technologies of gathering and archiving information into the world of visual art? The recently launched Google Art Project is the answer to that question, taking one of the broadest s...

If you are a victim of the latest Google algorithm change and experienced an 85 percent traffic drop like the disgruntled fellow penning this article, you may be feeling the heat right now. It's easy to blame others and point out competitors who are "getting away with worse," but what all of those...

Late last month, Google deployed a new algorithm intended to improve the quality of its search results, and as some critics feared, the results have in several cases hurt legitimate websites. The algorithm was meant to clamp down on website owners gaming the system to raise their standings in search...

Google on Thursday began using a new algorithm to rid its top search results of what it described as low-quality websites. This will reduce the rankings for sites that are low value-add for users, ones that copy content from other websites, or sites that just aren't very useful. Simultaneously, the ...

We've been hearing a lot lately from people who think it's time to start policing the Internet. Last week, the U.S. Congress began holding hearings to determine whether it should outlaw the practice of tracking Internet users' browsing habits. Meanwhile, the European Union started exploring the poss...

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