Google

By: Daniel Dimov

Google Glass is a wearable computer worn like a standard pair of glasses. The device displays information on a glass screen in front of the eyes of the user. It accepts voice commands that start with the phrase “ok glass.” Google Glass contains 12GB of usable storage and has a 5-megapixel camera which is capable of shooting 720p video. Users will be able to upload photos on the Internet. By the end of 2013, Google Glass will be available to consumers.

Google Glass may be a new and innovative product with the potential to change the world, but one thing that won't change because of Glass is the search giant's unified privacy policy.

The company said "no changes to the Google Privacy Policy are planned for Glass," in a recent letter to members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus. The letter, dated June 7 but only released on Monday, was a response to Congressional privacy hawks who asked Google for more details about Glass and its privacy implications back in May.

Google alerted Blogger users today that the company will update its Content Policy to "strictly prohibit the monetization of adult content on Blogger." It warned that blogs "which are adult in nature and are displaying advertisements to adult websites" may be shut down when the new terms take effect on June 30.

Web sites you think are safe but have been compromised to distribute malicious software are far more prevalent than sites that are intentionally dangerous, according to a new Transparency Report from Google released on Tuesday.

The new Safe Browsing section of the report reveals some of the security trends that Google has been seeing. While Google reiterated that its Safe Browsing program flags up to 10,000 sites a day, the report showed that hacked sites remain a major problem -- with about 60 percent hosting malware and 40 percent being used for phishing attacks.

Google's acquisition of Israeli mobile navigation app vendor Waze is going to get an anti-trust examination by the FTC.

Earlier this month, Mountain View's acquisition team flipped open the wallet to the tune of $US1.3 billion for the social map app, its sub-$US70 million revenue, and its claimed fifty million users. When the Chocolate Factory made its buy, Waze was also attracting the interest of Apple and Facebook.

Google has asked the court overseeing terrorism-related surveillance programs at the U.S. National Security Agency to allow the company to publish information on the number of surveillance requests it receives.

Six years after the first iPhone launched, Apple has finally made some major changes to the look and feel of its mobile operating system. Most of these improvements — including the new Notification Center, quick multitasking and Wi-Fi direct transfers — have been available on Android devices for years. So, if you wanted to transfer files quickly between phones, you could have done that just by tapping them together as long ago as 2011 . If you wanted to move quickly and easily between open apps, Android has provided a really great task-switching menu since version 4.0.

Google said Wednesday that it has discovered and stopped a series of attempts to hack the accounts of tens of thousands of Iranian users in what the company believes is an attempt to influence the country's upcoming election.

"For almost three weeks, we have detected and disrupted multiple email-based phishing campaigns," Eric Grosse, the vice president for security engineering, wrote in a post on the company's blog.

With Google set to buy app-maker Waze, the question is whether Google actually needs the crowd-sourced traffic app or is simply trying to stick it to its competitors.

On Tuesday, Google confirmed weeks of rumors that it is buying Waze. The company did not disclose the terms of the deal, but early reports put the price between $1 billion and $1.3 billion.

This morning Google sent the following letter to the offices of the Attorney General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Dear Attorney General Holder and Director Mueller

Google has worked tremendously hard over the past fifteen years to earn our users’ trust. For example, we offer encryption across our services; we have hired some of the best security engineers in the world; and we have consistently pushed back on overly broad government requests for our users’ data.