9TO5GOOGLE - Aug 5 - A privacy breach on Google+ resulted in a class-action lawsuit, and now, millions of former users are getting payouts. Google agreed to pay $7.5M to users of the defunct social network. Almost half of that money went to legal fees, but the rest is now being paid to ~1.72M people.
192 posts categorized "Google"
2M Former Google+ Users Can Claim Their $2.15 Payout From Class-action Lawsuit
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Trump Files Lawsuits Against Google, Facebook and Twitter
CNET - July 8 - After being banned earlier in the year, former President Donald Trump said he's filed lawsuits accusing Google, Facebook, Twitter and their CEOs of First Amendment violations for alleged censorship. Lawsuits that allege censorship and that argue social media companies violate the First Amendment when they remove posts or ban users have repeatedly been rejected by courts across the country.
by Erin Carson & Queenie Wong
See full article at CNet
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Google and Snap in Talks To Invest in India's ShareChat
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 5 - ShareChat, a Bangalore-based social network that added Twitter as an investor in 2019, is in advanced stages of talks to raise money from Google and Snap, as well as several existing investors, including Twitter, three sources familiar with the matter. ShareChat has raised about $264 million to date and was valued at nearly $700 million last year. Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder, and chief executive of ShareChat, said the app was growing "exponentially" and that users were spending, on average, ~30 mins on the app each day. If the deal goes through, it would be the first investment from Snapchat's parent company into an Indian startup.
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Google Maps Turned Into Social Network
ANDROID POLICE - July 31 - Rolling out globally today, users on Google Maps who have shared photos, reviews, or lists publicly will be followable. The updated profiles look a lot like a Twitter or Facebook page, with a follow button and the number of followers the account has.
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Twitter Partners With Google To Make Tweets Searchable
MASHABLE - Feb 5 - Twitter has reached a deal with Google that will make its Tweets instantly searchable. It's unclear how the Google deal will affect deleted tweets. Twitter's deal with Google isn't the first of its kind: It already has deals in place with Bing and Yahoo, wherein the company shares user data.
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Google & Facebook To Have More Than 50% Of UK Digital Ad Market
THE GUARDIAN - Dec 3 - Advertising on websites, smartphones, video and social media will see UK operations make £4.1B in 2015, according to eMarketer. The UK operations of Google and Facebook will make a combined £4.1B in 2015, a 50.8% share of the total expected to be spent on ads next year. Facebook UK’s ad revenues are forecast to grow by 55% this year to £576M and by a further 29% next year to £743M.
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The Laborers Who Keep Beheadings Out Of Our Facebook Feed
WIRED - Oct 26 - Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer of MySpace who now runs online safety consultancy SSP Blue, estimates that the number of content moderators runs to 100K. That is about twice the total head count of Google and 14 times that of Facebook. This work is increasingly done in the Philippines where moderators can be hired for a fraction of American wages ($300 - $500 a month). Whisper, a mobile startup (valued at $200M) that lets users post photos and share secrets anonymously, works with outsourcing firm called TaskUs. Michael Heyward, Whisper’s CEO, sees moderation as an integral feature and a key selling point of his app. Whisper practices “active moderation,” when every single post is screened in real time; many other companies moderate content only if it’s been flagged by users, which is known as reactive moderating. Given that content moderators might very well comprise as much as half the total workforce, it’s worth pondering just what the long-term psychological toll of this work can be. Employees are given psychological tests to determine their mental baseline, then interviewed and counseled regularly to minimize the effect of disturbing images.
by Adrian Chen
See full article at Wired
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Google To launch WhatsApp Competitor In 2015
DIGITALSPY.CO.UK - Oct 4 - Google is allegedly planning to launch a competitor to WhatApp next year. Google already operates its own IM platform Hangouts, but the new app is said to operate independently and function differently.
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Orkut Has Shut Down
IBNLIVE - Sep 29 - Orkut, Google's first foray into social networking, has closed down. Google declined to say how many users Orkut had. Orkut, which was widely used in Brazil and India, was launched early in 2004 - the same year that Facebook was founded. Google would preserve an archive of all Orkut "communities".
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Google Silently Drops Mandatory Google+ Sign Up
THE WESTSIDE STORY - Sep 22 - Google doesn't force the users to have a Google+ account anymore. Earlier every user that was having a Gmail account was forced to set up Google+. Since the Vic Gundotra stepped down as head of Google+; things have changed.
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Google Acquires Opinion Poll Service Polar For Google+
TECH CRUNCH - Sep 11 - Google has acquired Polar, the highly graphical opinion poll service, for an undisclosed sum. The Polar team will join Google+ and the service will continue to operate until the end of 2014. Existing users will be able to download and save an archive of their existing polls before the service shuts down for good. The company had raised $1.7M in total funding before the acquisition.
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Google Drops Real Name Requirement For Google+
THE INQUIRER - July 16 - People don't need to use their real names on Google+ anymore. Google acknowledged that this is something that people have requested for some time.
by Dave Neal
See full article at The Inquirer
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Google To Finally Shut Down Orkut
VENTURE BEAT - June 30 - Orkut will shut down on September 30. Users will not be allowed to create new Orkut accounts starting today, and Google will offer existing users the ability to export their data until September 2016. Although Orkut never took off in the U.S., the social network was once one of the most popular sites in Brazil.
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How Facebook Avoided Google's Talent Poaching Lawsuit
REUTERS - Mar 25 - In 2010, Google, Apple, Adobe Systems, Intel and others agreed to a settlement of a U.S. Justice Department probe that barred them from agreeing not to poach each other's employees. The companies have since been fighting the civil antitrust lawsuit. Facebook declined at that time to limit Facebook's recruitment or hiring of Google employees. Facebook is not the only Silicon Valley company which rejected a request to curtail its hiring efforts. In 2007, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs threatened to file a patent lawsuit against Palm if the company didn't agree to refrain from poaching Apple employees.
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Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Start-up DeepMind
FINANCIAL TIMES - Jan 27 - Google has completed its largest European acquisition to date with the purchase of London based DeepMind for around £300m ($500m.) The company develops powerful learning algorithms by combining machine learning and neuroscience. DeepMind was backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures, among others. One source familiar with the deal stated that Google moved extremely quickly complete the deal before Facebook could acquire the company.
by Tim Bradshaw & Sally Davies
See full article at Financial Times
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