search-engine giant

It's a connected world, and Google is moving to connect it a little more tightly this week for Gmail account holders.

The search-engine giant on Monday announced a new innovation from Gmail Labs that aims to streamline personal connectivity by tethering its Web-based e-mail program with its calendar function and Google Docs.

O3b Networks has taken the wraps off a bold plan to launch a global satellite network capable of delivering high-speed Internet connectivity to people living in emerging markets, where the commercial deployment of fiber networks is neither economically viable nor practical.

Google is seeking to draw clear distinctions between the methods it uses to target ad placements based on search queries and a controversial data-mining practice known as deep-packet inspection. The deep-packet technique gathers and stores information on an individual's Web-site visits and Internet usage without first obtaining the user's consent.

To appease privacy advocates, Google has added a privacy-policy link to its home page. Google had previously said it didn't want to clutter its page.

Led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), several privacy groups, including the California-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the World Privacy Forum, Consumer Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Northern California, and the Consumer Federation of California, sent a letter to the search-engine giant on June 3. The letter notified Google it was in violation of California law for not posting the link.

Google has expanded its licensing agreement with digital map provider Tele Atlas under undisclosed financial terms. The new license covers the entire range of Google's map-related services, from Google Maps and Google Earth services to newer applications that are expected to play lead roles on Google's Android mobile platform.

In an on-stage conversation with New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, Google CEO Eric Schmidt conceded that the search-engine giant doesn't know how to make money off of YouTube, the popular video-sharing site for which it paid $1.65 billion in 2006.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how valuable is the ability to find the perfect image of an object from the entire Web? According to a paper delivered by two Google researchers at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing last weekend, the search-engine giant may be one step closer to answering that question.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how valuable is the ability to find the perfect image of an object from the entire Web? According to a paper delivered by two Google researchers at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing last weekend, the search-engine giant may be one step closer to answering that question.