Following consumer outrage over YouTube’s handling of disturbing videos aimed at children on its network, the company has now banned one of the more controversial kid channels it hosted, Toy Freaks. The channel, the 68th largest on YouTube with over 8.5 million subscribers, was often criticized for its vile and seemingly exploitive videos featuring a […]
At Google I/O this year, Google quietly introduced a new chatbot analytics platform called Chatbase, a project developed within the company’s internal R&D incubator, Area 120. Today, that platform is being publicly launched to all, after testing with hundreds of early adopters including Ticketmaster, HBO, Keller Williams, Viber, and others. The idea behind Chatbase’s cloud service […]
Google Maps is getting an upgrade. The company said in a blog post that it has updated driving, navigation, transit and explore maps to better highlight information that the company thinks will be most relevant. That means gas stations when you’re driving or more prominently featured train and bus stations if you’re riding the rails […]
With the launch of Firefox Quantum, Mozilla released what’s probably the most important update to its browser in recent years. It’s faster, lighter and you should give it a try. And as you do so, you’ll notice another change: Google is now the default search engine again — at least if you live in the […]
Google has confirmed a major policy shift in how it approaches extremist content on YouTube. A spokeswoman told us it has broadened its policy for taking down extremist content: Not just removing videos that directly preach hate or seek to incite violence but also removing other videos of named terrorists, unless the content is journalistic […]
Google announced today it will soon roll out a new feature to Google Search, followed by Google Maps, that will show you the estimated wait times for area restaurants. The addition is an expansion on Google’s existing feature which shows businesses’ busy times, but with a tweak that helps diners better decide where and when […]
Computers have changed cars at least as much as they’ve changed our daily lives, but a new partnership between Google and Volkswagen could transform transportation further still: The two are collaborating on how to apply quantum computing to solving some fundamental car-related problems, including optimizing traffic flow, making machine learning more intelligent, and helping to […]
Google is hard at work behind the scenes improving one of its ambitious technical projects ever – Street View. The company previously revealed that its been rolling out improved camera cars with better photographic equipment to improve the quality and resolution of images that make up its street-level views in Google Maps, but it’s also […]
A New York Times piece and a subsequent Medium post this week highlighted an ongoing problem with YouTube Kids — bizarre and disturbing videos aimed at young children using key words and popular children’s characters. Now YouTube says it is putting in place a new process to age-restrict these types of videos in the main YouTube […]
When you’re browsing the web, there’s little that’s more annoying than clicking on what you think is a video and finding out that it was actually just an image with a link to a dubious site. Or what about those links that actually take you to your destination in a new window but then quickly […]