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Flashback Fun: Type "Atari Breakout" Into Google Image Search

Paul Lilly — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:28:56 +0000

Google goes old school.

The wily programming nerds at Google are all about Easter eggs, and if you type "Atari Breakout" into Google's image search, you'll spy the latest one. This isn't just a random flashback to an old school arcade game, it's also a shout out to the 1976 title's 37th anniversary, though the timing is a little curious. Breakout (PDF) originally debuted in April, so if someone knows the significance of today's date specifically, feel free to enlighten us in comments section below.

Regardless, Google's Easter egg is a fun excursion into arcade gaming from nearly four decades ago. You may not have been alive back then or even heard of Breakout, which was developed by Atari and heavily influenced by Pong, which came out four years prior.

It's also a historically significant title, as it influenced Steve Wozniak's design for the Apple II computer. Here's what Wozniak was quoted as saying about the Apple II:

A lot of features of the Apple II went in because I had designed Breakout for Atari. I had designed it in hardware. I wanted to write it in software now. So that was the reason that color was added in first — so that games could be programmed. I sat down one night and tried to put it into BASIC. Fortunately, I had written the BASIC myself, so I just burned some new ROMs with line drawing commands, color changing commands, and various BASIC commands that would plot in color. I got this ball bouncing around, and I said, 'Well, it needs sound,' and I had to add a speaker to the Apple II. It wasn’t planned, it was just accidental… Obviously you need paddles, so I had to scratch my head and design a simple minimum-chip paddle circuit, and put on some paddles. So, a lot of these features that really made the Apple II stand out in its day came from a game, and the fun features that were built in were only to do one pet project, which was to program a BASIC version of Breakout and show it off at the club.

Pretty neat, eh? As the late Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.

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Russian Search Engine Yandex Surpasses Bing in Popularity

Paul Lilly — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:00:32 +0000

Bing falls to fifth place in the search engine wars, according to data from comScore qSearch.

Google tends to be the go-to search engine in the United States and in many other parts of the world, but in Russia, Yandex is top dog. On a global scale, Yandex is now officially more popular than Microsoft's Bing, so says the latest search engine data from comScore qSearch. Bing slipped to fifth place with a 2.5 share of the search market, falling slightly behind Yandex at 2.8 percent.

The top three search engines are Google (62 percent), China's Baidu (8.2 percent), and Yahoo (4.9 percent). There's an interesting trend beneath the market share figures, however, one which suggests Yandex is an intense favorite among those who have used it.

For example, Bing say 268.6 million unique searches in December, more than three times as many as Yandex, which notched 74.4 million unique searches in the same month. However, Yandex's total searches in December came to 4.84 billion, ahead of Bing at 4.48 billion.

"It's thanks to the Russian audience that the number of Yandex searches grew," Yandex spokesperson Tatiana Komarova said, according to East-West Digital News. "Internet penetration is still relatively low in Russia and it continues to grow by adding older people and residents of small towns."

Outside of Russia, Yandex is also popular in the Kazakh, Ukrainian, and Belorussian markets.

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Whitney Houston, Gangnam Style Top Google's Search Trends for 2012

Paul Lilly — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:54:17 +0000

1.4 trillion searches can't all be wrong, can they?

Whitney Houston's untimely demise in February of this year led to her being the most searched term on Google in all of 2012, followed by "Gangnam Style," which ranked No. 2 and is on pace to hit an unprecedented 1 billion views on YouTube. With 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages throughout the year, Google gives arguably the best glimpse of what's trending around the world.

In terms of overall searches, "Hurricane Sandy" (No. 3), "iPad 3" (No 4.) and "Diablo 3" (No. 5) also ranked high in search trends. It gets a little more interesting when you start breaking things down by category.

For example, we can surmise that teenage girls dominate image search results, lest anyone can come up with another reason why "One Direction" led Google's image search queries. The "iPhone 5" (No. 3) and "Minecraft" (No. 8) both sneaked into the list of image searches that were otherwise dominated by celebrities.

There were no big surprises in the Consumer Electronics category, which was led by the "iPad 3" and followed by the "Samsung Galaxy S3," "iPad Mini," "Nexus 7," and "Galaxy Note 2" (in that order).

Looking for a sign of the apocalypse? In the TV Shows category, "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" (No. 3) ranked higher than "Game of Thrones" (No. 6). "American Horror Story" and "Sons of Anarchy" both didn't even make the top 10 search results, which I view as a real travesty.

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Sprint's Security Update for Galaxy S III Kills Universal Search Feature

Paul Lilly — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:51:52 +0000

If you're a Sprint customer using a Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone, there's plenty of blame to go around for why your universal search feature is now broken, provided you installed the latest security update. You can blame Apple, which holds U.S. patent number 8,086,604 related to "using a plurality of heuristic algorithms" to search multiple locations at once. You can blame U.S. patent law and hate the game, not the player. Samsung and its legal team deserve a bit of scorn for not putting together a better legal defense, and Sprint gets some blame for not making it clear that Galaxy SIII owners were about to lose their 'Quick Search' feature by installing the latest update.

Wherever you decide to place the blame, the end result is the same. Samsung Galaxy SIII owners who installed the recent update screwed themselves out of the ability to search through contacts, apps, and the Web all at the same time, according to user complaints on Android Central's forums.

"If you got used to this feature, it's a pain in the butt to lose it, especially if you want to search contacts. You have to go into contacts, then search, versus just using the global search," forum user 'eyecon82' posted.

Fortunately for other users in the same boat, eyecon82 didn't just post to complain about the update, he provided a solution by way of an Android Application Package (APK). We haven't tested this ourselves, but based on user comments, the GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk file he links to effectively restores the universal search function after applying Sprint's latest update.

As always, be extra cautious when installing software outside of official markets like Google Play and Amazon's App Store.

Image Credit: Android Central forum user bojackr1

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Google: Number of Government Requests to Censor Internet Data is 'Troubling'

Paul Lilly — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:22:54 +0000

The Internet may have forever changed the way information is shared and consumed, but what hasn't changed is the fact that government agencies around the globe go to great efforts to censor certain data. Google, which now discloses government requests to remove certain links and YouTube videos, says that what it's seen over the past two years has been nothing short of "troubling."

"When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added annotations with some of the more interesting stories behind the numbers," Google stated in a blog post. "We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not."

In particular, Google is concerned about the number of take down requests it receives over political speech.

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect -- Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," Google says.

Need examples? Google claims Spanish regulators in the last half year accounted for 270 search removal requests linking to blogs and newspaper articles referencing public figures such as mayors and public prosecutors. And in Poland, Google received a request from a public institution to censor certain links that criticized the establishment. All of these were denied.

Here in the U.S., Google says a law enforement agency requested that 1,400 YouTube videos be taken down due to alleged harrassment. The total number of content removal requests Google received in the past six months has more than doubled compared to the previous reporting period, the search company said.

Image Credit: Simon James (Wikimeda Commons)

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Copyright Owners Ask Google to Flush 250,000 Infringing Search Links Every Week

Paul Lilly — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:46:31 +0000

In an effort to be more transparent about copyright removals in search, Google this week expanded its Transparency Report with a new section that discloses precisely how many requests the sultan of search receives from copyright owners, including organizations, to remove allegedly infringing search links. That number now stands at over 1.2 million requests per month, or over 250,000 per week, which is more than it received in all of 2009.

"Fighting online piracy is very important, and we don’t want our search results to direct people to materials that violate copyright laws," Google explains in a blog post. "So we’ve always responded to copyright removal requests that meet the standards set out in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). At the same time, we want to be transparent about the process so that users and researchers alike understand what kinds of materials have been removed from our search results and why. To promote that transparency, we have long shared copies of copyright removal requests with Chilling Effects, a nonprofit organization that collects these notices from Internet users and companies."

Despite the massive number of removal requests submitted to Google on a daily basis, the search giant claims its average turnaround time is less 11 hours, which is pretty remarkable considering the man power required to look into well over a million links each month.

"At the same time, we try to catch erroneous or abusive removal requests," Google elaborates. "For example, we recently rejected two requests from an organization representing a major entertainment company, asking us to remove a search result that linked to a major newspaper’s review of a TV show. The requests mistakenly claimed copyright violations of the show, even though there was no infringing content. We’ve also seen baseless copyright removal requests being used for anticompetitive purposes, or to remove content unfavorable to a particular person or company from our search results."

For those of you who are curious about copyright removal requests, you can view that portion of Google's Transparency Report here, which also lists the top reporting organizations and owners in the past month, along with the top targeted domains.

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Microsoft's Vision of a Better Bing is Social Integration

Paul Lilly — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:19:33 +0000

Microsoft is dipping its search brush into its paint bucket and getting ready to swipe it across Bing, the world's second most popular search engine behind Google. The new-look Bing will take on a three column design that Microsoft says is "the most significant update" to the search engine since it launched three years ago. Microsoft is looking beyond simple keyword searches and putting a big part of its focus on sharing search results by incorporating a Facebook column on the right-hand side.

"Now it’s possible to do more than find pages with search. You are able to share nearly everything you do, including where you are and who you are, in real-time," Microsoft explains. "From rich multimedia content to real-time streams to social conversations to applications that let you take action in the real world, digital connections are created that present the opportunity to do something. This presents an unprecedented opportunity to rethink how search should work. Suddenly an index of documents that does not embrace these changes is insufficient."

The social sidebar is always present and supposedly "never intrusive." It will appear as part of every search query, though it's whisked to the right side of the browser. Most of the social content that used to appear in the main search pane will be shuttled to the side. You'll be able to share links and comment directly to Facebook using the sidebar.

It isn't all about social networking, however. The other two columns will consist of core web results, which will take up the largest third of the screen, and a 'Snapshot' center column with relevant information and services related to your search, such as maps, restaurant reviews and reservations, and more.

You can read more about Bing's redesign here.

Google Report: Search Engine Results Fall Under First Amendment Protection

Brad Chacos — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:09:22 +0000

When Eric Cartman prettied himself up in makeup and started shouting "Whatever! I'll do what I want!" on a fictional Maury Povich talk show, he and South Park's creators were flexing the freedom of speech rights allowed to everyone in the United States. Now, Google may be getting ready to do what it wants, too; the company recently commissioned a report by a First Amendment scholar who concluded that Google's search engine results are constitutionally protected speech and shouldn't be subject to government anti-trust regulations.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, the brains behind the claims, says that search engine results serve as the company's "opinion" about the query as asked by the searchee.

"It uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers’ judgments about what material users are most likely to find responsive to their queries," he writes in the 27 page report.

Volokh also says that search engines are essentially media companies like the New York Times and CNN, so he claims that Google, Bing and co. should be afforded the same free speech rights as more traditional publications. Or, as PaidContent puts it, if the Times can spit out "All the news that's fit to print," the same right should apply to search results.

PaidContent additionally points out that if that's true, Google would be within its rights to blacklist Yelp, which has been yelping about Google being a monopoly. Google has recently come under intense anti-trust scrutiny from both the United States and the European Union, which likely caused Google to commission the report.

It's an interesting change of tactics for the Mountain View crew, which previously claimed that its results shouldn't be regulated because Google isn't really a monopoly: anybody can use Bing or Dogpile at any time. Now, Google (via the commissioned report) is essentially giving up on the neutrality claims and shouting "Whatever! Whatever! The constitution lets me do what I want!"

What do you think: should Google be allowed to do whatever it wants with its search results? What do you think will happen in countries that don't have free speech protections? Google is a global business, after all.

Japanese Court Orders Removal of Google Autocomplete Terms in Defamation Case

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:10:18 +0000

First introduced in late 2004 as a Google Labs project, Google’s autocomplete search feature has been an integral part of the world’s most popular search engine ever since its widespread rollout in 2008. This nifty search aid hasn’t had a controversy-free existence, however. It now finds itself at the heart of a fresh controversy in Japan. More after the jump.

A Japanese court has ordered the removal of certain terms from Google’s autocomplete search feature. According to a report by The Japan Times, the court was acting on a petition accusing Google’s autocomplete feature of being defamatory. The petition was filed by a Japanese man (name not disclosed) who alleged that some of the autocomplete suggestions accompanying his name were not only defamatory but also breached his privacy. The unnamed petitioner, in fact, claimed that these defamatory search suggestions even cost him his job.

"This [autocomplete feature] can lead to irretrievable damage, such as job loss or bankruptcy, just by displaying search results that constitute defamation or violation of the privacy of an individual person or small and medium-size companies," The Japan Times quoted the man's lawyer Hiroyuki Tomita as saying.

But Google seems to be in no mood to subject itself to the Japanese court’s order. It contends that the court has no jurisdiction over its U.S. headquarters, and that its own privacy policy does not necessitate the deletion of any search terms in this matter.

"A Japanese court issued a provisional order requesting Google to delete specific terms from autocomplete," the Google spokesperson said in a statement. "The judge did not require Google to completely suspend the autocomplete function."

The autocomplete feature has found itself in the middle of similar controversies in the past too, with virtually identical cases being filed in other countries as well.

Report: Users Call Personalized Search A "Bad Thing" Due To Privacy, Relevancy Concerns

Brad Chacos — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:23:46 +0000

Google raised a lot of eyebrows when it introduced the Google+-infused Search Plus Your World personal results to its bread and butter Search results, but the most publicized criticisms have come from big name companies and government organizations. What does Joe Everyman think about personalized search results? A new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project asked 2,000 people that very question -- and most users say that hand-tailored results are a "Bad thing."

Pew phrased the question a couple of different ways to get a better grasp on why users liked/disliked personal results: all mentioned having your online behavior tracked in order to provide tailored search results. Just around two-thirds of all respondents -- 65 percent -- said they dislike personal search results because it "may limit the information you get online and what search results you see." A whopping 73 percent of respondents feel that the behavior is an invasion of privacy.

The research group also asked about the perceived ethics of tracking online behavior to deliver targeted advertising: 68 percent of respondents say they're "NOT OKAY with targeted advertising because I don’t like having my online behavior tracked and analyzed."

Despite all that doom and gloom, things aren't all bad: 91 percent of those surveyed found exactly what they were looking for "all or most of the time" they booted up a search engine. Check out the survey for yourself if you're a statistics freak, or even better yet, drop a line in the comments below and let us know how you feel about being tracked and targeted with tailored ads and search results. Crappy or awesome?

Check out our guide on how to disable G+ SPYW results in Google searches while you're at it!

European Regulators Ask Google to Delay Privacy Policy Changes

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:16:38 +0000

While the uproar over Google’s updated privacy policy has lessened in the U.S., European officials are taking things a step further today. The European Commission has asked Google to delay implementing its new privacy policy so the matter can be fully investigated. The search giant has apparently been taken aback by the proposal.

The Commission is in the process of updating its rules on data protection, and that might account for the new-found interest in Google’s policy. According to Google’s Brussels spokesperson, Google briefed the Commission on the proposed change before it was even announced to the public. He went on toe say Google would be happy to talk things over with regulators if there are any new concerns, but he did not say Google would delay implementation of the new policy.

Google’s new privacy policy is essentially ‘one policy to rule them all.’ Over 60 individual privacy policies from various services are being rolled into one document that spells out what information Google can share internally between services. Do you think the European Commission is justified in asking for a delay?

Google Best Company to Work For, Fortune Says

Paul Lilly — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:17:28 +0000

Looking for a job? Fortune this week revealed its list of the 100 best companies to work for, giving you plenty of options to set your sights on, some of which are harder to get your foot into the door than others. Coming out on top of Fortune's list of bodacious work places is Google, which moved up three places from its previous fourth place rank.

"Employees rave about their mission, the culture, and the famous perks of the Plex: bocce courts, a bowling alley, eyebrow shaping (for a fee) in the New York office," Fortune said. "Then there's the food: some 25 cafes company-wide, all gratis."

In other words, if you like to eat and play -- and who doesn't? -- Google is the go-to company, according to Fortune. It also helps in the job security department that Google, as a company, is doing well. Revenue, profits, and share price are all up compared to last year.

As you might expect, several tech companies made the list, including NetApp (No. 6), Zappos.com (No. 11), Qualcomm (No. 23), Adobe (No. 41), Intel (No. 46), Microsoft (No. 76), Cisco (No. 90), and GoDaddy.com (No.93), to name just a handful. You can view the full list here.

Image Credit: blogs.ubc.ca

Android App of the Week: Dragon Go!

Tim Ferrill — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:32:17 +0000

The competition for voice activation technology in mobile products has escalated in the last six months in large part due to the launch of Siri, Apple's "personal assistant", on the iPhone 4S. Several developers have attempted to fill in the gap on Android by offering voice-centric apps that provide access to search and other functions, with mixed success. One such app is Dragon Go! by Nuance Communications.

Though it doesn't integrate into Android the way Siri does on iOS, Dragon Go! does provide easy access to a wide range of functions from a central starting point. Dragon Go! integrates with a number of popular apps such as Google Music, Maps, and Netflix, giving you the ability to quickly navigate into those apps using your voice by saying things like "Mythbusters on Netflix" or "Play Tron Soundtrack". The app also integrates with the search functionality on a huge list of websites like Weather.com or Hulu.com using commands such as "San Francisco on Weather.com" or "Last Man Standing on Hulu.com". Expect more app and website integration in future updates.

Dragon Go! is available as a free download on the Android Market.

Google's Social Search Initiative Receives EPIC Complaint, Possible FTC Investigation

Paul Lilly — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:00:28 +0000

Google a week ago began rolling out a social search update called "Search, "Plus Your World," which meshes photos, comments, and posts on your Google+ account with your search results. This has drawn the ire of a privacy advocate called EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) concerned over privacy and antitrust issues that could arise from the new search feature.

EPIC plans to complain to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in hopes of sparking an investigation, the Los Angeles Times reports.

"We believe this is something that the FTC needs to look at," Mark Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC, told the L.A. Times. "Google is an entrenched player trying to fight off its challenger in Facebook by using its market dominance in a separate sector."

You could draw a parallel of sorts to Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows, a two-for-one that got Microsoft in trouble in the European Union and prompted a so-called browser ballot. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it is somewhat similar in that EPIC is charging Google with giving itself an unfair advantage by integrating Google+ content into Google Search. But that's not EPIC's only concern.

"Although data from a user's Google+ contacts is not displayed publicly, Google's changes make the personal data of users more accessible," EPIC states on its website.

Twitter is also opposed to Google's search modifications, while Facebook has yet to make its feelings known.

Google Search Gets Social with Google+ Integration

Ryan Whitwam — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:04:58 +0000

It was only a matter of time, and now Google has rolled Google+ social results into its search engine in a big way. The new system is called “Search Plus Your World,” and it's the biggest change to Google search in years. The new social search will surface content on the web, as well as on Google+. Everything from posts, to photos, to shared links will be taken into account from here on out.

Users will have to be logged into Google+ for the new social content to show up, but it appears to be the default view. A new search settings bar at the top allows you to quickly toggle the customized results off and get just general web content. The Plus-ified version of search indicated with a small person icon the links that are specifically from your Google+ circles or posts.

Private material will show up in results, but only for those people it has been shared with. People and pages from your Circles will also auto-complete on Google now. The change is live now, and should be available to everyone in the coming days. Google’s personalized search can be permanently disabled in the settings. Will you leave the personalized search on?