Google

Google will invest a whopping $100 million in start-up companies over the next 12 months, and says a recession is an ideal time to invest in firms that could someday make it big. The money comes from a scheme titled Google Ventures, which aims to ... combine the firm's technical knowledge and financial resources with the creative ideas of new companies. The firm says it will focus on industries including "consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care" and others. (Source: theregister.co.uk and nytimes.com ) Google says there's no reason not to invest during an economic slowdown ... (view more)

Have you considered making a video for YouTube? Do you think it would be cool to add in some hard-driving rock music for that drag racing video, or pump hip hop into a skateboarding demo? You may want to think twice, as music studios continue their ... crusade to rip copyrighted tunes off YouTube. The latest engagement between YouTube's amateur video content producers and the music industry involves Warner Music Group. According to reports, Warner Music is currently crawling the popular Google-owned video site for any of its songs and zapping those it finds. What could it mean for the average Joe ... (view more)

The debut of Google's Street View technology in the United Kingdom has not gone smoothly. Besides general privacy complaints and claims of hypocrisy, there have been some embarrassing images taken of British society. The service goes one step beyond ... the aerial views which were recently praised for saving lives in Australia. Street View uses millions of images to display a picture somewhat similar to what users would see if they stood in the relevant street. Already popular in other countries, it launched in the UK last week covering 25 major cities. The idea is that all faces, along with car ... (view more)

YouTube has exterminated all legally uploaded music videos viewable to British users. The move, which revolves around licensing disagreements, has sparked a public relations war with the music industry and fans. As of late last night, all music ... videos uploaded legitimately by record labels will be unavailable. The site has fallen out with the Performing Rights Society (PRS), which administers and collects royalties for the music industry in the country. PRS Outraged by Decision The two sides both blame the other for the failure to renegotiate a new licensing deal after the previous one ... (view more)

Google has released a new feature for their Google Health service that allows users to share their online health records with specified friends, doctors and family members. Google Health is a service that allows users to input their medical data ... into an online system. The system merges all separate records into one centralized account for the user. Since it uses the Internet to collect data, Google Health also gathers information on medical conditions and interactions between drugs and allergies. (Source: twine.com ) Google Health for Friends and Family Before the feature was introduced, only ... (view more)

Apparently, economic stagnation can't stop Google executives from getting their big bonuses. According to reports, Google's top brass have accepted impressive hand-outs, ranging from $675,000 to over $1.6 million. This news comes only weeks after ... the search giant laid off over 100 employees. The bonuses of four Google executives were made public yesterday when the search giant submitted its 8-K filing with the SEC. Although CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were not awarded impressive bonuses, five other executives were handed a massive sum, totaling some $6,309,000 ... (view more)

Is there anything Google can't do? Google mapping technology, the subject of intense international criticism last week with the introduction of the Latitude location-based social application, steps in to save the day by mapping raging Australian ... bushfires. This weekend, as the largest bushfires Australia has ever seen ravaged the landscape, engineers at Google Australia lent a helping hand by creating a Google Map that tracks the progress of the fires and provides essential information to those at risk. The map allows Australian citizens to keep track of clear, threatened, and danger zones ... (view more)

Google recently released a location-aware mobile application (Google Latitude) allowing the friends and family of a mobile phone user to track their location at all times. Not only is the location of the mobile user featured, but the application can ... also be used to contact them via SMS, Google Talk or Gmail. Now, Privacy International, a non-profit, British-based organization acting as a watchdog for surveillance invasions by governments and corporations has publicly blasted the application, calling it an "unnecessary danger to the security and privacy of a user". (Source: computerworld.com ... (view more)

Google has reached a deal with IBM to enhance its medical data system, Google Health. IBM will provide technology to allow users to update their records in real-time through Internet-connected medical devices. The technology involves fitting WiFi ... radio connections to tools such as heart rate monitors or blood sugar measurement meters. The data will then sync with their computer and automatically update their records in the Google Health service. The scheme, announced in 2007 and formally launched in May last year, allows users to store their medical records online and import details from ... (view more)

You may have thought Google extending its mapping services to cover the night skies the ultimate in its universal expansion. But you'd be wrong: now the Google Earth service is going underwater, on to Mars and even back in time. The newest edition, ... Google Earth 5, has just launched and includes detailed information about the oceans for the first time. Previous editions had simply shown a blue patch in the appropriate areas, with the only detail being darker shading to show the deeper points. Given that most of the world is underwater, that was something of an obstacle to a firm that's often ... (view more)