Google Timeline tracks your exact location: Here's how to stop it.
GOOGLE NEWS. GOOGLE PARTNERS. What FACEBOOK and GOOGLE are Hiding from world. DOCS. Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claiming Its Release Was Accidental. Yesterday, we published a blog post lauding an extremely important app privacy feature that was added in Android 4.3. That feature allows users to install apps while preventing the app from collecting sensitive data like the user's location or address book. The App Ops interface removed in Android 4.4.2 After we published the post, several people contacted us to say that the feature had actually been removed in Android 4.4.2, which was released earlier this week.
Today, we installed that update to our test device, and can confirm that the App Ops privacy feature that we were excited about yesterday is in fact now gone. When asked for comment, Google told us that the feature had only ever been released by accident — that it was experimental, and that it could break some of the apps policed by it. The disappearance of App Ops is alarming news for Android users. A moment ago, it looked as though Google cared about this massive privacy problem. Google, the right thing to do here is obvious. Google engineer submits joke support ticket asking for a monorail. Google buys monorail cars. GOOGLE+
GOOGLE+ Google blimps will carry wireless signal across Africa. Search giant Google is intending to build huge wireless networks across Africa and Asia, using high-altitude balloons and blimps. The company is intending to finance, build and help operate networks from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, with the aim of connecting around a billion people to the web. To help enable the campaign, Google has been putting together an ecosystem of low-cost smartphones running Android on low-power microprocessors. Rather than traditional infrastructure, Google's signal will be carried by high-altitude platforms - balloons and blimps - that can transmit to areas of hundreds of square kilometres. Google has also considered using satellites to achieve the same goal.
"There's not going to be one technology that will be the silver bullet," an unnamed source told the Wall St Journal. A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
GOOGLE MUSIC. GOOGLE GRANTS. ADS. Inside Search. YOUTUBE. GOOGLE APPS. NEVER MIND: Google Has NOT Figured Out A Way To Track You Even When You're Offline. Google announced a new advertising product this morning, called "Conversions API," with a statement on the DoubleClick blog that gave the strong impression the company was now able to let advertisers use their offline sales data -- from phone calls and credit card transactions, for instance -- to target search ad campaigns. But hold the phone. That's not what's happening. We misinterpreted a statement Google made about the new product.
The statement appeared to say Google was able to allow advertisers to track your offline behavior, in a store for instance, and then target search ads at you later. Google even said it wanted to "bring offline into your online world. " That would have been a revolutionary step -- and a huge competitive threat to Facebook, whose Custom Audiences product does much the same thing.
The original statement, however, was misleading. Here's what it said: All the keywords are there: "offline," "call-tracking," "credit," and so on. DoubleClick. Google Drive and Docs for Teachers 2012.
BLOGGER. FORMS. WEBMASTER TOOLS. DASHBOARD. INPUT TOOLS. The Future According to Schmidt: "Augmented Humanity," Integrated Into Google. In the future we will be Google, and Google will be us--the online giant will make us better humans. That's according to soon-to-be ex-CEO Eric Schmidt speaking today at DLD 11 conference in Germany. Schmidt announced this week that he's departing his role as Google's CEO, and then it emerged he was winning a $100 million golden parachute as a thank-you for his time in charge of one of the world's most important tech companies.
Perhaps that's why he felt he could reveal some of his forecasts for the future at Google. A future he was careful to note he'll be involved in (promising he'll be at Google for at least "the next decade"). After some preamble about his time at Google, Schmidt got to the good stuff: The future is mobile, he thinks, driven by the "device of our time," the smartphone--and the tablet. Children now have two states of existence, aided by this trend--"asleep or online. " Then Schmidt got brave: Unconnected devices today are "no longer interesting," he thinks.
CHROME. Top 10 Google Chrome Plugins for Small Businesses.