Googles

If you’ve noticed more iffy links creeping into your Google results, you’re not alone. Even Google says it’s keenly aware that it could do a better job of deflecting widely-used tactics for gaming its search engine. And it just announced several changes it’s making to push substandard pages down in results or eliminate them altogether.Known as the March 2024 Core Update, this round of fixes builds on algorithmic tweaks the company began implementing in 2022 to prevent questionable sites from competing with the useful ones…

Google’s upcoming Pixel 8a is now rumored to see a price increase that would put the cost of it over last year’s Pixel 7a. The phone is also said to come in four different colorways, giving users a wide variety of choices for the model that suits them best. Google’s Pixel ‘A ‘ series phones have always been about giving consumers a less expensive option in the Pixel lineup. Something that offered all the best parts of the flagship Pixel phones but, without the flagship price. That is still going to remain true. However,…

Google has been slowly changing how it talks about ranking algorithms. Although Google hasn’t said anything actually new to sharp-eyed industry watchers, it is important to shine a light on what has been subtly said, formalize it and apply it to digital marketing. Information satisfaction and helpful people-first content The core concept we should be focusing on is information satisfaction (IS). It is not new and has been hiding in plain sight for a long time. What is information satisfaction?…

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind companies like SpaceX and Tesla, has taken aim at Google's chatbot, Gemini, accusing artificial intelligence (AI) of mirroring the biases and mistakes of its creators.In a recent tweet, Musk lambasted Google's AI efforts, suggesting that the technology's flaws were evident in Gemini's generation of biased and unreliable data and images. Expressing his disbelief, he posted, "The sheer insanity of that actual response from Google's AI is staggering! They will fix it to be less obvious in…

Indian startups have now approached the country's top antitrust watchdog in order to force Google to reinstate the apps it delisted for policy reasons on Friday. Google had removed around 200 Indian apps including Naukri, 99acres, Bharat Matrimony and Kuku FM and the tech giant later reinstated only around 15 of these applications.  According to a Reuters report…

Max Buondonno/ZDNETGoogle has announced its latest feature drop for Pixel phones and watches, and it brings some pretty big additions to the lineup. Phones are getting better video and photos for Instagram, some older devices are getting Circle to Search, and a new next-gen Call Screen is coming to the US. Also: Google brings back 360-degree Photo Sphere modePixel watches are also getting a fair bit of attention, with Google adding a new pace trainer and heart zone trainer, plus automatic workout detection, and a way…

In a recent development, the controversy surrounding Google's Gemini AI platform has escalated, prompting the Union Minister of State for Electronics and…

Payments Council of India, which represents all the major payment companies of the country under IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India), wants the government to step in not only to negotiate between the two parties, but also amend the laws of the land to stop monopolistic policies of large multinational companies.“PCI requests the Indian government to bring in amendments to existing laws to save and protect Indian Startups, RBI regulated payment aggregators (PAs) from Google's abusive and monopolistic policies…

A few more apps came back on Play Store on Sunday after they complied with Google's billing policy, even as the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) expressed concerns as the majority of apps removed remained delisted. Murugavel J, founder and CEO of matrimony.com, said that only eight of the company's apps, including Bengali Matrimony, Marathi Matrimony, Tamil Matrimony, Jodii and Bharat Matrimony were reinstated on Sunday, but only after they accepted Google's terms. A vast majority of its 100-plus apps are…

Hello, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, investment firm KKR announced that it would acquire VMware’s end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion. As Ron explains, that business included VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon — two remote desktop apps that had been part of VMware’s family of products. Elsewhere, Mistral, the French AI startup, launched a new model to rival OpenAI’s GPT-4 — and its own cheekily…