Daily Archives: August 14, 2021

Way back in January 2020, Sonos sued Google over patent infringement. Today, the streaming speaker company scored an early victory with the U.S. International Trade Commission. A preliminary ruling penned by ITC chief administrative law judge Charles Bullock finds that Google infringed on five patents.

Today the ALJ has found all five of Sonos asserted patents to be valid and that Google infringes on all five patents, Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus said in a statement to TechCrunch. We are pleased the ITC has confirmed Googles blatant infringement of Sonos patented inventions. This decision re-affirms the strength and breadth of our portfolio, marking a promising milestone in our long-term pursuit to defend our innovation against misappropriation by Big Tech monopolies.

The finding is still very much early days for whats likely to be an even more protracted battled battle between the two companies. Sonos complaint stems from Googles own family of streaming speakers. Google entered the category, long dominated by Sonos, roughly four and a half years ago with the original Home speaker. The line now includes a number of products now listed under the Nest banner.

Google has been blatantly and knowingly copying our patented technology, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said in a statement when the suit was initially filed. Despite our repeated and extensive efforts over the last few years, Google has not shown any willingness to work with us on a mutually beneficial solution. Were left with no choice but to litigate.

Sonos noted similar issues with Amazon devices (Googles chief competitor in the category) at the time, but the company opted to focus its time, money and resources on a battle with Google, instead.

Ultimately, Sonos is hoping to use the ITC to block the import of those smart speakers, along with other Google hardware, including the Chromecast and Pixels. Such a decision would be a massive hit to Googles hardware ambitions. A final ruling isnt expected until December 13, however, after which point a potential import ban would take 60 days to go into effect.

We do not use Sonos technology, and we compete on the quality of our products and the merits of our ideas, Google Spokesperson Jos Castaeda said in a statement. We disagree with this preliminary ruling and will continue to make our case in the upcoming review process.

Link:

Google infringed on five Sonos patents, according to preliminary ruling - TechCrunch

For Google's Nuha Elkhiamy, it's exciting to see the company's Austinoperations grow into one of Google's largest hubs.

Elkhiamy, who was recently named the site leadfor Google's Austin hub,said Google has received a warm welcome since debuting operations in the city 14 years ago. She said she wants to ensure Google maintains "responsible growth" as it continues to expand in Central Texas.

"At a personal level, it's a place I call home and in my role in Google I committed to investing in the place where I work and I live. So for me, and I think for many of our other Googlers, it is personal,"Elkhiamy said. "We want to build upon thereal positive reception we've had in terms of the tech industry in Austin and we want to continueas partnersaswe grow in the city of Austin."

The company opened an Austin office in 2007 and now has more than 1,500 employees in Central Texas. Google plans to occupyall of a new 35-story tower being built at 601 W. Second St.

Elkhiamy, who is also director of Google's corporate engineering division, said she views her role as support for 800 engineering employees based in Austin, and the broader Google Austin hub. This entails everything from helping with development andcareer aspirations to building and fostering community relationships.

Before taking over as leader of the Austinhub, Elkhiamy was in charge of Google's Austin engineering diversity, equityand inclusion operations. In that role she alsoworked with the broader Austin community including anumber of partner organizations like Code to College as well as Huston-Tillotson University.

Elkhiamy spoke with the American-Statesman about her new role, her vision for Google's Austin hubandGoogle's involvement in the community. The interview has been edited for space and clarity.

American-Statesman: Austin is a growing location for Google. How do you work tokeep inclusion in mind as it expands?

Elkhiamy: One of the things that we did last year was a three-pronged approach to diversity, equity inclusion within the Austin site.

We looked at manager development, knowing that our managers are critical to creating inclusive environments, providing safe space for them to talk about various issues, and also really focusing on their development as they create those inclusive environments.

We also had a focus on allyship. We have a really rich employee resource groupfootprintwithin the Austin site... We look at how do we, as a community, facilitate strong allyship and partnership. We hosted things like listening sessions where folks that did not necessarily belong to a community but that care about a community can learn more about different communities.

The last is really trying to bring a more representative tech industrymore broadly. We focused on bringing STEM education, as well as computer science-based curriculum,to middle school and high school and engage with universities. We aim to bring up and build a more representative tech industry, that's one of the ways that we believe that we can help create a more representative Austin.

How is Google working to be inclusivewhile hiring in a competitive tech talent market?

We've had a healthy flow of tech talent coming into Google... Whether it's internal candidates or we're goingout in the market,orbuilding university relationships, we really want to be building a representative tech industry. We are investing earlier in students' careers, to ensure we do have a healthy pipeline of talent going forward. For example, in the average market, women represent less than 30% of the tech industry. We want to really challenge that and say how can we invest earlier in younger students, and change the dynamic to build a more representative tech industry and talent pipeline.

We ultimately want the best and the brightest minds. We believe that diverse perspectives are the right thing to do but it's also great for the communities we live and work in. We know that companies that have diverse representation, actually perform better.I think the more perspectives we bring into our workforce the better quality products and solutions we build for our customers and for our communities every day.

Why is Google involved in the community? What types of ways does the company work with local organizations?

Our missions are very much aligned in that we want to build a representative technology industry, that offers technologies for everyone. Our partner, Code to College, for example, aims to increase the number of minority high school students in STEM. When we partner with themwe have an annual interview and resume workshopswhere we support students every year and help upskill and get them ready for future interviews and interactions with companies.

We also earlier this yearco-sponsored a STEM workshop where students ended up proposing to us the future of video conferencing in collaboration with 30 or so Google volunteers. I think we have a common mission of building a more representative and accessible tech industry for all. We see that as part of our core missionwhich benefits, the places where we work and live, even if not necessarily directly benefiting the Google employee base immediately.

Youre taking over as site lead in a time of a lot of change between the pandemic and the hubs growth. What do you see for GoogleAustins future?

I'm really excited about this time. It's new territory for all of us collectively when we return to the office environment. It's a time for me, where I havebeen very intentionally empathetic. I know that a lot of our employees have questions about what this could look like and I'm really taking the time for questionsand helping them feel supported through the transition.

I think we have a really bright future here.Just anecdotally I'm hearing that there are existing employees that are really interested in transferring to Austin and so we expect that Austin will continue to grow as a site. We're building out a new office to occupy in 2023, so I'm really excited in terms of the growth of Google talent. I'm also really excited to hear from our employee base that they are excited to come back and start collaborating with their fellow employees, and also engage in the community.

I was talking to someone who was asking about opportunities on how she can specifically engagein the community. So I do see continued growth in our employee footprint here in Austin, but also in our engagement in the community really fueled by our fellow Googlers.

How does the Austin hub fit into Google at large?

I see our growth footprint as being very strong. As I make my rounds and as I hear about the return to the office, Austin is repeatedly one of the locations where our leaders are committed to invest, as well as employees themselves,are expressing interest in. I think our future is really brightfor years to come.

Austin's tech scene is booming. How do you seeGooglefitting into this growing ecosystem?

I think well continue to be partners with local communities and local community organizations.That's going to be really critical to the fabric of what we consider responsible growth. And also leveraging the power of some of our Google-wide programs. For example, our Growwith Google program in 2020 hosted hundreds of small business owners and job seekers at the Austin Public Library where we provided workshops and training. It's that same program and footprint that enabled us to help, Huston-Tillotson apply and get accepted into the Grow with Google HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities)Career Readiness Program, that's a $1 milliongrant that's focused specifically on digital enablementfor HBCU students.

One of the critical ways that we hope to continue to foster growth in the community is by supporting local organizations like Us Together, harnessing the power of Google-wide programs, and really demonstrating economic impact in the places where we work and live.

See more here:

Google's 'future is really bright' in Austin, company executive says - Austin American-Statesman

Google is adding air quality data to its Nest Hub smart displays. While the new feature is still only available in select US markets, itll give some users an idea of how much risk they might face from smoke and pollution in the area.

Google says it will roll out the new feature over the coming weeks. An Air Quality Index badge will show up on the clock and weather widget on the Nest Hubs Ambient screen. Anyone who doesnt want to see the badge will be able to opt out.

The data comes from the Environmental Protection Agency, which rates air quality on a scale from zero to 500, with zero being the best air quality. It also color-codes its ratings in categories ranging from good to hazardous air quality.

The EPA calculates risk by assessing five major pollutants: carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, smog, and particle pollution (which includes soot and smoke). Smoke from raging wildfires in the Western US has spread across the country over the past month. New York state issued a health advisory in July when smoke arrived from the Bootleg Fire in Oregon, thousands of miles away.

In places where Googles new air quality feature is available, Nest Hubs will issue an alert when pollution reaches an unhealthy level or a level thats unhealthy for sensitive groups. The Nest Hub will also respond to the voice command, Whats the air quality near me?

The EPAs air quality data is easy to access even if you dont have a Nest Hub, or if its new features arent available in your area. The EPAs AirNow website lets users plug in their location to get an air quality rating for that area. Theres also the EPAs Fire and Smoke Map, which has pretty wild visualizations of how far wildfire smoke reaches.

While the EPA has a network of thousands of air quality sensors across the nation, it doesnt always pick up everything. The sensors are expensive to deploy and can be spread far apart from each other, so they can miss higher concentrations of pollution in some areas. Its monitors have also missed major toxic releases in the past when equipment failed or was out of operation, a Reuters investigation found.

Here is the original post:

Googles Nest Hubs will warn users about nearby pollution and smoke - The Verge

Amplitude Studios upcoming strategy game, Humankind, will be the first Stadia release to feature a new touch-focused control scheme when it comes out on August 17th, according to 9to5Google and confirmed to The Verge by Google. Direct touch is designed around multitouch finger inputs like a traditional mobile game, rather than the previous way you may have played Stadia on your phone, with a Bluetooth controller or gamepad overlay.

The screenshots Google shared give a pretty good idea of how playing with direct touch works in Humankind. A single finger tap selects in-game objects, holding a finger down previews content, two fingers cancel, dragging your fingering around moves your view in-game, and three fingers brings up the pause menu.

The game will also feature Stadias State Share feature, which allows a friend to pick up where you left off in a game just by sharing a screenshot or video clip with them. In the case of Humankind, that also allows you to use a feature called Leave Your Mark where you let your friend play through your same world, find the ruins of your civilization, and compare their achievements to yours as they play.

Using direct touch rather than a controller for a 4X turn-based strategy game like Humankind makes sense, if only because offering satisfying controller support is difficult. Strategy games require navigating complicated menus and being precise where you deploy troops or build structures. You can translate a mouse to a controller stick, but youll lack some of the finesse you could have had otherwise. Thats why good console-specific releases of strategy franchises like Civilization Revolution are so beloved: they strip down a game to its core elements and simplify things so they work with a controller or touch.

Touch controls do come with a potential extra challenge for a streaming games service like Stadia potential latency issues. With touch, you might expect even more immediate responses to your taps than with a controller, which isnt always possible with slower connections. When asked, Google did not share if its had to make any adjusts to accommodate latency with direct touch.

Direct touch was originally spotted by 9to5Google earlier this year in an update to the Stadia app on Android, and it still isnt entirely clear what implementing the input method entails. Google says that Humankinds use of direct touch is custom and that the feature should make it easier to port games to Stadia while maintaining the same control schemes. Whether direct touch could help mobile-first titles come to Stadia remains to be seen, but it does mean that games should be a lot easier to play on your phone in the future.

Humankind is scheduled to be released on PC, Mac, and Stadia on August 17th, 2021.

See the original post here:

Google Stadias first game that responds directly to touch is coming this August - The Verge

Three Northern Kentucky Kroger locations are participating in the Cincinnati-based grocery giant's new partnership with Google Maps.

A new program launched Wednesday that both companies say will help to streamline the grocery pickup experience.

The pickup option increased in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a news release, when groceries are ordered from Kroger via the grocer's app, users will have the opportunity to add the order to Google Maps.

When it is time to leave, Google Maps will send a notification which will let the user share the arrival time with the store.

The estimated time of arrival will be continuously shared with the store, helping the location prioritize the order so that it is ready when the shopper arrives, the companies said.

"Theres no need to call, wait times are shorter, and your groceries are kept refrigerated (if needed) right until theyre placed into your car," the announcement said.

In Northern Kentucky, the Kroger locations in Covington (Latonia/4303 Winston Ave.), Newport (130 Pavilion Parkway), and Erlanger (3158 Dixie Highway) are included.

Demand for no-contact, curbside pickup exploded during the pandemic and continues to be popular, even with pandemic restrictions lifted, the announcement said. In fact, stats from March of this year show people in the U.S. were using Google Maps to search for curbside pickup nearly 9,000% more than they were a year prior, according to the announcement.

-Staff report

Continue reading here:

Three NKY Kroger Stores Part of New Pick-Up Partnership with Google Maps - The River City News

In the beginning, it took a very specialized pitch to connect Android and Google.

Dan Sandler

By mid-2005, Android was acquired and the future looked bright. But just six months earlier, things werent quite as rosy. In January of that year, the startup was desperate for cash and their main task was thesame as for most startups: getting funding. After the pivot from a camera OS to an open source phone platform, they still had the daunting task of actually building a product, which meant theyd need more money to hire a large enough team to do the work.

The original demo, written by Brian Swetland and Chris White and later enhanced by Fadden, showing a home screen and several apps (most of which were not implemented). Its a far cry from a modern Android home screen.

Chet Haase

So the company focused on three things. First, they needed a demo to show what was possible. Next, they needed to articulate their vision and create a pitch deck to help explain that vision. Finally, they needed to take the demo and the slide deck on the road to pitch their story to potential investors.

The first job for Andy McFadden (known to the team as Fadden) when he joined was solidifying the demo, a prototype phone system that Brian Swetland and Chris White had been working on. It wasnt actually functional (for example, it showed a stock ticker on the home screen which used a set of hard-coded symbols and stale data). But the demo represented a vision of what the product could be when it was actually implemented.

One of the apps that Fadden added to the demo was a simple calendar application. This early demo project would come back to haunt him. After many intervening years of working on things throughout the Android platform, he ended up helping out with the Android Calendar app. Time waits for no man... but calendar apps do.

As the team honed their vision, they created a slide deck to explain it. These slides painted a picture of the opportunities that they saw for Android in the marketplace, as well as a picture of how Android would make money for the investors.

The slide deck in March of 2005 had fifteen slides, which was enough to capture the attention of VCs as well as Google.

The pitch deck got interesting by the second slide, which compared PC and phone markets. In 2004, there were 178 million shipments of PCs worldwide. During the same period, there were 675 million phones shipped; nearlyfour times as many units as PCs, but with processors and memory that wereas capable as PCs were in 1998.

The first slide of the pitch deck. The word ANDROID in that custom font remained the logo for the OS for many years after this startup phase.

Chet Haase

The number of mobile phones already dwarfed the number of PCs being sold in 2004, providing a huge opportunity for phones with more capable software.

Chet Haase

This potential in mobile hardware was a point that Dianne Hackborn, then at PalmSource and eventually on the Android team, was also thinking about. The mobile industry was ready to pop because there was finally enough power for there to be a real, capable computing platform: Dianne said, You could see the writing on the wall. The hardware was getting more powerful, and the market was already bigger than PCs.

The presentation also identified the problem of the growing cost of mobile software. The cost of hardware was going down, but that of software was not, making it a larger and larger proportion of the per-handset cost. But handset manufacturers were not experts in software platform development and didnt have the skill set or interest in providing the increasing capabilities required to differentiate their software from that of their competitors.

The second major point in the pitch deck was that there was a gap, and an opportunity, in the market for an open platform. That is, Android would be an operating system that was free and available to manufacturers through open source. Companies would be able to use and distribute this OS on their own phones, without being beholden to a software provider and without having to build it themselves. This open approach was something that was simply not available at that time.

Microsoft provided a proprietary OS that manufacturers could license and then port to their hardware. Symbian was primarily used by Nokia, with some uptake from Sony and Motorola. RIM had its own platform, which it used only for its own BlackBerry devices. But there was no alternative out there for manufacturers that wanted a capable smartphone without either building their own OS, putting significant effort into customizing an existing one, and/or paying a high licensing fee.

Chet Haase

Even more problematic, the systems that were available failed to provide an ecosystem for applications. Symbian provided some of the core infrastructure for an operating system, but the UI layer was left as an exercise for the manufacturer, resulting in an application model for phones where apps written for one flavor of Symbian wouldnt necessarily run on some other variation, even on phones from the same manufacturer.

The Java programming language, known in the server and desktop PC world as write once, run anywhere, could possibly have provided this kind of cross-device application capability, but Java ME fell far short of this in the mobile space. While it did provide at least the same language across devices (much as Symbian provided the same language of C++for all of its implementations), Java ME addressed the wide variety of form factors and architectures in phones by providing different versions of the platform, called profiles. These profiles had different capabilities, so developers needed to change their applications to run on different devices, and often that approach failed when capabilities were drastically different across devices.

Linux to the rescue!... Almost. Texas Instruments (TI) provided an open platform based on the Linux OS kernel. All manufacturers needed was Linux itself, reference hardware from TI, and then a huge host of other modules that manufacturers had to acquire, license, build or otherwise supply to create their own device. As Brian Swetland put it, You could use TIs OMAP chips to build a Linux phone. So you needed TIs OMAP and then forty components from forty different vendors of middleware. You put all these together and you integrated them all and then youd have a Linux phone. Andthat was just absurd.

Chet Haase

Android wanted to provide the worlds first complete open handset platform solution. It would be built on Linux, like TIs offering, but would also provide all of the necessary pieces so that manufacturers would have only one system to adopt in order to build and ship their devices. Android would also provide a single programming model to application developers, so that their apps would work the same across all devices on which the platform ran. By having a single platform that worked across all devices using it, Android would simplify phones for both manufacturers and developers.

Read the rest here:

Excerpt: How Google bought Androidaccording to folks in the room - Ars Technica

Google says it plans additional privacy measures to protect teenage users on YouTube and its search engine, becoming the latest technology giant to adopt tougher standards in the face of criticism that companies are not doing enough to protect children.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Google announced that videos uploaded to YouTube by users 13 to 17 years old would be private by default, allowing the content to be seen only by the users and people they designate.

Google also will start to allow anyone under 18 years old, or a parent or guardian, to request the removal of that minors images from Google Image search results, the company said. It is unclear whether this process will be easy and responsive, considering Googles historical reluctance to remove items from search results.

In addition, Google said it would turn off location history for all users younger than 18 and eliminate the option for them to turn it back on.

The company plans to roll out the changes in the coming weeks, it said.

There is growing bipartisan support in Washington to press technology companies to do more to protect children. In the last few months, two pieces of legislation, one in the House and one in the Senate, seek to update the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act. The 1998 law, known as COPPA, restricts the tracking and targeting of children under 13 years old, and the bills would extend those protections to teenagers.

Google has repeatedly faced scrutiny over its handling of data related to children. In 2019, it agreed to pay a $170 million fine for violating COPPA by collecting childrens data without parental consent.

Googles announcement comes on the heels of changes unveiled last month by Facebook to protect teenage users on Instagram. Among the advertising and privacy policy changes, one will make accounts created by children under 16 private by default, Instagram said.

Both Facebook and Google said they were limiting the ability of marketers to target teenagers with advertising, but in slightly different ways. Facebook said advertisers would be able to target people under 18 based only on their age, gender and location and not on their interests or their activity on other apps and websites.

Google said it would block personalized ads that were based on age, gender or interests to people under 18. It will still allow ads based on context, such as a persons search requests.

Read the rest here:

Google to Increase Privacy for Teenagers in Search and on YouTube - The New York Times

How to get paid to work remotely in small cities, towns

At least 45 towns and communities are offering money and other incentives to get remote workers to move there.

Andrea Kramar, USA TODAY

Google employees who choose to work from home permanently may face pay cuts, according to a report by Reuters.

Workers with longer commutes were reported to receive the highest pay cuts. Reuters found that an employee living in Stamford, Connecticut, an hour from Google's New York office, would be paid 15% less workingfrom home, but a colleague living in New York would see no cut.

Another Google employee chose to make a two-hour commute to the Seattle office instead of a 10% pay cut for working from home full-time.

An employee working in the New York City office will be paid just as much as someone working remotely in the same area, aGoogle spokesperson told Reuters.

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"Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from," a Google spokesperson told Reuters.

Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecuiter, said companies cutting wages for remote workers may see a decrease in employee retention.

"Culturally, we're seeing a rise in pay transparency, and people feel very strongly that it's not fair to be paid different amounts for the same work and for the same quality output of work," Pollak told USA TODAY.

Pollak noted reports indicating remote work is here to stay and employees are willing to quit and find work elsewhere if it's taken away. She said changing the salary for an employee is difficult to do regardless of location.

Although remote work comes with fewer costs, such as gas for commutes, employees will argue the quality of their work hasn't changed, so their pay shouldn't either, Pollak said. She said the rise in remote working changed economics:Companies pay employees based on the value of their work, not their location.

"The companies that say that they will pay people the same, regardless of the personal choices they make about whether to live out of their cars or out of mansions, will have the upper hand," Pollak said. "Pay cuts for remote work will not be received well."

Google did not answer a request for comment by USA TODAY.

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Follow Gabriela Miranda on Twitter: @itsgabbymiranda

Continued here:

Google employees could face pay cuts if they choose to permanently work from home - USA TODAY