Category Archives: Google

Google has added small logos to each search result

You may have noticed Google's search results look a little different this week.

That's because of an effort aimed at clarifying sources of information, according to the company.

Googlehas added small logos to each search result that appear when someone enters a search query on their desktop. For example, a CNN or Fox News logo appears next to results that come from their respective news sites. A big, bold "Ad" logo appears next to advertisements.

But the logos show up for each search result -- not just news and ads.

The company said the new look is an expansion of an announcement it made last summer, which stated it would introduce the new look to mobile devices. This week, it launched the new look on the desktops.

The new look comes as Google and its parent company, Alphabet, face scrutiny from regulators and the public for struggling to contain misinformation. Calls for remedies have grown louder as the 2020 Presidential elections grow closer and the company faces a number of probes included antitrust related to its search business.

When asked for comment, the company directed CNBC to a tweet by "Google SearchLiaison" Monday.

"The format puts a site's brand front & center, helping searchers better understand where information is coming from, more easily scan results & decide what to explore," the company tweeted.

"This new design allows us to add more action buttons and helpful previews to search results cards, all while giving you a better sense of the web page's content with clear attribution back to the source," wrote Google Search senior interaction designer Jamie Leach.

WATCH: How Gmail beat Yahoo and Hotmail to dominate consumer email

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Why Google added little logos next to search results this week - CNBC

The promise of technology is always more for less faster processors at lower prices, thanks to more circuits crammed into the same silicon area.

And artificial intelligence has an analogue, it turns out, based on recent work by engineers at Google, who have found a way to take the "Transformer" language model and make a version of it run in a single graphics processing unit, or GPU, rather than the multiple graphics processing units it normally requires to operate.

That presents users with an interesting choice. If you could choose between getting the top technology in AI in a more easy-to-use fashion, would you opt for that, or would you instead want to stretch the power of your existing computer budget to do more?

It's like asking, Would you like to pay less for a PC or get even more power for what you have been paying? It's a classic dilemma for buyers.

The intent, at least, of Google scientists Nikita Kitaev (who also holds a position at U.C. Berkeley, ukasz Kaiser, and Anselm Levskaya, is to make the power of Transformer available on a budget, an invention they christen "Reformer."

"We believe that this will help large, richly-parameterized Transformer models become more widespread and accessible," they write in the formal paper, posted on the arXiv pre-print server this week. (There's also a blog post Google has published on the work.)

Here's the situation they're addressing. The Transformer approach to modeling sequential data was introduced in 2017 by Google's Ashish Vaswani and colleagues, and became a sensation. The approach of using "attention" to predict elements of a sequence based on other elements near to it became the basis for numerous language models, including Google's BERT and OpenAI's "GPT2."

An illustration of the "locality sensitive" hashing function used in Google's Reformer to cut down on the number of activations that need to be stored in memory. The colors denote vectors close in value that can be grouped together to consolidate storage.

The problem is these mega-models take tons of GPUs to run, mostly because of memory issues, not compute issues. GPUs used for training deep neural networks like Transformer, chips such as Nvidia's V100, tend to come with sixteen or thirty-two gigabytes of memory, and that's not enough to hold all of the parameters of neural nets with dozens of layers of neurons, as well as the matrix of activations of each neuron as the network tries in parallel various pairings of symbols looking for the right matches.

Take for example "XLNet," last year's big leap forward in Transformer capability. Authors Zhilin Yang and colleagues write in their implementation notes that they did all their work on Google's TPU chip, "which generally have more RAM than common GPUs." They do the math as to what fit would take to move it to GPUs: "[I]t is currently very difficult (costly) to re-produce most of the XLNet-Large SOTA results in the paper using GPUs." It would take 32 to 128 GPUs to equal their TPU work, they write.

Also: Google says 'exponential' growth of AI is changing nature of compute

The problem is not just that people are getting locked out of using some forms of deep learning. A deeper concern is that claims about which deep learning neural networks may be making breakthroughs are being clouded by massive engineering resources. Cloud giants like Google may be beefing up resources rather than truly making breakthroughs in AI science. That concern is articulated nicely by Anna Rogers in an article on Thinking Semantics cited by Kitaev.

To make Transformer more accessible, Kitaev and colleagues implement a couple tricks to reduce the memory footprint, such as hashing. Hashing, where a code turns a bit sequence into a different bit sequence, can be a way to reduce the total size of data. In this case, "locality-sensitive hashing" groups vectors that are close to one another in terms of values. These are the "key" vectors used by Transformer to store the words it is going to search through for the attention mechanism.

"For example, if K is of length 64K, for each qi we could only consider a small subset of, say, the 32 or 64 closest keys," write Kitaev and colleagues. ["K" is the matrix of keys and "q" refers to the queries that access those keys.) That eliminates the usual N-squared problem that explodes the number of vectors to store in memory.

The second big thing they do is to reduce the total number of neuron activations that need to be stored. Usually, all of them need to be stored, in order to facilitate the backward pass of backpropogation that computes the gradient of a neural network's solution by traversing the layer activations. That activation storage balloons memory as the number of layers of neurons scales. But Kitaev and team adopt something called a "reversible residual network," developed in 2017 by Aidan Gomez and colleagues at the University of Toronto. Gomez and team adapted the traditional ResNet so each layer's activations can be reconstructed from the stored value of the layer coming after it, so most activations don't need to be stored at all.

Also:AI is changing the entire nature of compute

"The reversible Transformer does not need to store activations in each layer and so gets rid of the nl term," write Kitaev and colleagues, referring to the N layers of a network.

With these efficiencies, they are able to cram a twenty-layer Transformer into a single GPU, they write. They can't directly compare its performance to a full sixty-four-layer Transformer, of course, because the Transformer can't fit in the same single GPU. But they show results that appear competitive.

But now comes the question: Reformer can also operate much faster than Transformer running in the traditional computer footprint, in this case, eight GPUs running in parallel, with the same sixty-four layers as the full Transformer. "Reformer matches the results obtained with full Transformer but runs much faster, especially on the text task, and with orders of magnitude better memory efficiency."

That means that with Reformer running on big iron, you can process potentially millions of "tokens," meaning, the individual characters of a written work. The authors refer to processing all of the text of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," 513,812 tokens, with one Reformer on one machine's worth with eight gigabytes of memory. You can imagine that if Reformer is multiplied across machines, it could operate on data at a greatly increased scale.

If you can get even more performance out of Reformer in this way, it raises the question: will you take a Reformer that can run on a single machine and get good results, or will you run it on multiple GPUs to get even more power? Will Reformer reduce some of the arms race aspect of hardware in AI, or will it only provide a new aspect to that arms race?

Too soon to tell, maybe a mix of both. At least, the breadth of choices is now greater.

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Will Googles more-efficient Reformer mitigate or accelerate the arms race in AI? - ZDNet

The Silicon Valley libertarians at Google are spending a lot of money these days to keep the government out of the companys business. But their sudden aversion to government regulation is a newfound religion for Google: the company has been profiting for years off of a sweetheart deal with the government struck in 1996 a government subsidy which Google no longer deserves.

Blockbuster reporting from the Wall Street Journal reveals that Google is no longer the neutral search platform they have long led consumers to believe they were.

It is not possible for an individual employee or a group of employees to manipulate our search results, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress. We dont manually intervene on any particular search result.

GOOGLE PARENT COMPANYS LEGAL CHIEF IS LEAVING FOLLOWING MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS

Except, it turns out, they do. And on quite a large scale. In fact, subjectivity underpins Googles entire search business.

Google uses tens of thousands of individual contractors to manually shape search results based on a set of internal company criteria, as well as subjective contractor opinion. The company also uses its engineers to tweak its algorithms on behalf of business interests. Chillingly, the company intentionally modifies results around inflammatory topics like abortion and immigration in an effort to steer political discourse. This is in addition to using blacklists to block sites or terms from appearing in search results.

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Google does all of this in blatant violation of what it tells users and lawmakers and of the terms of protection it has from the federal government.

The tech industrys arrangement with the federal government dates back to 1990s, in the infancy of the internet, when Congress passed the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 of the law was intended to spur online discourse by giving present and future internet companies immunity for content posted by their users in order to create forum[s] for a true diversity of political discourse.

In other words, lawmakers envisioned internet platforms as merely that neutral platforms. Giant bulletin boards where people could post content without interference, except for, as the law described, content which companies in good faith deemed to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable. (Courts have held that otherwise objectionable content must be similar to obscenity, violence, or harassment.)

Its a lucrative arrangement, unique to tech. No other outlet of ideas has the same protection. And it has contributed to turning outlets like Google from dorm room projects to the worlds most dominant billion-dollar company.

But its all contingent upon Google continuing to act as the neutral bulletin board. The platform, as it were, merely a host for ideas not as a publisher, with editorial control and subjective determinations around content.

But based on the Journals reporting, as well as multiple whistleblower claims, Google is far from a neutral arbiter. Rather, they engage in significant search manipulation and editorial control, ranking results based on subjective criteria, individual bias, and non-transparent internal editorial guidelines.

Put simply, they are no longer the neutral platform the law envisioned. They are a publisher. And the law ought to treat them as such, stripping them of the Sec. 230 protection whose terms they no longer meet.

When presented with the possibility of losing their government protection, Google and their backers howl that Sec. 230 is vital to their survival; that without it, they would have to allow exploitive and abusive content to flourish, for fear or being sued.

Its nonsense. Responsible moderation and outright search manipulation are two different and mutually exclusive behaviors, and in fact, a distinction which Sec. 230 requires.

As Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has pointed out, the ability to responsibly moderate content is not also a license to engage in political censorship. Tech companies can support or oppose whatever political causes that they want and engage in the good faith moderation the law allows. But the moment they begin to pick and choose what gets posted or amplified based on subjective determinations, the law demands they should be held accountable for the criteria with which they moderate their users. And this means losing the Sec. 230 protection.

Google isattempting to have it both ways benefiting from government protections while claiming that any change to their sweetheart deal is unwarranted government meddling.

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It doesnt work like that, and hopefully, lawmakers are smart enough to begin to catch on.

Sec. 230 may be a sweetheart deal for Google, but its turned sour for the rest of us. Its time for Google to engage in radical transparency and real reform, or for Congress to take away the government subsidy they no longer deserve.

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Rachel Bovard: Congress has a role to play in regulating Google - Home - WSFX

A log of my trip to Bristol, RI.

Todd Haselton | CNBC

Google Maps tracks everywhere you go on your iPhone or Android phone, and then keeps a log of this information in a "Timeline" that shows you everywhere you've been.

This includes a creepy level of detail, like exactly when you left work, when you arrived at home, the exact route you took along the way, pictures you took in specific locations and more. It'll show you if you were driving, walking or on a train, and any pit stops you might have made during your journey.

Sometimes this information can be useful, like if you want to remember the restaurant you ate at on Nov. 7 in New York City. (For me, it was Philippe Chow), and what you did before and after that.

Here's an example of that day, including my stop for lunch, and a meeting I took with Snapchat on the Upper West side earlier in the day.

Google Maps Timeline shows you everywhere you've been, and how you got there.

Todd Haselton | CNBC

If I zoom in, you can see the exact route I took to get there and where I parked. It's wild:

Google Maps Timeline shows everywhere you were on a certain day.

Todd Haselton | CNBC

There's no reason Google needs to know this much information about you, unless youreallycare about things like Google's recommendations based on where you've been (like restaurants you might like). There are a few ways you can reclaim your privacy.

First, here's how to delete everything Google Maps currently knows about you:

Choose "Delete all Location History."

Todd Haselton | CNBC

I also recommend that you set it up so Google automatically deletes all this location data every three months. Here's how:

Set Google Maps to automatically delete your location history.

Todd Haselton | CNBC

If you're really paranoid, you can turn it off entirely so Google Maps can't track you at all. Just do this:

Choose the option to pause Location History.

Todd Haselton | CNBC

Or, if you don't mind Google tracking you day to day but just want to stop it for a little while, you can turn on Incognito mode in Maps by doing this:

Google Maps incognito mode (as shown on an Android phone.)

Todd Haselton | CNBC

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Google Maps keeps a detailed record of everywhere you go here's how to stop it - CNBC

SAN FRANCISCO This past year, Google found itself inthe spotlight of a nationwide debate on health data privacy when a Wall Street Journal scoop brought to light its data sharing deal with Ascension Health. Subsequent reporting, however, confirmed that Google had done nothing wrong legally, even as conversations about the ethics of this kind of data sharing continue.

At the Startup Health Festival on the outskirts of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference here this week, Google Health VP Dr. David Feinberg opened up to Startup Health CMO Dr. Howard Krein about the debacle, speaking candidly about the companys dealings with Ascension, as well as his disappointment with the medias handling of the news.

The press has made this into something that it's not, Feinberg said. This is not us mining somebodys records to sell ads, to learn from it, to do machine learning, to develop products. We developed this on de-identified data. We brought this to Ascension. We're piloting with them.

"Every doctor that is using it, of course, is aware because they see a Google search bar on their patients record," he added. "It wasn't in secret. And so we're actually really, really proud of the work. And we hope that we can demonstrate a real improvement in care, less physician burnout and more joy into taking care of people.

Specifically, Feinberg said, Google is working with Ascension in several ways, which have sometimes been conflated in the reporting that was done. Two are straightforward and dont involve Google seeing any data: Ascension uses Googles cloud services and some G-suite tools.

And then they asked us, in two hospitals, to do something special, Feinberg said. Two hospitals, not three quarters of the United States like the Wall Street Journal said. In two hospitals they said, 'Could you help us organize that health record?'

Dr. David Feinberg, Google Health

For Google, its a low-hanging fruit project because search is at the heart of the tech companys core competency but search in healthcare is behind the times.

As a practicing clinician, if you go into these health systems, it's like finding a needle in a haystack to try to find a piece of information, he said. And you really have a view just for Epic or Cerner. You don't necessarily have a view on that patient for the other parts of their record that aren't in the Epic and Cerner. So we brought in the Google technology for search and created a unified platform for doctors and nurses at two hospitals to search their patients individual records.

For that functionality, Feinberg admitted, Google employees did need access to some patient data. But he maintains that they managed that access in a legal, responsible way.

It's a business associates agreement, he said. Ascension has 600 business associates agreements. When you go to any doctor's office, any hospital, they give you a privacy form that says we're gonna keep your information private, but we have third parties that we've worked with, like Epic, Cerner, a lab or maybe Mayo Clinic specialty diagnostics, life insurance companies, billing companies that are going to have to see part of your record to do what we've asked them to do. We had been asked and the only thing we did was organize the record. We just put it in a way that it was searchable. That's all we did.

Google and Ascensions partnership, and the reaction to it, has highlighted a knowledge disconnect between the industry and the public around what HIPAA does and doesnt do. But Feinberg thinks the sort of reaction that transpired represents a risk to health tech reform.

I think that very often fear is used to sort of quell innovation Oh, people are going to have access to your records, nothing is going to be secure and then that creates this fear, but it really is more hurtful to innovation than it is helpful to secure data, he said.

Much of the criticism in the WSJ piece and subsequently focused on the fact that patients werent informed that Google would have access to their data. This is true, Feinberg said, but not really remarkable.

Nobody goes over all 600 business associates agreements, he said. But we keep thinking about this one, how we can get more agency there and more understanding there. We do appreciate that we're in a somewhat unique position in that we're also a consumer company and there's there's worry that we're combining stuff. We're not combining stuff, but to build that trust I think we really have to think about ways we can give people agency to understand what's going on in this particular instance where we may be exposed to private health information.

Feinberg didnt spend his whole time on stage talking about search and Ascension. He highlighted additional work Google is doing around diabetic retinopathy screening in India and Thailand and some promising work the company has done applying AI to mammography and kidney screening. But none of that good work can reach its full potential without bridging the trust gap brought to light by the reaction to the Ascension partnership.

If you don't trust us and we can't bring [innovation] in a way that actually makes it easier, that's comprehensible, that's affordable, that's dignified, that's culturally sensitive if we can't make it the way that I would care for my own family then I don't care how good the AI is. It's not going to work. So we're really, really focused on understanding what people need, especially on the consumer side and the deep, deep relationships on the provider side.

"It would be a shame on us if we can't get this technology into the real world because we don't act in a humble way, we don't act in a thoughtful way, and we don't appreciate how hard it is to be a caregiver," he said.

Jonah Comstock is Director of Content Development for HIMSS Media.Email: jonah.comstock@himssmedia.comTwitter: @JonahComstock

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Google Health VP on Ascension partnership: 'The press has made this into something it's not' - Healthcare IT News

Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google agreed to buy wearables maker Fitbit (NYSE:FIT) for $2.1 billion last November. It initially seemed like a win-win deal: Google would strengthen its wearables presence to counter Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), and Fitbit would be salvaged after years of decelerating sales growth.

Yet the deal alarmed some consumers and privacy advocates, who worried that Google would mine Fitbit's user data to craft targeted ads. Both companies declared that wouldn't happen, butsome Fitbit users still deleted their accounts and dumped their devices.

Image source: Fitbit.

In December, the New York Post claimed that theDepartment of Justice could look into the acquisition and the privacy concerns regarding Fitbit's health data. The investigation would reportedly mark an expansion of the broader antitrust probe of Google by the DOJ that started last September.

Those developments already cast a dark cloud over the deal, but another hurdle recently appeared when Dutch electronics giant Koninklijke Philips (NYSE:PHG) claimed thatFitbit, Garmin (NASDAQ:GRMN), distributor Ingram Micro, and two Chinese manufacturers had violated its patents.

That complaint caused the U.S. International Trade Commission to launch a new investigation into all four companies. Could this spell even more trouble for Google's plans to buy Fitbit?

Philips claims that Fitbit and Garmin's wearable devices infringed on its activity tracking, alarm reporting, and motion sensing patents. The company claims it had been negotiating settlements with the companies for three years before the talks collapsed.

If the ITC sides with Philips, Fitbit and Garmin's products could face high tariffs or complete sales bans on all disputed products. In the past, companies have often used ITC rulings to force other companies into settlements instead of slugging it out in longer civil suits.

Speaking to Reuters, a Fitbit spokesperson stated that the claims were "without merit and a result of Philips' failure to succeed in the wearables market." Philips previously entered the wearables market with its Health Watch in2016, but the device failed to stand out in a crowded market which was dominated byApple, Xiaomi, Samsung, and Huawei.

Image source: Fitbit.

Phillips has repeatedly leveraged its patent portfolio to launch lawsuits at other companies, including Nintendo (OTC:NTDOY) and Lowe's (NYSE:LOW), sparking widespread allegations that it was becoming a "patent troll."

Those lawsuits bore mixed results. Some instances, like itscase against Lowe's and other companies over LED lights, were terminated by the ITC.Others, like its case against Nintendo over motion sensors in its Wii hardware, resulted in settlements. Therefore, there's a significant chance that Philips could force Fitbit and Garmin into unfavorable settlements.

The DOJ and ITC probes will likely delay Google's planned takeover of Fitbit, which was expected toclose this year. Google agreed to buy Fitbit for $7.35 per share in cash, but the pressure from regulators and Fitbit's own disappointing quarterly results could cause the stock to slide lower before the deal closes.

Those delays could also make it tougher for Google to execute its post-Fitbit wearable plans. Fitbit already tethers its users' data to Google Cloud, so the takeover should lead to the full integration of Fitbit's data into Google's ecosystem -- even if it isn't used for targeted ads.

That combination would complement Alphabet's other life science ventures, including Verily, which develops AI solutions, medical devices, and wearable devices for healthcare applications; and Calico, which is researching treatments for age-related diseases. It would also complement Wear OS, its operating system for smartwatches, and Google Fit, its mobile dashboard for fitness apps.

All those moves would widen Google's moat against Apple and other tech giants in the growing digital health market. However, these regulatory headwinds indicate that investors should expect significant delays before the deal closes -- which could cause Google to fall further behind Apple and other market leaders in the wearables race.

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Googles Takeover of Fitbit Faces Another Regulatory Hurdle - Motley Fool

Google has made a change that allows you to use your Apple iPhone to access services such as Gmail.

Your Apple iPhone can now be used as a cool and secure way to access your Google services. Thanks to a change made by Google, your Apple iPhone now works as a physical security key to authenticate you when using Gmail and other Google services, according to9to5Google.

It is the extension of asecurity featureintroduced last April that allows Android users to use their smartphones as a security key to open their Google accounts.

According to oneGoogle cryptographer, it works by utilisingthe Secure Enclaveon Apples A-Series chips. But it should be noted that the ability to use your iPhone as a security key only works in the Chrome and some other Chromium-based browsersat least for now.

Its still a pretty cool feature. As I have said before,security keys such as the Yubico YubiKey are a great extra layer of security for your accounts. Using a security keyin this case your iPhonehelps protect you from phishing attacks, where a hacker may try to persuade you to enter your details on a fake site. Its also more secure than SMS based authentication.

Google offers astep-by-step guideon its Help Center. First, ensure your iPhone is running iOS 10 or later. Youll also need to installthe Google Smart Lockapp, which has now been updated to support iPhones.

Go tomyaccount/securityusing your browser, then you will need to register your Apple iPhone as a method of two-factor authentication. You can do this by clicking Add Security Key > Select Your iPhone > Add. Then follow the on-screen instructions.

When using your Apple iPhone as a security key to sign in to new devices, make sure Bluetooth is turned on for both. Then check your iPhone for a Smart Lock notification, tap the notification and say Yes to sign in.

In addition to Chrome, the feature appears to work in some other Chromium based browsers. Security researcher Sean Wright, who tried it out using an iPhone XS onBrave, calls the feature pretty slick.

However, iPhones dont work as a security key in every Chromium based browser. The function doesnt work innewly-launched Microsoft Edgeyet, but it may be added later.

Your iPhone as a security key is a great thing, because it isnt necessary for you to buy another piece of hardware to try out this method of authentication.

It is a lot more user friendly than a verification code, says security professional John Opdenakker. However, he points out that one drawback is the fact the function isnt available in all browsers yet.

He also points out that the fairly lengthy set up involving an app might be too much of a barrier for less tech savvy users.

Indeed, says Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET, the toughest hurdle in persuading people to try two factor authentication is making them set it up. It will only gain maximum uptake when it is handed out on a plate and easy to implement.

However, Moore encourages users to try out this new iPhone feature: Hardware security keys are an excellent way of adding an extra layer of security without delaying you when accessing your accounts.

So, should you use your iPhone as a security key? If you dont mind using Chrome or a compatible Chromium based browser, I would say yes, especially if you havent tried out security keys before. Its a great way to get started.

For more information onusing security keys, Id also strongly advise you to watch myvideo demoon how to use a YubiKey in iOS 13.3.

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This Is How Your iPhone Is A Cool New Way To Access Google - Forbes

The Google Nest Mini (left) and Amazon Echo Dot are the top twobest-selling smart speakers in the United States.

In the battle royal for smart home supremacy, Google is hardly a minor player -- but that doesn't mean Google Home loyalists aren't prone to suffer a little Alexa-envy now and again. Sure, there'sa handful of things Amazon's voice assistant can do that Google Home can't, but Google Assistant packs its own unique bag of tricks that neither Alexa nor Apple's Siri have yet to master. For example,having a longer attention spanandcrafting a more distinct personality(more below).

Millions of people rely on Google Home to manage humdrum household tasks like ordering groceries,putting your kids to bed or helping to find your lost phone, but Amazon Echo ($100 at Amazon) and Apple HomePod ($299 at Walmart) can both do all of that, too. If you've chosen the Google Home ecosystem to manage your digital life, wouldn't you like some bragging rights to go with it?

If you'd like to show off your Google Home to your non-Google Home friends and family, or if you'd just like to put Google Home's unique skills to work, here are the top five things Google Home can do that other smart speakers and their digital assistants can't. What's more, we'll show you how to do them.

Amazon may have been first to market with its 10-inch Echo Show (left), but CNET thinks Google's 7-inch Nest Hub (right) is thebest overall smart display available today.

When it comes to smart speaker smarts, Google Assistant reigns supreme. In a recent study by Loop Ventures that pitted Google Assistant against Alexa and Siri, researchers asked each assistant the same 800 questions then scored on whether the AI programs understood the question as well as how accurately or correctly they responded. Google Assistant trounced on Alexa and Siri, understanding 100% of queries and responding correctly 92.9% of the time.

Both Alexa and Siri were only a hair or two shy of scoring perfectly on comprehension (99.9% and 99.8% respectively), but fell behind when it came to giving correct responses (Siri got it right 83.1% of the time, Alexa an even more pitiful 79.8%).

A 2019 study by Loop Ventures asked Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant the same 800 questions. Even when broken down by category, Google Assistant couldn't be topped.

In another recent study that added Microsoft's Cortana to the mix, Google Assistant once again dominated the field as the only contender to score above 80% on accuracy. (Interestingly, Cortana attempted to answer more questions than any of the other assistants, including Google's, but then ranked worst at getting them right.)

If you're feeling a little spunky, try summoning Google Assistant with "Hey, Boo Boo" instead of "Hey, Google."

When it comes to wake words (the phrase you say to invoke your voice assistant), Siri is the most restrictive. "Hey, Siri" is your only option.

With Alexa you have four choices. You can call the voice assistant Alexa, Echo, Computer or Amazon, but you can't switch it up on the fly without going into settings.

Not only does Google add some flexibility by allowing you to summon Google Assistant with either "Hey, Google" or "OK, Google," there's another, secret way to get your smart speaker's attention: Call it "Boo Boo."

Saying "Hey, Boo Boo" or "OK, Boo Boo" doesn't get you a different response than the admittedly less cutesy "official" wake words, but it might put a smile on your face next time you communicate with your Google Home.

Google Assistant has the competition beat by giving you the most control over your Google Home's voices and accents, which helps you personalize your assistant and make it feel more like your own.

Amazon has a little flexibility if you're willing to pay $1 to get Samuel L. Jackson's voice to helm some select duties. But if you change languages or accents, some functions might not work.

Now playing: Watch this: Google shows off the power of Assistant

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Siri is better about letting you pick multiple voices and accents, but the options are limited compared to Google Home's more than 10 different voice options. You can even pick singer John Legend and actor Issa Rae, but their functionality is limited, so you'll hear a different voice respond when theirs can't.

Google Assistant currently has 12 available color-coded voices to choose from, including celebrities and non-American accents.

Here's how you can change your Google Home's default voice.

1. Open your Google Home app.

2. Tap your personal icon in the lower-right corner.

3. Under the Google Assistant heading, tap More settings.

4. Select Assistant from the menu bar at the top.

5. Tap Assistant voice.

6. Choose from the list of voices until you find one that suits you.

Communicating with other assistants can sometimes feel like talking to a small child who can only pay attention to one thing at a time. "Assistant, turn off the lights. Assistant, set volume to 5. Assistant, play my bedtime playlist."

With Google Home, you can say, "OK, Google, turn off the lights, set the volume to five and play my bedtime playlist" to accomplish that same series of tasks, all in one breath.

Granted, this works better when the commands are relatively simple -- and it helps if they're related. For example, the string "Hey, Google, turn off the kitchen lights, turn on the bedroom lights and lock the front door" is likely to go off without a hitch because all of those are smart-home operations.

Google Home can listen for up to three back-to-back commands. Alexa and Siri can only handle one at a time.

Although you may not be housing a foreign exchange student or international diplomats any time soon, Google Home's ability to act as a real-time translator for up to 27 different languages could certainly come in handy if, say, a student in your home has language class homework or you need to send an email or direct message to someone whose first language isn't English.

To put Google Home into interpreter mode, simply voice what you need as you would naturally. For example:

There you have it -- the five biggest advantages of choosing Google Home over the competition and how to use them. Looking for more ways to have fun with your Google Home? Try mounting it on a wall -- just be sure to follow our guide to wall mounting your Google Home Mini or Nest Mini speaker. For a sneak peak at what's coming to Google Home this year, here are six features you can expect to see in 2020. Finally, if you're ready to make the leap from smart speaker to smart display, follow our smart display setup guide to get your new screen up and running in no time.

Originally published last year and updated periodically.

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Sorry, Alexa and Siri, but only Google Home can do these 5 things - CNET

With the 49ers' Week 12 thrashing of the Packers in mind, Vegas oddsmakers have made San Francisco heavy favorites over Green Bay in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday.

Back on Nov. 24, the 49ers took it to Aaron Rodgers and Co., beating the Packers 37-8.

But Sunday's game at Levi's Stadium isn't setting up to be as easy for the 49ers. The Packers are rolling, havingwon six straight games dating back to the regular season.

Rodgers is one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history and he will want to avenge that 29-point drubbing from earlier in the season.

But the 49ers' defense is fully healthy with Dee Ford, Kwon Alexander and Jaquiski Tartt all ready to go for the NFC title game.

The winner gets a trip to Miami for Super Bowl LIV, where the winner of the Titans-Chiefs AFC Championship Game will await them.

It's goingto be a classic under the bright lights in Santa Clara.

[RELATED: How to watch 49ers-Packers]

Caesars: 49ers -7.5 (-110)Consensus: 49ers -7.5 (-110)Westgate: 49ers -7.5 (-110)Wynn: 49ers -7 (-120)

Nick Wagoner, ESPN.com: 49ers 30, Packers 20Rob Demovsky, ESPN.com: Packers 28, 49ers 27Mike Florio, Pro Football Talk: Packers 24, 49ers 21Michael David Smith, Pro Football Talk: 49ers 28, Packers 13Gregg Rosenthal, NFL.com: 49ers 30, Packers 26Pete Prisco, CBS Sports: Packers 27, 49ers 26

Programming note: NBC Sports Bay Area feeds your hunger for 49ers playoff coverage with special editions of 49ers Central all week (6 p.m. Thursday and 8 p.m. Friday)

Also tune in at 2:30 p.m. Sunday for 49ers Pregame Live, with Laura Britt, Jeff Garcia, Donte Whitner, Ian Williams and Grant Liffmann previewing the NFC Championship Game against the Packers. That same crew will have all the postgame reaction on 49ers Postgame Live, starting at approximately 6:30 p.m.

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Kittle photobombed by The Rock in roster Google search - NBCSports.com

David Feinberg at the StartUp Health Festival in 2017. (Photo by Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for ... [+] Geisinger Health System)

David Feinberg, head of Google Health, defended the companys partnership with large Catholic hospital system Ascension Tuesday afternoon in San Francisco. The partnership, nicknamed Project Nightingale, recently came under criticism after news outlets revealed the partnership enabled Google to access confidential patient data.

Despite what they say in the newspapers, were super proud of it, Feinberg said.

In November, reporters at Forbes and other publications revealed that Google partnered with Ascension to move its patient electronic medical records to the cloud and create a search tool that would allow doctors to better search those records. A whistleblower alleged that Google employees consequently had access to confidential patient data, and that several employees involved with the project had internally raised concerns about patient data privacy. The claim caused public outcry and Google was admonished by several U.S. lawmakers.

Feinberg made his comments on stage at the StartUp Health Festival, an invitation-only event for biotech entrepreneurs coinciding with the annual JP Morgan Health Conference. Feinberg disputed the news reports and claimed that Google employees did not have access to patient medical records stored in the companys cloud servers to the extent that was reported. Think of it as a warehouse, he said, the only one that has the key to that record is Ascension.

He did confirm that some Google employees had access to patient data at two Ascension facilities, however, through a business associates agreement that allows third-party companies to access patient data. Business associates agreements are contracts that allow organizations covered by HIPAA to share patient information with certain partners. Feinberg said that Ascension has over 600 business associate agreements, and that Google employees only had access to patient data at two hospitals, not three-quarters of the United States as the Wall Street Journal said.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Google has multiple deals with medical companies, including Mayo Clinic and Intermountain Healthcare, which allows the company access to millions of patient health records in three-quarters of American states.

The patient data at two Ascension facilities was shared with Google employees during the process of developing a new search tool for patient medical records, which Feinberg says Ascension asked them to do. As previously reported by Forbes, the new search tool allows doctors to easily search for patients and view previous tests and notes. Feinberg stated that all Google employees who interacted with deidentified patient data received HIPAA training.

The press has made this into something that its not, Feinberg said. This is not us mining somebodys records to sell ads, to learn from it, to do machine learning, to develop products.

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Google Health Exec Defends Controversial Partnership With Ascension: Were Super Proud Of It - Forbes