Category Archives: Google

Happy AI holidays. If youre the recent recipient of hardware with Google Assistant inside like a Google Nest smart speaker or smart display heres a guide to getting the most out of it.

Done right, Google Assistant can help you cook, shop, learn, remember things, stay in touch with loved ones, and interpret dozens of languages, not to mention acting as a remote control for your TV.

Lets call this your suite of standard issue features. These are the reason smart speakers became popular in the first place and are the kinds of actions the average user is most likely to do like setting a timer or alarm, controlling smart home devices, playing music, and creating calendar events.

Once youve downloaded the Home app, follow the instructions to do things like integrate your favorite music streaming service or enable voice control of smart home devices.

Youll also want to set up Voice Match if you have multiple people in your home and want to do things like ask whats on your personal calendar or add an event to your calendar. Voice Match works for up to six members of a household.

Some things you can do with your smart speaker or display:

Notice I gave no directions on how to do any of this? Thats because the AI Google Assistant uses is designed to understand how people talk and adjust to variations of commands. Unlike every other form of computing, when done right the conversational interface should require no training. So ask away.

This is pretty basic too, but if you share your home and work address with Google in the Home app, you can create location-based reminders that pop up on your phone or cue a sound when you walk in the door.

In August, Google Assistant got the ability to assign reminders to up to six members of a household. Assigned reminders first appear on the persons smartphone and can also be location-based or be scheduled to take place at a certain time or date.

When you assign reminders with the Nest Hub Max, a smart display with facial recognition released this fall, reminders appear on the screen when it sees your face as you approach the device. If you can stomach giving Google facial recognition that recognizes your family, this can be pretty helpful around the house.

Gone are the days of a single female assistant with a monotone voice. Today, most AI assistants are more expressive than they were a few years ago, and with the exception of Amazons Alexa, all major AI assistants now offer feminine and masculine assistant options. Google Assistant gives you up to 11 different voices to choose from.

Text-to-speech synthesis also means you can have Google Assistant respond to queries with the voice of John Legend or Insecures Issa Rae. Amazons Alexa can also talk like Samuel L. Jackson. It seems likely that tech giants making AI assistants will incorporate more celebrity personality options for voice computing in 2020.

To be clear, AI that sounds like celebrity voices is not for every exchange, but it does work for responses to common requests like Whats the weather like? or Tell me a joke.

Once youve chosen your favorite voice, you can ask Google Assistant factual questions about almost anything, from Who was the 36th president of the United States? to Where is the nearest Best Buy?

Youre speaking to the right AI for your random questions: For the second year in a row, Google Assistant ranks #1 among virtual assistants in an annual IQ test that gauges their ability to accurately respond to questions. Though other assistants are catching up, Google Assistant outranks the competition in virtually every category, including local search and commerce questions.

Another analysis this summer found that Google Assistant ranks best among AI assistants in answering questions about the most commonly used medications in the United States.

If you have a smart display, the response to questions may also include visuals. And ask an animal-related question, like What does a whale sound like? and you might hear the sound. Or ask about a local business and directions may be sent directly to your phone.

If youve ever seen kids interact with a smart speaker, you probably understand that many children get a real kick out of controlling AI assistants, and Google Assistant has made a growing list of things for kids to do since the first Home speaker became available in 2016.

There are alarms with Ninja Turtles, Lego, or Nickelodeon characters that can tell jokes or share words of encouragement. There are also Google Assistant voice apps for kids from characters like SpongeBob SquarePants.

Google Nest speakers and displays can listen to you read a book, and when you arrive at certain sections, words will cue sound effects. My Storytime even lets parents record stories for their kids to listen to at their leisure through a Google Assistant voice app.

Kids under 13 can make their own Voice Match profile that lets Google Assistant recognize their voice with a parents permission.

Asking questions can be fun, but what about the follow-up? Continued Conversations allows Google Assistant to listen for about 10 seconds after an initial exchange for a follow-up question. Ask Whats the capital of California and then And how many people live there? and Google Assistant will understand the context.

This is designed to make exchanges feel more fluid and human and less like youre speaking to a basic bot.

With your permission, Google Assistant is able to act as a translator for up to 44 languages. Interpreter Mode for Home speakers launched in January for about two dozen languages Its not a perfect solution, as translations were limited to about 15 seconds at launch, but it can still be helpful in the right context.

Interpreter Mode also recently came to Google Assistant on Android devices.

If you speak more than one language at home, you can enable multilingual Google Assistant in the Home app. That means Google Assistant can speak and respond to queries in both English and Spanish.

This can be a lot of fun and a great way to explore your own photos or watch video. Try Hey Google, show me my photos from last weekend or Hey Google, show me my photos from Portland.

You can also say Hey Google, play the Warriors Game on YouTube TV or Hey Google, show me cats tap dancing on YouTube. To avoid untoward video recommendations, responses can be limited to YouTube Restricted Mode or YouTube Kids.

Its important to note that you dont need a smart display to do this: A Home speaker can also work in tandem with a Chromecast connected to your TV to display photos based on voice commands. And depending on the brand and model, Google Assistant can also act as a remote control for your TV or Roku device to let you turn the device on or off, change the channel, or ask for certain shows.

Google Assistant incorporates thousands of recipes from the web, and Home speakers can help with step-by-step guides to cooking a recipe. You can also check with Google Assistant on the basic cooking stuff, like how much 500ml is in ounces, or set timers to make sure your casserole doesnt burn.

Cooking with Google Assistant works best when you can see the recipe and scroll through instructions, rather than waiting for a speaker to talk you through each step or having the assistant repeat steps when you get behind, get distracted, or go looking for an ingredient.

Smart display users can swipe to the left to see recipe recommendations. Favorite recipes can also be saved in the Google app.

When you tell Google Assistant to broadcast a message, it quickly sends an audio snippet to other devices in a home so you can tell everyone its time for dinner or bed.

Broadcast replies were introduced to enable broadcasts to be interactive even if youre away from home.

This feature naturally encourages people to own more than one speaker, because broadcasting a message to someone doesnt make much sense if youre both in the same room.

This year saw a slow drip of privacy-related incidents from AI assistants made by tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. Most of these stories involved third-party contractors hearing wildly intimate audio from users who were unaware that humans were reviewing recorded interactions with their AI assistant.

In response, Amazon and Google introduced privacy-focused voice commands that enable you to quickly say things like Hey Google, delete the last thing I said or Hey Google, delete everything I said to you last week.

Google makes it possible to delete voice recordings in the My Activity section of the Home app, but voice commands make it even easier and dont require digging through your account.

Google also introduced Digital Wellbeing, a suite of services to monitor and limit tech usage.

With Google Assistant, this feature lets you disable music or video or limit Google Assistant responses based on the time of day. This can be good in households where kids get chatty with the assistant when its time for bed.

One major item on my wish list: Enable restrictions based on unique voice ID, so parents can lock out their chatty children but still have a full range of movement with a voice computing device, for example.

You can also disable voice or video calls and interactions with third-party Google Assistant voice apps.

Routines are voice commands you can customize to carry out multiple actions with a single utterance. For instance, you can make Okay Google, good morning a cue for the assistant to read the news, take your phone off silent, change the temperature in your home, tell you about your commute, and start your coffee maker. Or you can make a Routine that shuts off smart home appliances when you leave home or turns them on when you return from work.

The one I use most often is Good morning to check my calendar and hear the latest news.

Routines can even incorporate Google Assistant voice apps like Headspace for things like word of the day or meditation or wind down breathing exercises. If you follow a certain religion, routines might be good for daily devotionals, or to get things like a quote of the day or word of the day.

Companies like Google and Amazon offer Routines because they know voice commands that become part of your daily life are likely to see the highest levels of engagement. Daily Routines are one of Google Assistant VP Scott Huffmans 5 must-follow rules of voice computing.

More:

10 things to try with your new Google Nest smart speaker - VentureBeat

There are still a few days left in 2019, but Im not holding my breath. After more than six months of no updates, Google updated its Android distribution data in May. Since then, more than seven months (234 days to be exact) have passed without a single update.

The Android developer website hosts a distribution dashboard that details the adoption of Googles mobile operating system versions. With over 2.5 billion active Android devices out there, Androids distribution is useful information for anyone who makes decisions regarding Googles mobile operating system. Its incredibly valuable to know how widely (or narrowly) an Android version or more importantly, an API level has been adopted.

In October, Google did share that Android Pie had 22.6% adoption in August 2019. That meant the second-latest version of Android was running on a fifth of devices after some 12 months. Google did not, however, share adoption numbers for any other Android version, including Android 10, the latest version that started rolling out in September.

Google used to update its dashboard monthly. The last regular update was in October 2018. Google blamed a technical glitch for the gap between then and May 2019. The company told us at the time that it had resolved the issue and promised to keep the dashboard updated again. The updates would be closer to quarterly than monthly, the company said.

After a few months it became clear that Google had broken that promise. We reached out to Google multiple times since May. The company declined to offer any new numbers and did not respond to requests for comment.

Here are the latest numbers from May 2019:

This data is useless. Do Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich still have the minimum 0.1% to show up on the dashboard? What is Android 10s adoption share? Which versions should developers target? How many users have devices that support a certain feature? When in 2020 will Google issue an update? Nobody knows.

Instead of regular dashboard updates, it looks like Google only wants to share tidbits of good news. We likely wont see the latest numbers until Google has something positive to say about Android 10 adoption.

ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week.

Read the original here:

ProBeat: Google only updated Android distribution data once in 2019 - VentureBeat

After its famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial, Apple officially unveiled the Macintosh 128k, the "the computer for the rest of us." The Mac revolutionized personal computing. And it was Apple designer Susan Kares job to create digital fonts and icons to usher in this new age.

"I was a typical customer that they were trying to attract, someone for whom the graphical side of it would have been attractive," Kare told a technology historian in 2000. "I didnt really have much computer experience, but even then I found the rudimentary Mac more appealing to me than the Apple II."

Compared to most personal computers at the time which used command line interfaces that were too technical for many users to understand the Mac adopted a much more user-friendly graphical interface (GUI). It featured plenty of things that even the most novice computer user today understands intuitively pointers, menus, scroll bars, windows, icons, and typefaces.

Before the Mac, letters took up the same amount of room on a computer screen, like on a typewriter. But with the new screen and interface, letters such as "i" and "w" could take up different widths. For the first time, designers like Kare were able create typefaces with natural proportions, which made them easier to read.

With those new abilities, Kare designed the Macs first set of proprietary typefaces. That includes Chicago, the quintessential Apple typeface that debuted with the first Mac, retired in 1997 with Mac OS 8, and resurfaced in the 2000s with the early generation iPods.

Chicagos dark, bold strokes were designed to improve legibility on low-resolution screens a testament to the Macs user-friendly ethos. But when combined with its jagged, stair-like aesthetics, Chicago became a hallmark of Apples early brand image. As Chicago Magazine noted in 2018, it was "a typographic premonition of Apples future: a highly visible company that would be known for consistently reaching new heights."

Susan Kare's Chicago, a quintessential typeface for the Apple brand, is the system typeface for early Macs and early iPods.

A combination of technological advancements, functional needs, and branding considerations made Chicago possible and popular. Those same factors are why tech companies design custom typefaces today, says designer and brand strategist Ksenya Samarskaya.

The 2010s saw a resurgence in the adoption of custom typefaces by big tech companies. Apple debuted its first in-house font in more than 20 years with San Francisco in 2015. Google introduced Product Sans in 2015, Roboto for Android in 2011, and Youtube Sans for YouTube in 2017. Then there are Netflix Sans, Airbnb Cereal, Samsung One, and Uber Move.

Samarskaya told me tech companies growing interest in custom typefaces is partly related to the evolution of display technology.

When Kare designed Chicago for Apple back in the '80s, it was displayed on some of the earliest pixel-based screens. Designers at tech companies today, on the other hand, work with much more sophisticated displays.

Susan Kare's design of Chicago for Apple is among the first typefaces made for a computer operating system

As screens gain resolution, designers gain ways to address functional and branding needs on smaller displays. For instance, Apple debuted San Francisco in 2015 now used across iOS, OS, and tvOS with the Apple Watchs small screen in mind.

"When screens were all low-resolution, you couldn't really tell the difference between typefaces as much, and so you were much more limited in terms of what you could do design-wise," Samarskaya told me. "But now, we have more people using high-density screens, and all of a sudden, there's a finer canvas with which to play and express yourself and communicate."

But technology didnt just expand design options for typographers; it also expanded their audience. With the evolution of mobile technology and the internet also came globalization, and the need to cater to global audiences.

For companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook, which operate around the world, legibility in English is no longer the only functional concern.

"When youre dealing with this kind of global landscape, you get into localization concerns," Samarskaya said. "If this country is operating in Thailand, or Georgia, or wherever else, all of a sudden you also have to support all those additional scripts."

As companies expand to serve users globally, font licensing fees also become a cause for concern, Samarskaya told me. For example, before Netflix transitioned to its custom typeface in 2018, it had been paying type design agency Hoefler & Co. millions of dollars a year to use Gotham the same typeface used by Barack Obamas 2008 presidential campaign.

This is in part because these agencies, too, are responding to technological developments. As advertising follows a younger audience to online platforms, agencies increasingly monetize their typefaces based on the number of times they're displayed digitally, Netflixs brand design lead Noah Nathan told design blog Its Nice That in 2018.

Samarskaya noted that the tech companies I mentioned to her created their custom typefaces with speed and ease of processing in mind amid a landscape of similar typefaces.

"They want to fit into the groove of 'what works,'" she said.

But, she added, there is an emotional appeal to typefaces, too.

For a New Yorker, for instance, Helvetica may feel familiar because it's associated with the subway.

Samarskaya speaks of the "invisible" power of typefaces the subtle, primal ways they make an impression on people in their everyday lives. For a New Yorker, for instance, Helvetica may feel familiar because its associated with the subway. Likewise, Comic Sans may bring up memories from elementary school.

That means the typefaces used by brands come with cultural implications for better or worse.

"Typefaces kind of act like a sponge, and all the connotations when it was made and what companies it was used for get absorbed by them," Samarskaya said. "It makes sense that all these companies are coming up with their own. They want to have control to craft their own narratives."

Facebook, the company, created a custom logotype to differentiate itself from Facebook, the social media site.

Thats why Facebook, the company, designed a custom typeface for a new logo to differentiate itself from Facebook, the social network, as the latter increasingly faces scrutiny over antitrust concerns.

But for the most part, custom typefaces are used to amplify and reinforce a companys identity.

For example, Youtube said it made YouTube Sans "quirky, expressive, simple and bold, just like the platform it calls home." Similarly, Google said Product Sans combines the "childlike simplicity of schoolbook letter printing" and "the mathematical purity of geometric forms" to become "Googly" a symbol of the company's playful, experimental personality and technological finesse.

Then there is Airbnb, who said it designed Cereal with an overall roundness to convey the feeling that it is "friendly and approachable" ideal characteristics for a vacation rental company.

But ultimately, Samarskaya says typography is a "living, evolving culture" that develops alongside technology, and as a result, globalization.

Go here to read the rest:

Why Apple, Google, and other big tech companies create their own fonts - Mashable

Google Maps is a handy piece of technology used to help viewers map their way across the globe. While it has plenty of practical uses, many users have also discovered it is good for uncovering some of the worlds mysteries. Using satellite images of the earth from above, viewers have the opportunity to see the planet from a new angle.

One eagle-eyed viewer recently came across a very unexpected sight.

The user posted their finding to Reddit, which appears to show an aircraft in the middle of a field.

Situated just north of Mogadishu in Somalia, the satellite image shows a plane only metres from a dirt road.

Trees and foliage surround the plane while a lemon drying field sits directly to its left.

READ MORE:Google Maps: Mysterious island with only one building [PICS]

In a bid to discover what happened the user did their own research and found out that the plane was an A300 model which crashed in 2015.

They wrote: This appears to be the A300 that crashed north of Mogadishu in 2015. The details around the crash are not exactly clear with some conflicting info. But essentially the aircraft failed to land and ran out of fuel, pilots had to ditch the aircraft north of the city.

The rectangles around the plane appear to be a lemon drying field.

According to the Aviation Herald, the flight was a Tristar Air Airbus A300-B4 performing a freight flight from Belgium to Somalia via Egypt.

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While there were no passengers travelling on the plane, there were six crew members.

The flight was carrying 40 tons of perishables, noted to be frozen food supplies packaged with carbon dioxide, on behalf of the United Nations.

Local police reported the aircraft had suffered problems with the landing gear prompting the flight crew to instigate an emergency landing.

Luckily, no one was fatally injured onboard, however, two occupants received minor injuries.

Meanwhile, the plane itself was left damaged beyond repair, abandoned in the field.

Elsewhere in the world, Google Maps' satellite image has been used to uncover some mysterious locations.

Another user discovered a lone island, situated between the Marshall Islands and Hawaii, which was home to something spooky.

It's sat desolate amongst the blue ocean is a lone building, prompting users to question what it is there for.

Reddit users discussed the history behind the island, with one user stating that every other building on the island was dismantled at some point and removed".

The reason behind this lies with the U.S military.

For nearly 70 years, Johnston Island was under the control of the army and during that time, the island was expanded in size through reconstruction and contained a naval refuelling depot, airbase, nuclear and biological weapons testing sites, a secret missile base and much more.

According to the Nautilus Institute, the island was used for a series of nuclear tests in 1962 under the codenamed Operation Dominic.

The tests were reportedly conducted in a rush, in a bid to beat the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. The first phase was held from 25 April to 11 July 1962, and the second phase from 2 October to 3 November 1962.

What followed in the years to come were a series of nuclear missiles with some resulting in radioactive contamination spread across the 2.67 km island, and the island has sat abandoned ever since.

Read the rest here:

Google Maps: Aftermath of plane crash in Somalia discovered - what happened? - Express

Google (GOOGL) banned Huawei from preloading its apps on the new Huawei smartphones. It took that action to comply with the Trump administrations blacklisting of Huawei as a national security threat. Huawei responded to the Google apps ban by unveiling its own Harmony mobile operating system and digital mapping technology. These moves could rival Google products down the road.

Huaweis actions suggest brewing competition with Google down the road. Moreover, their different treatment of the controversial ToTok app may underscore that conflict of interest.

Google swiftly removed the ToTok app from its Play Store after the New York Times reported that ToTok is a spying tool for the United Arab Emirates government. Apple followed Googles lead a day later and yanked ToTok from its App Store.

However, Huawei indicated that it has no problem with ToTok. For instance, Huawei is using its Facebook page to promote ToTok. Furthermore, ToTok stated that Huaweis app store is one of the places people can download its app if they cant get it through Google or Apple. People can also download the ToTok app directly from the Samsung (SSNLF), Xiaomi, and Oppo app stores.

The Trump administrations blacklisting forced Huawei to launch its Mate 30 smartphone series without Google apps. For Huawei, that has resulted in tepid demand for Mate 30, resulting in weak sales of the device.

After its loss of access to Google apps, Huawei is preparing to move on without relying on the search giant for apps or other crucial technology for its smartphone business.

In India, Huawei is underway with efforts to break free of Google. Huawei is recruiting Indian developers to help it create alternatives to Googles popular apps, the Economic Times reported on December 24.

For Google, ToTok joins the list of popular social apps giving it a headache. The other is TikTok, which has been a huge hit with teens around the world. Similar to ToTok, TikTok has faced spying allegations. United States lawmakers have asked Google to clarify whether it requires foreign apps like ToTok and TikTok to disclose ties with their governments.

In addition to spying concerns, TikTok has emerged as a huge competitive threat to both Google and Facebook.

View original post here:

Huawei and Google Diverge in Their Treatment of ToTok - Market Realist

Googles (GOOGL) days as the dominant Internet search and mobile operating system provider may be numbered, all because of the actions and ambitions of Huawei, Facebook (FB), and Oracle (ORCL).

Google is on track to finish the year with 93% of the global Internet search market. Microsoft (MSFT) controls just 2.3% of the market, and Baidu (BIDU) and Yandex (YNDX), big in China and Russia, respectively, control less than 1.0%. Googles Android software is the dominant mobile operating system, with a 76% global market share. Apples iOS comes a distant second with 23%. Microsofts Windows holds less than 1.0% of the global mobile operating system market.

Android is such a strong operating software that even Google competitors Microsoft, Huawei, and Facebook rely on it to power some of their hardware products. Microsoft, for instance, has joined BlackBerry (BB) in making Android smartphones, abandoning its own Windows software. Huaweis smartphones run Android, and Facebooks Portal smart speakers are based on Android software. However, Huawei and Facebook have recently taken steps that threaten Androids dominance and Googles advertising business.

Prominent Android device maker Huawei shipped over 200 million smartphones last year, ranking as the worlds third-largest smartphone company. As Huawei smartphones typically come preloaded with Google apps, Huawei plays an important role in helping Google distribute its money-making apps.

But Huawei is exploring ditching the Android ecosystem, which could hurt Googles app distribution. Huawei is developing its own mobile operating system, Harmony, which could replace Android in future Huawei devices. Moreover, Huawei has begun recruiting developers to help it create alternatives to popular Google apps.

Facebook, another Android device maker, is also developing an Android software alternative that could power its future devices. A former Microsoft engineer is leading Facebooks efforts to create its Android alternative.

For Google, Android is an important platform for distributing its apps such as YouTube, Maps, and Gmail. These apps make money for Google through advertising, the companys main source of revenue. Therefore, the Huawei and Facebook challenge to Androids dominance puts Googles most important business, advertising, at risk.

Oracle presents Googles Android with a different challenge. The company has sued Google for allegedly copying its software code without permission to make Android. The dispute is now at the US Supreme Court, and Oracle is demanding huge compensation from Google.

View post:

Huawei, Facebook, and Oracle Put Pressure on Google - Market Realist

According to The Washington Post, the NORAD tracking system, which is run by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, uses satellites, radar, jet fighters, apps, social media accounts, and volunteers to track Santas location. However, its not entirely clear how or why Santa determines the route he takes.

This years portals for NORAD include Alexa, OnStar, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and 3-D apps that integrate geospatial and satellite-positioning technology with high-resolution graphics that display the actual positions of the stars, sun, and moon and the shadows they cast at any point in Santas journey, according to the Associated Press. It takes dozens of tech firms including (interestingly enough) Google, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and Bing Maps to deliver the immersive effect for global Santa trackers, with some 15 million visits to the website alone last year, according to the AP.

While the NORAD tracker shows Santa traveling over a detailed globe-esque setting, the Google tracker takes a more 2-D approach. Googles version also features many Christmas-themed games to keep children (and, sure, adults) entertained as Father Christmas makes his journey.

Psst! Did you know, Santas journey lasts 25 hours?! a Google webpage reads. He makes his first stop just after 10 PM local time in far eastern Russia, when its 5 AM in New York and 11 AM in Paris.

The Washington Post notes that NORAD which was expected to see 140,000 or so phone calls on Christmas Eve and Googles trackers have seen similar snafus in previous years, chalking the differences up as a testament to Santas mischievous ways.

At least one Twitter account seemed to explain the discrepancy:

However, if you find yourself doubtful of either or both of the online trackers, the Post notes: You can always look up at the night sky to see if you can spot Santa and his reindeer yourself.

Jaclyn Reiss can be reached at jaclyn.reiss@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JaclynReiss

Read more:

Where in the world was Santa? It depended on which online tracker you were following - The Boston Globe

The cities and suburbs on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay are home to 2.7 million people, a world-class University of California campus and bedroom communities for Silicon Valley that produce median incomes 50 percent higher than the national average.

What they no longer have is a thriving landscape of local daily newspapers.

Gone are the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times, The Daily Review of Hayward, The Argus of Fremont and the Tri-Valley Herald, among others. All had tens of thousands of readers during their heyday and served communities populous enough to be among the largest cities in many other states.

Ownership changes and consolidations have left the region known as the East Bay with just a single daily newspaper. The East Bay Times, based in Walnut Creek, attempts to cover a region nearly the size of Delaware with a fraction of the staff of the former dailies.

The growing number of places across the country with dwindling or no local news options has been associated with mostly rural and lower-income areas, places that have little resilience to counter the trend among readers and advertisers to go online. But the East Bay among the wealthiest and highest educated regions in the country shows that no place is immune to the struggles of the traditional news industry.

"It is really shocking that the place with the demographics and the business and the universities and the progressiveness, that this is a news desert ... " said U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat who represents a significant part of the East Bay.

The former small business owner started his political career on the Concord City Council nearly three decades ago, where he recalls seeing at least one reporter in the front row of every meeting. DeSaulnier is so concerned about the state of local news that he has backed legislative action in Congress to support it.

One of those bills targets what he and others believe is a main culprit of the industry's woes the big tech and social media companies that profit from the content news outlets produce without adequately sharing the profits.

Facebook and Google, among the most prominent of those targets, say they are not to blame for the news industry's downfall and have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to boost local news and help develop new business strategies. That includes backing for news sites in the East Bay, where many of the tech giants' employees live.

But some wonder if that philanthropy is too little, too late. In Fremont, Dan Smith used to have two copies of The Argus delivered daily, one to his family's funeral home for the obituaries placed on behalf of clients and the other to his home, where he turned to sports and comics.

But Smith, 60, no longer subscribes to a daily newspaper, after The Argus turned into a weekly insert to cover a community of nearly 240,000 people, where one of the local employers is electric car maker Tesla.

"Where does one go for local coverage, high school sports? What's going on with the city and the politics, and what's happening around the community?" he said. "How can I be part of my community if I don't know what's going on?"

Former journalists, civic leaders and others in the East Bay lament the loss of the community coverage that was once the staple of local dailies, many of which competed for scoops in towns where coverage areas overlapped.

In Richmond, a working-class city of 110,000 dominated by Chevron and its oil refinery, Mayor Tom Butt recalls a time when two reporters were posted full-time in the press room in the basement of City Hall.

"And everything that happened in the city of Richmond showed up in the newspaper the next day or two, a detailed, blow-by-blow account of every city council meeting, every planning commission meeting," Butt said.

Today, coverage of Richmond falls largely to two online publications. The graduate journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, staffs Richmond Confidential, which goes on hiatus during summer and winter breaks.

The city's largest employer, Chevron, runs the other through a public relations firm. The Richmond Standard posts stories about crime, high school football and community events. It also provides "a voice for Chevron Products Company on civic issues."

The website has posted stories about a Chevron workforce program, its employees and philanthropy, including an article about Chevron taking kids to an Oakland A's game.

Heat rises from stacks at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California.

Getty Images

A few miles down Interstate 80, Martin Reynolds gazes up at the 22-story Tribune Tower that defines the Oakland skyline and was home to the Oakland Tribune for decades before the paper was sold and its headquarters moved. The Tribune's nameplate with fancy gold script remains over the building's main entrance.

The 142-year-old Tribune was the first African American-owned major metropolitan daily, and its staff took pride in its deep connection to the racially mixed city of over 400,000. The newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Its reporters scoured the city's neighborhoods and institutions, and they filled the front page with Oakland-based stories, said Reynolds, who started as an intern and became editor in 2008. They also tried out new ideas in the digital age, such as blogging about life inside one of the city's most dangerous zip codes.

"We were just out there covering stuff all the time," said Reynolds, 51. "We even had a Berkeley bureau."

But ownership consolidated and newsrooms shrank. The Digital First-owned Bay Area News Group eventually announced it would collapse the East Bay's daily papers into one.

"There was a time when newspapers were so powerful and so meaningful and so influential to the community," Reynolds said. "To have lost that is a shame."

Digital First has a record of consolidating newspapers and trimming staff, but it also has said that its business model keeps local journalism alive. The company staffs reporters throughout the region and has separate regional sections on the East Bay Times' website.

The East Bay Times won its own Pulitzer in 2017 for its coverage of a fatal warehouse fire in Oakland. Even then, it wasn't long before cutbacks resumed.

Bay Area News Group Executive Editor Frank Pine said he understands the loyalty people have for the newspapers they grew up with, but said there is no way to turn back time.

The East Bay Times has collaborated with other publications in efforts to beef up local reporting, including a recent in-depth project about law enforcement officers with criminal convictions. The news group also received a grant from Google to test a premium, ad-free service for subscribers.

"Our business the business of news continues to be distressed, and we're doing our level best to stabilize that business and make it sustainable into the future," Pine said.

The loss of so many daily news outlets in this relatively well-to-do region has a ring of irony: Much of the East Bay's wealth and growth is due to tech giants Apple, Facebook and Google whose headquarters are a mere bridge crossing away on the other side of San Francisco Bay.

The dominance of Facebook and Google, which rake in the majority of digital ad dollars, is a key reason the traditional news business has been struggling through a period of layoffs and readership decline.

Apple's iPhone conditioned people to abandon print and seek information with a swipe of a screen. Since the iPhone debuted in 2007, employment in U.S. newspaper newsrooms has dropped by nearly half, according to the Pew Research Center.

David Chavern, president and chief executive of the News Media Alliance, said Google and Facebook can solve the crisis affecting the news industry by paying more for content and sharing more data about the people who click on it.

"The fact of the matter is that both Google and Facebook control everything about the news experience, and yet they don't want to compensate the people who create that content," he said.

Newspaper ad revenue was $50 billion in 2005, according to the Pew Research Center. Today, it's $14 billion.

Representatives of Google and Facebook reject the suggestion that their companies are responsible for the decline of newspapers, saying business models, readership and the way society operates changed dramatically.

They say they are making it easier for people to subscribe and are offering grants, partnerships and training programs to boost local news, but draw the line at sharing digital revenue at the levels news executives want.

"It's not about providing artificial props to models that frankly are no longer valid," said Richard Gingras, vice president of news for Google. "It's not a healthy thing if you're dependent on other sources for revenue to allow you to do your journalistic work."

Google drives an invaluable amount of traffic to news sites, he said, and shares revenue with publications that use its advertising technology.

Campbell Brown, a former television journalist and current head of global news partnerships at Facebook, said publishers she talks to want to be less dependent on platforms such as Facebook.

"We have to find new business models," she said. "But it has to be something that's sustainable over the long term."

Campbell Brown speaks onstage at the Peabody-Facebook Futures Of Media Awards at Hotel Eventi on May 19, 2017 in New York City.

Getty Images

Both companies are putting money behind attempts to build different business models and resuscitate local news. In announcing an array of initiatives and partnerships, the companies have also said they understand that strong local journalism is critical for a healthy democracy.

Each has pledged $300 million to boost journalism across the country, much of that at the local level where newsrooms have suffered the most; a University of North Carolina study found that more than 2,000 weekly and daily papers have closed in the U.S. during the last 15 years.

Facebook sees promise in its accelerator program, which brings leaders from various news outlets together to brainstorm over flash sales, e-newsletters and other tools to boost revenue and attract subscribers.

Josh Mabry, Facebook's lead for local news partnerships, said publications need to remind people why local journalism matters and why they should pay for it.

"Asking goes a long way," he said. "And I think, frankly, a lot of the publishers that we work with are learning how to market themselves in a way that maybe they haven't done in a while."

The program has helped several news outlets in the San Francisco Bay area, including a hyper-local website in Berkeley that used what it learned last year along with grant money from Facebook to sign up 343 members during its year-end membership drive. The previous year had seen just 23 new members during the same period.

"The program really injected a lot of discipline into what we were doing," said Tracey Taylor, co-founder and managing editor of the site, Berkeleyside.

Founded in 2009 by three journalists, Berkeleyside is a beacon in a bleak local news landscape. The site has a staff of seven and an annual operating budget of $800,000, with just under half of its revenue from advertising, Taylor said.

Most of its readers live or work in the relatively wealthy and famously liberal college town, and they send tips and shape coverage, Taylor said.

Habits have changed, said Gingras, the Google vice president. Consumers no longer need the local newspaper for national news or movie show times. Berkeleyside is smart in doing exactly what publications need to do to thrive in the digital age, he said: connect with readers.

Berkeleyside isn't the only local outlet attempting to fill the news void created by the loss of the East Bay's dailies. Political bloggers, community volunteers and others have started their own sites, determined to inform their communities about schools, town councils and crime.

In a major boost for local journalism, Berkeleyside announced recently that it was branching out to cover Oakland with $3 million in backing from Google and the American Journalism Project.

The two newsrooms will team up to cover the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and regional transportation, said Lance Knobel, Berkeleyside co-founder and CEO of the new non-profit that will oversee both sites. He is hoping that a combination of philanthropy and dedication to covering communities creatively will usher in a new era for local news. Knobel said he sees the hunger for that all around him.

"If we bring that sort of passion and caring and ability to tell stories and do deep reporting, there are a lot of people in the city who will say, 'Wow, I didn't know that about the place that I live in,' and will take an interest," he said.

The Associated Press has received grant funding from the Google News Initiative for its AP Verify and AP Story Share projects.

Follow @CNBCTech on Twitter for the latest tech industry news.

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Even amid the affluence of tech capital in Silicon Valley, local news struggles - CNBC

A new "feature" was released earlier this month where Google would automatically take photos that you add to your Google My Business profile and create Google Posts out of them. Not only that, it seems you cannot delete the Google Posts that were automatically created!

Joy Hawkins, a Google Product Expert (not a Googler), said in a Google My Business Help thread "So this is a new feature (not a technical issue) but I'm trying to collect more feedback for Google on it. Do you like it? If you don't like it, please give examples and details as to why :)"

Here is an example of this posted on Twitter:

You should be allowed to remove the Google Posts even if Google automatically creates them for you, no?

Forum discussion at Google My Business Help.

See the article here:

Google My Business Photos Being Added To Google Posts Without Option To Delete - Search Engine Roundtable

ANKARA, TURKEY - NOVEMBER 29, 2019: Representatives stand near an illuminated logo of U.S.-based ... [+] global tech giant Google at a fair. According to the Turkish media, Google announced on December 15 that it has suspended its services for new Android smartphones in Turkey unless the country backtracks from its decision to fine the company for violating competition law. PHOTOGRAPH BY Altan Gocher / Barcroft Media (Photo credit should read Altan Gocher / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

As per Trefis estimation, Google Advertising Revenue, which consists of Google Properties segment and Google Network members properties segment, will contribute 83.3% of Alphabets Total Revenue for 2019. Google properties business, is part of the companys advertising business and is expected to contribute $120 billion to Alphabets 2019 revenues, making up 70.2% of Alphabets $171 billion in expected revenues for 2019. The Google properties business contribution is about 6x that from Google Network members properties, the second segment of the companys advertising business. Alphabet is expected to add $80.8 billion in revenue between 2016 to 2019, out of which the Google Properties segment is expected to provide $56.2 billion, that is 69.6% of the total expected increase. This revenue growth has been key to Alphabets 60% price appreciation since 2016, further helped by high margins, and a stable valuation multiple. We discuss Alphabets valuation analysis in full, separately.

Below we discuss Alphabets business model, followed by sections that review past performance and 2019 expectations for Alphabets revenue drivers, and competitive comparisons with Facebook and Amazon.

You can look at our interactive dashboard analysis ~ Alphabets Revenues: How Does Alphabet Make Money? ~ for more details.

Alphabets Business Model:

What does Alphabet offer:

Has 3 major Operating Segments:

What Are The Alternatives?

What Is The Basis of Competition?

Revenue growth expected in 2019 is primarily from growth in the Google Properties segment.

Trefis

Whats behind Trefis? See How Its Powering New Collaboration and What-Ifs ForCFOs and Finance Teams|Product, R&D, and Marketing Teams More Trefis Data Like our charts? Exploreexample interactive dashboardsand create your own

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Is Google Advertising Revenue 70%, 80%, Or 90% Of Alphabets Total Revenue? - Forbes