Category Archives: Google

The mystery behind a strange 'black hole' found in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has finally been solved!

Last month, an eagle-eyed social media user came across a dark spot in the middle of the ocean when scrolling on Google maps.

It soon got lots of people talking and wondering what it could could be.

It's now been found to be a little-known uninhabited island called Vostok Island, which belongs to the Republic of Kiribati, a country that's located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean!

The 'black hole' on Google Maps was actually a mystery island belonging to Kiribati, a country located in the Pacific Ocean

What happened?

The social media user spotted the strange 'black hole' in the middle of the Pacific Ocean when they were using Google Maps.

The 'black hole' seemed to be situated far away from any other countries or islands.

It confused many people online and lots of different ideas and suggestions were made as to what it could be.

Some wondered whether it was an underground volcano, whereas others thought it might be a secret island or a military base.

However, it turned out to be a small coral island which is located nearly 4000 miles east of Australia.

The island has a lot of dense forest made up of trees which have grown tightly together.

The trees are dark green - but look black from the air and that's why on Google maps it looked like a 'black hole'!

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The mystery behind Google Maps' 'black hole' in the Pacific Ocean - CBBC Newsround

The Federal Trade Commission is warning consumers about a new scam on the rise, targeting people selling items on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or posting about lost pets on social media. Scammers contact posters pretending to be potential buyers or claiming they found the lost pet, but they are concerned that the seller is not a real person or pet owner. They send the consumer a text message with a Google Voice verification code, ostensibly to verify the consumers identity. Scammers then use the verification code to create a Google Voice number linked to your phone number, which can then be used to hide the scammers identity and take advantage of other people. Dont share a verification code with anyone you didnt contact first.

If you think youve been a victim of this scam, Google has instructions to reclaim your number within 45 days. Go to voice.google.com, settings, linked number and enter your phone number under new linked number.

More information at marincountyda.org or 415-473-6495

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Consumer tip: Be careful of this Google Voice scam - Marin Independent Journal

Google Home, the companion app for Googles smart home products, is changing the way users interact with photos on the app and on Nest Hub devices. 9to5Google first noticed the changes, which include a revamped Photo Frame settings menu.

Now, when you use Google Home to change the displayed album while your Nest Hub is idle, youll see a carousel-style UI that gives you the option to choose from curated groups of photos, categorized as Select family & friends, Recent highlights, and Favorites, 9to5Google reports. Scroll past that, and youll be able to see all the albums that youve created.

A preview window appears at the bottom of the page, and you can swipe through the preview carousel to see how your pictures will look when displayed on your Nest Hub. 9to5Google also notes that the time and weather are displayed at the bottom-left corner of the preview window on iOS, but only the photo appears on Android.

In addition to the new Photo Frame settings, 9to5Google also reports that the Nest Hub may be getting a new clock face option that includes the beloved Weather Frog. Also known as Froggy, the character first became available on the Nest Hub as a display option that shows the time, along with an animated depiction of the current weather conditions.

9to5Google found that theres a new option in the Photo Frame menu, called Google Weather Frog, and its description on the app implies youll be able to display Froggy alongside weather conditions and your photos. The feature appears to be unfinished, so it remains unclear just how Froggy might interact with your photos once its officially released.

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Google Home app gets new Photo Frame settings and possible Weather Frog display option - The Verge

Google says minors and their families can ask for an image to be removed from its search results, in a new policy unveiled Wednesday. Screengrab by NPR hide caption

Google says minors and their families can ask for an image to be removed from its search results, in a new policy unveiled Wednesday.

Google installed a new policy Wednesday that will allow minors or their caregivers to request their images be removed from the company's search results, saying that "kids and teens have to navigate some unique challenges online, especially when a picture of them is unexpectedly available on the internet."

The policy follows up on Google's announcement in August that it would take a number of steps aiming to protect minors' privacy and their mental well-being, giving them more control over how they appear online.

Google says the process for taking a minor's image out of its search results starts with filling out a form that asks for the URL of the target image. The form also asks for the URL of the Google search page used to find the image, and the search terms that were used. The company will then evaluate the removal request.

While the request could wind up scrubbing problematic images from Google's search tools, "It's important to note that removing an image from Google results doesn't remove it from the internet," the company said as it announced the policy.

The changes come after Google and other tech companies have faced intense criticism for their policies toward children, who now live in the public eye more than any previous generation facing the prospect of having any moment in their lives shared and preserved online, regardless of their own wishes.

The tool states that it is intended for cases in which the subject is under 18. Google says that if adults want material related to them to be removed, they should use a separate set of options.

In 2019, allegations that Google's YouTube subsidiary collected personal information from children without their parents' knowledge or consent resulted in the company paying a $170 million settlement to state and federal regulators.

"Our children's privacy law doesn't allow companies to track kids across the internet and collect individual data on them without their parents' consent," then-FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra told NPR at the time. "And that's exactly what YouTube did, and YouTube knew it was targeting children with some of these videos."

When Google first announced the image-removal initiative in August, it also pledged to block ads that target people based on their age, gender or interests if they're younger than 18. It also said its YouTube division would change the default privacy settings on video uploads to the tightest restrictions if they come from teens between 13 and 17 years old.

One of the biggest early adjustments for Google's search tools stem from Europe, where a Spanish man's case established the "right to be forgotten" in 2014. In the four years that followed, Google said, people made more than 650,000 requests to remove specific websites from its search results.

Editor's note: Google and YouTube are among NPR's financial sponsors.

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You can now ask Google to scrub images of minors from its search results - NPR

The ability to quickly find the answer to just about any question changes how people perceive their own intelligence, research finds.

People lose sight of where their memory ends and where the internet begins, the findings indicate.

When were constantly connected to knowledge, the boundaries between internal and external knowledge begin to blur and fade, says Adrian Ward, assistant professor of marketing in the University of Texas at Austins McCombs School of Business. We mistake the internets knowledge for our own.

When thinking with Googleor using the internet to fill in gaps in ones ownknowledgepeople believe theyresmarterand have a better memory than others, and incorrectly predict that theyll perform better on future knowledge tests that they take without internet access.

WhatS Me and WhatS Google?

Although humans have long relied on external knowledge stored in books and other people, online search has made the interface between internal thought andexternal informationswifter and more seamless, muddying the waters.

The process of searching Google is also much like searching your own memory, he adds. That can cause people to confuse information found online with information in their own heads.

Ward set out to investigate this possibility by running several experiments. In the first, participants answered 10 general knowledge questions either on their own or using online search. Then, they reported how confident they were in their ability to find information using external sources, as well as in their own ability to remember information.

Unsurprisingly, participants who used Google answered more questions correctly and were more confident in their ability to access external knowledge. More strikingly, they were also more confident in their own memory.

In a second experiment, participants answered the same 10 general knowledge questions either on their own or using online search. Then, Ward told them they would take a second knowledge test without using any outside sources, and he asked them to predict how many questions they would answer correctly.

Those who completed the first knowledge test with Google thought they would know significantly more when forced to rely on their own memory in the futuresuggesting they attributed their initial performance to their own knowledge, not to the fact they were using Google.

A subsequent experiment offers an explanation for this effect. In that study, participants answered knowledge questions on their own, using Google, or with a version of Google that delayed search results by 25 seconds. Unlike those who used standard Google, participants who used slow Google were not more confident in their internal knowledge and did not predict higher performance on future tests, suggesting search speed is partially responsible for knowledge misattributions.

In a final experiment, Ward asked participants to answer 50 questions using either Google or Wikipedia. Although both tools provided the same answers to all questions, Wikipedia contains additional contextual information that may help people recall that the answers originated online.

Participants were then shown 70 questions (50 from before and 20 new ones) and were asked whether each had been answered using internal knowledge or the internet, or whether it was new. Those who used Google were far less accurate in identifying the source of informationspecifically, they were more likely to attribute online information to themselves than those who used Wikipedia were.

Were seeing that people even forget that they googled a question, Ward says.

Less Smart But Feeing Smarter

The research offers a cautionary tale. It suggests that in a world in which searching online is often faster than using our memory, we may ironically know less but think we know more.

This could affect decision-making, Ward says. Feeling more knowledgeable just because youve used the internet might cause you to rely on intuition when making medical decisions or risky financial decisions, and it could make you even more entrenched in your views of science and politics.

Ward adds that the research also has major implications for education, as students might devote less time and energy to gaining knowledge if they already feel knowledgeable. More broadly, educators and policymakers may want to reconsider what it means to be educatedperhaps putting less priority on memorizing facts that can just be googled. Maybe we can use our limited cognitive resources in a more effective and efficient way, Ward says.

For now, Ward says hes scaled back somewhat on googling since conducting the study. Instead, when hes looking for information, he often tries to test his own memory.

When we immediately jump to Google, we dont do the remembering, Ward says. Were not exercising those muscles.

The study appears in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: Deborah Lynn Blumberg forUT Austin

Original StudyDOI: 10.1073/pnas.2105061118

This article was originally published inFuturity. Edits have been made to this republication. It has been republished under theAttribution 4.0 International license.

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Are You Really Smart, or Is It Just Google? - GovExec.com

Press Releases

10/29/2021

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) Governor Ned Lamont, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) President Terrence Cheng, and Alphabets Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat today announced that Connecticut has become the first state in the nation to offer the full suite of Google Career Certificates across its state colleges and universities system, and that the program is now available to all community colleges and career and technical education (CTE) high schools across the nation to onboard.

Part of the Grow with Google economic opportunity initiative, the certificates are available on the online learning platform Coursera. The program equips people with skills for in-demand jobs within three to six months with no degree or experience required at a time when employers in information technology related sectors have reported a skills gap in the U.S. workforce.

This is exactly what workforce development is all about, Governor Lamont said. We have employers that are looking to hire individuals with these digital skills, and our community college system responded quickly by entering into a partnership with Google to ensure our colleges are ready to start equipping students with these skills so they can enter these in-demand careers that pay over $60,000.

Following an agreement between Google, the Connecticut Office of Workforce Strategy, and CSCU, Google and Coursera will provide a diverse population of Connecticut residents with the training to fill positions in data analytics, IT support, project management, and UX design fields that are projected to grow in the next ten years, with an average starting salary of $69,000. After completing the program, graduates can share their resume with an employer consortium of more than 150 companies including Infosys, Verizon, Walmart, Wayfair, and Google. Infosys has already pledged to hire 250 program graduates at its Hartford location.

We are excited about this expansion of our Grow with Google Certificates program and the opportunity to partner with academic institutions across the U.S., including community colleges, which are critical to workforce development and economic mobility, Porat said. We believe that to have sustainable economic growth, we must have inclusive growth, and we are committed to continuing to help people develop the digital skills they need to participate in this economy.

Starting in early 2022, community colleges in all corners of Connecticut will offer Googles IT Support Certificate, with other certificates rolling out throughout the spring and summer, CSCU President Terrence Cheng said. Our public colleges and universities offer the highest quality education and cutting-edge training opportunities. We are thrilled to be the first in the nation to offer all Google Career Certificates on a statewide basis it is a testament to Governor Lamonts laser focus on workforce development.

Building on Googles initiative with Jobs for the Future to offer its first certificate in IT support to more than 100 community colleges, the companys new partnerships aim to help individuals bridge the skills gap by gaining the skills needed to take advantage of job openings. These institutions play an essential role in workforce training with 44% of all U.S. undergraduates attending community colleges, and 7.5 million high school students enrolled in CTE programs.

Through the College of Technology, all Connecticut community colleges will offer credit courses that will include Google Career Certificate courses beginning in spring 2022. Non-credit courses will also be offered regionally using the community colleges workforce development offices, with the roll out of the Google IT Support certificate in spring 2022. CSCU will partner with the Office of Workforce Strategy to help initially subsidize these programs for students and job seekers.

The Connecticut Department of Labor (CTDOL) was recruited by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies to be one of five states administering up to 100 Grow with Google scholarships for veterans and their spouses. The scholarships will be distributed through the American Job Center by CTDOLs Disabled Veterans Outreach Program specialists who work directly with veterans to meet their employment training needs.

The Connecticut Department of Labor is proud to be one of only five states with Grow with Google scholarships for veterans and their spouses, Connecticut Labor Commissioner Dant Bartolomeo said. With certificate programs in technology, analytics, and project management, we can prepare the workforce of the future and help Connecticuts veterans by providing free access to certifications that will help them prepare for, find, and retain good-paying jobs in growing industries.

The Google Career Certificates have a track record of helping people rapidly skill and obtain in-demand jobs. Fifty-three percent of graduates identify as Black, Latino, female, or veteran, and eighty-two percent of graduates report a positive career impact within six months of completion, such as a raise, promotion, or new job.

For more information about the certificates, visit either Googles website at g.co/grow/GoogleCareerCertificates or CSCUs website at ct.edu/google.

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Governor Lamont, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, and Google Announce Google Career Certificates Are Now Available Across the Entire CSCU...

I am leaning against a wall outside my secondary school in my home town of Canterbury, waiting for my mother to pick me up. She is late, as usual. I rest my head on the stone wall, which is obsidian smooth with the occasional sharp edge. I can feel a flinty knuckle of rock pressing into the base of my skull. I shift uncomfortably in my non-regulation high heels and watch the other parents come and go. I am irritated and worried I wont have enough time to finish my GCSE coursework that evening. And then she arrives, and I slam the car door shut with more force than is needed.

Only I am no longer a sullen teenager and I am not in Canterbury. I am on my sofa in south London, walking the streets of my former home town on Google Street View. I drag and drop Pegman, the Street View icon, outside my old school. He flails for a moment before freefalling feet-first, and then I am a teenager, walking the passageways of my youth. I can feel the cold stones under my hand as I trace my palm along the wall. I spent so many afternoons waiting for my mother in this spot that it feels as if there is an imprint of me forever leaning there, a ghostlike presence for todays students to bustle past.

I am not the only person to connect with Google Street View on an emotional level. In June, the poet Sherri Turner went viral after posting a Twitter thread about her experience revisiting her mothers old house on Street View. There is a light on in her bedroom, Turner wrote. It is her house, she is still alive, I am still visiting every few months on the train to Bodmin Parkway.

The post was liked more than 200,000 times, with users sharing their own experience of imaginative time-travel, courtesy of Street View. My dad died three years ago, but on Google maps he is still doing some gardening, which he loved, one user responded. Another added: I found my little nan walking to the shops. She always used to dress so smartly she died in 2018 after a massive stroke.

When Street View was launched in May 2007, it was touted as an opportunity for users to quickly and easily view and navigate high-resolution, 360-degree street-level images of various cities across the world. Street View was initially conceived as a way to improve the accuracy of Google Maps and it is still used by Google as a way of keeping Maps up-to-date, for example by removing defunct business listings. Its primary focus, says Googles Paddy Flynn, is to make the user experience in Google Maps more real.

Fourteen years later, Street View has been extended to 87 countries across the world, including Swaziland, American Samoa and even Antarctica. It has captured more than 10m miles of imagery and taken on a significance to many users that goes beyond its utility as a navigational tool. During Covid, searches spiked 10-fold, as users roamed the world in search of open spaces beyond the confines of home, supermarket and park. It was a way for people to feel more connected to the real world, Flynn says, see places and take virtual tours.

Street View rewards the most intrepid explorers with obscure flourishes. Above Hawaii, Pegman transforms into a mermaid; on the banks of Loch Ness, he becomes the fictional monster. Users can even journey to the International Space Station and observe themselves through a pane of thickly reinforced glass, 400km from Earth.

On Street View, we have a panoptical view of the world and all the mysteries, non-sequiturs and idiocies that are part of everyday life. Here is Sherlock Holmes hailing a cab in Cambridge; a car submerged in a Michigan lake containing the body of a long-missing person; Mary Poppins waiting on the sidewalk at an amusement park; a caravan being stolen by a thief.

I couldnt believe it, says David Soanes, a 56-year-old teacher from Linton, Derbyshire, and the owner of said caravan, which was stolen in June 2009. His son discovered the suspect on Street View and police were able to identify the man involved, although sadly this wasnt sufficient evidence for a conviction. I go back and look at it from time to time, says Soanes, of the image of his former caravan mid-transfer to a new owner.

Maps have always been a vessel to try to contain the daunting abundance of the world by putting a cartographical stopper in it. Maps have been around since time immemorial, says Flynn, and technology enables digital representation. It is one thing to digitise maps and make them widely available and accessible. But that reflection of the real world is something that people are also looking for.

Rather than offering a facsimile of the world we live in, Street View offers something more profound: the opportunity to spot loved ones on familiar streets, unaware that their errand or commute would be captured for posterity by the all-seeing eye of a camera-mounted Street View car.

You take photos, says Adam Bell, 33, an oil worker from St Ives, Cambridgeshire, but this is something that is there by chance. You see someone whos no longer there, and its like a snapshot of that time.

Hes referring to his grandmother Maisie, who died in 2013, but forever sits in the window of her Belfast house, looking out at a passing Street View camera. Her favourite seat was next to the window, he says. She was always looking out into the street and commenting on who was going by. The Street View car was a strange thing and thats why she was taking a good look.

Street View reveals us for who we really are, rather than the versions we present to the world. The criminal mid-theft; the inquisitive grandmother at the window. Because most of the people captured are unaware they are being photographed, the images evoke a sense of intimacy and verisimilitude. The artist Jon Rafman, writing in Art City, describes Street View as an impersonal, abstract eye that is neither sparing nor sentimental. The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, Rafman writes, and the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording.

When we see ourselves on Street View, we are reminded that we are peripheral players in a much greater narrative; passersby in another persons story, rather than the centre of the photographic frame. When we catch a glimpse of our loved ones on Street View, we see their hidden, solitary life. For the artist and lecturer Lisa Selby, 44, from Nottingham, Street View was a way for her to reconnect with a mother she scarcely knew growing up.

My mother was not maternal, says Selby, matter-of-factly. She didnt want to have a child. I am not saying that in a sad sense. I get it. She wasnt ready. Selbys mother, Helen, died in 2016, aged 61. She was an alcoholic and Selby was mostly raised by her grandparents, although she did spend time with her mother in her teens. She had this world of partying and drugs and alcohol, Selby says. I used to be bitter about it until I educated myself about it being an illness.

Selby always felt her mothers absence in her life. On Street View, she says, I would go and look at her house in Greenwich and see how it had changed. But I couldnt walk past there in real life, because it felt too traumatic. Selby would often look for her mother around Greenwich on Street View. I searched the streets for her, she says, as if I was walking around in real life.

And then one evening, someone messaged Selby, to tell her that Helen was on Street View, on the steps of Greenwich library. I was so excited when I found her, she says, My heart was racing fast. I was zooming in as much as I could. My face was close to the screen. It was like seeing a ghost. Shed once bumped into Helen there. It was one of her favourite spots. Helen didnt recognise her and asked her for any spare change. I said, Helen, its Lisa, your daughter, says Selby. Seeing Helen on the steps of the library, Selby felt as if shed been preserved in time. Like, digitally pickled or something.

Selby has no pictures of her mother from this time. Instead of taking a picture of her and putting it in a frame and hanging it on my wall, she says, its like a time machine that I can revisit when I want to see her again. She has not revisited the image of her mother since that night. But its nice knowing its there, Selby says. If I want to, I can place myself in front of her and look out at the things she was looking at at that moment. The busy street. The buses. The shops across the road. And then I can stand in front of those shops and look back at her.

Street View traps the dead and the living alike between pages of cartography, like dried flowers. The dead may not be visible to us in the living world any more, but on Street View, they achieve permanence. They keep updating the images for her street every few years, Bell says, but you go back to that year, and shes still there. Sometimes I think about it and have a little look. I turn back the clock on the dial and shes there again.

But Street View does more than just capture our loved ones in candid moments. Because you can turn back the clock on earlier versions, Street View allows us to move through digital space in a non-temporal, non-linear way and connect with the past on an emotional level. A sense of place is so important in memory, says the photographer Nancy Forde, from Waterloo, Ontario. Her Addressing Loss project asks users to submit stories and images of loved ones they miss, and the comfort theyve found remembering them via Street View images from when they were alive.

We tend to remember addresses or places that were meaningful, and how things looked like when we were kids. And thats whats so special about Street View, Forde goes on. Even if a home is renovated or changes, we can recognise something familiar in it. If something meaningful happened to us in that spot, it implants in our hippocampus. The interface of Street View, Forde says, mirrors the ways in which humans remember. You can zoom in and out, Forde says, and theres this telescoping. Its a little blurry at first, and then it rights itself. And I find that very evocative of how our memory works. We can try to remember something, and it sharpens as were talking about it or encountering it.

To all those who use it, Street View evokes a sense of freedom, in a rules-based, time-bound world. You can see bricks and mortar that arent there any more, says Selby. Shops you remember that arent there any more. I just wish it went all the way back to when I was born. But then Id spend all my time on Street View, not in the real world. Its almost like a game but based on reality. A driving game. Youre in the seat and you can go wherever you want to, to whatever year you want to.

I return to my school and click back through history, to see what the page looked like in 2008. There is sunlight glinting off a silver car, the same colour, manufacturer, and model as my mothers. The image is too blurry to see who is behind the wheel. Although it is probably not her, I like to think it is. I am waiting, and then she is here.

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Memory lanes: Googles map of our lives - The Guardian

Googles parent company, Alphabet, shrugged off any concerns about a downturn in online advertising with another quarter of blockbuster earnings, lifted by continued strong demand for ads on YouTube and steady growth at its cloud computing business.

Alphabet said on Tuesday that net profit in the third quarter rose 68 percent, to $18.94 billion, while revenue jumped 41 percent, to $65.12 billion. The results topped analysts estimates for $16.2 billion in profit and sales of $63.5 billion, according to data provided by FactSet.

The strong performance underscores the value of two of the internets prime destinations: Googles search engine and YouTubes video platform. While other social networks and advertising-dependent businesses have felt the sting of Apples policy change to require apps to ask users if they want to be tracked, Googles advertising revenue remained strong. Ad revenue rose 43 percent in the quarter, to $53.13 billion.

Ruth Porat, Alphabets chief financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts that the privacy changes in Apples iOS mobile operating system had a modest impact on YouTube ads, but noted that Googles advertising business remained strong globally and across a wide range of industries.

Last week, Snap, the parent company of the social media app Snapchat, said the impact of Apples changes was more severe than it had expected. On Monday, Facebook said it experienced continued headwinds from Apples move, even as the companys revenue jumped 35 percent in the third quarter.

Andrew Boone, an equity research analyst at JMP Securities, said Google was insulated from the effects of Apples changes because many of its services are used heavily in web browsers and less as apps, which are subject to Apples rules.

It just appears that the company is immune to the impact, he said.

Even as competition officials around the world target Googles businesses over antitrust concerns, Alphabet continues to grow at an eye-popping pace for a company of its size, while also improving its profitability by slashing its costs. The company said it converted 32 percent of its sales into operating profit in the third quarter, compared with 24 percent a year ago.

In a research note last month, Brad Erickson, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that Alphabet was facing greater regulatory pressure but that it was almost an unfairly good business. He noted that in conversations with advertisers, Google remains the first dollar of spend for any digital strategy.

The company also reported continued growth in its Google Cloud business. The unit, which competes with cloud computing services for businesses from Amazon and Microsoft, reported a 45 percent increase in revenue, to $4.99 billion, while narrowing its losses to $644 million from a year earlier.

Alphabet also continues to increase the size of its work force, surpassing 150,000 employees at the end of September, up from 132,000 a year earlier. Alphabet said it planned to increase spending for renovating and building new offices to accommodate its growing number of employees.

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Google's Profit and Revenue Soared in the Third Quarter - The New York Times

A Google tax introduced by the coalition government to crack down on multinationals shifting profits overseas has been criticised as a total failure, as new documents show it is predicted to raise no money over the next six years.

The diverted profits tax, introduced in 2015, was hailed as a pioneering effort to tackle multinationals who were reducing their UK corporation tax by shifting profits overseas.

It was predicted by officials that the tax would raise up to 400m a year, but new figures published with the budget last week show revenues slumping to zero.

Labours James Murray, the shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, said: Rishi Sunak tried to bury it but the diverted profit tax is a total failure. The governments own documents admit it will bring in absolutely nothing. Big multinationals are benefiting time and again from the chancellors tax breaks while British businesses are stifled with debt and unfair business rates.

The tax was introduced by the then chancellor, George Osborne, to stop large-scale tax avoidance. Osborne said the tax was designed to deal with the very real anger that people feel when they see large businesses not paying tax.

It was described as a world-leading anti-avoidance measure. It later emerged that Google would not be paying the tax, after negotiations with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), but other companies were forced to.

The measure was brought in after a series of tax rows involving major corporations. It emerged in 2012 that Starbucks had made no profit, and paid no corporation tax, on sales of 1.2bn in the UK over three years. Amazon, Google and Microsoft also faced mounting scrutiny over the amount of tax they paid in Britain.

It was revealed in 2018 that Amazon UK Services paid just 1.7m in tax the previous year, despite the online giant achieving total UK sales of 11bn.

Google has used tax structures known as the Double Irish and the Dutch Sandwich to channel profits through Ireland and tax havens to avoid tax. It said last year it would no longer exploit the loopholes.

Microsoft was revealed to be avoiding up to 100m a year in UK corporation tax by booking billions of pounds of sales in Ireland under a confidential deal with British tax authorities.

Officials said last year HMRC was conducting about 100 investigations into multinationals with arrangements to divert profits. The total amount of tax under consideration was 5.3bn at the end of March 2020.

HMRC has encouraged companies to disclose any profit-shifting arrangements by signing up to its compliance facility. It says firms can update their tax affairs via the facility without investigation by HMRC if a full and accurate disclosure is made.

There has been a concerted international effort to prevent multinational firms from creating elaborate corporate structures to avoid tax.

Boris Johnson and other world leaders were set to endorse a new agreement at the G20 summit onSaturday to ensure multinationals pay a fair share of tax around the world. The plan puts in place a minimum global corporate tax rate of 15%. One White House official was quoted as describing the deal as a reshaping of the rules of the global economy. It has been estimated it will raise more than 100bn a year globally.

George Turner, director of the UK charity TaxWatch, said the diverted profits tax had not stopped firms shifting profits overseas. He said: Companies will continue to move their profits around the world to exploit the lowest possible rate of corporation tax. The new agreement at G20 and a new minimum tax rate of 15% will not put an end to that.

A HM Treasury spokesperson said: The diverted profits tax is an important tool in countering artificial profit shifting. Since its introduction it has raised significant revenue as well as successfully encouraging groups to change their behaviour so that they pay more corporation tax in the UK.

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Osbornes Google tax on overseas profits now raises zero revenue, Treasury reveals - The Guardian

A Google Cloud logo outside the Google Cloud computing unit's headquarters at the Moffett Place office complex in Sunnyvale, California, U.S., June 19, 2019. REUTERS/Paresh Dave/File Photo

Oct 27 (Reuters) - Intel Corp (INTC.O) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google Cloud on Wednesday said they have worked together to create a new category of chip that Intel hopes will become a major seller in the booming cloud computing market.

The new chip, which is called Mount Evans and will be sold to others beyond Google, reflects the way that cloud computing providers operate. They build huge data centers full of powerful physical computers and sell virtual slices of those machines to other businesses, who in turn get better bang for the buck than building the machines themselves.

For cloud providers, tasks like setting up the virtual machines and getting customer data to the right place are essentially overhead costs. The Mount Evans chip, which Google and Intel have dubbed an "infrastructure processing unit" (IPU), separates those tasks out from the main computing tasks and speeds them up. Doing so also helps ensure the safety of those functions against hackers and adds flexibility to the data center.

"We see this as strategically vital. It's an extremely important area for us and for the data center," Nick McKeown, senior vice president of the network and edge group at Intel, told Reuters.

Intel is not the only player making infrastructure chips. Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) and Marvell Technology Inc (MRVL.O) have similar but slightly different offerings.

But Intel and Google are working together on a set of software tools that will be released for free in hopes of making Intel's version of the chip a broader industry standard used beyond Google's data centers.

Amin Vahdat, a Google fellow and vice president of engineering, said Google is hoping to spur a technology trend that makes it easier for all data center operators to be more flexible about how they slice up their physical computer servers into virtual ones to suit whatever computing task is at hand.

"The basic question of what is a server is going to go beyond what's inside the sheet metal. The IPU is going to play a central role there," Vahdat told Reuters.

(This story has been refiled to reflect that Amin Vahdat is also vice president of engineering at Google, paragraph 7)

Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San FranciscoEditing by Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Intel teams with Google Cloud to develop new class of data center chip - Reuters