Category Archives: Google

Google is expanding the VPN service that it provides as part of its Google One subscription to seven new countries: Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, as spotted by 9to5Google.

The company started offering VPN access to 2TB Google One cloud storage subscribers in the US late last year, as a free addition to the existing $9.99 / month plan. But todays announcement sees a marked expansion of the service.

There are a few limitations that separate Google One from more comprehensive VPN solutions. First off, youll only be able to use the service in one of the supported countries the companys support page notes that you wont be able to connect to VPN by Google One if you are traveling to an unsupported country.

And, much like Apples upcoming iCloud Plus VPN service, the Google One VPN wont enable one of the most popular uses of a VPN: accessing content from a different country or region by assigning an IP address from that area. Rather, Googles system will assign you an IP address based on your current country so that websites can show you the right content for your region, although Google notes that it still will prevent tracking to your specific city or area.

The newly expanded Google One VPN is still only available on Android devices, however. Last year, Google said that it would be expanding availability to platforms like iOS, Windows, and Mac in the coming months, but theres no news on that front yet.

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Google One VPN expands internationally to Canada, Mexico, UK, and more - The Verge

Google unveiled the Pixel 6 last week, and this time it says it's ready to compete at the flagship level. Actually, it unveiled two new devices, the Pixel 6, and Pixel 6 Pro, because every smartphone line needs at least one device that has the word "pro" in the name. That's how you know you're supposed to take it seriously--and, in the case of the Pixel 6--Google definitely wants you to take it seriously.

"We knew we didn't have what it took to be in the ultra high end," said Rick Osterloh, Google's head of hardware in an interview with The Verge. "And this is the first time where we feel like we really have it."

The thing is that the Pixel has always seemed like a side project for Google. Like almost all of Google's other side projects, that means that no one really takes it seriously.

That isn't to say that the Pixelsaren't good phones, there's just not much that stands out as a reason to buy one instead of say, a Samsung Galaxy or an iPhone. They definitely haven't been anywhere near the "flagship" level.

The Pixel 6 is something different in that it's really the first time that Google is making a device that seems to have a reason to exist beyond "we're a tech company so we should make a phone."

Actually--to be fair--that's not entirely true. The existing Pixel devices do come with the purest version of Android, instead of the modified versions put on devices by other manufacturers. Also, the Pixel line has a reputation for beingreally good at computational photography. If either of those two things were important to you, you might have been willing to put up with a device made mostly of plastic that just felt like it couldn't quite stack up with the competition.

Now, however, the Pixel is all-in on top of the line. It includes the same metal-sandwiched between-glass design that you expect to see on an iPhone or Galaxy S-series. It has an in-screen fingerprint sensor. It even has an all-grown-up camera bump.

In almost every way, Google is borrowing from Apple's proven playbook. Hey, it's worked for Apple, which is the world's most valuable company largely because of the success of the iPhone.

But the biggest thing Google is taking from Apple's playbook is something you can't see in photos, or even if you're holding one in your hand. The Pixel 6 series comes with Google's very own system on a chip (SoC) called Tensor.

The details are light on what exactly the Tensor is, or how much of it Google designed itself. Still, it's a pretty big deal. Almost every smartphone sold in the U.S. that isn't an iPhone is powered by chips made by Qualcomm. Even Samsung, which makes its own Exynos chips for its non-U.S. smartphones, uses Qualcomm chips here.

Interestingly, most rumors point to Google using components made by Samsung in its Tensor SoC. Not only does that mean that it could break the hold Qualcomm has on the non-iPhone market for chips, but it could mean that we finally see an Android phone that can compete with Apple's A-series SoCs.

Since Google makes the operating system, the hardware, and now the processor, it can be sure they all play nice together--just like Apple does. We've already seen what a difference that makes in terms of performance in the iPhone.

The A-series chips are so powerful, not only is the iPhone more powerful than a lot of PC laptops, Apple is basically using the same processing cores in its own laptops with the M1. All of that is to say that Google's strategy to make us take the Pixel 6 seriously looks pretty, well, serious. It might even work.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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Google Wants You to Take the Pixel 6 Seriously and It's Borrowing Apple's Playbook. Why It Might Work - Inc.

Google could cut pay for remote workers, with those with long commutes potentially hit hardest, but legal experts in Australia say bosses here would have difficulty doing the same.

Facebook and Twitter already have location-basedpackages, which reduce the salaries of workers who move to cheaper areas.

According to Reuters, Google's policy goes further, with a pay calculator that allowsemployees to see the effect movingwould have on their pay packet.

For example, a Google worker who lives an hour from New York City would be paid 15 per cent less if she worked at home, while a colleague from the same office living in New York City would see no cut from working from home, according to Reuters.

The pandemic has prompted manyAustralians with city jobs to move to the regions and work remotely.

But lawyers say bosses here who cut pay for those who work remotely all the timeface legal challenges.

"Employers in Australia are not entitled to unilaterally cut the pay of existing employees based on geographic location,"Brad Annson, an employment lawyer and partner at Gordon Legal, says.

"An employer who does sowill be exposed to a range of potential legal action."

Basically, a boss who cuts your pay without agreementwould be in breach of yourcontract or enterprise agreement.

"So much so that the employee is entitled to treat that as a termination, and therefore bring a claim for unfair dismissal," Mr Annson explains.

And, if you're covered by an award or enterprise agreement, you can't even agree to a pay cut.

"Essentially you cannot contract out of an enterprise agreement or award."

However, it's not necessarily against the law to offer location-based salary packages to new employees on private contracts.

AP: Jeff Chiu

That's more ofa grey area.

JobWatch executive director Zana Bythewaywarns that justas an employer can't cut your pay without agreement, a staff member can't permanently work from home without agreement.

"Basically, If you are required to be in Melbourne, and that's your location-based contract,you can't unilaterally vary that by going to Castlemaine," she says.

"There could be consequences to that, meaning your employment contract may be repudiated by your employer."

Ms Bytheway saysan employee who did face apay cut because of working from homecould argue that their living costs, like electricity bills, had become more expensive.

If you can't reach agreement with your boss, the contract could be terminated.

Similarprinciples apply.

"If the employer were to seek to have differential pay rates, depending on whether you worked at home regardless of your geographical location,that might bring into playa number of other complex legal questions," Mr Annson says.

"The employer could be exposed to legal action, including under anti-discrimination law."

His advice is to seek advice from a lawyer and/or union.

Google has ruled out introducing the policy for its Australian staff.

In the experience of recruitment agency directorPeter Salt, local companies are taking a different approach.

"I've got two examples of executives being employed in Dubbo and Riverina on the same salary packages as if they were based in the city," he says.

Mr Salt says the pandemic has resulted in bosses finally understanding that working remotely doesn't lead to a drop in productivity.

"It actually increases," he says.

He says a"chronicshortage" of skilled workers meansemployers are now more likely to includesweeteners to attract good talent.

"Any employer that thinks they'll get away with being stingy is going to miss out."

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Google is planning to cut people's pay for working from home. Could it happen here? - ABC News

Investors in Duolingo(NASDAQ:DUOL), the world's top-grossing education app, are having a fun learning experience. Duolingo's shares have soared over 40% from its IPO price of $102 -- a sign of affection for this growing educational tech start-up.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has a 13% stake in Duolingo -- making it the biggest outside investor in the company. In fact, Duolingo co-founder Luis von Ahn has sold two inventions to Alphabet. One of these inventions, reCAPTCHA, is used everywhere online today to guard websites from fraud and abuse. After snapping up reCAPTCHA in 2009, Alphabet went on to back von Ahn's next venture, Duolingo, which has become an even greater success.

Clearly, there is something Alphabet likes about Von Ahn and his ability to create successful tech products. With this in mind, Duolingo deserves a closer look.

Image source: Getty Images

Duolingo started in 2011 with the audacious goal to "develop the best education in the world and make it universally available." To achieve this, the founders built Duolingo from ground up to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile generation. Anyone with a web browser or smartphone can access the platform, which has won accolades for being innovative and easy to use. In 2013, the platform won Apple's App of the Year award -- the first time any education app had won this prize. Today, Duolingo has 40 million monthly active users (MAUs) using the platform to take courses in 40 different languages. Users have downloaded the app more than 500 million times, making it the top-grossing education app on Google Play and Apple's App Store.

There are many reasons why Duolingo is so popular. To start, users can use the app to learn a new language anywhere and anytime. That's pretty convenient, considering the location-based, deadline-driven structure of traditional education programs. In the old system, students follow a standardized lesson plan irrespective of their abilities, which results in a mixed learning outcome. Duolingo solves this problem by using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to personalize each lesson for every individual learner so users progress at their own pace.

Anyone who has tried to learn something new knows that staying motivated is hard. To keep users coming back, Duolingo deploys gameplay mechanics like experience points, streaks, and leaderboards. By gamifying the learning process, Duolingo helps users stay engaged -- boosting their chances of success.

Perhaps the most disruptive thing about Duolingo is its price. All course content is free, and Duolingo monetizes its audience by serving ads at the end of each lesson. For an ad-free experience and some additional features, users can subscribe to Duolingo Plus for $6.99 a month. Comparatively, attending a physical class to learn a new language can easily cost hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars.

In 2016, Duolingo began offering a second product: the Duolingo English Test. This is an online, on-demand English proficiency test that anyone can take on their phone from anywhere, at any time. More than 3,000 higher-education programs -- including top undergraduate programs at Stanford, MIT, Yale, and Columbia -- accept Duolingo English Test results as proof of English proficiency.

In 2020, subscriptions accounted for 73% of Duolingo's revenue. The rest is from ad income (17%) and other services (10%), such as Duolingo English Test fees and sales of virtual goods.

Over the last few years, Duolingo has been firing on all cylinders. Revenue grew 128% to $162 million in 2020, up from $71 million in 2019. This came on the back of growth in its paying user base, which rose 84% to 1.6 million users. The momentum continued into the first quarter of this year, with revenue surging 97% to $55 million.

But for Duolingo, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The market for online language learning is expected to be worth $47 billion in 2025, up from $12 billion in 2019. And Duolingo sees itself as much more than "just" a language learning app. It aims to expand its platform to tackle other subjects like math, riding the ongoing shift toward digital learning. This will help Duolingo grab a bigger slice of a market that GSV Ventures -- an edtech venture capital firm -- estimated will be worth $1 trillion by 2026.

There are many ways Duolingo can grow from here. For one, it can continue attracting new users from across the world. In the meantime, it can convert existing users into paying subscribers. Duolingo had 1.8 million paying subscribers as of March 31 -- just 4.5% of its MAUs. For the record, that's up from 3.3% in 2019, but there's still a lot of room for growth here. On top of that, Duolingo can roll out new courses and products -- such as proficiency tests -- which will further expand its revenue stream.

Still, the road ahead isn't all clear. There are thousands of free language learning apps jostling with Duolingo for user time and mindshare -- something the company acknowledges in its IPO prospectus. Duolingo also competes with education companies and universities, some of which offer free products in as many as 50 languages. So far, Duolingo has successfully defended its market position. It remains the top-ranked language learning app worldwide, and its financial performance has been impressive. But there's no guarantee this always be the case. As demand for online learning grows, more rivals will likely emerge with innovative products of their own, keeping Duolingo on its toes.

Duolingo appears to have the ingredients for success. It has a popular, engaging platform, a massive, global user base, and enormous room for future growth. On top of that, it stands to benefit from Alphabet's backing and expertise in scaling technology companies.

But at a market cap of $5.13 billion, Duolingo trades at an eye-popping 32 times 2020 sales. Facebook -- the biggest social media platform and one of the world's most innovative tech companies -- trades at less than 10 times sales.

Right now, Duolingo is riding high on investor optimism and the success of its IPO. But at such a steep valuation, the stock is too hot to touch. Keen investors should monitor Duolingo for a few quarters to see if it can sustain its strong performance.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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Google-Backed Duolingo Just Went Public. Here's What Investors Should Know - The Motley Fool

TL;DR

Google removed nearly 115,000 apps from the Play Store in the first half of 2021, making for the first substantial decrease in the total number of Android apps in three years.

Over 58,000 apps were pulled between January and April, and some 65,000 disappeared in May alone, according to SafeBettingSites, citing data from Google and analytics firms including App Annie, AppBrain, and Statista. There are now north of 2.8 million apps in the Play Store, down from 3 million as recently as September 2020. The last major drop happened in 2018 when totals slid from a peak of 3.6 million to 2.8 million.

The reason for the surge of removals in May 2021 is thought to be a sweeping set of new rules Google announced towards the end of April, aimed at blocking apps with misleading names and images. Developers were for instance stopped from embellishing titles with promotional claims, or even exceeding 30 characters.

Controlling the quality of Play Store titles has been a long-standing and seemingly intractable problem. The updated rules still dont directly address developers who produce low-quality clones or in some cases outright fake apps that dont work. The latter can be reported, but the appeal of easy money can result in new apps slipping in to replace what Google removes.

The Play Store reportedly amassed 56.2 billion downloads in the first half of 2021, up 6% year-over-year, while Sensor Tower data indicates that revenues were up 30% to $23.4 billion. Google still lags far behind Apple in financials, however, as its estimated to have earned $41.5 billion in 1H21 App Store revenue with far fewer apps on the market.

Originally posted here:

Googles new rules appear to be successfully purging the Play Store - Android Authority

Another Google employee, who asked to remain anonymous because she still works at the company, recalled that when she complained about a racist and toxic manager, she was told that perhaps she needed resilience training. She was also offered the same options: counseling or paid medical leave. She chose the latter. A former Google employee based in London said she was also offered counseling when she came forward with sexual assault claims.

When Timnit Gebru, a former co-leader of Googles Ethical A.I. team, raised concerns about bias in the technology giants artificial intelligence, she was also offered resources on mindfulness, she said in an email. She declined the offer, telling human resources that no amount of mindfulness fixes a hostile work environment.

One of my first questions when I have new clients is, Have you seen a therapist in the prior years? Ms. Mizrahi said. If someone had seen a therapist a long time ago for reasons unrelated to the current case and was otherwise mentally healthy until their work environment became challenging, lawyers can argue that those previous records are irrelevant and should not be handed over to the companys lawyers in litigation.

But when there are records of contemporaneous treatment, it becomes much harder to argue that they are irrelevant to the case at hand. (Of course, in some cases, that evidence might actually end up bolstering an employees case.)

When a counselor or therapist receives a subpoena, they can move to have that quashed or they may seek to turn over the minimal amount of information possible, said Dr. Lee, of Seattle University. However, when it comes to subpoenaing an E.A.P. counselor, I could see how there could be a potential conflict of interest, she added.

Where counselors are located might also suggest a breach of independence, said Ms. Hull, an employment attorney. I get really suspicious of E.A.P. counselors who are in the same building as human resources, sometimes in the same suite as human resources, she added.

She recounted that one of her clients, not affiliated with Google, told an employer-provided counselor that she was considering hiring an attorney with complaints about her work environment. The next day, according to Ms. Hull, human resources pulled the employee aside to ask her why she was looking to hire a lawyer a fact that she hadnt disclosed to anyone except her counselor.

In many cases, when plaintiffs realize that their counseling and medical records might be made public in emotional distress cases, they decide to either settle or drop their claims, Ms Mizrahi said.

Daisuke Wakabayashi contributed reporting.

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Google Responded to Workplace Complaints With Counseling - The New York Times

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 29: U.S. President Joe Biden gestures as he delivers remarks in the East Room ... [+] of the White House on July 29, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden spoke on his administration's effort to get more Americans vaccinated and plan to combat the spread of the Delta variant. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

President Joe Biden, Apple, Google and others are wisely following a basic best practice for responding to a crisis situation that all business leaders should keep in mind: Dont hesitate to change your strategies and tactics when a crisis worsens or takes unexpected turns, which is certainly the case with the rollercoaster ride that is the Covid-19 pandemic. From vaccine hesitancy to the Delta variant, the Covid crisis today is much different than it was a year ago.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Biden today called for state and local governments to make $100 payments to every newly vaccinated American to encourage them to get their Covid shots. In remarks at the White House, he announced all federal employees will be required to be vaccinated against thecoronavirusor face new testing, masking and distancing rules, according to the Washington Post.

Yesterday, Apple said anyone who enters their U.S. stores will have to wear a mask again and Facebook announced that all of their U.S. employees must be vaccinated before they can return to the companys offices.

Another important best crisis management practice Biden and the tech companies are following is to clearly explain what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how it will help address the worsening crisis.

On Wednesday, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, told employees they are now required to get their Covid vaccinations and that previously announced plans to return to the office were postponed until mid-October.

As the New York Times recently reported, When companies began announcing tentative return-to-office plans this spring, there was a sense of optimism behind the messages. Covid cases were dwindling in the United States as the vaccine rollout picked up pace. Employers largely hoped their workers would get shots on their own, motivated by raffle tickets, paid time off and other perks, if not by the consensus of the medical community.

In recent days, that tone has suddenly shifted. The Delta variant, a more contagious version of the coronavirus, is sweeping through the country. Fewer than half of Americans arefully vaccinated, exacerbating the situation.

According to a July 20 report by New York Times, Apple pushed back itsreturn-to-office plansby at least a month in response to the recent surge in coronavirus cases, which has been fueled by the spread of theDelta variant. The company told employees on Monday that they are now expected to return to the office as early as Oct. 1 instead of early September. [Apple] said that the date could shift further depending on the spread of the virus, and that it would give employees at least a months notice before they are expected to return, according to an email Apple sent to employees, which was viewed by The New York Times.

As the situation continues to evolve, were committed to the same measured approach that we have taken all along, the email said.

Of course, Apple, Facebook and Google are not the only companies who are apparently worried about the changing course of the pandemic or the urgent need to do some3thing about it.

In a spring surveyof more than 3,300 small employers,Reimagine Main Street found that 64% of small employers said that was very important for their employees to get vaccinated. The majority (63%) of respondents wee willing to encourage and incentivize employees to get their shots, with AAPI and Black small employers most likely to act.

To help businesses navigate changing public health guidance, surging rates of new Covid-19 infection and partially vaccinated workforces, the Health Action Alliance and National Safety Council experts developed aDecision Tool For Employers.

According to the Health Action Alliance, This interactive online resource is designed to help executives, human resource managers and operational leaders navigate the health, legal and other considerations that can inform their vaccination policy and other workplace safety decisions.

Professor Sharona Hoffman is a health law expert at Case Western Reserve UniversitysSchool of Law andSchool of Medicine. I think Google has made a sound decision, as long as they provide exceptions for medical and religious reasons.

Given the spike in Covid cases, it would be very reasonable for other companies to make the same [vaccination and office return] decision.We have seen that too many people refuse to take the vaccine if they are not required to do so.Establishing vaccine mandates appears to be a necessary step to combating this deadly pandemic, she observed.

David C. Miller, a labor and employment attorney with Bryant Miller Olive, said, My advice to leaders is to balance the benefits of vaccinations which are obviousagainst the downsides, the biggest of which is employee pushback.

My clients tell me that if they mandate vaccinations, there will be some number of employees who will quit rather than submit. If your company has a high public profile or its a consumer-driven business, you also have to guess at how much negative publicity youll get and how much it may hurt the brand and sales. I think there will certainly be a number of businesses that follow Googles example. How manyand especially how many outside the tech industryis an open question, he noted.

Miller advised that, If youre a public sector employer or if your employees are represented by a union, there are whole additional suites of hurdles you have to leap before you can require vaccinations. Ultimately, there are going to be major First Amendment suits against governmental vaccination requirements, whether aimed at employees or the general public. Weve begun to see them already.

He observed that, Google delayed its return to the office date in tandem with the vaccination requirement. [This] seems to have been done to allow employees time to get vaccinated, but also to give more time to adjust their work-from-home lives back to the brick-and-mortar model. Any employer choosing to have a mandate would do well to follow suit to try to minimize employee disruptions and, thus, pushback. Education, tangible incentives, and soft pressure have all been used to ease employees toward vaccination.

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Why Biden, Apple, Google And Others Are Changing Strategies To Combat Covid Crisis - Forbes

"A security update will be applied to Drive," Google's weird new email reads.A whole bunch of us on the Ars Technica staff got blasted with this last night. If you visit drive.google.com, you'll also see a message saying, "On September 13, 2021, a security update will be applied to some of your files." You can even see a list of the affected files, which have all gotten an unspecified "security update." So what is this all about?

Google is changing the way content sharing works on Drive. Drive files have two sharing options: a single-person allow list (where you share a Google Doc with specific Google accounts) and a "get link" option (where anyone with the link can access the file). The "get link" option works the same way as unlisted YouTube videosit's not really private but, theoretically, not quite public, either, since the link needs to be publicized somewhere. The secret sharing links are really just security through obscurity, and it turns out the links are actually guessable.

Along with Drive, Google is also changing the way unlisted YouTube links work, and the YouTube support page actually describes this change better than Drive does:

In 2017, we rolled out an update to the system that generates new YouTube Unlisted links, which included security enhancements that make the links for your Unlisted videos even harder for someone to discover if you haven't shared the link with them.

Google knew about the problem of guessable secret links for a while and changed the way link generation works back in 2017 (presumably for Drive, too?). Of course, that doesn't affect links you've shared in the past, and soon Google is going to require your old links to change, which can break them. Google's new link scheme adds a "resourcekey" to the end of any shared Drive links, making them harder to guess. So a link that used to look like "https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxI1YpjkbX0OZ0prTHYyQ1U2djQ/" will now look like "https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxI1YpjkbX0OZ0prTHYyQ1U2djQ/view?resourcekey=0-OsOHHiQFk1QEw6vIyh8v_w." The resource key makes it harder to guess.

If you head todrive.google.com/drive/update-drivesin a browser, you should be able to see a list of your impacted files, and if you mouse over them you'll see a button on the right to remove or apply the security update. "Applied" means the resourcekey will be required after September 13, 2021, and will (mostly) break the old link, while "removed" means the resourcekey isn't required and any links out there should keep working.

Google's "impacted files" interface. Feel free to add or remove that security update.

YouTube already went through this process earlier in the month, with all unlisted links before 2017 going dead, unless the owners of the videos are still active on YouTube and opted out. Drive is doing this with a bit more finesse than YouTube, though. Thanks to account-based sharing, anyone who accessed your unlisted Drive links in the past will still be granted access to them, even if you upgrade the security. No new people will be able to access the old, upgraded link, though. This way, if you have a stable community that uses an unlisted file, it should mostly be able to keep on trucking. Any new members, however, will be locked out and will need to request access. If you don't want this, at any point the owner of the file can hit the "share" button and change the settings to generate a new link or turn off the link altogether.

Not letting third parties create a list of all your unlisted files is a good thing, but don't confuse this link change with any actual security. You should never share anything over the "unlisted" or "get link" features on YouTube, Drive, or Google Photos if you actually want it to be private. Secret links are just security through obscurity, and even with Google's upgrades, they should not be considered secure or undiscoverable. This arrangement is totally fine for casual documents, but always assume that anyone in the world can read an "unlisted" file. If you're OK with that, fine. But if not, use Google's actually private account-based sharing options.

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Heres what that Google Drive security update message means - Ars Technica

Google announced its adding new caller ID, missed call, and SMS message features to Google Voice on Wednesday. The otherwise minor update is notable because Google Voice has fallen to the wayside while Google focused on other messaging boondoggles.

From the missed calls or voicemail sections of the mobile Google Voice app, you can now learn why you might have missed a call (for example, Do Not Disturb was on), and receive directions on how to make sure that doesnt happen again (turning Do Not Disturb off). Google is also making it easier to redial dropped calls and switch to your mobile network if your Wi-Fi connection was the reason your call failed.

If you use Google Voice on iOS to forward calls to your personal number, now you can have the app display your Google Voice number on caller ID rather than the original linked number. SMS messages can now be deleted in bulk on the web version of Google Voice as well.

Googles various attempts to connect people outside of Gmail have long been somewhat confused weve even made a timeline of the journey so far but Voice, in particular, has felt forgotten in the wake of Google Fi offering a more traditional phone service. Voice received a redesign in 2018, and a dark mode in 2020, but as a business-oriented Workspace product, it hasnt really received as many dramatic evolutions as Googles wild stabs at text and video chats. For the committed Google Voice user not at risk of forgetting the service exists, that might be for the best.

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Google remembers Voice exists, adds new missed call and caller ID features - The Verge

Trump supporters gather outside the Capitol in Washington ahead of the Jan. 6 riot.

All of these things are true, at least according to the Gateway Pundit: Election officials lost or tampered with millions of Trump votes on election night last November. In Pennsylvania, an impossible number of mail-in ballots flowed into the state, leading to Joe Bidens victory there. (That storys headline blared with all the subtlety of a fire alarm: SHOCKING EXCLUSIVE: WE CAUGHT THEM!) Months later, Attorney General Bill Barr failed to follow up on legitimate claims of election fraud.

In reality, none of this is true. The Gateway Pundit, a far right news website which wouldnt comment for this story, pushes a daily deluge of false, misleading or fake stories to a conservative audience eager to believe themwith much of the misinformation focused on the election, Covid-19 and the vaccine rollout, according to a new analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Its been lucrative for Gateway Pundit: From November 2020 to June, the site brought in $1.1 million through Google Ad Sense, the search engines shared advertising revenue program, according to the centers study, even though Googles rules would seem to prohibit content like Gateway Pundits from being monetized.

A Google spokesperson says the company has already demonetized Gateway Pundits homepage and some of its stories, including a half dozen or so examples of Gateway Pundit pieces that the Center for Countering Digital Hate cited and were shared with Google. The spokesperson continued: We have strict publisher policies that prohibit content promoting anti-vaccine theories, COVID-19 misinformation, and false claims about the 2020 U.S. Presidential election and our enforcement can be as targeted as demonetizing a specific page. We already actioned the majority of pages shared from this report back in 2020 or early 2021 and similarly stopped serving ads on the sites homepage last year. We will continue to take appropriate action if new content is uploaded that violates our policies.

The internet is rife with misinformation, and much of the recent focus about it has centered on how it spreads on social media like Facebook, especially in the wake of President Bidens stark comments two weeks ago that Facebook is killing people by not better guarding against such content. But the Center for Countering Digital Hates researching into Gateway Pundit is a useful reminder that misinformation is not only a Facebook problem. Every major company on the web must contend with it in some way, and Google is certainly no exception.

There's an entire business model built off the back of Google ads with misinformation attached to clickbait headlines, says the centers CEO, Imran Ahmed. The Gateway Pundit is a habitual offender.

According to Ahmeds researchers, the Gateway Pundit published at least 127 articles containing false information about the election and another 155 about Dominion Voting Systems, the Denver, Colorado company shoved into the spotlight by conservative conspiracy theories that its technology used to count ballots helped sway the election in Bidens favor. (A Diminion executive, Eric Coomer, has since filed a libel lawsuit against Rudy Guiliani, the Trump Campaign, Gateway Pundit and other conservative media outlets that pushed conspiracy theories about the company.)

In the months after Bidens victory, Gateway Pundit saw enormous traffic, over 50 million visitors from November through January, far more then the 2.75 million the site reportedly saw back in 2018. The more people visit its site, the more Gateway Pundit earns through Google Ad Sense, almost $200,000 a month last fall and winter.

Traffic began to dip in the spring with nearly 50% fewer visitors to the site in March and April, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hates research. But those numbers spiked again in May and Junejust as the site switched gears, partly refocusing on Covid-19 and vaccine stories. On April 19, Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft penned a story with this headline: Study Results: Facemasks are Ineffective to Block Transmission of COVID-19 and Actually Can Cause Health Deterioration and Premature Death. Last week, Hoft followed up with another story, falsely accusing the federal governments VAERS website, a warehouse of vaccine data, of misreporting vaccine deaths. Traffic has picked back up: Gateway Pundit attracted 32 million visitors last month. Another Hoft piece falsely accused the CDC of mishandling Covid death data.

Gateway Pundit (its motto: We report the truth and leave the Russia-Collusion fairy tale to the Conspiracy Media) was founded in 2004 by Hoft. It rose to prominence during the 2016 election when it pushed false accusations about voter fraud and Hillary Clintons health, according to The New York Times. The Gateway Pundits support for Trump earned it White House press credentials, and in 2018, the site published a document purporting to show evidence of a sexual assault allegation against Special Counseul Robert Mueller, who was then leading the probe into Russias role during the 2016 electionbut the site was forced to take it down within hours. Earlier this year, Twitter banned Hoft, who had 375,000 followers on the platform, after sharing a story containing unsubstantiated allegations of election misconduct in Detroit.

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How Gateway Pundit Used Vaccine And Election Misinformation To Earn $1.1 Million In Google Ad Revenue - Forbes