Category Archives: Google

FILE PHOTO: A Google sign is pictured on a Google building in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., October 20, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Texas court considering a state antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Incs Google is likely to hold a hearing on the companys request to move the trial to California, according to discussions at a status conference on Thursday.

Lawyers at the pretrial conference, which was held in Plano, Texas, discussed Googles motion to move the case to California, where it is fighting similar cases.

Judge Sean Jordan, who was nominated to the court by former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2019, indicated that if either side wanted a hearing on the issue, he would likely schedule one.

Yes, your honor, we will want a hearing, said Paul Yetter, who represents Google in the case. Suggested dates for that hearing were late February or early March.

Texas and nine other states sued the search and advertising company in mid-December, accusing it of breaking antitrust law in how it dominates all steps in placing digital advertising. Publishers complain that one result has been lower revenues. Google has denied wrongdoing.

Yetter also brought up the issue of an unredacted draft of the Texas lawsuit being leaked to major newspapers. The draft discussed a deal struck between Facebook Inc and Google.

Yetter, speaking for Google, said he wanted disclosures of who received confidential information in order to prevent a repeat of the leak.

Speaking for Texas, Mark Lanier pushed back, saying he would be loath to disclose consultants but would agree to having people sign for documents and suffer repercussions in the case of a breach.

The lawsuit is one of three faced by Google. The other two were filed by the U.S. Justice Department and a big group of states. Facebook faces lawsuits from the Federal Trade Commission and another group of states.

Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis

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Texas court considers hearing on changing venue of Google antitrust case - Reuters

On Jan. 8, the U.K.s Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into whether Googles proposals for replacing third-party cookies through an effort Google has branded Privacy Sandbox could cause advertising spend to become even more concentrated on Googles ecosystem at the expense of its competitors, according to a CMA announcement about the investigation.

Under pressure from governments and consumers over data privacy infringement concerns, Google a year ago said it will disable third-party cookies by 2022 in its Chrome browser, which is used by more than 60% of the worlds web users. The move will effectively disable a primary way that ads are targeted and content is personalized on publishers sites. By extension, it could compromise publishers abilities to make money from online advertising and push people, their data and along with them ad dollars further within the walls of Googles already dominant properties, according to ad tech and publishing executives.

Googles decision to disable the third-party cookie has been referenced as examples of anti-competitive behavior in recent antitrust suits against the company, too. A multi-state antitrust suit filed in December claimed Google uses its massive information advantage strategically to harm any publisher who refuses to use its intermediaries. Another recent antitrust suit filed on behalf of publishers claimed that Googles cookie decision was exclusionary. Federal lawmakers also highlighted antitrust concerns over Googles third-party cookie plans in a 2020 report from the U.S. House Subcommittee on Antitrust.

Through its Privacy Sandbox initiative, Google has proposed an evolving collection of ad targeting and measurement methods for replacing third-party cookies. The sandbox project is open to participation from other ad tech firms who can join in through an online forum, the Worldwide Web Consortium. However, ad tech providers and publishers are wary of how open Google actually is to their participation.

Privacy Sandbox is trying to replace an open and interoperable technology with one that is Google controlled, wrote James Rosewell, director of Marketers for an Open Web a group whose complaints against Google helped prompt the CMA investigation. This will force more marketers into their walled garden and will spell the end of the independent and Open Web. Rosewell is CEO of 51 Degrees, a mobile ad and publishing tech firm.

Critics question Googles commitment to a collaborative cookie replacement processDespite the seemingly collaborative setting, Googles Privacy Sandbox is under increasing scrutiny throughout the digital media industry and now from the U.K. government because Privacy Sandbox is under Googles control.

Google has magnanimously allowed the industry to play a role, said Alan Chapell, president of privacy law firm Chapell and Associates, with some sarcasm. Google should not be allowed to call this an industry consensus project.

A Google executive defended the firm in light of the CMA investigation. The Privacy Sandbox has been an open initiative since the beginning and we welcome the CMAs involvement as we work to develop new proposals to underpin a healthy, ad-supported web without third-party cookies, said Chetna Bindra,group product manager, user trust and privacy at Google, in a statement.

In regards to the Privacy Sandbox investigation, Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the U.K.s CMA said in a statement last month the agency has an open mind and has not reached any conclusions at this stage as to whether or not competition law has been infringed. He also said that the agency will continue to engage with Google and other market participants to ensure that both privacy and competition concerns can be addressed as the proposals are developed.

Googles approach could favor its browser business, say critics

Ad tech firms are participating in the Google sandbox effort. But some, including Criteo, are leery of an approach they say has been too centered around the browser.

Chromes proposalsremain very much browser-centric, which Criteo has shared in the past our concerns about, Arnaud Blanchard, senior analytics and product managerat Criteo, told Digiday.

If parts of the ad operation happen inside the device at the browser level, the data storage and processing demands will be too burdensome and possibly even discriminatory against people with limited data plans, Blanchard said.

One of Criteos proposals to provide more balance in the cookieless targeting and measurement process is to set up an independent gatekeeper such as a cloud service provider or SSP to providepeoplemore control and transparency, said Blanchard.

In response to concerns around browser-centric control, Google recently unveiled its latest targeting method, FLEDGE, which incorporates what it calls a trusted server that stores information about an ad campaigns bids and budgets.

When asked what qualities determine whether a server is trustworthy, and whether Google or some other entity would control such a trusted server, Bindra told Digiday those issues would be determined through public forum discussions with those participating in development of Privacy Sandbox ad methods. FLEDGE does not specify or expect any particular entity to run a trusted server,'she said.

An issue of trust

Trust in Google or lack thereof is at the core of most complaints about the Privacy Sandbox process. At the end of the day, said Chapell, people need to trust that Chrome will do whats best for users, that Googles numbers are accurate, that Google will itself employ the approach it is devising for the open web and that other ad tech firms have a genuine ability to compete once it is in place.

Any method that could give Google even more control over the ad process has advertisers, publishers and ad tech firms raising eyebrows.

It certainly would be a step in the right direction if it were an independent entity, said Chapell. Anybody but Google is a step in the right direction.

https://digiday.com/?p=392014

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Why Googles approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny - Digiday

FILE PHOTO: A Google sign is pictured on a Google building in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., October 20, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo GLOBAL BUSINESS WEEK AHEAD

OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) - Alphabet Incs Google will spend $3.8 million, including $2.6 million in back pay, to settle allegations that it underpaid women and unfairly passed over women and Asians for job openings, the U.S. Department of Labor said on Monday.

The allegations stemmed from a routine compliance audit several years ago required by Googles status as a supplier of technology to the federal government.

Google said it was pleased to have resolved the matter.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs had found preliminary indicators that Google from 2014 to 2017 at times underpaid 2,783 women in its software engineering group in Mountain View, California, and the Seattle area.

Investigators also found hiring rate differences that disadvantaged women and Asian candidates during the year ended Aug. 31, 2017, for software engineering roles in San Francisco, Sunnyvale, California, and Kirkland, Washington.

The settlement includes $2.6 million in back pay to 5,500 employees and job candidates and calls on Google to review hiring and salary practices.

Google also will set aside $1.25 million for pay adjustments for engineers in Mountain View, Kirkland, Seattle and New York over the next five years, according to the settlement. Any unused funds will be spent on diversity efforts at Google.

The company already conducts annual pay audits, but like other big tech companies, it remains under public scrutiny for a workforce that does not reflect the countrys makeup in terms of race and gender.

The company said in a statement, We believe everyone should be paid based upon the work they do, not who they are, and invest heavily to make our hiring and compensation processes fair and unbiased.

Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif.; Editing by Leslie Adler and Matthew Lewis

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Google to spend $3.8 million to settle accusations of hiring, pay biases - Reuters

Ecosia

Ecosia is a not-for-profit search engine that uses advertising revenue gained from searches to plant trees. It doesnt have the privacy-focus of DuckDuckGo, nor does it have the search results of Google. But it does have a unique mission.

This search engine is getting bigger and more widely recognized. For example, starting with Apples iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, Ecosia is one of the few options you can use as your default search engine in Safari. Google Chrome also includes it as a built-in option.

Ecosia is a not-for-profit search engine that aims to help the environment by planting trees. The search engines mission is to absorb as much CO2 as possible by planting trees to try and reduce the impact of climate change. This is done for the planet, for people, and for animals.

The service acknowledges that trees can help empower and lift vulnerable populations out of poverty through the regeneration of depleted soils and agroforestry food-growing programs. The search engine is also concerned with the plight of animals around the world that are losing their habitats to deforestation.

Ecosia is currently committed to 20 tree-planting projects in 15 countries all around the world, from South American countries like Peru and Brazil to Madagascar and Ethiopia in Africa, and other countries, including Spain and Indonesia.

These efforts are focused mostly on biodiversity hotspots, which only make up around 2.3% of the earths surface, but nevertheless account for half of all unique plant species and over 40% of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Trees are also planted in some of the poorest agricultural regions in the world to help restore soil, increase biodiversity, and provide alternatives to monoculture crops.

Ecosia is transparent about its revenue and tree-planting activities. The search engine regularly posts financial reports on its blogto disclose total monthly revenue and identify what percentage was used to plant trees. In November of 2020, the search engine generated over 1.8 million ($2.2 million) and financed over 650,000 trees.

To break down the spending, Ecosia spent 40% of its revenue from this period on trees, with a further 10% going to green investments like solar plants and regenerative agriculture. A total of 47% of revenue was used on taxes and operational costs, while 3% was used for advertising purposes.

Ecosia makes money like most other search engines: through advertisements. Just like DuckDuckGo, affiliate ads that are displayed alongside search results enable the search engine to turn a profit. This profit is then used to fund the planting of trees.

According to Ecosia, it takes about 45 searches to fund the planting of one new tree. This number could be reduced dramatically depending on other factors, like whether you click on an advert and how valuable the search term is in terms of advertisement payout.

The search engine also has an affiliate program with HotelsCombined called Ecosia Travel. Including the word hotel in your searches reveals a new search box at the top of results through which you can book accommodation. When you do this, Ecosia claims to plant around 25 trees, depending on the value of your booking.

Ecosia also has the Ecosia Shop,which sells merchandise like T-shirts, hoodies, and bags. T-shirts are designed to be sent back, recycled, and reworked into new products after being used, further demonstrating Ecosias commitment to sustainability.

Search engines like Google have a poor track record when it comes to privacy, storing your search history in a profile that is used to serve you more relevant advertisements.

As a result, many have ditched Google in favor of privacy-conscious search engines like DuckDuckGo. While Ecosia is arguably also a privacy-respecting search engine in some ways, its primary mission is to plant trees.In comparison, DuckDuckGo is entirely focused on privacyin all aspects of its operation.

Ecosia states that it will never share your searches with anyone except services that are directly involved in answering your search request, like Bing. Ecosia is powered by the Yahoo! and Bing search algorithms. DuckDuckGo also uses Bing for its searches, but explicitly states that this information isnt collected or passed on in the first place.

For the service to function, some information must be passed to Bing. According to Ecosia, this includes your IP address (obfuscated), user agent string, search term, and some settings like your country and language setting. By default, Ecosia sets a Bing-specific identifier to improve search results, a feature that is disabled if your browser has the Do Not Track flag enabled.

This behavior isnt quite as private as DuckDuckGo, which, according to its privacy policy, doesnt collect or store any information. DuckDuckGo doesnt even store an obfuscated IP address or your user agent string. DuckDuckGo also uses no trackers whatsoevernot even its own internal trackers.

Ecosia promises not to allow third-party trackers on their searches. This means that advertisers cannot track and link your Ecosia search activity to an existing profile. We tested this using both Safari and DuckDuckGos iPhone app and found no third-party trackers. Both browsers had Do Not Track enabled, which suggests that the search enginedoes respect this setting.

For your search data, Ecosia promises not to store personal profiles of search habits. Ecosia claims that all searches are anonymized within a week of having made them, and says that there are no agreements in place to sell this search data to third-party companies. Your searches also use HTTPS encryption by default, which has become the standard even on Google and Bing.

Ecosia works like any search engine thats powered by the Yahoo! and Bing algorithm, including DuckDuckGo. While the results often arent quite as numerous or relevant as Googles, theyre usually good enough to get you where you want to go. While DuckDuckGo uses Bing for most of its results, it also gets additional results from other search engines, whereas Ecosia does not.

Whether you get better results from DuckDuckGo, as a result, is up for debate. It likely depends on what youre searching for.

Like Google, Ecosia allows you to filter your results by media, including images and videos. You can click the News filter to see only recent articles. The Maps filter allows you to choose from Google Maps and Bing Maps, sending you off-site for directions and local search results. For comparison, DuckDuckGo built its own mapping solution using Apples MapKit API due to its tight privacy policy that doesnt require the disclosure of the end users personal information.

DuckDuckGo has a popular feature called Bangs, which allows you to search other websites right from the DuckDuckGo search field. Ecosia has search tags that work in the same way, allowing you to add tags like #videos to search videos, #gimages to search Google Images, or #wolfram to search Wolfram Alpha. See the full list of search tags here.

On Ecosia, theres support for rudimentary unit conversions (2 oz in g) and sums (2+2), but no support for currency conversion. You can translate words fairly easily (hello in japanese), but its no Google Translate. At any point, you can click on Filters to filter results by time or click Settings to change region and safe search settings.

How youll get on with Ecosia depends on how you use a search engine and how willing you are to sacrifice features to contribute to a sustainability project. Or to look at it another way: If Ecosia is fine for 90% of your searches, are you willing to go out of your way and visit Google or Bing for the other 10%?

RELATED: What Is DuckDuckGo? Meet the Google Alternative for Privacy

Ecosia, like DuckDuckGo, has already found its way into some of the most popular browsers on the web. This includes Google Chrome and Safari for iOS 14. Other browsers that include an option to search with Ecosia include Adblock Browser, Maxthon, and Brave.

To search with Ecosia by default, launch Google Chrome and click on the three dots ellipsis icon in the top-right corner of the window. Choose Settings, then click on Search engine in the menu on the left.

Now, click on the drop-down box under Search engine and choose Ecosia.

On iPhone or iPad, launch the Settings app and navigate to Safari > Search Engine. Pick Ecosia from the list to set it as your default search engine.

(If you dont see Ecosia in the list, make sure youre running iOS 14 or later by updating your iPhone or iPad.)

Most other major browsers are supported through an Ecosia add-on. Try visiting Ecosia.orgin your browser of choice and look for the blue bar that says Add Ecosia to (Browser) and click on it.

There are also Ecosia add-ons for Safari (Mac), Firefox, andEdge.

Ecosia provides a real alternative to Google with an environmentally friendly twist.

If you like the idea of ditching Google, but you demand a bit more functionality and a strong emphasis on privacy, consider switching to DuckDuckGo.

RELATED: What Is DuckDuckGo? Meet the Google Alternative for Privacy

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What Is Ecosia? Meet a Google Alternative That Plants Trees - How-To Geek

Microsoft just updated OneDrive adding playback support for Samsung Motion Photo and 8K video from the Galaxy S20, S21 and Note20 series.

Up until now OneDrive could store the files, but not play them back. In the case of Samsung's Motion Photo, which adds a couple of seconds of video and sound to a still shot, OneDrive will only show the still image. OneDrive now supports up to 250GB files, which works nicely for those large 8K videos. The app also features a new home screen layout with quick access to recent and offline files and a new "On This Day" with photos taken on this day years ago.

Google Photos doesn't support playback for Motion Photos, which gives OneDrive the upper hand here.

Samsung and Microsoft have had a good partnership for years now. Samsung preloads Microsoft apps to its Galaxy phones, Microsoft chose Samsung to preview is xCloud cloud gaming service, the YourPhone app launches many of its features on Samsung phones first.

Source | Via

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OneDrive one-ups Google Photos with Samsung Motion Photo and 8K video support - GSMArena.com news - GSMArena.com

Although it doesn't have an estimate for automotive-related cloud spending, IT researcher Canalys estimates the overall global cloud infrastructure market will increase at about 16 percent a year on average, rising to reach roughly $300 billion by 2025.

While services are similar, there are some differences between providers.

"Whereas AWS was first to market, giving it time to build out its capabilities, Google was more of a laggard and had to focus more on specific verticals such as banking," said Matthew Ball, Canalys' chief analyst, about the overall cloud infrastructure market.

While Google Cloud is smaller than its two main rivals, Wee said the business has been growing at a faster rate -- about 50 percent -- in part because of its competitive advantage in semiconductors designed specifically for AI.

Known as tensor processing units, or TPUs, these proprietary chips, which are not for sale, can be trained with visual data to spot blemishes on a car's paint job or defects in a powertrain component using visual clues. (AWS in November began utilizing A100 chips that feature tensor cores for similar applications, but these are graphics processors sold by Nvidia.)

"The reason we have that is because we are probably one of the biggest consumers of machine learning on the planet. Every time you type something into Google, you have just used our algorithms," Wee said.

With the help of AI, Google believes it can improve an automaker's efficiency at a double-digit rate. In the case of Renault this is done by aggregating data from more than 2,500 machines deployed across 22 production sites worldwide.

Just like with Android, Google Cloud believes its commitment to support other open-source software such as Kubernetes and TensorFlow is a key selling point. This enables a customer to more easily switch providers or add new ones, reducing the risk of being locked in with any one particular vendor.

"This was a huge factor for Renault," Wee said. "One of the reasons they went with us was the security that if at any point in time they wanted to move providers, they were at liberty to do so."

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How Amazon, Google, other hyperscalers are transforming the auto industry - Automotive News Europe

Google

Privacy and security are big concerns when it comes to web browsers. Google has some built-in tools in Chrome that attempt to make browsing safer. Enhanced Safe Browsing is one such tool,and well show you how to use it.

Safe Browsing is a list of dangerous URLs thats maintained by Google and used to protect users from malicious sites. Enhanced Safe Browsing builds upon this feature with some additional tools.

WithEnhanced Safe Browsing enabled, Chrome shares even more browsing data with Google. This allows for threat assessments to be more accurate and proactive, though it does present a privacy concern in itself.

RELATED: Why Does Google Say Chrome Is More Secure Than Edge?

From Googles description, Enhanced Safe Browsing enables the following:

Enhanced Safe Browsing is available for Chrome on desktop and Android. Its not available for iPhone and iPad. The process for enabling it is very similar on both platforms.

First, select the three-dot menu icon in the top-right corner of the Google Chrome web browser and choose Settings from the menu.

Next, go to the Privacy and Security section of the Settings.

On the desktop, click Security. On Android, its called Safe Browsing.

Select the radio button to enable Enhanced Protection.

Thats it! You wont notice anything different in your everyday browsing, but youll now have better protection. In the event that something is amiss, Google Chrome will give you a warning.

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How to Turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing in Google Chrome - How-To Geek

OTTAWA - Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault is promising legislation this year to ensure tech giants like Google and Facebook pay for the news content they disseminate on their platforms.

The promise comes as newspapers across the country are displaying blank front pages in a bid to highlight the urgent need for news media companies to be paid for their work.

News Media Canada, which represents newspaper publishers, organized the campaign; it saw some 105 daily and community newspapers across the country displaying blank front pages Thursday, with more to follow Friday.

The organization argues that Canadian news media companies are going under and journalism jobs are disappearing because their content is being used for free by Google and Facebook, which are simultaneously hoovering up 80 per cent of all digital advertising revenue.

It warns that as the producers of real news disappear, hate and fake news will be all that's left.

In a statement, Guilbeault says his department is studying options for a made-in-Canada formula for ensuring publishers are fairly compensated for the news they produce; his goal is to introduce legislation on the matter this year.

News is not free and has never been, he said in the statement Thursday.

Our position is clear: publishers must be adequately compensated for their work and we will support them as they deliver essential information for the benefit of our democracy and the health and well-being of our communities.

While the tech giants have played a positive role in making news accessible, Guilbeault said, we must address the market imbalance between news media organizations and those who benefit from their work.

He added that the government is looking closely at how other countries are handling the issue, specifically France and Australia.

As far as News Media Canada is concerned, Australia has found the right solution: mandatory arbitration if digital companies fail to reach an agreement with news publishers on how much they should be paid.

These massive American companies get virtually all of the revenue and don't pay for content, says the organization's president, John Hinds, in an open letter to members of Parliament.

Movie content doesn't work that way in Canada. Music content doesn't work that way. TV show content doesn't work that way. So why is news content treated differently?

Google and Facebook have threatened to shut down their services in Australia if the mandatory arbitration policy is implemented. However, Guilbeault has suggested such boycotts will become untenable as more countries follow Australia's lead.

The minister is expected sometime this winter to introduce legislation to regulate the dissemination of hate speech, child pornography, non-consensual sexual images, terrorism and incitements to violence on social media.

His office says legislation dealing with fair compensation for news content will be introduced separately.

Facebook funds a fellowship that supports journalism positions at The Canadian Press.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 4, 2021.

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Legislation coming this year to force Google, Facebook to pay for news content - CP24 Toronto's Breaking News

By most measures, Dom Leca is a successful entrepreneur. Hes started and sold two companies, including one to Google. And yet instead of feeling accomplished, several years ago Leca realised he felt an internal void.

Has anything hes built really improved peoples lives?

The journey he took to ponder this question led him to an improbable destination: designing a new browser called Beam. The Beam browser combines web browsing with note-taking functions to allow users to build their own knowledge databases.

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Entering a field dominated by Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla might seem like a fools errand. Leca knows its risky. But his underlying logic was enough to convince a group of VCs who just handed him $9.5m to pursue his goals.

The investors include Pace Capital, a new emerging fund led by Chris Paik and Jordan Cooper in New York, plus notable angel investors such as Christan Reber (Pitch, Wunderlist), Harry Stebbings (20minVC), and Albert Wenger (USV). This follows a $3m round Leca raised last October from Spark Capital (Twitter, Tumblr) and Alven Capital.

To hear Leca describe it, the development of Beam is as much an effort to improve the web browsing experience as it is a spiritual quest for meaning. Beams debut later this year may help gauge how successful he is in reconciling those two impulses.

The only reason Im doing this is to be working for the greater good, Leca said. Is this something I can explain to my kid and be proud of the fact that its not just a stupid business to make money?

Back in 2008, Leca founded Visuamobile, a mobile app development startup that Insign had acquired. Leca eventually left to create Sparrow Mail which developed an email app for Mac and iOS that generated some strong buzz. Just two years later it was sold to Google. In a blog post at the time, Leca wrote: Now were joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision one that we think we can better achieve with Google.

Leca stuck with Google until 2015 when he jumped ship to join Stuart, a last-mile delivery company that used a fleet of bicycle couriers to deliver products on-demand. It was at this point that something began gnawing at Leca.

I felt the bulk of tech I was working on was detrimental to society.

I felt the bulk of tech I was working on was detrimental to society, he said. I wasnt very happy about having 150 guys waiting in the staircase of the company to get a $15 an hour job. I felt myself going the wrong way. So I quit. (La Poste later acquired Stuart in 2017.)

Leca immersed himself in design jobs while he tried to take a deeper look at the meaning of tech and society. He eventually came across a 1973 book by Ivan Illich, a priest and philosopher, called Tools for Convivality. The book laid out a vision for the relationship with tools and how they affect ones perspective on the world. As Leca explains it, a tool is convivial if it fosters autonomy, improves efficiency within the bounds of human aptitudes and organic pace, is easy to master, and broadens your personal horizons.

At the same time, he became a fan of the note-taking app Roam. He loved the organising and collaborative functions but he also felt limited. He was always going back and forth between his web browser and Roam: a fundamental flaw he believed he could fix.

Youre watching a video, youve got an idea, and then youve got to do the old dance, he said. Ive got an idea and then I need to include it in my notes app. Then you navigate to it, you put it there, and then you come back to your content. You can do this two or three times a day. But if you do this 20 times, its completely breaking your mental flow.

Leca decided to focus on this problem.

I think these note-taking apps fail because they actually live in the wrong place, Leca said. It should be in the browser and it shouldnt be outside, because they shouldnt be thought of as an abstraction outside of yourself.

And so he started Beam.

This new web browser is still under development. But Leca gave a demo as he walked through the basic functions and described the underlying philosophy.

When it comes to browsing, Leca said he devotes all this time online doing searches and visiting websites and then forgetting most of the information he had gleaned. What do I have for all these hours I spent on the internet? he said. Nothing. Ive got three bookmarks and a few notes here and everything else is basically lost.

Beam aims to classify the bits of knowledge you gain as you jump from website to website.

Beam aims to fix that by generating notes as one visits websites. These notes are stored in cards that would classify the bits of knowledge you gain as you jump from website to website and open 40 tabs on the browser.

The search box on Beam scans both the web as well as the users personal knowledge database of cards. It also tracks how long someone spends on a website as a measure of how useful the information is likely to be, and then can match that to an existing card to store relevant information, or create a new card to begin building information around a new topic.

So if I type in James Dean, I would get the canonical stuff like the access to the Wikipedia page, Leca said. But in this case, because James Dean doesnt exist yet in my knowledge base, I can also just create the card. And so if in two years Im searching on this again, I could navigate to my knowledge base.

People will be able to share links to the cards with friends or on social media. But eventually, he hopes to enable people to put them online so they are searchable by others who may share the same interests and would benefit from a curated knowledge database.

At some point, you can expect that not only are you going to have your own knowledge base results plus the web, but were also going to feed you the relevant results from third parties, he said.

Its basically a cultural search engine.

So if Im into guitar making and a Japanese guy has an 80% overlap of links on guitar making, its highly probable that Im going to enjoy looking at what hes done and enjoy navigating into his knowledge base. This is still very far away, but its basically a cultural search engine.

At the moment, Leca is hoping to have an internal alpha version by April and a closed beta opening in early September. The latest fundraising will allow him to continue hiring. He plans to grow his seven-person team to 15 over the next couple of months as he hunts for machine learning and front-end web specialists.

Leca is realistic about the prospects for Beam. Hes not expecting to dethrone Google Chrome or Mozillas Firefox. Instead, hes betting that Beam can create a group of passionate users which he can then use to strike a deal with Google or another search company to be the default search engine for Beams browser. (Much like Google pays a hefty sum to be the default for Apples Safari.)

Im hopeful because Beam will be viral to some extent when you start sharing cards, Leca said. If we grab a few percentage points of the browser market, then maybe we can be paid by Google. Thats a long shot, but thats the thing Im hoping for.

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Reinventing the browser? Beam raises capital to take on Google - Sifted

Marlborough medical device company Hologic will soon integrate Google Clouds machine learning technologies into its Genius Digital Diagnostics system, which helps doctors screen for cervical cancer, Hologic announced on Monday.

The multi-year partnership is expected to increase actionable insights from cytology slides, for cytotechnologists and pathologists, according to a press release from Hologic. Google Cloud is expected to provide secure data architecture to further enhance what the Hologic system is capable of doing.

Through this collaboration with Hologic, we are helping to evolve digital diagnostics by complementing their expertise in diagnostics and AI with our expertise in machine learning, said Joe Miles, managing director of Google Cloud Healthcare and Life Sciences, in a statement.

Genius Digital Diagnostics is currently CE-marked for European use, but is not available in the United States.

Financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.

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Hologic teams up with Google Cloud to enhance cervical cancer detection - Worcester Business Journal