News about the National Security Agency's PRISM program and its privileged access to internal user data at nine U.S. Internet companies has unleashed a torrent of justified anger and hand-wringing. But the worries do not go far enough. Almost everybody is still looking at this through a narrow domestic lens. Our values and goals may be more challenged than you think. More
Tag Index / Showing 1 - 10 of 37 results for “Google”
Google Rethinks China E-Commerce
Six months after abruptly shuttering its China-based e-commerce search business, global Internet titan Google is reportedly rethinking that decision with plans to re-enter the market. The decision looks like the latest acknowledgement by Google that China is simply too big to ignore, following its high profile shuttering of its China-based general search business in 2010 after a spat with Beijing over censorship. If this latest story is true, the next logical question might be whether we could see Google return to the general China search market, where competition is suddenly starting to heat up after years of dominance by market leader Baidu. More
Digital E-Commerce Global Tech
Qihoo, Alibaba Tie-Up Set For Turbulence
A sudden rush to form new partnerships on China’s Internet is creating some interesting new tie-ups, including the latest one that is seeing e-commerce leader Alibaba join with security software firm Qihoo 360 in the e-commerce search space. This new pair-up actually seems relatively minor, with Qihoo using Alibaba’s specialized eTao search engine to power e-commerce searches on Qihoo’s own so.com general search site. This kind of tie-up isn’t all that uncommon in search, where portals and other companies that want to include a search function on their home page often license a third party’s engine like Google’s or Baidu’s for the job. More
Capturing the Value of Technology—in Economic Terms
When you look at economic statistics like G.D.P. and productivity, what gets overlooked? According to a New York Times column by Eduardo Porter, these key measures fail to capture the value people get from digital technologies. But leading academics from the University of Chicago, Stanford, M.I.T., and the University of Michigan are developing metrics to assess the overall value of technology on our lives, trying to put numbers around key pieces of the puzzle, like the value of the Internet and the value of free online services. More
Mining Big Data for Programming Talent
Finding and recruiting top programmers remains a huge challenge for fast-growth companies like Square, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Will Big Data come to their rescue? They’re willing to give it a try. These companies—along with other big names like Twitter and Walmart—are all customers of Gild, a startup that leverages information technology to find hidden talent. Gild was developed to tap self-motivated achievers—a cohort rife with what co-founder Dr. Vivienne Ming calls "wasted talent"—who are largely unknown compared to the smaller pool of much-wooed Ivy League graduates. More
Does Facebook Want to Make Us Closer or More Separate?
A thoughtful article at Wired.com by Evan Selinger asks the right questions about the TV ads for the new Facebook Home app for Android phones. How appropriate is the kind of self-absorbed distraction that the ads depict users of the software indulging in? Should we celebrate people who tune out those around them, opting instead for entertainment provided by their friends? While one ad shows a guy on a plane being greeted by a young relative, another depicts a young woman at a family dinner completely ignoring her relatives as she enjoys her friends' snowball fight, a ballet performance, and a loud drummer. More
Everything Changes with the Internet of Everything
If you get lost, your sneakers could help find you. The coming age of the Internet of everything promises radical shifts in how we live, how we solve problems, and how we recover from difficulty. The technology industry is racing to instrument and connect a vast range of things and processes in the physical and digital worlds. Several big companies have identified it as a giant opportunity—Amazon, Cisco, Ericsson, GE, IBM, and Qualcomm among them. They all believe that what many call the Internet of everything (or IoE) could have an even bigger impact on the world than the Internet we had on the world that preceded it. More
New Smartphone Moves From Alibaba, China Mobile
We’re seeing some interesting new moves in the smartphone space from e-commerce leader Alibaba and dominant carrier China Mobile, as each makes big new bets in the fast-evolving area. Alibaba is launching its mobile operating system on a new series of smartphones with several Chinese partners, following a similar aborted attempt last year. China Mobile, meanwhile, is planning a major overhaul for its popular but rapidly aging Fetion mobile messaging service, in an attempt to compete with newer, more popular third-party apps like Tencent’s WeChat. More
Cities Digital Security & Privacy
Google’s Person Finder Launched Moments After Boston Explosions
Within moments of the explosions at the finish line of the Boson Marathon today, Google put its Person Finder into action to help friends and family locate loved ones who might have been affected and were unreachable by cell phone. At 7:00 pm, the app was tracking about 3,000 records. More
Is Facebook Home More Than Just a Souped-Up App?
The day after Facebook's big announcement about its new Home interface for Android phones, Techonomy CEO David Kirkpatrick fielded questions on Yahoo! Finance about the implications of Facebook's latest play for the mobile market. An essential component of the app, said Kirkpatrick, is that it surfaces SMS and messaging as the top layer of the user experience, demonstrating Facebook's insight into how people are communicating. Are users ready for this new level of interactivity on their mobile phones? Maybe not all American users, said Kirkpatrick, but Facebook is looking abroad to places like Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, and India, where Facebook is "growing like crazy." More
