Massachusetts today sued Google and iHeartMedia over 2019 ads on Boston radio stations by DJs and other on-air talent gushing about all the cool things they were able to do with their new Pixel 4 phones even though they didn't actually have the phones. Read more.
Matthew Sandofsky says his name is worth something, and that he's tired of Google making a profit off it, so he's suing the company for the $1,000 he says it owes him - and every other American whose names can be found on a search results page. Read more.
The Boston Business Journal reports a Google acquisition on the West Coast could mean good news for people who want yet another alternative to Comcast. Google snapped up Webpass, a San Francisco Internet provider that already has a beachhead in Boston for its gigabit-speed Internet service.
A Williamstown woman says she was shocked to learn that Google uses an anti-spam measure in which users help the company translate old texts into binary code without paying her anything, so she's filed a class-action suit seeking millions of dollars in recompense under federal and Massachusetts consumer-protection laws.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court today tossed a lawsuit by Skyhook Wireless of South Boston against Google, saying the company failed to prove Google maliciously tried to keep its location services off Android phones in 2009 and 2010.
If anything, the court ruled, the fault was entirely Skyhook's, for failing to ensure its software would work properly with the application programming interfaces Google wrote for determining the location of an Android phone.
Cambridge Day reports the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority is miffed that changes to Google buildings in Kendall Square have dramatically strayed from the designs board members had earlier approved.
Born said Wednesday that designs for the two-story connector building have "strayed further from the initial rendering that the council and CRA approved every time we’ve seen it," with a grand staircase shrinking to a "piddly" size and the latest design including walls she deemed a “revolting mustard" color.
A tiny company called Lexington Luminance is suing both Amazon and Google over a patent it claims is violated by the LEDs used in the companies' tablets.
Boston University this week filed its own LED patent lawsuit against Amazon over the LEDs used in its Kindle tablets.
Yesterday, Formosa Epitaxy, the company that makes the LEDs that Google uses in its Nexus 7 tablets, filed a lawsuit against Lexington Luminance to try to forestall an anticipated Lexington Luminance lawsuit against it.
Biking in Heels spots a Google bike in Kendall Square and chats to its rider about the company's fleet of bikes for its Kendall Square employees.
Now that Google's decided to stay in Cambridge (sorry, Innovation District), ArchBoston.org will be tracking the changes that will mean for the area.
Cambridge Day reports Google's Kendall Square landlord wants to give the search company more room by building atop a parking garage that now features a rooftop garden. Landlord proposed replacing the lost skypark with a new, larger park elsewhere, but Cantabrigians were outraged and the city council put at least a temporary hold on the whole thing.
Fire up Google Maps to find out where to catch the bus, and it won't help much; dozens or hundreds of stops are displayed in the wrong locations, have the wrong bus lines associated with them, or aren't shown at all.
Try this mess at Brigham Circle, for example. You'll spend a long time waiting for the 39 on Tremont Street, yet that's where Google Maps now declares the 39 stops; the stop for the 39 on Huntington Avenue is gone.
Whether you’re someone who sits on the couch with the cat or time shifts your entertainment and loads it onto your mobile device, technology has changed our TV watching.
These days - and maybe you already have one - there are Apple TV devices, Roku boxes, Google TV and many more so-called connected TV devices. And these types of technology have opened up the capability for people to enjoy their entertainment.
To that end, as I type this there are five entertainment and tech industry executives sitting in bar stools at the front of a Hill Holliday conference room in downtown Boston. These TV pros have their own opinions about how you should watch TV. Whether you believe them or step into line with their wishes is really up to you.
So who are they and what are they saying? On the panel are: Aaron McNally of Google TV; Anderw Kippen of Boxee; Greg RIvera of Xbox; Chas Smith of Roku; and Tara Maitra of TIVO.
When asked by Hill Holliday’s Mike Proulx, “Who are these devices for?” the panelist responded as follows...
Covering technology events is a breeze, but sometimes - as with today’s #TVNext panel in Boston at Hill Holliday - you sometimes run into a challenge. Today's event is a challenge for me because I've already heard some astonishing facts and it's only 10AM. We now watch TV five hours a day, on average, in America.
Let me paint the picture and then I'll share where that five-hour figure came from.
Galaxy Internet Services, which runs Brookline's townwide WiFi network, charges the wireless system Google used as it took Street View photos collected data on at least one occasion from Brookline wireless users.
In a class-action suit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston last week, Galaxy, which also provides public WiFi in the area around Faneuil Hall and in Grove Hall, wants lots of money ($10,000 for each user whose data was collected) - and a court order barring Google from destroying any of the data it grabbed until after the suit is settled or decided:
Google just launched new street view imagery taken by their camera equipped tricycle (the trike) which allows them to take pictures of areas not accessible by car. Along with Legoland, Seaworld, Hershey Park and other attractions, the trike visited BU. The older sun-soaked footage of BU, taken from Comm Ave has been removed.
An Israeli software company with an office in Waltham yesterday charged the way Google sends out updates for its Chrome Web browser violates its patent.
Jonathan Kamens reports an MBTA cop threatened him with arrest for trying to give reporters at this morning's Google Maps/MBTA press conference at South Station flyers about incorrect bus-route information at mbta.com.
Although the building is publicly owned, it is managed by a private company, a representative of which told Kamens he couldn't exercise the First Amendment without a permit. A few minutes later, a T cop told him to knock it off or she'd have to take him away, he says.
New game: Where's Mumbles?
(Google Maps has a history of getting landmarks in Boston wrong. A year or two ago, they had Kendall Station about 2 blocks east of its real location.)
Google set to extend tendrils into Boston:
Job listings for the Boston area and a reputed search for suitable facilities in the city add up to a forthcoming Beantown presence for the search advertising company. ...
Via Skadz.
Google began with an almost ridiculously simple web site in an age of complexity. At the same time, the most popular search engines including Yahoo! were complicated and verbose portals of information, sorted into detailed categories. Google appeared with little more than a dialog box and very rapidly changed the way people seek out data on the Internet.
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