There's a new Easter Egg in Google search right now, if you care to take a peek. This is different from the website that focuses on the Bouncing DVD Logo, but not entirely different from what you'd expect from such a logo. Pam claims she saw it one day when she was alone in the conference room... Okay.
Google is axing its Google Shopping app, with the iOS and Android app expected to disappear within the next few weeks. Intended as a way for Google to serve up retail-specific results - and squeeze some extra advertising revenue from retailers, of course - the Google Shopping app had increasingly been looking pointless given there's a Shopping tab in search results these days.
Brave, best known for its privacy-minded browser, is getting into the search engine business with the launch of Brave Search. The new Google and Bing alternative is based on Tailcat, and existing privacy search technology Brave recently acquired, and aims to distinguish itself in several ways from the search mainstream.
Google just released their first ever "top 100 trending gifts" guide, also known as the Google Shopping Gift Guide 2020. This website puts in focus the products that've been most-purchased for the holiday season, effectively pushing the biggest to sell bigger, and the lesser-known an even lesser chance of finding their target audience. Google's top 100 includes categories like The Chef, The Athlete, The Techie, The Decorator, The Wellness Guru, The Gamer, and The Kids.
The final Chrome update of the year 2020 was released this week. Google claims that this new Chrome 87 release includes significant improvements to both speed and memory utilization - both of which are long overdue for a boost in one of the most-used web browsers in the entire world. This update also signs a sea change for Google, as Chrome is set to include the ability to search tabs (all the tabs open at once), and activate Chrome Actions.
It is Huawei's big day and, as expected, it announced a slew of products to show the world it can still make it big. More than just hardware, however, the company also announced apps and services that practically boast of its independence from companies that it will no longer be able to do business with as per the US' rules. It remains to be seen, however, if Petal Search, Petal Maps, and Huawei Docs will be able to gather enough traction both from users and partners to stay in service for long.
It has finally happened. After repeatedly being investigated again and again over alleged anticompetitive business practices, Google was finally hit with a formal antitrust lawsuit by the US Justice Department, specifically over what is being described as an unfair monopolistic advantage in the Internet search market. Of course, Google didn't simply take the charges sitting down, given how high-profile and potentially disruptive it could be, and has now published a point-by-point rebuttal over what it calls a deeply flawed lawsuit.
Google announced an event called "Search On" that'll take place on Thursday, October 15. The event will not likely reveal any new sorts of hardware, but will very likely drop some major upgrades to the software we've already got loaded on our phones, notebooks, and tablet computers.
Microsoft Edge web browser had a bit of an issue with its primary URL bar system that caused the application to crash. Every time you tried to start entering a URL into the address bar, the web browser would crash. Now, it would seem, enough users have complained about the issue that Microsoft's dev team on Edge have taken care of said issue.
Today Google announced that they've got a timeline for when they'll move to mobile-first indexing for all websites starting in September of 2020. For most websites, this won't be a big deal. Most modern websites - news sites and social networks especially - have been ready to roll with "mobile friendly" design for several years at least. It's the old guard that should worry.
Today Google updated the way Google Search results appeared in web browsers on desktop computers after a similar redesign earlier this month. The most visual bit of this update - the most prominent, easy to see, and central element of this update - is the favicon. As it was with mobile UI for Google Search results updated in May of 2019, so too shall it be for Google Search results on desktop computers - or at least that's what Google suggested on the 17th.
Gone are the days when almost anyone that can set up a web server would offer a search engine of their own. These days, any custom engine is often powered by either Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Yandex and Baidu in certain countries. That is exactly what is happening with Verizon's unexpected OneSerch engine, which actually serves up results from Microsoft Bing. That, however, isn't what makes it interesting. Rather it is its promise to protect users' privacy that will probably raise not a few eyebrows.