Heena Sharma Blog

  Concerned at private group chat links being available on Google Search, WhatsApp on Monday said that they have asked Google not to index such chats and advised users not to share group chat links on publicly accessible websites. Google had indexed invite links to private WhatsApp group chats, meaning anyone can join various private chat groups with a simple search. The indexed WhatsApp group chat links have now been removed from Google. Independent cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia on Sunday shared screenshots with IANS showing indexing of WhatsApp group chat invites on Google. "Since March 2020, WhatsApp has included the "noindex" tag on all deep link pages which, according to Google, will exclude them from indexing. We have given our feedback to Google to not index these chats," a WhatsApp spokesperson told IANS. Read More

  One in 10 queries on Google Search are misspelled and the tech giant has now introduced a new spelling algorithm that uses a deep neural net to significantly improve the ability to decipher misspellings, in under three milliseconds. According to Google, this single algorithm makes a greater improvement to spelling than all of its improvements over the last five years. The company on Thursday detailed how artificial intelligence (AI) is powering its Search engine, announcing numerous improvements made to Search over the year and some new features coming soon. Google has invested deeply in language understanding research and last year, it introduced how BERT language understanding systems are helping to deliver more relevant results in Google Search. Read More

Google Pay on Wednesday announced that it's 'Nearby Stores’ spot, which provides information such as business hours, essential items stock, social distancing information, is now available in 35 cities across the country. “Originally rolled in a few cities across India, this Spot is now available in 35 cities across the country. Additionally, merchant establishments can now indicate their business hours, whether social distancing measures are in place at the store and the essential goods presently in stock. Additionally, users in Mumbai can also see if the store is present in a containment zone,” said Google in a statement. Read More

Google wants to restrict apps, which are always accessing your location in the background with the Android 11 update . In an official Android Developers Blog, the company notes that with the upcoming Android update, users will have an option to grant a temporary 'one-time' permission to sensitive data like location, after which, the app will have to request permission again for the next access. Google will also update its Google Play policy by the end of the year to require that developers get approval if they want to access location data in the background, which will be based on relevance and necessity. For example, an emergency or safety alert app would have more chances of getting approval compared to an app with a store locator feature. Read More

Ahead of the holidays, Google has made its shopping microsite, Google Shopping 100, live for everyone. Google Shopping 100 is a list of trending products on Google search in the US to help you buy what others are buying. The list showcases products across categories, ages, and interests, the official blog notes. In addition to showing you what's popular, Google also helps you find the best prices and places to buy from to make last-minute gifting easy. Read More

Google is rolling out a new tool for news publishers to help improve the content with the use of real-time data. A new feature called trending topics sits within the Realtime Content Insights tool (RCI) . It provides publishers will more real-time data from Google Trends, the official blog notes. RCI is a free tool for newsmakers to identify which articles are the most popular among its readers. With Trending Topics, the aim is to better understand readers' interests and create content as news unfolds. Read More

Google is rolling out a major Chrome OS update for the month of August that includes new features like improved media playback, an updated camera app for the Pixelbook, and more. For media controls, one can now open system menu and see all the tabs or apps on Chromebook that are playing audio tracks and control them from one place, wrote Google in a blog-post on Thursday. Google has also included an updated camera app for the Pixelbook and select Chromebook machines. Additionally, Google has updated the Camera app UI for navigating between new modes, like square mode and portrait mode. A "Clear all" button has also arrived for notifications. With this, one can now check and clear notifications from Play Store apps on Chromebook and dismiss notifications with the "Clear all" button. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

Search engine and technology giant Google has now made it easier for users to review and delete their search history. The company has rolled out an update for its Google Search platform that enables a new ‘Your data in Search’ option where a user can review and delete recent Search activity, get quick access to the most relevant privacy controls in Google Account, and learn more about how Search works with data. The update is currently available for desktop and web platforms; it will be available in the Google app for iOS and Android in the coming weeks, and in Google Maps from next year. Google collects several data when you make a search using Google Search platform. This data includes the terms you search for, links you interact with and other information like your current location when you search. Until now, the information related to search history was available under Google Account. To review and delete search history and other data, users had to visit their Google acc...

Google unveiled changes Monday aimed at making the leading search engine more visual and intuitive to the point it can answer questions before being asked. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are core drivers of how Google will pursue its 20-year-old mission to organise the world's information and make it accessible to anyone, search vice president Ben Gomes said at an event in San Francisco. The search engine focussed strongly on mobile use and appeared to be growing more like Facebook, encouraging users to linger and explore topics, interests or stories with an increasing emphasis on photos and videos. Results will be increasingly personalised. ALSO READ: Alphabet's comeback plans in China go beyond Google Search The search engine will also let users create Collections of online content, and suggest related material that might be of interest. A Google feed used by more than 800 million people monthly is getting a new name, Discover, an incr...

Back in 1998, two PhD students from Stanford University launched a new search engine with a bold mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. 20 years since then, there has been no looking back and two tech nerds, Larry Page and Sergey Brin began their journey to change the internet. According to Wikipedia, Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google - the name originated from a misspelling of the word "googol" - the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. As Google turns 20 today, let's look back at what Google has been up to since 1998, and where they are headed next Google was launched in September 1998 in a garage rented in the Northern California cit...