Google and Facebook: voracious giants with the power to create the future

The internet powerhouses are using their billions to challenge in sectors far removed from their original business modelsThe webs biggest consumer companies make the bulk of their incomes, and have built up vast assets, from targeted advertising. It accounts for around 90% of Facebooks revenue and much the same for Google. By supporting a vast range of services that variously offer search, chat, email, file storage, video and photo-sharing, they can track every nuance of online activity, preference and behaviour, targeting and adapting advertising and services.Yet with such a simple and lucrative core business, Facebook and Google are investing significant sums in new, exploratory and seemingly unrelated technologies. Facebook astonished the industry with its $2bn acquisition of Oculus Rift, a promising but niche and untested virtual reality headset. Google X, the companys notionally secretive experimental wing, has bought 14 specialist startups since March 2013, covering robotics, machine learning and gesture recognition, but has also been developing Googles self-driving car project, the augmented reality Google Glass headset and Project Loon, which is developing ways of using a network of balloons in the stratosphere to bring internet connectivity to developing regions. Why? Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2014-11-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #oculus rift #machine learning

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New-Media Powers Say They'll Be Profitable Soon. Don't Ask About That Facebook Plan

New media titans have shown they can attract investors' money, raking in millions in venture capital funding, but they have not answered clearly whether they can show a profit.At South by Southwest, sales chiefs for three heavily-funded digital publishers said they can do that too, or can soon,... Continue reading at Advertising Age

[ Advertising Age | 2015-03-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Apple, Google and Facebook lend support and money to Je Suis Charlie campaign

12 people died in an attack on satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday. At time of writing, the situation in France is still unfolding, and technology companies have been quick to show their sympathy for the victims whilst voicing support for freedom of speech. Google has donated... Continue reading at Betanews

[ Betanews | 2015-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Johnston Press, Newsquest, Local World take on Facebook and Google

Regional newspaper publishers pool ad space to compete with tech companies such as Facebook, Microsoft and Google Continue reading... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2014-11-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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German Publishers Bow To Google’s Market Power In Ongoing Text Snippets Fight

A tug of war between Google and German publishers over how online news content is displayed in search results has ended in surrender (for now) for the publishers — who have grudgingly agreed the search giant can display snippets of their co ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher

[ Editor & Publisher | 2014-10-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Google, Facebook continue massive lobbying efforts in Q3

Google and Facebook continued to pour millions of dollars into federal political lobbying in the third quarter in attempts to influence U.S. lawmakers and have legislation written in their favor.Google spent US$3.94 million between July and September while Facebook spent $2.45 million, according... Continue reading at PC World

[ PC World | 2014-10-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook Expands Mobile Ad Net to Make a Run at Google, Yahoo

Facebook's mobile ad network is officially open for business.Five months after the social network formally launched its Audience Network with a small set of app publishers and advertisers, Facebook is opening up the mobile ad network to any media buyer and seller. The company is also adding a... Continue reading at Advertising Age

[ Advertising Age | 2014-10-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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British spies are allowed to intercept Google and Facebook traffic, official says

British spies are authorized to spy on British citizens’ Internet communications transiting through servers outside the U.K., a civil rights group has discovered.Privacy International uncovered the information as part of a lawsuit it filed against the U.K. government over its alleged involvement... Continue reading at PC World

[ PC World | 2014-06-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook, Google and Yahoo now say when the US government requests user content (update: Microsoft too)

Last week, the US government finally relented on letting technology companies publish more detail about national security requests; today, some bigger firms are taking advantage of the looser rules. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Yahoo have updated ... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2014-02-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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EU Privacy Proposal Could Limit Data Use by Google, Facebook

The European Commission's call today for stronger data privacy protections could help the web's biggest data collectors like Google and Facebook fight data requests from the U.S. government.As expected, the Commission published a collection of recommendations for stronger data protections,... Continue reading at Advertising Age

[ Advertising Age | 2013-11-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Fortune's Most Powerful Women List Has Lots of Tech Stars, With She-Can-Do-Anything Spotlight on Facebook's Sandberg

I say we scramble all the private jets in Silicon Valley and get the "Lean In" book star to D.C. to lean on some pols to open the government again, tout de suite! Continue reading at AllThingsD

[ AllThingsD | 2013-10-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Predecessor To Google Books, Facebook Graph Search, And Rewind.me--In The Early 1900s

You want an idea to survive hundreds or thousands of years? Step one: Don’t write it on paper. Alexander Konta believed this deeply. Paper yellows and withers and crumbles; it is the printed form of Alzheimer’s. “Why not make [text] imperishable by photographing the written word after it has... Continue reading at Fast Company

[ Fast Company | 2013-01-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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How French Publishers Are Fighting Back Against Facebook and Google's Display Ad Dominance

The battle to keep online advertising yields and returns high in a market of infinite volume and little scarcity rages on. But some publishers are deciding that it's not their fellow broadcasters, magazines and newspaper who are the problem but t ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher

[ Editor & Publisher | 2012-09-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Google News Headline Error Creates Controversy For ABC Anchor

On Wednesday morning (Apr. 18), ABC News’ senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper fell victim to one of the lesser-known perils of online publishing. Filing a story on a recent Romney campaign attack on President Obama (the Romney team dug up a quote from Obama’s memoir where the President... Continue reading at AdWeek

[ AdWeek | 2012-04-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Google shows off the graphical power of Android 3.0 Honeycomb

By Tim Conneally, Betanews At a special event in Mountain View, California Wednesday, search leader Google gave the first in-depth look at "Honeycomb," the tablet-specific version of the Android operating system. This is the biggest overhaul the platform has gotten since it debuted in 2008. The... Continue reading at Betanews

[ Betanews | 2011-02-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The big bang created the universe. What created the big bang?

Quantum cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton winds back the clock to ponder the origin of our universe's origin. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2022-08-05 10:00:13 UTC ]
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The Future Is Not Edible: the Future of Food According to Sci-Fi

Science fiction has a lot to say about where we'll be concerning things like technology, but what does it have to say about our food? Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2022-04-13 10:34:00 UTC ]
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Girl Power, Book Power

Publishers discuss how their new and upcoming titles consider the needs of women and girls. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-01-14 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Stage anthology 21 Black Futures asks: What is the future of Blackness?

21 Black Futures, a new stage anthology by CBC and Toronto's Obisidan Theatre Company, brings together 63 Black artists from across the country to answer the question "What is the future of Blackness?" Its creation also directly addresses, and... Continue reading at CBC

[ CBC | 2021-02-16 09:00:00 UTC ]
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Life after Facebook: How Brit + Co became profitable after seeing Facebook traffic plummet

After taking a hit with the rest of the digital media industry during the Facebook and Google advertising duopoly, founder Brit Morin is taking a more hands-on and themed approach to creating the site's content to ready the brand for a comeback. The post Life after Facebook: How Brit + Co became... Continue reading at Digiday

[ Digiday | 2020-03-09 04:00:06 UTC ]
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Facebook’s Jennifer Howard reveals best practices for engaging an audience with Facebook Watch

  Jennifer Howard, Managing Director of Entertainment, Media, and Tech at Facebook, sits down with Ad Age Associate Publisher Heidi Waldusky to discuss how Facebook Watch is changing the way its 140 million daily users consume content—and how marketers can take advantage of it. A custom... Continue reading at Advertising Age

[ Advertising Age | 2019-10-02 19:52:00 UTC ]
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