Apple CEO Tim Cook has reportedly been called to testify at Tuesday's Senate hearing on offshore profit shifting. The hearing is being conducted by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has the authority to investigate things like federal waste, corporate crime, and offshore...
The man in charge to face Senate scrutiny
Google's annual marathon press conference has wrapped up, and so have we. This is The Verge Live: Google I/O 2013. Join Joshua Topolsky, Chris Ziegler, and friends as we break down all the big news of today and what it means for Google and its...
Hangouts, the new Google messaging service that unifies the company's disparate offerings in the space, will eventually be available on Glass. Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, told ABC News' Joanna Stern that Hangouts would be able to provide Glass with more social functionality.
Almost two years in, Google’s social network hasn’t siphoned much activity off of Facebook. But even if Google+ doesn’t yet have all your friends, it does have one of the world’s most powerful data centers at its disposal. Starting today, the network will start leveraging that power, focusing on winning users’ photos by making them look better than they do straight out of your camera.
“Your darkroom is now a Google data center,” said Vic Gundotra, who leads Google’s social efforts, in an interview with The Verge. Images have become the most compelling part of Google+, and that’s by design: Google is betting that if it can get your photos, it can eventually get your friends.
Data-center muscle is coming to Google’s social network in three ways: powerful processing that automates photo selection and image editing; a...
Testing the notion that brute-force machine learning can bring new life to a social network
Google I/O this year has a stronger developer focus than in years past, which meant that consumer-facing products sometimes didn't get much airtime during the keynote. That's certainly the case for the new version of Google Maps, available today as an opt-in preview. As we discussed in our early look at Maps, it's a complete redesign from the ground up, with edge-to-edge content and very little...
The new Maps is here
Google has formally announced its new subscription music initiative, Google Play Music All Access. Rumors first broke that Google was working on the service earlier this year; The Verge reported just yesterday that Mountain View had in fact closed deals with all three of the major record labels, and that the service was ready to be revealed. It essentially works like Spotify and Rdio, letting...
Google today announced Play Music All Access, a music service with subscription features that competes with Spotify and Rdio — building on Google's existing music store and cloud service that competes with iTunes and Amazon. That's a compelling mix of features, but Google still faces plenty of challenges as it attempts to establish itself as a credible competitor in the rapidly changing music space.
"For now, we have a version 1.0 of what's possible," Google Play lead product manager Paul Joyce told The Verge. "We had a vision and it's taken us time to build out that vision. We look at...
Like its larger desktop counterpart, Google has revealed that it's giving Maps for mobile its own design overhaul. Well, one half of it, anyway. Android users will soon receive the updated UI and features first delivered in the company's Maps app for iOS. But the changes are more than skin deep: Google Offers is also being integrated in Maps with the forthcoming update, including deals from popular retailers and restaurants like Starbucks, Toys 'R Us, and RadioShack. Users can now rate restaurants on a five-point scale, and can also view Zagat reviews directly inside Maps. And traffic alerts will expand to include live reports of incidents...
Recon Instruments has been building heads-up display headgear for years, but until Google Glass showed up, not many people understood what exactly the company was trying to sell. "Google being in this space makes it easier for us to explain what we do," said Shane Luke, Recon's VP of product management at Google I/O today. "People aren't so confused by our products anymore." The company's next product, the Jet, is a pair of sunglasses built...
Android-powered shades
Microsoft previously promised Surface Pro availability in the UK this month, but it's revealing an exact date and pricing today. Brits will be able to purchase Microsoft's Windows 8 tablet on May 23rd, priced at £719 for the 64GB model and £799 for the 128GB version. The usual Surface...
According to a just-issued press release from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), Google has committed to updating Android with support for Bluetooth Smart (also known as Bluetooth Low Energy) "in the coming months." That means future smartphones and tablets running the OS will be able to...
Not long ago, we looked to "the cloud" and saw a liberating force, a way to unshackle ourselves from the messiness of computing by offloading our data into large, mysterious, supposedly secure servers in undisclosed locations. But the reality is a...
An international team of scientists announced today that for the first time ever, they were able to create new human stem cells by cloning older, fully mature human cells. The process cannot be used to create full human clones, as the scientists involved were quick to point...
After months of rumors, it's finally here: Google has launched an unlimited subscription music service to take down competitors like Spotify and Rdio. The service exists as a $9.99-per-month upgrade to Google Music called All Access, and it's available today on the web and Android devices. We've...
Google just pulled out a Samsung Galaxy S4 on the Google I/O stage, but it's not like any S4 you've ever seen: It runs stock Android, is a completely unlocked device that comes with an unlocked bootloader, and Google's promising prompt system updates as well. The device runs on both T-Mobile and AT&T's LTE networks and comes with 16GB of storage. The handset will go on sale, directly from Google, for $649 this...
From Hangouts to Maps, Google announced a host of new features across a variety of products during its 2013 I/O keynote. But if you missed watching it live, combing through all three-and-a-half hours of the event may require a bit more effort than...
NASA's Kepler probe, tasked with searching distant stars for Earth-like planets, may not be able to continue its mission. On a conference call, NASA confirmed that the spacecraft is currently in "safe mode" after a vital reaction wheel failed, likely because of a problem with the wheel bearing or...
Google has updated its Play Books e-reader apps for iOS and Android to include support for EPUB and PDF files from outside the Play Store. The new...
Creator Kazunori Yamauchi announced Gran Turismo 6 today, a new installment of the racing video game series set to be released this November for PlayStation 3. GT6 will feature an overhauled...
YouTube Live, the live streaming service that YouTube first launched in limited beta over two years ago, is finally expanding to a much wider audience. Starting today, all YouTube channels with...
Just shy of five years after launching in July of 2008, Apple's App Store has hit 50 billion downloads. Apple has just announced the news officially, after posting a countdown in early May. As...
After years of waiting for Google to tie its disparate communication services together, the company has today announced a unified messaging system simply called Hangouts, available for Android, iOS,...
Google CEO Larry Page is holding a rare Q&A session with attendees of today's Google I/O keynote, and he's been offering up some pretty unfiltered...
It wasn’t a complete shock this morning when BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins announced that the popular BlackBerry Messenger, one of the few remaining apps chaining BlackBerry users to the platform, would be coming to iPhone and Android in the form of a free app this summer.
"It’s been a long time coming," said Ted Livingston, CEO of the free multimedia messenger app Kik. "We heard that the...
It didn't receive any attention on stage at Google I/O today, but Google hasn't forgotten about its ongoing effort to take over the living room with Google TV. The company is today updating the platform to the latest version of Android (4.2.2 Jelly Bean) and is promising that under-the-hood...
