Google today took aim at the SEO industry which has gamified search rankings to destroy the value of Google Search results.
That’s about to change with the company’s latest search update, the comapny said.
On Tuesday, Google announced a search quality update that will specifically focus on improving the search quality ranking of websites and will update Google Search’s spam policies.
Google estimates that through this update and its prior efforts, it will be able to reduce low-quality and unoriginal content by 40%.
If Google could address these problems with its search quality update, it could have a significant impact on how consumers perceive the usefulness of Google Search, which many people have become increasingly concerned about in the wake of AI advances.
Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary AWS has revealed that it will allow customers to transfer their data out of its ecosystem with no so-called “egress fees” attached.
While AWS already allows customers to transfer up to 100GB of data per month off its servers for free, this won’t cover companies looking to “lift and shift” their entire data stores to another provider — and that is what is effectively changing for AWS customers as of today.
Companies that want to move their data off of AWS are requested to contact AWS, which will then apparently issue credits for the data being migrated.
It’s not clear what today’s news means in relation to the U.K.’s ongoing antitrust probe into cloud lock-in practices.
Another issue identified by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was also looking at interoperability, concerning areas where cloud companies design their products to not play nicely with rival services.
Google has trailed another bundle of product tweaks ahead of Thursday’s deadline for compliance with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Google’s blog post further notes that users “may” see “new consent banners asking them whether they would like to link their Google services“.
The adtech giant is the DMA gatekeeper with by far the largest number of regulated platforms — eight in total; namely: Google Maps, Google Play, Google Shopping, Google Ads, Chrome, Android, Google Search and YouTube.
Elsewhere on data for ads, Google appear to be relying on its advertisers to keep a pipeline of targetable user data flowing through its ad engines.
Some of what Google is trailing in today’s blog post also appears to be re-announcing changes previously announced and/or launched in recent weeks.
Indian firms whose apps were delisted by Google last week have begrudgingly started to comply with Play Store billing rules to get their apps back on the store.
A lot of protesting developers have opted for a consumption-only model for now, while others have opted for the Google Play billing.
And what about alternate app stores like the recently launched Indus app store from PhonePe?” Janakiraman told the publication.
Google also noted that the company has given developers three years to comply with Play Store rules.
Firms seeking regulatory actionThe firms that are protesting against Google’s move are looking for regulatory intervention.
Pixel phone updatesThe company is now allowing users to capture and upload 10-bit HDR videos on Instagram.
This feature is available to users on the Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, and Pixel Fold.
Later in the month, the company made the feature available to Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro users.
Google today said the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro users will be able to use this feature soon.
Pixel Watch updatesGoogle is rolling out two updates to the original Pixel Watch to help users train better, namely Pace training and Heart Zone training.
Google said on Friday it will start removing apps from its Play Store in India if developers fail to comply with its payment policy, taking a definitive stand weeks after the top Indian court granted the Android-maker with relief.
Without naming them, Google said 10 companies in India, including “many well-established ones,” have not paid Google Play’s fee despite being provided with three years to prepare.
“After giving these developers more than three years to prepare, including three weeks after the Supreme Court’s order, we are taking necessary steps to ensure our policies are applied consistently across the ecosystem, as we do for any form of policy violation globally,” the company wrote in a blog post.
“Enforcement of our policy, when necessary, can include removal of non-compliant apps from Google Play.”This is a developing story.
More to come.
Google is introducing improvements to search suggestions in Chrome, the company announced today.
As part of the changes, users will start to get more helpful search suggestions in Chrome based on what others are searching for, see more images for suggested searches and find search suggestions even with a poor connection.
Search suggestions are the drop-down list of suggested completions that appear before you finish typing out your query in Google.
With these new updates, Google is expanding the availability of search suggestions and using them to boost inspiration.
For example, if you start typing out “bohemian table,” Google will display an image of a bohemian table, bohemian tablecloth, bohemian table runner and bohemian table lamp.
The launch partner for this is Google, which will use Stack Overflow’s data to enrich Gemini for Google Cloud and provide validated Stack Overflow answers in the Google Cloud console.
Google and Stack Overflow plan to preview these integrations at Google’s Cloud Next conference in April.
It’s no secret that content-driven services like Stack Overflow (but also Reddit, publishing houses etc.)
While Google and Stack Overflow aren’t discussing the financial terms of this partnership, it’s worth noting that this is not an exclusive partnership.
Google will also bring Stack Overflow right into the Google Cloud console and will allow developers to see answers and ask questions right from there.
On Android, Gemini also breaks Google Assistant’s song recognition.
So imagine my frustration when I discovered that Gemini on Android can’t recognize songs — or even perform the basic task of funneling song ID requests to Google Assistant.
Or, were I using a conventional home screen, I could place the dedicated song ID shortcut.
Perhaps it’s sophisticated in other ways — ways I haven’t discovered yet, frankly.
Full transparency, I’ve reached out to Google about song recognition via Gemini and I’ll update this post if I hear back.
For example, on February 25, 2024, Threads saw 486,803 installs on Google Play and 342,228 on iOS.
X, by comparison, saw 225,408 Google Play downloads and 112,625 on iOS, Appfigures data shows.
That’s nearly triple the downloads on iOS for Threads and more than double the downloads on Google Play.
Then, Threads had 382,999 daily installs on iOS versus just 113,649 installs of X on the same platform — or more than triple.
Threads’ Google Play downloads were 660,882 at this time, versus just 210,475 for X on the Play Store — also more than triple.
