Tag: Google

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Google adds CO2 emission labels to flights

Google is updating its flight and hotel search tools to include information about CO2 emissions and sustainability commitments.

Starting today, every Google Flights listing now features a note next to its price detailing the estimated CO2 emissions for that particular flight, compared to the usual amount of CO2 emissions produced on the route being flown.

If a flight boasts a lower-than-average emission rate, a green badge is displayed.

According to Google, the CO2 metrics are seat-specific, with emissions for business and first class generally being higher because “they take up more space” in the plane.

Travelers can also check if the hotel they stay at upon landing is eco-friendly using Google’s recently updated hotel search tool.

On September 22nd, Google added badges to indicate whether a hotel is eco-certified, as well as details about each hotel’s sustainability practices — for example, the famous Château Laurier in Ottawa boasts energy-efficient lighting, a towel and linen reuse program, and locally sourced food.

The new eco-focused flight and hotel search tool features are available to Google users in Canada and globally.

Google also announced today that it plans on improving the results in its regular search engine when people ask about ‘climate change.’

Last week, on September 29th, California-based company released its Google Maps wildfire tracking tool globally to Android users, with iOS and desktop updates planned for October.

Source: Google

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Mobile Syrup

Searching ‘climate change’ on Google will soon yield better results

Google is improving the results it provides when users ask questions about climate change.

In a company update on sustainability initiatives, Google announced its plans to add a “dedicated results page” about climate change to its main search engine.

The page will feature “in-depth” and “high quality” information from credible sources — the United Nations is listed as one — explaining the “causes, effects and definitions” of climate change.

The update is schedule to roll out sometime later this month, and will be available upon launch globally in English, French and Spanish.

As of today, Google is also updating its flight and hotel search tools to include information about CO2 emissions and sustainability commitments.

In April 2021, Google Earth released a video illustrating the devastating global effects of climate change in the last 40 years.

Source: Google

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Mobile Syrup

Google to auto-enroll millions of accounts in two-factor authentication

Source: https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/making-sign-safer-and-more-convenient/

Google has put out another blog post reminding people that it will soon enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for millions of users by the end of the year.

2FA, or two-step verification as Google calls it, is a security protocol that can help protect online accounts by requiring a second method of authentication when the user signs in. In most cases, this refers the codes texted to people’s phones after they log into a website.

According to Google’s blog post, the search giant plans to auto-enroll an additional 150 million Google users in 2FA by the end of the year. It also plans to require 2 million YouTube creators to enable 2FA.

Along with that announcement, Google detailed several other ways it’s working to protect users’ accounts. For example, Google builds security keys into Android phones and offers similar functionality to iPhone users with Google Smart Lock. The search giant also detailed improvements to the password manager built into the Chrome browser, such as auto-fill options for iOS and Android users.

These things are all steps in the right direction for improving security. However, it’s also worth noting that 2FA can be an imperfect solution, especially when used over text.

SIM swap attacks are a common way for hackers to take over a victim’s phone number and intercept incoming 2FA messages to gain access to online accounts. It’s a prevalent issue in Canada, with the CRTC recently revealing it documented over 24,000 cases of potential phone number fraud between August 2019 and May 2020.

That’s part of why Google’s pushing users to use security keys and, in turn, is building them into devices. At a basic level, security keys are little USB sticks that users can plug into a computer to authenticate themselves. By turning smartphones into security keys, Google’s offering a convenient, secure alternative to SMS-based 2FA.

If you haven’t enabled 2FA on your Google account yet, here’s how to do it:

  • Head to myaccount.google.com
  • Click ‘Security’
  • Scroll down to ‘Signing in to Google’ and click ‘2-Step Verification.’
  • Follow the steps to set it up.

Image credit: Google

Source: Google Via: The Verge

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Mobile Syrup

Google Pixel 6 Fall Launch scheduled for October 19th

After months of leaks and rumours about Google’s upcoming Pixel 6 lineup and the Mountain View, California-based company going all out with its marketing, Google has just announced its Pixel Fall Event set to take place on October 19th at 1pm ET/10am PT.

Google is expected to fully detail the new devices during the event and show what its in-house Tensor chips are capable of.

“On October 19th, we’re officially introducing you to Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro—the completely reimagined Google phones. Powered by Google Tensor, Google’s first custom mobile chip, they’re fast, smart and secure. And they adapt to you,” reads Google’s invite to the event. The event will be broadcasted live on the Pixel Event website and its YouTube channel with ASL interpretation.

While the Pixel 6 lineup will be officially unveiled at the October 19th event, we still aren’t sure when the devices will be available for the public to pre-order or purchase.

From what we know so far, the Pixel 6 Pro is expected to have a curved screen, similar to the S21 Ultra and Samsung’s ISOCELL GN1 50-megapixel sensor. The ultra-wide camera will use a 12-megapixel IMX386 sensor, while the 4x optical telephoto camera on the 6 Pro will use a 48-megapixel IMX586 sensor.

The phone will reportedly support up to 20x zoom with photos and videos (except 4K, where zoom is capped at 7x) and 4K/60fps video recording. However, we still don’t know how the new cameras will perform when paired with Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) models.

Further, the new Pixel devices will reportedly be capable of 33W wired charging. For reference, Google’s Pixel smartphones currently only support cable charging up to 18W.

If you can’t tune in live on October 19th, make sure to follow along with MobileSyrup. We’ll have the latest news and updates from Google on our homepage as well as on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Source: Google 

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Mobile Syrup

Nest Cam indoor wired is now available in Canada for $130

Google’s new $129 Nest Cam (indoor wired) is now available. The indoor wired camera lets users keep track of what’s going on inside of their home.

The camera is available in different designs and four colours: ‘Snow,’ ‘Linen,’ ‘Fog’ and ‘Sand with a maple wood base.’ However, it seems like only the Snow variant is available in Canada so far.

Google says its new Nest Cam offers ten times more machine learning power than its predecessor. It also features enhanced HDR video quality and processes events on-device, which should make it more accurate and provide timely alerts.

The indoor camera can detect people and animals and send alerts regarding what’s important. There’s also three hours of event video history with the ability to create Activity Zones that allow the camera to keep an eye out on important places in your homes like doors and windows. There’s also local storage backup, so if your Wi-Fi goes out the camera will keep recording and will upload your clips when the app returns.

Source: Nest Cam

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Mobile Syrup

October Android 11 security patch now hitting Pixel devices

Unfortunately, Android 12 didn’t drop today on Pixel devices like many expected it would, so here’s the next best thing — Android’s October security patch.

The update is available for the Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, Pixel 4, Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a (5G), Pixel 5, and Pixel 5a devices.

You can check out the October 2021 Android Security Bulletin, here. The bulletin indicates there are no actual updated features and that it offers 20 security fixes. The vulnerabilities range from moderate to critical.

You can download the update over the air or via factory image.

Source: Android Security Bulletin 

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Mobile Syrup

YouTube adds new ‘continue watching’ feature to web app

Users have discovered a new way to resume content on their mobile devices that they previously watched on the web or vice versa. The catch is that you need to use YouTube’s website instead of its app to enable this feature.

When you watch content through the web version of YouTube on a desktop or an Android/iOS tablet, you get access to a mini-player that keeps your content playing while you browse around looking for something else to watch.

If you were watching something on another device, now that tiny player appears as soon as you open the YouTube website and asks if you want to continue watching. For example, if you watched something on your phone or tablet, this window would also appear on your desktop.

Of course, you need to be logged into the same Google account across the devices for this feature to work.

While not the most game-changing feature, it’s still a good demonstration of a minor feature that makes the viewing experience more seamless on Google’s video platform. While convenient, it will be interesting to see if the company brings this functionality to its mobile apps or if it adds some sort of Netflix-like ‘Continue Watching’ area to YouTube’s homepage.

As someone who watches a lot of YouTube, this is pretty handy and a lot easier than being forced to dive into my history every time I change the device mid-show.

Via: 9to5Google

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Mobile Syrup

Google Japan shows off Pixel 6 Pro in new video ad

I looks like Google Japan is very excited about the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. 

The 30-second video below doesn’t reveal much about the Pixel 6 Pro, but it confirms the phone’s ‘Material You’ user interface, and it’s clearly the 6 Pro featured in the ad.

Additionally, there’s a two-second reminder that the phone utilizes Google’s Tensor chip, the company’s proprietary processor.

The messaging in the video’s description read that the phone is “Coming Soon,” so we’re, unfortunately, still waiting on an official reveal and release date.

That said, we do know that Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are scheduled to launch this fall. 

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Another Pixel 6 Pro benchmark score shows improved performance

Another rumoured Pixel 6 Pro benchmark score has surfaced on Geekbench with improved performance.

Google’s semi-announced Pixel 6 series previously showed up in Geekbench listings in September with a disappointing single-core score of 414 and multi-core score of 2,074. However, this new listing spotted by PhoneArena shows a score of 1,034 and 2,756 in single- and multi-core respectively. The listing also confirms there will be a 6 Pro configuration with 12GB of RAM. It backs up previous information that the Tensor chip will use two ARM Cortex-X1 cores at 2.80GHz, two intermediate cores at 2.25GHz and four power-efficient cores at 1.80GHz.

That’s a significant jump over the previous Pixel 6 Geekbench test, but still not as good as other Snapdragon 888 flagships. The Samsung Galaxy S21, for example, scored 1,112 and 3,378 in our tests. The Z Fold 3 scored 1,109 and 3,185. The OnePlus 9 Pro also sports a Snapdragon 888 and scored 1,071 and 3,282.

It’s also worth comparing the alleged Pixel 6 Pro scores to previous Pixel devices. If accurate, the Pixel 6 Pro outperforms the Pixel 5’s Snapdragon 765G (589 and 1,603) and the Pixel 4’s 855 (695 and 2,339). In other words, it looks like the Pixel 6 series may offer improved performance over older Pixels, so if you’re still holding onto a Pixel 4 or older, you’ll get a speed bump this time around.

Still, this all indicates Google’s customer Tensor chip may actually hold its own against Qualcomm’s venerable Snapdragon line. We also haven’t seen much in the way of machine learning or artificial intelligence performance, which is supposedly where Tensor will shine.

That being said, until the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro actually launch, it’s not worth putting much stock in benchmark numbers. For one, things can clearly change — the previously leaked benchmark scores are much lower than these new ones. The performance may even increase before these phones launch. But we won’t know until reviewers get hands-on with devices and put them through their paces.

And the second issue with benchmark scores is they often don’t reflect real-world use. Day-to-day performance using apps, making calls, sending texts can have a different impact. Plus, I regularly see ‘budget’ devices that score poorly on benchmarks operate without issue in real-world testing (for example, the Pixel 4a). So, don’t read too much into the benchmark scores.

Source: Geekbench Via: PhoneArena

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Mobile Syrup

Google says Bing’s top search result is Google

Google is fighting an antitrust fine from the European Union using Microsoft’s Bing.

Specifically, it’s using Bing’s top search term, which according to Google, is Google.

For a bit of background, the EU slapped Google with a massive €4.34 billion (roughly $6.37 billion CAD) antitrust fine in 2018 for requiring Android phone manufacturers to bundle Google apps with the Play Store. Over the last week, Google started the appeal process to fight the fine.

Of particular note was evidence submitted by Alfonso Lamadrid, a lawyer for Google’s parent company, Alphabet. The evidence cited Bing’s most popular search term — allegedly Google — as proof that customers choose Google Search over competitors.

“People use Google because they choose to, not because they are forced to. Google’s market share in general search is consistent with consumer surveys showing that 95% of users prefer Google to rival search engines,” Lamadrid said.

According to Bloomberg, Google argues that being Bing’s top search result proves people actively choose to use Google. It follows, then, that Google’s bundling of its services with the Play Store on Android phones isn’t the driving factor behind people using its services — people actually prefer to use those services.

Although it may take more than being Bing’s top search result to prove that point, it’s funny to see Google argue that in court.

It’s also worth noting that there’s nothing stopping people from choosing to use different services on their Android smartphone. Granted, being the default can significantly influence people’s choice to use or not use a given app or service. The real question is whether Google leverages its position as the default service to block other services from competing with it.

Source: Bloomberg Via: 9to5Google