Jewish & World News

As soon as Google Maps Street View was rolled out in Lithuania earlier this year, tax authorities were ready. Sitting in the comfort of their own offices, inspectors used the free Internet program for a virtual cruise around the streets of some of the Baltic country's big cities, uncovering dozens of alleged tax violations involving housing construction and property sales.

Google is hanging onto its dominant share of the search market, while its competitors inch up and down. Google edged a bit further ahead in January, going from 66.7% of the search market in December to 67%, industry tracker comScore said.

For those of us dreaming of self-driven smart cars, the wait is nearing an end. Google took to its company blog to proclaim a major milestone in its quest to put autonomous cars on the road: Its smart cars have driven over 300,000 miles without a single accident under computer control.

Google is ramping up its search offerings, saying Wednesday that it has started a pilot program that lets users include Gmail results in their normal search queries. In a company blog post Wednesday, the company said that Google users can now sign up to have the feature enabled on their accounts. “We think you shouldn’t have to be your own mini-search engine to find the most useful information— it should just work,” wrote Amit Singhal, a senior vice president for Google and a Google fellow, in the post. “A search is a search, and we want our results to be truly universal.”

Smile if you’re in Central Park this week — you might be on Google’s candid cameras. Even with the controversy surrounding the search engine’s Street View feature, the company pushed forward with its plan to photograph every nook and cranny of the 843-acre park that its souped-up pedicab camera can reach.

For New York City residents, there's nothing quite like the annoyance of an unexpected service change on your regular subway line. For visitors, these changes can make the already confusing task of riding the subway even more perplexing. But now, Google's got your back. Beginning today, Google Maps will display planned service alerts for New York City subways. The alerts will show up when you click on any of the 468 NYC subway stations labeled on Google Maps, or when you use Google's mapping service to search for transit directions. The new feature works online via maps.google.com on your desktop browser, and on the Google Maps for Android app.

An eighth-grader at the San Diego Jewish Academy won a science prize at the second annual Google Science Fair competition. Jonah Kohn, 14,  won a $25,000 scholarship for his device that uses tactile sound to enhance music for people with hearing loss.

You may have tried to access your Google Talk account this morning, only to find that the service is completely unresponsive. Some users can connect but cannot send messages, while others can't access their contact lists or send messages completely. We are also hearing that Android services have been affected too. Reported issues include Android syncing issues and intermittent Push support. If you have experienced the same, please let us know in the comments.

Facebook may be more populous, but Google+ is better-liked. That's the message from a new set of data released Tuesday by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Google+, the 1-year-old social network that pundits declared dead last year, ties Wikipedia at the top of the list of social media sites, with a score of 78 out of 100.

Google has been ordered to disable part of its autocomplete function in Japan after complaints it violates privacy. An unidentified man took the search giant to court over concerns that typing in his name linked him with crimes he was not involved with. Lawyer Hiroyuki Tomita said the effect on the man's reputation has meant he has found it hard to find work.

California and New York residents have filed two separate lawsuits this week against Google alleging that changes to the company's privacy policy violate users' privacy rights. The suits seek class-action status. The New York lawsuit, says the change in Google's guidelines enacted March 1 "violates Google's prior privacy policies, which deceived and misled consumers by stating that Google would not utilize information provided by a consumer in connection with his or her use of one service, with any other service, for any reason, without the consumer's consent." "It also violates consumers' privacy rights, allowing Google to take information from a consumer's Gmail account and Google+ account, which may have one expectation of privacy, and use it in a different context,..." the suit says. This is in violation of a consent decree Google reached with the Federal Trade Commission last year, claims the suit, filed on Tuesday by three New Yo...

Google is promising to make some big changes to its search engine over the next few months, with more emphasis on providing facts and direct answers instead of just a series of links. That’s how the Wall Street Journal tells it anyway, after speaking with top Google search executive Amit Singhai and several unnamed sources. Although Google’s existing keyword search system isn’t going away, the company plans to supplement those results with its own knowledge database. A process called “semantic search” will try to better interpret the meanings of words, such as the difference between “Apple” the company and “apple” the fruit, and provide more answers on its own.

Google just rolled out a streamlined privacy policy that consolidates your personal information for use across various Google-owned services. Despite some criticism and accusations of an Orwellian Big Brother scenario, the updated policy’s goal, says Google, is “to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience.” There’s no denying that the new policy doesn’t make it any easier to stay off the digital grid, so here are some things you can do to minimize what Google knows about you.

To hear Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page tell it, Google+ has become a robust competitor in the social networking space, with 90 million users registering since its June launch. But those numbers mask what's really going on at Google+.     It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there.

Microsoft wants to be known as the people's smartphone company. The software giant said today that it had lowered the minimum requirements to build a Windows Phone, a move that allows vendors to construct less-expensive devices that can appeal to more budget-conscious customers and first-time smartphone buyers. The shift represents an attempt to expand Microsoft's addressable market, vital to the company's bid to regain a measure of relevancy in the smartphone business. The company had previously maintained a strict list of specifications that vendors had to follow, which at the time made the devices fairly high-end. The move comes as Android's momentum in a variety of markets, high and low, continues to gain ground. "Our strategy over time was to expand the range of price points," said Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Microsoft, in an interview with CNET. Microsoft's move follows a similar tack Google took with Android. The Internet search g...

Android-powered Google glasses may seem like fantasy, but according to the New York Times, they’re real, and on track for a 2012 launch. Citing “several Google employees familiar with the project,” Nick Bilton reports that the heads-up display will go on sale by the end of the year. It’ll have a 3G or 4G data connection built-in, and will cost somewhere between $250 and $600.

If you’re not shy about letting Google know about all the websites you visit and how you use them, the company may have a proposition for you. Google is offering $5 Amazon gift cards for participating in a panel called Google Screenwise . Participants install an extension in Google’s Chrome browser, which tracks their web surfing activity, and earn one gift card for every three months in the program — up to $25 total.

Behold the future! Take a pile of smartphone parts and stuff them into a pair of somewhat bulky glasses. That’s the idea behind a project Google is reportedly working on right now. According to 9to5Google.com , these high-tech glasses have been in the works for a while now but the blog’s unnamed source has apparently witnessed a real-world set of prototype glasses that appear similar to the Oakley Thump glasses your favorite bounty hunter is wearing.

Google is widening the potential user base for Google+ by lowering the age requirement from 18 to 13 years old -- a move that could help it grow in Facebook's shadow. Last week, Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product at Google+, announced the change in a blog post. He noted that Google wants to help teens share with their friends, while also helping them keep from over-sharing, especially with strangers.

New research finds people fork over $5,000 worth of personal information a year to Google in exchange for access to its “free services” such as Gmail and search. While many view this as a fair trade, privacy experts say the Internet giant’s latest plan to pool user data from its various sites make it less so.     The new privacy policy – which Google contends will allow it to better target ads — goes into effect on March 1. In a press release, the company said it may combine the information userssubmit under their email accounts with information from other Google servicesor third parties . What people do and share on the social networking site Google+, Gmail and YouTube will be combined to create a more three-dimensional picture of consumers’ likes and dislikes, according to reports.  Google did not return calls seeking comment.