Google sidelined 780 million suspect ads in 2015

Google revealed on Thursday that it sidelined more than 780 million ads deemed rude, dishonest or dangerous in 2015 in a leap from the 524 million targeted a year earlier.

“Some ads are just plain bad — like ads that carry malware, cover up content you’re trying to see, or promote fake goods,” Google senior vice president of ads and commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy said in a blog post.

“Bad ads can ruin your entire online experience, a problem we take very seriously.”

Google has a team of more than 1,000 people around the world devoted to fighting “bad ads,” and has armed them with sophisticated technology, according to Ramaswamy.

Google disables ads for violating the California-based Internet giant’s policies.

More than 10,000 websites and 18,000 accounts were suspended for hawking counterfeit goods such as designer watch knock-offs, and Google blocked more than 12.5 million healthcare-related ads that included offering drugs that were approved for use or made claims that weren’t properly supported.

Weight-loss scams were among top complaints by Google users last year, and the company responded by suspending more than 30,000 websites for making misleading claims, Ramaswamy said.

Google also blocked nearly 7,000 “phishing” websites crafted to looked like online pages of legitimate businesses such as banks but intended to trick people into entering passwords or other personal information.

“We got even tougher on ads that mislead or trick people into interacting with them — like ads designed to look like system warnings from your computer,” Ramaswamy said.

“In 2015 alone we rejected more than 17 million.”

Google vowed to ramp the war on bad online ads this year. It also said it will increase defenses against malicious software and computer networks known as “bots” programmed to automatically click online ads to drive up revenue from pay-per-click marketing messages.

Via Starrfm

Audi A8 5.5 launched with built-in rice cooker

Audi has introduced today in Japan the A8 5.5 which comes with a built-in rice cooker.

Specially developed for Japan, the Audi A8 5.5 gets its name from 5(five) Go and 0.5(half) Han, coming from the term "gohan", which means rice in Japanese. It comes equipped with a rear console-mounted rice cooker designed specifically for the full-size luxury sedan that can cook the "perfect rice ever" thanks to its intense heat convection inside the Japanese rice cooking pot called Hagama.

The owner can use an on-board touchscreen menu panel to select from various cooking options while an Audi-branded rice paddle will come bundled but only for a limited amount of time. Pricing hasn't been disclosed but Audi says the A8 5.5 will be commercialized only in Japan.


Via Starrfm

Microsoft's Translator app plays catch-up with Google - CNET

Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET

Microsoft has a couple new tricks up its sleeve to help it better compete with Google Translate.

Get 2GB of Google Drive space for free (again!)

Want to earn an extra 2GB of storage space on Google Drive for 2 minutes of your time? Read on to find out how.

Same as last year, Google is now offering an additional 2GB of Drive storage for users who complete the Account Security Checkup, in honor of Safer Internet Day. This year, you only have until February 11, 2016, to complete the checkup.

Right now users can do the same checkup (it's been spruced up a bit) and receive 2GB of space in addition to any previous offers you've obtained on Google Drive. So if you're interested, act fast.



To get started, head to the Security Checkup tool that Google provides for your account. You'll need to verify your backup information, including phone number, recovery email address and backup security question. These fields must be filled out for this portion of the security checkup to be considered complete

Recent activity on your Google account.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

Now you'll be able to check your connected devices that have recently signed-in to your account. If you have any mobile devices attached to your Google account, you will see them in this list. If something looks wrong, you'll be prompted to change the password on your account to make sure the device in question can no longer connect.

Google account permissions.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

This next section might be a long one if you've used Google to log in to many devices or websites. Each device and site will be listed with a Remove button to the right, allowing you to cancel access right now. You can always come back to this at a later time if you change devices or no longer want to use a specific website/service. This is the end of the security checkup if you are not using two-step authentication.

App-specific passwords.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

If you are using two-step authentication on your account, you may notice that some devices do not support the authentication code. For these, you would have used an application-specific password. This section allows you to revoke any of the devices you no longer want on your account.

Two-step verification settings.Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

The final section of the security checkup includes your 2-step verification settings, which should include a backup phone number and backup codes. The phone number will help you work out access to your account with Google if you lose other methods of logging in, and the backup codes serve as one-use passwords if you lose the authenticator.


After finishing, you'll see a "Nicely done" page load, with the message that 2 GB of Drive space will be awarded to your account to celebrate Safer Internet Day. So hurry, and grab your free gigs now!

Via CNET

Facebook-owned WhatsApp boasts of billion users

Facebook-owned smartphone messaging service WhatsApp has hit the billion-user mark, according to the leading social network’s chief and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

“One billion people now use WhatsApp,” Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page.

“There are only a few services that connect more than a billion people.”

Google’s free email service, Gmail, is the latest of the Internet giant’s offerings to crest the billion-user mark, chief Sundar Pichai said Monday during an earnings call.

The ranks of people using WhatsApp have more than doubled since California-based Facebook bought the service for $19 billion in late 2014, according to Zuckerberg.

“That’s nearly one-in-seven people on Earth who use WhatsApp each month to stay in touch with their loved ones, their friends and their family,” the WhatsApp team said in a blog post.

After buying WhatsApp, Facebook made the service completely free. The next step, according to Zuckerberg, is to make it easier to use the service to communicate with businesses.

Weaving WhatsApp into exchanges between businesses and customers has the potential to create revenue opportunity for Facebook.

Recent media reports have indicated that Facebook is working behind the scenes to integrate WhatsApp more snugly into the world’s leading social network by providing the ability to share information between the services.

Via OmniGhana