Google strikes back at News Corp.'s antitrust complaint to EU

Amid a tangle with EU regulators over how it displays search results, Google gets into a war of words with Rupert Murdoch's media giant. Google has some pointed words for Rupert Murdoch, founder of the media giant News Corp.

Last week, News Corp. wrote an open letter to Joaquin Almunia, the European Union's competition commissioner, criticizing the search giant for its business tactics. Robert Thompson, News Corp.'s chief executive, wrote that Google is a "platform for piracy," and said the company "routinely configures its search results in a manner that is far from objective."

The public spat took another turn on Thursday, when Google published a blog post aimed not at Thompson, but the face of News Corp., entitled "Dear Rupert."

In a point by point response to News Corp.'s specific claims, Rachel Whetstone, Google's senior vice president of global communications, said "Google has done more than almost any other company to help tackle online piracy."

The feud between Google and News Corp. comes amid a four-year antitrust investigation by European regulators into Google's practices around surfacing search results . In February, Google reached a tentative settlement with the commission over complaints that the company allegedly favors its own products and services over those of competitors in search results. As part of the settlement proposal, Google agreed to display search results for its own services in the same way as those for rival companies, but did not have to pay a fine.

Google's proposed settlement has come under fire after widespread criticism and complaints, including from European politicians, competitors like Microsoft,and publishers like News Corp. The media giant owns a handful of European outlets, including The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Times and The Sun. On Tuesday, Almunia told Google that if it did not improve its settlement proposal, the company would face formal charges from the commission.

Both companies declined to comment beyond their respective letters. "We're letting the letter speak for itself," a News Corp. spokesperson said.

In Whetstone's post, Google touted its role in shoring up traffic to publishers, noting that it drives 10 billion clicks a month to 60,000 publishers' websites. The company mentioned the local listings service Yelp and travel accommodations site Expedia -- who have both criticized the way Google displays competitors' search results -- as brands Google has helped in terms of revenue and traffic.

As for News Corp.'s claim that Google enables piracy, the company said it took down 222 million websites in 2013 that infringed on copyrights, and that the company "downgrades" repeat offenders in Google searches. The average take-down time for copyright violators is six hours, Whetstone noted.

Google's post was also tongue-in-cheek at times. In response to the idea that Google favors YouTube videos over others, the company said a search for "videos of Robert Thomson News Corp" brings up BBC and The Wall Street Journal content above YouTube.

"We only show YouTube results when they're relevant to a search query," wrote Whetstone.

News Corp.'s letter last week also said that the once "shining vision" put in place by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin -- who famously coined the mantra "Don't be evil" -- has been replaced by "cynical management." Whetstone pointed to the pairs' involvement with ambitious projects including driverless cars and Wi-Fi-beaming balloons.

"Larry Page and Sergey Brin are still very much at the helm of Google," she wrote.

The company also took a final dig at the media giant toward the end of the post, linking to a crude cover of the News Corp.-owned tabloid The Sun in response to the claim that Google's behavior toward publishers helps "lead to a less informed, more vexatious level of dialogue in our society."

Google buys Lift Labs, maker of spoon for Parkinson's tremors

The search giant takes another step into biotech, snapping up a device maker focused on neurodegenerative diseases.

Google on Wednesday announced that it's buying Lift Labs, a biotech company that developed a special spoon designed to make it easier to eat for people with diseases like Parkinson's or essential tremor. Financial terms of the deal were not announced.

The team will join Google X, the part of the company that executes its most ambitious projects, deemed "moon shots" in Google parlance. Other X initiatives include driverless cars and Wi-Fi beaming balloons. Specifically, Lift Labs will join Google X's Life Sciences division.

Lift's product, called Liftware, vibrates to stabilize tremors, countering the movements of a patient's hand as he or she raises the spoon to the mouth. The company will continue to make and sell the product after it joins Google's team in Mountain View, Calif.

The search giant has increasingly delved into life sciences recently. Last year, it backed Calico, short for the California Life Company, a firm dedicated to developing medication with the overarching mission of expanding the human life span. Last week, the company -- run by former Genentech CEO and current Apple Chairman Arthur Levinson -- announced a partnership with the biopharmaceutical firm AbbVie to pour up to $1.5 billion into a research facility focused on fighting age-related diseases.

Google X has also developed a smart contact lens, which measures glucose levels in tears for people with diabetes and other conditions. In July, the company partnered with the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis to produce the contacts.

Also in July, Google unveiled another Google X project, Baseline, a volunteer-based program in which the company will intimately study the workings of the human body, with the goal of finding breakthroughs in disease prevention.

As The New York Times notes, the push to fight neurodegenerative diseases may also be a personal cause for Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who spends much of his time on Google X projects. Brin's mother has Parkinson's, and he's said he has a genetic mutation that gives him a higher chance of developing the disease himself.

A Google spokesperson said Lift Labs' "tremor-canceling" technology could "improve quality of life for millions of people." The company also said it is looking for new ways to use an "understanding and management" of neurodegenerative diseases. The Lift team wrote that joining Google will allow it to grow its operations.

Google's Mysterious 3D Project And The Humongous Business Appetite For Imaging

Google is working on mobile devices capable of taking and reproducing 3D images – reportedly including a tablet – which could help satisfy the insatiable business appetite for better imaging, experts have said.

Development is being kept well under wraps and is taking place under the codename Project Tango, and while Google has already talked of working on a prototype smartphone with 3D imaging capabilities, it has not commented  on reports this week that it is developing 3D capable tablets.

3D technology is not new, but the potential commercialization by a company with the reach of Google – at an affordable price point – could transform its adoption. Consumer tablets and phones running the Android operating system are already highly popular in the enterprise.

Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of IT industry association CompTIA, tells Forbes that if Google were to develop “really compelling” technology, it would find uses in “video and image heavy fields like medicine, real estate and engineering and some retail markets like automotive.”

Many of these industries already use imaging technology heavily, and are looking for the next stage. In medicine, doctors, pharmaceutical companies and researchers are always attempting to improve the ways they can assess, see and understand human health. In other industries, uses can be as diverse as showing a property to prospective buyers, or examining a design scenario for a city center construction, major utility site, or road project.

“Imagine sectors like construction, mining, or warehousing,” says Bryan Ma, vice president of client devices research at IDC. “Being able to see where things should be [in terms of 3D and augmented reality technology], without them being physically obvious to the unaided eye could help significantly accelerate processes and efficiency.”

Other industries, including manufacturing and design, can also see the benefits of the technology in assessing potential plans. And retail will be sure to play a part: consumers could take an image of their living room before going furniture or decor shopping, for example, and see what would fit well from within the store, with retailers further enhancing the experience.

A number of companies already work with more sophisticated systems including virtual reality – such as Ford, which uses Facebook’s Oculus VR systems to help it visualize and experience designs before producing them. But many organizations do not have that level of budget and are looking for a less expensive, more standardized type of technology to begin with.

In terms of Google’s own announcements, the company has already said on its Project Tango website that applications for 3D technology could include changing customer and citizen experience, as well as gaming.

“What if you could walk into a store and see exactly where that thing you need to buy is, or play hide-and-seek in your home with that character from your favorite game, or help the visually-impaired navigate that place they have never been able to to go on their own?” Google says on the site. “We believe the possibilities are vast.”

A Google 3D tablet could have a seven-inch screen and two back cameras, infrared depth sensors and 3D capture software, sources familiar with the plans told the Wall Street Journal.

While the official details remain unclear, one thing is for sure: Google is taking the development seriously. For Project Tango, Google has said it is “working with universities, research labs, and industrial partners”, across nine countries, in order to “concentrate the past 10 years of research in robotics and computer vision” into its mobile technology.

Partners on the project include major businesses such as manufacturer Bosch, as well as key organizations including the Open Source Robotics Foundation and the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Ma at IDC says Google is deliberately working with these companies and developers across sectors because it “won’t know all of the possibilities on its own without partners who understand deep industry processes”.

Google’s multi-faceted business may help make the 3D project a business and consumer success, according to Thibodeaux at CompTIA. Google is “probably one of a very small number of companies who could bring the pieces together”, he says, adding: “They have the dominant GPS technologies. They have a rich platform like YouTube and the challenge is something their engineers would eat up.”

Google Says Website Encryption Will Now Influence Search Rankings

Google will begin using website encryption, or HTTPS, as a ranking signal – a move which should prompt website developers who have dragged their heels on increased security measures, or who debated whether their website was “important” enough to require encryption, to make a change. Initially, HTTPS will only be a lightweight signal, affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, says Google.

That means that the new signal won’t carry as much weight as other factors, including the quality of the content, the search giant noted, as Google means to give webmasters time to make the switch to HTTPS.

Over time, however, encryption’s effect on search ranking make strengthen, as the company places more importance on website security.

Google also promises to publish a series of best practices around TLS (HTTPS, is also known as HTTP over TLS, or Transport Layer Security) so website developers can better understand what they need to do in order to implement the technology and what mistakes they should avoid. These tips will include things like what certificate type is needed, how to use relative URLs for resources on the same secure domain, best practices around allowing for site indexing, and more.

In addition, website developers can test their current HTTPS-enabled website using the Qualys Lab tool, says Google, and can direct further questions to Google’s Webmaster Help Forums where the company is already in active discussions with the broader community.

The announcement has drawn a lot of feedback from website developers and those in the SEO industry – for instance, Google’s own blog post on the matter, shared in the early morning hours on Thursday, is already nearing 1,000 comments. For the most part, the community seems to support the change, or at least acknowledge that they felt that something like this was in the works and are not surprised.

Google itself has been making moves to better securing its own traffic in recent months, which have included encrypting traffic between its own servers. Gmail now always uses an encrypted HTTPS connection which keeps mail from being snooped on as it moves from a consumer’s machine to Google’s data centers.

While HTTPS and site encryption have been a best practice in the security community for years, the revelation that the NSA has been tapping the cables, so to speak, to mine user information directly has prompted many technology companies to consider increasing their own security measures, too. Yahoo, for example, also announced in November its plans to encrypt its data center traffic.

Now Google is helping to push the rest of the web to do the same.