Browsing: Google

While other mainstream media have undergone radical change due to the Internet, television has remained relatively immune to its influences — until now

We’re pretty used to hearing outlandish valuations on Internet companies that, if they were people, would be barely out of nappies. It happened during the first dot-com boom, and it’s happening again now. But news that Facebook is

Despite being the year of the 2010 soccer World Cup, the soccer spectacle was outranked in Google’s fastest rising searches by teen sensation, Justin Bieber, as well as SA’s latest rap-rave hotshots, Die Antwoord

When Google offers to buy your two-year-old website for as much as US$6bn, you’d have to be crazy to refuse, right? But that’s what Groupon did. A surge of rumours last week had Google opening its offer

Death and taxes now have a third, unavoidable friend, the Internet. Even the poorest people on the globe are touched by it, if only by the proceeds of online charity drives. But, like a typical youngest child, the Internet is already at odds with one of its siblings — the taxman.

Google is continuing to tailor its search engine and other online tools for the SA market, on Friday announcing its mobile voice search facility is now also available in Zulu and Afrikaans, in addition to English. The service, available immediately, allows users

One of the most curious and unintended side effects of rapid innovation is on language. Rather than making words up, we prefer to frame things in analogy and reference. That’s why we still talk about “opening a window” on a computer, and why we “cut and paste” text and save “bookmarks”

Predictions are a tricky thing. Fifteen years ago, when the Internet was first flexing its gobal wings, futurists were predicting the end of all “traditional” media, particularly television. And while the dot-com bust deflated a lot of expectations, some of those predictions finally seem to be coming true. Time spent on everything from newspapers to cinema has been falling while Internet usage has been climbing inexorably higher.

If you sued one of the world’s largest companies for defamation and won, you might expect a bit more than €5 000. But in the case of “Mr X” vs Google, which was recently tried by a French court, it is a full €5 000 too many. The rather sordid tale of Mr X began when he was arrested and tried for allegedly raping a 17-year-old girl.