An Italian mafia boss on the run for 20 years was tracked down to a Spanish town after being spotted on Google Street View. The Guardian reports: Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted murderer listed among Italy's most wanted gangsters, was arrested in Galapagar, a town near Madrid, where over the years he had married, changed his name to Manuel, worked as a chef and owned a fruit and vegetable shop. Sicilian police carried out several investigations in their search for Gammino, 61, and a European arrest warrant was issued in 2014. The fugitive was traced to Spain, but it was Google Street View that helped to pinpoint his precise location. The navigation tool, accessible through Google Maps, had captured an image of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop called El Huerto de Manu, or Manu's Garden, in Galapagar. Police believed one of the men closely resembled Gammino, but his identity was only confirmed when they came across a listing for a nearby restaurant called La Cocina de Manu or Manu's Kitchen. The shop and the restaurant are now closed, but the police found a photo of Gammino, dressed in his chef's garb, on a still-existing Facebook page for La Cocina de Manu. He was recognisable by the scar on the left side of his chin. The restaurant's menu included a dish called Cena Siciliana or Sicilian dinner. Gammino was arrested on 17 December but the details surrounding his capture did not come to light until they were reported by La Repubblica on Wednesday. Upon his arrest, Gammino reportedly told police: "How did you find me? I haven't even called my family for 10 years!"

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A supermajority of customer service representatives for Google Fiber, operating out of a store in Kansas City, Missouri, have signed union cards in the hopes of bargaining their first contract with their bosses. Engadget reports: They're organizing under the auspices of the Alphabet Workers Union, a year-old division of the Communication Workers of America which is seeking to represent employees and contractors at all level of Google's parent company. The 11 workers -- 10 of whom have signed cards since the union drive began in October -- are jointly employed by Google and a staffing agency called BDS Connected Solutions. That's not out of the ordinary, as staffing arrangements with Alphabet go: a 2019 story in the New York Times found temps and contractors made up the majority of the tech giant's workforce, while a Recode report that same year indicated that this second class of laborers earned significantly less than Google's own full-time employees. According to two BDS workers who spoke to Engadget, customer representatives had been feeling left out of key conversations about staffing and safety protocols, and communication with management has deteriorated. [...] Kansas City was the very first market Google Fiber launched in, nearly a decade ago. What makes this push to form a bargaining unit somewhat unusual, however, has been the decision to skip straight to petitioning the National Labor Relations Board. Typically, this is the longer, more arduous option when an employer refuses to voluntarily recognize a union. But, according to Adair, Alphabet and BDS have neither attempted to quash the union drive, nor expressed a willingness to recognize it. "There's been no acknowledgement, no pushback. no response at all yet," they said. [...] While they weren't keen to give too many specifics as to what they'd hope to secure in a first contract, one of the benefits they're seeking to obtain is hazard pay [while working in person in a pandemic.] While it may be months or years before the NLRB makes a ruling, Google Fiber representative Mike Knox hopes it might spur action from others within Google Fiber. "We're really hoping that this inspires in that regard," he said. "We're hoping that's a flashpoint where other people can see that and decide to push for more input."

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Alphabet's Google used the annual CES technology conference to showcase upcoming deeper ties among its devices and preview support for unlocking more cars with Android phones. From a report: The enhancements announced Wednesday included more quickly pairing accessories with devices running Google's Android and Chromebook laptop software, unlocking devices with Google software via smartwatches running Google's Wear OS and sharing content across products. The new features mirror work Apple has done with its software and hardware, an effort that has led consumers to buy more types of Apple devices. The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has long touted its ecosystem as superior to Google's because of tight integration, and now Google is trying to rival that experience.

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South Korea's government wants Google and Apple to block new and existing play-to-earn (P2E) games, saying such games should not receive an age rating to get listed on their respective app stores. From a report: The country's Game Management Committee in the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism said in an official letter called its request "reasonable" as money gained from P2E games could be considered prizes. In Korea, prizes from gaming are allowed to be only around US$8.5 at a time. The ministry's move comes after game developer SkyPeople's P2E title, Five Stars for Klaytn, was blocked from getting a rating it required to get listed in April this year.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has a tendency to show up, innovate, and then abandon its products/services rather quickly. There's an entire site, Killed by Google, that's dedicated to documenting all of Google's dead projects. Even Stadia, Google's once-promising cloud gaming service, could be heading to the graveyard, after years of failing to measure up to Microsoft's xCloud and Nvidia's GeForce Now. But software is one thing. Hardware is another, and Google has let its premiere Chromebook, the Pixelbook, rot without a hardware refresh since 2019's Pixelbook Go. Not counting the original Cr-48 reference design Chromebook, Google has released a total of four Chrome OS-powered laptops. There was the original 2013 Chromebook Pixel and 2015 Pixel 2 (not to be confused with the phones that are named Pixel). Then the 2-in-1 Pixelbook in 2017, and in 2019, the Pixelbook Go. The pattern for a refresh seemed to be every two years. This year's Pixel 6 event came and went with no word of a new Pixelbook. And according to a recent comment made at Qualcomm's conference by Chrys Tsolaki, Google's retail partner manager for Chromebooks, there won't be a Pixelbook in 2022, either.

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Google's open-source team said they scanned Maven Central, today's largest Java package repository, and found that 35,863 Java packages use vulnerable versions of the Apache Log4j library. From a report: This includes Java packages that use Log4j versions vulnerable to the original Log4Shell exploit (CVE-2021-44228) and a second remote code execution bug discovered in the Log4Shell patch (CVE-2021-45046). James Wetter and Nicky Ringland, members of the Google Open Source Insights Team, said in a report today that typically when a major Java security flaw is found, it typically tends to affect only 2% of the Maven Central index. However, the 35,000 Java packages vulnerable to Log4Shell account to roughly 8% of the Maven Central total of ~440,000, a percentage the two described using just one word -- "enormous." But since the vulnerability was disclosed last week, Wetter and Ringland said the community has responded positively and has already fixed 4,620 of the 35,863 packages they initially found vulnerable. This number accounts to 13% of all the vulnerable packages.

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Google has announced a new policy for cloud storage service Drive, which will soon begin to restrict access to files deemed to be in violation of the company's policies. TechRadar reports: As explained in a new blog post, Google will take active steps to identify files hosted on its platform that are in breach of either its Terms of Service or abuse program policies. These files will be flagged to their owner and restricted automatically, which means they can no longer be shared with other people, and access will be withdrawn from everyone but the owner. "This will help ensure owners of Google Drive items are fully informed about the status of their content, while also helping to ensure users are protected from abusive content," the company explained. According to Google, the motive behind the policy change is to shield against the abuse of its services. This broad catchall encompasses cybercriminal activity (like malware hosting, phishing etc.), hate speech, and content that might endanger children, but also sexually explicit material. "We need to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide these services, and we ask that everyone abide by [our policies] to help us achieve this goal," states Google in its policy document. "After we are notified of a potential policy violation, we may review the content and take action, including restricting access to the content, removing the content, and limiting or terminating a user's access to Google products." Google goes on to say that it may make "exceptions based on artistic, educational, documentary or scientific considerations." As noted by TechRadar, "there is a system to request a review of a decision if someone feels a file has been restricted unfairly, but it's unclear how the process will be handled on Google's end and how long it might take."

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Alphabet's Google is facing potentially heavy fines in Russia after a court ruled it must unblock the YouTube account of a TV channel owned by a sanctioned ally of President Vladimir Putin. From a report: The Moscow Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld an April ruling that ordered the U.S. technology giant to restore the Tsargrad account or face a daily fine, the channel said in a statement Thursday. Settlement talks between the two sides failed to yield a deal in August. Russia has stepped up confrontation with foreign social media and internet companies in what the government calls a campaign to uphold its digital sovereignty. Regulators have levied fines and slowed content in a bid to force companies including Google and Twitter to delete posts encouraging unauthorized protests and other material deemed illegal. In September, Google and Apple removed a protest-voting app from their Russian stores as parliamentary elections got underway after the authorities threatened to imprison their local staff. Google now faces a daily fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,360), which will double each week that the company refuses to comply. Tsargrad said the court capped the total fine at 1 billion rubles in the first nine months and then it will be allowed to grow further. Under Russian law, there's no upper limit on the potential fines.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google doesn't accept cryptocurrencies for ad buying, its payments service or its app store. Until recently, Google had banned several categories of crypto ads. Google hasn't touched NFTs. In a recent interview with Bloomberg Television, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai copped that he "dabbled" in crypto, but didn't own any. Some staffers at Google have also dabbled with the technology, according to multiple current and former employees at the company. Still, Google hasn't laid out a plan for inserting itself into web3. A Google spokesperson said its mobile payments service is "working with several companies" such as Coinbase, Bitpay and Gemini "to support crypto cards, which transact in fiat currencies." There are a few reasons Google might not want to dive into the new arena -- one is defensive. Web3 evangelists see the technology as "decentralized," controlled by its many participants. They draw stark contrasts to the business models of Google, Facebook and Amazon. These boosters see the blockchain as inherently trustworthy, unlike the current web titans. "Can't do evil > don't be evil," tweeted Chris Dixon, an Andreessen Horowitz partner, in a clear dig at Google. And many Silicon Valley visions for web3 activity, search engines and media decidedly don't involve advertising, Google's main business. But the company isn't completely averse to cryptocurrency. Google has been willing to take crypto money for its cloud business. In September, the division signed a deal with Dapper Labs, a Canadian blockchain company. It also has agreements with Hadera, Block.one and others. Given web3's escalating computing demands, Google will certainly look to ink more of these. (Google will have to weigh crypto's energy needs versus the company's zero-emissions targets.) In some ways, the wait-and-see strategy is typical of Pichai, who has a more deliberate management style than his predecessors. And that doesn't mean the company isn't quietly exploring the technology.

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According to job listings on LinkedIn, Google appears to be working on an augmented reality device and operating system to pair with it. Ars Technica reports: On LinkedIn, operating system engineering director Mark Lucovsky announced that he has joined Google. He previously headed up mixed reality operating system work for Meta, and before that he was one of the key architects of Windows NT at Microsoft. "My role is to lead the Operating System team for Augmented Reality at Google," he wrote. He also posted a link to some job listings at Google that give the impression Google is getting just as serious about AR as Apple or Meta. As 9to5Google discovered, one of the listings ("Senior Software Developer, Embedded, Augmented Reality OS") described Google's objective in clear terms: "Our team is building the software components that control and manage the hardware on our Augmented Reality (AR) products. These are the software components that run on the AR devices and are the closest to the hardware. As Google adds products to the AR portfolio, the OS Foundations team is the very first software team to work with new hardware." Other job listings say new hires will be working on an "innovative AR device." And one specifies that Google is "focused on making immersive computing accessible to billions of people through mobile devices." The roles are largely in the United States, but some are located in Waterloo, Ontario -- the HQ of Canadian smart glasses maker North, which Google acquired in 2020.

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The U.K.'s antitrust watchdog has given the clearest signal yet that interventions under an upcoming reform of the country's competition rules will target tech giants Apple and Google -- including their duopolistic command of the mobile market, via iOS and Android; their respective app stores; and the browsers and services bundled with mobile devices running their OSes. From a report: So it could mean good news for third-party developers trying to get oxygen for alternatives to dominant Apple and Google apps and services down the line. Publishing the first part of a wide-ranging mobile ecosystem market study -- which was announced this summer -- the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said today that it has "provisionally" found Apple and Google have been able to leverage their market power to create "largely self-contained ecosystems"; and that the degree of lock-in they wield is damaging competition by making it "extremely difficult for any other firm to enter and compete meaningfully with a new system." "The CMA is concerned that this is leading to less competition and meaningful choice for customers," the watchdog writes in a press release. "People also appear to be missing out on the full benefit of innovative new products and services -- such as so-called 'web apps' and new ways to play games through cloud services on iOS devices."

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Ars Technica's reviews editor remembers how Google Toolbar launched back when Internet Explorer "had a rock-solid monopoly" on December 11, 2000, and marked Google's first foray into browser ownership. "Rather than idly sit by and live under Internet Explorer's rule, Google's plan was to hijack Microsoft's browser with various plugins." Once upon a time, Toolbar.google.com offered to guide any wayward Internet Explorer users across the web with the power of Google.... It also patched up long-neglected Internet Explorer with new features, like highlighted search terms in pages, pop-up blocking, spell check, autofill, and Google Translate. Phase 2 of the hijack plan was Google Gears, which augmented IE with new APIs for web developers. Eventually, Google stopped fixing other companies' browsers and launched Google Chrome in 2008, which would make all of this obsolete. But it ended as Google finally pulled the plug this week on "a dusty, forgotten server" that had spent nearly 21 years blurting out "Take the best of Google everywhere on the web!" Now, it redirects to a support page saying "Google Toolbar is no longer available for installation. Instead, you can download and install Google Chrome." The good news is that we wrote most of this post at the end of November, so this might be the Internet's very last hands-on of the now-dead product.... To say the app had been neglected is an understatement. The about page read, "Copyright 2014 Google," though Google definitely stopped performing maintenance on Toolbar before that. You could still do a Google Search, and you could still sign into Google Toolbar, but so much there was broken or a time capsule from a bygone era.... The "share" settings were a bloodbath, listing options for Google Reader (killed July 2013), Orkut (killed September 2014), Google+ (killed April 2019), and Google Bookmarks (killed September 2021). There were also search shortcuts for Google Blog Search (killed May 2011) and Picasa Web Albums (dead May 2016).... The spell-check servers didn't work anymore, and I couldn't translate anything. The baked-in-by-default connections to Google+ and Google Bookmarks would also let you know that those products have been shut down. Even some of the "working" integrations, like Gmail, didn't really work because Gmail no longer supports Internet Explorer.... One feature that really blew my mind was a button that said, "Turn off features that send information." Google Toolbar apparently had a one-click privacy kill switch back in the day.

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theodp writes: The Chicago Public Schools kicked off CSEdWeek by issuing a press release announcing a Google partnership: "Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is partnering with Google in an annual call to action during CSEd Week (Dec. 6 -12) to inspire students to learn computer science, advocate for equity in computer science education, and celebrate the contributions of students, teachers, and partners such as CafeCS that support this important field of study." A flyer with a joint CPS and Google letterhead invited parents of CPS schoolchildren to attend the first of an unspecified number of Parent Panels exploring career opportunities in computer science. Google in late 2020 lamented that "students are generally unconvinced that computer science is important for them to learn," adding that "Interventions from parents, educators, community leaders, policymakers, nonprofits and the technology industry are needed." Back in Dec. 2017, Google kicked off CSEdWeek by announcing that Google.org was donating $1.5 million to bring CS to students in Chicago and has been a long-time friend of the CPS CS4LL initiative, including making its Chicago HQ available for a CPS 'soiree' just hours before the CPS made CS a HS graduation requirement in 2016 and a 2017 video shoot in which the CPS lamented schools failure to address tech's need for coders. Coincidentally, Google's CSEdWeek partnership with CPS comes as the leaders of the Computer Science Teachers Association (the organizer of CSEdWeek) and Code.org (the organizer of the Hour of Code, CSEdWeek's flagship event) took to Twitter to urge the nonprofits' 1+ million followers to sign a petition asking CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to overturn Code.org's ban from Chicago classrooms for failing to meet what Code.org termed "onerous requirements unrelated to student privacy that make it prohibitive for organizations like Code.org to agree to" (which didn't stop Google from getting its free Google CS First offering on the CPS Approved for Use list). Ironically, back in 2013, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett kicked off CSEdWeek and the first Hour of Code with a press release announcing a CPS partnership with Code.org under which CPS would receive free CS curriculum and ongoing professional development and stipends for teachers. "Partnering with Chicago Public Schools is a giant step forward towards Code.org's vision of bringing computer science to every student in every school," said Code.org founder Hadi Partovi at the time. Google, by the way, is a Platinum Supporter ($3+ million) of tech-backed Code.org.

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According to Insider, Google is planning to launch its own in-house smartwatch in 2022. "Two employees said a spring launch was possible if the latest testing round is a success, however all sources stressed that details and timelines were subject to change depending on feedback from employees testing the device," reports Insider. From the report: The device, which is internally codenamed "Rohan," will showcase the latest version of Google's smartwatch software to customers and partners [...]. To date, Google has opted to create software for smartwatches built by partners such as Samsung, but has not made a device of its own. [...] Unlike the Apple Watch, Google's smartwatch is round and has no physical bezel, according to artistic renders viewed by Insider and employees who have seen it. Like Apple's device, it will capture health and fitness metrics. The watch has sometimes been referred to internally as the "Pixel watch" or "Android watch," but executives have used a variety of names to refer to the project and it is unclear what branding Google will land on if and when it launches the device. [...] The Rohan watch has a heart-rate monitor and offers basic health-tracking features such as step counting. In its current form the watch will require daily charging, according to a feedback document seen by Insider. One employee testing the watch lamented the charging was slow. Like the Apple Watch, Google's wearable will also use proprietary watchbands. [...]

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Google has removed The Pirate Bay and more than 100 related domains from its search results in the Netherlands. The search engine points to a local pirate site-blocking order that was forwarded by anti-piracy group BREIN. The order targets ISPs and doesn't name Google but the company chose to voluntarily comply. TorrentFreak reports: The reason for this broad removal is provided by Google itself. The search giant notes that the results were removed in response to a legal request. This 'request' came from local anti-piracy group BREIN and includes a copy of a Dutch site-blocking order. The order, issued in October last year, required Dutch ISPs Ziggo, KPN, and XS4ALL to block access to Pirate Bay mirrors and proxy sites. Google isn't listed as a party in this lawsuit, but a copy was sent to the search engine nonetheless. BREIN's request, at least the part that's available publicly, doesn't explain why it would apply to Google. However, BREIN informs us that it's not uncommon for Internet services to comply with orders that don't target them directly. A few weeks ago, Dutch ISPs agreed to a covenant where they promise to comply with site-blocking orders that are targeted at other ISPs. While Google is not part of this agreement, in this case it chose to follow the court order. "In essence, this is the same situation as recently agreed in the Dutch government-supported covenant between right holders and internet access providers," BREIN director Tim Kuik informs TorrentFreak. "Dutch case law also shows that once there is a contested court order against one access provider, courts do grant the same order against others if they refuse to conform to it even though they are not named in it." The report notes that this is "the first time that Google has complied with a pirate site blocking order without being named." BREIN has gone on to submit the legal paperwork to block six additional pirate sites, including proxies and mirrors.

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Google has pledged more restrictions on its use of data from its Chrome browser to address concerns raised by Britain's competition regulator about its plan to ban third-party cookies that advertisers use to track consumers. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating Google's plan to cut support for some cookies in Chrome - an initiative called the "Privacy Sandbox" -- because it is worried it will impede competition in digital advertising. Alphabet's Google has said its users want more privacy when they are browsing the web, including not being tracked across sites. Other players in the $250 billion global digital ad sector, however, have said the loss of cookies in the world's most popular browser will limit their ability to collect information for personalising ads and make them more reliant on Google's user databases. Google agreed earlier this year to not implement the plan without the CMA's sign-off, and said the changes agreed with the British regulator will apply globally.

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The U.S. General Services Administration said Friday that the Defense Department has solicited bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle for cloud contracts. From a report: The outreach comes after the Pentagon set aside a highly contested $10 billion contract that Microsoft had won and Amazon had challenged. The value of the new contracts is not known, but the Defense Department estimates it could run into the multiple billions of dollars. The new effort, known as Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC, appears like it will bolster the top global cloud infrastructure providers, Amazon and Microsoft, although it could also provide more credibility to two smaller entities. "The Government anticipates awarding two IDIQ contracts -- one to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and one to Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) -- but intends to award to all Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) that demonstrate the capability to meet DoD's requirements," the GSA said in its announcement. An indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, or IDIQ, contract includes an indefinite amount of services for a specific period of time.

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Google was so worried about Epic Games sidestepping its app store with Fortnite that it created a task force to confront the issue, according to a legal filing by the game developer. From a report: The task force was created after Epic began offering an Android version of the hugely popular game through Samsung Electronics's Galaxy Store and directly through Epic's website in 2018, giving users a way to bypass the Google Play store, according to the filing. Epic's efforts to avoid paying commissions on app stores from Google and Apple reached a flashpoint last year when both companies removed Fortnite and the game's creator sued them. The legal showdown has help draw criticism and regulatory scrutiny to the app store policies of Alphabet's Google and Apple, which are seen as a dominant force in mobile software. In October, Google countersued, arguing that Epic pushed an "unapproved" version of Fortnite on Android phones that placed users at risk. Google has said that its app store isn't a monopoly since the company allows other stores to run on Android devices, unlike Apple.

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Google researchers caught hackers targeting users in Hong Kong exploiting what were at the time unknown vulnerabilities in Apple's Mac operating system. According to the researchers, the attacks have the hallmarks of government-backed hackers. From a report: On Thursday, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), the company's elite team of hacker hunters, published a report detailing the hacking campaign. The researchers didn't go as far as pointing the finger at a specific hacking group or country, but they said it was "a well resourced group, likely state backed." "We do not have enough technical evidence to provide attribution and we do not speculate about attribution," the head of TAG Shane Huntley told Motherboard in an email. "However, the nature of the activity and targeting is consistent with a government backed actor." Erye Hernandez, the Google researcher who found the hacking campaign and authored the report, wrote that TAG discovered the campaign in late August of this year. The hackers had set up a watering hole attack, meaning they hid malware within the legitimate websites of "a media outlet and a prominent pro-democracy labor and political group" in Hong Kong. Users who visited those websites would get hacked with an unknown vulnerability -- in other words, a zero-day -- and another exploit that took advantage of a previously patched vulnerability for MacOS that was used to install a backdoor on their computers, according to Hernandez.

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Alphabet unit Google lost an appeal against a 2.42-billion-euro ($2.8-billion) antitrust decision on Wednesday, a major win for Europe's competition chief in the first of three court rulings central to the EU push to regulate big tech. From a report: Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager fined the world's most popular internet search engine in 2017 over the use of its own price comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals. The shopping case was the first of three decisions that saw Google rack up 8.25 billion euros in EU antitrust fines in the last decade. The company could face defeats in appeals against the other two rulings involving its Android mobile operating system and AdSense advertising service, where the EU has stronger arguments, antitrust specialists say. The court's support for the Commission in its latest ruling could also strengthen Vestager's hand in her investigations into Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

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