How Google tracks your every move

Google share price slumps after poor results slip out

By Barry Collins

Posted on 18 Oct 2012 at 18:02

Trading in Google shares has been suspended after the early posting of its financial results caused its share price to crash.

The company's share price plunged from almost $760 to $687 before trading was suspended at the time of publication.

The sell-off came after the company reported below-par earnings ahead of schedule. The Securities & Exchange Commission filing was obviously posted in error, with a gap left for a quote from CEO Larry Page.

Google recorded a third-quarter profit of $2.18 billion, down from $2.73 billion for the same quarter in 2011.

Motorola is also becoming a drag on Google's results. The handset maker contributed $2.58 billion in revenue, but recorded an operating loss of $527 million - accounting for much of the difference between this and last year's profits.

There was more bad news in Google's core advertising business, with the average cost per click that advertisers paid to the company falling by 15%, largely because of the lower premiums attached to mobile advertising.

However, the number of paid clicks increased by 33% year-on-year.

Read more: Google share price slumps after poor results slip out | Enterprise | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/377647/google-share-price-slumps-after-poor-results-slip-out#ixzz29j3QetK3

Google updates struggling Chrome OS

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By David Bayon

Posted on 22 Aug 2012 at 17:01

Google has issued an update to Chrome OS, the cloud-based software that runs on the company's Chromebook and Chromebox devices - but are the changes too late to win sales?

Updating devices to the latest stable release brings several interface enhancements, including a new apps list, full Google Drive integration, and the ability to add custom wallpapers.

Rather than a full-screen grid of available apps, the new app list is a small box that pops up without obscuring running applications. It's ordered into pages of 16 apps each, and has its own in-built omnibar that searches apps and online, with search results mixed together. You can also pin apps directly to the Launcher - what Google calls the taskbar.

Google has added the ability to save files directly to Drive, rather than saving them locally and uploading them, making it much easier to work on files between devices. Saving a file opens a dialog window with a choice of tabs; choose Google Drive and it gives a neatly ordered folder and file tree that's arguably cleaner than the Drive web interface.

Choosing a desktop wallpaper beyond bundled samples is finally possible, and Google has moved the choice away from the browser and into the same file and folder dialog window.

Chromebook struggles

With a more user-friendly UI and vital offline apps added in the last big release in April, Chrome OS is gradually becoming a viable affordable alternative to a Windows laptop.

Whether that will translate into sales remains to be seen. By January, Google had placed 27,000 Chromebooks in schools in 41 US states, and in June it announced more than 500 school districts in the US and Europe were actively using the devices. Figures haven't been released for consumer sales, but are thought to be small.

In June, Google pushed its Chromebooks into 100 Best Buy stores in the US and an unspecified number of Dixons outlets in the UK. No sales figures have been released, but a study by online advertising firm Chitika of web traffic for a week in June put Chrome OS's share at a negligible 0.0119% - lower even than those using the Sony PlayStation 3 as an unlikely web browser.

Read more: Google updates struggling Chrome OS | Cloud | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/cloud/376534/google-updates-struggling-chrome-os#ixzz24JPMiYtz

If you've lost the driver discs

Remember, if you've lost the driver discs for your computer, then you can always go online and hunt them down from there.  For example, a client had misplaced her HP Photosmart printer discs and thought that she would have to go through the process of ordering a new one.  However, a simple Google search of HP Drivers pointed her in the right direction and she was able to install the drivers for her printer from the HP site.

Many manufacturers now have their drivers on their websites for easier customer use, so just type the search term in a Google Search and see what drivers come up for that manufacturer.