There will be blood on streets, Google execs warn employees about layoffs

San Francisco, Aug 13 (IANS) As Big Tech companies begin to lay off employees in the global economic downturn, Google executives have reportedly warned workers to either boost performance or prepare to leave as "there will be blood on the streets" if the next quarterly earnings are not good.

In a company message viewed by Insider, Google Cloud sales leadership has threatened employees with an "overall examination of sales productivity and productivity in general" and that if next quarter results "don't look up, there will be blood on the streets."

If third-quarter results "don't look up, [then] there will be blood on the streets," according to a message conveyed to the sales team. The warning was first reported by Insider.

Google employees are "fearful of layoffs" after the company quietly extended its hiring freeze this month without making an announcement, reports The New York Post.

The company has now reportedly warned employees with layoffs if they don't produce results.

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees late last month that they must improve productivity due to fierce economic headwinds.

Pichai said that he wanted to solicit ideas from his employees on how to get "better results faster."

"There are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the head count we have," he was quoted as saying.

Google in July put a freeze on hiring for two weeks to review its headcount needs and decide on future course of action. The company earlier announced to slow down hirings for the rest of the year.

According to Pichai, "it's clear we are facing a challenging macro environment with more uncertainty ahead".

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue for the April-June period (Q2).

Revenue growth slowed to 13 per cent from 62 per cent in the same quarter last year.

Other tech companies that have either laid off employees or slowed hiring in the current economic downturn include LinkedIn, Meta, Oracle, Twitter, Nvidia, Snap, Uber, Spotify, Intel and Salesforce, among others.

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US bill that couldve allowed parents to sue social media companies addictive features fizzles out

San Francisco, Aug 13 (IANS) California lawmakers have rejected a much-anticipated bill allowing parents to sue social media platforms over their addictive features for kids has failed in the legislature.

The Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act (AB 2408) failed to pass out of committee for a full state Senate vote, reports Miami Herald.

The bill would have let local prosecutors sue social media platforms for up to $250,000 per violation for knowingly using tools that can make children addicted to their products.

"As we've said from the start, protecting children online is a priority but must be done responsibly and effectively," Dylan Hoffman, executive director for California and the Southwest of TechNet was quoted as saying.

"We're glad to see that this bill won't move forward in its current form. If it had, companies would've been punished for simply having a platform that kids can access," Hoffman said in the report that came out on Friday.

Supporters said that such rules are necessary to protect children from companies who turn a blind eye to the harm caused to their mental health by social media addiction.

The Bill applied to social networks that generate less than $100 million annually or are primarily intended for video games.

"I am extremely disappointed. The bill's death means a handful of social media companies will be able to continue their experiment on millions of California kids, causing generational harm," said bill author Jordan Cunningham.

The demise of the bill comes at a time when US President Joe Biden has called for new child safety protections online.

Critics of the bill argued that it would have pushed services toward privacy-threatening age verification.

"It hurts the kids by depriving them of valuable social outlets and educational resources," according to Internet policy expert Eric Goldman.

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Google Search shows which streaming services have specific games

San Francisco, Aug 13 (IANS) Tech giant Google's Search will show users what cloud streaming services have a particular video game, building on existing support for movies, TV, and music.

According to 9To5Google, for years, Google Search has acted as an aggregator of the world's streaming services.

If you want to watch a particular show, users can use Google Search or Google TV to get accurate info about what services it is on, the report said.

For example, searching for The Simpsons reveals that the show can be streamed from various apps, including Disney+ and Hulu, or purchased from multiple stores, it added.

In the last few days, Google Search has expanded this capability to include support for video games.

However, rather than including links to various consoles' storefronts or to the many PC gaming retailers, Google is strictly focusing on cloud gaming.

As per the report, it makes perfect sense, given Google has skin in the game thanks to Stadia and Google Cloud's Immersive Stream.

Oddly enough, the list of services seems to vary between desktop and mobile. Searching for "Destiny 2" on Android only brings up a result for Stadia, while the same search on the desktop shows both GeForce Now and Stadia.

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Multiversus Season 1 With New Battle-Pass System Starts on August 15

Multiversus Season 1 releases August 15 with a new battle-pass system. The new season will add Morty from Adult Swim's Rick and Morty animated series to the character roster on August 23. Content drop will be spread out throughout the season.

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Facebook sees massive drop in teen usage in last 7 years

New Delhi, Aug 12 (IANS) A new survey of American teenagers (ages 13 to 17) by the Pew Research Center has revealed a worrying trend for Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook as the share of teens who use the social media platform has plummeted from 71 per cent in 2014-15 to 32 per cent as of now.

Chinese short-form video platform TikTok has rocketed in popularity and is now a top social media platform for teens on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

Some 67 per cent of teens say they ever use TikTok, with 16 per cent of all teens saying they use it almost constantly.

Google-owned YouTube tops the 2022 teen online landscape among the platforms, as it is used by 95 per cent of teens.

TikTok is next on the list of platforms that were asked about in this survey (67 per cent), followed by Instagram and Snapchat, which are both used by about six in 10 teens.

After those platforms come to Facebook with 32 per cent and smaller shares who use Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr, the Pew Research Center survey found.

This is the top reason why Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has placed his energies in making its platforms more like TikTok, and Instagram Reels now has a higher annual revenue run rate for ads ($1 billion) than Facebook/Instagram Stories at identical times post-launch.

"Changes in the social media landscape since 2014-15 extend beyond TikTok's rise and Facebook's fall. Growing shares of teens say they are using Instagram and Snapchat since then. Conversely, Twitter and Tumblr saw declining shares of teens who report using their platforms," said the survey.

Two of the platforms the Center tracked in the earlier survey, Vine and Google+, no longer exist.

"There are some notable demographic differences in teens' social media choices. For example, teen boys are more likely than teen girls to say they use YouTube, Twitch and Reddit, whereas teen girls are more likely than teen boys to use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat," the findings showed.

In addition, higher shares of Black and Hispanic teens report using TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp compared with White teens.

This study also explored the frequency with which teens are on each of the top five online platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.

"Fully 35 per cent of teens say they are using at least one of them 'almost constantly'. Teen TikTok and Snapchat users are particularly engaged with these platforms, followed by teen YouTube users in close pursuit," the survey showed.

A quarter of teens in the US who use Snapchat or TikTok say they use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the same.

When looking at teens overall, 19 per cent say they use YouTube almost constantly, 16 per cent say this about TikTok, and 15 per cent about Snapchat.

Since 2014-15, there has been a 22 percentage point rise in the share of teens who report having access to a smartphone (95 per cent now and 73 per cent then).

"While teens' access to smartphones has increased over roughly the past eight years, their access to other digital technologies, such as desktop or laptop computers or gaming consoles, has remained statistically unchanged," the report noted.

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Google expands AI-based content advisories to more searches

New Delhi, Aug 12 (IANS) Google has announced to expand content advisories to searches where its AI systems don't have high confidence in the overall quality of the results available for the search.

Pandu Nayak, Google Fellow and Vice President, Search, said that this doesn't mean that no helpful information is available, or that a particular result is low-quality.

"These notices provide context about the whole set of results on the page, and you can always see the results for your query, even when the advisory is present," he said in a blog post late on Thursday.

"We have deeply invested in both information quality and information literacy on Google Search and News, and today we have a few new developments about this important work," said Nayak.

Google also introduced the latest AI model, called Multitask Unified Model (MUM), to improve search result quality in 'snippets' which are shown on top of the page for searches.

"Our systems can check snippet callouts (the word or words called out above the featured snippet in a larger font) against other high-quality sources on the web, to see if there's a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same thing," explained Nayak.

The company said it has trained systems to get better at detecting false premises, which are not very common but are cases where it's not helpful to show a featured snippet.

"We've reduced the triggering of featured snippets in these cases by 40 per cent with this update," said Google.

Google is also adding more context to the 'About this result' feature, such as how widely a source is circulated, online reviews about a source or company, whether a company is owned by another entity, or even when our systems can't find much info about a source.

Google also announced a partnership with MediaWise at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs to develop information literacy lesson plans for teachers of middle and high school students.

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Google Meet updated with new features after merging with Duo

San Francisco, Aug 11 (IANS) After announcing that Google has combined two of its video-calling apps -- Duo and Meet -- into a single platform, the tech giant said this upgrade gives everyone access to new features like scheduling and joining meetings, virtual backgrounds, in-meeting chat and more, in addition to your current video calling features.

The company said additional meeting features let users start an instant video call with their entire study group or connect with their colleagues at a recurring scheduled time.Before they join a meeting, they can change their background or apply visual effects.

During the meeting, they will also be able to use in-meeting chat and captions for more ways to participate.

"We are also launching live sharing for Google Meet. Live sharing allows all meeting participants to interact with the content that is being shared," Dave Citron, Director of Product Management, Google Duo and Google Meet, said in a blogpost.

"So whether you are co-watching videos on YouTube, curating a playlist on Spotify, taking turns while playing games like Heads Up!, UNO! Mobile or Kahoot! During an ice breaker, everyone will be able to join in on the action," Citron added.

Over the past few weeks, the company said it has started rolling out these new features to the Duo app, and now, users are beginning to see their app name and icon updated to Google Meet.

This upgrade will take place throughout the month across mobile and tablet devices and will come later for other devices. To ensure a smooth transition, keep your app updated to the latest version.

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