Data is becoming the new oil. Governments are under substantial pressure from the citizens to protect their data. Organizations such as Google, Facebook and Apple make daily headlines for manipulating data of the consumers by selling them to marketing agencies.

BRUSSELS, Sept 12: Google won a victory on Thursday after Europe’s top court said Germany has to notify the European Commission of a rule allowing publishers to demand a copyright fee from the U.S. tech giant for using news snippets.

MOSCOW, Sept 9: Russian state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said tech giants Google and Facebook had allowed political advertising during Sunday’s regional elections despite being asked to ban such publicity.

WASHINGTON, Sept 4: Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc, and its YouTube video service will pay $170 million (£138 million) to settle allegations that it broke federal law by collecting personal information about children, the Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON, Aug 28: Take the post down. Put it back up. Stop policing speech. Start silencing extremists.

Aug 2: Google will let Android device users in Europe choose their default search engine from four options, including Google search, the U.S. company said, as it tries to quash EU antitrust concerns and stave off fresh penalties.

Apple and Google are rolling out dozens of new emoji that include cute critters, of course, but also expand the number of images of human diversity.

May 30: Alphabet Inc’s Google on Wednesday banned apps on its app store that facilitate the sale of marijuana or related products, as part of a change to its content policy.

Your daily dose of missed important news of the day.

NEW YORK, May 20: Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware, software and technical services except those publicly available via open source licensing, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday, in a blow to the Chinese technology company that the U.S. government has sought to blacklist around the world.

BRUSSELS, April 15: The European Union’s bid to overhaul its two-decade old copyright rules cleared its final hurdle on Monday as EU governments backed the move forcing Google to pay publishers for news snippets and Facebook to filter out protected content.

LONDON, April 9: Tech giants like Facebook and Google came under increasing pressure in Europe on Monday when countries proposed stricter rules to force them to block extreme material such as terrorist propaganda and child porn.

BRUSSELS, March 23: Czech search engine Seznam urged Google on Friday to disclose more details about its plan to boost rival search apps in Android smartphones, saying it continued to lose users due to what it said were Google’s anti-competitive practices.

BRUSSELS, March 20: Google was fined 1.49 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on Wednesday for blocking rival online search advertisers, the third large European Union antitrust penalty for the Alphabet business in two only years.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 20: Alphabet Inc’s Google announced on Tuesday that it would launch this year a browser-based video game streaming service dubbed Stadia that attempts to capitalize on the company’s cloud technology and global network of data centers.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 12: Google paid former search executive Amit Singhal $35 million in an exit package when he was reportedly forced to resign after a sexual assault investigation, according to court documents released Monday.

NEW YORK, March 9: Senator Elizabeth Warren vowed on Friday to break up Amazon, Google and Facebook if elected U.S. president to promote competition in the technology sector.

Feb 21: Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Wednesday it had made an “error” in not disclosing that its Nest Secure home security system had a built-in microphone in its devices.

WELLINGTON, Feb 19: New Zealand’s government plans a new tax targeting online giants like Google and Facebook that earn plenty of money in the country but pay little tax.

WELLINGTON, Feb 18: New Zealand said on Monday that it plans to update its laws so it can tax revenue earned by multinational digital firms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, extending a global effort to bring global tech giants into the tax net.

Google defines conspiracy theory as “a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event”. The so-called “conspiracy theorists” have come up with several theories regarding famous events, celebrities, war etc. While they may most probably not be true (who knows), it’s always interesting to know what twisted notions people have about things that happen across the globe.

Dec 30: A lawsuit filed against Google by consumers who claimed the search engine’s photo sharing and storage service violated their privacy was dismissed on Saturday by a U.S. judge who cited a lack of “concrete injuries.”

SEATTLE, Dec 19: Google and Facebook have agreed to pay $455,000 to settle allegations that they failed to keep proper records about who was paying for campaign ads on their sites, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Tuesday.

LONDON, Nov 22: Google is expanding stricter requirements for political advertising to the European Union as part of efforts to curb misinformation and increase transparency ahead of the bloc’s elections next year.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 26: Google announced that it has fired 48 employees for sexual harassment during the past two years and sent them away without severance packages, hours after a news report that it had protected some male executives facing sexual misconduct allegations and offered them large sums to leave the company.

NEW YORK, Oct 9: Google is expected to introduce two new smartphones Tuesday, part of its continuing push to embed its digital services and Android software more deeply into peoples’ lives.

WASHINGTON DC, Oct 9: Google is closing the Google+ social network after an error exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users last spring, in an incident which the company never disclosed to those affected.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said it had absorbed the cost of the European Union fine and made $3.2 billion in profit in its latest quarter.

BRUSSELS, July 18: The European Union’s antitrust chief has fined Google a record $5 billion for abusing the market dominance of its Android mobile phone operating system.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jun 1: Google is blaming “vandalism” at Wikipedia for search results that incorrectly said the ideology of the California Republican Party included “Nazism.”

Google, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have been hit with privacy complaints within hours of GDPR taking effect Friday -- complaints that could carry fines of up to $9.3 billion in total.

Google Now supports relationships, allowing users to say commands like "Call Mom."

BANEPA, Oct 15: Nishan Chandi Shrestha and his two friends who were searching for job after completing their MBA have now become entrepreneurs based on their learning from 2015 earthquake. While volunteering to help the earthquake survivors, they found out that there was scarcity of bricks for reconstruction. That gave them an idea to look for an alternative to the traditional red brick.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 5: Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) on Wednesday unveiled the second generation of its Pixel smartphone along with new voice-enabled home speakers, redoubling its commitment to the hardware business as it competes with a surge of devices from Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O).

SAN FRANCISCO, June 20: Google is promising to be more vigilant about preventing terrorist propaganda and other extremist videos from appearing on its YouTube site amid intensifying criticism about the internet's role in mass violence.

NEWARK, N.J., June 19: Google is intensifying its campaign against online extremism, saying it will put more resources toward identifying and removing videos related to terrorism and hate groups.

KATHMANDU, May 29: Google has celebrated Republic Day of Nepal today keeping a doodle with Nepal flag.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 21:  Google wants to make it easier for you to find answers and recommendations on smartphones without having to think about what to ask its search engine.

Seven-year-old Chloe Bridgewater is a big dreamer and wants to work at tech industry giant, Google. Something she made clear in a letter she sent to ‘Google Boss’, Sundar Pichai.

Search engines have long been blamed for providing easy access to pirated content. Efforts made by copyright holders to curtail the problem have been in vain, causing billions of dollars in losses to the entertainment industry.

To protect consumers from misleading, inappropriate or harmful ads, Google on Friday announced that it took down 1.7 billion ads in 2016 that violated its advertising policies. The number is more than double the amount of bad ads it took down in 2015, the company said in its annual “Better Ads Report”.

Five teams have qualified to compete in a $30 million Google-backed competition to land and operate robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon, the XPrize Foundation said on Tuesday.

Google’s somewhat aging VoIP calling service, Google Voice, is preparing to roll out a significant update, the company has confirmed. Several Google Voice users this week reported seeing an upgrade link touting “the new Google Voice” on the web version of the service, along with a link that would let them try it out. Clearly, the message was posted too early because the upgrade didn’t come through when the link was clicked.

Accusing LinkedIn of flouting local laws that require internet firms to store data on citizens within the nation’s borders, the Russian authorities have asked Apple and Google to remove the professional networking site app from their online stores.

According to Google’s global trends report released Wednesday, the augmented reality game from Nintendo was the most-searched item online in 2016.

A product manager at Google has sued the company for its allegedly illegal confidentiality agreements, policies and practices that among other things prohibit employees from speaking even internally about illegal conduct and dangerous product defects for fear that such statements may be used in legal discovery during litigation or sought by the government.

Google is crossing a milestone in its quest to reduce pollution caused by its digital services that devour massive amounts of electricity.

NEW YORK, Nov 27: Someone renamed Donald Trump's midtown Manhattan building on Google Maps, and the new moniker isn't very flattering.

Google has made our life easy, quenching our relentless thirst for information. It is more than a search engine, but we sometimes fail to notice how it has improved human well being.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 15: Alphabet Inc's Google said on Monday it is working on a policy change to prevent websites that misrepresent content from using its AdSense advertising network, a move aimed at halting the spread of "fake news" and other types of misinformation on the internet.