What's the difference between Google and Alphabet?

On 2 October, 11 years after its creation, Google officially became a subsidiary of a new holding company called Alphabet. The Google brand remains dedicated to internet-related products and services, while other projects have been spun off into their own companies under the Alphabet umbrella.

Alphabet's website, the quirkily domain-named abc.xyz -- alphabet.com was already owned by a division of BMW -- is currently home to a letter from CEO Larry Page, a link to Google's investor information site, and little else. Page's letter explains the meaning behind the new name: "a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity’s most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search."

The move, first announced in August and finalised late last week, also saw Sundar Pichai, formerly product chief at Google, is now CEO of the new-look Google.

Alphabet Inc. is run by Google's original co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, acting as CEO and president respectively. All Google shares have been converted into Alphabet stock, which will continue to appear on stock tickers as GOOG and GOOGL.

Most of Alphabet's staff still work for Google, which remains the corporate home of Android, YouTube, Google Apps, Google Maps and Google Ads, as well as the eponymous search engine that started it all. Another seven companies have been established as Alphabet subsidiaries. These are Calico, Google Life Sciences, Nest Labs, Google Fiber, Google X, Google Ventures and Google Capital.

Google X, previously Google's experimental research division, is now its own company under Alphabet, with current projects including the Wing drone delivery system, self-driving cars, Project Aura (formerly Google Glass) and Project Loon, which aims to enable universal internet access using a network of balloons carrying wireless access points. Google X is also home to the Deep Dream neural network project for speech and image recognition.

Calico, short for "California Life Company", is involved in biotech research focussed on longevity, with the goal of developing technology to "slow aging and counteract age‑related diseases." Google Life Sciences, formerly a division of Google X,  also operates in the health sector, with projects including glucose-checking contact lenses for people with diabetes, a project to build a genetic and molecular blueprint of what a healthy human should look like and nanoparticles designed to detect early signs of disease such as cancer.

Google's machine learning Inbox can now reply to your emails

Machine learning can now reply to your emails.

A new feature in Google's Inbox app can recognise the content of emails and tailor responses using natural language, without a human being having to do a thing.

Machine learning is used to scan emails and understand if they need replying to or not, before creating three response options. An email asking about vacation plans, for example, could be replied to with "No plans yet", "I just sent them to you" or "I'm working on them".

The feature, dubbed Smart Reply, is only available in Google's Inbox app for Android and iOS. It has been designed for emails that can be answered with a short reply such as "I'll send it to you" or 'I don't, sorry'.

Google said the system would enable users to reply to emails in just two taps -- one tap to open it, one tap to select a response and send.

The responses a user chooses, or doesn't choose, will also improve future suggestions. According to Google software engineer Bálint Miklós, who first came up with the idea, the system used to suggest "I love you" as a suitable response to workplace emails.

This was as a result of what Smart Reply had learned from the emails it had scanned. As "Thanks", "Sounds good" and "I love you" were common responses, it gambled on them when it was unsure of what to say. The adorable anomaly has since been removed.

Smart Reply is built on a pair of recurrent neural networks, one that encodes incoming emails and one that comes up with possible responses. Each word is captured in turn to create a list of numbers, known as a thought vector, that gives the machine learning system the gist of what is being said. From this, the second network builds a grammatically correct response one word at a time.

"Amazingly, the detailed operation of each network is entirely learned, just by training the model to predict likely responses," explained Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist at Google.

Google tracks everything you do: here's how to delete it

It's no secret that Google knows a lot about you. This week it made headlines when the internet realised that every time someone speak to Google, it records their voice. And you can listen back to it. But that isn't the only bit of Google data that users with the right know-how can track down.

One of the more interesting places to check out what Google really knows about you is to head over to its ad settings page where (if you're signed into your Google account) you'll see a profile Google has built for you based on your search history, YouTube history and interests. So, for example, it might know that you're female, aged 18-24 and interested in banking, consumer electronics, mobile phones, shooter games, rap and hip hop and toys.

Google doesn't make a huge song and dance about its in-depth knowledge of its users, but at the same time it doesn't keep it a secret either. Here's how to find out what Google knows and take control of your data.

GOOGLE SAVES EVERY VOICE SEARCH

Google's voice search-saving habits have been reported on many times.

Anyone who use Google's voice search or the voice-activated assistant, Google Now, have their searches stored so that more relevant ads are served and search features are steadily improved -- in the same way you'd expect from regular Google search.

And a lot of people don't realise that many of these searches are actually recorded. This means users are able to listen back to exactly what they searched for by listening to what they said and how they said it.
How to delete it: If you've used any of Google's opt-in voice features for yourself, then head to Google's Voice & Audio Activity page to review your voice searches and listen back to them. Be warned, this could be interesting, funny or just plain cringe-worthy.

To delete this database of embarrassing searches select one or more of the recordings from the check box beside them and then click "delete" at the top of the screen.

GOOGLE SAVES ALL YOUR SEARCHES

Probably the least surprising of the lot, but Google has all of your search history stored up.

How to delete it: If you'd rather not have a list of ridiculous search queries stored up, then head to Google's history page, click Menu (the three vertical dots) and then hit Advanced -> All Time -> Delete.

If you want to stop Google tracking your searches for good, head to the activity controls page and toggle tracking off.

GOOGLE TRACKS AND RECORDS YOUR LOCATION

As well as recording your searches and your voice, Google has also been keeping tabs on your location.

Google's location history, or timeline page, serves up a Google Map and allows you to select specific dates and times and see where you were. Its accuracy depends on whether you were signed into your Google account and carrying a phone or tablet at the time.

How to delete it: When you visit the timeline page you can hit the settings cog in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and select delete all from there.

There's also the option to pause location history by hitting the big button in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
But this one is a little trickier to completely get rid of, because to stop it happening in future you'll need to opt out of both location tracking and location reporting with your device -- whether you're running Android or iOS.

Google's quantum computer is 100 million times faster than your PC

Initial tests found that Google and Nasa's quantum computing system was unable to outperform regular computers. But now Google has announced that its D-Wave computer has outperformed a traditional desktop by 108 times -- making it one hundred million times faster. 

"What a D-Wave does in a second would take a conventional computer 10,000 years to do," said Hartmut Nevan, director of engineering at Google, during a news conference to announce the results.

The machine "raced" a conventional single-processor computer in a number of tasks, and outperformed it in every case, says Google. It has posted the results in a research paper, which is yet to be peer reviewed. 

Google's interest in the D-Wave machine, which has also been invested in by Microsoft and IBM, is due to the huge power quantum computers could potentially unlock. The so called "weirdness" of quantum mechanics -- where the basic laws of physics break down -- has the potential to solve long standing problems in in machine intelligence and materials science. On Nasa's part, the computer could help schedule rocket launches or generate complex simulations of space missions. 

This is the next generation of Google Glass

Google has revealed the next generation of its Google Glass head-mounted display.
The Enterprise Edition of the glasses has been rumoured for some time, but has now been confirmed in a filling with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

While the original Google Glass was aimed at consumers, the Enterprise Edition is designed for use in the workplace. The redesigned glasses have a larger glass prism, 5GHz Wi-Fi, a faster Intel Atom processor and are waterproof.

The filing with the FCC also confirms the new Google Glass will have a foldable hinge, making them easier to pocket.
The overall design of the new wearable isn't too dissimilar to the original Glass. 9to5Google also reports the device will be compatible with a Google-made external battery pack, which attaches magnetically.

Google's robot cars would have crashed 13 times if it wasn't for humans

Google's self-driving cars aren't perfect, but they're still better than human drivers. The company has revealed that its human drivers had to take control of its robotic vehicles 341 times win the last 14 months, after a total of 424,999 miles (468 682,361km) of driving.

As part of the agreement to test self-driving cars in California each company involved -- so far Bosch, Delphi, Google, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, andVolkswagen Group -- were asked to submit "disengagement" incidents, where a human has had to take control of the car. Disengagements can happen when a human takes control of the car, or the car tells the human it is switching to manual mode.

The cars California experienced 272 failures . If humans hadn't taken over driving, they would have crashed 13 times, the company has said. 

So no, self-driving cars aren't perfect yet. But the amount of times humans are needed is decreasing. The available reports show Google had the most disengagements with 341, although it drove the most miles, Nissan's autonomous vehicles drove 1,485 miles and disengaged 106 times, Delphi drove 16,662 miles with 405 human takeovers and Tesla didn't report any, according to Ars Technica.

However, Google said it is only reporting the 'significant' times when humans were forced to take over as the reality is there are "many thousands" of occasions" where control is taken.

"Safety is our highest priority and Google test drivers are trained to take manual control in a multitude of situations, not only when safe operation "requires" that they do so," the company said in its report of September 2014 to November 2015.

The majority of the disengagements from Google came after the car detected a technology problem within itself. These ranged from sensors malfunctioning to software problems. On 23 different occasions humans had to take over because of "a recklessly behaving road user" and eight times they had to "disengage for incorrect behaviour prediction of other traffic participants"

"Disengagements are a critical part of the testing process that allows our engineers to expand the software’s capabilities and identify areas of improvement," Google said.

"Our objective is not to minimise disengagements; rather, it is to gather, while operating safely, as much data as possible to enable us to improve our self-driving system."

Mini Street View filmed with tiny cameras

Google Maps goes beyond day-to-day navigation; you can tour art galleries, navigate the vertical climes of Yosemite and even catch Pokemon. Now, for the first time, Street View is getting distinctly smaller.Using a modified camera, Google has created a 360-degree map of Miniatur Wunderland in Germany -- the world's largest miniature railway.

Boasting 13,000km of track and 200,000 exceptionally well-behaved citizens, Miniatur Wunderland contains tiny reconstructions of Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and Hamburg Airport. At the heart of the display is Knuffingen, a fictional city in the depths of the Swiss Alps. Rustic markets, casinos and airports are all recreated in incredible detail.