This Google Doodle featuring the Esperanto flag was exploited by scammers to spread malware, according to Barracuda Networks.

(Credit: Google)

Online scammers are taking advantage of the public's interest in the Google Doodle to spread malware, a security firm warned on Tuesday.

In so-called "SEO poisoning," scammers use search engine optimization techniques to increase the distribution of malware. They create special malware-rigged Web sites or hide malware on legitimate Web sites they've...

Google showed off its new lightweight operating system designed for Netbooks and cloud computing on Thursday. As anticipated, it will rely on many of the same security features and concepts used by the Chrome browser.

"The browser is the operating system. We've expanded the browser to...

Support for extensions to customize Chrome, the top-requested feature for Google's browser, has begun arriving for adventurous users.

Previously, extensions worked only for those who enabled the feature with a command line switch. Now the feature is enabled by default in the developer preview version of Chrome on Windows, Aaron Boodman, the Google engineer who oversees the extensions work, said in a blog post Wednesday.

"We're ready for a few more people to start using extensions--the kind ...

Gmail was down from about 12:30 p.m. PDT Tuesday to about 2:30 p.m. PDT, affecting millions of Gmail customers who depend on the service for everything from fantasy football roster updates to business-critical information. The problem was caused by a classic cascade in which servers became overwhelmed with traffic in rapid succession.

According ...

Google continues to move language translation into more and more of its products. On Thursday, it became a feature of Google Docs, letting anyone do an on-the-spot translation into one of 42 languages.

The new feature, tucked away in a settings menu, has the smarts to automatically detect in which language the original document is written. It then opens the translated version in a new window, allowing you to compare and contrast the two side by side, more easily checking whether the translati...

Linux users are known for being a somewhat finicky lot. Despite broader application support for Windows and a better user experience in Mac OS X, Linux "desktop" users swear by the open-source operating system (and sometimes swear at its competitors).

It's therefore somewhat telling that Linux users overwhelmingly choose Google as their preferred search engine, according to data released today by Chitika, an online advertising network. Chitika analyzed data from 163 million searches across it...

Google has begun work on a 64-bit version of Chrome for Linux, a move likely to whip Linux loyalists into a lather of excitement.

V8 is Chrome's engine for running programs written in the JavaScript language common on the Web. Chr...

Google Apps Script automates processes such as sending e-mails regarding spreadsheet data.

(Credit: Google Enterprise Blog)

Google officially rolled out its Apps Script functionality for enterprise users Wednesday, following a limited pilot release earlier this year.

Google Apps Script works mainly within the Spreadsheets app to automate various processes. For example, users can automate the sending of e-mails based on data held in a spreadsheet, or create scripts that communicate with other W...

"Once you set up sync from the Tools menu, Chrome will then upload and store your bookmarks in your Google Account. Anytime you add or change a bookmark, your changes will be sent to the cloud and immediately...

That's the sense I got reading through Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady's billet-doux to Chromium, the open-source project behind the Google Chrome browser. O'Grady has long been friendly to Mozilla and a dedicated user of Firefox. When his head is turned by another browser, it's time for concern.

Yes, Firefox...

Features that Google brought to its developer preview version of Chrome--themes, a revamped new-tab page, a tweaked Omnibox for searching and entering Web addresses, and support for HTML 5 video--have now arrived on the browser's better tested beta version intended for broader use.

Individually, these features in Chrome 3.0.195.4 (download) are niceties. Collectively, they show Google is steadily moving ahead with its browser project, which was ambitious even before Chrome OS arrived on the...

Google and On2 Technologies jointly announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire On2, a developer of video compression technology. The acquisition is expected to close later this year. On2 markets video compression technologies that power high-quality video in both desktop and mobile applications and devices and also holds a number of interesting patents.

Some of its codec designs are known as VP3, VP4, VP5, TrueMotion VP6, TrueMotion VP7...

Google ditched its browser sync plug-in for Firefox a year ago, but the idea is resurfacing in Chrome in a way that makes me think of possibilities the technology could hold for Chrome OS.

The company is preparing to build a system to synchronize bookmarks across different versions of Chrome, Google's Tim Steele said in a mailing list posting on Friday. Google envisions extending the feature to other data types, including passwords, Steele and fellow programmer Idan Avraham said in a follow...

"The O3D team is working on getting O3D integrated into the Chromium build, and we're close to being able to complete our first step towards integration," said programmer Greg Spencer in a mailing list announcement Wednesday about Chromium, the open-source project that underlies Chrome itself. "I'll be making the Windows build of Ch...

The techniques Google uses to protect Chrome users from browser-based attacks have taken on new importance with the company's plan to make the software the centerpiece of a Netbook operating system.

Two weeks ago, Google announced plans for the open-source Chrome OS designed for people who spend most of their time on the Web. The Google Chrome operating system is a "natural extension" of the Chrome browser, Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering d...

The sharp eyes over at the Google Operating System blog noticed that Google quietly changed some wording in Google Docs from "PDFs" to "files." While small, this could signal that Google Docs may soon support the viewing and editing of other file types, and possibly double as an online storage service--like the fabled GDrive.

Google has long-allowed users to upload PDFs to Docs. These could be viewed in Google's online viewer, but not edited. However, the service would not allow other items ...

New versions of Google Chrome are out, fixing bugs and patching security holes in both the stable build and the beta build.

Two serious security flaws have been plugged. One had allowed for malicious code exploitation within the Chrome tab sandbox. Found by the Google security team, the threat was serious enough that Google has declined to be more specific until "a majority of users are up to date with the fix," the company said in a blog post.

A second security risk caused by memory corru...

Essentially, nothing has changed, said Google's Andy Rubin at a press conference Friday morning highlighting Google and T-Mobile's partnership on the launch of the new MyTouch 3G smartphone. "You need different technology for different products," Rubin said, explaining that Google's approach to product development means that projec...

Google has long worked on expanding its reach beyond mere Internet search. And as many had suspected, it confirmed late Tuesday night that it plans to develop a lightweight operating system based on Linux and Web standards for personal computers.

Why? Well, Google's standard response to any question about why it's working on something other than search is to de...

That Google operating system rumor is coming true--and it's based on Google's browser, Chrome.

The company announced Google Chrome OS on its blog Tuesday night, saying lower-end PCs called Netbooks from unnamed manufacturers will include it in the second half of 2010. Linux will run under the covers of the open-source project, but the applications will run on the Web itself.

In other words, Google's cloud-computing ambitions just got a lot bigger.

"Google Chrome OS is being created for peo...

The computer security industry historically borrows military defense concepts to combat digital threats, literally creating war rooms where experts follow attacks in progress on huge screens with phones ringing off the hook. 

Not so at Google's Postini e-mail security service provider unit. Instead, computerized systems monitor 3 billion messages per day that flow in and out of customer systems and pass through Postini's thousands of machines in data centers around the U.S. and in Europe befo...

Android and iPhone developers looking for an extra source of revenue will soon have an advertising option, sponsored by Google.

Google's AdSense program--in which it sells and distributes ads to third-party publishers--is coming to mobile devices as a beta program, the company announced Wednesday. A small group of developers have been testing this program but now anyone can apply, said Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management, in a blog post.

Mobile apps are one of the hottest top...

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Those who think HTML tags are low-level technology should realize they can have a huge impact on the bottom line.

By finding an HTML tag that allowed Google to offer ads on the right hand side of its search page without delaying page loading times, Google was able to cash in without harming the user experience, said Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and experience, at the O'Reilly Velocity 2009 conference. There aren't a whole lot of "billion-dollar HTML tags...

Imagine stumbling upon a picture of a beautiful site in Europe filled with ancient ruins, one you didn't recognize at first glance while searching for vacation destinations online. Google has developed a way to let a person provide Google with the URL for that image and search a database of over 40 million geotagged photos to match that image to verified landmarks, giving you a destination for that next trip.

The project is still ...

Last week, PBWorks founder David Weekly found out from some customers that his hosted collaboration site had been blacklisted by Symantec for hosting malware and, thus, visitors to any of the 10 million pages on PBWorks were being warned that the site wasn't safe.

"(Damn) you, Norton Safe Web. Whenever one file on one PBWorks space has a virus, all of PBworks is marked unsafe?!" a frustrated Weekly wrote on Twitter and Facebook on Thursday. In a follow-up interview, he said: "That's tarnishi...

So the Googlies are, allegedly, gnashing and wailing.

Their ears, their nostrils, even their fully formed eyebrows are twitching beyond all human control.

Though I am not one of those who necessarily subscribes to the idea that Googlies ever have extreme emotions, the rumor is that they are in a fizzy tizzy. Because of Bing, the new search fragrance from Microsoft.

According to a report, Google's Sergey Brin has ordered some of his finest brains to take Bing apart as if it were a secretly smu...

And Google's ability to walk away from high-cost AdSense deals are one reason those margins are headed higher. Lindsay writes in a ...

Specifically, Google is trying out a new way to present search results that uses the JavaScript programming language and the related Ajax interface technology, not just regular HTML, to display the information, Google spokesman Eitan Bencuya said.

The reason: with the Ajax-enhanced search res...