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The Google graveyard: Remembering three dead search engines
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first show on American television to use the word "Google" as a transitive verb. It was 2002, in the fourth episode of the show's seventh and final season. Buffy, Willow, Xander and the gang are trying to help Cassie, a high school student who cryptically says she's going to die next week. In Buffy's dining room, they search through hard copies of Cassie's medical records and find nothing noteworthy. Willow, tapping away on a thick white iBook, turns to Buffy and asks, "Have you Googled her yet?" Xander replies, jokingly, "Willow, she's 17." "It's a search engine," Willow explains, because that's something that had to be done in 2002.
Google's Pixel Buds translation will change the world
Google's Pixel 2 event in San Francisco on Wednesday had a lot of stuff to show off and most of it was more of the same: the next iteration of the flagship smartphone, new Home speakers and various ways of entwining them more deeply into your smart home, a new laptop that's basically a Yoga running ChromeOS and a body camera that I'm sure we've seen somewhere before. Yawn. We saw stuff like this last time and are sure to see more of it again at next year's event.
Yahoo shutting down a dozen products, including AltaVista and Axis
As expected, in amongst the high profile acquisitions that have thus far marked the next step in Yahoo's evolution, the web company is doing some serious house cleaning. EVP Jay Rossiter took to the exclamatory search company's Tumblr to announced a whole slew of shut downs. The list includes properties old and new, from AltaVista to Yahoo Axis, along with the sunset date of each one (July 8th and June 28th, respectively). There are a dozen properties in all -- you can check out the full list of obits in the source link below.
Apple snags Amazon's A9 head to lead Siri team
Companies poach each other's employees and execs all the time. But, Apple's latest score, William Stasior, is a pretty substantial one. For the last six years he has served as president and CEO of A9, Amazon's search and ad subsidiary. Before that he held other search-related roles at Amazon and worked at AltaVista, departing around the time of the Yahoo! acquisition. In his new role at Cupertino, Stasior will be leading the Siri team. The MIT Ph.D will be taking the helm of the voice-powered virtual assistant, which has led some to speculate that Apple could be stepping up search and advertising game. Considering the on-going drama between Mountain View and the purveyors of all-things-i, we wouldn't be entirely surprised to see the two go head to head on Google's home turf. But we'd say such a move would be a long term goal, at best.
Widget Watch: Web Translator 2.0
Web Translator is a widget that allows you to translate a web page or text using either Google's Translation service or AltaVista's Babel Fish service. Usage is pretty simple: enter a URL or text, chose the languages and off you go.This widget seems like a nice addition to Apple's built-in translation widget which only does text.
