Tag: Google

Google is set to roll out an update to Google Play Services tomorrow aimed at addressing the slow WiFi issue that some users of Chromecast and Google Home have experienced.  The issue cropped up a couple of weeks ago and at first, was thought to be an issue with the new Google Home Max.  It turns out that Google Play Services was the culprit.

For those that haven’t encountered the problem (good!), it comes down to Android devices on your network as well as Chromecast and Home devices.  Essentially what was happening is that Android devices on the same network would see the Cast enabled device and flood your network with packets.  That would cause slowness or instability.  It was effectively an internal DDoS attack.

Project Fi is rolling out a new unlimited data named Bill Protection.  It assures that individual users who use more than 6GB of data a month will be charged one flat rate and, like current Fi plans, if you use under 6GB in a month, you are credited back money for those unused gigs.

The plan is being rolled out today and it is for individual users as well as groups who are all on Project Fi.  For individual users, the maximum out of pocket per month would be $80 per month.  That is $60 for the 6GB plus $20 for the calls & text portion of the service.  If you go above those 6GB, you still only pay $80.  If you have two members in a group, the maximum cost is $135 with a data plan level of 10GB.  There is a calculator to help you understand the costs for your plan

As Google continues its relentless growth of its data and cloud services, the company announced today their plans to have three new undersea data cables by the end of 2019.  The cables are fully owned by Google and will provide data infrastructure support to various regions and the company’s Cloud Platform.

The announcement came as part of a larger GCP (Google Cloud Platform) announcement where the company indicated 5 new GCP locations will be coming online in 2018.  These will be Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Montreal, Netherlands, and Finland.  These new POPs will give GCP more localize control and cut down data haul times (measured in milliseconds) to those areas & regions.

The Google Home Mini has become one of Google’s most popular devices for a lot of reasons, price and size chiefly among them.  The donut sized device lends itself to be tucked away in any room to give you access to Google Assistant whenever you need it.  But for some rooms, having the Home Mini mounted on the wall makes more sense and frees up counter space in your bedroom or kitchen.

Incipio has been making a wall mount for the Google Home Mini almost since its release.  It’s been available directly from them on their site but it got a big boost this week with it now being available on the Google Store.  On either site, it is $14.99 and comes with everything you need to mount your Home Mini to a wall in your home.

For the second time in less than six months, it looks like Google is going to be revamping the online Google Store.  A report from Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources within Google, suggests that the revamp will have Google Assistant front-and-center in the redesign where Google will sell their devices and those of sister Alphabet companies like Nest.

The move is in response to Amazon and their own digital assistant, Amazon Alexa.  Amazon had a two year start on Google when it came to personal AI-driven assistants, with Amazon still holding an estimated 68% market share with their Amazon Echo devices compared to the 25% for Google with Google Home.  The disparity has the Mountain View company worried and they are going all out to meet Amazon head on in the space.

After being an exclusive to Verizon since October of last year, the Kinda Blue color option for the Google Pixel 2 is now available to everyone from Google or on Project Fi.  The pricing of the phone and the functionality of the phone is identical to any Pixel 2, it is just that you have a more unique color option than Black or White.

The Kinda Blue color was an exclusive for the phone from Verizon as being the other launch partner of the phone with Google.  That meant that the phone was locked to the carrier like the other Pixel phones they have sold.  Now with it being available from Google directly, you can get it unlocked.