News

• French police end missing persons searches, suggest using Facebook instead

  The latest victim of disruption by Internet technologies is a veteran of World War I: the missing persons search.

• Google launching new fund for later-stage tech investments

  Google is launching a new fund through which it will make later-stage investments in technology companies, a Google executive said Wednesday.

• Chinese rival bolsters search engine against Baidu with Alibaba partnership

  China's Baidu has long dominated the country's search market. But a local rival to the company is bolstering its own search services with the help of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.

• Yahoo returns to list of most valuable brands

  Yahoo again ranks as one of the world's 100 most valuable brands.

• Yahoo revamps Flickr and offers a terabyte of free storage

  Yahoo has made some radical changes to its Flickr photo sharing service, which now has a more photo-filled interface and comes with a free terabyte of storage so that users can upload images at their original resolution.

• The good, the bad and the ugly of Tumblr under Yahoo

  Yahoo has promised "not to screw up" Tumblr now that it has acquired the freewheeling blogging site. But there are still several ways Tumblr could get better, and worse, as a Yahoo-owned company.

• Yahoo Japan says 22 million user IDs may have been stolen

  Yahoo Japan, the country's largest Web portal, said up to 22 million user IDs may have been leaked during a hack that was discovered last week.

• At Google I/O, developer services hogged the spotlight

  Forget Glass, self-driving cars or a smartwatch. Developers, not physical consumer products, were Google's darlings at the company's annual I/O conference this week.

• Yahoo calls press conference amid Tumblr acquisition rumors

  Yahoo has called a mystery press event in New York City on Monday afternoon, hot on the heels of rumors that it plans to buy Tumblr for US$1 billion.

• At Google I/O, Glass wearers say 'trust us'

  Google is facing some tough questions from Congress over the privacy concerns raised by Glass, its fledgling augmented reality system for recording and receiving information on the fly. But on the ground at the company's I/O conference for developers, attendees are largely enthusiastic about the technology.

• Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr try out social networking apps for Glass

  While Google promotes its Glass head-mounted display as a new way for people to receive and document information on the fly, several social networking companies including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr now want a piece of the action, by offering social applications on the device.

• German online copyright law to take effect in August

  A German online copyright law that will give publishers the exclusive right to the commercial use of their publications on the Internet will come into effect on Aug. 1.

• Google to boost speed, cut data use on mobile devices

  Google has shown off new features that can reduce data consumption and improve Web performance on Android-powered mobile devices, drawing partly from capabilities already supported in the Chrome desktop OS.

• A soft-spoken Larry Page makes surprise appearance at Google I/O

  Google CEO Larry Page made a surprise appearance Wednesday at the Google I/O conference, where he overcame problems with his throat to take questions from developers in the audience for almost an hour.

• Google brings voice-enabled search to the desktop

  Just by saying "Okay Google," people will soon be able to search using voice commands on their Chrome-powered desktop and laptop computers, Google said Wednesday.