Hackers force Thousands of Google Chromecast Devices, Smart TVs to play PewDiePie Videos

Thousands of Google’s Chromecast streaming adapters, Google Home smart speakers and smart TVs with built-in Chromecast technology were targeted by hackers Wednesday, who forced the devices to play a video of controversial YouTube star PewDiePie. The hack attack, which began Wednesday morning, took advantage of badly configured routers to find streaming devices exposed to the …

HTTP-over-QUIC experimental protocol will be renamed to HTTP/3

QUIC stands for “Quick UDP Internet Connections” and is, itself, Google’s attempt at rewriting the TCP protocol as an improved technology that combines HTTP/2, TCP, UDP, and TLS (for encryption), among many other things. The HTTP-over-QUIC experimental protocol will be renamed to HTTP/3 and is expected to become the third official version of the HTTP …

Nigeria’s Main One Cable blamed for routing Google traffic through China

Nigeria’s Main One Cable Co has taken responsibility on Tuesday for a glitch that temporarily caused some Google global traffic to be misrouted through China, saying it accidentally caused the problem during a network upgrade. The issue surfaced on Monday afternoon as internet monitoring firms ThousandEyes and BGPmon said some traffic to Alphabet Inc’s Google …

Sundar Pichai says Google is still considering the Dragonfly, censored search engine in China

Google is still considering whether to launch a censored version of its search product in China, as confirmed by CEO Sundar Pichai during a recent event. “It’s very early. We don’t know whether we could or would do this in China, but we felt it was important for us to explore,” Pichai stated at the …

Google+ to be culled after a massive data breach that exposed 500,000 users’ data

Google has announced the shutdown of its social media network Google+ following a significant data breach that compromised the private data of hundreds of thousands of users. The tech giant revealed that a security vulnerability within one of Google+’s People APIs allowed third-party developers to access sensitive information for over 500,000 users. This exposed data …

Rights groups ask Google to cancel its plan to launch Dragonfly, a censored version in China

Leading human rights groups are calling on Google to cancel its plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, which they said would violate the freedom of expression and privacy rights of millions of internet users in the country. A coalition of 14 organizations — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, …

Trump administration might explore regulating Google searches for bias

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it would explore regulating Google — an effort that would challenge protections around free speech online — in response to the president’s allegations that the tech giant manipulates its search results to prominently display negative stories about him and other Republicans. In the United States, regulating search results could …