Google is an American multinational technology corporation focused on information technology, online advertising, search engine technology, email, cloud computing, software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" by the BBC, and is one of the world's most valuable brands. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., has been described as a Big Tech company. Wikipedia
Website: about.google
Owned by: Alphabet
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- Oct 16: New comedy podcast Pacific Dark from RNZ, dives headfirst into the stories that keep people awake at night, and the ones you probably shouldn't Google at 2am. Hosted by Pasifika comedians UceGang (Simeon Fiapule) and Just the Norms (Regan Foa’i), they investigate supernatural encounters, haunted locations and Pacific urban legends laced with fictional elements, letting loose with their jokes, turning some truly wacky stories into crack-up sessions.
- Oct 12: It's emerged that Apple acqui-hired some of the team behind Huxe, an AI "podcast" app, in June. Huxe has closed, but its website is still visible - the service made "podcasts" from your email, calendar and anything else you wanted, and you could ask it to generate you a personal "podcast" about anything. If you think it sounds similar to Google's NotebookLM, you'd be right: Huxe was founded by former Google developers who worked on that project. Apple's deal lets them make job offers to specific employees, and allows them a licence to use the technology.
- Sep 22: Far from being a friend of podcast creators, Apple and Google are making money from an ad-skipping podcast app, Podnews can reveal today. The app, called Podtastic, takes podcasts and automatically skips the ads on-device, charging $9.99 a month - none of which goes to creators, but up to 30% goes direct to Google and Apple's own app stores. Automatically skipping the ads in this way means that advertising won't work, and creators will see lower renewals and unhappier advertisers; but because the skipping takes place on-device, US case law suggests that the behaviour of the app could be considered legal, if clearly unethical.
- Sep 21: Mediastream has lost its IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines compliance. It was last certified in June 2024, and was removed from the list of companies on Thursday. The company, based in Chile, still claims it's compliant on its website, which also promotes that it can get your show listed in Google Podcasts.
- Aug 6: It does beg the question: what is Apple Podcasts doing about Roku and Android TV, which dominate the connected TV world? Apple Podcasts on an Apple TV will get access to video podcasting in the next few months - but isn't available at all from a Google TV streamer or a Roku device.
Data credits: Podnews newsletter, Wikipedia