Google Account

After hearing about Google's plans to unify 60 of its services' data under one privacy policy and share information between those services, The Washington Post's Ryan Kellett whipped up a quick poll of users to gauge reaction to the news. Of the 13,541 readers who took our non-scientific poll, by midday Wednesday, 66 percent said that they will cancel their Google accounts because of the changes. Fifteen percent said they weren't jumping ship and 19 percent said they had yet to decide.

Apple users get the chance to see what all the fuss over Google Now is about, thanks to an update from the company that brings Google's version of the personal assistant to the iPhone and iPad. The app plugs into users' Google accounts to offer personalized information — traffic status, nearby restaurants or packages you may be expecting — based on information pulled from your smartphone's location, Gmail account or Google Calendar. The app requires users to sign-in to their Google account, and to verify a good amount of data...

Google's new privacy policy is set to go into effect tomorrow, March 1 — making it as good a time as any to do some maintenance on your account. As we've mentioned in the past, Google account holders have a few ways to control what they share with the company. Here's a refresher course on how to use your Google privacy settings. The first and easiest way to use Google but keep the company from collecting information on you is to use the company's services without...

Google has brought Google Now, its prime Siri competitor, to the iPhone and iPad by incorporating the feature into its search app for iOS devices. The feature, which has been available to Android users for months, pulls together information from across Google services to give users a digital starting point. The company said Monday that the service is now open to iPhone and iPad users through the company's free Google Search app. To use Google Now, users will have to sign into their Google accounts to enable the app to access their...

Apple users get the chance to see what all the fuss over Google Now is about, thanks to an update from the company that brings Google's version of the personal assistant to the iPhone and iPad. The app plugs into users' Google accounts to offer personalized information — traffic status, nearby restaurants or packages you may be expecting — based on information pulled from your smartphone's location, Gmail account or Google Calendar. The app requires users to sign-in to their Google account, and to verify a good amount of data...

How do you spend your time on Google? If you're curious, Google has released a new tool that allows those with accounts to look at their monthly activity on Google while signed in to its services. Users can opt to receive the reports by e-mail. Those who choose to receive the reports will receive a link directing them to sign in to their accounts for a summary of their online activity. The report will tell users information such as how many e-mails they've sent and received in the past month, their Web history (if...

Google has brought Google Now, its prime Siri competitor, to the iPhone and iPad by incorporating the feature into its search app for iOS devices. The feature, which has been available to Android users for months, pulls together information from across Google services to give users a digital starting point. The company said Monday that the service is now open to iPhone and iPad users through the company's free Google Search app. To use Google Now, users will have to sign into their Google accounts to enable the...

Google doesn't make much money from its Android phones, but chief executive Larry Page recently vowed in an earnings call that that was about to change. A push by the company to create clearer online profiles of Web surfers may turn the promise into reality, analysts say. Google this week announced a shift in its privacy policies that will allow it to follow the activities of users as they move across the firm's Web sites, including its highly popular YouTube, Gmail and main...

One day after it announced a sweeping change to its privacy policy, Google is facing some heat for the decision. Hayley Tsukayama reports : Google's announcement that it is sharing more user data across its services has already raised the hackles of privacy advocates, technology writers and caught the attention of at least one national data-protection agency. On Tuesday, the  search giant announced  that it was placing 60 of its Web services under a unified privacy policy that would allow the...

Google announced Tuesday that it will integrate users' information across Gmail, YouTube, search and 57 other Google services. Google privacy director Alma Whitten, who explained the changes in a company blog post Tuesday afternoon, said the company will "treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience. " What is Google doing?: In a nutshell, Google is taking information from almost all of your Google services — including Gmail, Picasa, YouTube and search — and...

There's no love lost between Google and Microsoft, and the enmity is rising now that the latter has launched a new campaign accusing Google of bad ad practices on Gmail. But consumers may want to check their outrage. This territory has been traveled before. This is Microsoft latest salvo in its "Scroogled" campaign, dinging its archrival for using algorithms to scan Gmail users' messages and serve ads based on the keywords they find there. This is a favorite target of Microsoft, which has criticized Google for the same...

In a move away from online anonymity, Google will now link users' Google+ identifications to reviews they leave on the company's Play store. The change began popping up Monday, and will show users' real names and the pictures associated with their Google+ account next to any reviews they write. Linking the two services does not appear to be optional. When users click the "Write a Review" button on the company's marketplace, they're greeted with the following message: "From now on, reviews you write will be...

Google and Samsung announced Thursday that they will be launching new Chromebooks to follow up on the cloud-based laptop Google introduced last year. The WiFi Chromebook will be available on Monday, for $249. It has an 11.6-inch screen, weighs 2.43 pounds and is less than 0.8-inches thick. The company says it has 6.5 hours of battery life, a 16GB solid-state hard drive and comes with one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, an HDMI Port and is Bluetooth compatible. Amazon , NewEgg and Samsung have...

Just weeks after another security breach , cloud storage company Dropbox has added a two-step verification process to help make user accounts more secure. Dropbox has experienced three high-profile instances of security problems in the past year or so, with the latest instance concerning usernames and passwords being stolen from other websites and their accounts accessed. In response to the latest incident, Dropbox promised it would add "two-factor authentication.

Chrome for iOS Browsing for an alternative browser? For those who haven't been impressed with the browser on their iOS device, Google has offered a mobile alternative to Safari. The browser will feel familiar to anyone who's used the desktop version and even comes with Google's "Incognito Mode" for private mobile browsing. Tabbed browsing is an integral part of Chrome, and users can switch between tabs quickly by swiping from the edge of the screen. You can also close tabs by...

2012 is the year of Chrome OS — or so we're told. When we spoke with Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, he told us that this is the culmination of "a long, slow march" for Google's cloud-based operating system. One iteration was about getting people to understand what Chrome OS is; another was about seeding it to developers and OEMs. Now, Pichai said, Google's trying to take Chrome OS mainstream. The company's diving in with two new devices, both running a brand-new version of Chrome OS that's been...

Two days after Google announced sweeping changes to its privacy policy, analysts are weighing on who might be most affected by it. Cecilia Kang reports : Google this week announced a shift in its privacy policies that will allow it to follow the activities of users as they move across the firm's Web sites, including its highly popular YouTube, Gmail and main search engine. The company emphasized in interviews that the change would apply only to users who are signed on to...

Google's decision to unify 60 of its services under one privacy policy has set off renewed interest in how, exactly, Google account holders have their privacy settings configured. The data integration component of the company's new policy governs mostly what your Google accounts share with each other, and can't be configured service by service. But Google users have control over some of what they share with the company itself through their accounts. The search giant offers a couple of options on...

How do you spend your time on Google? If you're curious, Google has released a new tool that allows those with accounts to look at their monthly activity on Google while signed in to its services. Users can opt to receive the reports by e-mail. Those who choose to receive the reports will receive a link directing them to sign in to their accounts for a summary of their online activity. The report will tell users information such as how many e-mails they've sent and received in the past month, their Web history (if they've opted to have...

Google's new privacy policy is set to go into effect tomorrow, March 1 — making it as good a time as any to do some maintenance on your account. As we've mentioned in the past, Google account holders have a few ways to control what they share with the company. Here's a refresher course on how to use your Google privacy settings. The first and easiest way to use Google but keep the company from collecting information on you is to use the company's...