News & Reviews:   Google

15 years ago this week, the beta of Google Maps was launched. As time passed by, it has now become one of our favourite navigation apps that has guided us through many journeys. To celebrate its 15th birthday, Google has redesigned the app icon and rolled out several new features, let’s find out what they are!

In a collaboration between Google and The Pokémon Company International, you can vote for your favourite pokemon from 14 February 2020 at 9:59PM onwards. If you are interested in taking part, all you need to do is search for “Pokemon vote” and vote for your favourite pokémon.

If you're like us, you probably encountered videos with annoying ads while browsing the internet or watching YouTube, some that appear in the middle of watching a video. This can happen even for short videos, which gets annoying. Now, it looks like Google wants to start putting a stop to that by setting up restrictions.

Prior to the Huawei Mate 30 series release last year, it was most unfortunate that Huawei got caught in the trade war. The company is still not clear out of being able to use Google Mobile Services (GMS) yet, so they have been trying different ways to survive without it with their own Huawei Mobile Service. Despite this, international countries out of China still relies on GMS a lot, so what is Plan B?

We know that there are some of you out there who will never upload your personal files onto the cloud services like Google Photos and iCloud for privacy concern. Not to say there are many news regarding celebrities’ photos being leaked from the services as well. Not long ago, Google accidentally sent some of the users’ private videos from Google Photos to the other users, and they have apologized to those who were affected by the issue.

The public has long wondered how much Google makes a year through YouTube but those numbers were never revealed. But recently, YouTube's parent company decided to include YouTube ad revenue in its quarterly report and it's a massive USD 15 (~RM61.76) billion.

Yes, the trade war is still on-going which unfortunately placed Huawei in an awkward situation. Starting from the Mate 30 series onward, they won't be able to use any Google mobile services (GMS) but according to new insights from Fred Wangfei, a Huawei executive, he said that the company probably won't return to using GMS even if the ban is lifted by the US government.

As the current in-house flagship for Google, the Pixel 4 becomes the first of many to get new Google features added to it. In fact, the company was working on a call recording function for the Google Phone app a while back and seems to have made it live. But a more useful feature that may come is the rumoured call transcription support.

In the world of emojis and stickers, it seems that Google will be releasing a new batch and it's an interesting one. According to sources, the company is experimenting mashing up two emojis together by using emotions on another emoji's shape. Besides that, it was also revealed that 117 new emojis will be ready this year including boba tea (yes, really).

When it comes to messaging software, Google has never managed to get a foothold on the market. But it looks like the company won't give up just yet and is looking for a different implementation. Word has gotten out that Google is working on a new business communications platform, which will combine several Google services together.