Google Is Uping the Game on Artificial Intelligence

LONDON (AP) - Google says that it has purchased the British startup DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company founded by a 37-year old former chess prodigy and computer game designer.

The American tech giant's London office confirmed a deal had been made but refused to offer a purchase price, which is reportedly $500 million. The company was founded by researcher Demis Hassabis together with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.

Hassabis, who is on leave from University College London, has investigated the mechanisms that underlie human memory.

Artificial intelligence uses computers for tasks normally requiring human intelligence, like speech recognition or language translation. DeepMind says the company, based in London, specializes in algorithms and machine learning.

Google, like other tech giants such as Facebook, are anxious to develop systems that work like the human brain.

Google Explains What the Floating Barges Off the Coast of San Francisco Are For

"A floating data center? A wild party boat? A barge housing the last remaining dinosaur?  Google has shed more light on just what it plans to do with a pair of floating barges off either coast of the US.

The advertising giant told The Register that its two vessels, officially known as Google Barges, will in fact be designed to serve as nautical showrooms for the company's latest and greatest products.

Why is this important to a Tax Blog?  It's always important where and how data is stored.  Google is the group-leader in how our tax information can and may be protected in the future.  I personally believe that Google will ultimately place sensitive data servers onto the barges in case of an International disaster.

Did the NSA Break Into Yahoo and Google Data Centers Around the World? Ups!

If it's true, no wonder Google is thought to be building a floating data center on Treasure Island, in San Francisco! 


By LOLITA C. BALDOR, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, the Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

A secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, indicates that NSA sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency's Fort Meade, Md.,
headquarters. In the last 30 days, field collectors had processed and sent back more than 180 million new records — ranging from "metadata," which would indicate who sent or received emails and when, to content such as text, audio and video, the Post reported Wednesday on its website.

The new details about the NSA's access to Yahoo and Google data centers around the world come at a time when Congress is reconsidering the government's collection practices and authority, and as European governments are responding angrily to revelations that the NSA collected data on millions of communications in their countries. Details about the government's programs have been trickling out since Snowden shared documents with the Post and Guardian newspaper in June.

The NSA's principal tool to exploit the Google and Yahoo data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency's British counterpart, GCHQ. The Post said NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

The NSA has a separate data-gathering program, called PRISM, which uses a court order to compel Yahoo, Google and other Internet companies to provide certain data. It allows the NSA to reach into the companies' data streams and grab emails, video chats, pictures and more. U.S. officials have said the program is narrowly focused on foreign targets, and technology companies say they turn over information only if required by court order.

In an interview with Bloomberg News Wednesday, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander was asked if the NSA has infiltrated Yahoo and Google databases, as detailed in the Post story.
"Not to my knowledge," said Alexander. "We are not authorized to go into a U.S. company's servers and take data. We'd have to go through a court process for doing that."

It was not clear, however, whether Alexander had any immediate knowledge of the latest disclosure in the Post report. Instead, he appeared to speak more about the PRISM program and its legal parameters.

In a separate statement, NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said NSA has "multiple authorities" to accomplish its mission, and she said "the assertion that we collect vast quantities of U.S. persons' data from this type of collection is also not true."

The GCHQ had no comment on the matter.

The Post said the NSA was breaking into data centers worldwide. The NSA has far looser restrictions on what it can collect outside the United States on foreigners.

But Google said the company has "long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping." The statement said Google is "troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centers, and we are not aware of this activity."

Google, which is known for its data security, noted that it has been trying to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links.

Yahoo spokeswoman Sarah Meron said there are strict controls in place to protect the security of the company's data centers. "We have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency," she said, adding that it is too early to speculate on whether legal action would be taken.

The MUSCULAR project documents state that this collection from Yahoo and Google has led to key intelligence leads, the Post said.

Congress members and international leaders have become increasingly angry about the NSA's data collection, as more information about the programs leak out. A delegation from the European Union Parliament came to Washington this week to conduct intense talks about reported U.S. spying on allied leaders, including the collection of phone records. And a German delegation met with U.S. officials over allegations that the NSA was monitoring Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone.
Alexander told lawmakers that the U.S. did not collect European records, and instead the U.S. was given data by NATO partners as part of a program to protect military interests.

Congress members, however, are working on plans that would put limits data collection. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has called for a "total review of all intelligence programs"

More broadly, Alexander on Wednesday defended the overall NSA effort to monitor communications. And he said that as Congress considers proposals to scale back the data collection or provide more transparency to some of the programs, it's his job to lay out the resulting terrorism risks.

"I'm concerned that we give information out that impacts our ability to stop terrorist attacks. That's what most of these programs are aimed to do," Alexander said. "I believe if you look at this and you go back through everything, none of this shows that NSA is doing something illegal or that it's not been asked to do."

Pointing to thousands of terror attacks around the world, he said the U.S. has been spared much of that violence because of such programs.

"It's because you have great people in the military and the intelligence community doing everything they can with law enforcement to protect this country," he said. "But they need tools to do it. If we take away the tools, we increase the risk."
___
Associated Press writers Mike Liedtke in San Francisco and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.

For the full Washington Post story, click here.

Is Google Building a New Floating Data Center on San Francisco's Treasure Island?

 An even more important question is, what does this new project, if anything, have to do with Google's stock sky rocking in the last 30 days?


 Google could be building a new data center — on top of a barge that could take it anywhere in the ocean. CNET gives a comprehensive report on a secret project underway on San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Someone is building something out of shipping containers on top of an old barge — but the whole project is fenced off, so it’s impossible to get closer. There’s no confirmation that Google is responsible, but telling factors point to the company being involved. Google won patents for water-based data centers in 2009. Photos obtained through Google’s own mapping service show a fenced-off collection of shipping containers outside a building known as Hangar 3. People with access badges for that same Hangar 3 have been known to buy food at nearby shops with Google-branded credit cards, and a contact number on the property lease leads to a dead-end phone somewhere within Google. If you can keep the saltwater from corroding the sensitive electronics, a boat-based datacenter has unique upsides. “The advantages of such a project would be the cheap and efficient cooling, using seawater. The cooling is one of the biggest expenses of a datacenter.” (Via Softpedia ) And no, you wouldn’t have to plug it in. “It’s theoretically possible to power it by generating electricity from wave motion—about as clean a source of energy as you can imagine.” (Via ReadWrite ) Of course, floating it out away from land-based computer networks could prevent high-speed connections to whatever Google stores there. “Another potential issue will be shuttling data in and out of the floating byte bucket, but since Google owns a world-spanning fibre-optic cable it could theoretically tap its ocean-bound facility into this.” (Via The Register ) Still, such a datacenter could theoretically be moved anywhere across the world’s oceans, or as Mashable points out, held in international waters outside the jurisdiction or surveillance range of governments. There’s no indication as to when this floating project might launch. If it is Google behind the construction, we’ll have to wait for it to say something.

Google's New Knowledge Graph and SEO

The article written below was written by: Travis Bliffen - The link for the entire article is at the bottom of this post.  SEO professionals are getting ready for yet another "Google change"



What is Google’s knowledge graph? You likely have already noticed Google’s Knowledge Graph at work. If you make a search on Google for a person, place, movie, TV show, or basically any noun or word with multiple meanings on the right side of your browser a small box may appear. This box includes semantic-search information for your quarry from a variety of sources. Information typically includes what it is, important dates, people, suggested searches other users made about the search terms or other meanings for the same search. What does Google’s Knowledge graph mean for SEO? 
The answer to that question is just as ambiguous as the secret formula to land on the first page of Google in the first place. However, there are some implications one could stipulate.

Better targeted traffic:

First, Google’s Knowledge Graph is far more likely to have a positive effect on sites than a negative one in regard to search traffic. Before one might type in say, “Dallas” searching for the 2012 TV series and would have to wade through pages of content which may include the city, the other TV series, the football team, the basketball team or any other manner of results that simply managed to rank high for the word, “Dallas.” Now the Google Knowledge Graph box allows a user to quickly say, “I wanted the TV show.” Then results include only those relating to the show.  For webpage owners, this means people who are actually looking for their content are more likely to find it in the massive slush-pile that is the Internet.

Context matters:

While Google’s Knowledge Graph could have a positive effect, it also means webpage owners need to ensure their keywords are supported by secondary keywords that add context. In our example, if Google can’t tell your page is about the Dallas TV show and not Dallas the city, your site isn’t going to be found no matter how optimized your page was for the word, “Dallas.”Thinking like a reader: That tiny box also makes suggestions based on other user’s subsequent searches. So, SEO is no longer a matter of just plugging keywords into an analyzer and seeing what people are searching for. It’s now important to think about how a user would find certain information as well as what other information they may be looking for on that topic. Back in our Dallas example, maybe I’m searching for the TV show Dallas because I wanted to know more about an actor on the show, a natural subsequent search would then be the actor’s name. If my site uses the actors name as a keyword as well as the title of the show I can receive traffic both from people looking for the show who may be recommended to search for the actor and people looking for the actor who may be recommended to search the show.

A quest for more:

Finally, Google’s Knowledge Graph challenges us to provide more. Gone are the days where Web users actually have to click websites to get basic information. The basics appear in the box. If you want readers to click into your site you need to not only offer more, but let users know it’s there. This may entail more precise meta-tags or page summaries that invite readers to learn more than Google’s little smart box can offer.. In the end, only time will tell how Google’s Knowledge Graph will ultimately impact SEO tactics, but the focus is the same as it’s been since the Panda algorithm change poked it’s nose into the game: It’s about quality and real content for real people, not keyword density.

View the entire article

Keywords in Title Tag; Google's Ranking Factors

We must say thank you to Broad Vision Marketing dot com for putting out such a great report on Google's important ranking factors.

With that being said, lets move on to today's information.  Keywords in the "title tag" are important in ranking.  Title tags that start with a keyword are more valuable than tag titles with the keyword at the end of the tag.

It's safe to say that your title tags will serve you better if you try to always place your keywords as the first, or maybe second word in your page"title tags"

If you had to ask yourself what is a "title tag" then it's safe for me to say that you may need a little more hep then just reading a blog to learn more about SEO.  No problem, you're not alone.  There are software programs which can tell you EXACTLY what you need to do to rank higher in the search engines.  In fact these software programs are what I call "SEO smart" they even tell you what your competitors are doing, that you aren't doing.

If SEO isn't your cup of tea, then you might want to check out IBusinessPromotor.  This is the only SEO software that guarantees success.  I must tell you that the task you have to complete in order to get a refund on the software will, in fact, put your site on the fast track to first page placement for select keywords.

This goes to show you that Google's ranking formula, is just that, a formula.  And when you plug in the necessary task to promote your site, it's only a matter of time before you will begin to major results.

PS:  A title tag is the main text that describes an online document. It is the second most important on–page SEO element (the most important being overall content), and appears in three key places: browsers, search engine results pages, and external websites.  (Google allows 70 characters for a title tag)  You can use the free SEO tools at SEO Work in Progress to learn more about your site.