google

Say goodbye to productivity, because this game just took over your workday/life.

Whenever you start typing a search into Google, the search engine tries to predict what it thinks you are looking for based on previous searches.

The results are often absurd and can make you question your faith in humanity.

So a guy named Justin Hook has harnessed the power of autocomplete and turned it into an online game called “Google Feud.”

You just pick a category (Culture, People, Names, Questions), and the site chooses a question/topic. The top 10 very real results from Google’s API are posted to the board which you then have to guess.

Just like “Family Feud” you get just 3 strikes before the game ends.

“Beware, certain results may be offensive and/or incomprehensible,” Hook writes on the page.

The game’s received a lot of attention since it launched, so much so that it apparently crashed their servers.

There’s something about Google’s annual “Year in Search” videos that give you the chills every single time.

This one is no different.

Google also says we have made “trillions” of searches this year and has released stats on the most trending topics of 2014.

Robin Williams, the World Cup and Ebola were the top 3, followed by the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, the Ice Bucket Challenge and that annoying/addictive little game Flappy Bird.

The most searched person was Jennifer Lawrence, the top tech search was the iPhone 6, and the top athlete was James Rodriguez.

You can explore the trends in more depth here.

You know those annoying boxes on websites that ask you to type hard-to-read text as a security precaution against spammers and bots? And then after 3 failed attempts you just throw your computer out the window instead?

Well their days might be numbered.

Google has announced that it has developed a new method of proving that a user is a real, live human being.

"No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA" - as it's being called - simply asks if you are a robot, and then you click a box if you are not.

According to Google:

Our research recently showed that today's Artificial Intelligence technology can solve even the most difficult variant of distorted text at 99.8% accuracy. Thus distorted text, on its own, is no longer a dependable test.

To counter this, last year we developed an Advanced Risk Analysis backend for reCAPTCHA that actively considers a user's entire engagement with the CAPTCHA—before, during, and after—to determine whether that user is a human.

If you are a robot… well then you need to stop, right now. Bad robot.

Google's not just building a robot army to take over the world, its also designing artificial intelligence to help people out (or so it says).

Researchers have announced that they have developed new technology that can automatically caption a photo with greater accuracy than ever before. The program is intended to assist the visually impaired in addition to making image searches easier.

"A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes it's the words that are most useful -- so it's important we figure out ways to translate from images to words automatically and accurately," they wrote on their blog.

Google provided a few examples including this photo with the caption "Two pizzas sitting on top of a stove top oven."



Sounds great in theory, but it will be interesting to see how it shapes up against some of the other stuff the Internet has to offer, besides a couple pizzas.

Exhibit A:

Well this is terrifying. Now only will our future involve nightmarish robotic hell hounds chasing us through the woods, now we have to deal with robots trained in martial arts as well.

Boston Dynamics, the engineering company Google purchased back in December 2013, has released a new video showing Ian, an Atlas-model, "Agile Anthropomorphic Robot" that can move like the "Karate Kid."

Ian is 6'2" tall, weighs 330 pounds, and using software written by the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Interaction, it can also drive a car.

According to Boston Dynamic's website:

Atlas is a high mobility, humanoid robot designed to negotiate outdoor, rough terrain. Atlas can walk bipedally leaving the upper limbs free to lift, carry, and manipulate the environment. In extremely challenging terrain, Atlas is strong and coordinated enough to climb using hands and feet, to pick its way through congested spaces.

Wax on, wax off, and be very afraid.

The deal, in an all-cash offer, is expected to be announced imminently, sources said. If completed the acquisition would be the most significant in the history of YouTube, which Google acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion.

YouTube is preparing for U.S. regulators to challenge the Twitch deal, according to sources. YouTube is far and away the No. 1 platform for Internet video, serving more than 6 billion hours of video per month to 1 billion users worldwide, and the company expects the Justice Department to take a hard look at whether buying Twitch raises anticompetitive issues in the online-video market.

Google's newest doodle is the product of a contest asking children to design an invention that would improve the world. Audrey Zhang designed the "transformative water purifier" that you can see on the Google home page. Needless to say this is one ridiculously talented young illustrator.

Google declares war on vertical videos by dropping this official Camera app in the Play Store.

Up above here you can see Kim Kardashian's Instagram post. Suspiciously, the same photo is on a free wallpaper website. Whoops?

From your device, launch the Google Maps app and tap the Search option at the top of the screen. You'll see a new 'Press Start' option and a blue Pokéball icon. Press this and go off on your quest.

A lot has happened in the past year, and Google captured 2013 beautifully with their annual zeitgeist wrap-up video.