The first time Google found itself in trouble about their “unprofessional hairstyles” search results was four years ago. The search engine is a favorite, but when users saw that “unprofessional hairstyles” brought up photos of black people—specifically donning natural, braided, or dreaded styles—people became upset. It seems that the controversy has made its way to 2020, because Google is once again addressing their controversial issue since not much has changed.

The Shade Room reportedly spoke with Cathy Edwards, the Vice President of Google Images, and she explained how the search engine’s algorithm works. “Our Google Images search systems rely on a number of factors, including word matching, to surface results,” said Edwards. “For many of the results, the words ‘unprofessional hairstyles’ appear in the articles, and many of these stories are rightly denouncing the discrimination people of color face when it comes to their hair.”

“While we include captions to help people understand why these images are relevant to the query, we acknowledge that the association can be concerning and painful to see without the fuller context,” Edwards added. “Ensuring that all people and communities are able to find helpful results in Google Images is something we care about deeply and are actively working to improve.” Basically, Google isn’t the one labeling the styles as unprofessional, it’s the bloggers, writers, and commentators penning articles that are making the correlation popular.

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Facebook and Google will be continuing to have employees work from home for the remainder of 2020, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and a Facebook spokesperson announced.

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Pichai says employees whose work is vital to being in-office, can return in July under enhanced safety measures. Similarly, Facebook will ask certain employees to come in, but they haven’t decided which. 

“Facebook has taken the next step in its return to work philosophy. Today, we announced anyone who can do their work remotely can choose to do so through the end of the year,” a spokesman said. “As you can imagine this is an evolving situation as employees and their families make important decisions re: return to work.”

“Most Facebook employees are fortunate to be able to work productively from home, so we feel a responsibility to allow people who don’t have this flexibility to access shared public resources first,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post last month. “I hope this helps contain the spread of COVID-19 so we can keep our communities safe and get back up and running again soon.” 

Facebook was originally slated to have all its employees back in offices by July 6 and Google by June 1.

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Google says millions of users are being sent coronavirus-related scams every day.

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In a new update, the company says last week saw an average of 18 million scams daily: “During the last week, we saw 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19. This is in addition to more than 240 million COVID-related daily spam messages.”

“Bad actors are creating new attacks and scams every day that attempt to take advantage of the fear and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic,” the company continued. Google says most attacks use fear mongering or financial incentives to elicit responses from users.

Independent security researcher Scott Helme explained how these attacks work to BBC: “Phishing attacks always share the common trait of inciting or depending on an emotion that causes us to act more hastily or think less about our actions at that moment in time. The coronavirus pandemic is a highly emotional topic right now and cyber-criminals clearly know this. They’re hoping that the typical person might be more inclined to click through links or follow bad instructions if they use this lure.”

Google says 99.9% of these emails are stopped before they reach user inboxes, but be extra diligent during these trying times.

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We can only imagine that those of you who haven’t had to work remotely in the midst of the quarantine has been running up the YouTube and Netflix streams. In Europe, where the Coronavirus pandemic has hit extremely hard, there seems to be a continental crisis surrounding Netflix and YouTube with both companies announcing that they’ll be reducing the streaming quality for the next 30 days.

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CNN reports that the increase in streaming on both YouTube and Netflix could crash the Internet in the next month in Europe if they don’t act immediately. That being said, EU officials have already asked the public to stop streaming in HD when necessary to ease the internet. However, both reps for Netflix and Google, who owns YouTUbe, issued statements regarding the use of their platforms moving forward.

“We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25% while also ensuring a good quality service for our members,” a rep for Netflix said.

A rep for Google stated they’re trying to ease the stress on the system without rendering the quality for their users. “We will continue working with member state governments and network operators to minimize stress on the system, while also delivering a good user experience,” a rep said. 

Well, for those of you in Europe, try to go for 1080p instead of 4K. I promise it isn’t that bad. 

Google is one of the most trusted entities in the entire world — Americans even have more faith in Google than they have in actor Tom Hanks according to a fact we oddly came across recently. However, those stats may see a dip on the negative side for the digital giant if this recent data breach lawsuit they were hit with proves to be true.

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Reuters is reporting that New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas is suing Google parent company Alphabet Inc with allegations that the search engine’s educational software has been collecting personal data without consent from the likes of many young students. Kids across the nation have been relying on Google’s highly popular Chromebook laptops for years now, as seen above in the picture of two students working off Chromebooks gifted by Google to their school, Mildred Avenue K-8 School, back in 2014. Google has responded by calling the allegations “factually wrong,” although they stopped short of responding to a request to elaborate. The software in question is the free or low-cost G Suite for Education software package, which comes with email and writing tools. 

Balderas’ assistant attorney general Brian McMath states that recent testing by his team showed students younger than 13 years old had their Web browsing, location, passwords and other personal information transmitted to Google those same Chromebooks provided to their schools. Their lawsuit says Google violated the “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act” by failing to gather verifiable parental consent before collecting the data.

Although McMath admits that no evidence points to Google misusing the collected data, his firm believes the company might generate revenue from the information they have on file. As a response, Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said, “G Suite for Education allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary.”

Read the full report over on Reuters, and let us know if this news makes you lose a little trust in Google by sounding off down below in the comments.

For years, Instagram has been tinkering with its algorithms and making its interface more user-friendly. And with some of the biggest Instagram influencers being celebrities and socialite personalities like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Lionel Messi, and more, they’ve been able to successfully promote products to hundreds of millions of their followers. Heck, even Beyonce joined Instagram in 2012 and has become one of its most favorable participants. But while companies and influencers have been able to join forces in order to secure the bag, Instagram itself has found a way to make billions of dollars in ad revenue the social media platform. 

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Bloomberg has reported that the picture-sharing application made approximately $20 billion USD in advertising revenue alone in 2019, which is nearly a quarter of Facebook Inc.’s total revenue for the same year. In 2012, Facebook purchased Instagram for $715 million USD prior to the app having an established strategy to sell advertisement space within its interface. The executive and creative minds over at Facebook formulated the concept to sell ad space in Instagram’s ‘disappearing’ Stories feed. 

According to Bloomberg, these astronomical figures came from an undisclosed source that is familiar with the organization and asked to remain anonymous because this information isn’t necessarily for public consumption. But if this information happens to be true, Instagram’s $20 billion earned in ad revenue, outperformed Google‘s YouTube platform, which produced a total of $15.1 billion in advertisement dollars in 2019. 

Facebook Inc. owns Instagram, WhatsApp, FriendFeed, LiveRail, Oculus VR, and more to which they do not specifically reveal any individual company’s annual income. After news leaked of Instagram potentially earning $20 billion, Facebook has declined to comment on the news.  

In just a few days, the nation will embark on an annual celebration known as Black History Month that showcases the power, perseverance and contributions overall that African American people have put forward. While it technically runs solely throughout the entire duration of February, Google decided to get an early start during the GRAMMYs this past Sunday (January 26) that had Black people everywhere applauding with gratitude. 

Titled “The Most Searched,” Google used their metrics to show us just how successful Black people have been throughout the Digital Era. Many iconic moments are documented in the minute-and-a-half commercial spot seen above, some that happened not too long ago. Most-searched performance ever? You already know Beyoncé’s epic Coachella 2018 performance took that crown. Even something as niche as most-searched guitar solo is included, which music icon Prince nabbed rightfully during his Purple Rain era. Others included in the spot range from most-searched EGOT winner (John Legend) and female poet (Maya Angelou) to tennis player (Serena Williams), ballerina (Misty Copeland), athlete (LeBron James) and Pulitzer Prize winner (Kendrick Lamar) just to name a few. Heck, even Lil Nas X got a moment to shine for most-searched remix for his 2019 breakout hit “Old Town Road (Remix)” with Billy Ray Cyrus. Google ends the commercial by adding the caption “To the history makers and those they inspire,” and we couldn’t agree more. Search on, folks!

Watch Google’s “The Most Searched” commercial for Black History Month above, and watch a few of the key standouts below:

Tom Hanks, the star in such masterpieces of cinema like Forrest Gump, Castaway, Saving Private Ryan, and more. Tom Hanks, the father of the young patois-speaking god Chet Hanks himself. Tom Hanks, the two-time Oscar-winning actor is reportedly less trustworthy than multi-billion dollar companies such as Google and Amazon according to market research firm, Morning Consultant. 

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The firm recently compiled a list of the 'most trusted brands' after noticing a common theme of societal distrust between citizens, large corporations, and other public entities. The research showed that approximately 50% of Americans fully trust their 'primary care doctors' while 44% of Americans fully entrust the military. 

39% of Americans trust Amazon, while 38% of Americans trust Google. However, only 30% of Americans trust the living legend and national treasure that is Tom Hanks. Ironically, both Amazon and Google have higher trust ratings than extreme weather warnings (36%), teachers (35%), and health warnings (23%).