Google on Tuesday began letting people sidestep unwanted Web sites by eliminating them from Internet search results.
“Now there’s yet another way to find more of what you want on Google by blocking the sites you don’t want to see,” Google search quality engineers Amay Champaneria and Beverly Yang said in a blog post.
People who jump back to the Google search results page after checking out a link will have the option of signaling they have no interest in seeing that Web site suggested in the future.
“Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right, but sometimes you may dislike the site in general, whether it’s offensive, pornographic or of generally low quality,” the engineers said. “For times like these, you’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results.”
A small “block” button was added to options listed with search result links.
Blocked domains are associated with people’s Google accounts. Subsequent searches that would have generated the unwanted Web sites will show instead messages indicating they were blocked.
“We’re adding this feature because we believe giving you control over the results you find will provide an even more personalized and enjoyable experience on Google,” the engineers said.
The new feature began rolling out on Tuesday for English-language versions of Google.com accessed with the latest Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer Web browsing software.
It is to expand soon to other languages and browser software.
Google-owned YouTube said on Thursday it plans to increase its staff by almost one-third in what will be the online video-sharing star’s biggest hiring year.
“2010 was a bang-up year,” Jeff Ferguson of YouTube’s human resources team said in a blog post. “And in 2011, we plan to grow the number of people working at YouTube by more than 30 percent!”
An average of 35 hours worth of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute and 2 billion videos are watched daily at the Web site, according to Ferguson.
“It’s been amazing to watch an idea become a platform that turned into a stage for hundreds of millions of people to express themselves,” he said. “We now have aspiring filmmakers and musicians building their careers on YouTube, activists opening our eyes to global issues and individuals telling their stories in ways that only video can capture.”
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to