Google Inc’s top social networking executive is leaving the Internet company after a nearly eight-year stint highlighted by an audacious challenge to Facebook.
Vic Gundotra fittingly announced his departure in a post on Thursday on Google Plus, a social network that debuted nearly three years ago. Gundotra had been in charge of Google Plus as the Mountain View, California, company’s senior vice president of social.
Gundotra did not explain his reasons for leaving nor did he reveal what he plans to do next.
“I am excited about what’s next,” Gundotra wrote. “But this isn’t the day to talk about that. This is a day to celebrate the past eight years. To cry. And smile. And to look forward to the journey yet to come.”
Google CEO Larry Page praised Gundotra in his own Plus post, but did not immediately announce a new leader for Google Plus.
Although it boasts more than 500 million users, Google Plus is still struggling to lure people into hanging out on its service for as long as they do on Facebook. And even with its rapid growth, Google Plus is still less than half the size of Facebook, which ended last month with nearly 1.3 billion users and also boasts one of the most popular applications on smartphones and tablets.
Nevertheless, Google Plus has served its purpose by giving Google’s search engine and other services more information about its users’ identities and preferences.
That information has helped Google sell more digital advertising, the main source of the company’s revenue.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained