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// HAPPENING TODAY
- Google I/O continues.
- GoPro is trading for the first time as a public company under the Nasdaq ticker symbol GPRO.
- The 40th anniversary of the first barcode scan.
You Can’t Take Something Off the Internet — That’s Like Trying to Take Pee Out of a Swimming Pool
The Internet never forgets, but Google is reluctantly making some things harder to remember. This morning the company began removing some search results in compliance with the European Union’s landmark “right to be forgotten” ruling, which grants EU citizens the right to petition Google to remove links to sites hosting information that they consider “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” Google received some 41,000 removal requests in the first four days of accepting them, so it will be slow going. And needless to say, the company’s leadership isn’t at all happy about stripping information from its search service. As CEO Larry Page told The Financial Times earlier this year, doing so sets a bad precedent. “It will be used by other governments that aren’t as forward and progressive as Europe to do bad things,” he said. “Other people are going to pile on, probably … for reasons most Europeans would find negative.”
How’s This for a Forward-Looking Statement? Results May Differ Horrifically From Those Anticipated.
Samsung CFO Lee Sang-Hoon on the company’s second-quarter prospects: “It doesn’t look too good.”
And We Want to Know When Your Kids Are Home Alone — Wait, Scratch That.
Google has long said it has a “creepy line” that it likes to approach, but never cross. And the company’s rhetoric continues to make that statement almost impossible to believe. To wit, this remark from Android chief Sundar Pichai at yesterday’s I/O keynote: “We’re making everything contextually aware. We want to know when you’re at home, with your kids.” Nice work, Sundar. Keep it up and you may make Creep Executive Officer.
Mmph, Sorry, Plans for World Domination Always Put Me Right Out
Mat Honan reporting live from Wednesday’s Google I/O keynote: “There is a reporter next to me who is asleep in his chair. Not kidding.”
Hewlett-Packard Totally Psyched Over Latest IBM-Lenovo News
Looks like Washington’s suspicions about Chinese companies buying U.S.-based tech assets are complicating IBM’s proposed $2.3 billion sale of its low-end server business to Lenovo. The Wall Street Journal says the U.S. government is particularly concerned about the security of IBM’s x86 servers, which are used in places like the Pentagon. Hardly surprising. After all, Lenovo’s gone through this before. When it acquired IBM’s PC unit in 2004, the deal triggered an investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment.
Wait — Are You CEO of Google or a Pharmaceutical Company?
Google CEO Larry Page: “Right now we don’t data-mine health care data. If we did, we’d probably save 100,000 lives next year.”
Outlier Theory: 2014 Glass Team Parachuted Into a Biker Bar and Was Never Seen Again
During Google I/O 2012, skydivers wearing Google Glass jumped from a blimp to the roof of Moscone Center and bicycled into the keynote address in a barn burner of a demo. Two years later, Glass was nowhere to be found, garnering not a single mention during Wednesday’s grueling 2.5 hour I/O keynote, which featured a fair bit of talk about wearables. That seems curious, doesn’t it?
Not Any More, There Aren’t
The National Security Agency: “A thorough search of our files was conducted, but there are no documents indicating that Mr. Snowden contacted agency officials to raise concerns about NSA programs.”
And Then There Was the Even More Devious “Helpless Breakfast Octopus Project“
Steve Coll, The New York Review of Books: “‘Bezos kept pushing for more’ and suggested that Amazon should negotiate with small publishers ‘the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.’ This remark — a joke, one of Bezos’s lieutenants insisted — yielded a negotiating program that Amazon executives referred to as ‘the Gazelle Project,’ under which the company pressured the most vulnerable publishers for concessions. Amazon’s lawyers, presumably nervous that such a direct name might attract an antitrust complaint, insisted that it be recast as the Small Publisher Negotiation Program.”
If You Do See a Drone Hovering Outside Your Window, Make Yourself Larger and Bang Pots and Pans Together to Discourage Predatory Behavior
Peeping-drone victim Lisa Pleiss: “It was actually quite large. It appeared that there were video cameras on it. So that’s what kind of caused me alarm because I wasn’t particularly dressed for a camera, by any means. I wasn’t appropriate, and so that was nerve-wracking immediately. I kind of, like, hid for a second and got myself taken care of and then I went back out and looked and went to grab my camera and it swooped away really fast.”
Off Topic
The Pugs of Westeros and Cliff Slip N’ Slide.
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.