• A saving grace for search results. In the first case since 2007 to address the issue, a California state court judge recently held that Google’s search results are in fact protected by U.S. free speech laws, and that Google is therefore entitled to rank  the results it delivers in response to queries however it determines will be most useful to its users.  The California judge issued the holding in the context of dismissing a lawsuit filed by Louis Martin, the operator of a web site called CoastNews, who claimed Google’s exclusion of his site from search results is biased. The California court categorized Martin’s suit as a “SLAPP” case—a lawsuit intended to intimidate or censor critics. This move by the U.S. court system is in distinct contrast to what’s going on in Europe, where Google’s pervasive Internet presence is at risk of being curtailed as a result of regulators’ investigation into the search engine’s possible violations of antitrust law.
  • Picture perfect captions.  We’ve written about visual recognition software before.  Now Google has gotten into the act.  The company has developed new artificial intelligence software that can automatically produce captions that, according to Google’s research blog, “accurately describe images the first time it sees them.”  The potential practical implications are significant.  A blind person could conceivably click on a photo and have its contents described using voice technology.  The new software might also improve people’s ability to search on Google for photos that they vaguely remember but don’t recall in detail.