Google

Google’s Big Push to Own Social Starts Now (CNET)
Nearly two years after the launch of Google+, Google’s social strategy looks like less of a joke and more of a calculated maneuver to make its social network the underlying fabric that weaves together relationships spread across desktop and mobile, Android and iOS. Wednesday, at its annual Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, the search company announced 41 new features for its Google+ social network, including a Pinterest-like look, auto-generated related hashtags, “Awesome” photo options, and a streamlined messaging experience.

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Google will launch music streaming through YouTube and Google Play, according to reports in The Verge and the Wall Street Journal. SocialTimes will be reporting from Google’s I/O conference for the rest of this week.

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Google Now Offers 15GB of Shared Storage for Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos; Apps Customers Get 30GB (The Next Web)
Google on Monday announced a change to how it offers free cloud storage to its users: 15GB will now be shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+. Previously, Google offered 10GB for Gmail plus another 5GB for Drive and Google+ Photos.

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YouTube Offers ‘Sesame Street’ and Martial Arts, for a Fee (The New York Times)
YouTube on Thursday detailed its plan to let producers sell paid subscriptions to their videos, creating a prominent new marketplace for programming on the Internet. The first paid video channels appeared on the sprawling video Web site, a unit of Google, Thursday afternoon, with subscription rates ranging from 99 cents to $7.99 a month.

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Facebook (Unofficially) Lands on Google Glass (AllFacebook)
Although it’s only available to a super-select few, Facebook already has a home on Google Glass. It’s not the official Facebook application, but TechCrunch reports that recently launched photo-sharing app Glass to Facebook uploads photos taken with Google Glass to users’ Facebook accounts.

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Gmail will now automatically underline dates and times mentioned in emails, allowing users to use the information to schedule events in Google Calendar without leaving the Gmail interface.

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Mark your calendars, SocialTimes readers. We’ve got a free webcast happening next Monday, May 6 from 3:00 – 3:30 p.m. ET on Google Tools for Social Media Marketing Success. Monica Morse, the social media lead for SMB Solutions at Google, will be sharing best practices on how to use Advanced Search, Trends, Hangouts, and YouTube to enhance your social media marketing campaigns.

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Google reported consolidated revenue of $14 billion in the first quarter of 2013, up 31 percent over its first-quarter earnings last year.

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Google has employed its Person Finder tool to help people locate family and friends who may have been hurt in the explosions that occurred today near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

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Google has reportedly reached an agreement with the European Commission to change its search practices after a two-year investigation on whether the search engine giant favors its own properties in the search results.

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