12 things Google does better than any other tech company

• Antonio Villas-Boas
 
•  

• May 4, 2016, 5:14 PM
• 28,561

Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider/Google

Google started out as a research project in 1996, and founder Sergei Brin and Larry Page nearly sold it for $1 million because it was interfering with their academics.

Now, Google is everywhere. Unless you're actively trying to avoid Google's products or services, it's likely that you're using at least one of them.

The competition is tougher than ever, but some of Google's services are consistently better than anything else out there. 

Check them out:

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Google's digital assistant Google Now is incredibly useful in so many ways.

Screenshot

Google Now shows you a wide variety of useful information without making you even search for it.

It automatically shows you "cards" with information about things like traffic or public transit delays along your commute, weather, calendar reminders, sports scores, package tracking, news you're interested in, and locations you might be interested in your area.

It's more robust than any other digital assistant like Siri or Microsoft's Cortana.

Google Maps has the most up to date data for directions, locations, and public transportation. It even helps you avoid traffic.

Tech Insider

Apple Maps has made strides, but it still hasn't caught up with Google Maps.

Nexus smartphones are the purest expression of Google's smartphone vision, as well as the Android operating system. They're premium, powerful, and cheaper than the majority of the competition.

Google

Unlike smartphones from Samsung, LG, HTC, and most other companies, Nexus phones run pure Android. 

They also come without the annoying apps, or "bloatware," from your carrier, as they're sold unlocked directly from Google, often for cheaper than other premium Android phones.

The Android operating system has several advantages over iOS while maintaining an incredible 84% market share compare to iOS's $13.5%.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider

In several ways, Android is better than Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones and iPads. For example, notifications and settings are much easier to manage on Android than they are on iOS.

Android is also a lot more customizable than iOS, and it allows you to do little things that make a big difference, like ditching animations to make your Android phone feel faster.

With 15GB of free storage, the Google Drive cloud storage service gives you the most free storage than any other service.

Tech Insider/Flickr/Horia Varlan

Google's productivity suite is a perfect companion for Google Drive and it's a great free alternative to Microsoft's Office suite.

Google/Tech Insider

Google's free-to-use productivity suite includes Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, and they offer almost all the functionality of Microsoft's Office Suite.

You don't need to install anything as you can run these apps straight from your web browser, and you don't even need to be connected to the internet to use them. 

Google Photos lets you backup all your photos for free. Yes. Unlimited photo cloud storage. For free.

Google

There's also a great search feature in Google Photos that lets you search for something specific in your pictures. 

For example, if you want to find pictures of your cat, you can search for "cat" and Google Photos will show you all the photos with cats. The same goes for other search terms like locations, people, events, and even objects.

At $35, the new Chromecast is the cheapest video streamer for your TV.

Google

Chromecast Audio is a $35 device that lets you turn any speakers into smart wireless speakers.

Tim Schofield (Qbking77)/YouTube

We largely have YouTube to thank for cat videos, and it's still the Internet's main video channel.

YouTube/MacBarbie07

Nothing comes close to YouTube for watching and uploading videos on the Internet.

Google's Project Fi isn't the most widely used mobile carrier by any means, but its pricing structure where you only pay for what you use is how all carriers should work.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider

Google's Project Fi charges you a base rate of $20 for unlimited talk and text, and an additional $10 per gigabyte of data in a monthly billing cycle.

However, if you only use 600 megabytes of your gigabyte in a month, Google will refund you $4 for the 400 remaining megabytes you didn't use in that monthly billing cycle.

In short, you only pay for the data you use.

And, of course, Google is still the best search engine.

Google

Other search engines work fine for some, but Google still dominates at delivering what you want, when you want it.

SEE ALSO: We just learned the first details about Google’s next phone

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GoPro is tanking

• Akin Oyedele
 

• 3h
• 5,891
 
• 5

Andrew Burton/Getty Images

GoPro on Thursday reported first-quarter sales that were better than expected but a loss that was more than analysts forecast.

Shares fell 5% in premarket trading on Friday after rising by as much as 6% in after-hours trading right after the earnings crossed.

The digital-camera maker's revenues totaled $183.5 million, topping the forecast for $169.1 million. But that's about half of what GoPro earned in the first quarter of last year.

The company reported an adjusted loss per share of $0.63 — greater than the $0.59 that was expected, according to Bloomberg.

The market for the handy cameras that GoPro is known for has become very saturated, and this has some analysts concerned about the company's ability to compete well.

GoPro highlighted numerous data points suggesting that its cameras were still outselling on a unit and dollar basis.

In January, GoPro announced that it was cutting 7% of its workforce. It also announced preliminary results for the prior quarter that were worse than forecast because of slow sales.

The company is now pivoting to drones, but consumers have to wait a little longer.

"While we had to make the difficult decision to delay our drone, Karma, the upside is that Karma's launch should now benefit from the holidays," CEO Nick Woodman said in theearnings statement.

The company restated its earlier outlook for full-year revenues, and it expects to rake in $1.35 billion to $1.5 billion in 2016.

As at Thursday, GoPro shares had tumbled 70% since the company went public in July 2014.Google

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Square shares are crashing after reporting lower than expected earnings

• Eugene Kim
 
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• 17h
• 1,812
 
• 1

Bill Pugliano/GettySquare CEO Jack Dorsey

Square-A  $10.81

SQ

+/--0.69

%-6.00

Disclaimer

Square shares dropped as much as 15% in after hours trading on Thursday, after the payments company reported widening losses as spending accelerated.

Operating expenses increased nearly 72% year-on-year to $207 million for the quarter, causing Square's net loss to reach $96.7 million, nearly double the level at this time last year.

Excluding certain items, Square said it lost $0.14 per share, which was larger than Wall Street expectation of a loss of $0.09 a share.

Square beat Wall Street targets on the top line, generating quarterly revenue of $379.2 million, up 51% year over year, and higher than $343.6 million analysts were expecting.

There was also a one-time charge of roughly $50 million as a result of a lawsuit against Robert E. Morley Jr., a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who claimed to be the original creator of Square's credit card reader.

Square said it signed a binding term sheet last quarter to potentially reach a settlement with the plaintiff, but the lawsuit contributed to a huge increase in general and administrative costs, which skyrocketed to $96 million this quarter from $28 million in the first quarter of last year.

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SEE ALSO: Why Jack Dorsey is obsessed with the Golden State Warriors

Deutsche Bank is being investigated for suspected market manipulation

• Reuters

• 6h
• 889

REUTERS/Kai PfaffenbachA statue is pictured in front of the former head quarters of Germany's largest business bank, Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, January 28, 2013.

BARI, Italy (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank is under investigation in Italy for suspected market manipulation relating to the sale of Italian government bonds in 2011, an investigative source said on Friday.

A prosecutor in southern Italy is investigating the German bank's sale of 7 billion euros worth of Italian state debt as Italy approached a debt crisis that eventually brought down the government of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Deutsche Bank had no immediate comment.

Five former managers of Deutsche Bank as well as the bank itself are under investigation in the case, the source said.

(Reporting by Vincenzo Damiani, writing by Isla Binnie, editing by Giselda Vagnoni)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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Goldman Sachs is firing traders again

• Matt Turner
 
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• 17h
• 10,041
 
• 6

Thomson ReutersGoldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at a panel discussion at the North American Energy Summit in New York.

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Goldman Sachs on Thursday made job cuts in its securities business, according to people familiar with the matter.

The cuts bring the headcount reduction in the fixed-income, currencies and commodities (FICC) business to around 10%, the people said.

The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Goldman Sachs cut staff in a round of redundancies earlier in the year.

The bank had a lousy first quarter, posting a 37% decline in trading revenue versus the same quarter a year earlier. FICC revenues fell 47%.

Harvey Schwartz, CFO at Goldman Sachs, was asked if there might be more job cuts on the bank's first-quarter earnings call.He said (emphasis added):

In terms of other cost initiatives, I know there's been a lot of stuff in the press. I guess I would really summarize it as follows. I would just say we're shareholders and we're doing things that you would expect shareholders to do.

The FICC business in particular has seen a lot of change. It was announced late last month that the cohead of global fixed-income, currency, and commodities sales, Dalinc Ariburnu, would leave the bank. The other cohead is Tom Cornacchia.

In March, Cornacchia, described a cultural shift wrought with "friction" and "awkwardness"inside the global FICC business.

The Goldman Sachs news extends a miserable week for investment banks. Business Insider reported on Wednesday that Credit Suisse had fired about 130 people in the global-markets business in London.

Fitch downgrades Brazil, Meirelles calls for credible targets

• Reuters

• 13h
• 137

Thomson ReutersThe Fitch Ratings logo is seen at their offices at Canary Wharf financial district in London

By Alonso Soto and Aluisio Alves

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Fitch Ratings downgraded Brazil's sovereign debt further into junk territory on Thursday, citing a deeper-than-expected economic contraction and changing fiscal targets that have undermined credibility.

Fitch downgraded Brazil to BB from BB+ with a negative outlook a week before a Senate vote that is expected to lead to the ouster of unpopular leftist President Dilma Rousseff.

Henrique Meirelles, a likely finance minister if Vice President Michel Temer becomes president, said the first step Brazil must take is to establish realistic targets.

"Everyone increasingly needs to know that what is signaled, what is declared a goal or a target, will be achieved," he said during a televised interview with Globo News.

The ratings agency in December had stripped Brazil of its investment-grade status in what was a bitter reversal for Latin America's largest economy, seven years after a commodities-fueled boom helped propel it to the coveted top rating.

Fitch said the outlook had weakened further since December, with a 3.8 percent economic contraction expected in 2016 due to "the high level of political uncertainty" as well as deteriorating labor markets and a slowdown in Brazil's top trading partner, China.

If the Senate votes on May 11 to try Rousseff on charges of allegedly manipulating budget accounts, as expected, she will immediately be replaced by Temer during the six-month trial.

"This (downgrade) is due to lack of fiscal control and the absence of political and economic direction in the country," Andre Perfeito, chief economist with Gradual Investimentos. "The arrival of Temer is not being seen as the solution to the fiscal problems which are very deep given the fall in revenues."

Fitch's Brazil director, Rafael Guedes, said in a phone interview the deterioration of Brazil's economic outlook is similar to that of neighboring Argentina in 2001.

He said, however, the country's debt could be upgraded quickly if the government takes action to reduce a ballooning debt burden.

Meirelles, a former central bank chief, said the country's main challenge is to pass measures that would make public debt levels sustainable. He has repeatedly expressed concern with the trajectory of Brazil's rising public debt.

A spokesman for the finance ministry said it did not plan to comment.

In February, ratings agency Moody's cut Brazil's rating by two notches to junk level, while S&P has Brazil at BB, two notches below investment grade.

(Additional reporting by Cesar Raizer and Raquel Stenzel; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Diane Craft and Sandra Maler)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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Here's your complete preview of Friday's jobs report

• Akin Oyedele
 
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• 3h
• 2,634
 
• 2

Reuters/Jim Young

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the April jobs report on Friday.

Here's what Wall Street is expecting, via Bloomberg:

• Nonfarm payrolls:+200,000
• Unemployment rate: 4.9%
• Average hourly earnings month-on-month: +0.3%
• Average hourly earnings year-on-year: +2.4%
• Average weekly hours worked: 34.5

The forecast for headline job gains is right where economists obsessed about just a few months ago. Anything below 200,000 was troubling.

"As we approach full employment, the monthly job growth of 200,000 may not be sustained," Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, told Business Insider.

"But this isn't a problem."

To put things in perspective, we haven't seen negative employment growth for 65 straight months.

And for April, indications of another robust month of job gains can be found in the second-straight rise of the ISM's non-manufacturing employment index, and the fact that initial jobless claims fell to the lowest level since 1973.

So rather than obsess over the headline, economists have recently turned their attention to other things.

FRED

The labor-force participation rate has unexpectedly crept higher since late last year.

It's been driven by demographics and the availability of jobs.

People born in the 1940s — so-called baby boomers — have hit their prime retirement age. 

Additionally, the near-record level of job openings is "pulling back into the labor force some workers who are right on the edge," said Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain.

But he's seeing a yellow warning light on the tech sector, which was volatile in April after a slew of weak earnings. Even before that, there had been uncertainty in Silicon Valley that prompted some companies to reconsider their hiring plans.

Economy-wide, discouraged workers would change their minds faster if wages start to grow.

Slow wage growth has been one of the biggest laggards of the labor-market's recovery, and wage growth is the one thing everyone, from the average consumer to the Federal Reserve, needs right now.

Chamberlain forecasts that average hourly earnings grew 2.6% year-on-year, which is more than the consensus. He said it's puzzling that wage growth has been so slow, although it has trended upwards since early last year. 

Torsten Sløk, Deutsche Bank's chief international economist, pointed out a calendar quirk that could push the wage-growth data higher for April. 

Deutsche Bank

The Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys for the jobs report during the week of the 12th of every month. Payday for is on the 15th for those paid bi-weekly.

So when, like April, the 12th is early in the week and not at the end, more employers are likely to include the bi-weekly pay in the survey. 

Calendar effect or not, higher wages are something the Federal Reserve would welcome.

It would give them more confidence in their 2% inflation target, and suggest that consumer spending will continue to drive economic growth.

And for Marc Chandler, this is about the only thing that matters to the Fed right now in the labor market. The strong pace of job gains and the drop in the unemployment rate have not moved the needle on raising interest rates. 

"Another 200k increase in nonfarm payrolls is not a game-changer" for the Fed, Chandler wrote in a note. "The issue is not jobs or income; it is consumption and investment."

SEE ALSO: More millennials are living in mom's basement than at any other time in the past decade

There's one big problem with China's plan to transform its economy

• Elena Holodny
 
•  

• May 4, 2016, 11:30 PM
• 5,995

 More Charts

 
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One of China's long-term economic plans is to get its workers out of rural areas and into cities.

This is part of China's larger goal of transforming the country's economy into one based on services and consumer spending. Ultimately, the government wants to get about70% of its population into cities.

But it seems as if China may actually be on the edge of a reverse migration, as many migrants are returning back home.

Back in January, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that the migrant population in 2015 dropped for the first time in three decades — by 5.68 million.

Bloomberg View's Adam Minter previously noted that part of that drop could be attributed to economic reasons such as a deterioration in the manufacturing sector and an improvement in rural economies. He also suggested, however, that people were moving back home for noneconomic reasons, too, such as taking care of aging parents.

In a monthly research note to clients, Deutsche Bank's Torsten Sløk shared a chart showing the percentage of rural migrants seeking jobs outside their hometown over the past five years.

As the chart shows, the percentage has dropped close to zero, down from about 5.5% in 2010.

Deutsche Bank

One notable consequence from China's reverse migration is that China's ghost cities may end up staying ghost cities for much longer, as Seeking Alpha's Pater Tenebrarum noted.

Still, while this reverse migration may not be in line with China's master plan, it's not necessarily a bad trend.

As Bloomberg View's Minter noted:

It should help alleviate the overcrowding in China's biggest cities and the sharp income disparity between rural and urban areas. Returning migrants tend to be more worldly and wealthy than when they left, as well as more entrepreneurial: The number of people starting new businesses in rural China grew 3.1%, year over year, in the first half of 2015. In total, about 2 million migrants have returned home to start businesses.

And, arguably, the more pressing demographic issue is China's aging population; by 2050 its over-65 age group is estimated to be about equal in size to the combined total projected populations of Japan, Germany, Australia, and Egypt.

SEE ALSO: There's a big reason why the US dollar has been getting destroyed