Budget 2015: Google Tax gets green light as Treasury aims to reap £3.1bn in new avoidance clampdown March 18, 2015 The government pledged another tax clampdown yesterday, with the implementation of a so-called “Google tax” taking centre stage. The Treasury expects to raise £3.1bn over the next five years through the various measures announced. There has been ongoing concern in many quarters over what is perceived to be an unfair diversion of taxes by multinationals [...]
Budget 2015: City hit by Google tax and bank levy hike March 18, 2015 The government's bank levy will be increased by 0.21 per cent, in an effort to raise £900m, the chancellor announced today. The measures were being taken so banks "make a bigger contribution to the repair of our public finances", George Osborne said during his Budget speech. Lenders will also be prevented from offsetting PPI compensation [...]
How to win at job interviews, according to Google’s HR boss March 17, 2015 Google's senior vice president of people operations Laszlo Bock wants to help you win at job interviews. He's about to publish a book about succeeding at work and ahead of that has been posting advice on how to get a job at Google (or anywhere). Ahead of publication he is also sharing six tips [...]
Google finance boss goes out on a high March 11, 2015 THE PHRASE “spending more time with my family” is normally code for “I’ve been asked to leave by someone more important than me”. But for Google CFO Patrick Pichette, he really means it. The exiting finance boss said he made the decision after climbing Kilimanjaro, with his wife, who wanted to do more travelling. “When [...]
Google Shop London in pictures: Inside the search giant’s first ever physical shop on Tottenham Court Road March 11, 2015 It may have succeeded as one of the most successful companies of the 21st century by offering services online, but Google is making a move offline for the first time – right here in London with its first real life shop. Based at Currys PC World on Tottenham Court Road, the “shop within a shop” [...]
Google’s share price under departing finance chief Patrick Pichette rocketed March 11, 2015 Google’s long-standing finance chief Patrick Pichette has announced he’s leaving the tech company to travel the world. Pichette is one of the most senior executives, with the tech giant having overseen the firm’s finances for the last six and a half years. Since then, the value of Google stock has rocketed by almost two thirds [...]
Google’s Eric Schmidt: Humans are better off than ever – and it’s down to technology March 6, 2015 Humankind has never had it so good and we should be thankful for the role of technology in getting us to that point, according to Google’s Eric Schmidt. Speaking at the WorldPost's Future of Work conference, the executive chairman of the software giant said he wanted to talk about “why we are so unhappy – [...]
Mobile World Congress 2015: Google aims to launch its own mobile network March 2, 2015 Google is set to launch its own US mobile network “in the next few months” as part of a move to spur innovation among operators. The search giant’s vice president of android and chrome, Sundar Pichai, told telecoms executives at Mobile World Congress that Google would rent network capacity and launch a consumer-facing network to [...]
Google researchers propose a new method for ranking search results, prioritising facts rather than reputation March 2, 2015 A team at Google has suggested a new model for search, which is based on measuring the accuracy of facts in a web page, rather than its reputation. At the moment, the position of a website partly depends on the number of other websites linking to it, so that the more times a page is [...]
Google Ventures just invested $60m in Paul McCartney and Sam Smith’s music rights company Kobalt February 27, 2015 More fuel to add to the Apple vs Google music streaming fire. Google's investment arm, Google Ventures, has just invested $60m (£39m) in music rights and publishing company Kobalt. As part of the funding round, the business also got investment from Dell founder Michael Dell. The company, which has more than 8,000 songwriters and more [...]