Tax Justice Network: Google dodged £1.5bn tax in the UK last year

Ethically-minded developers may want to know how much tax companies like Google are getting away with avoiding.

In an analysis for The Mirror, the Tax Justice Group estimates Google should have paid an eye-watering £1.5 billion extra in corporation tax last year.

The publication notes how this figure could have paid for 60,000 nurses for the UK's struggling national health service.

In 2018, Google paid just £67 million in corporation tax. The figure the...

8 April 2019 | Android

Opinion: Why Kubernetes Managed Services are becoming a key trend

From augmented reality to AI-driven solutions, evolving technology trends have the potential to make our daily lives more efficient and more exciting – provided we understand and embrace them to their full potential. The same applies to the cloud industry.

Operators are looking for every opportunity to deliver simplicity and efficiency to their customers. Container technology has been instrumental in the progress businesses have made in these areas, having allowed them to manage...

28 March 2019 | Cloud

Phil Spencer: Google Stadia is impressive, but Xbox will ‘go big’ at E3

Xbox boss Phil Spencer his circulated an internal memo following the Google Stadia announcement promising that Microsoft will ‘go big’ at this year's E3 conference.

Microsoft has been working on a Google Stadia-like equivalent called xCloud for some time now and recently showed it off in a smaller demo. Google got the jump on Xbox by taking Stadia to the big stage at GDC yesterday.

In his memo, Spencer admitted that Stadia was impressive but had little...

20 March 2019 | Cloud

Google donates $2 million to Wikipedia along with free APIs

Google is donating $2 million to Wikipedia in addition to providing free access to APIs which help editors improve Wiki pages.

One important Google API is making free to Wikipedia is the Translate API “to provide editors with resources and insights to drive the creation of new Wikipedia articles across 10 languages in India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and the Middle East and North Africa region.”

Elsewhere, the Google Cloud Custom Search API will help editors...

23 January 2019 | API

Google upgrades its speech APIs with improved features

Google has updated its Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text APIs with a range of feature improvements alongside support for more languages.

For many developers, the addition of 17 new WaveNet-based voices for a variety of languages will be the highlight of today’s update.

WaveNet is Google’s technology which uses machine learning to create a natural-sounding voice when performing text-to-speech.

Text-to-Speech now supports a total of 30 standard voices...

29 August 2018 | API

GitLabs shift from Azure to GCP is not due to ex-GitHub users

GitLab is shifting from Azure to Google Cloud but says its decision was not due to users who migrated from GitHub following its Microsoft acquisition.

Following the news of Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub, traffic spiked of people using GitLab’s tool for importing projects from the world’s biggest Git service. It’s clear developers still have very divisive opinions about Microsoft.

At first glance, it would be easy to believe GitLab’s migration...

26 June 2018 | Cloud

Google Cloud App Engine now supports the Node.js runtime

Google Cloud has announced support for the popular cross-platform Node JavaScript runtime in the standard App Engine environment

Node.js allows server code to be written in JavaScript. With the support added today, Google is seeking to make this process as simple for developers as possible.

 

To ensure simplicity, Google is not putting any limitation on the Node.js packages that developers can use — and it will not have any language or API...

13 June 2018 | Cloud

Opinion: A 5G-enabled PSP would prove mobile streaming’s potential

If the rumours of a 5G-enabled PSP (PlayStation Portable) are true, it would be a defining moment in proving the next-generation of cellular technology has unlocked the potential for the cloud streaming of apps and games to mobile devices.

The rumours of a 5G PSP started after Sony released its FY2017 financial results. In its results, the company pointed towards 5G as being the reason it should remain in the smartphone business — despite current poor...

1 May 2018 | Cloud

Jakarta EE aiming to focus on cloud-native Java after developer consultation

What do enterprise developers want? A cloud-native Java, according to a new consultation from the Eclipse Foundation.

The study, which polled more than 1,800 Java developers – 44% of whom categorised themselves as senior developers with a further 24% as architects – put cloud-native as an ‘imperative’ for enterprise Java going forward.

‘Two critical gaps in Java EE are now top priorities for Jakarta EE’, the foundation notes – lest we...

25 April 2018 | Cloud

Mimecast rolls out new API developer portal to extend business and cyber resilience

Email and data security provider Mimecast has rolled out a new application programming interface (API) developer portal to extend business and cyber resilience for email with a constant, scalable and uniform API.

The Mimecast API developer portal is already processing a huge number of requests every day and is a key enabler for multiple Mimecast services and applications. Mimecast customers and partners need to visit the portal to take advantage of Mimecast security and archive data...

5 April 2018 | API