Mystery Google barge will be invite-only Google X showroom, says report

Google's mystery barge in the San Francisco Bay. A new report said that the tech giant is building a VIP, invite-only showroom for Google X projects and products.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

After a week of intense interest in what Google has been building on barges in the San Francisco Bay and in Maine's Casco Bay, the mystery may well be over: The tech giant is developing a reconfigurable, invite-only showroom for Google X-related projects and products.

According to a report from CBS' San Francisco affiliate KPIX, Google has been working on the project for more than a year, and the plan is to make the showroom movable and also capable of being taken apart and reassembled as needed. The idea is that elements of it could be on the water one day, or on a ski slope the next. The edifice will have three floors of showrooms and a party deck, KPIX said, citing "a source who has been on board the vessel."

KPIX also reported that the project has been "personally directed" by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Google X is the tech giant's secretive research unit. Its efforts have ranged from the Google Glass computerized eyewear to Google's self-driving cars, and last spring it acquired Makani Power, a startup investigating far-out, high-flying ideas for wind power generation.

Last week, CNET was first to report the connection between Google and the mysterious four-story building, made from shipping containers and covered in scaffolding and black netting, that is sitting atop a rusty barge alongside the former Navy base at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.

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CNET reported that Google was likely planning to use the structure as a floating data center. But subsequently, a KPIX report and a tip to CNET both indicated that it would be used as some kind of floating Google Glass store. (KPIX is owned by CNET parent CBS.)

Although Google has been working on the structure for months, first inside the cavernous Hangar 3 on Treasure Island, and then outside that building but behind security fencing, it hasn't said anything publicly about the project, nor has it confirmed its involvement. But both the National Park Service and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) confirmed Google's involvement to CNET, though neither agency could say what the tech giant was building on the barge.

And although activity on the project was bustling at one time, it has recently come to a complete standstill.

Across the country sitting idle is a second mystery Google barge that in early October was towed into the harbor in Portland, Maine. The registration on the Portland barge showed its owner to be By and Large LLC, the same company that owns the barge on which the Treasure Island project was built and that also is the leaseholder on Hangar 3. CNET was able to connect the projects on both coasts to Google.

It's isn't clear why work hasn't resumed on Treasure Island. The BCDC has said it isn't ready to issue a permit for Google to move the barge to San Francisco's Fort Mason -- a desire confirmed by the National Park Service, which manages that former Army base -- but BCDC didn't stop the project. Asked if it was responsible for ordering the work stoppage, the Coast Guard also said no.

Google hasn't responded to numerous CNET requests for comment. And in the absence of other public agencies with any knowledge of the project talking, it has been impossible to say why there's no activity at the Treasure Island site. But the Coast Guard in Maine did say that the assumption there is that work will not even begin on the structure that pulled into Portland harbor until the San Francisco Bay-based project is completed. And now, KPIX reported that Google's problem is that it didn't seem to expect that the Coast Guard would consider the project to be a vessel, and therefore subject to marine regulations.

Work likely began on the San Francisco barge project sometime last fall, given that Hangar 3 was leased starting in mid-November 2012. According to The Day Connecticut, work on the East Coast mystery barge structure started sometime in May, although the containers used to assemble that structure were built in San Francisco. That work almost certainly took place in Hangar 3.

Now, the biggest questions are whether Google will confirm the new KPIX report, and when work will start again on Treasure Island. But with the mystery revealed, it's safe to wonder if much of the intense speculation and interest will quickly die down.

With Nexus 5, Google finally gets flagship phone treatment

(Credit: Google)

The Nexus franchise is finally getting a little respect.

Google on Thursday pulled the wraps off its latest marquee smartphone, the Nexus 5, which comes loaded with high-end specifications and Android 4.4, or KitKat. But perhaps just as important is the confirmation that the phone will be broadly available in carrier stores across the nation.

That's right, the Nexus 5 will be sold through Sprint and T-Mobile, with only Verizon Wireless opting out of carrying the device. Updated at 3:26 p.m. PT: Google came back and confirmed that AT&T won't be selling the Nexus 5, but it will be able to run on its network.

Broader distribution is critical at a time when all of the big flagship smartphones, from theiPhone 5S to the Galaxy S4, are sold on every carrier in the nation. The industry has shifted away from exclusives with nearly every player pushing a universal device with multiple partners.

The Nexus 5 multi-carrier push is a far cry from the launch of the Nexus One, Google's first attempt to get into the phone business. It was sold through its own store, which eventually shut down amid complaints of poor customer service. Subsequent Nexus phones had one or two carrier partners, but little carrier support.

That was one of the knocks on the older Nexus phones -- devices that were highly coveted by hardcore Android fans, but tough to get because of the select carrier support.

And it's not like the support was consistent. The unlocked Nexus One would only work on AT&T or T-Mobile; the Nexus S was a Sprint exclusive; the Galaxy Nexus was available on Verizon Wireless -- with its Google Wallet capability stripped out -- and Sprint; and the Nexus 4 was only available through T-Mobile or unlocked.

A Nexus fan would have to jump through some hoops if that person wanted to keep upgrading from one Nexus device to another.

The Nexus 5 at least attempts to solve some of that confusion by offering a nearly universal single device able to run on all bands supported by the big three carriers. It will sell for the attractive unsubsidized price of $349, which comes with 16 gigabytes, and $399 for the 32GB version. It is available today unlocked in 10 countries through Google Play.

More importantly, the Nexus 5 will also sell in carrier stores. Despite Google's attempts to shift the smartphone retail paradigm toward its online model, most people still buy their smartphones in retail stores, and largely run by carriers.

Google maintained it had a strong relationship with Verizon, and hinted at projects that it was working on for next year.

The Nexus 5 may not benefit from the same kind of marketing support that a Samsung will throw at the Galaxy Note 3 or Apple at the iPhone 5S, but it represents a step in the right direction.

Sprint, meanwhile, confirmed that it would subsidize the Nexus 5, bringing it down to $150 with a two-year contract (T-Mobile has eliminated subsidies). The lower price could further entice buyers not normally familiar with the Nexus brand or not obsessed with the latest version of Android.

Perennially a favorite of Android fans, the Nexus franchise could reach the kind of mainstream awareness that the Galaxy S and iPhone family enjoys.

White House rejects criticism of Obama over NSA surveillance as rift deepens

White House press secretary Jay Carney speaks to the media on Friday. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

The White House sought on Friday to distance itself from the National Security Agency's monitoring of foreign leaders, rejecting criticism that President Barack Obama was understating his knowledge of the agency's activities.

In a further sign of the growing blame game within Washington over the affair, spokesman Jay Carney said Obama paid close attention to terrorism intercepts but had no need to personally bug the phones of allies.

"The president is a very deliberate consumer of the intelligence gathered for him on national security matters," said Carney. "But when the president wants to find out what the heads of state of friendly nations think, he calls them."

The White House comments followed an admission on Thursday from secretary of state John Kerry that some surveillance practices were carried out "on auto-pilot" and had not been known to the president. That was followed on Thursday night by the NSA director, Keith Alexander, blaming Kerry's own department for driving its spying on friendly world leaders.

"The intelligence agencies don't come up with the requirements. The policymakers come up with the requirements," Alexander said. "One of those groups would have been, let me think, hold on, oh: ambassadors."

Alexander said the NSA collected information when it was asked by policy officials to discover the "leadership intentions" of foreign countries. "If you want to know leadership intentions, these are the issues," he said.

On Friday, veteran US diplomats questioned that assertion.

Thomas Pickering, who served as ambassador to Russia, India, Israel, Jordan and the United Nations, said he found it puzzling that intelligence agencies would interpret requests for information as a green light to bug the phones of friendly government leaders.

"To point the finger at ambassadors as being responsible for generating these requests seems, in my experience, to be far fetched," Pickering told the Guardian.

"In my time, intelligence requirements were never based on collection methods, they were based on intelligence interests. That an ambassador may have been interested in the views of a foreign leader is not a reason to say they had any responsibility for how that information was gathered."

Pickering, who recently led a White House review of the 2012 assassination of the US ambassador to Libya, said he had no direct knowledge but would be surprised to find the NSA was taking direction from ambassadors on such matters.

"It would be self-evident that embassies would be interested in knowing, but it is a huge jump to imagine that an ambassador could somehow be so persuasive as to persuade the intelligence community," he said.

NSA director General Keith Alexander. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Alexander's explanation also drew scorn from James Carew Rosapepe, who served as an ambassador under the Clinton administration, who said "we generally don't do that in democratic societies" during an event at the the Baltimore Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday.

Pressed over the apparent "inconsistency" between comments by Alexander and Kerry, Jen Psaki, the state department's chief spokeswoman, said on Friday: "I don't actually think there was an inconsistency … I would just refute the notion of the question."

She added that the reviews into surveillance programs announced by the White House included all branches of government, and that Kerry's remarks applied not just to the state department.

"When the secretary made his comments yesterday, he said 'we'," she said. "He is talking about a collective 'we', as in the entire government is looking at these programs."

Apple, Google, Microsoft unite against NSA spying program

(Credit: USA Freedom Act letter)

The top tech companies are sharpening their blades in their battle with the National Security Agency. While they've been doggedly asking for transparency on the agency's mass surveillance program for months, they're now calling for reform.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and AOL penned a letter (pdf) to the lead members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday urging the lawmakers to substantially reform the NSA surveillance practices. The companies also asked for additional oversight and accountability mechanisms for the spying programs.

"Transparency is a critical first step to an informed public debate, but it is clear that more needs to be done," the letter reads. "We urge the Administration to work with Congress in addressing these critical reforms that would provide much needed transparency and help rebuild the trust of Internet users around the world."

The NSA is one of the biggest surveillance and eavesdropping agencies in the US and was whistleblower Edward Snowden's workplace before he decided to leak some of the agency's top-secret documents to the press in June.

That document leak opened the public's eyes to the government's collection of data on US residents through both cellular records and metadata from Internet companies. Since Snowden's original leak, thousands more documents have surfaced. The NSA and the Obama administration have maintained that the surveillance program was carried out to protect Americans and track down foreign terrorists.

The letter sent by the tech companies "applauds" Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) who recently sponsored a bill called the USA Freedom Act. This bill has the goal of "ending eavesdropping, dragnet collection, and online monitoring" by the NSA and other government agencies.

Sensenbrenner is considered one of the architects of the Patriot Act, which the NSA often cites as a legal justification for its surveillance activities. However, Sensenbrenner is adamant that mass government spying wasn't the intention of the Patriot Act.

"We have to make a balance between security and civil liberties," Sensenbrenner told theAssociated Press in an interview last week. "And the reason the intelligence community has gotten itself into such trouble is they apparently do not see why civil liberties have got to be protected."

In their letter, the six tech giants echoed Sensenbrenner's sentiment.

"As companies whose services are used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, we welcome the debate about how to protect both national security and privacy interests and we applaud the sponsors of the USA Freedom Act for making an important contribution to this discussion," the letter reads.

Ever since the Snowden leak, these tech companies have been pushing for greater transparency from the US government. They have also been urging the government to allow them to publish detailed information on the number of national security-related government requests for user data they have received.

In their letter, the companies again reiterate their request to release more information to the public.These companies are looking to reassure their users that the NSA doesn't have unfettered access to their user data. At present, tech companies are only allowed to publish information on such requests in aggregate; they can't break down how many requests came from the NSA specifically.

"We also continue to encourage the Administration to increase its transparency efforts and allow us to release more information about the number and types of requests that we receive," the letter reads, "so that the public debate on these issues can be informed by facts about how these programs operate."

In other NSA reform news, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved a handful of surveillance reforms on Thursday in an 11-4 vote during a closed meeting, according to Politico. The text of the bill is not yet available, but most likely it would call for limits on government call-tracking and database queries.

Oracle executive pay deal again rejected by shareholders

Larry Ellison, Oracle founder. The company's growth has slowed in recent years as corporations move from installing software on their own machines to using cloud-based services. Photograph: Action Press/Rex Features

Oracle shareholders have rejected the company's pay practices for a second successive year, after founder Larry Ellison topped the league of America's best paid executives with a $78m (£49m) package in the most recent financial year.

A motion to approve executive pay at the annual meeting was defeated after 57% of shareholders voted against or abstained in a non-binding poll. Because Ellison owns more than 24% of the shares, an estimated 85% of the independent stockholders are thought to have joined the pay revolt.

Immediately after the meeting, shareholder activist group Change to Win called for the resignation of Bruce Chizen, who has chaired Oracle's compensation committee since 2011.

"Given the extent of investor opposition, Chizen must make room for fresh, independent thinking that can restore investor confidence in the board's linking of pay with corporate performance and strategy," said Dieter Waizenegger, director of the group's investment arm. "Further foot dragging risks a real governance crisis."

The UK's Railway Pension Investments joined Dutch fund PGGM and the California State Teachers' Retirement System in voting against the board after sending an open letter earlier this month raising "severe concerns about executive compensation and proper board accountability at Oracle".

The company's growth has slowed in recent years as corporations move from installing software on their own machines to using cloud-based services. Oracle's stock has risen 8% in the last year, but lags gains made by other US companies.

A number of funds and shareholder advisory group ISS also campaigned against the re-election of the directors. All board members were majority approved, but the company has yet to give a breakdown of the percentage of votes cast in their favour.

Last year, Oracle's pay policy was voted down by a majority 59%. The remuneration vote, known in America as "say on pay", is non-binding but few companies risk the wrath of shareholders two years running.

However, Oracle chairman Jeffrey Henley told the meeting on Thursday: "We believe that our current executive compensation is considerably performance driven."

At the event, Thomas McIntyre of the Trowel Trades fund put forward a motion for better information on how rewards for executives are measured.

"Without clarity from the board, shareholders are giving the board a blank cheque to pick whatever metrics and calculations it chooses," he said. "This is even more concerning because over the past several years the board has sat by despite persistent pay for performance misalignment. Our executives receive outsize rewards by average performance."

Oracle is one of only 12 of America's top 3000 public companies to have suffered more than one say on pay backlash, according to ISS. Others include the clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, whose chief executive Mike Jeffries was paid $4m in 2011 for agreeing to limit his use of the company jet.

UK manufacturing sector boosted by rising demand for exports

A steel works in Rotherham. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Britain's manufacturers enjoyed rising export demand and hired new workers in October, according to a survey.

The closely watched Markit/CIPS UK Manufacturing PMI report suggested export orders grew at their fastest pace in more than two years, although overall activity rose at a slightly softer pace.

Although manufacturing output remains well below the level enjoyed before the recession, it notched up its seventh straight month of improvement with a reading of 56.0. That was well above the 50-mark that separates expansion from contraction and down slightly from 56.3 in September. Economists had forecast a reading of 56.1 in a Reuters poll.

The survey follows the latest official data showing the UK economy grew by 0.8% in the third quarter. With households under pressure from stagnant wages and rising bills and prices, there have been questions over whether that pace of growth can be maintained in the consumer-dependent UK economy. But economists said manufacturing could help drive overall growth.

Rob Dobson, senior economist at survey compilers Markit, said: "Despite only accounting for less than 11% of the economy, the current strength of growth seen in manufacturing means the sector will still provide a major boost to the economy in October, boding well for the strong pace of economic growth we saw in the second and third quarter being sustained into the fourth quarter.

"The survey suggests manufacturing output is growing at a quarterly rate of around 1%-1.5%."

But he also highlighted the challenges facing the government as it vows to shift economic dependence towards manufacturing and exports.

"Maintaining this solid expansion will be important if we are to see any real signs of the economy rebalancing, as manufacturing remains 9% smaller than its pre-crisis peak, while services have already closed the gap," added Dobson.

The survey suggested manufacturing employment rose for the sixth consecutive month as total new orders for the sector continued to rise. Within that, export orders increased at the fastest pace since February 2011 as companies reported growing demand from Asia, the US, mainland Europe, Ireland, the Middle East and Russia.

EEF, the manufacturers' organisation, welcomed the export growth.

"Manufacturers' focus on developing new products and services to support their expansion into new export markets is making a strong contribution to this trend," said the EEF's chief economist, Lee Hopley.

"Buoyant output across all sectors and an upbeat view of demand at home and in overseas markets bodes well for a sustained recovery in the fourth quarter and into 2014. While we expect to see a mild contraction in output overall for 2013, we are forecasting growth to bounce back to over 2% next year."

Economists said the latest show of continued growth in the sector would probably boost market speculation that the Bank of England will have to raise borrowing costs from their current record low of 0.5% sooner than suggested.

"With orders and production indices remaining firm, the PMI is consistent with an acceleration in GDP growth in the fourth quarter from the 0.8% quarter-on-quarter rate recorded in the third quarter, which should keep early rate hike expectations and sterling supported, particularly against the euro," said James Knightley at ING Financial Markets.

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