As the US speeds toward one of the most consequential elections in its 248-year history, Google is rolling out safeguards to ensure users get reliable information. In addition to the measures it announced late last year, the company said on Friday that it's adding election-related guardrails to YouTube, Search, Google Play and AI products. YouTube will add information panels above the search results for at least some federal election candidates. The modules, likely similar to those you see when searching the web for prominent figures, will include the candidates' basic details like their political party and a link to Google Search for more info. The company says the panels may also include a link to the person's official website (or other channel).

The Google online search business is slowing. Search sales rose 15 percent in 2019 slower than the 22 percent pace of 2018. The stock's been on a little bit of a roller coaster this week thanks to those numbers but is still on pace to finish the week higher. I had a chance to sit down with Ruth Porat the company's CFO and we talked about how Alphabet split its advertising revenue into its three buckets for the first time . I often say that we've been on a journey and we've been expanding disclosure over time whether it was providing more insight into what's our geographic breakdown or one time run rates.

Two former product wizards from Facebook and Google are combining Silicon Valley's buzziest buzz words -- search, artificial intelligence, and big data -- into a new technology service aimed at solving nothing less than the problem of how to provide professional meaning in the modern world. Founded by chief executive Ashutosh Garg, a former search and personalization expert at Google and IBM research, and chief technology officer Varun Kacholia, who led the ranking team at Google and YouTube search and the News Feed team at Facebook, Eightfold.ai The two men have come together (in perhaps the most Silicon Valley fashion) to bring the analytical rigor for which their former employers are famous to the question of how best to help employees find fulfillment in the workforce. "Employment is the backbone of society and it is a hard problem," to match the right person with the right role, says Garg. "People pitch recruiting as a transaction… [but] to build a holistic platform is to build a company that fundamentally solves this problem," of making work the most meaningful to the most people, he says. It's a big goal, and it's backed by $24 million in funding provided by some big-time investors -- Lightspeed Ventures and Foundation Capital .