GPS readings in cities and indoors can be terrible. One startup has found a novel solution.

A new antenna design being tested by the U.S. Air Force could make GPS significantly more reliable and able to function in dense urban areas where GPS accuracy is weak. It might even allow the technology to work indoors in some cases.

Good GPS readings are hard to get in cities because of the multipath phenomenon: signals from positioning satellites bounce off buildings and other structures. That confuses GPS receivers, which calculate their location by knowing exactly how long it took for signals to arrive from satellites overhead.

A signal that has bounced takes longer to arrive than it would if it had traveled directly, muddying a receiver’s math and sending location readings off by tens or hundreds of meters. Smartphones and in-car GPS units often have to work out their true location by analyzing maps and by getting a series of readings over time.

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The Air Force Institute of Technology is now trying to tackle that problem with an antenna able to recognize and ignore multipath GPS signals. The project builds on a design invented by Locata, a company based in Canberra, Australia. The institute is testing the company’s soccer-ball-sized proof-of-concept prototype, and plans to adapt it into versions that could conform with the frame of a Humvee or aircraft, or be built into helmets.

As the U.S. military tries to automate aircraft and other vehicles, it must rely on GPS to know where they are. Nunzio Gambale, cofounder and CEO of Locata, says that what the Air Force develops stands a good chance of trickling down to civilians, since most GPS technology in smartphones and navigational aids originated with the military.

“The requirements of the military are now converging with the requirements of Apple and Google,” he says. “Everyone wants to use these location tracking-devices indoors and in urban areas where people say GPS will never work.”

Locata’s antenna has many different elements that can be activated individually. In the current prototype there are 80 such elements positioned around a sphere. Switching on each element individually for about one millisecond makes it possible for a receiver to sense not only the strength but also the direction of incoming signals, by comparing what is detected by the elements on different parts of the antenna.

That makes it possible to ignore GPS signals that have bounced in favor of pure ones coming directly from a satellite. “It’s like the blinders coming off,” says Gambale. He believes that in some circumstances the new antenna design could even allow GPS readings indoors, where multipath effects are extremely strong and the signals from positioning satellites are extremely weak.

Constructing antennas from multiple elements isn’t a new idea. But such designs traditionally had each element controlled by its own radio, causing different elements to interact with one another in ways that required complex additional processing to clean up. In Locata’s design, all elements connect to a single radio. The sequence of signals it produces from different antenna elements can be processed relatively easily.

Todd Humphreys, a professor at the University of Texas geopositioning lab, says that Locata’s design shows promise because it can be so much cheaper than previous attempts to address the multipath problem. However, he cautions that this approach to antenna design requires a large receiver, so for now it will be practical only in military applications.

Locata is leaving it up to the Air Force to work out how practical the 3-D antenna can be. Gambale says his company is instead focused on using the technology to improve a competing technology to GPS: a system of ground-based location beacons that allows location readings to within centimeters (see “Ultra-Fine Location Fixes”). Last year the U.S. Air Force commissioned a Locata system for the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Locata is also working to sell systems to companies that operate mines and warehouses.

OpenRemote is an open-source Internet of Things platform that could help spur smarter homes and cities.

If you buy several Internet-connected home gadgets—say, a “smart” thermostat, “smart” door lock, and “smart” window blinds—you’ll likely have to control each one with a separate app, meaning it exists in its own little silo.

That’s not how Elier Ramirez does it. In his home, an iPad app controls his lights, ceiling fans, and TV and stereo. Pressing a single button within the app can shut off all his lights and gadgets when he leaves.

Ramirez can tap a lamp in an image to turn an actual lamp off and on in his apartment, and at the same time he’ll see the picture on the tablet’s screen go dark or become illuminated. Ramirez also set up a presence-sensing feature that uses his cell phone to determine if he’s home (it checks whether or not he has connected to his home Wi-Fi network). This can automatically turn on the lights if he’s there. Ramirez runs the whole setup from a small computer in his home.

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The software behind all this interconnection comes from a company calledOpenRemote, which is plugging away on an open-source software platform for linking Internet-connected gadgets, making it easier to control all kinds of smart home devices, regardless of who made them. And it makes it easy to automate actions like lowering your connected window blinds if the temperature sensed in your living room goes above 75 degrees.

Co-created in 2008 by Marc Fleury, who previously came up with the open-source Java application server JBoss, and Juha Lindfors, OpenRemote offers a way to control and automate all kinds of existing lights and home electronics without worrying about the various integration protocols in different gadgets or shelling out for a customized system. That’s because it supports a slew of different products and protocols, and continues to add support for more as they emerge. Best of all, the software is available to consumers for free.

Pierre Kil, who heads up business development for OpenRemote from Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, says the company eventually hopes to establish a common platform that manufacturers use to make all kinds of home-automation products simpler to set up and use, and to allow devices from different makers to work together smoothly.

When OpenRemote got started, the so-called Internet of Things—wherein traditionally offline devices are connected to the Internet—was largely unknown, and smartphones were just beginning to gain ground among consumers. It was the early days of the iPhone and of Android smartphones, and the iPad had yet to be released. At the time, home automation was expensive, requiring lots of proprietary hardware and installation time.

Now there are relatively inexpensive devices like Twine and Belkin’s WeMo, which can connect “dumb” devices to the Web, and a growing number of Internet-connected devices, like the Nest smart thermostat, that are easy to install and use. Yet different devices still operate on a slew of different “protocols”— the rules devices abide by when transmitting data.

Though OpenRemote isn’t targeting the consumer market directly, it has a community of individual users—including Ramirez, who runs his own IT consulting business in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and has been using OpenRemote for about two years. He discovered the software when browsing for home-automation remote control apps on his iPad, and he gave it a try after realizing how much he could customize it—including building his own remote app with interactive images of the rooms of his house.

“It took a little bit of work and testing, but ultimately I got it to work just fine,” he says. “And once you get it to work, it’s simple to add new things to it.”

Ramirez says he continues to use OpenRemote even as more options emerge because new options and support for new protocols are continuously added. But as more of a hobbyist than an actual programmer, he says, he does wish it were simpler for the average non-programmer to set up in the first place.

Though there are tutorials on its site, the average person may not find OpenRemote simple to set up, and it does require you to have a server on which to run it. Users have to download an OpenRemote controller and then use the Web-based OpenRemote Designer to set up the devices the controller should connect to and determine the look of the user interface. Once you’ve done that, you can access and control your gadgets from your computer or on a smartphone or tablet with Android or iOS OpenRemote apps.

OpenRemote is currently focused on building a sustainable business, which it believes it can achieve by licensing its software to the makers of connected devices. Kil says product integrations are coming, though he won’t yet say when they will happen.

OpenRemote also sees a moneymaking opportunity beyond the home in providing its software to cities, which are becoming increasingly interested in using technology for everything from communicating with citizens to monitoring traffic. Last year, OpenRemote conducted a small test in Eindhoven, in hopes of using automation and crowdsourcing to monitor a city. This included people-tracking with cameras, sound-level tracking, social-media monitoring, and an app that people in the area could use to rate what the atmosphere was like. The company is currently working on a larger-scale project in Eindhoven, Kil says. “If you put four walls around a city, it’s a big room, if you know what I mean,” he says.

(Reuters) – Lookout, one of the world’s biggest providers of mobile security software, said on Thursday that it has raised $55 million in financing.

The round was led by Deutsche Telekom AG.

Qualcomm Inc’s venture capital arm, Greylock Partners and Mithril Capital Management also participated, as did current investors Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.

Lookout’s security software is installed on some 45 million devices runningGoogle Inc’s Android operating system and Apple Inc’s iOS.

Telecommunications firms such as Deutsche Telekom and Qualcomm are growing increasingly interested in mobile security products because cyber attacks on mobile devices have grown exponentially in recent years as sales of smartphones and tablets have surged to consumers and businesses alike.

Lookout said in a statement that it plans to enter the corporate security market later this year, which would put it in competition with older, more established software makers includingSymantec Corp and Intel Corp’s McAfee security division.

San Francisco-based Lookout, founded in 2007, has raised $131 million to date.

(Reuters) – Israeli chip manufacturer TowerJazz (TSEM.TA) is targeting annual revenue run-rate of $1 billion a year by 2015, its chief executive Russell Ellwanger said.

The company, which has plants in Israel, the United States and Japan, had revenue of $639 million in 2012.

“We would have to accelerate growth (to reach this goal),” Ellwanger told Reuters on the sidelines of a company symposium. “Our biggest focus is on sustainable GAAP net profit.”

Ellwanger believes this will be achieved when the company reaches quarterly revenue of $190 million to $200 million.

TowerJazz had a net loss on a GAAP basis in the second quarter of $23 million and has had few profitable quarters on a GAAP basis in recent years due to heavy investments in its second chip plant in Israel.

The company has forecast revenue in the third quarter of $130 million to $140 million, compared with $125 million in the second quarter.

TowerJazz, which makes chips used in smartphones like Apple’s (AAPL.O) iPhone and Samsung’s (005930.KS) Galaxy models as well as battery chargers and AC/DC adapters, expects to start seeing revenue next year from an anticipated contract to build a plant in India.

TowerJazz (TSEM.O) is part of one of two consortiums that have proposed building semiconductor plants in India.

TowerJazz’s consortium includes India’s Jaiprakash Associates (JAIA.NS) and IBM (IBM.N). The group has proposed a plant near New Delhi at a cost of about $4 billion.

Ellwanger said he expects a formal government notification regarding a contract will be made in the next few weeks.

Groundbreaking on the plant could be about six months later and it would take two years for silicon to start and three years to begin shipping revenue wafers, Ellwanger said.

TowerJazz’s share in revenue from the construction and running of the plant would be $300 million over eight years, according to Israeli media reports.

TowerJazz will also be able to use part of the facility for its own products, enabling it to penetrate the Indian market.

(Reuters) – Five buyout firms are expected to bid next week for a stake in Deutsche Telekom’s online classified advertising business Scout24, valuing the equity and debt of the whole unit at $2.2-2.3 billion, three sources close to the process said.

However, the auction is proving to be more than just a battle over price, with some bidders hoping the German telecoms firm can be persuaded to sell a larger stake and several unhappy with its proposals on the future funding of Scout24.

Deutsche Telekom wants to sell part of Scout24 – originally seen as a way to compensate for declining earnings at its traditional telecoms business – in order to free up cash for a planned 6 billion euros of investment in broadband in Germany.

The sources said private equity groups Apax, TPG, Hellman&Friedman, EQT and Silver Lake were expected to table offers in the latest round of bidding next week, valuing the whole of Scout24’s equity and debt at roughly 1.6-1.7 billion euros ($2.2-2.3 billion).

Final offers are due in early November, they added.

The sources said Deutsche Telekom was looking to sell a 30 percent stake, and that was causing some friction with bidders.

“An investor will have almost nothing to say,” an adviser of one of the potential buyers said, adding Deutsche Telekom had rejected offers for 100 percent of Scout24.

The buyout groups are also critical of Deutsche Telekom’s plan to grant Scout24 a shareholder loan worth several hundred millions of euros on what they see as unacceptable terms.

“Deutsche Telekom wants a coupon that is 100 basis points higher than the buyers’ refinancing costs,” one of the sources said.

The buyout groups have made counter-proposals to organize Scout24’s financing themselves, but in that case Deutsche Telekom would demand an even higher valuation of Scout24’s equity, the sources said.

Terms of shareholders loans have been a sticking point for Deutsche Telekom before.

Earlier this year it had to sweeten the loan terms for its acquisition of U.S. peer MetroPCS, which it merged with its T-Mobile US unit.

Only after cutting the debt load it was planning to transfer to the combined company and after sweetening the loan terms did Deutsche Telekom manage to save that deal.

Deutsche Telekom and three of the buyout groups declined to comment. Silver Lake and Hellman&Friedman were not immediately available for comment.

Separately, German daily Handelsblatt reported on Thursday that Swiss publisher Ringier had made a 200 million Swiss Francs ($220 million) offer for Deutsche Telekom’s 50 percent stake in Scout24’s Swiss operations.

(Reuters) – Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has decided not to list its shares in Hong Kong, but has not yet committed to listing on any other exchange, including the New York Stock Exchange, CEO Jonathan Lu told Reuters on Thursday.

The company, founded in 1999 by billionaire Jack Ma, had planned to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange in an IPO analysts and bankers have said could raise up to $15 billion.

Alibaba failed to convince Hong Kong regulators to waive rules over the group’s unique partnership structure – specifically that 28 partners, mainly founders and senior executives, would keep control over a majority of the board, even though they own only around 13 percent of the company.

“We’ve decided not to list in Hong Kong,” Lu said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in China’s Hangzhou city in Zhejiang province. “The Hong Kong authorities need time to study this corporate governance structure (for knowledge-based companies).”

In his first public comment on Alibaba abandoning Hong Kong for the IPO, Lu added the company had not yet committed to list on any other exchange, including the New York Stock Exchange.

Alibaba, whose platforms handle more goods in a year than EBay Inc and Amazon.com Inc combined, expects to nearly triple the volume of transactions on its marketplaces to about 3 trillion yuan ($490 billion) in 3-4 years from 2012, eventually surpassing Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

“In three years we hope to be the No. 1 retail network in the world – larger than Wal-Mart,” Lu added.

(Reuters) – Months before Fairfax Financial Holdings Inc bid $4.7 billion for BlackBerry Ltd, Fairfax boss Prem Watsa played a role in securing a golden parachute worth as much as $55 million for the smartphone maker’s chief executive, according to company filings.

Watsa, Fairfax’s chief executive, joined BlackBerry’s board in January 2012 and was one of three directors charged in March with reviewing the compensation of the Canadian company’s chief executive, Thorsten Heins.

The three directors – Watsa, BlackBerry Chairwoman Barbara Stymiest and long-time board member John Wetmore – decided to boost Heins’ basic salary and incentive bonus, as well as sharply increase the size of the equity awards that he would receive if he loses his job in the event of a takeover.

The new contract that Heins signed in May tripled his compensation to an estimated $55.6 million if there is a change of control at BlackBerry, up from $18.9 million previously, according to a securities filing on May 21.

To be sure, the $55.6 million figure is based in part on BlackBerry’s share price in early March, and the stock has fallen by more than a third since then, which may mean that Heins’ parachute would be worth less.

Still, Watsa’s role in deciding Heins’ compensation is drawing scrutiny from some pay experts after BlackBerry on Monday accepted a conditional buyout bid from a consortium led by Fairfax, a property and casualty insurer that owns almost 10 percent of the smartphone maker.

“(Watsa) was part of the committee that was negotiating this agreement. Did he anticipate that he would make some sort of offer to buy the company? I feel like that’s unlikely, but it’s impossible to know,” said Joe Sorrentino, managing director at executive pay advisors Steven Hall & Partners in New York.

Sorrentino added, “The only concern I would have is since they structured his compensation equity award so that it all is granted at the beginning … it is all getting captured in a change of control golden parachute, as opposed to if they did a more typical process” of granting equity awards annually.

When asked for comment on Thursday, a Fairfax spokesman said Heins’ compensation was reviewed and approved by the entire BlackBerry board.

Watsa stepped down from the board in August, citing a potential conflict of interest after BlackBerry announced a strategic review and sought a buyer. The Fairfax-led consortium aims to take BlackBerry private and give it time to rebuild away from Wall Street’s gaze.

A spokeswoman for BlackBerry said the company had no comment on Watsa’s role or Heins’ compensation, and Heins himself did not respond to a direct request for comment.

Towers Watson, the human resources consultancy firm that worked with BlackBerry’s board on the compensation package, also declined to comment on Thursday.

BlackBerry is not the first company in the spotlight for large payments for outgoing executives. Nokia’s departing chief executive, Stephen Elop, stands to pocket 18.8 million euros ($25 million) if shareholders agree to sell Nokia’s handset business to Microsoft Corp. Elop is set to rejoin Microsoft, his former employer.

STOCK DOWN MORE THAN 50 PCT

Heins was appointed BlackBerry CEO in early 2012, taking over from former co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. In the months before they stepped down, Lazaridis and Balsillie had cut their base salary to $1, a symbolic gesture that they would not draw fat checks while the company was obviously suffering.

Heins’ compensation has increased from $1.9 million in fiscal 2011, when he was chief operating officer, to $10.3 million in fiscal 2012 when he was appointed CEO, before slipping back slightly to $9.1 million in fiscal 2013, which ended on March 2 this year.

Since Heins took over, BlackBerry shares have fallen more than 50 percent as the company delayed the release of its first BlackBerry 10 devices and they then failed to excite sales.

In May, Heins signed a new contract that raised his base salary to $1.5 million from $1 million; bumped his maximum incentive bonus to 150 percent of salary from 125 percent and granted him more than $34 million in front-loaded equity awards that vest over three years.

It is those equity awards that provide the bulk of the enlarged payout if BlackBerry is taken over – the shares would vest immediately instead of over a three-year period.

According to company filings, if Heins is terminated due to a change of ownership of BlackBerry, he’ll receive $3 million to reflect his base salary, annual incentives worth about $4.5 million, and equity awards of $48 million.

The board said the higher payouts were justified to retain Heins and ensure his interests are aligned with those of shareholders, and to reward the executive for leading BlackBerry through a period of massive upheaval.

“The necessary speed and scope of this transformation, as well as its critical importance to the future success of the company, demand leadership of exceptional skill, agility and vision,” BlackBerry said ahead of its July annual general meeting, when shareholders approved the changes.

The filings show that BlackBerry’s board also gave Heins a “special achievement bonus” of $3 million for launching the BlackBerry 10 platform used for its latest smartphones, and for maintaining cash and liquidity above $1.5 billion.

Last week, the company said it would book almost $1 billion in writedowns, mostly on unsold BlackBerry 10 devices, when it reports second-quarter results on Friday.

($1 = 0.7418 euros)

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Tiffany Wu and Lisa Shumaker)

(Reuters) – Google Inc has overhauled its search algorithm, the foundation of the Internet’s dominant search engine, to better cope with the longer, more complex queries it has been getting from Web users.

Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search, told reporters on Thursday that the company launched its latest “Hummingbird” algorithm about a month ago and that it currently affects 90 percent of worldwide searches via Google.

Google is trying to keep pace with the evolution of Internet usage. As search queries get more complicated, traditional “Boolean” or keyword-based systems begin deteriorating because of the need to match concepts and meanings in addition to words.

“Hummingbird” is the company’s effort to match the meaning of queries with that of documents on the Internet, said Singhal from the Menlo Park garage where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin conceived their now-ubiquitous search engine.

“Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You’d sit down and boot up your bulky computer, dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words,” Singhal wrote in a separate blogpost.

“The world has changed so much since then: billions of people have come online, the Web has grown exponentially, and now you can ask any question on the powerful little device in your pocket.”

Page and Brin set up shop in the garage of Susan Wojcicki — now a senior Google executive — in September 1998, around the time they incorporated their company. This week marks the 15th anniversary of their collaboration.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Bob Burgdorfer)

Now private companies can try to raise funds from the public at large.

By Antonio Regalado

During a “demo day” in Silicon Valley last August, entrepreneur Mattan Griffel took the stage with a well-practiced, carefully timed pitch.

“We teach people how to code, online, in one month,” said Griffel, adding meaningful pauses between the words. The startup he cofounded, One Month Rails, will “change the face of online education,” Griffel promised.

Such technology salesmanship used to be reserved for a select audience of angel investors, like those who attended the invitation-only Y Combinator event where Griffel’s video was filmed.

But starting Monday, Griffel’s pitch appeared on the Internet, next to a clickable blue button that says “Invest.” Buying into his startup is now almost as easy as purchasing a toaster on eBay.

“Crowd investing” is the idea that anyone should be able to invest easily in startup companies. That idea took a big step forward thanks to new federal regulations that allow startups, for the first time, to invite large swaths of the public to invest in them.

The new rules are part of the 2012 JOBS Act, a basket of regulatory changes that Silicon Valley lobbied for and that are meant to make it easier for small companies to raise money. The rule that took effect Monday reverses a longstanding ban on “general solicitation” or advertising risky securities to the public.

Under the new regulations, startups can advertise their shares anywhere—on billboards, on Facebook, via direct mail, e-mail lists, or via a dozen online crowd investing portals that have been set up to solicit and manage investments from the public at large.

Griffel’s company appears on Wefunder.com. The site, which was founded last year but became fully operational today, allows anyone to navigate through pitches from two dozen companies developing everything from small farms in shipping containers to new ways to transmit money overseas.

Crowd investing could ultimately have broad effects on what types of technology are able to win financial backing. In particular, it could lead to more gadgets that appeal to narrow markets or those that are developed by the maker movement (see “What Technologies Will Crowdfunding Create”). It might also create competition for traditional venture capitalists (see “Silicon Valley Dynasty Adapts to Fast-and-Cheap Startups”).

Mike Norman, president of Wefunder, says popular technologies that are highly “sharable” will generate the most interest. On Wefunder, for instance, a company called Terrafugia is developing a “flying car”—a plane that has retractable wings and can drive on highways. Most startups can’t yet rely on crowd investing to raise as much money as they need, however. Terrafugia, for instance, has already raised more than $10 million from conventional investors. For many companies, crowdfunding will instead be a way to reach out to hard-core fans and potential customers.

Carl Dietrich, Terrafugia’s CEO, called crowd investing “an interesting experiment to see what happens.” His company already has 83 different investors, many of whom chose to back flying cars because they believe such vehicles should exist and might increase people’s freedom. “What Wefunder is doing is providing the crowd an avenue for direct input into what the world should look like, and what kind of companies there should be.”

Wefunder’s website, with a menu of companies and short promotional videos, looks a lot like Kickstarter, the popular site where filmmakers, authors, and technology companies can raise donations for individual projects. That site has already spawned several technology companies, like Pebble, maker of a smart watch (see “A Smart Watch, Created by the Crowd, Debuts in Vegas” and “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013”).

With crowd investing, however, people will actually be buying shares in new companies. For now, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates financial markets, is limiting crowd investing to accredited investors, or people with $1 million in the bank or who earn more than $200,000 a year. However, the SEC is developing other regulations, due out next year, that would let any member of the public invest small sums in startups.

Some investors may hope to get in early on the next billion-dollar technology company, but the odds say most small investors will be losers. Since 1999, even professional venture capitalists have had dismal returns, barely above zero (see “The Narrowing Ambitions of Venture Capital”). And because individuals invest in fewer companies than professionals, the chance they will see their money again is even lower. “People should not be betting their retirements or kids’ education on startups,” Norman says.

Registering to invest on Wefunder’s site takes only a minute or two. Users agree they meet the financial cutoffs, such as having an income of $200,000. Then a box appears, asking them to click on statements including “I understand most startups fail” and “I can bear a 100% loss on my investments.”

Due diligence: A sign-up screen at crowd investing site Wefunder cautions users that putting money behind startups is risky.

Crowd investors will have to judge startups and their technology based on very limited information. For each company, Wefunder offers a short “elevator pitch” and financial highlights summarized in three or four bullet points. There are stylized photos of company founders, whom investors can then “meet” by watching short personal statements, or visiting their LinkedIn pages.

While that seems like little to go on, it’s not unusual for early-stage investors to make quick decisions, Norman says. “Angel investors sit down for an hour, and then write a check,” he says. “At this stage of the company so many things are going to change that it’s really about the founders.”

According to CFIRA, a trade group, there are more than a dozen crowd investing sites in operation or being planned, including SecondMarket, Equitynet, SeedInvest, and OfferBoard. Details of how to buy shares vary between funding platforms. On Wefunder, up to 100 small investors will join a limited liability company, which will then make the actual investment in the startup. Wefunder, acting much as a venture capital firm would, manages the investment and collects 20 percent of any profits.

It’s still uncertain how big an impact crowd investing will have. The SEC is considering further rules, including requiring startups to track all their advertising, including every mention in the news media. That has some investors worried that crowd investing could flop. Investor Brad Feld, a partner at the Foundry Group, recently called the SEC’s additional rules “one scary mess that could undermine the whole thing.”

Upgrades to Google’s search engine will make it better at understanding conversational queries – helping its mobile search apps tread on Siri’s toes.

By Tom Simonite on September 26, 2013

Google announced a series of upgrades to its search engine and mobile search apps today that strengthen its ability to understand queries in the form of natural sentences like those used in conversation. The changes are particularly focused on enabling more complex spoken interactions with Google’s mobile apps, boosting the company’s challenge to Apple’s Siri personal assistant.

“We are making your conversation with Google more natural,” said Amit Singhal, who leads search technology at Google. He spoke at a press conference held in the Menlo Park garage that Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin made their first office space in 2000.

The new features apply to all Google searches, but were all demonstrated with queries spoken out loud to Google’s mobile apps. One change sees Google better able to understand broad questions about categories of concepts. For example, saying “tell me about Impressionist artists” to the Google search app on a mobile or tablet calls up a page that presents many ways to explore the topic. A carousel of images at the top of the page allows a person to swipe through different artists, and tapping one leads to another summary page with a carousel of works from that artist. Asking Google about a band brings up a list of their songs to hear. Movies and many other topics can be explored in the same way.

Another upgrade gives Google the ability to compare different things or concepts. For example, asking the search app to “compare coconut oil versus olive oil” produces a table contrasting their nutritional qualities. Google selects the most relevant criteria to compare things. Asking for a comparison of two celestial bodies would see it use properties such as brightness, age, weight, and orbital period, for example.

Google’s new features rest on a system called Knowledge Graph, which the company unveiled last year. It gives the company’s software the ability to understand the meaning, concepts, and relationships behind text mentioning concepts and things (see “Google’s New Brain Could Have a Big Impact”).

Tamar Yehoshua, vice president for search at Google, also demonstrated an upgraded version of Google’s search app for Apple devices. “We have made voice a much bigger feature,” she said. The changes puts it into even more direct competition with Siri, which is promoted as a personal assistant people can talk to like a real person.

One new feature of the upgraded iOS app makes it possible to ask the app to remind you of something when you get to a specific location. If you tell it to “Remind me to get crackers when I go to Safeway,” the app will confirm which store you mean, and then notify you the next time you visit that location.

Singhal also announced that roughly one month ago, his team had made a complete overhaul of Google’s core search ranking system to improve its ability to handle longer, more conversational queries. The upgraded system is known as Hummingbird, and replaces one known as Caffeine used since 2010. About 90 percent of Google searches have been affected by the change.

“People have started asking many more complex questions of Google, and our algorithm had to go through some fundamental rethinking,” said Singhal. The changes were focused on improving Google’s ability to understand the concepts a person refers to in a query and how they are related, he said. “You have to balance all that meaning of what the query is looking for with what the Web document is saying.”