Swine virus shuts Google

Search giant Google has shut down its office at Madhapur for two days after one staffer was tested positive for swine flu and five others were quarantined in city hospitals with suspected symptoms

However, the Ranga Reddy health officials were only able to give the prescribed Oseltamavir tablets for two days to the 300 other employees of Google because of lack of stocks.

The tablets should be given to those who have been in contact with infected persons continuously for 10 days to prevent them from catching the flu.

“Our officials visited Google and distributed tablets,” said Dr Shobavati, the district medical and health official. “But we could only distribute 600 to 700 tablets.”

Dr K. Subhakar, coordinator of the Chest Hospital H1N1 influenza nodal centre, said trouble started when an employee of an IT firm who returned from Houston on July 5 tested positive for swine flu.

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Google co-mentor drowns in pool

Rajeev Motwani, the 47-year-old Indian American computer science professor at Stanford University who mentored Google’s co-founders when they were graduate students, has died from a freak drowning accident at his Atherton, California home.

Born March 26, 1962, in Jammu, Motwani grew up in New Delhi, earned a computer science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur in 1983, and his doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley in 1988.

He apparently drowned on Friday morning in a backyard swimming pool at the home he purchased three years ago, according to the San Jose Mercury News, a Silicon Valley news outlet. Friends said he did not know how to swim but was planning to take lessons.

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YouTube invites Congress, BJP to election party

The presidential election campaign in the United States this time is being fought as much in the party primaries as on YouTube, the enormously popular Google-owned site where anyone can post a video free of cost. In the run-up to the next general elections in India, we may see a similar online video war between the Congress and the BJP.

Google announced the launch of YouTube’s India operations on Wednesday. However, it has already broached the use of YouTube with the BJP and the Congress in their campaigns for the coming general elections.

“We will provide space to the parties for telecasting video campaigns. We can also create customised interactive platforms for them,” says Google India managing director Shailesh Rao.

YouTube could become the quickest and cheapest mass based electronic means of reaching out to young urban voters in this country. YouTube already has some 200,000 registered users in India, the company claims another five million occasional visitors to the site. Most of them are in the age group of 20 to 30 and located in urban centres.

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