Google boasts 2012 WWW conference contributions

E. Betters

Google just announced, well, boasted, about its involvement with the 2012 World Wide Web conference that occurred last month.

Vice President of Engineering Prabhakar Raghavan took to the Official Google Research Blog this afternoon to detail the search engine’s role in the widely popular and annual series. Google was a major supporter of the conference and even sponsored it, coupled with many Googlers having taken an active role through keynotes and papers.

“More than forty members of Google’s technical staff gathered in Lyon, France in April to participate in the global dialogue around the state of the web at the World Wide Web conference (WWW) 2012,” explained Raghavan. ”A decade ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin applied their research to an information retrieval problem and their work—presented at WWW in 1998—led to the invention of today’s most popular search engine.

The new VP further said Mobile Web in the technical program is becoming more apparent as the conference has “evolve[d] over the years,” and then he noted the WWW community is transitioning from a “classic ‘bag of words’ of web pages” to an “entity-centric view.”

Raghavan is Yahoo’s former chief scientist, but 9to5Google reported that he left the position in March to take an executive job at Google amid massive cuts at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search engine.

A list of Googlers and their conference contributions is below:

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LG to release Google TV-enabled set in US in late May

E. Betters

LG Electronics announced it will release its anticipated Google TV-enabled television set in the United States during late May.

“Production of Google TVs will start from May 17 from our factory in Mexico and U.S. consumers will be able to buy the product from the week of May 21,” said Executive Vice President of LG’s TV business unit Ro Seogho to a group of reporters.

According to Reuters, Seogho further revealed that a launch in Europe and Asia would follow as long as the product performs well stateside.

Earlier this month, 9to5Google also reported LG’s 3D Google TV-enable sets would launch in early May.

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Google considering moving Motorola HQ to downtown Chicago

Jordan Kahn

According to a report from Chicago Business (via The Verge), Google is considering moving Motorola Mobility’s main offices to Chicago. The report claims sources have confirmed the company is looking for 500,000 square feet of office space in downtown Chicago that could house up to 3000 employees, more than enough room for Motorola’s new headquarters. The report said those 3,000 employees would likely be relocated from Motorola’s current Libertyville HQ, but not involve those from its River North location:

Among the handful of sites under consideration are upper floors of the landmark Merchandise Mart in River North and Fulton Market Cold Storage, a large warehouse that’s slated for redevelopment in the West Loop, according to a source familiar with the matter… Top real estate executives from Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters have toured several downtown sites over the past several month.

ChicagoBusiness said acquiring the property is still dependant on Google completely closing the acquisition with approvals from regulators in China. Apart from its main campus in Mountain View, Google is no stranger to downtown offices with about 3,000 employees currently calling downtown Manhattan home at the company’s second largest World offices.
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Hangouts On Air is now available to all, allows recorded or live broadcasting

E. Betters

Google launched Hangouts On Air last year to select broadcasters, which allows recorded or live conversations with friends to broadcast, but today the search engine made the popular feature available to Google+ users worldwide.

Engineering Director Chee Chew explained the option’s functions on the Official Google Blog:

Today we’re excited to launch Hangouts On Air to Google+ users worldwide. So if you have something to say—as an aspiring artist, a global celebrity, or a concerned citizen—you can now go live in front of a global audience. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to:

  • Broadcast publicly. By checking “Enable Hangouts On Air,” you can broadcast your live hangout—from the Google+ stream, your YouTube channel or your website—to the entire world.
  • See how many viewers you’ve got. During your broadcast, you can look inside the hangout to see how many people are watching live.
  • Record and re-share. Once you’re off the air, we’ll upload a public recording to your YouTube channel, and to your original Google+ post. This way it’s easy to share and discuss your broadcast after it’s over.

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AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson says that Google prevents updates to Android devices

Seth Weintraub

During the Q&A of a recent interview, AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson said some interesting things about the Android ecosystem.

His statements are confusing, because we have been— up to this point—lead to believe that there is a straightforward way this works:

  1. Google open sources the Android OS.
  2. After that, manufacturers get the OS working on their devices with drivers and  (gawdforsaken) overlays.
  3. Finally, the carriers certify the OS on those devices (and add a bunch of crapware).

In a response to the questioner, Stephenson blamed Google, saying, “Google determines what platform gets the newest releases and when. A lot of times, that’s a negotiated arrangement and that’s something we work at hard. We know that’s important to our customers. That’s kind of an ambiguous answer because I can’t give you a direct answer in this setting.”

He then goes on to explain how great Windows is and how he has been using it for a month. He also said Android needs to work on security.

While the questioner is speaking in the broader sense about getting his older Android device updated, it is possible that he is referring to the recent Galaxy Nexus that hit Verizon first in December. The GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus was available on AT&T before the release on Verizon (I was an early user) if you bought the phone without a plan. Read more

Google adds ‘Shared with me’ playlist to Google Play

Jake Smith

When Google announced Google Music last year, it added the ability to share a song or album with your Google+ friends after you buy it. To compliment that feature, Google added a pretty cool “Shared with me” playlist to Google Play, which curates all the songs that your Google+ friends purchased. This is great, especially considering you get one free listen per song shared. Hopefully you have many friends who are buying music from Google.