9to5Google: Beyond Good and Evil

Google’s Eric Schmidt appears to be continuing his media tour in New York this week. Yesterday, we posted a video of Schmidt sitting down one-on-one with The Economist’s Daniel Franklin, but today several U.K. publications are reporting on comments made by the Google Chairman at another one of his media stops last night. According to reports from both Daily Mail and The Independent, Schmidt defended the company’s controversial tax avoidance schemes by stating he is “‘proudly capitalistic”:

‘We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways… ‘I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate…. ‘It’s called capitalism….‘We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.’

The U.K.’s chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee Margaret Hodge said Schmidt and Google should be ashamed:

For Eric Schmidt to say that he is ‘proud’ of his company’s approach to paying tax is arrogant, out of touch and an insult to his customers here in the UK,” she said.

“Ordinary people who pay their taxes unquestioningly are sick and tired of seeing hugely profitable global companies like Google use every trick in the book to get out of contributing their fair share… Google should recognise its obligations to countries like the UK from which it derives such huge benefits, and pay proper corporation tax on the profits it makes from economic activity here. It should be ashamed, not proud, to do anything less. ”

Schmdit continued: Read more

David Pogue, in his review of Google’s new Google Maps application for iPhone and iPod touch, shares a couple of interesting tidbits from Google. First, Google reportedly has admitted that its iOS Google Maps application is better than its implementation on Android devices:

Google admits that it’s even better than Google Maps for Android phones, which has accommodated its evolving feature set mainly by piling on menus.

While the version for iOS takes much of the Android version’s functionality, it does still lack offline mode and full-tablet support. After noting the lack of offline map saving and iPad support, Pogue shares that Google said “that goodies like those will be coming soon.”

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Previously available for only its Nexus line, Google launched a new Sound Search widget for all Android devices that allows users to identify a song playing and purchase it from Google Play. Services like Shazam and SoundHound also serve a similar purpose, but Google bragged its solution syncs across all devices to make purchasing easier from another device. Additionally, users running Android 4.2 can add the widget directly to their lockscreen to catch the song easier. Do you find yourself constantly scouring Google Play for music? This might not be such a bad thing to download from the source link below.

Source: Google Play

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Google Chairman Eric Schmidt sat down with The Economist’s Daniel Franklin on Dec. 6, as part of the executive’s ongoing media tour, to discuss everything from driverless cars and the mobile landscape to user data and “magical journalism devices.”

One of the more notable tidbits (at 25:40) regards why Marissa Mayer and other Googlers really left Google to become CEOs of Yahoo and other competing companies such AOL and Facebook. Schmidt suggested they were unable to move up the corporate ladder so they ultimately moved on:

“Well, in each case, they became—let’s see—CEOs of important and powerful companies. And that position has been occupied by Larry and myself, so I think perhaps they wanted a career path that wasn’t in front of them. Each of them is fantastic. And if you look, each of them sort of trained at Google —independently strong, they’ll make a good showing.”

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Android sneaks past iOS as most popular smartphone operating system in Australia. New #Telsyte smartphone report telsyte.com.au/?p=1995

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  (@Telsyte) December 12, 2012

Android has passed Apple’s iOS for the first time in Australia, according to a new research report from Telsyte (via TheSydneyMorningHerald). Telsyte reported 44 percent of smartphones in Australia are now running on Android—just slightly edging out Apple with 43 percent of the market running iOS. Telsyte Research Director Foad Fadaghi attributed Android’s growth to a wider range of handsets, faster product cycles, and carrier support has helped Android close the gap:

“Our new research shows that the lower prices, faster product cycles and carrier support has helped Android become the leading platform,” Fadaghi says.

While Apple and Android dominate the market with 87 percent of smartphones in the country, Fadaghi noted Apple has “the highest repeat purchase intention amongst consumers, with iPhone upgrades significantly driving re-contracting with carriers.”

You can read the full results of the Telsyte report here.

Google is out today with its 12th annual Zeitgeist report that provides us with insight into the most popular search queries over the year. Google is providing even more stats this year for more countries, with 838 different lists covering 55 countries around the globe. Other new additions to the Zeitgeist report include an interactive map on the 2012 Zeitgeist website and a new Android app (iOS in the works). Now for the stats…

Whitney Houston comes in at the No. 1 spot for top-trending search worldwide, followed by Gangnam Style by PSY. Both, of which, were also able to grab the No. 1 spots for many other lists worldwide. As for consumer electronics, iPad 3 lands at No. 1 for trending searches worldwide, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPad mini.  Google walked us through some of the other topics that reached the top of the list in many countries:

People researched a breadth of other topics, too. Web users took a serious interest in threats to the open Internet, with proposals like SOPA and ACTA both finding their way to the top of many countries’ lists. The U.S. elections brought attention to the candidates and issues, not least the presidential campaigns’ most notorious political gaffes. And while it might not be surprising to see that tragic natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy ranked highly (#3 on the global trending list), it is reassuring to find searches like [donate to Sandy] spiking as well.

You can check out Google’s 2012 Zeitgeist website here for access to all 838 lists.