Google and Mozilla Firefox deal is a ‘partnership’: Chrome engineer sets the record straight with rant

E. Betters

Google renewed its search bar collaboration last week with Mozilla, effectively keeping Firefox in business, and the transaction has caused a Chrome engineer to come forth and defend the alliance.

According to The Mozilla Blog, Google paid just shy of $300 million per year to be the default choice in Mozilla’s Firefox browser. The total amount is almost $1 billion, a large leap from its previous arrangement, due to competing interest from both Microsoft and Yahoo.

Chrome engineer Peter Kasting spent Christmas Eve posting a Google Plus “rant” to discuss how misunderstood the transaction is amidst a firestorm of media reports that accuse the search engine giant of funding a web competitor.

Referencing MG Siegler’s Google Plus post on the matter, Kasting felt compelled to respond.

“People never seem to understand why Google builds Chrome no matter how many times I try to pound it into their heads,” wrote Kasting. “ It’s very simple: the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly as possible. That’s it.”

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Google Plus implements ‘a few big improvements’ for the New Year

E. Betters

Google Plus announced a “goodie basket” of functional features and big improvements for the upcoming New Year on its Official Google Blog today.

Bradley Horowitz, vice president of Google Plus product, posted the blog and claimed the new features were on everyone’s wish list.

The first feature mentioned is “Pump up (or down) the volume,” and through the addition, Google will enable users to fine-tune their streams.

“When viewing the stream for a particular circle, you’ll now see a slider at the top that lets you adjust how posts from that circle should be blended into the main stream,” wrote Horowitz in the blog post. “That way you’ll never miss a post from that special someone, and you can tweak these settings to form your own ‘perfect stream.’”

The first big improvement discussed in the blog is “More useful and attractive notifications,” and with it, Google offers sneak previews to allow users efficient social content navigation… Read more

Google+ updates: Hangout on any post, initiate Hangouts from your phone (Bonus: Raindeer faces)

9to5 Staff

Google’s Vic Gundotra just announced on his Google+ page a host of new Hangouts features meant to “go beyond the status update”. In short, you can now hangout on any post (an invitation will be added to the comments), call any phone number in the world and conference in anyone (free outbound calls to US and Canada, international calling rates are “super, super low”) and initiate a hangout session from the official Google+ app for Android or iPhone by tapping the new hangout icon.

The executive also shared an interesting milestone for Hangouts on Air, saying “hundreds of people” whitelisted as part of their trial now have the ability to broadcast their hangouts to the world. “Our goal is to enable this for everyone on the planet”, Gundotra noted. Initiating a Hangout session from your phone requires a new Google+ app, which will be available in Android Market within a few days, Google said (“coming soon” to the App Store).

The official Google blog has more information.

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Google polishes up Google+ advertising for Thanksgiving

9to5 Staff

Google has posted a nice new promo clip for Google+ to their YouTube channel, just in time for the official start of the holiday shopping season. Surprisingly, it isn’t about discounts or deals as Google opted for a different approach.

It’s entitled “Circles Love Story” and illustrates vividly “new ways of sharing the right things with the right people”. So, a guy meets this girl and puts her in the “Love of my Life” circle on Google+. Ring a bell?. She returns the favor by putting him in the Creepers circle, but soon changes her mind and moves him around a bit until he ends up in…

Just watch the clip above. Google also polished up the original Google+ advert and introduced a new tagline. Both the original and new advert are right after the break. Speaking of holidays, have you seen a Thanksgiving Google Doodle that lets you customize a virtual turkey?

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Games earns a spot on the homepage of Google+

Jake Smith

Google+ engineer Vermont Lasmarias revealed today that a new section displaying all of your recently played games has been added to the Google+ homepage. The new section can be found in the bottom left, and allows you to quickly launch into a game where you left off.  Luckily, if you’re not a fan of the new games section, or just want to free up your side bar, you can get rid of the widget right from the homepage too.

 

Feature

Google releases new Reader redesign, featuring Google Plus integration

Jake Smith

Google announced on their blog last week that they’d be redesigning Google Reader, and today the redesign has hit the interwebs. The redesign takes shape like almost every other Google product in terms of color, shapes, and speed.

Google Reader now also features Google+  functionality built in, after turning off friending and following in Reader. Users will be able to +1 a post and then from there have the ability to share it with their Google+ friends. Check it out after the break.

The redesign will begin rolling out to users in the coming days, so hold tight if you’re not yet seeing it. For me, the new redesign is welcomed, because I thought the last one was just plain bleh. Having the new look around Google is giving the company a cutting edge feel.

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