Without any official confirmation, The New York Postreported today that Google is looking to sell Motorola Mobility’s set-top box division as the $12.5 billion acquisition of the company looms.
Google allegedly summoned Qatalyst Partners and Barclays Capital to help shop the asset around. However, the publication’s sources indicated Google is not likely to unload the division, because cable operators are “shunning” Motorola set-top boxes before the acquisition closes.
With that said, one source speculated a possible sale price between $2.5 billion to $4 billion.
The New York Times posted a back-and-forth piece today about Google+ having an image problem ironically within hours after the search engine announcing it rebranded Android Market to “Google Play.”
Reports circulated recently over ComScore’s latest findings that show users only spend three minutes a month on Google+. Meanwhile, the study revealed people spend close to 7 hours a month on Facebook.
Google itself combats public whispers over such studies with its own statistics. Google’s Vice President for Engineering Vic Gundotra told the NYT that Google+ has approximately 100 million accounts with over 50 million daily users.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company has a suite of integrated products, such as YouTube, Google.com, and Google Play, which contribute to Google+’s fan base. Gundotra’s statistics include the amount of people who regularly use such products.
In other words, Gundotra indicates that signing up for a Google+ account and regularly using any related product makes one an active daily user of the social network, but he also said his figures do not accurately depict what is happening at Google.
“This is just the next version of Google,” said Gundotra to the NYT, while comparing Google+ to a social blanket that covers the entire Google experience. “Everything is being upgraded. We already have users. We’re now upgrading them to what we consider Google 2.0.”
Ubisoft unveiled the above teaser for the critically acclaimed “From Dust” videogame by Creative Designer Eric Chahi and announced it is coming to the Google Chrome browser next month.
“Chrome users will be able to play a High-End console game within their very own Google Chrome browser,” contended Ubisoft, the game’s developer.
Google announced it rebranded Android Market to “Google Play” today as a cloud-based digital entertainment destination.
“Starting today, Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will become part of Google Play,” explained Director of Digital Content Jamie Rosenberg on the Official Google Blog.
Google Play lets users find, enjoy and share content, such as music, movies, books and apps, on the web and on an Android smartphone or tablet. Moreover, the cloud service stores all of the content online. Google Play allots free storage for up to 20,000 songs, and it has downloads for more than 450,000 Android apps, eBooks browsing, and rent options for thousands of movies, HD titles, and new releases.
The integrated destination replaces and extends Android Market as an attempt to create a stronger brand with enticing offerings and slicked purchasing for an all-around better experience that will “drive traffic and revenue for the entire ecosystem,” according to Kenneth Lui on the Android Developer’s Blog.
Google must be napping to reenergize for its upcoming Motorola Mobility acquisition, because it has not completed a single buyout in 2012 despite purchasing 79 companies last year.
Google filed its 10-K with the SEC in January that revealed the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine spent $1.9 billion (including stock and cash) on 79 acquisitions in 2011. The more notable purchases were ITA Software for $676 million, and Apture, Katango, and Clever Sense. That means the Internet giant bought six to seven companies a month in 2011. In contrast, it obtained four companies a month in 2010 for a total 48 acquisitions worth $1 billion.
With that said, Google has not picked up a single company since Dec. 13, 2011—roughly four months since its last investment. If judging Google’s spending habits over the last two years, the firm should have already completed 16 to 28 buyouts in 2012 to bulk its portfolio of interests. The company still has time to flash its money, though, as it grabbed roughly 25 of those 2011 acquisitions after the year’s third quarter.
Google’s premier apps partner merged with Salesforce.com’s top partner to offer an international cloud service for businesses in the United States and Asia Pacific.
According to a press release, the combined company will also help businesses that use social enterprise Salesforce.com or Google to employ cloud computing.
“The demand for cloud services in Asia-Pacific continues to grow at breakneck speed,” explained GlobnalOne founder and Senior Vice President for Asia-Pacific at Cloud Sherpas John Orrock. “Our cloud consultants in Australia and New Zealand, combined with our newly acquired mobility practice and offshore development capabilities in the Philippines, sets the new Cloud Sherpas apart from other cloud service providers in the region.”
“Bringing together a dominant Salesforce.com partner with a leading Google Enterprise partner enables us to provide customers around the globe with a more comprehensive range of enterprise cloud solutions,” contended Cloud Sherpas’ President Douglas Shepard.
Yahoo’s chief scientist Prabhakar Raghavan is taking a job at Google as circulating rumors hint at massive cuts within the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search engine.
Yahoo validated the departure this morning in a statement to AllThings D:
“Yahoo! thanks Prabhakar Raghavan for his dedication and contributions to Yahoo! for the past 7 years. We wish him well in his next endeavor. Ash Munshi, CTO, will assume leadership for Y! Labs,” announced the company.
French electronics manufacturer Archos announced today a 7-inch Android tablet for kids.
The “Child Pad” features a lightweight design, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, 1GHz processor, and 1GB of RAM. This slate is kid-friendly because children can access the Kids App Store powered by AppsLib. It is essentially a filtered Android Market with 10,000 apps in 14 categories covering games, communication, multimedia, entertainment, books, comics, and sports.
Children will enjoy the user interface due to its brightly colored icons and home screen folders with direct access to apps. The top 28 children’s apps also come pre-loaded, such as Angry Birds Pig Rush and Flight Frenzy…
Baidu is China’s largest search engine with a not-so secret mission to dominate the global market, and while most chuckle at the thought of it surpassing Google, one might be surprised to learn the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant lost 7 percent of its search market share to Baidu last month.
According to the well-regarded statistics firm NetMarketShare, Google dropped 7 percent in Desktop Top Search Engine Share Trend in February while Baidu gained a little over 6 percent. Bing, Yahoo, and other competitors remained stagnant. As seen in the chart below the break, Google and Baidu have paralleled each other in terms of share fluctuations since November 2011.
Beijing-headquartered Baidu offers a range of Web services similar to Google, including maps, news, search ranking, e-commerce, Internet TV, a browser, and a smartphone operating system based on Android OS. The firm is adamant about its business not being a Google-clone, though.
Baidu’s Director of International Communications Kaiser Kuo explained to CNN (in the 2010 video above) that CEO Robin Li actually filed a hyperlink analysis patent before Google’s cofounder Larry Page. The filing indicates Baidu envisioned the future of search long before Google dominated cyber space…
Google Wallet’s Vice President Osama Bedier said United States carrier Sprint Nextel would receive 10 additional phones with Google Wallet support this year.
Bedier spoke at “Mobile World Congress 2012” show in Barcelona this week during the “Mobile Money: Delivering Innovative Mobile Payment Services” panel. He said Google Wallet support is expanding to the upcoming LG Viper this spring with roll outs slated for a suite of additional smartphones soon after…
From robots to holographic telepresence, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt took the time at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona yesterday to discuss where the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company is in the world and what the future holds in the technology realm.
Google’s Hugo Berro showcases Chrome for Android in the first 10 minutes of the keynote (video is above). The nugget to his presentation is that Chrome is fast, secure, and free.
“People say in Ice Cream Sandwich that we got the UI right, we got it right for the global audience, and you see the benefits when you see Chrome,” contributed Schmidt to Berro’s lecture. Upon the concluding statements about Chrome, Schmidt led the stage with an announcement that he wanted to talk about the state of the world and “the world that we all operate in, because I think getting this right—the stakes are huge.”
Schmidt mentioned the potential for growth among the millions in the world who have never played Angry Birds and “never got into the Android vs. iOS argument,” but he also hypothesized about the future. While claiming technologies like holograms, virtual reality, and self-driving cars will be commonplace “quite soon,” Schmidt described a scenario where one could “dispatch a robot”:
“…you need to go to a conference across the world for work and it’s the same time your favorite artist is playing live, in the future you’ll be able to dispatch a robot… to each venue, allowing you to experience both events… using a 3D screen and a control system”
The National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties announced today that Google’s new privacy policy might violate European Union law.
The allegation comes just days before the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant planned to enact the policy that unveiled last month. Google said the updated policy streamlined privacy practices for 60 different services engaged around the globe to bring transparency and clarity.
“We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read,” explained Google’s policy website.
A portion of the letter.
The French privacy agency picked a bone with the search engine’s intent and wrote a letter (PDF) to Google’s Chief Executive Officer Larry Page that painted the new rules as questionable. The central focus of the letter inquired how Google would use the reaped private data, but it is well-known the advertising firm collects personal information from tracking cookies to build targeted ads.
“Rather than promoting transparency, the terms of the new policy and the fact that Google claims publicly that it will combine data across services raises fears about Google’s actual practices,” wrote the agency, also known as CNIL, in the letter. “Our preliminary investigation shows that it is extremely difficult to know exactly which data is combined between which services for which purposes, even for trained privacy professionals.”
The new policy takes effect March 1, and while users’ privacy preferences remain, the new arrangement allows Google to gather and implement user data across its services. Google is charging ahead with Search plus Your World, Gmail, Picasa, YouTube, and Google+, so it is probably just connecting all the loose legal ends to make one continuous experience….
Everyone knows that Google can dodge privacy features in Internet browsers, renounce third-party cookie policies, and supply personalized ads despite a user’s privacy setting. Privacy regulators, advocates and consumers alike have called upon Google and other advertising companies to abide by browser’s do-not-track policies, but Google already stepped to the plate with a solution for suspicious users that do not want to be tracked.
“Keep My Opt Outs” is a Chrome browser extension that blocks all cookies harvested for personalized ads. The evasive cookies under fire in the media essentially follow a user’s trail across websites to collect history for data reaping. The particulars help Google supply targeted advertisements. All Web browsers include a built-in setting to block this information-cropping process, but Google and other firms use a distinct code to disable the setting in Safari and Internet Explorer.
“Keep My Opt-Outs is an extension for users who aren’t comfortable with personalization of the ads they see on the web. It’s a one-step, persistent opt-out of personalized advertising and related data tracking performed by companies adopting the industry privacy standards for online advertising,” wrote Google on the Chrome webstore…
ZTE Corporation wants one of the top three vendor spots in the global handset market by 2015, and the firm is challenging leaders in the market with a range of handsets and tablets announced at the “Mobile World Congress 2012” event in Barcelona.
According to a recent study, industry analyst Gartner ranked ZTE as No. 4 for world handset shipments in Q4 2011, and ZTE smartphone sales are accelerating faster than any other vendor—aside from Apple, of course.
“Our long-term goal for the Terminals Division is to achieve a compound growth rate of above 40 percent per year for five consecutive years from 2010, and to become one of the top three vendors in the global handset market by 2015,” said ZTE EVP and Head of the Terminals Division Mr. He Shiyou in a press release…
LG is lobbying Google to score a collaborating partnership on the next Nexus device.
“We’re having discussions,” said head of LG’s smartphone division Ramchan Woo to CNET in an interview. “We’re working on it.”
Garnering the honor would gain LG an ounce of prestige in the mobile industry, because the handset maker would have absolute access to Google’s offerings. Even if the financial benefits are on the low-end for LG, the company will inevitably surface with an impeccable reputation after working with the Mountain View, Calif.-based technology giant…
Varied hands-on looks at the Asus PadFone while at Mobile World Congress 2012 are exploding across the Web, but the consensus on the three-in-one combination seems generally positive.
The 4.3-inch device is in its last form and features a texture on the back cover, 3.5mm headphone jack on top, ports and connectors on the left side, and an aesthetic similar to the Transformer Pad. The Verge declared the screen as “bright and fairly snappy.”
According to a press release, the device transforms into a 10.1-inch tablet with five times the battery capacity when placed inside the PadFone Station. The PadFone Station also offers an optional keyboard dock that looks like other Asus docks. It essentially converts the PadFone into an “ultraportable computing device.”
The PadFone’s Stylus Headset employs a pliable rubber ball unlike more firm, plastic-tipped stylus competitors. Many reports indicate the bluetooth stylus is responsive, but it apparently requires more pressure than comparable products. Moreover, Asus’ Jonney Shih announced at MWC 2012 that the stylus doubles as a headset for “picking up calls easily.”
The Asus PadFone’s full spec sheet, hands-on images and video are available below.
Details about Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S III smartphone seem to emerge left and right, but BGR gave a more specific run down on its version of the flagship device’s spec sheet this morning.
The publication previously said Samsung would launch the smartphone simultaneously around the world. Today, it described the device as having a 1.5GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos processor, 2-megapixel front-facing camera with an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, 4G LTE, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, Ceramic Case, and (more importantly) a 4.8-inch display in “full HD” with 1080p resolution at a 16:9 aspect.
Of course, there is significant doubt that the Samsung Galaxy S III will be the world’s first 1080p smartphone, because a 720p display on a 4.8 inch screen is already “retina.” Any smaller pixels are undetectable to the human eye—thus wasted pixels and processor to drive them. Expand Expanding Close
Google Insights for Search is a handy tool that helped the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine predict last year’s Oscar winners by tracking search pattern behaviors, and the Internet giant has decided to test its service again with this year’s red carpet lineup.
The Academy Awards is the most popular entertainment award show in terms of search volume. The convolute of searches subsequently create a prime foundation for Googlers to analyze patterns. Google’s Rebecca Mall, an entertainment account executive, took to the Official Google Blog today to “open the (search) envelopes and see who the Oscar (may) go to this year,” according to Google Insight’s reaped Web information.
Google can now check the University of Pennsylvania off its ever-growing list of ivy leaguers wielding Google Apps for Education, because the school just announced a recent move from Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail to Gmail.
The Philadelphia-based private university ranks No. 5 in National Universities, according to U.S. News and World Report, and it joins over 60 other leading institutions from the nation’s top 100 to use Google Apps. Harvard College, Yale, and Brown University are a few of the more prominent schools to top Google’s list.
Penn changed services after studying student email trends:
“We just saw more than 50 percent of students forward emails from their Hotmail to Gmail accounts and thought it would be more convenient this way,” said Director of Social Sciences Computing and Student Technology Chris Mustazza to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Google plans to enter the tablet market in April with a self-branded 7-inch slate.
CNET’s Brooke Crothers said Display Search analyst Richard Shim expects 1.5 million to 2 million units with a 1280-by-800-resolution display to enter initial production this spring.
The rumor mill also indicates the Google-branded tablet will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and it apparently also has Nexus ties. The device will see a $199 price tag to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire that has a 1024-by-600 display…
Google announced today that it is adding Google+ Circles to Google Voice.
Software Engineer Tom Ford took to the official Google Voice blog to tell users how Circles give callers more control with organizing and managing in Google Voice:
Circles give you more control over how you manage your callers; for example, calls from your “Creepers” circle can be sent straight to Voicemail, only your “College Buddies” circle will hear you rap your voicemail greeting, or you can set your “Family” circle to only ring your mobile phone.
As Ford mentioned, go to the Groups & Circles tab in Google Voice settings to customize Circles.
Microsoft requested European Union antitrust regulators to probe Motorola Mobility on claims that the United States phone manufacturer is blocking sales of Windows and Xbox products.
“Earlier today, Microsoft filed a formal competition law complaint with the European Commission (EC) against Motorola Mobility and Google,” wrote Microsoft’s Vice President and Deputy General Counsel David Heiner in a blog post this morning. “We have taken this step because Motorola is attempting to block sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products.”
Microsoft’s post, “Google: Please Don’t Kill Video on the Web,” lambasted Motorola Mobility for not making industry standard patents available on reasonable and fair terms, and for using those patents to block competitors from shipping products.
The industry apparently agreed many years ago to define common technical standards for everyone to use and build compatible Wi-Fi and video products. However, Heiner contended, Motorola is backtracking on its word and attempting to use standard patents for “killing video on the Web.”
Microsoft released the above Google-lambasting video on YouTube (ironically) yesterday to take aim at Google Apps and decry the Mountain View, Calif.-based advertising business of seedily selling productivity software “on the side.”
Microsoft takes a curious spin on “moonlighting” and calls its competition the “Googlighting stranger” while making many jabs at the search engine’s product. The mud-slinging does not stop at the end of the 2.15-minute video, however…
Fluent is a web-based workflow stream that works with existing Gmail accounts to bring a Sparrow-like user interface to email.
Users can stream email threads and replies, preview aggregated attachments in a tab, quickly reply or compose inline, archive messages, and even add a to-do list with the new design concept that claims to run on any web browser.
Sparrow is a great success as a Mac-only application, and now Fluent hopes to balance the playing field and snag users whom are in dire need of a new Gmail look and functionality. Fluent’s website specifically praises its workflow ability, multiple accounts options, and “blazing” fast search-as-you-type filter.
The streaming email UI is the work of three former Googlers who quit the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company. BusinessInsidersaid Cameron Adams, Dhanji Prasanna, and Jochen Bekmann left because designers were “less valuable” than engineers at Google, and they felt disconnected from Google’s culture while operating from across the world in Sydney, Australia…
