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As 2013 wraps up, we’ve seen a variety of different year-end info graphs and data, most of which comes from Google itself, such as the top search terms. This afternoon, Dow Jones has released an info graphic displaying the most talked about companies in 2013.

Google was able to narrowly beat out Apple this year. Google received 123,769 media mentions this year, while Apple received 120,451 mentions, up from 114,954 in 2012. Google saw its biggest spike in mentions came in May, which as we all know, is when Google I/O took place. Other notable technology companies include Microsoft, who received 84,174 mentions and IBM, who came in with 48,734 mentions.

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A pithy quote from a Google engineer working on Android on the day the iPhone was launched has been doing the rounds today.

As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.

The quote, attributed to Google engineer Chris DeSalvo, appears in Chapter 2 of Fred Vogelstein’s Dogfight: How Apple and Google went to war and started a revolution. It suggests that Google had to abandon a Blackberry-style smartphone in favor of a touchscreen one in direct response to the iPhone. This is seemingly supported by Android boss Andy Rubin reportedly saying in response to the webcast of the iPhone launch: “Holy crap, I guess we’re not going to ship that phone.”

There’s just one small problem with this version of events – it may not be entirely accurate … 
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Earlier this year, Google launched Zagat for iPhone and iPod touch. The application is Google’s form of allowing users to discover new places, such as restaurants, across many cities in the United States. Today, Google has updated the application with support for the iPad’s larger display. Also in the mix is support for ratings and reviews for shops and restaurants. Support for Charleston, South Carolina and Nashville, Tennessee has also been added. The 2.0 update is free on the App Store.

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A piece on ZDNet‘s Korean site reports that Samsung has developed an iris-recognition system to unlock smartphones, and that the technology is likely to be seen in handsets launched next year.

Iris-recognition is generally considered to be the gold standard for biometric identification, allowing extremely fast matches with a very low risk of false matching. It is commonly used for border controls … 
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Google, which was fined $22.5M by the FTC for illegal use of tracking cookies on iPhones even when the user had set Safari to reject them, is asking the UK’s High Court to reject a claim for compensation from a group of British iPhone owners, reports The Guardian.

Google is arguing that any case should be held in the U.S., and that UK courts have no jurisdiction in the matter. It also observes that a similar claim in the USA was dismissed two months ago.

Google has been called “arrogant and immoral” for arguing that a privacy claim brought by internet users in the UK should not be heard by the British legal system […]

In the first group claim brought against Google in the UK, the internet firm has insisted that the lawsuit must be brought in California, where it is based, instead of a British courtroom … 
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Motorola had a pretty exciting 2013. The company released the highly-anticipated, highly-customizbale, American-made Moto X back in August. The company then released the budget Moto G, which received high reviews from many people. In a recent interview with AP, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside sat down to discuss the company’s past year and give a peak into the future and how the company has changed since its acquisition by Google.

When asked what he thought consumers were most interested in seeing in their future smartphones, Woodside commented that a big area was durability. 
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Google’s former head of patents Michelle Lee has been named as the interim head of the USPTO, starting work there on 13th January, reports Yahoo! Finance.

Although technically Lee is deputy director, the agency hasn’t had a director since David Kappos left back in February, meaning that Lee will be running the show for the immediate future at least.

The appointment is an interesting choice given Google’s vocal criticism of patent trolls … 
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The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has joined Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, Yahoo!, Facebook, and other giants in the tech industry in calling for a reform of the NSA’s surveillance tactics. Earlier this year it was revealed that the National Security Agency was using information from these companies and more to monitor citizens across the nation without warrants.

The companies allegedly involved in the “PRISM” program denied turning over any user data to the government, but a leaked NSA slidedeck (seen above) seemed to imply the opposite.

The new collaborative campaign, called Reform Government Surveillance, cites five driving principles in its drive to curb excessive government spying:

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As Samsung beats back rumors of poor Galaxy Gear sales, it made me wonder what buyers really want to see in their ideal smartwatch? The world may be waiting to see what Apple unveils in the wearables category, but that hasn’t stopped companies like Sony, Qualcomm, and Pebble from trying to capture just a small sliver of this up and coming market.

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As the Samsung, Apple patent damages trial opened yesterday the Android giant began singing a different tune. According to a live blog by Howard Mintz from the San Jose Mercury News, Samsung attorney Bill Price didn’t continue the company’s long-standing claim that the case mostly centered on “rounded corners,” instead his argument focused on the specific amount the company owes its chief competitor.

Representing Samsung, attorney Bill Price countered in his own opening remarks, “Apple is simply asking for much more money than it’s entitled to.”

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3x-bAWZWPM

The video may be slightly cringeworthy (hot girls are always turned on by geek tech, right?), but the concept is certainly an exciting one: a foldable display which allows a pocketable smartphone to unfold or unroll into a tablet … 
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HP and Google combined to create two new Chromebooks which were launched early last month: The $299  Intel Haswell-powered Chromebook 14 and the smaller Samsung Exynos ARM-powered Chromebook 11. Both machines mark new territory for Google and HP. The Silicon Valley neighbors have been getting closer and closer since Meg Whitman took over as CEO, including an expanding array of Android tablets as well. The initial HP Chromebooks were clearly re-purposed Windows laptops. These clearly are something entirely different…
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Google, Samsung, and several other Android handset manufacturers are being sued by Rockstar, a consortium backed by Android competitors Microsoft and Apple, over alleged infringement of several search patents acquired by Rockstar from Nortel in 2011. Last year HTC reached a ten-year agreement with Apple as part of a patent infringement settlement. That deal would result in both companies licensing existing and future patents from one another, but it seems that agreement does not apply in this case.

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Update: JD Power’s math seems a little off, when you delve into the scores … 

Samsung got 18 stars, Apple 18, with Samsung only ahead on price, yet took the overall lead.

J.D. Power has released its 2013 U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Study–Volume 2 today with Samsung edging out Apple’s iPad for the top spot. Apple has in the past ranked number one in the company’s customer stratification surveys for tablets, but this time Samsung has jumped up from number 3 in April to take the first position from the iPad.

Samsung ranks highest with a score of 835 and is the only manufacturer to improve across all five factors since the previous reporting period in April 2013. Samsung showed particularly strong improvement in the cost factor (25-point increase). Apple ranks second scoring 833 and performs particularly well in performance and ease of operation.

While Samsung only slightly beat out Apple with 835 points vs 833 points on a 1000 point scale, the outcome is quite notable for Samsung who in April ranked even lower than Amazon. The study measures customer satisfaction based on five metrics for 3,375 tablet owners: performance (26%); ease of operation (22%); styling and design (19%); features (17%); and cost (16%).
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A federal judge ruled that a lawsuit against Google and several other companies can proceed as a class-action suit today after determining that a significant number of employees across the tech industry were hurt by “do-not-hire” arrangements between their employers and other companies. The policies in question were practiced by Google, Apple, Adobe, Pixar, and more as a way of keeping their own employees from defecting to competitors for higher pay. Essentially the agreements barred two companies from offering jobs to competing employees for a higher salary. Because doing so gave employees leverage with which to bargain for higher pay at their own jobs, employers were often faced with the decision to either pay any given employee more to keep them around or lose them to a competitor willing to pay more.

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Billed as ‘the lockscreen that learns,’ Cover is an Andoid app that notes which apps you use in which locations, and then puts the apps you’re most likely to need onto your lockscreen.

At home you might get weather, news, traffic and Twitter; at work, calendar, Google drive and LinkedIn; in the car, maps and music … 
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Photo: ibtimes.com

Samsung has beaten its earlier forecasts for both revenue and profit in Q3, reporting new records for both at $9.56B profit on revenues of $55.59B.

Samsung had earlier reported that it had sold more than 40 million Galaxy S4 handsets in the first six months, but advised today that most of its mobile growth was in lower-end models, while high-end growth is slowing … 
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Rumors that Samsung plans to launch a Google Glass competitor have been lent further credence by a design patent uncovered by the WSJ.

While it’s not the first glasses patent Samsung has filed – this one was granted back in March – the latest one does look much closer to something that might actually be launched than the previous design … 
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Samsung could see itself getting priority access to new glass technologies after taking a 7.4 percent stake in Gorilla Glass maker Corning and simultaneously signing a 10-year supply agreement.

The net effect of a complex series of share swaps and cash investments, allied to a long-term procurement commitment from Samsung, is a $2B deal that will enable Corning to boost its R&D investment, accelerating the pace of development of new types of display.

With closer cooperation between the two companies, Samsung may prove well positioned to gain access to those new technologies ahead of the rest of the market … 
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