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While the report is a little bit on the light side with specific details regarding the product, a new report from AndroidAuthority claims that a source has revealed details about a Google smartwatch as well as new updates coming to Gmail and Maps apps on Android.

According to the report, which seems to provide more questions than answers, the Android smartwatch has been floating around Google offices in Berlin, Manchester, and more recently Mountain View, which it claims signals “the watch is set for release sometime soon.” The last we heard from analysts is that Google smartwatch is scheduled for 2014 at earliest, but AndroidAuthority already claims to have details on the device:

While noting that “Functionality will be very much like Glass,” the report claims Google’s smartwatch is “not a standalone device yet” and that “It needs to be tethered to a smartphone.”

We don’t expect to see a Google smartwatch on show at Google I/O this month, and the report doesn’t offer up much in the way of confident predictions for when we might. The report added that sources say Google’s Motorola will be manufacturing the smartwatch.

Also included in the report is info on updates that are apparently coming to Google’s Maps and Gmail apps on Android devices in the near future. AndroidAuthority describes redesigned apps that will apparently borrow a lot from the most recent versions of Google’s apps on iOS:
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A nice little pre-I/O surprise today from Google: Everyone who uses Gmail, G+ Photos and Google Drive now gets 15GB of free space across all three platforms instead of the previous 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos. That’s a lot of combined space

We’ll also be making updates to the Google Drive storage page, so you can better understand how you’re using storage space. Simply hover over the pie chart to see a breakdown of your storage use across Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. And if you need more storage, this is your place to upgrade, with plans starting at $4.99/month for 100 GB.

Pro tip: This change means you’re no longer limited to a 25 GB upgrade in Gmail—any additional storage you purchase now applies there, too.

These changes to Google Drive storage will roll out over the next couple of weeks. Google Apps users will also be getting shared storage, so visit the enterprise blog to learn more.

Enterprise users get 30GB between the three platforms.
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Google has been signing up a lot of Google Apps for Government customers over the last year, including Colorado and the US Naval Academy, and today The Boston Globe reports that Boston is soon making the switch from Microsoft to a Google Apps environment for city employees.

As noted in the report, Boston was previously relying on Microsoft’s Exchange for much of its tasks and making the switch to Google will save the city around $280,000 a year:

It’s not just the gee whiz factor: It’s also a matter of money. It will cost Boston around $800,000 to move over to Gmail, Google Docs for word processing, and Google’s cloud service for storing documents. But by dropping some Microsoft products, the city government will save at least $280,000 a year.

Microsoft responded to the decision in a statement to the Boston Globe, claiming, “Google’s investments in these areas are inadequate, and they lack the proper protections most organizations require.”
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Google just announced a nice bit of API code that will allow developers to to make it easy for readers of websites to download files to their Google Drive account.

Adding a Save to Drive button on your website is easy. You simply have to include the script and HTML tag below:

<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
<div
 data-filename="My Statement.pdf"
 data-sitename="My Company Name"
 data-src="/path/to/myfile.pdf">
</div>

It isn’t hard to see how this could come in handy.

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As Business Insider points out, Google released a new ad called “Here’s To The Moms” featuring people sending thank you notes over Gmail and sharing family videos on YouTube.

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Google is beginning to roll out a new feature in Gmail today that will allow users to quickly and easily create or add an event to Google Calendar without ever leaving their inbox. Once the feature has been enabled, users will be able to click the date and time within emails to add or create an Google Calendar entry using the data from the email (as pictured above). The calendar entry  can be edited before added and will also automatically include a link back to the original email for reference:

When you click on one of these underlined dates, you’ll be able to preview your schedule for the day and change the title, date or time of the event. Clicking “Add to Calendar” will do exactly that — add the event to your calendar, and for extra convenience, the calendar event will include a link back to the original email.

Keep an eye out for the new feature rolling out to everyone using the English (US) language setting over the next week.

Google has been hiring a group of individuals on one year contracts to help the Glass explorers with their upcoming Glasswear we’ve learned.  The employees would be based in New York or San Francisco but travel to events throughout the US and eventually overseas. These people will also be manning the retail presence that Google hopes to have in New York, San Francisco and possibly LA by the end of the year.

Glass explorer editions are to begin shipping next month after an initial run of a few thousand.

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Google isn’t slowing down investing in new data center operations around the world. Back in January we heard that it is expanding its Berkley County data center in South Carolina with an additional $600 million investment bringing the project up to $1.2 billion total. Today, Associated Press reports that Google is set to invest $390 million in a new expansion of its European data center in Belgium.

Internet search giant Google says it is investing 300 million euros ($390 million) to expand its continental European data center. Google Inc. said Wednesday it will upgrade the facility in Belgium to meet growing demand for its online services

Back in October of last year Google opened its data center doors to all with a new project dubbed “Where the internet lives” that gives anyone a unique behind the scenes look at its facilities responsible for handling 20 billion web pages indexed per day, 3 billion daily searches, and free mail to 425 million Gmail users.

Rumors of an upcoming messaging service from Google dubbed “Babel” have been steadily popping up in recent months. We first heard back in March that the service would unify Google’s chat services such as Google Talk, Chat for Drive, Google+ Hangouts, etc, and since got a look at two different sets of screenshots showing variations of what tipsters both alleged were an Android app for the rumored service.

After a small hint at Gmail integration for Babel this morning, we now get yet another set of photos, this time reportedly showing what the service will look like inside of Gmail. TechRadar posted the images above that apparently come from an anonymous Google employee currently testing Babel.

From the screenshots we see a slightly tweaked text layout, new emoticons and the expected Google+ integration, but not much else. 
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Google announced today on its Official Gmail Blog that it has released an update to the Android app for Gmail that brings new features, faster search, and other enhancements for certain users. Perhaps the most notable new feature is the ability to reply, archive, and delete from notifications with one tap—rather than having to open the app to sort and reply to mail:

You can combine this with existing notification features like the ability to customize which messages you receive notifications for and set up different sounds for individual labels. So if you filter and label all the messages from your mom, you could set a ringtone to let you know you received a new mail from her and then quickly reply (because we know what can happen when you ignore your mother!).

The feature is available to users running Android 4.1 and up, but Google is also rolling out faster search, bug fixes, and performance enhancements for Android 4.0 and up. Users on Android 2.2 and up will now have access to a “New Labels API for 3rd-party app developers” and the usual performance improvements.

The updated Gmail app for Android is available from Google Play now. 
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Google announced today that it updated the mobile web app for Gmail and the Gmail Offline Chrome app with a refreshed UI and new features similar to recent enhancements to its iOS apps. On top of the redesigned visuals, Google also included improvements to search and Google Calendar integration:

Today we’re rolling out a similar refreshed look to the Gmail mobile web app as well as Gmail Offline (http://goo.gl/0f1ae) that includes many of these same changes. Try it out at gmail.com in the browser of your Android, iOS, Blackberry or Kindle Fire device.

Google noted it decided to implement a design for its web apps similar to its iOS offerings after receiving positive feedback since first launching the new iOS design in December.

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Vint Cerf, “father of the internet” and Google’s chief internet evangelist, is speaking out about Google’s decision to push users toward using their real names across services. In a recent interview with Reuters, the Google executive said the initiative to get users using their real names across profiles on various services such as Google+ and YouTube has “sparked intense debate” at the company:

Over the past year, the company has strongly encouraged users to merge their accounts on YouTube, Gmail and other Google properties into a single Google+ identity, the company’s social network offering that asks users to use the “common name” they are known by in the real world.

“Using real names is useful,” Cerf said. “But I don’t think it should be forced on people, and I don’t think we do.”

Vint said not using real names is “perfectly reasonable” in certain situations, especially in countries with governments seeking to ban anonymity:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=63u-RG-31B0&list=UUal1Fb7cnd1bE9sMKdFcJcg

Microsoft’s latest smear campaign against Google services kicked into full gear earlier this month with the launch of several online video and print ads as part of its “Scroogled” campaign. Privacy is at the heart of the issues with Gmail depicted in the commercials, with the majority highlighting how Google scans the bodies of emails to serve up relevant ads in Gmail. According to a report from Datamation, Google executives commented on the claims during a panel discussion yesterday with heads from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla at the RSA Security conference.

Challenging Microsoft’s claims, Google’s Senior Privacy Counsel Keith Enright said the following:

Microsoft alleges that Google’s contextual ads, which show up alongside user email, is a violation of user privacy. Google does not agree. Enright noted that the use of automated algorithms is commonplace across multiple facets of technology and is not an issue of privacy. He added that automated algorithms are used to make the contextual ads more relevant. “The idea that doing that (contextual advertising) is in any way detrimental to privacy, or is antithetical to the interests of our users, I think is misleading and intellectually dishonest,” Enright said.

Enright continued:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=63u-RG-31B0&list=UUal1Fb7cnd1bE9sMKdFcJcg

On top of officially announcing the launch of Outlook.com today, Microsoft is making the rounds with the press by offering some stats on the newly launched service. While announcing the service has grown to 60 million active users in just six months of the limited preview release, Outlook.com Senior Director Dharmesh Mehta told Bloomberg that a third of those users are ex-Gmail customers. The news follows the launch of Microsoft’s latest Google smear campaign with a series of “Scroogled” ads depicting security and privacy concerns related to Google scanning users’ email to display ads.

While free e-mail isn’t a huge money-maker — Mehta said Outlook.com carries about 60 percent fewer advertisements than Microsoft’s previous Hotmail product — the Redmond, Washington- based company considers it critical to gaining and retaining consumers. Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, has been losing users of its Windows operating system to smartphones and tablets such as Apple Inc.’s iPad.

According to Mehta, roughly 20 million of Outlook.com’s users  have switched from Gmail and now use the service as their “primary free e-mail account.” There is of course no real way of knowing how many users have actually decided to make the switch, and how many of those users are continuing to use both accounts. As for the Scroogled campaign, Mehta shared that Microsoft is spending “tens of millions” on many TV, online print, and bus ads in the US, as well as TV ads in Europe slated to debut in the coming weeks.