Google

Back in November of 2012, Google acquired the then 2-year old startup BufferBox. BufferBox was a service that provided customers with temporary lockers in certain locations to accept packages at from online retailers. At the time of the acquisition, Google said that BufferBox would “keep doing BufferBox,” but today, Google has announced that it is shutting the service down.

The BufferBox team now says it will work to “bring the learnings, technology and expertise of the team to future Google Shopping products.”

For those that are BufferBox customers, the company says it will stop accepting packages on March 31st, 2014 and that the last day to pickup packages is April 21, 2014. More details can be found on BufferBox’s FAQ page.

Since being acquired by Google, BufferBox has spread from its home Waterloo, Ontario to other cities such as San Francisco. We can only assume that Google will still continue to expand the self-serve pickup idea, but without the BufferBox branding.

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Streaming TV is heating-up. Amazon looks set to launch its TV box in March, we’re expecting Apple to announce a new Apple TV box in April, and Google is reputed to be not far behind with a Nexus-branded box.

So-called cord-cutting – people who give up their cable TV subscriptions in favor of streaming content over the web – is growing in popularity. Mobile TV viewing on tablets is increasingly common.

All of which makes me wonder whether we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of live TV … ? 
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y42eQJmGbxk]

A lot of clues in the above ad, but obviously nothing is guaranteed. The waterproof angle would be a major blow to Sony’s Z line which is the only major phone than can get dunked. Samsung’s S4 Active is water resistant, but not very rugged. I’ll be waiting for the Google Play edition, personally.

Image: digitaltrends.com

Amazon’s TV box, which the company is believed to have been working on for around a year, is to be launched next month, according to unnamed content distribution sources cited by re/code. It had originally been expected to be launched in time for last year’s holiday sales.

People I’ve talked to who are partnering with Amazon believe the company is aiming for a March rollout […]

Sources tell me Amazon’s box will be powered by Google’s Android operating system, which is also not a surprise — Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets use a “forked” version of Android … 
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Image: mobilegeeks.de

Update: TheInformation is reporting that Google was willing to beat Facebook’s $19 billion offer. More behind a paywall here.

Google tried to buy messaging service WhatsApp for $10B prior to Facebook’s successful $19B bid, according to two separate sources cited by Fortune. It has also been reported that Google had earlier offered WhatsApp “millions of dollars” simply for the right to be informed if WhatsApp received an offer from anyone else, an offer the messaging company turned down.

The size of the offers seem almost incredible given that the app is free and has no ads. Its entire revenue stream depends on users signing up to a 99c annual subscription after their first year, giving it – at present – a revenue ceiling of $450M a year.

But it’s likely that WhatsApp’s real appeal was it provides access to a core market for the future: mobile-first users in developing markets … 
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Back in November, Google announced that Currents news service would slowly be transitioned into a new Google Play Newsstand app, and today, the company has finally taken the final step. Google today released an update for the Currents app that makes it nothing more than a pathway to Play Newsstand (via Android Police).

When users launch the Currents app after updating, they will be presented with a screen telling them to download Google Play Newsstand. Newsstand will be able to automatically import all Currents subscription, making the transition as easy as possible for users. Once users agree to make the switch to Newsstand, the app icon for Currents will disappear, making it impossible to ever return.

iOS users are still waiting for Google’s Newsstand app, but there’s something with an eerily similar name preinstalled on all iOS devices already…

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We’re just a week away from Mobile World Congress kicking off in Barcelona, and while the event has been rather quiet for the past couple of years, it looks like that may change this time around. Samsung has already announced a press event for MWC, during which it will unveil its Galaxy S5 flagship. According to two new reports, however, the company also has more planned for the event.

Both USA Today and The Verge are reporting that Samsung will unveil at least one new Galaxy Gear smartwatch variant at its press event next week. The Verge report is sparse on details, simply reporting that Samsung could unveil “multiple new Galaxy Gear” models at the event.

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Image: ggpht.com

For those who may be waiting to choose between the Samsung S5 and the new HTC flagship handset code-named the M8, HTC has a little sweetener for you: a free, one-time replacement of the screen if you break it within the first six months of ownership. The company is also promising to offer Android updates for two years.

Now when customers buy any HTC One they can rest assured their device will be future proofed, with major Android updates for 2 years from launch. And it’s nearly accident proof too, because we will replace a broken screen for free once within the first 6 months you own it—let’s face it accidents do happen and we want to keep your device in great condition … 
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SlickLogin launching at TechCrunch Dusrupt five months ago

TechCrunch reports Google has acquired the startup company SlickLogin, which appears to live up to its name with a whole bunch of clever ways of allowing you to login to a website without using a password. The key ingredient is sound.

To verify a user’s identity and log them in, a website would play a uniquely generated, nearly-silent sound through your computer’s speakers. An app running on your phone would pick up the sound, analyze it, and send the signal back to the site’s server confirming that you are who you say you are — or, at least, someone who has that person’s phone … 
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With so much of what is offered on Valentine’s Day feeling contrived and commercial, today’s U.S. Google doodle provides a rather heartwarming antidote, allowing you to listen to real-life love stories from This American Life.

Click on any of the hearts to play the story, narrated by Ira Glass. If you enjoyed those, you can subscribe to the free weekly This American Life podcast on iTunes … 
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Last night, it was reported that Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside would be stepping down from his position to become the chief operating officer at cloud storage company Dropbox. Woodside has now confirmed this decision in a blog post on the Official Motorola Blog, saying that he will step down as CEO at the end of March.

Woodside goes on to announce that Jonathan Rosenberg, who was the SVP of Products at Google from 2002 until 2011, will step in as COO at Motorola Mobility on April 1st. Rosenberg worked closely with Woodside and was “intimately involved” with decisions at Motorola. Google Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora will remain Executive Chairman of the Motorola Operating Board and continue to oversee strategy at the company. It looks as if Motorola will be going without a CEO after Woodside leaves, leaving Lenovo with a lot of control.

Woodside says he is leaving Motorola Mobility “in great hands” and that he is immensely proud of what the company has accomplished in the past 18 months. He also notes that he is excited for the next chapter for the company under Lenovo, who purchased it for $3 billion last month.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston has also issued a statement on the news.

“We’ve long admired Dennis’s leadership at Google and Motorola where he ran multi-billion dollar businesses and built amazing organizations around the world. We’re so happy to welcome Dennis to our team — I can’t imagine a better person to help us bring Dropbox to global scale.”

Read the full resignation letter after the jump:

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According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Dropbox plans to name Motorola CEO and 10-year Google veteran Dennis Woodside as its first chief operating officer. Citing people “familiar with the matter,” the report says that Woodside will focus on further expanding Dropbox services into businesses and schools, as the company faces stiff competition from other services, such as Box Inc. 

Woodside joined Google in 2003 and was tasked with helping manage the search giant’s relationships with partners and advertisers internationally. He became the CEO of Motorola Mobility when the company was acquired by Google in 2011. Of course, Google just sold its Motorola Mobility unit to Lenovo last month for $3 billion, meaning that Woodside’s rein at Google would be coming to an end.

This is a big loss for Motorola. Even though Woodside didn’t return the company to profitability in his short tenure as CEO, he did release several very well-received smartphones, including the Moto X and its lower-cost sibling the Moto G. It remains to be seen who will take over when Woodside officially steps down from his post at Motorola. 

At Dropbox, Woodside will be the business veteran of the team, working under chief executive Drew Houston chief technology officer, Arash Ferdowsi. Dropbox has reportedly been slowing down in terms of growth, with its sales slowing and questions being raised about whether it is profitable or not. Woodside will certainly have his hands full at Dropbox. 

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The Wall Street Journal has published a new report in which it claims that there are some major “strings attached” for manufacturers when it comes to using Android. According to documents obtained by the publication, Google has imposed strict regulations on companies that wish to have access to YouTube or the Play Store on their devices. The documents show that in order to receive access to those services, companies are forced to feature other Google apps and set Google search as the default search engine on the device.

Companies wishing to gain access to Google services are forced to sign a “Mobile Application Distribution Agreement” with Google. Both HTC and Samsung have signed such agreements, which force them to preinstall twelve Google apps on any device they release. Other details of the agreement include placing the Search and Play Store apps “immediately adjacent” to the homescreen, and that Google apps appear no more than one screen away. Samsung and Google also recently signed a deal to license each other’s patents for the next 10 years.

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Google today updated the Play Music app for Android with a handful of new features. The biggest change is the ability to cache radio stations for offline listening, following the update in December that added the ability to save songs to your SD card. This means that you can now create a radio station and be able to listen to it whenever you want, even if you don’t have an active internet connection. It’s unclear how much of a radio station Google will cache, but we’d imagine it’s quite a few songs, so you can listen for a while before hearing a repeat song (via Android Police).

Also new with this update is the ability to manage your authorized Google Play Music devices from directly within the app. There’s a cap of 10 devices, and as many power users now, it doesn’t take long to reach that limit, especially if you share an account with family members.

There are a few other minor tweaks throughout the app with this update, such as a new “Play Next” button on songs, artists, and albums. There’s no official changelog just yet, as this appears to be a staged rollout. Be sure to keep an eye on the Play Store for the update to hit your device.

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Google announced a partnership with virtualization software maker VMware today that will bring Chromebook users access to Windows desktops and apps. The deal means enterprise Chromebook users will have access to Windows apps through VMware Horizon DaaS and an upcoming Chrome Web Store app:

Cloud applications allow flexibility, scalability and security and enable a work-anywhere environment, but many of our customers still use traditional desktop applications. Desktop as a Service (DaaS) helps bridge the gap between the cloud and a traditional desktop by allowing you to run your traditional software in the cloud and have applications appear on your Chromebook similarly to how they run today. An example might be your Windows based accounting application.

It might sound a little bit like Google is admitting that enterprise customers need more than just Chrome apps to get the job done, but it’s also embracing the upcoming end of life for Windows XP and encouraging business customers to upgrade to Chromebooks. Giving businesses access to the Windows apps many rely on is certainly a good argument for upgrading to Chromebooks. In a statement in VMware’s press release, Google’s president of enterprise Amit Singh said “Chromebooks can save businesses about $5,000 per computer when compared to traditional PCs.”
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Koushik Dutta, Cyanogen Inc co-founder and developer of the AllCast app that allows Chromecast streaming of local photos and video from your phone or tablet, has posted the above meme graphic hinting at the ability to mirror the entire Android screen to a TV.

Dutta had previously suggested that the functionality might be coming to Android officially … 
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