Gmail is officially turning nine years old this month after originating as a project created on an employee’s spare “20% time” and launching on April 1st as an invite only beta in 2004. To celebrate, Google has put together the info graphic below showing some of the milestones for its massively popular email service:
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.
Last week, Facebook announced two new products to expand their reach in the mobile market: Facebook Home, a downloadable Facebook-intergrated skin for Android phones and the HTC Facebook First, the first official hardware by the company. The First is scheduled to be released April 12th for $99 exclusively through AT&T. Naturally, the First comes pre-loaded with Facebook Home.
Facebook Home is a downloadable launcher for Android phones only, and a few of its key features such as Chat Heads are getting much praise by reviewers. On the other hand, the First is being criticized for its lack-luster hardware such as the mediocre 5MP camera and lack of a dedicated shutter button.
If you want to read all about Facebook’s new duo of software and hardware, below is a round-up of some of the reviews from around the web…
The HTC First is compelling for two reasons. For Facebook fans, it’s now easier to maintain social connections with friends and family. For the tech-savvy crowd who has little interest in the service, the phone is a stock Android 4.1 device that comes with AT&T LTE, which is still something of a rarity. Including this opt-out was a smart move on Facebook’s part, because it’s difficult to recommend that consumers sign two-year contracts on an unproven product that depends so heavily on their engagement with Facebook. Worst case, it’s a decent mid-range phone for $99 on contract (or $450 without any commitment).
Facebook Home isn’t perfect, nor will it convince many non-Facebookers to start Liking and commenting with reckless abandon. But it’s aesthetically pleasing, and surprisingly polished for a 1.0 product.
Following Google’s announcement that it will bring its speedy Google Fiber network to Austin, Texas, in mid-2014, AT&T has created competition by announcing it plans to bring fiber-optic internet connectivity to the Lone Star state as well.
Today, AT&T announced that in conjunction with its previously announced Project VIP expansion of broadband access, it is prepared to build an advanced fiber optic infrastructure in Austin, Texas, capable of delivering speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives. This expanded investment is not expected to materially alter AT&T’s anticipated 2013 capital expenditures.
AT&T says it believes it will be granted the same privileges as Google in this regard. The full press release is available below:
We already knew that Google was getting set to announce its Gigabit Google Fiber Internet service for Austin, Texas today after an initial successful launch in Kansas last November. Reports claimed invites started going out this month, but today Google has officially announced Google Fiber will be coming to Austin, Texas by mid-2014.
Google noted that pricing would be similar to Kansas, and it will also be offering customers in Austin the same free Internet connection at 5 mbps for 7 years with a one time installation fee: Expand Expanding Close
In a recent “Life at Google” video (above), Interaction Designer on Google’s search team Noah Levin walks us through his work building the latest version of the Google Search app on iOS:
After just three months at Google, Interaction Designer Noah Levin helped change the way our users interact with Google Search on the iPhone and iPad. Learn how he takes a complex system and makes it a simple user experience for our most well-known product: Search.
While hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers around the globe have had the option to use Gmail in Latin America Spanish since last year, a number of other popular Google services didn’t offer the Español language setting. Now, Google has announced on its Official Gmail Blog that it is expanding support for its Latin American Spanish language option to Google Calendar:
If you’re new to Calendar but already using Gmail in Latin American Spanish, just visit google.com/calendar and language settings will be ready to go. If you’ve used Calendar in the past, you’ll need to update your language settings by clicking on the gear icon in the mid-upper right of Calendar, then selecting Settings: Once in General Settings, Language you can select Español (Latinoamérica).
You’ll also be able to access the Español (Latinoamérica) setting for Calendar on Android devices through your device’s “Language Settings” within Settings.
An updated Google Play with an image-centric design will be rolling out to all Android devices running Froyo (2.2) and up over the next few weeks, the Official Androidblog confirmed. The redesign focuses on connecting ‘similarly themed’ content so apps, songs, and movies of the same genre are grouped rather than scattered everywhere.
Perhaps it’s too soon to state this with any certainty — surely this update has been in the works for some time now — but we may already be seeing the influence of Facebook Home on app design, at least as it pertains to the use of larger imagery and simplified interface. Something to keep an eye on at the very least.
Almost 60,000 apps have been removed from Google Play, reports TechCrunch, in a move believed to be in response to the number of apps falling foul of the store’s anti-spam policies. Expand Expanding Close
New data from tech analysts Canalys (via TechCrunch) shows Google leading downloads, with Google Play accounting for 51 percent of the market against Apple’s 40 percent, but Apple well ahead in monetisation, taking 74 percent against “close to 20 percent” for Google. More on 9to5Mac.com
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. Expand Expanding Close
Digital Trends claims that Google is negotiating to buy the hugely popular messaging app, WhatsApp – with the company said to have rejected initial offers and to be holding out for a price said to be close to $1 billion (via Gizmodo).
Google is on record as acknowledging its weakness in the mobile messaging field, with Digital Trends arguing that the acquisition makes perfect sense.
There are rumors that Google Babel will combine Google’s disparate communication services under one roof, but the platform still needs to do something to innovate in this space; mobile messaging has been taken over by smaller apps and Facebook has made a major push as well. Google hasn’t given an answer to this competition. Even Google Product Manager Nikhyl Singhal confessed to GigaOM in June of last year that “We have done an incredibly poor job of servicing our users here.” Messaging is a huge, gaping hole in Google’s mobile strategy.
Google Voice already offers most of the features of What’s App making the acquisition primarily a subscriber play, but we’re not exactly holding our breath on this one. Remember Google already has some Bable thing being cooked up, so adding something huge like this might put a wrench in the works.
Venturebeat got the word from some invites that went out this week.
On Tuesday, April 9, at 11 a.m., the City of Austin and Google will make a very important announcement that will have a positive impact on Austinites and the future of the city. We anticipate more than 100 community leaders and elected officials to be in attendance to celebrate this announcement. The event invitation is attached for your convenience. Although we cannot share the details of the announcement with you in advance, we know readers will want to learn more, so we encourage you to join us on Tuesday.
Google today announced in a blog post on its Public Policy Blog that it has asked the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to investigate and take a stronger stance against patent privateering and patent assertion entities, aka patent trolls. Google linked to a document submitted to the government agencies mentioned above and noted that BlackBerry, Earthlink and RedHat are among other companies backing the request.
Within its post, Google’s Senior Competition Counsel Matthew Bye cited losses of nearly $30 billion a year in the U.S. due to patent trolls and urged companies to help Google create “cooperative licensing agreements that can help curb privateering.”
Trolls use the patents they receive to sue with impunity—since they don’t make anything, they can’t be countersued. The transferring company hides behind the troll to shield itself from litigation, and sometimes even arranges to get a cut of the money extracted by troll lawsuits and licenses.
Google described patent privateering as companies selling “patents to trolls with the goal of waging asymmetric warfare against its competitors.” While it didn’t name any companies specifically in its blog post or document submitted to the FTC, it did link to an article on Bloomberg that mentions Microsoft, Nokia, and Alcatel-Lucent as companies linked to patent privateering.
In the document submitted to the FTC, Google outlined its stance on patent trolls and recommended the FTC initiate an investigation into patent assertion entities and or expand its broader inquiry to include a number of important areas specifically related to patent privateering: Expand Expanding Close
Google’s Nathan Johns posted a picture of an all-pink Tesla Model S yesterday complete with the official bat signal on its hood, bat wings as a spoiler, and Chrome’s logo embedded in the middle of its alloys.
This candy-coated Tesla apparently belongs to Google cofounder Sergey Brin. According to Search Engine Round Table, Brin’s beloved and spirited Googlers played an elaborate April Fool’s Day prank last Monday and transformed his zero-emissions car into a cute flashy Batmobile.
Brin—seen driving his Tesla around LinkedIn’s headquarters in the image above (via Brian Li)—is sometimes called “Batman” around Google because of his Batcave-like Google X repository.
Facebook introduced the HTC First with Home for Android today, and now CEO Mark Zuckerberg is doing the press rounds and discussing everything from “Facebook phone,” building for Android, Google’s reaction to Home, and even why iOS was left in the dark.
During the unveiling event, Zuckerberg described building Home for Android as “smooth,” because the platform is open and does not require any Google intervention, where as Home for iOS would require a direct partnership with Apple.
In a wide-ranging interview at Wired.com this afternoon, Zuckerberg gave a more detailed explanation on why Facebook launched Home for Android phones instead of iOS, as well as why the company ditched the idea of building a phone directly:
Why not just build a phone? I’ve always been very clear that I don’t think that’s the right strategy. We’re a community of a billion-plus people, and the best-selling phones—apart from the iPhone—can sell 10, 20 million. If we did build a phone, we’d only reach 1 or 2 percent of our users. That doesn’t do anything awesome for us. We wanted to turn as many phones as possible into “Facebook phones.” That’s what Facebook Home is.
It’s only available on Android phones. Isn’t it ironic that your mobile strategy is now tied to Google’s operating system? “We have a pretty good partnership with Apple, but they want to own the whole experience themselves. There aren’t a lot of bridges between us and Google, but we are aligned with their open philosophy.”
So do you think in, say, two years you will have this on the iPhone? “That’s above my pay grade to be able to answer that.”
That’s a pretty high pay grade.
“Look, I would love for that answer to be yes. Facebook is in a very different place than Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft. We are trying to build a community. We have a billion folks using our services now, and we want to get to 3 or 5 billion one day. We’re going to do that by building the best experience across all devices. Android is growing quickly, and we’re excited that the platform is open and that it allows us to build these great experiences. I think that this is really good for Google too. Something like this could encourage a lot of people to get Android phones, because I think people really care about Facebook. In a lot of ways, this is one of the best Facebook experiences that you can get. Of course, a lot of people also love iPhones—I love mine, and I would like to be able to deliver Facebook Home there as well.”
Zuckerberg also talked with Fortune.com today about Google’s reaction to Home and what it’s like working with Apple:
On what Google will think of Facebook’s use of the open Android platform:
“I’m not sure how they’re going to react.”
On working with Apple:
“They really control the operating system… Android is different because it’s a much more open platform.”
On Google vs. Apple in mobile:
“I think that Google has this opportunity in the next year or two to start doing the things that are way better than what can be done on iPhone through the openness of their platform. We’d love to offer this on iPhone and we just can’t today. And we will work with Apple to do the best experience that we can within what they want, but I think that a lot of people who really like Facebook–and just judging from the numbers, people are spending a fifth of their time in phones on Facebook, that’s a lot of people. This could really tip things in that direction. We’ll have to see how it plays out.”
Arthur Frommer announced yesterday that he reacquired the rights to his travel brand from Google with plans to continue publishing Frommer’s guidebooks.
Google acquired Frommer’s last summer from the Wiley publishing company, but Skift.com reported recently that the Internet Giant intended to “cease production” of Frommer’s books.
Frommer, 83, originally sold his travel line to Simon & Schuster in 1977. Despite nearly 40 years of separation, Frommer told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he bought his brand back from Google.
“It’s a very happy time for me,” said Frommer. “We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com.”
It should come as little surprise to industry observers that Facebook plans to unveil both a rich, skinned version of its Android app at a press event tomorrow, along with the first hardware to run that experience out of the box. The phone, by HTC, is appropriately named “First”—appropriate because of its status as the première phone to undergo Facebookification and its similarity to the name of HTC’s newest flagship, the One. More screenshots follow: Expand Expanding Close
The streamlined interface now makes it easier for businesses to update their information, and a helpful widget will even outline what they should do to fully complete profiles.
Profile edits will also now appear across all of Google’s products, like Google Maps, within 48 hours, but the improved integration doesn’t stop there. The official Google and Your Business blog has the story:
Through this upgraded interface, you will be able to access your local Google+ page to take advantage of social features like sharing photos, videos, or posts. For businesses who also use AdWords Express and Google Offers, managing your ads and promotions is easier than ever. You can check results and make edits directly from your upgraded Places for Business dashboard.
Google+ now allows users to upload and share full-size photos from their desktops.
Google+ introduced full-size backups for Android photos in December 2012, and now it has expanded support for that functionality. Google’s Jon Emerson has the story:
To enable full-size desktop uploads, just visit your settings at www.google.com/settings/plus, and check “Upload my photos at full size.” Afterwards, any files larger than 2048px will count towards your Google storage (up to 5GB free). Photo storage at 2048px or smaller remains free and unlimited.
Emerson clarified that the update doesn’t allow users to replace previously uploaded images with a new full-size version. But, hey, now they can update their profile photo, create a new album to share, or back up pictures with better-detailed images up to 2048 pixels large.
Reuters has some vague new information on the Nexus 7 successor from Google today. Rather than being available at Google I/O in May (which would have been my guess), Reuters thinks it won’t hit the mass market until July. Perhaps a limited run will be available to developers in May?
Twilio, a voice and messaging API solution, announced a partnership with Google’s Cloud Platform today.
Twilio is the first of its kind to integrate with Google App Engine and give developers voice and messaging services for their apps with just a few lines of code, and its APIs are priced on a pay-per-use scale, as first noted by TechCrunch. Voice services like making calls, for instance, start at 2 cents per minute, and the ability to receive calls costs just $1 per phone number and 1 cent per minute.
“We’re very excited to partner with Google to be the first voice and messaging platform integrated with Google Cloud Platform,” explained Twilio on its blog, while also listing step-by-step instructions on how to register with Google App Engine, build a messaging app, etc.
Twilio’s SDK notably includes one-to-one voice and messaging, SIP support, in-app conference calling, group texting, two-factor authentication, phone numbers, and mobile app distribution. Hipmunk, for instance, uses Twilio’s distribution feature to supply users with a text message and link to download its app.
While Google has played several light-hearted April Fool’s jokes today, Microsoft’s search engine Bing took things to the next level by pretending to be Google.
To see the somewhat harsh joke, go to Bing’s website and then search for “Google.” A Google-like search page will appear with the header “Bing.” The fake search page features floating squares that criticize Google, but it most notably changed Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button to “I’m Feeling Confused” with link to a blog post that fully explains the joke.
So today we’re running a special test, where if you visit bing.com and enter a certain telltale query, you’ll get something a little more bland. We decided to go back to basics, to the dawn of the Internet, to reimagine Bing with more of a 1997, dial-up sensibility in mind. We may see some uptick in our numbers based on this test, but the main goal here is just to learn more about how our world would look if we hadn’t evolved.
So, Microsoft has basically slammed Google’s look and deemed it dated. Yeah. Way to keep things light, Redmond. Don’t worry, though: Google has lashed back.
