Google announced today on the Chrome Blog that it is promoting Chrome 26 to the beta channel and including a number of new features in the release. Among the most notable new features included in today’s Chrome Beta release is an improved default spell checker that brings support for additional languages like Korean, Tamil, and Albanian. Google also highlighted other new features included in the beta like the ability to sync custom dictionaries and “support for grammar, homonym and context-sensitive spell checking in English.”
Furthermore, for users who have enabled the “Ask Google for suggestions” spell check feature, we’re now rolling out support for grammar, homonym and context-sensitive spell checking in English, powered by the same technologies used by Google search. Support for additional languages is on the way.The new spell checking engine – which is also available in Google Docs – even understands proper nouns like “Justin Bieber” and “Skrillex,” so if you’re wondering how many Ns there are inDananananaykroyd, worry no more (there are four).
The new features will rollout to users on Chrome OS, Linux, and Windows in the “coming weeks” with Mac support some time after.
While Google might be happy with the mobile ad revenue Samsung brings in shipping roughly 40 percent of the devices running Android, The Wall Street Journal said Google execs worry behind closed doors that Samsung could use its dominance to renegotiate its cut of revenue from mobile ads and search:
Google executives worry that Samsung has become so big—the South Korean company sells about 40% of the gadgets that use Google’s Android software—that it could flex its muscle to renegotiate their arrangement and eat into Google’s lucrative mobile-ad business, people familiar with the matter said.
Citing its usual “people familiar with the matter,” WSJ claimed executives at Google are betting on companies like HTC and HP to release compelling Android devices that compete with Samsung. According to the report, Android chief Andy Rubin discussed the situation at a recent event for Google executives. He described Motorola as “a kind of insurance policy against a manufacturer such as Samsung gaining too much power over Android.” Expand Expanding Close
Following a report from the Financial Times last week claiming Google is developing a free music service to compete with Spotify, Bloomberg reported today much of the same details citing “two people with knowledge of the situation.” According to the report from Bloomberg, Google is planning to launch the subscription-based music streaming service by the third quarter and it’s already in talks with record labels:
Negotiations are under way with major record labels to license their music, said the people, who sought anonymity because the talks are confidential. Google, which also owns the YouTube video website, is also discussing renewing deals that cover the use of songs in videos made by consumers, they said.
The report added that sources said the service would work on both Android and devices running another OS.
Today only, eBay deals has the Wi-Fi variant of Samsung’s latest 11.6-inch Chromebook for the cheapest price we’ve seen at $239 + free shipping. We rarely see these Chromebooks go on sale, and, if you’re not going to pick up the new Chromebook Pixel, this is definitely the best value for your money in the Chromebook space.
Vanity Fair today posts the first renderings of Google’s first ‘from scratch’ building dubbed Bay View which it is building on land it leased from NASA in 2008 for 40 years and which overlooks San Francisco Bay. The project is designed by Architecture firm NBBJ.
The more you look at the complex, however, the more intriguing it is. The new campus, which the company is calling Bay View, consists of nine roughly similar structures, most of which will be four stories high, and all of which are shaped like rectangles that have been bent in the middle. The bent rectangles are arranged to form large and small courtyards, and several of the buildings have green roofs. All of the structures are connected by bridges, one of which will bring people directly to one of the green roofs that has been done up with an outdoor café and gathering space. And cars, the bane of almost every suburban office complex, including the Googleplex, are hidden away.
The project was actually announced in 2011 but the press release no longer lives on the company website. From the *ahem* Google cache:
We are thrilled to announce that NBBJ has been selected to design a new 1.1 million square foot facility for Google in Mountain View, California. The scope of work includes integrated new construction, interiors and workplace design. This will be Google’s first build-to-suit new construction project. Both Google and NBBJ have high expectations for sustainability and healthy, creative work environments. Together, we will explore innovative materials and processes for construction.
Chrome version 25 was released with a new Web Speech API that allows web developers to integrate speech-to-text dictation into their web applications.
The other feature of importance on the new version is the removal of “silent extensions.” Silent extensions are web-browser extensions that install without your knowledge. From now on, every web extension installation must be manually approved.
The updated version is available here, but Chrome’s auto-update feature may have already installed it for you.
A United States Patent Application filling from today revealed three detailed diagrams of Google Glass. Google announced yesterday that it would open applications, asking people to answer the question “If I had Glass”. A Google-approved, answer along with $1,500, will score you a set of the futuristic glasses this year. The new diagrams, along with many pages, detail the future potential. In the filling, mentions of Wi-Fi, LTE, Bluetooth, and more are all listed as connectivity options, as well as back-up battery slots that accept AA and AAA batteries to help keep that LTE juice flowing all day. Some other features of the device possibly include touch input all along the frame of the glasses and different RAM, battery, and storage configurations.
Other possible mentioned features are:
Gyroscope and accelerometer
Retina laser scanner
Semi-transparent LED display
Balanced internal distribution for “predetermined weight distribution”
While there are tons of mentioned features in the filling, it’s unsure how many will actually come to life when Glass launches officially next year.
YouTube announced on its YouTube Partners & Creators blog today that it is partnering with two translation services— Gengo and Translated.net— to allow YouTube content creators to order professional caption translations directly through the site’s video editor. From within the video manager, users can request a translation in one of 36 languages and select a vendor to start the translation process (as pictured above). It’s not entirely built-in to YouTube, as the announcement noted users would be redirected to the “vendor’s website to complete payment.” Once the translation is complete, it will be available on YouTube:
Just click “Start order” next to the vendor you’d like to use. This will then create an order and direct you to the vendor’s website to complete payment. When the translator completes the translation, they’ll send the translated caption directly back to YouTube. Once you approve, the translated caption will now be available for all your viewers!
As President Obama and many others have done in the past, Google announced today that First Lady Michelle Obama would host a live “Fireside Hangout” on Google+ to answer questions submitted by users. The Hangout will take place March 4, and Michelle Obama will be joined by Kelly Ripa to discuss the First Lady’s Let’s Move!initiative.
Three years ago, the First Lady launched the Let’s Move! initiative to unite the country around our kids’ health and create real support for families to live healthier lives. Since then communities across the United States have worked together to share, collaborate on and create ways to improve the health of our nation’s children. This year, the First Lady is using Google+ to celebrate the anniversary of Let’s Move!and to connect with communities on Google+ who are passionate about healthy eating, fitness and parenting.
Google has released a decent update to Google Drive that brings a few new and welcomed features alongside a number of bug fixes and performance enhancements. First, Google will now allow users to stream video files on devices running Honeycomb and higher. The updated app also now features the ability to pinch and zoom inside of the presentation viewer.
While Google didn’t detail all the bug fixes and performance enhancements individually, it said to expect improvements “across the whole app.” The updated Google Drive Android app is available on Google Play now.
What’s in this version:
– Performance improvements across the whole app
– Support for streaming video files on Honeycomb+
– Pinch to Zoom support in presentation viewer
– Bug fixes and other improvements
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.
As noted by Android Central, Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra yesterday made some comments about the quality of cameras in upcoming Nexus devices. While Google’s Nexus lineup has never been known for having the best cameras, Vic promised in the comments of a photography-related Google+ post that Google is committed to making improvements to the cameras in future Nexus phones.
Gundotra’s original post questioned if he should bring his DSLR in addition to his Android phone and Google Glass on an upcoming vacation. When asked by a commenter whether a future Nexus could replace a DSLR, Gundotra responded:
Google recently made some updates to its Google Takeout service to allow users to download even more types of content from both Blogger and Google+. As noted recently on its Data Liberation blog, Google is now allowing users to download each of their Blogger blogs as an Atom Xml file. It is also adding more ways to download data from Google+, including the ability to download your posts as HTML files and your Google+ Circles as JSON files. Google noted that it can also just “export a single blog or page of your choice.”
An extremely reliable source has confirmed to us that Google is in the process of building stand-alone retail stores in the U.S. and hopes to have the first flagship Google Stores open for the holidays in major metropolitan areas.
The mission of the stores is to get new Google Nexus, Chrome, and especially upcoming products into the hands of prospective customers. Google feels right now that many potential customers need to get hands-on experience with its products before they are willing to purchase. Google competitors Apple and Microsoft both have retail outlets where customers can try before they buy. Google’s retail move won’t be an entirely new area, however.
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Google Chrome pop-up stores
Google currently has Chrome Store-within-a-store models in hundreds of Best Buys in the U.S. and 50 PCWorld/Dixon’s in the U.K. These stores have Google trained employees who demonstrate the value of Chromebooks and can answer the multitude of questions people have before making a purchase. Our source told us the new Google Stores would be a much broader play. The Chrome SIS employees don’t have sales targets, and they are there mostly for educating. Best Buy and Dixen’s also handle product and monetary transactions, not Google.
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Google and Virgin also ran a limited test run of Kiosks in five major Airports, including this one at SFO (Image Scott Beale)
My understanding is that these new stores will operate independently and make direct sales to customers from Google like the Nexus online store does currently. It might also make sense for Google to sell its apparel and other Google-branded merchandise in these stores as well, but that’s speculation on my part.
The decision to open stores, I’m told, came when drawing up plans to take the Google Glass to the public. The leadership thought consumers would need to try Google Glass first hand to make a purchase. Without being able to use them first hand, few non-techies would be interested in buying Google’s glasses (which will retail from between $500 to $1,000). From there, the decision to sell other Google-branded products made sense.
Along with Glass, Google will have an opportunity to demonstrate other upcoming and Google X projects like driverless cars and mini-drone delivery systems at its stores.
There are small bits of anecdotal evidence that Google is looking into retail. It is hiring folks to develop Point of Sale systems, for instance. We’re told, however, that most of the ramping up of these stores will be done by an outside agency.
“I don’t think we would have been nearly as successful with iPad if it weren’t for our stores. It gives Apple an incredible competitive advantage. Others have found out it’s not so easy to replicate. We’re going to continue to invest like crazy. The average store last year was over 50 million in revenue.”
Google may now understand that if it wants to roll out a new product category like Google Glass, it is going to have to dive into retail. Expand Expanding Close
Google rolled out the official YouTube app for Wii U in November, allowing users to browse channels and categories from the GamePad and view the video in 1080p on their TVs. Today, as previously announced, Google is rolling out its new Google Maps and Street View solution for Wii U owners with the Wii Street U app available now on the Wii U eShop. The app allows users to view street view and 360 degree content and easily navigate Google Maps using the Wii U GamePad:
With Wii Street Utm powered by Google, you can step into Google Street View with an immersive experience that will make you feel like you’re actually there! View a 360 degree Google Maps Street View of locations all over the world using the Wii Utm GamePad controller’s motion controls. Jumping to a location is easy—just use the GamePad touch screen to type in an address or location and start exploring, or instantly travel to over 70 fascinating, hand-picked locations around the globe.
We previously told you about an upcoming movie called “The Internship” starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, where the two compete for an internship at Google. The two stars sat with Conan O’Brien on Wednesday in a live hangout to promote the film and début the official trailer. As you can see from the full-length trailer above, it appears the majority of the movie will take place at Google’s campus. The Internship hits theatres on June 7.
Google announced today on the Google Developers Blog that it would now allow users to add Drive-enabled Chrome web apps to the Create menu in Google Drive. While users could previously select from one of Google’s own apps such as Google Docs or Sheets, a new “Connect more apps” button will now allow users to install apps from the Chrome Web Store’s Drive collection of apps. Once an app is installed, users will then be able to launch the app from the Create menu and open Drive files directly in the app (as highlighted in the image below):
After first introducing its Hangouts feature in Gmail as a replacement for the old video chat feature in July, Google announced today it is finally bringing the feature to users in India. Not only can users do the usual 1:1 video chat they are used to, but they will also now be able to chat with up to nine people and access more of the Hangouts features we are familiar with from Google+.
Over the last few months, we’ve been rolling out updates to Google+ Hangouts to make it easy for you to connect with friends and family no matter where you are. Today we’re excited to bring Hangouts to all of our Gmail users in India… To give Hangouts a try, just click on the hangout button at the top of your chat list in Gmail. You can also schedule a hangout with Google Calendar, and use the Google+ app for Android and iOS to hang out while you’re on the go.
Google also announced (via TechCrunch) that it is rolling out a bandwidth slider for users with slow Internet connections and an audio-only mode:
1) Bandwidth slider. At the top right of every hangout is a new slider that lets you adjust your bandwidth preferences in real-time. This makes it easier to keep hangouts going, even in areas with poor connectivity.
2) Audio-only mode. Choose this mode to send and receive audio only, and thus, significantly reduce your bandwidth requirements. Other participants will only see your profile picture, but they’ll hear you loud and clear.
Google announced via its Official YouTube Partners & Creators Blog that it would begin rolling Bulk Actions for all YouTube users. The feature allows users to make updates to multiple or all videos at once for tasks, such as: adding tags, selecting monetization settings, and editing the privacy preferences of videos. YouTube said the feature is now available to all users through the Video Manager. Select the videos you want to change to access the feature, and then follow “Actions > Advanced.”
Google just acquired marketing firm Channel Intelligence for $125 million in cash, according to a press release issued by the company’s parent company ICG Group (via BusinessInsider). The press release said the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of this year after passing the usual regulatory process.
As for what Google wants from the acquisition, Channel Intelligence said on its website that it “tracks online retail sales for a variety of verticals including computing, home improvement, appliances, consumer electronics, toys and other consumer packaged goods.” It also said that it makes “it easy for consumers to find and buy products online.” We can only speculate what Google will do with the technology, but we imagine it would play a role in the company’s ads and shopping businesses.
In an announcement on the Channel Intelligence website, the company noted it has “worked with Google for years” as a featured Google Shopping launch partner with a technology that helps to “maximize sales and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) with Product Listing Ads (PLAs)”:
A featured Google Shopping launch partner, CI has developed a technology to help merchants maximize sales and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) with Product Listing Ads (PLAs), which has become an increasingly important channel for merchants… CI excels at product feed optimization and product data is paramount for Google Shopping. The CI Managed Services team also employs unique Product Bidding methods to further enhance Google Shopping (PLA) performance; helping retailers generate qualified consumer visits and profitable product sales.
We are pleased to announce that Channel Intelligence (CI) has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!
For over ten years, we have focused on making it easy for consumers to find and buy products online and help our clients grow their business. We’ve worked with Google for years, and look forward to the great things we will be able to do together.
All CI services will continue to offer the excellent client service and great performance that our clients have come to expect over the years.
Google Inc.’s YouTube is negotiating a $50 million equity investment in music video service Vevo LLC, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
Google would own less than 10 percent of the company, giving Vevo a valuation of at least $500 million, said the people, who asked for anonymity because negotiations are still early and an agreement may not be reached.
The investment would be part of a broader contract to keep Vevo’s music videos on YouTube, the people said. Vevo, formed in 2009 by Vivendi SA’s Universal Music and Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment, and Google last year extended their existing contract until April.
Some of the most valuable (and clicked) content on YouTube is from Vevo-associated Artists. Vevo previously threatened to leave YouTube, so the investment would be to secure long-term access to the content advertised on and monetized by affiliate links to buy music.
It is also important to Google’s ecosystem to have easy and cheap access to all of Vevo’s content.
YouTube has announced on its official Partners and Creators blog that the new YouTube One Channel, currently only available in limited beta to select content creators, will soon roll out to all. YouTube content creator iJustine made the announcement. A number of other channels are also using the new design, including: DeStorm,EpicMealTime, SORTED, MysteryGuitarMan, LOUD, and Geek & Sundry.
YouTube provided some tips for content creators who want to prepare for the new channel layout:
1) Create a channel trailer to get people to subscribe
On your new channel, you can show a trailer that will only appear to viewers who aren’t already subscribed to your channel. This is your chance to let visitors know what your channel is all about and tell them why they should subscribe! Keep it short and to the point, and include a clear call to action inviting your audience to subscribe.
2) Create some channel art
Channel art is how you can express the personality of your channel wherever it is seen, whether on a mobile phone, a tablet, a TV, or in a hovercard anywhere on the site! Here is a template and guidelines on how to start creating channel art that will look great.
Amazon today announced that it will soon roll out a new virtual currency, known simply as “Coins,” that Kindle Fire owners can use to purchase apps, in-app purchases, and other content from the Amazon Appstore. Amazon said the service will launch for users in the United States in May and noted developers will still take their usual 70-percent revenue for purchases made with Coins. For the launch of Coins, Amazon will give away “tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Amazon Coins” to Kindle Fire users. This is definitely good news for developers who submit their apps by the April 25 deadline.
Amazon Coins is an easy way for Kindle Fire customers to spend money on developers’ apps in the Amazon Appstore, offering app and game developers another substantial opportunity to drive traffic, downloads and increase monetization even further.. Amazon will give customers tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Amazon Coins to use on developers’ apps in the Amazon Appstore—apps and games must be submitted and approved by April 25 to be ready when Amazon Coins arrive in customers’ accounts
We posted a leaked spec sheet late last month that showed off what appeared to be an upcoming 14-inch Chromebook from HP. HP has officially announced the new Chromebook today. While it might have a 14-inch display two inches wider than any other Chromebook, it also happens to be more expensive than Samsung’s latest offering at $329. That’s significantly more than Samsung’s latest $249 model.
HP offered up full specs on the device that is available to order through the company’s website now. Not only is the HP Pavilion 14-c01us Chromebook more expensive, it’s also heavier than Samsung’s offering at 4lbs compared to 2.5lbs. Battery life is unfortunately the same story with an approximate 4.25 hours quoted compared to the 6.5 hours Samsung’s Chromebook offers. If you can get past that, the new HP device packs in a 14-inch diagonal HD BrightView LED-backlit (1,366-by-768-pixel), 1.1GHz Intel Celeron 847 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB SATA SSD, HDMI, USB 2.0, as well as an Ethernet port.
The Samsung Chromebook has been the top-selling laptop on Amazon since it launched; Acer reported that Chromebooks make up 5-10% of US shipments; and in the first two months of 2013 Google announced two new devices from two new partners, Lenovo and HP. In the Enterprise, Google just announced 2,000schools have deployed Chromebooks and businesses like Kaplan, Dillard’s and Quality Distribution are using Chrome devices as well.
HP’s hoping consumers will opt for the larger display, keyboard, and additional ports for the extra $80, but we’re not too excited about the battery life.
