Google

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The Wall Street Journal just published a lengthy report detailing how Google convinced Nevada state assemblywoman Marilyn Dondero Loop, as well as other states’ transportation committees, to introduce legislation that would help legalize its driverless cars for streets.

“This will save taxpayers countless millions of dollars and revolutionize driving as we know it. No more being distracted, no more accidents, and not another DUI attorney again.”

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company persuaded lawmakers, according to The Wall Street Journal, with “demonstrations and rides in its exotic cars,” and it subsequently earned “legislative wins” in Nevada, California, and Florida. There are even bills pending before legislators in Hawaii, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and the District of Columbia:

In the process, the Mountain View, Calif., company is building its credentials as an astute political operator. Google has been “pretty savvy” at navigating state capitols, said Frank Douma, a transportation-policy author and associate director at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. With its self-driving cars, Google “knew what they were doing by moving forward in Nevada” before approaching bigger states, he said. “If you blow it in the first state, you’ve really got problems.”

Success at legalizing self-driving car technology has broader implications for Google. Skills learned from lobbying state lawmakers could aid other endeavors that will require local policy-making, including the potential expansion of its Google Fiber Internet and TV service into markets dominated by cable companies.

Google spent roughly $9 million during the first and second quarters of 2012 lobbying in Washington and coaxing lawmakers and U.S. Department of Transportation officials, but Google did not disclose how much went toward lobbying state officials.

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YouTube is tweaking the way it ranks videos as part of its recent trend to improve video discovery.

Google’s video-sharing platform made changes to Suggest Videos in March, and it refreshed YouTube Analytics just yesterday, and now it is attempting to applaud and boost popular videos with new optimizations to ranking.

YouTube elaborated on the official YouTube Creator blog:

The experimental results of this change have proven positive — less clicking, more watching. We expect the amount of time viewers spend watching videos from search and across the site to increase.  As with previous optimizations to our discovery features, this should benefit your channel if your videos drive more viewing time across YouTube.

YouTube does not detail the exact adjustments, but it clearly wants to feed engaging videos to users who do not have a specific search query in mind. The result, as YouTube suggested above, will not only supply users with trending video but will also pipe more views to successful publishers.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zAytOPnfkX8#!]

Rumor has it that LG’s Nexus device is on the way and based on the LG Optimus G that we recently got hands-on time with at a media event in New York City. We might not have official word from Google or LG, but recent retail inventory listings and leaked images indicate an unveiling will happen in the coming weeks. Several reports agree the LG Nexus will sport almost identical specs to the Optimus G, but today we get a look at what we can expect from the new device with a lengthy 4-minute product video posted to LG’s YouTube account.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=00xUH86sJV0]

Today, we are getting a look at what Android Police claimed is a new build of Gmail—one that “may or may not have come from an LG Nexus system dump.” Among the big new features for Gmail version 4.2, which the report noted also runs fine on Android 4.1, is pinch-to-zoom within your inbox. On top of that highly requested feature, the new Gmail will also get the ability to swipe to delete or archive.

The new app now provides a few options for swiping your conversation list, including: “Has no effect,” “Archive, delete,” or “Always delete.” The default option, “Archive or delete”, will archive conversations in your inbox, delete conversations when in All mail or sent, and it will remove the current label when viewing regular labels.

Also noted is the ability to report a message as phishing. It is unclear exactly when we might be able to get our hands on the new Gmail build, but we will keep you posted as always.

Today, Geek.com points us to proof that Google is preparing to open a call center for Nexus customers. Google is currently sourcing a third-party company to hire employees for the new call center, according to the report, with recruiters seeking “Android enthusiasts” to start in the next few weeks. The timeframe would of course line up nicely with all of the rumors of the LG Nexus and other OEMs preparing Nexus device launches, but Google is not publicly advertising the positions for now on its website.

Lack of support has been a big complaint among Nexus owners in the past. With the introduction of Nexus 7, and new devices on the horizon, we hope all this recruiting is really for a Nexus/Android-related call center. Google recently announced it would start phone support and email support for Apps customers.

Recruiters have been visiting Bay Area campuses looking for Android enthusiasts willing to come work for Google within the next few weeks. Applicants are not being told specifically what the position is for until after the applications are submitted, though the advertisement makes it fairly clear who they are applying to work for…We’re told that Google plans to have the call center fully staffed and trained by the end of the month.

Google announced a few updates for YouTube Analytics today on the YouTube Creators blog. The new tools for content creators include enhanced “time watched” data, a beta version of “Annotations report,” and a few UI improvements.

For time-watched data, which Google originally rolled out earlier this year, channel owners can now see an enhanced Views report that includes “estimated minutes watched”. It also features other metrics from a “Compare metric” drop down menu, such as: “Monetizable views”, “Unique viewers”, “Estimated minutes watched”, and “Total estimated earnings”. You will also now find “Annotations (Beta)” in the YouTube Analytics sidebar, allowing you to “view data on the performance of your video annotations, with insights on viewer click and close rates.

As for design changes, there is now a Date Slider to easily adjust the time period you are viewing data for, a metadata section with data for video duration and lifetime views, and video hover cards to quickly view a thumbnail and info for your videos.

U.S. Judge Lucy Koh granted Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone in June, and the decision resulted in the temporary removal of the device from Google Play pending a software fix with Android 4.1. Today, Reuters reported that Apple’s U.S. injunction on the Galaxy Nexus has been reversed. 

TheNextWeb got its hands on the official order. Samsung argued that its product would “sell almost as well without incorporating the patented feature” :

Samsung argued, somewhat humiliatingly, that the sales of the Galaxy Nexus were so poor that they didn’t pose a threat to Apple’s iPhone and that the unified search feature was not essential to the success of its device. The appeals court apparently agrees, as it states in its official order:

…it may very well be that the accused product would sell almost as well without incorporating the patented feature. And in that case, even if the competitive injury that results from selling the accused device is substantial, the harm that flows from the alleged infringement (the only harm that should count) is not.

According to Reuters, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled the court “abused its discretion in entering an injunction” and will send the case back to the California court for consideration.

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Tech website Onliner just posted a slew of alleged “LG Nexus 4” pictures.

If these images are the real deal, as The Verge noted, they will be the first clear shots of LG’s widely rumored Nexus handset. Onliner verified it is an Optimus G-inspired device, called the “LG E960”, and it features a massive quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 2GB RAM, 4.7-inch 1,280-by-768-pixel display, and Android 4.1.2. Previous rumors indicated Android 4.2 would come on board, but Onliner suggested the mobile OS could change versions before the smartphone’s speculated Oct. 29 unveiling.

The “LG Nexus 4” moniker first appeared yesterday in the inventory system for mobile device retailer Carphone Warehouse, while French newspaper Le Figaro later ousted the launch date with an estimated December arrival for France. More rumors on the device previously pegged a mid-November launch for the United States, while additional leaked photos and specs have painted a decent picture as to what the Android-powered smartphone could potentially feature and look like.

A gallery is below.

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While still taking its sweet time building a Maps app for iOS, Google is making sure to take care of its own business today by launching the biggest update ever for Street View.

Street View is a five-year-old feature in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views of many streets in the world, and its latest update adds over 250,000 miles of roads from around the globe. Google’s Street View team elaborated on the service’s expansion in a post on the official Lat Long blog:

We’re increasing Street View coverage in Macau, Singapore, Sweden, the U.S., Thailand, Taiwan, Italy, Great Britain, Denmark, Norway and Canada. And we’re launching special collections in South Africa, Japan, Spain, France, Brazil and Mexico, among others.

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Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt sat down for an AllThingsD talk last night with Walt Mossberg. Among other topics, they not-surprisingly discussed Android and his thoughts on Apple. Much of the talk centered around Schmidt’s thoughts on the Android-Apple platform fight, which he called “the defining fight in the industry today.” He also noted there is a “huge race specifically between Apple and the Android platform for additional features,” and he commented on Apple’s Maps situation:

The Android-Apple platform fight is the defining contest. Here’s why: Apple has thousands of developers building for it. Google’s platform, Android, is even larger. Four times more Android phones than Apple phones. 500 million phones already in use. Doing 1.3 million activations a day. We’ll be at 1 billion mobile devices in a year.

At the 17:30 mark, Schmidt began to talk about Apple’s new Maps app controversy: “Apple should have kept with our maps”…

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[tweet https://twitter.com/nerderk/status/256020893275414529]

As Google has done with past updates to its products, it appears to be testing a redesigned version of its mobile homepage with a small group of users. A 9to5Google reader noticed the change on Android. There were also reports of iOS users noticing a new UI. As highlighted in the image above, the updated Google mobile website includes a redesigned top toolbar that looks similar to the desktop version. The redesigned toolbar also provides access to a slide-out sidebar that contains quick links to all of Google’s services as opposed to a top bar containing just a few tabs for “Images”, Maps”, “Places”, “more”, etc. The toolbar provides links to the “Web” and “Images”, as well as Google+ notifications and profile information. It is possible Google will push the redesigned UI to all users soon.

The Google Cultural Institute just launched an online series of narrative exhibitions that feature links to archival content stitched together to unearth different perspectives and stories of historical and life-changing events.

The official Google blog elaborated:

Today you can discover 42 new online historical exhibitions telling the stories behind major events of the last century, including Apartheid, D-Day and the Holocaust. The stories have been put together by 17 partners including museums and cultural foundations who have drawn on their archives of letters, manuscripts, first-hand video testimonials and much more. Much of the material is very moving—and some is on the Internet for the first time.

The Google Cultural Institute is essentially a team of dedicated Google engineers that creates tools to “tell the stories of our diverse cultural heritage and make them accessible worldwide.” A few of the exhibitions in its latest project include a tragic love story at Auschwitz, details and personal letters from D-Day, and color photographs of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Visit the Google Cultural Institute’s website for the full catalog of new additions.

More details are available in the video below. 

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In May, Google opened up the ability for developers to include subscriptions in their apps. It is a feature that has been available on Apple’s App Store for quite sometime.

According to a new posting on the Android Developers’ website, a new feature is landing today for the in-app subscription service Google offers. The team in Mountain View has rolled out the ability for developers to set a free trial period, allowing users to try a subscription before buying. A user will be required to give payment information when signing up for the free trial, but it will not be charged. Like most free trial services, a user will be charged after the trial period is over. As for the changes that developers need to make….
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It is no secret that Mountain View-based Google has been in a flurry of legal proceedings over its Android operating system—along with the OEMs that use it. Consequently, Google has been vocal in the past about how it wants to change the patent system in the United States. Adding to the attempt of reform, in an interview with reporters in Seoul this afternoon, Google Legal Chief David Drummond called for a reform of how software patents are issued.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Drummond talked about making it more difficult to obtain a software patent as one possible solution. He spoke about other countries, specifically: “There are places in the world where you can’t get a software patent, or at least it’s harder, like Europe. We think that’s probably the better way to go.” Many others have also voiced a similar opinion.

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Today Google announced on its Android Building group that Android version 4.1.2 is being released to the Android Open Source Project, the same build spotted running on an LG Nexus prototype yesterday. While the update is listed as minor by Google, improving performance and fixing bugs, it also enables the ability to enter landscape orientation for the Home screen on the Nexus 7. According to reports from Android Police and others, Nexus 7 users are already seeing the 31.3MB update arriving over the air. We have yet to see the update ourselves, but the images above and below come from EETimes.

In other Nexus 7 news, Phandroid pointed us to a retailer’s inventory listing showing the 16GB model as “end of line” and indicating the model would be replaced with a 32GB variant. It’s unclear exactly what this would mean for pricing of the 8GB and 32GB models, but it looks like Google might be planning to drop the 16GB and lower pricing on the remaining models. 
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Google announced today on the Official Gmail Blog that it is adding improved support for languages with a number of new input tools that provide one-click access to language and keyboard layouts. According to Google, 100 virtual keyboards, transliteration, and IMEs are included in the update. The introduction of the new tools means Gmail now supports typing in 75 languages:

Finding the right words can be difficult, especially across languages, and once you choose them, finding a way to typethem can be even harder. Try emailing family in Germany, chatting with friends in China or adding a Russian business partner’s name to your contacts and you may find yourself limited by the language of your keyboard…That’s why today we’re adding more than 100 virtual keyboards, transliteration and IMEs—collectively called input tools—in Gmail. These tools enable you to type in the language and keyboard layout you’re accustomed to, making it easy to keep in touch with family, friends and coworkers from any computer. You can even switch between languages with one click.
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