Google

Google+ always allowed you to receive notification emails for specific activity from the network, such as comments on your posts and when another user mentions or shares with you. Today, Google is making the experience even better for Gmail users by making those notification emails interactive. In Gmail, you can now “view, comment on, and +1 posts” directly from within your inbox. Google noted, “Comments appear in the Google+ stream in real-time, and responses from others instantly appear in Gmail, as part of the notification message.”

Google explained replying to the notification emails is now possible from your mobile device through a “Reply to this email” prompt (pictured, right):

Tap reply, send your comment, and we’ll automatically add it to the ongoing Google+ conversation. Even if you don’t use Gmail, you can still reply by email from many different services.

Google will make these new features available to Gmail/Google+ users over the coming week, and you can always manage your Google+ notifications in settings here.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q3drI4yyiVw&start=2675]

Like us, Google appears to be confused by last night’s report—where AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson told a questioner that the fault of Android smartphones not receiving updates is Google’s.

Stephenson blamed Google, claiming, “Google determines what platform gets the newest releases and when. A lot of times, that’s a negotiated arrangement and that’s something we work at hard. We know that’s important to our customers. That’s kind of an ambiguous answer because I can’t give you a direct answer in this setting.”

Google refuted that point of view tonight, telling us:

“Mr. Stephenson’s carefully worded quote caught our attention and frankly we don’t understand what he is referring to. Google does not have any agreements in place that require a negotiation before a handset launches.  Google has always made the latest release of Android available as open source at source.android.com as soon as the first device based on it has launched. This way, we know the software runs error-free on hardware that has been accepted and approved by manufacturers, operators and regulatory agencies such as the FCC. We then release it to the world.”

Is it possible that the former CFO Stephenson does not know the technicalities of what is happening at his own company? It would appear so.
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Google just announced, well, boasted, about its involvement with the 2012 World Wide Web conference that occurred last month.

Vice President of Engineering Prabhakar Raghavan took to the Official Google Research Blog this afternoon to detail the search engine’s role in the widely popular and annual series. Google was a major supporter of the conference and even sponsored it, coupled with many Googlers having taken an active role through keynotes and papers.

“More than forty members of Google’s technical staff gathered in Lyon, France in April to participate in the global dialogue around the state of the web at the World Wide Web conference (WWW) 2012,” explained Raghavan. “A decade ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin applied their research to an information retrieval problem and their work—presented at WWW in 1998—led to the invention of today’s most popular search engine.

The new VP further said Mobile Web in the technical program is becoming more apparent as the conference has “evolve[d] over the years,” and then he noted the WWW community is transitioning from a “classic ‘bag of words’ of web pages” to an “entity-centric view.”

Raghavan is Yahoo’s former chief scientist, but 9to5Google reported that he left the position in March to take an executive job at Google amid massive cuts at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search engine.

A list of Googlers and their conference contributions is below:

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Following recently signing MGM and Paramount Pictures to add over 1,000 new movies for rent, Google is once again investing in content for YouTube. Today AllThingsD reported the company is about to invest in Machinima, a network featuring videos about videogames that is pulling in about a billion views monthly.

People familiar with the round tell me it should end up raising more than $30 million, and will value the company at around $190 million, post-funding. No comment from Google or Machinima.

The report explained, unlike its past deals with content creators where it recoups over $100 million in investments through ad sales, the Machinima deal would be the first time Google takes an equity stake in a YouTube content provider:

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LG Electronics announced it will release its anticipated Google TV-enabled television set in the United States during late May.

“Production of Google TVs will start from May 17 from our factory in Mexico and U.S. consumers will be able to buy the product from the week of May 21,” said Executive Vice President of LG’s TV business unit Ro Seogho to a group of reporters.

According to Reuters, Seogho further revealed that a launch in Europe and Asia would follow as long as the product performs well stateside.

Earlier this month, 9to5Google also reported LG’s 3D Google TV-enable sets would launch in early May.

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According to a report from Chicago Business (via The Verge), Google is considering moving Motorola Mobility’s main offices to Chicago. The report claims sources have confirmed the company is looking for 500,000 square feet of office space in downtown Chicago that could house up to 3000 employees, more than enough room for Motorola’s new headquarters. The report said those 3,000 employees would likely be relocated from Motorola’s current Libertyville HQ, but not involve those from its River North location:

Among the handful of sites under consideration are upper floors of the landmark Merchandise Mart in River North and Fulton Market Cold Storage, a large warehouse that’s slated for redevelopment in the West Loop, according to a source familiar with the matter… Top real estate executives from Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters have toured several downtown sites over the past several month.

ChicagoBusiness said acquiring the property is still dependant on Google completely closing the acquisition with approvals from regulators in China. Apart from its main campus in Mountain View, Google is no stranger to downtown offices with about 3,000 employees currently calling downtown Manhattan home at the company’s second largest World offices.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3pmSWh2BQco]

Google launched Hangouts On Air last year to select broadcasters, which allows recorded or live conversations with friends to broadcast, but today the search engine made the popular feature available to Google+ users worldwide.

Engineering Director Chee Chew explained the option’s functions on the Official Google Blog:

Today we’re excited to launch Hangouts On Air to Google+ users worldwide. So if you have something to say—as an aspiring artist, a global celebrity, or a concerned citizen—you can now go live in front of a global audience. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to:

• Broadcast publicly. By checking “Enable Hangouts On Air,” you can broadcast your live hangout—from the Google+ stream, your YouTube channel or your website—to the entire world.
• See how many viewers you’ve got. During your broadcast, you can look inside the hangout to see how many people are watching live.
• Record and re-share. Once you’re off the air, we’ll upload a public recording to your YouTube channel, and to your original Google+ post. This way it’s easy to share and discuss your broadcast after it’s over.

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During the Q&A of a recent interview, AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson said some interesting things about the Android ecosystem.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q3drI4yyiVw&start=2675]

His statements are confusing, because we have been— up to this point—lead to believe that there is a straightforward way this works:

1. Google open sources the Android OS.
2. After that, manufacturers get the OS working on their devices with drivers and  (gawdforsaken) overlays.
3. Finally, the carriers certify the OS on those devices (and add a bunch of crapware).

In a response to the questioner, Stephenson blamed Google, saying, “Google determines what platform gets the newest releases and when. A lot of times, that’s a negotiated arrangement and that’s something we work at hard. We know that’s important to our customers. That’s kind of an ambiguous answer because I can’t give you a direct answer in this setting.”

He then goes on to explain how great Windows is and how he has been using it for a month. He also said Android needs to work on security.

While the questioner is speaking in the broader sense about getting his older Android device updated, it is possible that he is referring to the recent Galaxy Nexus that hit Verizon first in December. The GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus was available on AT&T before the release on Verizon (I was an early user) if you bought the phone without a plan.
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This is a special guest post written by Steven Troughton-Smith. Follow him on Twitter or his blog.

When Google first showed off Android, the company showed it running on a device very similar to Blackberries or Nokia E-class devices of the time. This device was the Google Sooner—an OMAP850 device built by HTC with no touchscreen or Wi-Fi. This was the Android reference device…and the device Google originally built the OS on.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg]

Recently, I got access to a Google Sooner running a very early version of Android. With all the recent information coming out of the Oracle vs. Google trial, I thought it would be interesting to take you on a brief tour of the OS. The build of Android this is running was built on May 15, 2007, which is four months after the iPhone announced. The first M3 version of Android announced in November 2007, and Android 1.0 did not come until a year later….

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Google announced on the official Google News blog three new features coming to the U.S. edition of the site, including: new larger images on the main news page; real-time updates that will cover only the latest content; and new integration with Google+ content.

The realtime coverage page provides access to “every news story as soon as they become available to Google News.” The page will also include “Google+ Discussions” to the right, which will even display on the refreshed News homepage. The discussions will only appear to those signed into to Google+ and will consist of comments from journalists, politicians, and those in your Circles currently discussing breaking news.

The Google+ discussions, new realtime coverage page, and larger images will roll out over the next week, but you can upgrade now (here). Google also provided the following instructions to turn off the Google+ integration:

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/2lpLGb1WW8E]

Samsung just unveiled the Galaxy S III in London and has already posted its first television advertisement for the smartphone on YouTube. A few official images for the device were also included on Facebook—check them out:

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

There are more than a few tools online to help you learn a new language, but none are as effective as immersing yourself in another country’s language by actually traveling there. Since we all do not have the time to do so, Google’s Creative Lab is providing a similar immersive experience through a new Chrome extension that employs the Google Translate API for translating certain text on any given webpage.

Available through the Google Chrome store, Google teamed up Use All Five to create the “Language Immersion for Chrome” extension and to currently provide options for translating a page into a mix of “Frenglish, Spanglish or even Tagaloglish.” However, all 64 languages supported by Google Translate are available. You can also roll over words to hear them pronounced, or click them to translate to English.

Within the extension, you will be able to filter the level of immersion with a sliding scale going from “Novice” to “Fluent” as you become more comfortable with any given language. A video demo of the extension in action is above.

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Google launched a new “Go Google” campaign today to flaunt its array of cloud-based services, and now the Google Docs team is doing the same by rounding up a host of improvements it made to Google Docs in April with the announcement of 450 new fonts and 60 new templates.

“Today, we added over 450 new fonts to Google documents to make it easier for you to add a little something extra to whatever you create,” explained Software Engineer Isabella Ip on the Official Google Docs Blog.

To select the new fonts, click on the font menu, and then select “Add fonts” at the bottom. This will open a menu to all the Google Web Fonts available. Users can narrow their search for the perfect font by alphabetical order, date added, and “trending.” Once a font is selected, users are free to implement them in Google Docs, especially in one of the service’s 60 new templates that were unveiled today.

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Microsoft’s search engine Bing unveiled a new look today, and, well, it looks strikingly like Google’s homepage user-interface.

“Starting today you will notice a fresh, de-cluttered experience designed to help you find the results you want faster,” announced Principal Group Program Manager Sally Salas on the Bing.com blog.

Bing stripped the gray-blue gradient, orange links, left sidebar, and the convolute of text and imagery from its website to reveal a simple, white background adorned with crisp, blue text.

“Over the past few months, we’ve run dozens of experiments to determine how you read our pages to deliver the link you’re looking for. Based on that feedback, we’ve tuned the site to make the entire page easier to scan, removing unnecessary distractions, and making the overall experience more predictable and useful,” Salas explained.

The obvious rip-off appears hypocritical, though, especially because the company often takes shots at Google for stealing its ideas. Microsoft Europe’s communication team used Twitter in 2010 to poke fun of Google’s ability to implement background images, which is popular feature that characterized Bing since it launched in 2009.

[tweet https://twitter.com/#!/MSEurope/status/15838998934]

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For quite a while, Android users on many carriers in a handful of countries have had access to direct carrier billing for apps. Google is rolling out the option today to all content available through Google Play including music, movies, and books to certain carriers in the United States and Japan. While direct carrier billing is available to AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile (everyone but Verizon who operates its own Android store), Google’s announcement seems to indicate the expanded service will launch first on T-Mobile in the United States with Sprint coming soon. It will also roll out to Softbank, DoCoMo, and KDDI customers in Japan. You can check out a full list of countries and carriers that support direct billing here.

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/kcOUWjkGBUY]

It’s no secret that Google is fully cloud-compatible, from emails and documents to online storage and video chats, but now the search engine is boasting about its array of cloud-based tools in a new campaign that encourages folks to go Google.

“At the heart of it, Google is about cloud computing—helping people live online and get things done in the cloud,” explained Vice President of Engineering Venkat Panchapakesan on the Official Google Blog:

According to Panchapakesan, over 16 million students and teachers from 66 of the top 100 U.S. universities and more than 4 million businesses worldwide have gone Google through Google Apps:

“Whether you need to add ‘milk’ to a shared shopping list from the train, collaborate with your teammate back in the office to finish your presentation from a hotel lobby, or chat face-to-face with your mom from halfway around the world, we believe that getting stuff done in the cloud is a better way. We like to call it ‘going Google.'”

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