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The Android team announced today in a post over at Google+ that Google’s mapping service on Android won the Best Consumer Mobile Service Award at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain. For mobile users, the Google Maps mobile app, including Google’s other location and mapping offerings, is a reason alone to get an Android handset as many would not be able to get around without it. Though Apple also has a native iOS Maps app that taps into the Google Maps backend, and Google itself provides a surprisingly capable web app, Google Maps for mobile looks and works best on Android smartphones. Perhaps not surprisingly, the latest and greatest Maps features début on Android first. For example: Advanced (and free) turn-by-turn GPS navigation for driving, and walking and public transit directions with 3D views that integrate nicely with Google’s other location-based services like Latitude and Places.

In case you were wondering, the Device Manufacturer of the Year award went to Samsung, which also got the Best Smartphone award for the Galaxy S II. New features in Google’s location-based products are now introducing regularly. The latest update to the Google Maps for Android app brought improved transit navigation and more accurate positioning and indoor maps. Google has a nice interactive overview of Google Maps for newbies here.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLSO8wYzk]

From robots to holographic telepresence, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt took the time at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona yesterday to discuss where the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company is in the world and what the future holds in the technology realm.

Google’s Hugo Berro showcases Chrome for Android in the first 10 minutes of the keynote (video is above). The nugget to his presentation is that Chrome is fast, secure, and free.

“People say in Ice Cream Sandwich that we got the UI right, we got it right for the global audience, and you see the benefits when you see Chrome,” contributed Schmidt to Berro’s lecture. Upon the concluding statements about Chrome, Schmidt led the stage with an announcement that he wanted to talk about the state of the world and “the world that we all operate in, because I think getting this right—the stakes are huge.”

Schmidt mentioned the potential for growth among the millions in the world who have never played Angry Birds and “never got into the Android vs. iOS argument,” but he also hypothesized about the future. While claiming technologies like holograms, virtual reality, and self-driving cars will be commonplace “quite soon,” Schmidt described a scenario where one could “dispatch a robot”:

“…you need to go to a conference across the world for work and it’s the same time your favorite artist is playing live, in the future you’ll be able to dispatch a robot… to each venue, allowing you to experience both events… using a 3D screen and a control system”

More information is available below.

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Google and its partners do not divulge Google TV sales data. This makes figuring just how many Sony Google TV units and Logitech Revue boxes there are in the wild anyone’s guess. According to GigaOM, less than a million of Google TV 2.0 devices by Sony and Logitech are in active use. The publication came to this number by observing Google’s own install data in Android Market for the Movies & TV app for the Google TV platform. This program is part of the Google TV 2.0 software update, so it gives a clue on the number of Google TVs:

The active install base for this app, according to Google’s Android Market, currently is 500,000 to 1 million. The same is true for all the other apps that come pre-installed with Google TV, which suggests that the number of Google TV devices that are currently being used by consumers is less than 1 million.

There is a problem with GigaOM’s logic, however, as it is assuming everyone updated to the Google TV 2.0 software. The update is available to all Google TV 1.0 devices, but many folks might not have upgraded. They either do not care or their set-top box is sitting in the trashcan not being used at all…

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The National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties announced today that Google’s new privacy policy might violate European Union law.

The allegation comes just days before the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant planned to enact the policy that unveiled last month. Google said the updated policy streamlined privacy practices for 60 different services engaged around the globe to bring transparency and clarity.

“We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read,” explained Google’s policy website.

A portion of the letter.

The French privacy agency picked a bone with the search engine’s intent and wrote a letter (PDF) to Google’s Chief Executive Officer Larry Page that painted the new rules as questionable. The central focus of the letter inquired how Google would use the reaped private data, but it is well-known the advertising firm collects personal information from tracking cookies to build targeted ads.

“Rather than promoting transparency, the terms of the new policy and the fact that Google claims publicly that it will combine data across services raises fears about Google’s actual practices,” wrote the agency, also known as CNIL, in the letter. “Our preliminary investigation shows that it is extremely difficult to know exactly which data is combined between which services for which purposes, even for trained privacy professionals.”

The new policy takes effect March 1, and while users’ privacy preferences remain, the new arrangement allows Google to gather and implement user data across its services. Google is charging ahead with Search plus Your World, Gmail, Picasa, YouTube, and Google+, so it is probably just connecting all the loose legal ends to make one continuous experience….

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Everyone knows that Google can dodge privacy features in Internet browsers, renounce third-party cookie policies, and supply personalized ads despite a user’s privacy setting. Privacy regulators, advocates and consumers alike have called upon Google and other advertising companies to abide by browser’s do-not-track policies, but Google already stepped to the plate with a solution for suspicious users that do not want to be tracked.

“Keep My Opt Outs” is a Chrome browser extension that blocks all cookies harvested for personalized ads. The evasive cookies under fire in the media essentially follow a user’s trail across websites to collect history for data reaping. The particulars help Google supply targeted advertisements. All Web browsers include a built-in setting to block this information-cropping process, but Google and other firms use a distinct code to disable the setting in Safari and Internet Explorer.

“Keep My Opt-Outs is an extension for users who aren’t comfortable with personalization of the ads they see on the web. It’s a one-step, persistent opt-out of personalized advertising and related data tracking performed by companies adopting the industry privacy standards for online advertising,” wrote Google on the Chrome webstore…

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YouTube is bringing new capabilities to its popular captioning feature, according to today’s blog post by the search engine giant. The company added Japanese, Korean, and English language to auto-captioning and transcript synchronization features. Captions and subtitles are now supported in 155 different languages. Movies and Shows information finally show available subtitle languages, and users can now search for memorable quotes in closed captions.

This is accomplished by adding “, cc” to any search or clicking Filter > CC after searching to only see results with closed captions. The CC icon in the bottom-right of the video player now lets you change the font size or colors for captions. YouTube now supports broadcast captions for precise positioning and styling (check out this demo) in various industry formats, such as .SCC, .CAP, EBU-STL and closed captions created for TV or DVDs or those in MPEG-2 files with CEA-608 encoding…

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[slideshow]

If you are not attending the Mobile World Congress 2012 show now underway in Barcelona, Spain until March 1 but want to stay on top of the latest trends in mobile, worry not as Google just released the official MWC app for Android devices. Called “Android MWC” and available as a free download from Android Market, this useful little program lets you check out Google Mobile apps featured at the show, retrieve information on the company’s featured partners and events, browse booth and partner maps, check out videos, use the Android Pin checklist to keep track of your Android pins and more.

Release notes are after the break.

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Android smartphones are definitely putting on a great show. As the total number of Android devices around the world jets past 300 million and 850,000 devices get activated each day, nobody in their right mind would argue that Android has become the most powerful platform. It exceeded an estimated 50 percent of the market for smartphones both globally and in the United States. The same cannot be said for Android tablets. Whilst Android-driven slates saw a much-needed uptick since the arrival of tablet-optimized Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich software, Apple’s iPad still dominates the once niche and now rising market segment.

Google is well aware of its shortcomings in the tablet arena and the company is ready to “double down on tablets,” according to its mobile head Andy Rubin. He told The Verge that in two years some 12 million Android tablets were sold—the figure he called “not insignificant, but less than I’d expect it to be if you really want to win.” He is hoping that “2012 is going to be the year that we double down and make sure we’re winning in that space.” Acknowledging the overall lack of high-quality apps is an issue resulting in many prospective buyers considering Apple’s iPad, Rubin urged developers to “put in the muscle and make their apps work great on tablets.”

By the way, we wonder if by “doubling down” Rubin meant a self-branded 7-inch Ice Cream Sandwich tablet said to arrive by summer with a $199 price tag. Also, it was not immediately clear from the report whether the 12 million figure includes the millions of Fire tablets Amazon sold thus far (likely not, as that device runs forked Android software), but clearly Samsung has done a lot here to help push Android slates.

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Google has a dominant presence at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) show now underway in Barcelona, Spain from Feb. 27 through March 1. The company’s Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile and digital content, shared a few updates related to the Android ecosystem, and he revealed in a blog post that 850,000 Android devices are now activated each day with the total number of Android devices around the world past 300 million.

The number of apps available in Android Market tripled from 150,000 at the last year’s show to 450,000 items today. Moreover, the Market is now recognizing over a billion downloads each month. All told, about 800 different Android devices launched to date and the company is highlighting more than a hundred new ones at its huge stand at MWC…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODy4Z2Lp_jE]

Google Insights for Search is a handy tool that helped the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine predict last year’s Oscar winners by tracking search pattern behaviors, and the Internet giant has decided to test its service again with this year’s red carpet lineup.

The Academy Awards is the most popular entertainment award show in terms of search volume. The convolute of searches subsequently create a prime foundation for Googlers to analyze patterns. Google’s Rebecca Mall, an entertainment account executive, took to the Official Google Blog today to “open the (search) envelopes and see who the Oscar (may) go to this year,” according to Google Insight’s reaped Web information.

More information is available below.

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Google plans to enter the tablet market in April with a self-branded 7-inch slate.

CNET’s Brooke Crothers said Display Search analyst Richard Shim expects 1.5 million to 2 million units with a 1280-by-800-resolution display to enter initial production this spring.

The rumor mill also indicates the Google-branded tablet will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and it apparently also has Nexus ties. The device will see a $199 price tag to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire that has a 1024-by-600 display…

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/cOZU7BOeQ58]

Google announced today that it is adding Google+ Circles to Google Voice.

Software Engineer Tom Ford took to the official Google Voice blog to tell users how Circles give callers more control with organizing and managing in Google Voice:

Circles give you more control over how you manage your callers; for example, calls from your “Creepers” circle can be sent straight to Voicemail, only your “College Buddies” circle will hear you rap your voicemail greeting, or you can set your “Family” circle to only ring your mobile phone.

As Ford mentioned, go to the Groups & Circles tab in Google Voice settings to customize Circles.

More information is available below.

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Microsoft requested European Union antitrust regulators to probe Motorola Mobility on claims that the United States phone manufacturer is blocking sales of Windows and Xbox products.

“Earlier today, Microsoft filed a formal competition law complaint with the European Commission (EC) against Motorola Mobility and Google,” wrote Microsoft’s Vice President and Deputy General Counsel David Heiner in a blog post this morning. “We have taken this step because Motorola is attempting to block sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products.”

Microsoft’s post, “Google: Please Don’t Kill Video on the Web,” lambasted Motorola Mobility for not making industry standard patents available on reasonable and fair terms, and for using those patents to block competitors from shipping products.

The industry apparently agreed many years ago to define common technical standards for everyone to use and build compatible Wi-Fi and video products. However, Heiner contended, Motorola is backtracking on its word and attempting to use standard patents for “killing video on the Web.”

More information is available below.

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Detailed street-level imagery of landmark spots in Russian cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg is now available in Google Maps, Google’s Russia Product Manager Boris Khvostichenko announced in a blog post yesterday. Among other places, mapping aficionados can now tour Red Square, Moscow Kremlin, great palaces and parks, such as Tsaritsino, Peterhof, Kuskovo, the Oranienbaum, Alexandria, plus The Peter and Paul Fortress and the entire historical center of St. Petersburg (a UNESCO Heritage Site). St. Petersburg is Russia’s former capitol—now the country’s second largest city and northernmost megapolis. As for Google Earth enhancements…

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A new URL on the drive.google.com subdomain is another sign that Google’s rumored GDrive cloud storage is coming soon. Available at beta.drive.google.com, it redirects to the Google Accounts login website. Upon providing my credentials, the page was stuck in an endless redirect loop. Something clearly is cooking in Google’s kitchen, though the product is not ready for prime time. Google Drive, or GDrive, leaked many times in past months, revealing its logo and interface. Judging by Google Docs code hooks, GDrive is likely to become at least an integral part of Google’s cloud-based productivity suite if not a full-blown cloud storage service shared across all Google services.

While it is already possible to buy more storage from Google, it is shared only across Gmail, Google Docs, and Picasa Web Albums. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Google would launch Google Drive “in the coming weeks or months.” The idea of a unified Google storage for consumers’ dates back to 2007, and later leaks suggested the product is anything but vaporware. With Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service now being revamped, GDrive is likely around the corner.

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Google’s Chrome browser has long released with a built-in Flash Player plug-in—the result of a technology partnership between the Internet giant and Flash maker Adobe. Though Adobe still allows customers to download a standalone Flash Player plug-in for Windows, OS X or Linux, the company announced today that the Flash Player plug-in for Linux after version 11.2 would only be available with Chrome browser distribution. The Linux plug-in will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe. While one could suspect this news foreshadows broader policy changes on Windows and OS X, Adobe insisted that is not the case.

Flash Player will continue to support browsers using non-”Pepper” plugin APIs on platforms other than Linux.

Additionally, it will continue supporting Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for years to come. “Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release,” wrote the company in a blog post…

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In what seems to confirm our earlier reports, (here and here), The New York Times’ Nick Bilton offered more information today on the Heads Up Display Glasses that Google is building. Some of the new bullet points are as follows:

• The glasses are not designed for constant wear; although, Google expects the nerdiest users to wear them a lot. However, they will be more like smartphones—used when needed.
• Internally, the Google X team is actively discussing the privacy implications of the glasses, and the company wants to make sure that people know if someone wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera is recording them.
• One of the key people involved with the glasses is Steve Lee, a Google engineer and creator of the Google mapping software Latitude.
• The other key leader on the glasses project is Sergey Brin, Google’s cofounder, who is currently spending most of his time in the Google X labs.

On a personal note, I think this will be the most exciting technology product release this year.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z07MnBf9QNY]

Fluent is a web-based workflow stream that works with existing Gmail accounts to bring a Sparrow-like user interface to email.

Users can stream email threads and replies, preview aggregated attachments in a tab, quickly reply or compose inline, archive messages, and even add a to-do list with the new design concept that claims to run on any web browser.

Sparrow is a great success as a Mac-only application, and now Fluent hopes to balance the playing field and snag users whom are in dire need of a new Gmail look and functionality. Fluent’s website specifically praises its workflow ability, multiple accounts options, and “blazing” fast search-as-you-type filter.

The streaming email UI is the work of three former Googlers who quit the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company. BusinessInsider said Cameron Adams, Dhanji Prasanna, and Jochen Bekmann left because designers were “less valuable” than engineers at Google, and they felt disconnected from Google’s culture while operating from across the world in Sydney, Australia…

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A new comScore research study revealed that United States viewership in January 2012 suffered a slight decline from December 2012, also proving Google was right to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into getting premium partners for content on YouTube. Last month, 181 million online users in the U.S. consumed nearly 40 billion online videos, which is a drop from 43.5 billion clips watched by 182 million users in December 2011. On average, we watched 22.6 hours of online clips with a 6.1-minute duration for each clip.

The search and Internet giant continues to lead the online video market with 152 million unique viewers. Google-operated websites cumulatively account for a whopping 18.6 billion views. Rival Hulu and VEVO delivered 877 and 717 million views, respectively.. In addition to Google websites, VEVO (51.5 million), Yahoo websites (49.2 million), Viacom Digital (48.1 million) and Facebook (45.1 million) round-up the top five online video destinations in the country.

Be advised that comScore defines a video as any streamed segment of audiovisual content for both progressive downloads and live streams. For long-form, segmented content, such as television episodes with ad pods in the middle, each segment of the content is counted as a distinct video stream…

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Google is on a roll these days in regards to interesting patent filings. The company filed a patent for Android’s pattern unlock feature in November, and a new filing suggests more unlocking methods with one involving voice recognition and the other based on a two-icon methodology. Today, Patently Apple pointed to another document the search company filed with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) on Sept. 29, 2011.

Being made public only recently, it describes methods and apparatus for a Google TV remote that lets you search for televisions shows, movies, music and other media simply by asking. This sounds a lot like Apple’s Siri voice assistant the rumor-mill speculates could enhance an alleged Apple-branded HD TV set.

The difference, per the publication:

Apple has had a similar feature under Remote for several years now, but it doesn’t relate to live TV as Google’s will. Google’s real competitor on this particular front will come from Samsung who just announced their latest TV remote with voice controls and a touch pad. The race to bring the best next generation TV Remote to market is officially on.

One embodiment of the invention describes a situation where a user searches for the popular sitcom “Seinfeld” simply by asking their Android phone, “When is Seinfeld on?” The phone would parse and send the query up to the Google cloud, beaming down the results to your Google TV set-top box.

GPS positioning could enhance the scope of the invention in interesting ways:

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Google’s Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt plans to sell $1.5 billion in Google stock that he owns, according to a filing with the SEC. Schmidt’s stake in Google is currently 2.8-percent. The prearranged sale of 2.4 million shares of Class A stock will lower his share to 2.1-percent. Google closed at $604.64 per share on Friday. WSJ reported:

Google Inc. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is selling stock currently worth about $1.45 billion as part of a trading plan that would cut his ownership stake in the Internet giant to about 2.1% from 2.8%.

As of the end of last year, Schmidt owned 2.8-percent of Google, which equivalates to 9.1 million shares of Class A and Class B stock. At the end of the sale, Schmidt will own 6.7 million shares of stock— or 2.1-percent of Google.

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