According to a report from Bloomberg (via AllThingsD), the U.S. Federal Trade Commission subpoenaed Apple as part of its antitrust investigation of Google. There are not many details currently, but the report claimed the FTC is interested in Apple’s agreement with the company to use Google as its primary default search engine on iOS devices.
The agency’s request for documents includes the agreements that made Google the preferred search engine on Apple’s mobile devices, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly and declined to be identified. Google rivals such as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) have criticized these agreements as anticompetitive.
O.K., really that headline is a bit misleading. We have no idea what the now-former DARPA head has been hired to do at Google, and the department would only tell us the scripted:
“Regina is a technical pioneer who brought the future of technology to the military during her time at DARPA. She will be a real asset to Google and we are thrilled she is joining the team.”
Besides pulling off designer jeans, Wired profiled her other qualifications:
Dugan’s emphasis on cybersecurity and next-generation manufacturing earned her strong support from the White House, winning her praise from the President and maintaining the agency’s budget even during a period of relative austerity at the Pentagon. Her push into crowdsourcing and outreach to the hacker community were eye-openers in the often-closed world of military R&D. Dugan also won over some military commanders by diverting some of her research cash from long-term, blue-sky projects to immediate battlefield concerns.
“There is a time and a place for daydreaming. But it is not at Darpa,” she told a congressional panel in March 2011 (.pdf). “Darpa is not the place of dreamlike musings or fantasies, not a place for self-indulging in wishes and hopes. Darpa is a place of doing.” For an agency that spent millions of dollars on shape-shifting robots, Mach 20 missiles, and mind-controlled limbs, it was something of a revolutionary statement.
You will recall that Google’s Driverless cars were born from the DARPA Grand Challenge, so perhaps we will see her join the ranks of Google’s X team. The videos below of Dugan talking feature her deep knowledge on the type of cyber-hacking that Google has accused China of in the past.
Without any official confirmation, The New York Postreported today that Google is looking to sell Motorola Mobility’s set-top box division as the $12.5 billion acquisition of the company looms.
Google allegedly summoned Qatalyst Partners and Barclays Capital to help shop the asset around. However, the publication’s sources indicated Google is not likely to unload the division, because cable operators are “shunning” Motorola set-top boxes before the acquisition closes.
With that said, one source speculated a possible sale price between $2.5 billion to $4 billion.
The New York Times posted a back-and-forth piece today about Google+ having an image problem ironically within hours after the search engine announcing it rebranded Android Market to “Google Play.”
Reports circulated recently over ComScore’s latest findings that show users only spend three minutes a month on Google+. Meanwhile, the study revealed people spend close to 7 hours a month on Facebook.
Google itself combats public whispers over such studies with its own statistics. Google’s Vice President for Engineering Vic Gundotra told the NYT that Google+ has approximately 100 million accounts with over 50 million daily users.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company has a suite of integrated products, such as YouTube, Google.com, and Google Play, which contribute to Google+’s fan base. Gundotra’s statistics include the amount of people who regularly use such products.
In other words, Gundotra indicates that signing up for a Google+ account and regularly using any related product makes one an active daily user of the social network, but he also said his figures do not accurately depict what is happening at Google.
“This is just the next version of Google,” said Gundotra to the NYT, while comparing Google+ to a social blanket that covers the entire Google experience. “Everything is being upgraded. We already have users. We’re now upgrading them to what we consider Google 2.0.”
Ubisoft unveiled the above teaser for the critically acclaimed “From Dust” videogame by Creative Designer Eric Chahi and announced it is coming to the Google Chrome browser next month.
“Chrome users will be able to play a High-End console game within their very own Google Chrome browser,” contended Ubisoft, the game’s developer.
Google announced it rebranded Android Market to “Google Play” today as a cloud-based digital entertainment destination.
“Starting today, Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will become part of Google Play,” explained Director of Digital Content Jamie Rosenberg on the Official Google Blog.
Google Play lets users find, enjoy and share content, such as music, movies, books and apps, on the web and on an Android smartphone or tablet. Moreover, the cloud service stores all of the content online. Google Play allots free storage for up to 20,000 songs, and it has downloads for more than 450,000 Android apps, eBooks browsing, and rent options for thousands of movies, HD titles, and new releases.
The integrated destination replaces and extends Android Market as an attempt to create a stronger brand with enticing offerings and slicked purchasing for an all-around better experience that will “drive traffic and revenue for the entire ecosystem,” according to Kenneth Lui on the Android Developer’s Blog.
Google must be napping to reenergize for its upcoming Motorola Mobility acquisition, because it has not completed a single buyout in 2012 despite purchasing 79 companies last year.
Google filed its 10-K with the SEC in January that revealed the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine spent $1.9 billion (including stock and cash) on 79 acquisitions in 2011. The more notable purchases were ITA Software for $676 million, and Apture, Katango, and Clever Sense. That means the Internet giant bought six to seven companies a month in 2011. In contrast, it obtained four companies a month in 2010 for a total 48 acquisitions worth $1 billion.
With that said, Google has not picked up a single company since Dec. 13, 2011—roughly four months since its last investment. If judging Google’s spending habits over the last two years, the firm should have already completed 16 to 28 buyouts in 2012 to bulk its portfolio of interests. The company still has time to flash its money, though, as it grabbed roughly 25 of those 2011 acquisitions after the year’s third quarter.
Google rolled out a handy new feature yesterday to its mobile search page on Android and iPhone smartphones that provides access to the list of past places-related search queries. According to a post over at the official Google Mobile blog, the new Recent icon “shows information about places you have recently searched for on any of your devices.” You must be logged in to your Google Account when searching for places (such as the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco). Web History must also be enabled. Users can swipe to the right to see more icons for other categories of places.
Next time you are heading to a place you have recently searched for, no need to worry if you can’t remember the address or phone number. Just go to Google.com on your smartphone and tap on the “Recent” icon.
This improvement also allows you to research places of interest on your desktop and view them later while on the go— without having to bookmark or email places’ URLs to yourself. One thing to keep in mind: This information about your previously searched places will be available under the Recent icon for about a day, Google said. This handy new feature is the first in a series of enhancements aimed at unifying search experience across devices.
Samsung today announced its latest addition to the Galaxy device lineup, the Galaxy Pocket smartphone seen on the right. As the name suggests, this Android 2.3 Gingerbread device easily fits into your pocket as it is just 12mm thin and weighs only 97 grams.
The diminutive phone packs a 2.8-inch QVGA 240-by-320 pixel resolution display, 832MHz processor, 3GB user memory (expandable to 32 gigs via MicroSD cards), built-in FM radio, and runs Samsung’s upgraded TouchWiz user interface. On the connectivity front, the Galaxy Pocket supports Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi wireless networks, and 3G HSDPA 3.6Mbps cellular networks.
The included social features cover Samsung’s Social Hub and the downloadable ChatON cross-platform communication service. The Galaxy Pocket will be available in Italy starting from March and will gradually roll out to Europe, CIS, Latin America, Southeast and Southwest Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and China. No price points, model numbers, or United States availability information were released at press time.
Apple’s latest cunning move in its Holy Crusade against Android involves getting a court order to force Google, the maker of Android software, to produce documents detailing the Android roadmap and its proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of handset maker Motorola Mobility. It was not immediately clear what data Apple was exactly seeking to uncover. This is notable, because Apple is actually going after Google with this request. It is the first direct in the ongoing legal war considering Apple fought Google by proxy in the past.
According toBloomberg, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner ruled yesterday based on a patent lawsuit Apple filed in 2010 against Motorola that both Motorola and Google must spill relevant information to Apple, as “the Android/Motorola acquisition discovery is highly relevant to Apple’s claims and defenses.” Motorola, of course, opposed the request, offering the following argument.
Google’s premier apps partner merged with Salesforce.com’s top partner to offer an international cloud service for businesses in the United States and Asia Pacific.
According to a press release, the combined company will also help businesses that use social enterprise Salesforce.com or Google to employ cloud computing.
“The demand for cloud services in Asia-Pacific continues to grow at breakneck speed,” explained GlobnalOne founder and Senior Vice President for Asia-Pacific at Cloud Sherpas John Orrock. “Our cloud consultants in Australia and New Zealand, combined with our newly acquired mobility practice and offshore development capabilities in the Philippines, sets the new Cloud Sherpas apart from other cloud service providers in the region.”
“Bringing together a dominant Salesforce.com partner with a leading Google Enterprise partner enables us to provide customers around the globe with a more comprehensive range of enterprise cloud solutions,” contended Cloud Sherpas’ President Douglas Shepard.
Software giant Microsoft took to video sharing service Vimeo to disseminate its new commercial promoting the Internet Explorer 9 browser. Tentatively named “A More Beautiful Web,” it features a soundtrack by Alex Clare and fast-paced (albeit a tad amateur-looking) MTV style editing. Both treats are not usually associated with neither the Microsoft brand nor the company’s dull television advertising.
While watchable, it does not hold a candle to Google’s memorable Chrome advertising. The 60-second video highlights the browser’s headlining features, such as hardware-assisted canvas rendering, high-definition video playback, rich web apps like Chillingo’s “Cut the Rope” game, and more.
Two important observations here:
1. The commercial was a Vimeo exclusive at post time— despite Microsoft’s official presence on YouTube, including the Internet Explorer team’s channel. It is interesting that Microsoft chose to tap a rival video sharing service and not leverage the world’s most popular destination for online video to get the word out. An anti-Google move, cynics might say.
2. Per data from StatCounter (see the chart below), the Windows maker’s possible motivation to bypass YouTube likely includes Internet Explorer’s continuous downward spiral. It has been a trend, not a temporary hiccup. Last summer, Google’s Chrome claimed one-fifth of the worldwide market for browsers and is now No. 2 in some key markets that traditionally favor Microsoft’s product.
Microsoft appeared late to the party and has lost momentum in browser innovation that now almost exclusively belongs to Google and —in small part— to Apple and its Safari browser. If it were not for big businesses’ reluctance to upgrade to a more modern browser, Internet Explorer would already be severely beaten in browser wars.
Yahoo’s chief scientist Prabhakar Raghavan is taking a job at Google as circulating rumors hint at massive cuts within the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search engine.
Yahoo validated the departure this morning in a statement to AllThings D:
“Yahoo! thanks Prabhakar Raghavan for his dedication and contributions to Yahoo! for the past 7 years. We wish him well in his next endeavor. Ash Munshi, CTO, will assume leadership for Y! Labs,” announced the company.
Baidu is China’s largest search engine with a not-so secret mission to dominate the global market, and while most chuckle at the thought of it surpassing Google, one might be surprised to learn the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant lost 7 percent of its search market share to Baidu last month.
According to the well-regarded statistics firm NetMarketShare, Google dropped 7 percent in Desktop Top Search Engine Share Trend in February while Baidu gained a little over 6 percent. Bing, Yahoo, and other competitors remained stagnant. As seen in the chart below the break, Google and Baidu have paralleled each other in terms of share fluctuations since November 2011.
Beijing-headquartered Baidu offers a range of Web services similar to Google, including maps, news, search ranking, e-commerce, Internet TV, a browser, and a smartphone operating system based on Android OS. The firm is adamant about its business not being a Google-clone, though.
Baidu’s Director of International Communications Kaiser Kuo explained to CNN (in the 2010 video above) that CEO Robin Li actually filed a hyperlink analysis patent before Google’s cofounder Larry Page. The filing indicates Baidu envisioned the future of search long before Google dominated cyber space…
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. Expand Expanding Close
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”
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 toGigaOM, 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… Expand Expanding Close
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….
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…
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…
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.
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 toldThe Vergethat 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.
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…
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.
