According to CRN and other sources, iCloud will soon be partially powered by the Google Cloud Platform by way of a deal that could also be used as leverage to cut its cloud costs with Amazon and Microsoft. Such a move is a big win for Google’s burgeoning cloud enterprise business.
Numerous complaints in Apple’s discussion forums have spotlighted a problem preventing iCloud.com and me.com email addresses from receiving Google Gmail messages, with delays lasting hours or days.
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Dropbox has today slashed its pricing and doubled the maximum storage space from 500GB to 1TB. Up until yesterday, you’d have been paying $500/year for 500GB; today you can pay just $120/year (or $99/year when paying annually) for a terabyte.
The new deal finally brings Dropbox into line with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, with Apple’s new iCloud pricing – which includes iCloud Drive – also looking to be broadly similar …
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Motorola has added iCloud support to its Motorola Migrate app, making it far easier to switch from an iPhone to a Moto X, Moto G or Droid handset than the longwinded process Eric Schmidt described back in November. Previously, it was necessary to go via Gmail or to use the online migration app.
With this update, you can pull in your contacts and calendar events by simply entering Apple ID and password directly into the app. The app the connects to iCloud and downloads your data automatically.
The app is powered by mark/space, a company specialising in sync technology and behind many consumer and corporate synchronisation tools.
Motorola appears to be making a play for iPhone users, launching a tool yesterday to allow an iPhone user to easily transfer their contacts and calendars from iCloud to a Google account, ready for use on an Android phone.
The option has been added to the Moto Maker customization tool for the Moto X handset, which allows buyers to choose from 32 color combinations.
Transferring contacts and calendar appointments between platforms is, of course, nothing new: both Samsung and HTC offer tools to help import data from an iPhone. We also doubt too many iPhone users will be tempted to switch to a mid-range Android handset, even if it does come with many more color options than the iPhone 5c.
But the wording of Google’s announcement suggests it may be the first step in a more aggressive move on the iOS market by parent company Google. In his Google+ post, Motorola Mobility VP Punit Soni commented:
We added the ability to migrate your iPhone contacts and calendar to the Moto X (from Motomaker.com). There is a long way to go, but its a start…
The tool was created by Mark/Space, a company with a lengthy track-record in mobile synchronization, dating back to 2001.
Via GigaOM
Similar to iTunes Match, Google has updated its Google Music service in the United States with its new scan match feature that previously was only available in Europe. The feature is definitely welcomed, as it scans a user’s local library for songs and matches them in the cloud, doing away with any lengthy upload periods. Engadget reported that U.S. users who have already put their music library on to Google Music will begin seeing the process take place in the coming weeks, which means matched songs will be streamed at 320Kbps. Want to know the greatest thing about Google Music’s scan and match? It’s entirely free if you stay under 20,000 songs, unlike rival services.
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Alongside the introduction of its new Samsung Galaxy S III, the company briefly talked about a music player accessory/companion product called the “S-Pebble.” The device is a refresh of Samsung’s old pebble MP3 player line, and it apparently has a 17-hour battery life and 4GB of built-in memory. However, it is not really an accessory for the Galaxy other than its pebble-blue and marble-white hyper glaze color schemes.
The S-Pebble will go nicely with Samsung’s new Scan and Match feature baked into its Music Hub service offering over 17 million songs. We do not have all the details on the feature, but it certainly sounds a lot like Apple’s iTunes Match service that matches your personal library of songs with songs stored in the cloud. The feature appears to be included in the cost of Samsung’s $10 per month fee for access to the Music Hub streaming service.
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Google is embroiled in a hullabaloo over allegations that it cropped personal data from millions of people during its Street View project, and while the Federal Communications Commission ended its 17-month investigation into the matter, with a partial exoneration for the Internet giant, The New York Times is claiming to have found the culprit at the center of the case.
Google Street View is a service highlighted in Google Maps and Google Earth that offers panoramic views of streets. It launched in 2007 in the United States and has expanded to many cities and rural areas worldwide. The project ambitiously maps the world’s streets with photographs while accumulating data about local wireless networks to bulk location-based searches.
It eventually became apparent that Google’s Street View vehicle also gathered unencrypted information like emails and Internet searches beamed from personal computers from within homes. When this came to light, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company fingered a nameless engineer as being solely responsible for the action, which resulted in a F.C.C. inquiry. The search engine did not break any laws, the regulatory body found, but it did obstruct the investigation.
Although Google and the F.C.C. refused to confirm, the NYT published a lengthy piece yesterday that named Marius Milner as Google’s scapegoat. A former state investigator involved in another inquiry into Street View identified Milner as the engineer responsible. He is a programmer with an extensive background in telecommunications and Wi-Fi networking. As the publication discovered, Milner listed his occupation as “hacker” on his LinkedIn page (not working now), and wrote, “I know more than I want to about Wi-Fi” under the profile’s “Specialties” category.
