Founded by the developers of Apple’s Siri, Viv Labs is a startup working on creating a personal AI assistant that can understand and automate what a user wants. The Information is reporting that Google and Facebook have tried and failed to purchase the company within the past year.
According to a report out of The Information today, Andy Rubin — widely regarded as the father of Android — is interested in making phones again. The report, citing people in the mobile industry, mentions that Rubin has been trying to recruit personnel to build such a company…
Expand
Expanding
Close
Google today has started a program for startups to gain two non-organic patent families from Google, as well as the opportunity buy more patents from the company at some point down the line. To be eligible however, the interested startup must also join the LOT Network, which includes companies like Dropbox and Canon and focuses on stopping patent trolls (via TechCrunch).
Google announced today that it’s kicking off a new program that will see the company hand out $100,000 in credits to its Google Cloud Platform services to help early-stage startups. Google will choose eligible companies through 50 partners that include a mix of incubators, accelerators and investors:
This offer supports our core Google Cloud Platform philosophy: we want developers to focus on code; not worry about managing infrastructure. Starting today, startups can take advantage of this offer and begin using the same infrastructure platform we use at Google… Thousands of startups have built successful applications on Google Cloud Platform and those applications have grown to serve tens of millions of users.
It will also provide the startups chosen with 24/7 support, and access to our technical solutions team.
Those interested in learning more can visit Google’s new Cloud Platform for Startups site.
Flutter, the startup that created a gestured-based music controller for iTunes and Spotify, has been acquired by Google according to a splash page on the company’s website. The Flutter app used a computer’s webcam to detect hand gestures for starting, stopping, or switching songs on iOS, OS X, and Windows. Aside from iTunes and Spotify, Flutter is compatible with a variety other apps, including Quicktime Player, Rdio, and even Google Chrome.
Google officially started rolling out its new gigabit fiber Internet and TV service in Kansas City in July. Google asked households in the various “Fiberhoods”, which are made up of 800 or so residents each, to sign-up, but the service has not yet rolled out to businesses. Now, as reported by GigaOm, businesses are going as far as purchasing residential homes in the city to take advantage of the $70 per month Internet plans:
the startup community wasn’t willing to settle — and since most of them worked from their homes, coffee shops or communal space anyhow, it wasn’t a big leap to decide to find a house in an area slated for fiber and move in.
Tyler Vanwinkle of Leap2, a mobile search company, said his company was already based near a neighborhood slated to get fiber and a friend of his owned a house there. So he talked to his friend about renting space for the company in the house, now dubbed the Hacker House. “Google fiber the speed is phenomenal but it’s only residential,” he said. “Since we were interested in renting the house as office space and so were some of our friends, this has evolved into this common bond of entrepreneurship.”
GigaOm also noted many other startups and businesses in the city are considering making the switch to residential to gain access to Google’s new Internet service. The company originally said it would provide more information on offering the service to businesses at a later date, but has yet to do so.
