United States

Google announced on its Enterprise Blog today that it would officially make its Google Apps Vault service available to Google Apps for Government customers. Google head of eDiscovery Jack Halprin made the announcement, noting federal, state and local agencies in the United States can “now purchase Vault to help meet their compliance needs.”

Google Apps Vault helps protect organizations of all sizes from legal and compliance risks through advanced message archiving, retention and eDiscovery capabilities. It provides the ability to quickly search, identify, preserve and export information in response to litigation, investigation, compliance audits, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Apps for Government users interested in finding out more can go here. 
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Google launched its new ARM-powered Chromebook last week with two years of 100GB Google Drive storage and 12 Gogo in-air, Wi-Fi passes for free, and it even published FAQ pages so folks could access the perks in just a few quick steps.

Here’s how to claim the 100GB of Google Drive storage:

1. Log into your Chromebook (ARM-powered Chromebook, Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550, or Samsung Chromebox Series 3 only).
2. Update to to the latest version of Chrome OS (Chrome OS 23 required).
3. Go to the Google Drive offer page, and the 100GB will soon load in your account (Google will verify the Chrome OS device—only one deal per Google account).

More details are available at Google’s Goodies page.

The steps for Gogo passes are below.

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The Association of Newspapers in Brazil is not happy with Google News, as it recently opted out of the free news aggregator, over complaints that Google crops news headlines and lede paragraphs for the decade-old service without permission nor monetary reimbursement.

The 154-member ANJ roughly equals 90 percent of Brazil’s newspaper circulation. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas reported on a dispute that occurred earlier this week between an ANJ member’s lawyer and a Google executive at the American Press Association General Assembly in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The contention apparently “fueled one of the most intense debates during the Inter American Press Association’s 68th General Assembly.”

According to the Knight Center:

On one side of the debate were defenders of news companies’ authoring rights like German attorney Felix Stang, who said, “platforms like Google’s compete directly with newspapers and magazines because they work like home pages and use content from them.”

On the other, Google representatives said their platform provides a way to make journalistic content available to more people. According to Marcel Leonardi, the company’s public policies director, Google News channels a billion clicks to news sites around the world.

ANJ president Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto specifically told the Knight Center that providing the “first few lines of our stories to internet users, (Google) reduces the chances that they will look at the entire story in our websites.”

Google Public Policy Director Marcel Leonardi refuted Neto’s comment during the IAPA debate, claiming if the reader is “satisfied with the small blurb (we offer), that means the story did not call his attention that much.”

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Verizon held its Q3 2012 earnings call this morning and —aside from announcing $29 billion in total operating revenue— revealed Android smartphones were 79 percent of its total smartphone activations for the quarter.

The nation’s second-largest carrier also said operating revenue experienced a 3.9-percent gain over last year, while noting a third consecutive quarter of “double-digit percentage growth.” As for mobile device activations, 4G LTE smartphone penetration increased from “just below 50 percent last quarter to more than 53 percent.”

The company further disclosed that it activated 6.8 million smartphone in Q3, and 3.4 million of those activations were Android-powered devices. Three million were also specifically 4G LTE Android. In terms of iPhone activations, for comparison’s sake, Verizon activated 3.1 million with only 21 percent of the iPhones supporting 4G LTE.

The carrier then gave more information on its aggressive LTE rollout across the United States (via Yahoo Finance | Earnings Call Transcript):

[sic] In terms of 4G LTE coverage we are by far the market leader. Our 4G LTE service is currently available in 419 markets covering more than 250 million tops roughly 80% of the U.S. population. As our TV commercial say, we have more 4G LTE coverage than all of our competitors networks combined. We will continue expanding our 4G LTE network with a goal of having a nationwide foot print similar to our 3G network next year.

Visit Verizon’s Investor Relations page for more specifics.

The press release is below.

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We know Apple has had a lot of success pushing iPads in education, and during Apple’s Q3 conference call, CEO Tim Cook said the company would continue to be “very aggressive”. Apple’s iPad 2 sales in the K-12 market doubled y-o-y in Q3 thanks to a price drop to $399. In Q2, Apple said it sold about a million iPad units to the United States education market. With Apple’s upcoming iPad mini announcement possibly bringing an even lower price point for iPads in education, Amazon is announcing its plans today to get Kindle tablets into schools.

Reuters reported today that Amazon is launching a service, called “Whispercast”, aimed at allowing schools to easily deploy and manage multiple kindle devices:

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While we heard previously that Samsung was beginning to roll out Galaxy S III Jelly Bean updates in Poland, the carrier confirmed today users in the United States would see the update in the “coming months.” We still do not know exactly when to expect it, but Samsung said Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular will announce specific timing for the over-the-air updates separately. We will of course notify you when they do. Samsung’s full press release is below.

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U.S. Judge Lucy Koh granted Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone in June, and the decision resulted in the temporary removal of the device from Google Play pending a software fix with Android 4.1. Today, Reuters reported that Apple’s U.S. injunction on the Galaxy Nexus has been reversed. 

TheNextWeb got its hands on the official order. Samsung argued that its product would “sell almost as well without incorporating the patented feature” :

Samsung argued, somewhat humiliatingly, that the sales of the Galaxy Nexus were so poor that they didn’t pose a threat to Apple’s iPhone and that the unified search feature was not essential to the success of its device. The appeals court apparently agrees, as it states in its official order:

…it may very well be that the accused product would sell almost as well without incorporating the patented feature. And in that case, even if the competitive injury that results from selling the accused device is substantial, the harm that flows from the alleged infringement (the only harm that should count) is not.

According to Reuters, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled the court “abused its discretion in entering an injunction” and will send the case back to the California court for consideration.

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Tech website Onliner just posted a slew of alleged “LG Nexus 4” pictures.

If these images are the real deal, as The Verge noted, they will be the first clear shots of LG’s widely rumored Nexus handset. Onliner verified it is an Optimus G-inspired device, called the “LG E960”, and it features a massive quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 2GB RAM, 4.7-inch 1,280-by-768-pixel display, and Android 4.1.2. Previous rumors indicated Android 4.2 would come on board, but Onliner suggested the mobile OS could change versions before the smartphone’s speculated Oct. 29 unveiling.

The “LG Nexus 4” moniker first appeared yesterday in the inventory system for mobile device retailer Carphone Warehouse, while French newspaper Le Figaro later ousted the launch date with an estimated December arrival for France. More rumors on the device previously pegged a mid-November launch for the United States, while additional leaked photos and specs have painted a decent picture as to what the Android-powered smartphone could potentially feature and look like.

A gallery is below.

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It is no secret that Mountain View-based Google has been in a flurry of legal proceedings over its Android operating system—along with the OEMs that use it. Consequently, Google has been vocal in the past about how it wants to change the patent system in the United States. Adding to the attempt of reform, in an interview with reporters in Seoul this afternoon, Google Legal Chief David Drummond called for a reform of how software patents are issued.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Drummond talked about making it more difficult to obtain a software patent as one possible solution. He spoke about other countries, specifically: “There are places in the world where you can’t get a software patent, or at least it’s harder, like Europe. We think that’s probably the better way to go.” Many others have also voiced a similar opinion.

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The U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Intelligence just published a report that deemed two Chinese manufacturers of routers, switches, and telecoms equipment as a possible threat to national security, and it subsequently warned American companies to purchase their hardware elsewhere.

According to the committee’s press release:

The Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers (R-MI) and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), today released a report recommending to U.S. companies considering doing business with Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE to find another vendor.  The report encourages U.S. companies to take into account the long-term security risks associated with either company providing equipment or services to our telecommunications infrastructure.  Additionally, the report recommends that U.S. government systems, particularly sensitive systems, exclude Huawei or ZTE equipment or component parts.

Reuters reported that Huawei and ZTE are the world’s second- and fifth-largest manufacturers, respectively, of telecom equipment by revenue. ZTE ranks fourth in the global mobile smartphone sector, however, while Huawei sits in sixth. The majority of both companies’ U.S. sales come from devices sold through U.S. carriers like Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile USA.

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YouTube announced 100 original channels were coming to the video-sharing platform last fall, and now it is following up exactly one-year later with the launch of new channels coming from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“From local cuisine, health and wellness and parenting to sports, music, comedy, animation and news, this new lineup of original channels will have something for everyone,” revealed YouTube on its global blog. “They are backed by some of the biggest producers, well-known celebrities and emerging media companies from Europe and the U.S.”

Along with the news about upcoming channels, YouTube also revealed a few statistics on the success of its one-year-old initiative:

• Our top 25 original channels are now averaging over a million views every week
• 800 million of your are watching 4 billion hours every month, that’s up from 3 billion hours earlier this year
• The number of people subscribing has doubled y/y
• And partners this year are reaching the 100k subscriber mark 5x faster than they were just two years ago

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