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The announcement of Google’s ultimatum to China regarding Internet censorship generated much fanfare across the Web, about the purity of the values that Google fought for and represented.  Now it seems Google is backing its threat, and bidding a final farewell to the world’s most populated country.

The delay so far was due to negotiations between Google and China, to see if any sort of resolution could be developed to keep the controversial Google.cn up and running.  However, the Chinese government has publicly declared it would not revoke its current internet censorship policy simply for Google’s sake. This coupled with the apparent inability of talks to lead towards results has made Google adamant about leaving.

Google now says it is “99.9 percent” certain it will close down its main Chinese operations and Google.cn.  It wishes to maintain other projects it had there, before Google.cn’s conception, but it is now unlikely that Google will have a place in China at all.  Still, much of Google’s base in the Western world will have a sense of newfound pride in its search engine overlords.

Via Financial Times

The iPhone is a wonderful little ditty that is a pillar in Apple products. The device is unbelievably useful, and part of that can be attributed to the almost limitless capabilities of applications one can find through the App store. In fact, what apps can achieve is only limited by the imagination of the third party developer.

Apps themselves have created a new market which Google is now taking charge in. Businesses from every corner have began to use Google apps, which leads to the use of more Google services. Many of the apps created by third party developers already exist in one form or another, but by selling them through Google, they can easily be synced to other Google tools like Gmail and Google Calendar. For those who run and manage their life with Google (read: netbook users) it’s only going to get easier.

The fact that all of these different services can now work together under the Google umbrella is fantastic, but what does that say about the market? It’s as clear now as it ever was that as new niches (such as apps) enter the market, giants like Google will immediately try to soak them up, Microsoft-style. It’s hard to say if that’s a good thing or not.

Via PCWorld, image via ThePilver.

Good old Steve

I really never thought I’d see the day that Steve Ballmer said nice things about Apple. After all, Ballmer is the CEO of Microsoft, and aren’t Apple and Microsoft supposed to be mortal enemies? We must recall that Ballmer completely dismissed the threat the iPhone would have to the smartphone market and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system. Three years later, Ballmer has been proved wrong, as proved by the runaway success of the iPhone and the App Store.

Ballmer knows he was wrong. At a recent speaking engagement, he actually praised the App Store, saying, “Apple’s done a very nice job that allows people to monetize and commercialize their intellectual property.” The comment may appear to be insignificant at first glance, but when we consider the history between Microsoft and Apple, as well as the possibility that Apple may be replacing Google as the default search engine with Microsoft’s Bing, Ballmer’s words take on a new meaning.

Could Apple be prepared to team up with Microsoft to defeat a common rival, Google? I’m not sure how I feel about this idea: I’m an avid Mac user and I’m also rather fond of Google products (I have an interest bordering on obsession with Gmail), but I don’t like Microsoft at all. I’d rather see Apple and Google teaming up against Microsoft.

Of course, it may be too early to make any predictions. After all, Microsoft is still planing to compete with Apple by releasing a new mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7.

Via DailyTech, image via DailyTech.

Apple’s legal action against HTC, the first manufacturer to use Android in its phones, could have larger implications for other companies using Android on their phones. In the case, Apple alleges 20 patent infringements, and this case could be the first of many.

Apple hasn’t specifically named Google in the lawsuit, but many of the patents relate to operating system processes. Google has declared its support for HTC. Due to the increase in competition between Google and Apple, some analysts have speculated that Apple is attacking Google indirectly through this lawsuit. Therefore, the lawsuit could have implications for other companies later.

Apple asserts that HTC has infringed on 20 patents owned by Apple that are used in the iPhone. Apple wants an injunction that would bar HTC from selling phones that use the patents in the United States.

Via BBC News, image via BBC News.

Italy’s courts have rendered a highly controversial decision against internet search giant Google.  The case was over a video posted on Google Video of an autistic teenager being bullied.  Under Italian law, this is highly illegal, and the executives in question -  Peter Fleischer, David Drummond, George De Los Reyes, and Arvind Desikan – were originally charged with defamation against the teen.

The presiding judge over the case, Oscar Magi, dropped the charges regarding defamation.  However, all but Desikan recieved six-month sentences for privacy violations.  Drummond is the chief legal officer at Google and has stated he was “outraged” by the verdict.  And he makes a valid point with his full statement:

“I intend to vigorously appeal this dangerous ruling. It sets a chilling precedent… If individuals like myself and my Google colleagues who had nothing to do with the harassing incident, its filming or its uploading onto Google Video can be held criminally liable solely by virtue of our position at Google, every employee of any internet hosting service faces similar liability.”

This blogger wholeheartedly agrees.  Google did the right thing; it provides a relatively open hosting space, but the second the video was brought to its attention, the video was removed.  The very openness of the internet is under attack by this verdict and it creates an impossible standard for content providers to live by.

Via BBC News, image via Google.

This week, Google rolled out its newest service, a Facebook sort of thing called Google Buzz. Apparently, Google Buzz was only offered initially to a portion of Gmail users (so I suppose I ought to feel lucky that I was offered the opportunity to try it out). Almost immediately, users started complaining about privacy issues concerning Google’s newest creation.

In all honesty, Google Buzz was not initially very well thought out. Buzz contacts were visible by default on public profiles until users edited their settings. Users were up in arms about this and Google responded, bringing changes to Buzz to make it more privacy-oriented. There is now a checkbox in profile setup that says users must acknowledge that the names of the contacts they follow will be displayed on their profiles.

Google also added a block option for users that can be used whether or not a user has a profile set up or not. The previous option only allowed users to block followers if they had set up a public profile.

Despite privacy concerns, Buzz has been having relative success. Many people have checked it out, making millions of posts and over 200 posts per minute with cell phones.

Via eWeek, image via Google.

In the latest move of the Apple-Google battle, Apple has banned an iPhone app developer from using the word “Android” in the description of his app in the App Store.

The Flash of Genius app, developed by Tim Novikof, was a finalist in Google’s Android Developer Challenge, a contest that honors innovative apps. Novikof wanted to mention this fact in his description of the app, but Apple did not take too kindly to this. The app was rejected and Apple said it was not appropriate to mention the app’s success in the Android Developer Challenge.

Apple has caused controversy in the past for rejecting apps, including the Google Voice app and Google Latitude app. And this week, Apple raised some eyebrows by revealing a new policy that says developers are not allowed to make apps that use location data solely for location-based ads. Apple’s policies regarding the App Store have caused quite a bit of consternation amongst analysts.

Via PC World, image via PC World.

Google recently published designs for a Chrome OS tablet that would compete directly with Apple’s newly released iPad. The tablet is still under development, but  pictures on Chromium.org give us an idea of what the hardware might look like, and how users might interact with it. Possible features include a 5 to 10 inch screen, on-screen keyboard, and multi-touch capability.

A video demonstrating how users would interact with the tablet is also available for download here.

The tablet is not the first of Google products that aim to rival Apple devices. The Nexus One was launched after the iPhone, and the Chrome OS itself competes with other operating systems -  not just Apple’s, but Microsoft’s as well.

Gartner analyst Robin Simpson says that, while it is debatable whether Google or Apple hardware is superior in quality, Apple definitely has the upper hand in terms of giving users better and easier access to content developed by independent third parties. Google seems to be making small steps in achieving a similar “ecosystem” by considering putting Chrome OS onto other devices, not just netbooks.

Via SMH, image via Wired.

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, has made some provocative comments concerning Adobe and Apple rival Google at a meeting with employees last week, according to reports.

Jobs reportedly made fun of Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil.” He called it “a load of crap,” but some reports have said he used a stronger and cruder term. Tensions between Google and Apple have been on the rise, especially since the release of Google’s Nexus One smartphone, which is meant to be a competitor to Apple’s iPhone. Apple may even be dropping Google as the search engine on the iPhone. Google’s browser and operating system also pose a threat to Apple.

Jobs called Adobe lazy, adding, “They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it.” This comment is really no surprise, considering Apple’s refusal to support Adobe Flash on its mobile devices. Jobs said that Flash is too buggy and is often the cause of crashes on Mac computers.

Jobs said that Apple will work on an “A-plus” update to the iPhone so Android cannot keep up.

Via MercuryNews, image via Apple.

A peculiar announcement came from Ubuntu’s development staff earlier this week.  On Tuesday, Rick Spencer of Canonical posted that it planned on making several minor and ultimately cosmetic changes to Firefox on Ubuntu’s next release.  The first is relatively benign, making the default Firefox homepage be the selected default search engine for Firefox’s search bar. However, the interesting part is that the new default search engine for Ubuntu will no longer be Google, but instead Yahoo!. This also effectively makes Yahoo! the new default home page.

So what’s Canonical’s explanation for this sudden and strange shift? It seems to be that the company has established a new revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! in order to help fund the Ubuntu project.  However, this will undoubtedly be unsavory to much of the original Ubuntu base for a number of reasons.

First of all, it arguably shows  that Canonical is caving into corporatism and losing the puritanical openness it’s known for.  Secondly, Yahoo! is now powered by Bing, which means this effectively becomes a revenue sharing deal between Canonical and Microsoft.

Google already has two distributions of Linux (albeit each is far from traditional distros) in the works -  Android and Chrome OS – and Microsoft has ownership over one of the most major players of Linux, Novell’s SUSE.  Whether or not Microsoft has some sort of interest in Ubuntu is unsure at best, and is probably unlikely.  However one thing is evident: major corporations will play a role in shaping Linux and open-source’s fate, regardless of what its users and adherents would wish.

Via Canonical Development Boards, image via Yahoo!.

Google’s smartphone, the Nexus One, has not really lived up to its expectations. Many analysts had high hopes for the phone before it was released, but such hopes were dashed when consumers began to complain about it. The phone is the first one sold by Google itself and runs Android, the open-source mobile OS.

The Nexus One has had problems with the 3G network. It has unreliable connectivity and will switch to the slower EDGE network. Users are annoyed with this, as well as Google’s poor customer service. Luckily, there may be a solution to the 3G problem. Google has said it is going to release a patch soon that will fix 3G connectivity in most cases. The patch should be available within the next week or so.

Via Wired, image via Google.

Google may be one of the most widely used and well-known search engines, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Google has been criticized for having search results lists that do not have the answers users are seeking. For example, when you search “London flights” on Microsoft’s Bing, you get results for travel deals, but a Google search may not give such results.

Google’s improvements, introduced on Friday, are built on Google Squared and Rich Snippets, introduced in May 2009. Google Squared formats search query results in tables and columns. Rich Snippets provides an expanded set of information for a search query.

Now, thanks to Google Squared technology, a query contains highlighted information in the results. For example, the query “Empire State height” has the height of the Empire State Building highlighted in the search results.

Rich Snippets may not be new technology—Bing uses something similar already—but users will probably welcome the change. However, web site owners may not welcome these changes, as it may reduce the incentive to click through to a search result.

Via InformationWeek, image via Google.

The competition between Google and Apple is heating up and some analysts believe that the next major move will involve Apple dumping Google as the default search engine on mobile devices. That wouldn’t seem tremendously surprising, except for the fact that Microsoft’s Bing may be replacing Google.

The logic behind getting rid of Google is to cut it off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising. Microsoft’s Bing may therefore be the search engine of choice on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Alternatively, Apple itself may decide to start its own search engine. I personally find it surprising that Apple still does not have one already.

Apple and Google have competed in various arenas for a while now, but Google’s release of the Nexus One smartphone has really intensified the battle. The iPhone is near and dear to Apple’s heart and Google has made everything so much more personal by attempting to compete with the iPhone.

Via MacDailyNews, image via BusinessWeek.

Chinese attackers who mounted attacks on Google were able to do so by exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer, according to new info from McAfee. Microsoft was supposed to release an advisory about the Internet Explorer hole but has not done so yet.

The security flaw involves Internet Explorer’s handling of JavaScript. The malware involved opens a “back door” that allows the attacker to enter and control the entire compromised system. The attackers targeted only a few specific individuals. Internet Explorer is vulnerable to this attack on all recent Microsoft operating systems, including Windows 7.

Initially security researchers thought that a vulnerability in Adobe Reader was the problem. Adobe denied this, and it turns out they were right–their software appears to have no security issues associated with this recent attack.

Google released information about the attacks on Tuesday. They were not the only US company to be attacked: Adobe, Yahoo, Symantec, Juniper Networks, Northrop Grumman, and Dow Chemical were also targeted.

Via CNET, image via Microsoft.

There is a popular saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Unfortunately for Google, its new smartphone, the Nexus One, is not perceived as beautiful–and neither is the company itself.

The Nexus One is meant to compete with Apple’s iPhone, but there are certain areas in which it is lacking. Let’s consider aesthetics alone: the iPhone is a much more personalized phone. It responds to you personally when you touch it. When you put it to your ear to talk, the screen turns off to save battery. And then there’s the App Store, offering hundreds of thousands of apps so that each user can customize their phone to their heart’s content, making it truly theirs.

Simply put, the iPhone makes people feel good. Interacting with it makes us happy. Even when it has problems, solving them is not so much of a hassle because of Apple’s excellent customer service (and I say this as someone who has used Apple Care extensively for Mac products).

Contrast this to the Nexus One. In the words of Joe Wilcox, it looks like it was designed by Dell (no offense to anyone who owns a Dell computer, but their products are just plain ugly). The Nexus One, though it has many great features, lacks humanity. It is not highly personal the way iPhone (and many of Apple’s products) is. The customer service cannot compare to Apple’s, either.

This may sound silly, but it’s an important point. People are highly influenced feelings. From a completely analytical standpoint, the Nexus One may be a better phone than the iPhone. But if using Nexus One is not as personal an experience as using an iPhone, Nexus One will not be the iPhone killer it’s meant to be. An iPhone competitor will have to not only offer all the iPhone’s features and more, but will have to present them in such a way that is comparable to the iPhone’s presentation–and that’s no easy feat.

It’s true that I am a diehard Apple fan and have not seen the Nexus One in person. But to compete with Apple, Google does need to take a more human and personal approach and not rely solely on analytics.

Via Betanews, image via Google.

The latest innovation from Google has arrived. It is the Nexus One smartphone, and analysts are already speculating that its introduction may be as revolutionary as the iPhone’s introduction in June 2007. The official website for the phone is up, though I’m not really impressed by it at the moment – the site does not integrate well with Firefox, at least at the time of this writing.

The most astounding and important feature of the Nexus One is its voice capabilities. A user can speak a search term, such as the name of a restaurant, and Nexus One will use GPS to find the nearest location and then give spoken directions on how to get there. The Nexus One is to speech what the iPhone is to touch.

The Nexus One could offer substantial competition to Apple’s iPhone. A recent survey said that the number of people planning to buy an Android smartphone in the next three months has risen to 21 percent from 6 percent. By contrast, the number of people planning to buy an iPhone dropped from 32 percent to 28 percent. Google is also not emphasizing apps as much as Apple does, preferring to rely on cloud services, which could appeal to some users. But only time will tell if apps or cloud services are preferred by the majority of smartphone owners.

Steve Jobs had better watch out. As amazing as the iPhone is, Nexus One has some very appealing features, especially its voice-to-text capabilities. It would not surprise me at all if Apple made some drastic improvements to their next iPhone in response.

Via Betanews, image via Google.

Google’s browser Chrome, as of today, now holds 4.63% of the browser market, meaning that is has finally surpassed Apple’s Safari. This gain is attributed to the release of Mac and Linux versions of the browser. Safari has stayed relatively static, losing a miniscule 0.15%.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the biggest loser this past month. It lost one percentage point, bringing its share down to 62.7%. Some people are predicting that if this trend continues, Internet Explorer will have under half of the browser market in six months.

Google is still continuing to improve Chrome. It released an extension today (currently only for Windows) that allows one to go to similar pages from the browser itself. More and more people may become dissatisfied with Internet Explorer and switch to Chrome, Safari, or Firefox (or another browser), which are, in my opinion, better alternatives to Microsoft’s product.

Via Computerworld.

Google is due to announce their new smartphone, the Nexus One, this coming Tuesday. It will be designed to run Google’s Android operating system. Android, which was released over a year ago, was supposed to be revolutionary because it is an open OS that companies can use for free.

Android was meant to compete with the iPhone’s OS in some respects, though that plan hasn’t exactly come to fruition. The iPhone is still enormously popular, likely because of Apple’s continual innovation and risk-taking.  The iPhone is a perfect example: it has taken years for competitors to offer something even half as good. The App Store was a revolutionary innovation that has helped secure the iPhone’s dominance.

The only way to offer strong competition to Apple in the smartphone market is to design a phone comparable to the iPhone, but cheaper or  with a revolutionary new design. Google could do the latter (the former is unlikely, as their profit margins may already be slim), especially if it designed a smartphone that directly used the Internet for transmission instead of traditional cellular carriers.

We may be disappointed, however. Early reports suggest that Nexus One will be just like the average smartphone, and even if Nexus One is truly new and innovative, it is likely to be overshadowed by Apple’s impending announcement at the end of January.

Via ABC, image via Gizmodo.

We’ve been eagerly awaiting Google’s netbook for a while now, and for neither the first time nor likely the last, rumors have surfaced about what specs we should expect to see in the thing.

The Google netbook will run the Google Chrome OS on a 10.1-inch screen that will be HD-capable and powered by the Nvidia Tegra.

The system will also include an ARM CPU and 64 GB SSD – small, but lightning-quick. It should have 2 GB of RAM, Bluetooth, 3G suport, a webcam, 3.5mm audio jack, multi-card reader, and a few USB ports.

The Google Chromium OS will be a fascinating experiment when it comes out next year. It suffers from a constant need for a connection to the internet, but with Google apps like Gmail, Maps, Docs, Calendar, and Wave, it will feature an integrated and lively interface, streamlined for mobile use. A $300 price tag could be in the works as well.

All these details are moot until the Google netbook hits stores, but if the pieces come together as projected the Google netbook will be a fine thing to get one’s hands on.

Via TFOT.