Google Archive

"Sebastian Holst makes yoga mobile apps with his wife, a yoga instructor. The Mobile Yogi is sold in all the major mobile app stores. But when someone buys his app in the Google Play store, Holst automatically gets something he says he didn't ask for: the buyer's full name, location and email address. He says consumers are not aware that Google Inc. is sharing their personal information with third parties. No other app store transmits users' personal information to third-party developers when they buy apps, he said." Oh Google.

"No, there's only one area where Android falls really, horribly, undeniably short when it comes to the tablet form factor: The web browser. It's the most fundamental tablet app, IMHO, and yet the web experience on Android could not possibly be worse." This, right here, is it. On my Nexus 7 - there's not a single decent web browser. Not one. The stock browser? Crashes a lot. Chrome? Slow, touch-unfriendly UI, laggy, and locks up all the time. Everything else uses non-standard UIs are, are plain buggy, are also slow, or any combination of the three - and yes, this includes your favourite browser. I've been through them all. Just yesterday I loaded up my iPhone 3GS, and Safari was like a dream. Internet Explorer 10 on Windows Phone 8? Buttery smooth and excellent UI. How Google - a web company - can let this situation persist is beyond me.

"People are, unsurprisingly, upset that Microsoft have imposed UEFI Secure Boot on the x86 market. A situation in which one company gets to determine which software will boot on systems by default is obviously open to abuse. What's more surprising is that many of the people who are upset about this are completely fine with encouraging people to buy Chromebooks. Out of the box, Chromebooks are even more locked down than Windows 8 machines." Good point.

Fantastic article by The Verge: "Something strange and remarkable started happening at Google immediately after Larry Page took full control as CEO in 2011: it started designing good-looking apps. We went to Google looking for the person responsible for the new design direction, but the strange answer we got is that such a person doesn't exist. Instead, thanks to a vision laid out by a small team of Google designers, each product team is finding its way to a consistent and forward-looking design language thanks to a surprising process. They're talking to each other." I think Google's recent complete design transformation is one of the most remarkable shifts this industry has seen post-iPhone. I think the importance and possible ramifications of this shift are best captured by Tom Dale: Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services.

"Google's fourth-quarter earnings rose 7 percent as online advertisers spent more money in pursuit of holiday shoppers. The financial results announced Tuesday were a mixed bag. While the company's earnings topped analyst estimates, an accounting quirk caused net revenue to fall below the projections that guide investor expectations."

Wired's Steven Levy got to interview Google CEO Larry Page, and it's a good read overall. When asked about how he feels about Jobs' infamous remark that he would go 'thermonuclear' on Android, Page defiantly responds "How well is that working?" He's got a point. He's even harsher on Facebook, stating that the social network does "a really bad job on their products". My favourite quote from the interview is in response to questions about Google X, and projects like Google's self-driving cars. "If you're not doing some things that are crazy, then you're doing the wrong things."

"Release early, release often. Today, we're introducing Chrome Beta channel for phones and tablets on Android 4.0+. You can expect early access to new features (and bugs!), as well as a chance to provide feedback on what's on the way. Just like our other Beta versions, the new features may be a little rough around the edges, but we'll be pushing periodic updates so you can test out our latest work as soon as it's ready." Well, let's see if the Chrome Beta is any less of a disaster than what passes for 'stable' Chrome on Android.

A blog post on the Free Software Foundation Europe site is making the rounds around the web. The blog post, written by Torsten Grote, claims that 'the Android SDK is now proprietary', because upon download, you have to agree to terms and conditions which are clearly not compatible with free and/or open source software. What Grote fails to mention - one, these terms have mostly always been here, and two, they only apply to the SDK binaries. The source is still freely available.

"Engineers at Motorola are hard at work on a sophisticated handset, to be released next year, that parent Google hopes will provide more potent competition for devices like Apple's iPhone, said people familiar with the matter." Well, paint me red and call me a girl scout. This is more fascinating: "Motorola also ran into difficulties when it looked into using a bendable screen and materials such as ceramics that would allow the company to make the X Phone more stress resistant, use more colors and mold into different shapes, these people said." Bendable displays could be a huge turning point for mobile - and not because they allow new shapes. No, the killer 'feature' of bendable displays will be their resilience.

"Google Sync was designed to allow access to Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts via the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol. With the recent launch of CardDAV, Google now offers similar access via IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV, making it possible to build a seamless sync experience using open protocols. Starting January 30, 2013, consumers won't be able to set up new devices using Google Sync; however, existing Google Sync connections will continue to function." Others are free to implement the open protocols.

A change to anything related to Google Search - the product so many of us rely on - is never going to go by unnotoced. This time around, Google has altered Image Search for US users to alter the way it handles that ever so important aspect of the web - adult content.

As the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 go on sale, several Galaxy Nexus owners are already getting the update to Android 4.2. Luckily, updating your Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 manually is easy - download the update file from Google, and install it through adb. I did so earlier today, and it all went smoothly. Chrome seems to perform better (yay!), but for the rest this is clearly a point release. Two issues for me: the new lockscreen with widget support is a joke (only three Google-sanctioned widgets are available), and on the Nexus 7, Google did something I just can't wrap my brain around. Whereas on phones you open the new settings dropdown with two fingers, on the Nexus 7 you swipe down with one finger on the right to get the settings dropdown, and one finger on the left to get the notifications panel. Unintuitive, and incredibly cumbersome and confusing on a relatively small device like the Nexus 7. No more one-handed operation, either. Why Google didn't just employ the same two-finger gesture on the Nexus 7 as they did on the Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus is beyond me. Such a massive UI fail - it almost makes me want to go back to 4.1.2. Luckily, my new HTC 8X will arrive in the mail tomorrow to distract me.

Back when I reviewed the Nexus 7, I mentioned that I was disappointed with Chrome for Android. It often felt slow, would hang, and typing in the address bar and input fields on webpages would lag. Scrolling wasn't always optimal, and sometimes, it would simply freeze up altogether. We're several months down the line now - has the situation improved for me?

"Google's quest to guess what we want before we want it has produced an unusual side effect: a disparity in the results the company presents about the presidential candidates. A Wall Street Journal examination found that the search engine often customizes the results of people who have recently searched for 'Obama' - but not those who have recently searched for 'Romney'." A confirmation bias' wet dream, this. The confirmation bias is already one of the root psychological causes of much of the problems in the world as it is - we really shouldn't have technology companies make it worse. Technology - and more specifically, the internet - should fight this bias, not affirm it.