Google Archive

Google to Acquire AdMob for $750 Million

Google 1 Comment
"Google's back on the acquisition front, spending $750 million in stock Monday to acquire mobile display ad company AdMob. AdMob is perhaps best known for serving display ads on iPhones, but it also recently started a business unit focused on ads for Android phones. The start-up would appear to fit well into Google's advertising business model, giving Google a leg up in the still-small but fast-growing world of mobile advertising."
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Google Wave Open for Federation Among Other Wave Providers

Google 6 Comments
"Google makes its Google Wave Federation Protocol available to let would-be Wave providers build their own Wave servers and get them communicating with other Wave servers, similar to the way e-mail servers talk to one another. This federation would ideally pave the way to making Wave ubiquitous, making it more available for future users. But given the learning curve stumping early users of Wave, how many programmers will want to build their own Wave servers? That remains to be seen."
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What Problems Does Google Wave Solve?

Google 22 Comments
"There are countless pundits and other tech gurus describing Google Wave as a disappointment, lately. Most of that seems to come from the fact that nobody seems to get what Wave is for. So they compare it to social media. Is Wave the next Twitter? Nope. Is it the next Facebook? Nope. Is it going to replace Instant Messengers? Possibly, in some circumstances, but not any time soon." Read more here.
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Google Bites Bing back, Recovers All Usage Losses Since Spring

Google 20 Comments
"If the last two months should be interpreted as Microsoft suggests, with Bing's gradual ascent in usage share against Google as a sign of Bing's inevitably catching up, then a similar interpretation of September's numbers from live analytics firm StatCounter should be taken as a sign of Bing's ultimate demise. A sampling of five billion or more US page views from Web sites accessed by StatCounter in September reveals that, of the world's top three search services, Google's usage share has climbed back just above 80%, and is flirting with last November's peak of 81.14% -- meaning Google is back to serving four out of five US-based general queries. Bing's usage share in the US descended by 1.13% to 8.51% for the month of September, while Yahoo's dove 1.1% to 9.4%. Google's share among the top three has now climbed above where it stood in May (78.72%), when Microsoft changed the name of Windows Live Search."
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Google Angers Android Community with Cease and Desist Letter

Google 37 Comments
Building custom ROM images for popular phones is a relatively common thing on the internet. There are a number of forums dedicated to hacking and creating custom Windows Mobile ROMs, and there's also a community of people working on custom Android ROMs. The latter community has been up in arms over the fact that Google has sent a cease and desist letter to one of the most popular ROM hackers.
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Android 1.6 SDK Released

Google 1 Comment
Xavier Ducrohet posted the announcement for the Android 1.6 SDK release: "With support for CDMA and additional screen sizes, your apps can be deployed on even more mobile networks and devices. You will have access to new technologies, including framework-level support for additional screen resolutions, like QVGA and WVGA, new telephony APIs to support CDMA, gesture APIs, a text-to-speech engine, and the ability to integrate with Quick Search Box." Check out the video in that page too.
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Google Chrome Comes Bundled on Sony Laptops

Google 14 Comments
Google said August 31 that Sony is bundling the Chrome Web browser on its Sony laptop computers, the search engine company's first such bundling deal to help the now one year-old browser reach more users. Sony did not respond to requests for comment but a Google spokesperson confirmed to eWEEK that Sony is bundling Chrome. The spokesperson declined to provide financial details but claimed: "Users' response to Google Chrome has been outstanding, and we're continuing to explore ways to make Chrome accessible to even more people."
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Google’s Rubin: Android Isn’t Blocking VoIP, Despite Claims

Google 2 Comments
This morning a USA Today article discussed the FCC's investigation into why the Google Voice App was banned from the iPhone. The article goes on to say that Google could "soon find itself in the hot seat" because Android cannot use Skype, proposing that Google itself blocks VoIP to force users into traditional voice calls. Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President of Mobile Platforms, had to step forward and call USA Today out. Rubin said, "Here are the facts, clear and simple: While the first generation of our Android software did not support full-featured VoIP applications due to technology limitations, we have worked through those limitations in subsequent versions of Android, and developers are now able to build and upload VoIP services." Rubin says it's up to the operators to decide if certain applications violate their terms of service.
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Google Caffeine: What it Really Is

Google 3 Comments
"As it invites the world to play in a mysterious sandbox it likes to call 'Caffeine', Google is testing more than just a 'next-generation' search infrastructure. It's testing at least a portion of a revamped software architecture that will likely underpin all of its online applications for years to come. Speaking with The Reg, ueber-Googler Matt Cutts confirms that the company's new Caffeine search infrastructure is built atop a complete overhaul of the company's custom-built Google File System, a project two years in the making. At least informally, Google refers to this file system redux as GFS2."
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Chrome for Linux Improving at a Brisk Pace

Google 26 Comments
When Google released its Chrome web browser for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X users were left out in the rain, without the ability to enjoy all the goodness that is Chrome. Thanks to the relentless porting efforts of the Chromium team, we now have daily builds of the Chrome/Chromium web browser, and I decided to take a look where the Linux version stands.
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Google To Buy Video Compression Technology Outfit On2

  Submitted by John Mills Google 22 Comments
"Google confirmed today that it plans to buy digital video compression outfit On2 Technologies in an all-stock agreement, valued at $106.5m. Mountain View said On2 shareholders will be handed 60 cents worth of Google class A common shares for each outstanding share they hold in the company. Clifton Park, New Jersey-based On2 employs around 60 staff. It started life as the Duck Corporation in 1992. On2's VP6 codec is licensed by Adobe, for its Flash Player and Flash Lite 3 for mobile phones. Other major customers include AOL, Freescale, Nokia and Sun Microsystems."
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Google to Integrate O3D into Chrome Browser

Google 11 Comments
Google announced their O3D plugin for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms a few months ago, and that was all very well and exciting; this will enable advanced 3D effects to be performed directly in the browser. These new 3D standards on the web will be a very exciting new step in technology. Lately, though, Google has also announced that O3D will eventually be integrated into Chrome. In the words of Greg Spencer, a programmer from Google, "The O3D team is working on getting O3D integrated into the Chromium build, and we're close to being able to complete our first step towards integration. I'll be making the Windows build of Chromium be dependent upon building O3D as part of the build process."
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