"what actually really got me into technology was a gift I received on my 16th birthday. I got the Diamond Rio MP3 player, one of the first on the market. It had 32MB of storage and was tiny. I started looking into how a CD was encoded into an MP3, I learned about signal compression. I went into engineering at Princeton and did a PHD at Santa Barbra in computer vision."

The arrival of our mini-heatwave appears to have tricked some of our national newspapers into thinking “silly season” has arrived. Both The Sunday Times and The Daily Mail have led with front-page splashes about Google’s Street View data harvesting – both based on a report by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that we and many others reported on when it was published over a month ago.<p>

It’s not the newspapers’ late arrival to the story that has me pounding my keyboard in frustration, however. It’s the sensationalist exaggeration of the Street View data collection that has triggered a sudden spike in my blood pressure.

After the fourth or fifth time of being hammered after an article appeared in Google News, I finally discovered a pattern I should have seen earlier. Our access logs were full of requests from many different IP addresses asking for the same page repeatedly within a few seconds. That in itself wasn’t unusual for traffic generated by Google News, but more peculiar was the user-agent identifier — that’s the bit of text a browser sends that tells a server what its maker and version are.

Google's 7-inch Android tablet is real — it's even being passed around inside the Googleplex.<p>

That's what I'm hearing from Googlers who have seen the device. Backing up what's been rumored for months on CNET, Digitimes and other sites, I'm hearing that this device is aimed squarely at Amazon's Kindle Fire (which runs Amazon's tailored version of Android). It's likely to start in the $200 to $250 range, have a higher resolution screen, and perhaps a camera.

Striking is the sheer volume of takedown notices Google receives: in just the last month, it processed over 1.2 million requests for Search alone, from 1,296 copyright owners and 1,087 reporting organizations. That scale allows it to present trends in the data that might not otherwise be apparent. For example, even in the case of notorious "pirate" sites like The Pirate Bay, Google has received takedown notices for less than 5% of their indexable pages.<p>

On the other hand, this report also provides a clearer look into the abuse of copyright tools. Google explains that it's complied with 97% of takedown requests received between July and December of 2011, but also provides examples of obviously invalid copyright requests it's received.

Mr. Caspar asked [in spring 2010] to see the hard drive [with the Wi-Fi data collected from Street View]. Google said handing it over could expose it to liability for violating German telecommunications law, which prohibits network operators and other data managers from disclosing the private communications of their clients.<p>

This made no sense to Mr. Caspar, who explained that as data protection commissioner [for Hamburg] he was empowered to receive the data. Finally, in autumn 2010, the company yielded and gave Mr. Caspar the hard drive. By this point, Hamburg prosecutors had opened a criminal investigation.<p>

Google was equally resistant with the American authorities.

Like Google's press images for what it calls "Project Glass," the glasses Brin wore while walking down King Street were lens-free with a small, clear prism-like display mounted above the right eye. It wasn't clear if the glasses were completely self-contained, or if they were wired to what appeared to be a smart phone in his left hand. Brin, who has been seen sporting the headgear before, wasn't using them at the moment, though - he said they were out of power.

In the end, the conclusion is that a ‘modern browser’ according to Google is a browser which sends ‘Chrome’ as its UA string and supports Flash or the Web Audio API.<p>

Can we instead on production sites standardize on something like “this site requires (experimental) features not yet present in your browser” (Thanks @getify for the idea) and a link to instructions on how they can update their browser, or if it is a browser specific feature, information about the feature and why it isn’t yet supported in their browser of choice.

Google Inc's Android mobile platform has not infringed Oracle's patents, a California jury decided in a high stakes trial fought by the two Silicon Valley giants over smartphone technology.

I have just sent a letter to Eric Schmidt setting out these four points. In this letter, I offer Google the possibility to come up in a matter of weeks with first proposals of remedies to address each of these points.<p>

If Google comes up with an outline of remedies which are capable of addressing our concerns, I will instruct my staff to initiate the discussions in order to finalise a remedies package. This would allow to solve our concerns by means of a commitment decision – pursuant to Article 9 of the EU Antitrust Regulation - instead of having to pursue formal proceedings with a Statement of objections and to adopt a decision imposing fines and remedies.

Google said on Saturday that Chinese authorities have approved its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings, the last regulatory hurdle to a deal that would allow the world's No. 1 Internet search engine to develop its own line of smart phones…<p>A main condition of the deal is that the Android system remain free and open for five years, said a source who is familiar with the Chinese approval but not authorized to discuss it.

Britney Spears was Google's most popular search query -- followed by Paris Hilton, Christina Aguilera, and Pamela Anderson. (Yes! Pamela Anderson!)
<br />Janet Jackson's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction was the most searched term to date on Lycos.<br />
people still used Lycos.<br /> 
The Howard Dean campaign was pioneering grassroots organizing and fundraising on the Internet.

France's data protection watchdog has set up a meeting with Google to closely examine its controversial privacy policy.<p>

The search giant consolidated 60 privacy policies into one single agreement in March. The EU expressed concern over the legality and impact of the change.<p>

France's information commission, the CNIL, said it was not yet "totally satisfied" with Google's explanation of the amendments.

Fragmentation matters to the entire Android community: users, developers, OEMs, brands & networks. It's a blessing and a curse.</p><p>

The Blessing. Fragmentation allows users to take their pick from thousands of devices. You can choose from phones with 3D screens, projectors, CDMA, GSM, or even CDMA & GSM. You may not care that Tag Heuer has made an Android phone but at least one person does (and they use OpenSignalMaps). It's a triumph for Android that as a single OS it can target so many markets.</p><p>

The Curse. The proliferation of devices with their associated screen sizes, internal hardware and custom ROMs creates some difficulties. We spend a lot of time making the app presentable (or at less functional) on exotic devices - this is the most common request we get from app users.

Take a query like [taj mahal]. For more than four decades, search has essentially been about matching keywords to queries. To a search engine the words [taj mahal] have been just that—two words.</p><p>
But we all know that [taj mahal] has a much richer meaning. You might think of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant. It’s why we’ve been working on an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a “graph”—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.

<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702304371504577406511931421118-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwNTExNDUyWj.html">The Wall Street Journal</a> reports that the new strategy will accompany the launch of Android 5.0 - to be known as Jelly Bean, in keeping with Google's sweet tooth for Android code names – and involves several Android vendors. Several devices, including both tablets and unlocked smartphones, will be sold directly through Google's Web site and through some unnamed retail partners.

Faster downloading speeds have helped make Google’s YouTube video-viewing more popular. Young urban Africans organise YouTube parties. The company is also trying to help African governments digitise information and make it freely available to their citizens. Many rulings in the higher courts of Ghana, for instance, are going online.</p><p>

Yet critics complain that Google is buying up enormous amounts of virgin digital land in Africa at virtually no cost. Within a couple of decades, without the regulatory oversight of the African Union or African governments, they say, Africa’s internet life will be almost entirely in hock to the Google giant. Even the company’s decision to go slow on seeking profits from Africa by offering cheap deals has been attacked by African would-be rivals, which say that such tactics are only extending Google’s unfair advantage.

The new Google-commissioned paper, written by well-known UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh and attorney Donald Falk, argues that such regulations would be preempted by the First Amendment. Google's search engine, they write, "uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers' judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries."<p>

The authors argue that this selection process is no different, constitutionally speaking, from a newspaper editor selecting wire stories to run, a guidebook deciding which attractions to feature, or a parade organizer choosing which floats to include. The courts have ruled that all of these editorial processes are fully protected by the First Amendment.

When playing with the assumptions, it becomes clear that the model is most sensitive to the revenue per device and total devices in use. The profitability is entirely dependent on those figures as variable costs are a percent of sales and fixed costs are limited by talent constraints.</p><p>

For example, if revenues per device drop to $4.50/yr then the operating margin drops to 38%.</p><p>

Now we can calculate some of the more interesting figures. For example:<br />
• Android OEMs receive $0.76 on average per device per year<br />
• Android Operators receive $1.07 on average per device per year (including Play)<br />
• Android Developers, as a group, receive $1.94 per device per year (including Play and AdMob)<br />
• Google receives a contribution of $2.75 per device per year from Android</p><p>

Again, these figures are very sensitive to the revenue per device (currently assumed to be $6.50).

On Friday afternoon by local time, Judge William Alsup, the federal judge presiding over the Oracle v. Google lawsuit in the Northern District of California, entered a judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) overruling the jury (as well as Google's opposition to an Oracle motion for JMOL) with respect to eight decompiled Java files.

So Oracle has now filed a motion asking for a postponement of phase three of the trial, the damages phase. It would like a new jury, too. It wants to wait to calculate damages until after the judge decides whether APIs are copyrightable, so it can add the 37 API files into the mix for damages, if they are. Maybe then it would have a prayer of getting some money.</p><p>

In short, Oracle woke up and realized it's in a pickle of its own making. It was too clever by half, and now reality has struck. It clearly is worried that if they go to the damages phase now, it will gain a big fat zero in damages. It should have thought of that before it asked for infringer's profits, but there you are.

Richard [Gringras, head of news at Google] doesn't believe the vertical model of a newspaper makes sense going forward. He compares the metropolitan newspapers' all-things to all-people product to content portals for specific communities. This strategy doesn't make sense given the possibilities. Yahoo!'s initial success was as a portal. But portals have disappeared online as consumers have learned to navigate the web on their own and found the niche sites they love.</p><p>

Paywalls are not a panacea. Richard's not against experimentation with paywall models. The New York Times was smart, he says, in designing its paywall with many levers to adjust revenue vs. traffic flow. It's not there yet, but they can experiment and find what works. He appreciates those who are looking at paywalls in a more nuanced way. Some publishers say, "They bought it before, they'll buy it again," or "We need to get people back into the habit of paying for news." But consumers never did pay the true costs.

Here’s a bit of conspiracy theory: What if Apple wanted to replace Google Maps from a very early point and the company was biding its time until it could acquire and build the core assets and expertise to do so? Maybe that early point was when former CEO Steve Jobs’ attitude toward Google changed, when he began to feel that Android was “a stolen product”?</p><p>

To continue with my conjecture, maybe Apple thought it would be harder to wean iPhone users off a stronger Google-powered mapping product than the comparatively weak one that exists today. I know this seems very contrary to Apple’s culture and corporate ethos. Yet replacing a weaker product with a stronger one is a lot easier than taking away a strong product from users who’ve come to depend on it.

Google is offering billion dollar checks to labels for blanket rights to their entire catalogs, according to highly placed digital music sources.</p><p>

According to one source,  ”Google has offered at least one label over a billion dollars for all the rights in every country for every piece of music and for every platform.” This means that Google could potential be writing checks for a total of well over $5 billion, if they’re crazy enough to actually go through with it. By comparison, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI), total revenue generated by the global recorded music industry in 2011 was $16.6 billion.

The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles has issued the first license plates that will allow Google's autonomous cars onto public highways.</p><p>

Nevada is the first state to devise licensing procedures for autonomous vehicles, and Google is the one of the leaders in that field, having hired some of the top talent that took part in the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges. Google's fleet will have red Nevada license plates with a Greek infinity symbol, intended to alert other drivers that a computer has control of the vehicle.

It's hard to imagine another, similar case on the scale of Oracle versus Google, so it's remarkable that an almost identical one came to resolution in Europe at almost the same time. SAS Institute sued World Programming for copyright infringement in what seems like a much more clear-cut case than Oracle versus Google. World Programming copied the SAS programming environment with the intent of direct competition, yet the court did not find against World Programming.</p><p>

Although the case has nuances, the court was clear that although software itself could be copyrighted, its externalities -- the function it performs, the programming interfaces it exposes, and the data structures it uses -- cannot be. This is entirely reasonable. Without such a division, interoperable technology markets would be impossible.

Many news stories inspire vibrant discussions on Google+, and today we're starting to add this content to both the News homepage, and the realtime coverage pages. This way you can see what your circles, journalists covering the story and notables like politicians or others who are the subjects of stories have to say about breaking news, and even contribute to the discussion directly from Google News.</p><p>

Note that these Google+ discussions will only appear for those of you reading the US edition who have signed in and upgraded to Google+.

With this paradoxical partial decision, the jury has left the case very much in the air, and Google has already moved for a mistrial.</p><p>

On Monday, as the Google-Oracle case entered its fourth week, a jury ruled that Oracle has proven that Google infringed the overall structure, sequence, and organization of copyrighted works of 37 APIs used by the Java platform. In building Android, Google created a new version of the Java platform known as the Dalvik virtual machine, and this mimicked the Java APIs, or application programming interfaces, which are essentially a way for a Java application to talk to the platform.</p><p>

But the jury was unable to reach a decision on whether Google’s Java clone constituted “fair use.” A fair use decision would let Google off the hook.

It's quite clear that Android was being designed to a completely different target before the iPhone was released. What we see here would have fitted in perfectly with the world of Symbian and BlackBerry. This early build of Android is in fact even less capable and mature than the 2004 release of Symbian Series 90 (Hildon), the OS that runs on the Nokia 7700 and 7710 - Nokia's first, and only, pre-iPhone touchscreen smartphones.

By crippling functionality on sites Google owns (like YouTube) and forcing users to "upgrade" to a service that they may not want or need to get that functionality back, Google is making a huge and annoying mistake.</p><p> You get people to enthusiastically use services by making them compelling and awesome and easy to use. You don't get people to enthusiastically use your services by forcing them to. In fact, that's probably a great way to ensure that a huge number of people who may have been interested in trying out your service never even look at it.

We think of Google and Facebook as Web gorillas.  They’ll be around forever. Yet, with the rate that the tech world is moving these days, there are good reasons to think both might be gone completely in 5 – 8 years.  Not bankrupt gone, but MySpace gone.

Google is selling some of its analytic guts as an online service, in an effort to compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services in the market for enterprise cloud computing.</p><p>

In November, Google offered a limited number of developers access to some of its most powerful data analysis software, part of what Google uses to index the Internet, in a product called <a href="https://developers.google.com/bigquery/">BigQuery</a>. On Tuesday, Google announced that it was selling that software, which can scan terabytes of information in seconds, as a service to corporate customers.

There is also wide speculation that Facebook will start its own Internet search engine to rival Google.</p><p>

“Microsoft is simply less concerned about the threat of social to its business than Google is,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, a research firm, explaining why Microsoft is not concerned about competition with Facebook.</p><p>

“This may be a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he added.
Jim Prosser, a Google spokesman, declined to comment.

In Dan Farber's recent <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57423538-94/oracle-google-trial-puts-ex-sun-execs-on-opposite-sides/?tag=rb_content;contentBody">article on CNET titled "Oracle v. Google: Ex-Sun execs on opposite sides"</a> he got my position on the case totally backwards and totally misinterpreted my comments. Just because Sun didn't have patent suits in our genetic code doesn't mean we didn't feel wronged. While I have differences with Oracle, in this case they are in the right. Google totally slimed Sun. We were all really disturbed, even Jonathan: he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun.

The code used to run Java applications on Google’s Android operating system is “completely different” from the code that underpins Oracle’s Java platform, according to an expert witness called by Google in its ongoing court battle with Oracle over Android and Java.</p><p>

“The implementation code in Android is completely different than the implementation code in Java,” Duke University computer science professor Owen Astrachan said on Friday, though he added that the two use the same “method signatures,” code that defines the inputs and outputs for part of a computer program.</p><p>

...Astrachan’s testimony contrasted sharply with that of Stanford University processor John Mitchell, who was originally called by Oracle on Monday and returned to the stand on Friday. Mitchell said that at least in some cases, Google must have copied code from Oracle’s Java platform. “I don’t think there is any way [Google] could have come up with it on their own,” he said, when asked if he thought Google copied code for the Java application programming interfaces, or APIs.</p><p>

Google says Dalvik is a “clean room implementation,” meaning it was built from scratch. But Mitchell disagreed. “Whoever inserted that code into the codebase had access to it,” he said. “This wasn’t a clean room implementation.”

Federal Judge William Alsup has rejected Oracle’s attempt to reincarnate a dead Java patent in its attempt to prove that Google stole its intellectual property in building the Android mobile operating system.</p><p>

“Oracle’s argument that the patent ‘trial’ has not yet started is wrong,” Alsup’s ruling, filed late Wednesday, <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/wp-content/uploads//2012/04/Alsup-Ruling1.pdf">read</a> (PDF). “Oracle will be required to stand by its word and live with the dismissal with prejudice.”

Other documents entered as evidence come from an internal July 2010 presentation given by Rubin. They reveal that the company got advertising revenue of just $16.8m from Android handsets in 2009, but by mid-year of 2010 that had grown to $132.1m from ads on the fast-growing handset market – though Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad using Google's search and maps generated $281m, or more than twice as much in total.

So, Google was sincere in wanting to work with Sun. Sun? Apparently it had a more complicated position.</p><p>
But reading the exhibits, you see that an independent implementation was always viewed as possible by Google, Lindholm even mentioning one possibility, just not ideal. In fact, apparently someone in 2010 told Safra Katz of Oracle that maybe Google would just use something else, and this apparently seemed to disturb her, as on page 7 it says the "threat" to move off Java "hit her hard". Of course Google has the technical ability to do pretty much whatever it wants to take on. They're designing driverless cars and how to mine asteroids. I mean. Really. Replacing Java would be annoying but not impossible.</p>p>

But part of what Google was trying to make happen in 2009, as you can see on page 30, was getting Sun to "get Java more fully open sourced" which, by then was seen as urgent in that they thought Sun was "going to fail sometime soon." Why did Google care? Because, as one email that year in the same thread pointed out, Google was already highly invested in Java.

We have so many opportunities in front of us that without hard choices we risk doing too much and not having the impact we strive for. Here are the details on the changes we’ll be making:</p><p>
We are making a number of API changes, adopting a one-year deprecation policy for certain APIs and removing the deprecation policy for others. Additionally, we are retiring some old APIs with limited usage. We have also updated the deprecation policy for all APIs to be much clearer and more concise. Please see the <a href="http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/changes-to-deprecation-policies-and-api.html">Developers Blog</a> for more information.

As an independent analyst and blogger, I will express only my own opinions, which cannot be attributed to any one of my diversity of clients. I often say things none of them would agree with. That said, as a believer in transparency I would like to inform you that Oracle has very recently become a consulting client of mine. We intend to work together for the long haul on mostly competition-related topics including, for one example, FRAND licensing terms.</p><p>

We've known each other ever since I vocally opposed Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems (not because of Java), but that's history as I fully respect the European Commission's clearance decision and the subsequent closing of the deal.

In the end it was a search that let Google down.</p><p>

The company suffered a setback in its patent dispute with Oracle last week when a U.S. judge denied Google's request to keep an internal Google email out of the case record. The email, written by a Google engineer, could suggest to a jury that Google knew it needed a license to use Sun's - now Oracle's - Java technology in Android.

At least one shareholder advisory firm, Philadelphia-based <a href="http://www.egan-jones.com/">Egan-Jones</a>, has come out strongly in opposition to the plan. "We strongly oppose governance structures, such as currently exists at Google and as proposed, in which the holders of one class of common stock have voting rights with fewer votes per share," the firm said. </p>
<p>Also on the record in opposition? CalSTRS, the $145 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System, which owns $400 million worth of Google shares, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/14/net-us-google-idUSBRE83B1GJ20120414">told Reuters</a> that it's not happy about the proposal and intends to let Google know about it.

Having noticed the Google CEO’s fondness for using variations of “exciting” and “excited” when discussing his company’s products and businesses, we at AllThingsD had a bit of fun with the transcripts from his recent earnings calls.</p><p>
Since Page reassumed the CEO role last year, he hit an all-time high of 16 mentions of “excited” on last year’s third-quarter call. His company’s performance made him both “incredibly excited” and “amazingly excited.”

My key problem with the proposal is that it’s being pushed through without common shareholders being given the opportunity to object. I would be OK with it if it was being voted on a one-share, one-vote basis. But instead, Google’s Troika has decided that having ten times the votes of any other shareholder isn’t good enough for them, and that what they really want is a whole new class of shareholders — including new employees — who have no votes in the company at all.

I’ve been meaning to write my “Google+ Is Like The Apple Store For Google” piece for some time. Maybe I’ll never get to it now. But you know when you go into an Apple Store, and it’s filled with sometimes scary Apple fanatics who seem to have arrived at a holy place? That’s Google+ for Google.</p><p>

If Google+ isn’t anything else, it’s a place that Google fans can call home. It’s a place that Google’s never really had before, a spot for its millions (and let’s face it, there are millions) of fanboys and fangirls to rejoice in all things Google.</p><p>

I’ve experienced this firsthand in my time at Google. I’ve learned that if I share anything negative about Google, I can expect to get comments, sometimes many, asking why I hate Google or am biased against Google.

The World Bank has confirmed that it will not support the use of Google Map Maker for citizen-mapping efforts unless it gives users free access to the map data they create.</p><p>
The World Bank and Google have launched a project using crowd-sourcing to populate maps with the locations of public services in the developing world – a resource which could be used by many different groups in humanitarian and longer-term development work.

I wish the app developer community luck as far as Lodsys is concerned. I saw that some of the smaller defendants, <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/gedeon/status/190541152125059073">including Iconfactory</a>, settled the dispute on undisclosed terms, presumably because they couldn't afford the cost and deal with risk of protracted litigation. I wish the remaining defendants as well as all those facing the threat of being sued that Apple's intervention will help to get his troll defeated. I also hope that <a href="http://www.fosspatents.com/2011/08/googles-reexamination-requests-against.html">Google's reexamination requests</a> will be successful. I still believe that those large players should do a whole lot more for app developers than what they are doing at this stage (for example, I believe they should give them blanket coverage against litigation costs)

Google is just an organisation like every other organisation; they’re not exempt from the rule that if you aren’t careful, self-serving managers will rise to the top, where a personal agenda or reaching this or that far-fetched goal to boast your manager creds might be more important than doing the right thing. It is good of us to watch Google, and to elbow them in the ribs every now and then. But in the grand scheme of things – in the whole “crowd-sourced hive-mind world-wide collective vs. government-and-business-controlled data cathedrals” arena – Google is on the same side as we are. More so, perhaps, than a couple other organisations who vie for our affection.

In addition to very broad popularity, Google and Apple share vast exposure. Just 10% of Americans haven’t formed a basic opinion of Google (rising to 29% of less tech-savvy seniors), and 14% have no opinion of Apple and Facebook alike. Twitter is less well known, with 31% unready to express an opinion of it, jumping to 51% of seniors.

Last week, Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal asked both parties to give settlement talks another chance, with a decision required by April 9. Even though they had another week, it must have been clear that a settlement just isn't in the cards.

Sony will start selling Google TV-based products in Europe in September, according to a report by Les Echos.</p><p>

The site reports comments by Sony France marketing director Stephane Labrousse that the CE maker will sell two devices: A set-top box which will go on sale for €200 ($266) and a box with an integrated Blu-ray player that will sell for €300 ($399).

This month Google is showing off their newest opt-in service known as Account Activity, a service capable of showing you everything the group knows about your signed-in activities. Google services of course work their way into several daily activities of people like you and I, and certainly knowing everywhere I logged in from as well as all the YouTube videos I’ve ever watched could be entertaining – but that’s not what the service is for, says Google. Account Activity is Google’s way of helping you “step back and take stock of what you’re doing online” in an analytical way.

In the year or so since the [Motorola] deal was announced, it has become more and more clear that Larry does, in fact, want to make gadgets.

In the latest evidence of this, Google is now planning to open an online tablet store in which it will push Android-based tablets, Amir Efrati of the Wall Street Journal reports.

In this store, Google will initially sell tablets that are manufactured by its tablet hardware partners like Asus and Samsung. But the tablets may be co-branded as Google tablets.

France-based VUPEN is one of the highest-profile firms trafficking in zero-day exploits. Earlier this month at the CanSecWest information security conference, VUPEN declined to participate in the Google-sponsored Pwnium hacking competition, where security researchers were awarded up to $60,000 if they could defeat the Chrome browser’s security and then explain to Google how they did it. Instead, VUPEN—sitting feet away from Google engineers running the competition—successfully compromised Chrome, but then refused to disclose their method to Google to help fix the flaw and make the browser safer for users.

“We wouldn’t share this with Google for even $1 million,” said VUPEN founder Chaouki Bekrar. “We don’t want to give them any knowledge that can help them in fixing this exploit or other similar exploits. We want to keep this for our customers.”

Which brings us to the other aspect of Microsoft's renaissance: good timing. The once-hipper than Microsoft foes, Google and Apple haven't looked so good these days. Google, the once beloved search company, has users uneasy with its <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/03/even-googlers-are-losing-faith-google/50247/">Google+ integration</a>, privacy issues and anti-trust concerns. Even Googlers <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/03/yahooization-google/48338/">aren't too sure</a> of Google's mission, these days. Apple still produces insane-popular gadgets, but no longer wows reviewers like it once did. The new iPad is still the best tablet out there, but it&#39;s not a must-have. Plus, it too has gotten itself into its own <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/02/theres-easy-fix-apples-latest-iphone-privacy-problem/48732/">privacy messes</a>. It also had the misfortune of acting as the face of the last few months of <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/topics/foxconn/">Foxconn scandal</a>. Though the Foxconn protesters that threatened mass suicide back in January made Microsoft's XBox, thanks to Mike Daisey and Apple's financial successes, Apple not Microsoft absorbed most of the bad PR.

Google never said “What you’re doing is broken. Use our thing instead.” They always said “Did you know you we can do that too, for free?” Did they say Excel was broken when they let you make spreadsheets in Docs? Did they break down email to its bare bones and remake it for Gmail? Of course not. Google was about ubiquity, diversity, and a few memorable little quirks or improvements that set them out from the crowd.

To attempt to build something new, a la Apple, with the assurance that company likes to make (“This is the best way, which is why we made it the only way”) is not a Google strength. They just aren’t good at making new things. Never have been. Making existing things easier, faster, more accessible — sure. But inventing them? Not so much. So the idea that they were going to invent a new way to share should have rung alarm bells to begin with.

Sharing was never broken; Google merely found that they were losing a battle they had not even prepared for. Their declaration of war was a declaration of defeat.

You’re probably asking yourself how the bad guys are turning this malicious scheme into money. Well, it’s easy: they have total control of the victim’s profile, so they created a service to sell “Likes” on Facebook, especially focused for companies that want to promote their profiles, gaining more fans and visibility: 1000 likes earn R$ 50.00 (around U$ 27.00)

Of course, to sell the “Likes” they use the profile of the victims.

Be careful when using Facebook. And think twice before installing a Google Chrome extension.

Google is weighing changes aimed at improving its Google Wallet mobile-payment system following slow adoption and the departure of two key managers, according to people with knowledge of the project.

The company is considering sharing revenue with carriers such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T to get them to embrace the technology, which lets users pay for items at checkout by tapping phones on a reader device, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private…

“They are in a bit of a re-evaluation pattern right now,” said Rick Oglesby, an analyst at Boston-based research firm Aite Group. “It’s going much slower than anticipated.”

It's the GSM Nexus that's under fire today. You see, over on <a href="http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1376856">XDA</a> some GSM Nexus owners have been having problems manually flashing the recently rolled out update to 4.0.1. Unfortunately, there's no problem with the update file. It has to do with custom Samsung installed firmwares.

You’re attending a baseball game and call Google’s 411 service for information about a nearby restaurant. The cheers of the crowd and the sounds of the announcer are picked up by your phone. Google’s system analyzes the background noise, takes into account your location, determines that you’re at a ballgame and delivers related ads or links to your phone with sports scores and news.

Or maybe you’re making the call from a concert hall, and the sound in the background is the instruments tuning up during intermission. Google figures out that you’re at a concert, and serves up musical news or ads about albums related to the performance.

a new comparison was made ​​by Android Central. The site wanted to know the performance of Google Chrome on Android (currently in beta) from the browser Safari mobile. As shown in the video, the iPhone 4S and Safari are doing pretty good but the Galaxy Nexus wins many times over its competitor.

When Oink shut down yesterday, I used their export tool so that I could do something useful with the information I gave them. In requesting my data, which I did simply by filling out a form with only my username, I received the email below. In looking at the link, it seemed that my publicly available username (cristina) called for the download.