The United States Department of Justice also approved Google’s proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility today. The deal gained regulatory approval from the European Commission earlier today.
The European Commission has approved Google’s $12.5 billion buyout of Motorola Mobility. With a likely approval of the merger by the US Justice Department soon, Google now needs the consent of China, Israel, and Taiwan to finish the acquisition process.
Despite reports in the last couple of months that Google+ was slowing down from its rapid growth, CNET is reporting that the Google’s newest attempt at social has surpassed the 62 million user mark. According to the report Paul Allen (who apparently has ways of knowing these things) says the social network surpassed the mark on December 27th.
Google announced today that Google+ will receive some new improvements over the next couple of days, including refined activity stream controls, more detailed notifications, a new photo lightbox, and a few changes to Google+ Pages. First, the new stream controls, which Google calls a “volume slider” for your Circles, will allow users to adjust a slider to determine how much activity they’d like to see from specific people in their stream. The photo feature’s gotten improved as well, with a new black lightbox, and photo tagging. Notifications have also been tweaked to include more information.
Google also announced that it’s adding the three most highly requested features to Google+ Pages — support for up to 50 administrators for a page, a new notification flow, and a combined count of users that +1 the page and add it to Circles. This was one of the biggest complaints when Google rolled out the pages for Google+, people found out that they couldn’t create a page without it being linked to the account they created it under. At least now more than one person can be associated with a page, which will be very important for business owners.
Apple made a big splash this year when they introduced their Siri technology alongside the iPhone 4S. It is for sure the biggest upgrade when it comes to the new iOS hardware. So it is no surprise that Google is working to catch up. According to Geek.com, Google is working on its own version of Siri dubbed Majel. While we can debate whether or not Siri is a good name or not, we can all agree Majel is horrible. This has to be an internal code name. But name aside, what will Google bring to the table?
It was rumored. It arrived. It was buggy and pulled. Now it is back. What are we talking about? The Official Gmail app for [...]
It looks like Google is about to launch another part of its Google Music product. It looks like they will start truly competing with iTunes and Apple by starting to sell songs. The service, reportedly, will include some sort of sharing aspect, so that users can share the music they purchase.
What we don’t know is if Google will enter the streaming subscription service to compete with the likes of Spotify and Rdio. It would be interesting if they do. It would add one thing that iTunes doesn’t have yet.
One of the greatest things that Android has held over Apple’s iPhone is the integrated Gmail experience that it provides. The Gmail experience on the iPhone is notoriously bad, hard to set up, and not fully functional. So with some shocking news, Google might be ready to release an official Gmail app for the iPhone. According to The Verge, “…MG Siegler is reporting that “multiple sources” have told him that Google has developed a Gmail app for the iPhone and may have even submitted it for review. The main advantages over Gmail’s HTML5 implementation would be true push notification for a native Gmaili app and what would likely be faster and easier access to those Gmail functions.”
Why is this so shocking? It would effectively eliminate one of Android’s core advantages over the iPhone. No longer could consumers (mainly geeks) say the reason why they chose Android is because of the Gmail experience. Why would Google do this? Are they so comfortable in their lead that they don’t think it will hurt? Hell, maybe it won’t, but it does take one more reason to buy Android off the table.
I complained about it just the other day. It looks like Google was at least working on it. According to The Next Web, Google Apps users can now use Google+
Starting now you can manually turn on Google+ for your organization. Once Google+ is turned on, your users will just need to sign up at google.com/+ to get started. For customers who use Google Apps for Business or the free version of Google Apps and who have chosen to automatically enable new services, Google+ will automatically become available to all of your users over the next several days.
The Next Web also points out that as with all the Google Apps, your administrator will be able to see all of your data. So keep that in mind before posting that picture of you and your secretary going at it in the copy room.
Google and Samsung unveiled their newest Google Phone last night. The moniker? The Galaxy Nexus. The phone is just under 7mm thick, and it runs the new version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich which Google has given the version number as 4.0. The specs are pretty geek drool worthy with a dual-core 1.2GHz CPU, a 5-megapixel camera with enhancements, a 4.65-inch 1280 x 720-pixel Super AMOLED HD display with curved glass face, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage, NFC, and a 1,750 mAh battery. The phone will initially be available as an exclusive on Verizon Wireless’ LTE network here in the US, and in other parts of the world it will feature HSPA+ in a pentaband configuration.. The handset will launch in November. No word on price or exact release dates.
