Image: Dimitar Nikolov/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Back in November 2010, the European Commission launched an antitrust investigation into Google after two websites complained. Now, the results are in – and Google could face a suit on its hands, after it found four areas where it may be considered an abuse of its market dominance.
The Samsung GALAXY Nexus (Image: Samsung/supplied)
RUMOUR MILL: By Thanksgiving, we could see five new ‘Nexus’ smartphones and tablets – the title given to Android’s flagship phone for a particular version – being sold directly to consumers through Google, as opposed to the traditional carriers. Well, that’s if a report by the Wall Street Journal is true.
The next big OS is the internet. Here’s what Google’s doing to make sure of it.
Google’s always been known for their lack of unity, internally and externally, with their products and teams. Whether it’s ideas like Buzz and Google+, from completely different departments, mixing functionality, and both completely missing the mark, or services left to gather dust, Google has always found itself with pieces of a puzzle that just can’t find eachother. But, by the looks of things, Google’s finally found a direction, and it’s racing to the starting line.
Google Drive has finally officially launched, after years of speculation, and is available now or, for some users, very soon.
The service, which has literally been rumoured, and then reportedly killed, over 4 years ago has finally arrived with Google Docs, Google+ and Gmail integration, a better API, 5GB of free storage and native file-syncing, basically like DropBox or SkyDrive offers.
It’s a big day for the cloud, isn’t it? Microsoft, only this morning, released a preview for their Dropbox-style desktop clients for SkyDrive, while also (disappointingly) cutting out 18GB of data for new users, leaving you with only 7GB of free space. It’s still competitive, but sadly it shows that the 25GB was only for show with the previously web-only interface.
Microsoft has today added a sync client to SkyDrive that works with Mac and Windows. Similar to DropBox, the new SkyDrive apps create a folder, called SkyDrive, which provides a native syncing functionality.
Just in case you were doubting the already obvious signs and reports that Google Drive exists and is coming very soon, an Android developer has accidentally shown that he has a Google Drive application installed on his Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
Rumours are getting very loud that Google Docs will soon be renamed to Google Drive and I think Google, themselves, have just proven the existance of the rebranding and change.
Last week when you went to drive.google.com the domain wouldn’t resolve. This week, however, drive.google.com shows a 404 Not Found message. This means that the drive.google.com subdomain has been added by Google, making the rumours much more believeable.
Both the European Commission and the Department of Justice in the United States have cleared a deal that will see Google and Motorola finally tie the knot, after the US$12.5 billion deal was announced last August.
Google Wallet’s week hasn’t been that great. A second major security flaw has been revealed today which could allow a thief to have access to your funds via Google’s prepaid card. This comes on top of revelations that it was possible to crack the PIN on rooted Android devices.
Google’s popular Chrome browser is now heading to Android with the launch of Chrome for Android beta for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This means, you can now experience the same speed and simplicity of the browser on your phone or tablet.
As if Google Chrome OS wasn’t irrelevant enough, Google has today announced a beta for Google Chrome on Android. It’s only available in select countries, which includes Australia, and only works on Android 4.0, or Ice-Cream Sandwich.
A threat of a crackdown “like China” by India has forced Google and Facebook to remove content that were deemed offensive to religions in the country. The threat comes after a lawsuit by one person claiming that both companies were violating Indian law.
If you’ve been locked out of Google+, like me, because of age then today is your lucky day! Bradley Horowitz, Google+ VP, has announced, via Google+, that the new age restriction is 13+.