Google today announced its latest update for Google Maps for Android with support for Google Offers. One interesting piece of this announcement that stood out was that Google Maps for Android users now get access to free Google Offers – think coupons for a free coffee or dessert – through the app. Turns out, that’s actually just a small part of a wider update to Google Offers. Merchants across the U.S. – including towns where Google’s pre-paid offers haven’t launched yet – can now use a new self-service interface to create these free offers. → Read More
Google just launched an update for Google Maps for Android that brings three interesting new features to the app: integration with Google Offers, support for Google Business Photos and indoor walking directions.
With the new Google Offers integration, Android users will now be able to see which nearby stores currently offer deals. This, says Google, includes both offers that can be purchased, as well as “free” offers that are available immediately. Users can also opt-in to receive notifications when there are offers near them. → Read More
Online and mobile research company comScore just released its newly rebooted and retooled Mobile Metrix report this morning, which examines mobile media usage across both apps and mobile web browsing. According to the new data, Google sites led as the top property on iOS, Android and RIM devices, reaching 96.9% of the U.S. mobile audience, followed by Facebook, Yahoo sites and Amazon sites. But apps dominated in terms of usage, says comScore, with 4 out of every 5 mobile media minutes spent in apps.
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Congratulations. You’re the CEO of a startup. You’re doing the hardest job in business. You’ve raised money from venture capitalists and turned down better-paying jobs elsewhere. You’ve mastered complicated things such as capitalization tables and common things, such as payroll. You’ve fought with competitors, coworkers, friends and even yourself without losing your way or your wits. You’ve inspired others to work beside you each day to make your dream a reality. I salute you.
Now, everybody else calling himself or herself a CEO—listen up, this is for you: stop it. Just stop calling yourself a CEO. → Read More
Google has always been pretty cagey about the financials behind its Android mobile OS — and data that has emerged over the last week could give us an indication why: it’s been losing money from day one.
In the lawsuit between Oracle and Google — in which Oracle claims Google, in its Android platform, infringes on copyrights and patents related to Java — a judge and jury are trying to work out what kind of damages might be awarded to Oracle. That case took a turn for the specific yesterday, when Judge William Alsup (as reported by Reuters) read out excerpts of Google documents that determined that the platform produced a net loss for every quarter of 2010 — and “a big loss for the whole year”.
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Google News already featured some integration with Google+ in the past, but today, Google is expanding this integration by bringing “relevant Google+ posts for a new social perspective” to its news aggregation site. Starting today, Google News users will be able to see what their circles, journalists covering the story and those who are the subject of the story have to say about it. Google News will now also feature a new “realtime coverage page” for every news story that will surface these Google+ comments, as well as new articles as they become available. → Read More
In September 2010, I wrote a post that ignited an absolute shitstorm around these parts. “Shitstorm” in this case meaning a post with a thousand comments, the majority of which were spewed up by rabid Android fanatics. The title of that post:
Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?
At the time, we were in the midst of a massive Android surge to the top of the smartphone ecosystem food chain. This was happening all around the world, but the focus of this particular post was the U.S. market. Based on some comments made by developer David Beach at the time, I wondered if, as the title suggested, Android was only doing so well in the U.S. because the iPhone was still only available on one carrier, AT&T?
It’s time to revisit that thought because there’s now absolutely no question that this was the case. There’s now data to back it up. What’s more, despite what some surveys suggest, this trend may have fully reversed itself. → Read More
Google today announced that it is bringing web fonts to Google Docs. Thanks to this update, you can now use 450 new fonts in your Google documents. These are the same 450 fonts Google already features on its Web Fonts site for web designers. In addition, Google also announced that it added over 60 new templates to its template gallery over the last month, improved support for screenreaders in Docs and added more options for inserting images into documents, including support for Google Drive and webcams. Docs users can now also search for images in the LIFE photo archive and insert them into their documents. → Read More
While Google keeps cramming its search results pages full of tools and social content, today Bing confirmed with me the full roll out a redesigned search results page that completely clears the left sidebar, and replaces the tabbed header with a cleaner set of links. Bing’s Facebook integration is also more subtle now, instead of plastering names and faces beneath Liked results.
This more relaxing, dare I say zen, design gives Google a more claustrophobic and exhausting feel by comparison. Microsoft seems to have realized that if it can’t match Google’s algorithmic prowess, it could win with sleek design that doesn’t bombard you with a thousand options. Here’s how the designs of two search engines compare… → Read More
In 2009, Google brought its translation features to Gmail as a Gmail Labs experiment. Today, almost exactly two years after it first launched, this feature is finally graduating from Gmail Labs. Starting in the next few days, you will see an option to “Translate message” in the header at the top of every message that is written in a foreign language. → Read More
ifeelgoods has a brilliant idea — letting you earn Facebook Credits for ecommerce purchases or following a brand on Twitter — but now it has to convince big companies and shopping sites to adopt its tech. That’s why it’s hired former Google Managing Director of Commerce Sales and leader of PayPal’s enterprise sales team Tyler Hoffman to be its new Senior Vice President of Sales.
ifeelgoods is starting to snowball, as CEO Michael Amar says 92% of customers returning to ifeelgoods and increasing their budget by 250%. Of my years in tech, this is one of the most promising startups I’ve seen. Because virtual currency is so cheap to distribute and is highly valued by some consumers, ifeelgoods could become a big disruptive force in how businesses acquire customers. → Read More
Earlier today Google released the full report of the FCC’s investigation into the collection of “payload data” from open Wi-Fi networks — aka passwords, email and search history from open networks — that its fleet of Street View cars obtained between 2008 and April 2010. An earlier and heavily redacted version of the report was released on April 15 but today’s version only redacted the names of individuals.
The report found no violation of any wrong doing by the company because there was no legal precedent on the matter. The FCC found that Google did not violate the Communications Act citing the fact that Wi-Fi did not exist when it was written. However, the FCC did fine Google $25,000 for obstructing the investigation, which was presumably the outcome of Google refusing to show the FCC what the data being collected entailed because it might have shown that the company broke privacy and wiretapping laws. Google says any obstruction was result of the FCC dragging out the investigation. Interestingly enough, the report did reveal that the data harvesting was not the act of a rogue engineer and that said engineer notified the Street View team of what was going on.
(Wait. What? Google knew this was going on! It gets even better.) → Read More
In the past few months, Facebook’s patent portfolio has grown exponentially as a result of acquisitions of patent portfolios from IBM and Microsoft. After acquiring 650 AOL patents and patent applications from Microsoft, the company now has approximately 1,400 patent assets. Amazingly, only 46 of these assets (24 issued patents and 22 published applications) were originally filed by Facebook.
In recent years, Facebook has consistently looked to the outside to augment its IP holdings with strategic acquisitions of patent assets. The company paid 40 million for the Friendster social networking patent portfolio, acquired a group of patents from Walker Digital, and another from Hewlett-Packard. These deals expanded the portfolio to approximately 160 patent assets prior to Yahoo’s lawsuit being filed. After Facebook’s IPO decision, and the subsequent patent suit by Yahoo, Facebook has kicked its patent acquisition program into overdrive. → Read More
Google TV, the company’s first serious foray into the living room, hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. That doesn’t mean Google has given up, though. Far from it. While there hasn’t been much news about Google TV itself lately, the YouTube app for Google TV is getting an update today. Google says that its developers have “been working like it’s a 24/7 hackathon over here to bring all of YouTube to your Google TV.” With this update, the developers have added recommendations, a Google+ button and the ability to search for channels. The new version now also handles suddenly drops in bandwidth more gracefully. → Read More
Ever since Google released its cloud storage service Google Drive earlier this week, there has been some speculation as to what its integration with ChromeOS, Google’s cloud-centric operating system, would look like. Today, Google released the first developer version of ChromeOS 20 with support for Google Drive. As expected, Google Drive is now deeply integrated into the ChromeOS file manager, though this is clearly just a first effort and still needs quite a bit of work. → Read More
Google’s sale of a previously purchased arm of the company this morning, 3D modeling software SketchUp, to Trimble, isn’t just something it does “every now and again”. It’s actually Google’s first divestment ever, according to two sources, and we’re hearing the search giant made a profit, as it sold SketchUp for more than it bought it for back in 2006.
This could signal a sea change in how Larry Page executes his vision for a leaner, more focused Google. The company frequently shuts down extraneous products, but that requires redistribution of their team members internally. If it’s now willing to sell them instead, Google could streamline around the theme of making user’s lives more convenient, while making some money at the same time. → Read More
Google is prolific when it comes to its in-house production, churning out new ideas and products all the time, and the company isn’t afraid to pull the plug if the idea doesn’t pan out. In fact, CEO Larry Page said in his “Update From The CEO” earlier this year that Google has shuttered or combined 30 products since April 2011. But this morning found Google making a relatively unusual move, announcing not a closure, or a purchase, but a sale(!).
The product, called SketchUp has become one of the most popular 3-D modeling tools in the world, with over 30 million activations of the program in 2011. And today, Google announced that the SketchUp team and technology will be leaving the Google campus to join Trimble Navigation, for an undisclosed sum. → Read More
Right now there’s a cutthroat battle between social marketing platforms to represent the world’s biggest brands. In hopes of seducing dollars from offline and clients from competitors, social marketing platform FanBridge has just hired former Buddy Media’s GM of lifestyle brands David Dowd. Previously the head of branded content biz dev for Google, his experience courting fashion, retail, luxury and other companies there and at Buddy Media will give him the edge as FanBridge’s new VP of brands.
Selling big brands on the future is tough. There’s plenty of social skeptics still clinging to TV. Many companies aren’t shifting their whole marketing budgets to digital, but that’s the direction the money is flowing. Be it Buddy Media, FanBridge, or their many competitors, those who can lock down trend-setting clients and get positioned for the coming wave will surf their way to multi-million dollar contracts. → Read More
Blogs and content sites are only willing to give up valuable real estate and clutter themselves with social sharing buttons if they get ample referral traffic in return. That’s the big problem with the Google+ Share button that launched today with no launch partners or live examples of it in use. The embeddable button for posting webpages to the Google+ news feed with an optional comment is going to struggle for installs unless Google can prove it drives page views.
After flops like the Google Buzz and +1 buttons, and plenty of competition, it’s going to be a tough sell. In the end, it could backfire, sidestepping the bullshit registered user counts Google cites as awesome growth and exposing the social network as a place few people spend time. And it’s all kind of sad because the G+ Share button could be the answer to the Google+ content drought. → Read More
After years of rumors, it looks like the Google Drive has finally arrived. While we are still waiting for official word from Google, but earlier today, the company apparently mistakenly posted the French translation of its announcement to its French blog (and quickly deleted it, of course). Thankfully, intrepid Google+ user Gerwin Sturm made a copy and ran it through Google translate. → Read More
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