May 15th, 2013

With Google Play For Education, Google Looks To Challenge Apple’s Dominance In The Classroom

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Google I/O, the company’s sixth annual developer conference, got officially underway in San Francisco on Wednesday, and it was an eventful day. It took the company every minute of its epic three-hour keynote to unfurl a laundry list of announcements and updates, seemingly across every product category in its arsenal — from Android, Chrome and Search to Maps, Google+ and Hangouts — each with a… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Unboxing The First Chromebook Pixel Given Away At Google I/O

Sebastian Rodriguez waited in line 90 minutes to be the first person at Google I/O to get the Google Chromebook Pixel, the premium laptop given to all conference attendees today. Rodriguez is a a software engineer with Thales, a data security company. He humored us and did an “unboxing” of his new  Pixel. He was hoping to get Google Glass as were most of the people we talked to at the… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google’s Three-Hour I/O Keynote Boils Down To These Highlights And One Theme: Foundation

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Today’s three-hour-long Google I/O keynote came with plenty of announcements, but the company mostly assured us that it is focused on building frameworks that can benefit developers and consumers.

We saw a more unified company that needed three hours in one session to get their message across. Breaking today’s keynote up into two days would have disrupted the momentum coming out of a company… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Stock Price Closes At 52-Week High Of $915 On First Day Of Google I/O As Apple Takes Another Drop

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Google’s stock price came close to its 52-week high on the first day of Google I/O today, hitting $915 per share at close. In comparison, Apple today dropped 15 points to close at $428 per share, 277 points off its 52-week high. This morning, Google stock jumped to $909 per share from its opening price of $895 when Co-Founder Larry Page hit the stage at around 11:45. It is now trading at… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

See The New Google+ Photos Experience In Action, Making Your Pics Better

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Google+ is getting a big update for its photos experience, which is rolling out to users now. Initial impressions show a work flow that makes it easier to tweak pictures quickly and even automatically, without requiring that you learn a huge amount about Photoshop or other editing software. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

The App Store’s 50B Downloads Vs. Google Play’s 48B: Android Closes The Gap

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Apple had a bit of a head start when it came to mobile software sales, since it launched its App Store earlier than the Android Market (which would later become what we call Google Play today). But the gap was more pronounced in terms of downloads when they kicked off, but lately the gap has been closing, and today both Play and the App Store announced very close milestones. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Makes Email More Interactive With Customizable Gmail Action Buttons

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Google today announced a small but cool update to Gmail. For emails where the developer has enabled this feature, Google will now show action buttons next to emails in your inbox that let you take actions without even opening the message. The cool thing about this, however, is that it’s open to developers, who can now use the schema.org markup language to add their own actions to Gmail messages. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Death By A Thousand Cuts? Google Wallet’s Plan To Take On PayPal Leverages Chrome, Android, Google+, Gmail & More

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Flying under the radar amid a flurry of announcements from today’s Google I/O developer conference is the bigger news of how Google is stepping up its efforts to compete with online payment giants, such as PayPal. It plans to do so with a revamped checkout process for the web, mobile web, within mobile applications running on Android, and more.

It’s a proposed death to PayPal by a thousand… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Maps API Gets A Visual Refresh, Available For Opt-In Today, Coming To Most Sites In August

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At its I/O developer conference, Google today announced a new Maps API for mobile developers, updates to Maps for Android and iOS and a completely refreshed Google Maps experience on the desktop. After the main keynote, however, Google also announced a major visual refresh for sites that use its Google Maps API. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Folds Wallet Support Into Gmail So You Can Send Money As Attachments

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Phew. Google just spent the last three hours or so showing off new developer tools, APIs, service overhauls, and the occasional gadget, but not everything the search giant rolled out today got a turn under the spotlights at the Moscone Center. Case in point: according to a post on the official Google Commerce blog, Google Wallet support has been baked into Gmail, so users will soon be able to send… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Cloud Platform Opens To General Availability With 3 Million Applications, New Pricing And PHP

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Google announced today at I/O that it made Google Cloud Platform generally available, marking a milestone for the cloud community and the real arrival of a giant to contend with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its pay-as-you-go pricing. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Deep Dive With The New Google Maps For Desktop With Google Earth Integration, It’s More Than Just A Utility

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Using Google Maps today is great for what it’s supposed to do, get you from point A to point B. But there’s a lot of information that Google collects that you never get a chance to glance it, or don’t have a reason to. Google wants to give you more reasons to explore a map, and it’s obvious with the preview of its latest version. This truly is a re-imagination from the… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google I/O Session Totals Show Deeper Importance Of Google Cloud Platform

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We are more than two hours into the Google I/O keynote, the kickoff to a three-day event with 171 sessions. But something is quite different from last year. Google Cloud Platform now represents about 14% of all the sessions at the event, second to only Google Chrome and Google Android.

Last year, Google Cloud Platform had just been launched and so the sessions were more introductory in nature. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Unites Gmail And G+ Chat Into “Hangouts” Cross-Platform Text And Group Video Messaging App

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Today at I/O, Google rebranded “Hangouts” as a new unified, cross-platform messaging system. It lets people text, photo, and group video message across Hangouts’ Android and iOS apps, plus its Gmail and Google+ site integrations. Hangouts rolls out today, replacing Google Talk [GChat] and G+ Messenger. While it doesn’t support SMS yet, it could challenge Facebook Messaging and Apple’s iMessage. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google+ Photos Can Now Automatically Create Animated GIFs, Panoramas, HDR Images And Better Group Shots

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Photos have always been at the center of the Google+ experience and at I/O today, Google announce a major update to Google+ Photos that now makes use of the many of the tools the company acquired when it bought Nik Software last September. The focus of this update is squarely on automating a lot of the photo editing and sharing process. Google+ can now, for example, automatically enhance the tonal… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google+ Redesigns Its Stream To Include Multi-Column Google Now-Esque Cards, Auto-Hashtags And More

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Google+, the social layer that Google introduced almost two years ago, has evolved quite a bit since its launch. Today, the company announced a complete redesign, taking cues from the mobile experience that has drawn positive feedback from those who don’t even use the service. In total, Google has launched 41 new features for Google+, including a completely revamped Photo product, Hangouts app and… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Apple Bagged 57% Of $12.5B In Smartphone Profits In Q1; Android 43% – Samsung 95% Share Of That, “More Than Google”

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Apple continues to lead both as the single-most profitable smartphone maker, and by default the most profitable platform, taking 57% of $12.5 billion in smartphone operating profits in Q1, according to figures out from Strategy Analytics today. Android took 43%, equating to $5.3 billion, Neil Mawston, chief analyst with the firm, tells TechCrunch. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Says Its Chrome Browser Now Has Over 750 Million Monthly Active Users

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Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for Chrome and Android today announced that the company’s Chrome browser now has more than 750 million monthly active users. That’s up from 450 million users Google announced at last year’s I/O. This number, as far as we can see, includes both desktop and mobile users. Google launched Chrome in 2008 and since then, as Google… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google To Begin Offering Unlocked Samsung Galaxy S4 With Stock Android For $649 On June 26

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Google is offering a version of the Samsung Galaxy S4, arguably one of the top current Android devices, with Jelly Bean 4.2 unlocked on Google Play beginning June 26, the company revealed at I/O today. The news is big because it’s the first non-Nexus device to get blessed with this opportunity, and Google says it will be updated in time with all other Nexus devices. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Launches “Google Play Music All Access” On-Demand $9.99 A Month Subscription Service

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Google just launched an on-demand subscription music service at I/O called “Google Play Music All Access”. Its web and mobile interfaces feature millions of songs you can play instantly, recommendations, charts and playlists, and instant radio stations. The Spotify competitor launches today in the US for $9.99 a month, comes with a free trial month, and sign-ups before June 30th get it for $7.99. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Launches Android Studio And New Features For Developer Console, Including Beta Releases And Staged Rollout

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Today, during Google’s I/O developer conference, the company announced a group of tools for app developers, including a new developer suite called Android Studio. It’s an IDE based on IntelliJ. This was a popular announcement, as the crowd “ooh’d” and “ahh’d” as screenshots were shown on stage. This tool has more options for Android Development… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Announces It Has Reached 900M Android Activations, Sundar Pichai Calls It “Most Popular Mobile OS In The World”

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Today, Google announced that its Android operating system has reached 900M activations. This is a 500M increase from last year’s announcement. At one point, Google said that it was experiencing 1M Android activations a day. These activations have brought in 48M app installs for developers who have launched on Google Play, which is why the I/O conference exists. As we noted yesterday, Google… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google I/O: Watch The Live Video Stream Here

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Google’s annual I/O conference in San Francisco kicks off this morning at 9am PT/noon ET and, as usual, the good folks from Mountain View are making a live video stream of the event available for all of you who can’t be there in person. Unlike other years, when Google ran two separate keynotes on the first two days of I/O, the company is only running a single keynote this time around. → Read More

May 14th, 2013

I/O 2013: One Google, Under Page, With Unification And Usability For All

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This is the evening before Google’s I/O developer conference and there’s already been quite a bit of chatter about what the company will announce and share at the conference. One important thing to note is that there will only be one keynote this year, a mega three-hour session where Google will talk to the attendees about all of the important things that have happened over the past year and what… → Read More

May 14th, 2013

Google CEO Larry Page Reveals He’s Recovering From Vocal Cord Paralysis, Will Fund Research

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In a post on Google+ today, Google CEO Larry Page discussed for the first time publicly the voice problems he’s been experiencing. It doesn’t sound like Page is experiencing life-threatening medical problems, but it has become a topic of interest every time he speaks publicly. During the last earnings call, Page actually spoke for a long time, albeit a bit labored, and answered questions at the… → Read More

May 14th, 2013

Google: 40% Of Android Users Accept Google+ Sign-In’s Over-The-Air Install Prompts

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Ever since Google launched its new Google+ Sign-In for mobile and the web, the company has been saying that one of the most popular features on the platform is the ability for publishers to direct users to install their native Android apps with a single click during the sign-in process. These over-the-air installs, Google today revealed, have indeed turned out to be a nice way for publishers to… → Read More

May 14th, 2013

Outlook.com Users Can Now Chat With Their Google Friends

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Here is something you probably didn’t see coming: Outlook.com just enabled chat interoperability with Google Talk. This new feature, which is rolling out worldwide over the next few days, allows Outlook.com users to chat with their friends on Google, just like they can already do with their Facebook friends. Given the somewhat strained relationship between Microsoft and Google, this move… → Read More

May 13th, 2013

Google Launches Version 1.1 Of Its Go Programming Language, Promises Noticeable Performance Boost

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Google today launched version 1.1 of its open source Go programming language. It’s been more than a year since Google launched version 1.0 of Go. The language, which puts an emphasis on concurrency and speed, has seen three maintenance releases since then, but the team has been conservative with bumping up its version numbers. This new version, however, the Go team writes, introduces a… → Read More

May 13th, 2013

Google Commemorates The 37th Anniversary Of Atari’s Breakout With Image Search Easter Egg

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If you’re an old-school gaming nerd, then you might remember a little game released by Atari called Breakout. The idea was simple, just hit a ball around and break things. Don’t let the ball get past you, or you lose. → Read More

May 13th, 2013

At I/O, Google Will Be Tracking Things Like Noise Level And Air Quality With Hundreds Of Arduino-Based Sensors

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If you’re attending Google I/O this week, you will be a part of an experiment from the Google Cloud Platform Developer Relations team. On its blog today, the team outlined its plan to gather a bunch of environmental information happening around you as you meander around the Moscone Center. → Read More