Google has sent out press invitations this afternoon for an Android event to take place on October 29th. The shindig will kick off at 10 a.m. EST at Basketball City in New York.
The invitation itself doesn't give many clues as to what could be announced. But given the fact that the holidays are just around the corner, we're guessing it's new hardware...
Google's pricey $12.5 acquisition of handset maker Motorola Mobility didn't change the dynamics of patent wars as Google hoped it would. Recently, Microsoft and Apple scored a major win in a patent dispute in Germany, forcing Google's Motorola subsidiary to pull all of its Android-based smartphones and tablets from store shelves in the country.
Luck continues to be in short supply at Mountain View, California. Today, the Windows maker has expanded the Motorola patent case to include Google Maps for Android, specifically naming Google as a defendant.
As the public fight between Google and Microsoft gets uglier, Google faces a real possibility of Google Maps becoming unavailable in Germany as early as next spring. Ouch!
Google chairman Eric Schmidt sat down with The Wall Street Journal tech columnists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher last night to talk Maps, Apple and Android. “Apple should have kept our maps”, he remarked. “Apple decided a long time ago to do their own maps", he revealed, suggesting Google very well knew way in advance that the iPhone maker would nuke Google Maps from orbit on iOS devices.
He also talks about the epic iOS versus Android fight and comments what it would take to persuade him to become an Apple CEO. A couple more highlights and a nice video right after the break...
Google today finally updated its slick Google+ mobile client with some much-needed support for iOS 6 and the iPhone 5's four-inch display, so people don't experience the ugly letterboxing. More importantly, the program has received a couple new features that finally make it easy to edit posts on the go. And if you have your own page on the Google+ social network, you can now view, post and comment as your Google+ page...
Google is rolling out a revamped mobile experience on smartphones as we speak. It's pretty slick as Google has finally adopted the design language used across its other web properties. The company really hit the ball out of the park in terms of design: the refreshed site features a black navigation bar which slides in and out of view smoothly, akin to the Facebook app.
Matter of fact, it almost feels like a native app. Knowing it's been ages since Google updated its Search app on the iPhone, the prettified mobile site will certainly better serve your needs. My favorite capability has to be the ability to navigate Google's most popular services with ease, all without losing track of content at hand...
Back in August, Google showed off an update for its iOS Search app that included its new Google Now digital assistant technology. It's the same tech it uses in Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean).
During the showing, the company said that it had submitted the update to Apple and was awaiting approval. But more than two months have passed now, and we haven't heard a peep...
I was a little surprised realizing the blogosphere today reported on a nice little nugget I discovered nearly a month ago, but here it goes. If you visit the iTunes Preview page on the web for Google's Gmail iOS app and check out the screenshots, you will notice a nice tribute to Apple's late CEO Steve Jobs in two screenies. The images depict an email message with the subject line “Your favorite Steve Jobs quotes” and contain the following text in the message body...
When Google announced last month it was acquiring Nik Software, the brains behind Snapseed, a popular Photoshop alternative on the iOS platform, Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra made a promise on Google+ that "we’re going to continue offering and improving Nik’s high-end tools and plug-ins". The search giant has kept its word as it pushed an update to Snapseed for the iPhone and iPad on the App Store, bringing long-awaited iOS 6 and iPhone 5 compatibility...
Apple, Google, Samsung and others meet today - not in a courtroom but in neutral Switzerland. The discussion, moderated by the UN's International Telecommunications Union, focuses on whether the key principal of patent licensing is preventing products from coming to market.
The talks follow Apple and Samsung high-profile patent dispute and the EU investigating whether a number of companies are abusing the patent guidelines...
Handset maker Motorola Mobility, a Google subsidiary, has pulled all of its phones and tablets from the German market, following unfavorable rulings over patents. This has got to be a huge blow as the search Goliath has been struggling to return Motorola to profitability after it had acquired the ailing cell phone company for $12.5 billion, gaining a treasure trove of 17,000 mobile technology patents. Motorola reported an operating loss of $233 million during the second quarter so you could imagine that any disruption in sales is not going to look good in its next earnings report...
Following up on a revealing Sunday piece by The New York Times that looks at patent wars from both sides to conclude that Apple (like other tech giants) patents anything and everything just to prevent rivals from patenting the same inventions, Google's chief legal counsel David Drummond has now called for an all-encompassing software patent reform.
Criticizing broken patent system in the United States, Drummond advocates for a change to make the system more akin to Europe and some other countries, which make it much harder to get a software patent of any kind, let alone something as basic as Apple's slide-to-unlock gesture...
As we told you earlier today, Google is thought to have teamed up with Samsung on a new flagship tablet. The device is believed to feature a ten-inch display with a greater resolution and pixel density than the iPad 3's Retina display.
The search company reportedly feels so confident about the upcoming tablet that it's gonna adorn it with the Nexus branding. With Amazon having recently unveiled an 8.9-inch high-end tablet and now Google eyeing the same market segment, rivals are taking the fight for tablet supremacy to Apple's own turf, where the iPad dominates. Should Cupertino be concerned?