Android Police has scored aset of screenshotsfrom the next version of Google Hangouts, and it looks like Google is finally ready to integrate SMS messaging into the product. One screenshot shows messages displaying in the Hangouts app, marked as "xxmins via SMS." Another shows the settings screen with an option to "Turn on SMS" which will "Send and receive SMS with Hangouts." The report says the screenshots are from version 1.3 of Hangouts (the current version is 1.2) and that SMS delivery reports, MMS, and video sharing support are also included.
Android Police has a solid track record of getting access to early bits of Android, having acquired advanced copies ofAndroid 4.2 andAndroid 4.0in the past. (Full disclosure: I wrote those articles). While the site can't give a firm release date, chances are this is part of the coming wave of Android KitKat improvements.
Unifying the stock texting app and Google Hangouts is probably the Android community's most requested feature. It would bring Google's confusing mess of messaging apps down from three apps to two. There used to be fourmessaging apps (Google Talk, G+ Messenger, the stock texting app, and Google Voice), so this is an ongoing project for Google. If this change makes it into version 1.3, we'll be down to Google Voice and Google Hangouts.
That's right, there's still no Google Voice support. Hopefully that's next on the agenda.
ARM-based Chromebook uses a Samsung Exynos SoC and an IPS display. by Andrew Cunningham
The new HP Chromebook Pixel 11.
Andrew Cunningham
Google has announced yet another member of the Chromebook family this morning: the HP Chromebook 11, a new smaller system from HP that joins itsPavilion Chromebookandits upcoming Chromebook 14. The system is available now from Google Play, Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers starting at $279.
One of Google's stated aims with the laptop was to bring some features of the Chromebook Pixel down to a more affordable price point. While the high-resolution touchscreen and the all-metal construction obviously didn't make it, the computer does sport a 1366×768 non-touch IPS display, a significant step up in color and viewing angles from the TN panels we've seen in cheap Chromebooks to date. The system also retains the Pixel's multicolored light bar on the lid. The laptop comes in white or black plastic with one of four accent colors (red, blue, green, and yellow, Google's standard colors), and while the body is plastic it is underlaid with a magnesium frame.
On the inside, the specifications also take a step down from the Pixel, though they're still not too shabby. Like last year's Samsung Chromebook, the Chromebook 11 sports a dual-core ARM SoC from Samsung (the exact same chip, in fact—the Exynos 5250 combines two Cortex A15 CPU cores with one of ARM's quad-core Mali-T604 GPUs). This chip won't come near the performance of an Ivy Bridge chip from Intel, but it should be more than sufficient for Chrome OS, and it also allows the laptop to be completely fanless. 2GB of RAM, 16GB of solid-state storage, dual-band 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, and up to six hours of battery life are also standard.
The Chromebook 11's full-size keyboard, which at least at first blush actually has pretty good key travel. Like the Chromebook Pixel, the speakers are hidden beneath it.
Andrew Cunningham
Finally, the laptop includes a pair of USB 2.0 ports and charging via a tablet-and-phone-like micro USB port (which can also output video via the SlimPort standard, much like the recent Nexus devices). The system also comes with 100GB of Google Drive storage for two years, a 60-day free trial of Google Play Music All Access, and 12 free GoGo Inflight Internet sessions. A 4G version will be available, but pricing and availability has not been announced.
We'll be going hands-on with the HP Chromebook 11 later today, at which point we'll be posting impressions of the laptop's construction and more pictures.
Jefferson Graham previews Google's new Search and sees how it stacks up to Bing.
It's Microsoft vs Google in search: Bing is vastly improved, but Google, well, out Googles it.
by Jefferson Graham
Jenny Cameron prefers Google to Bing. (Photo: By Sean Fujiwara)
Microsoft has its work cut out for it with its provocative "Bing It On" search challenge.
Say this three times to a co-worker, and gauge the reaction: "People prefer Bing over Google for the Web's top searches."Skeptical, most likely.
The words are Microsoft's tag line in a marketing campaign for Bing, the No. 2 search engine after Google.
Google had 67% market share in July, compared with 18% for Bing, according to measurement firm ComScore Media Metrix. But its influence is growing: Bing now provides search results made with the Siri digital assistant on Apple's iPhone and iPad, and provides search for Facebook and Yahoo.
Meanwhile, Google recently celebrated its 15th birthday by announcing refinements in its search engine, so we staged our own "Bing It On" test and took a deep dive into search-land.
First, the bottom line: Bing is way, way better than you might think, vastly improved since its 2009 launch. It's a very respectable second opinion, and if you were forced to only use Bing for searches, you'd be well served.
But Google is, well, Google — home of the driverless car, Internet-connected glasses and very simply, the greatest search engine ever. It is not just a way of life for most computer users, it is also — at least for this columnist — far ahead of Microsoft, especially in mobile.
Both Google and Bing get the majority of their results from links — the more folks point to an article or website, the more likely it is to be at the top of results. Both tap into the vast array of online databases — Wikipedia, IMDb, YouTube, Amazon and elsewhere — to add additional information.
Google's newly enhanced results also look at what it calls the "Knowledge Graph," a massive database with 570 million items, connected 18 billion ways, according to Google.
The results understand questions — "What time is it in Tokyo?" — and conversations that begin with a question and continue with follow-up queries you can ask in shorthand.
For instance, we asked Google to show us photos of the Eiffel Tower, and continued with "What year was it built?" and "Where is it?"
Google got all three on the money.
It can now do comparisons — "What's the difference between olive oil and butter?" — and show the calories, carbs and total fat for each.
Additionally, the Knowledge Graph pulls from your various Google tools, as long as you're signed into Google.
You may or may not like this, depending upon how much personal information you want Google to have. But once you're signed in, Google can pull from your Gmail, Google+ social network, Picasa photo library and more.
In our tests, we asked Google to yank "my sunset photos" (from G+) and find my upcoming flight to New York (from Gmail), and both worked spot on.
In past USA TODAY pieces about Google search, we've heard from readers who were uncomfortable having Google know even more about them. They found Bing to be less intrusive.
Reader Rich Steinberg, a Bing user, said "I avoid using Google as much as possible. I don't trust them at all."
Reader Mark Jenkins said he switched to Bing, because he didn't like how Google tries to jump-start his queries by offering responses before he's finished typing the question. "Bing makes suggestions but does not start something until I say go."
Here by the beach, most consumers we spoke with were die-hard Google users.
"I only use Google," said Jenny Cameron, from Bakersfield, Calif. "It's my default."
Angela Stephens, visiting from Georgia, switches immediately back to Google when Bing shows up on her computer. "I never use Bing," she says.
But Gwen Speas of Oregon does. Her Bing search is part of her MSN home page, and she likes it. "I use Bing, but I say Google," she says. "I'm actually Binging."
Beyond the "Bing It On," campaign, Microsoft is working hard to woo users from Google by paying them. The Bing "Rewards" program distributes retail discounts and freebies, similar to a frequent-flier program. A massive Bing searcher (every two searches is worth a point) could get a free Redbox DVD rental (110 points), $25 off an Expedia flight (250 points) or a $5 Starbucks card (525 points).
THE NEW GOOGLE SEARCH
Google suggested we try the searches on mobile, where voice-activated search has gotten much attention from the company. The results — from flights, photos, olive oil vs. butter and a query about how many calories there are in a grape — handily beat Apple's Siri in speed and relevance.
Bing's app (on iOS, Android and Windows Phone,) paled in comparison:
• The Eiffel Tower query: Bing showed hotels near Eiffel Tower and a Wikipedia article about its history.
• "Show me my sunset photos." Results: Online sunset pictures.
On the plus side, when we asked Google and Bing a trick question — "How old is Punky Brewster?" —" Bing got it right, and Google didn't.
(Bing responded with the age of the actress who played Punky on the 1980s sitcom — Soleil Moon Frye — while Google responded with a link to a Wikipedia entry for the TV show as the top result.
So, it's great that Microsoft is spending lots of money and energy on improving its search results. No one wants to live in a world where Google's results are the only option.
While the company clearly overreached in claiming that people prefer Bing to Google (just look at the market-share data) Bing has morphed into a fine search engine.
Complaints about Google search largely have to do with privacy. Maybe you don't want Google to know what you're thinking, or fish through your e-mails and pull up your flight info, or give you search results before you've even finished typing.
That said, if it's basic information you're looking for, you want it to be fast and accurate, and are willing to surrender parts of your life to Google, well, it's still far and away the best game in town.
Seeking to stand out in a crowded photo-storage space,Loomsaid on Friday that it has raised a $1.4 million seed round to fund its vision for syncing photos across multiple devices.
Investors include Google Ventures, Tencent, DC Shoes founder Damon Way, and Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment.
Loom, a Y Combinator alum, is making the pitch that it is more than just a place to ditch one’s photos for backup. Rather, it creates multiple separate versions of each image for efficient and fast viewing on different types of devices. For now, Loom is Mac- and iOS-only, though the company aims to eventually support Android, PCs and Windows Phone.
In addition to the funding, the site is also opening its service to the public, after being in closed beta since July. Up to five gigabytes of storage is free, with 50GB of storage going for $3.99 a month, and 250GB going for $9.99 a month.
Anonymous sources are telling several outlets (includingAppleInsiderandTechCrunch) that Apple has just purchased Cue, a personal assistant service with more than a few similarities to Google Now. News of the acquisition (which, according to various sources, cost Apple somewhere between $35 and $60 million) follows thecomplete shuttering of the serviceyesterday.
Cue (once called Greplin) could pull data from a number of services including Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. It would then organize this data and present you with a unified list of relevant information whenever you opened the app. Android users with Google Now enabled already enjoy similar functionality—Google Now will dynamically track packages or show you the status of flights, for example, based on data it pulls from your configured e-mail accounts. With Apple's purchase of Cue, we would not be surprised to see Siri become capable of the same kinds of tasks in the future (in fact, this was something we asked for inour iOS 7 review).
TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarinopositsthat the service could also be used to improve the "Today" section of iOS 7's Notification Center. Currently, the feature can show you the weather and a brief summary of your upcoming day based on your calendar appointments, but Cue's ability to reach beyond your calendar for this sort of information could make the feature more appealing.
The bad news for existing Cue users is that the service has completely shut down. Customers who had opted in to the Cue Premium service "will receive a prorated refund" or can request a refund through the iTunes store. All Cue users' data has been deleted rather than transferred.
A company called Flutter has just announced that they've been purchased by Google. Flutter is a simple Windows and Mac OSX app that lets you control popular media players through a webcam. Just put your hand up to stop the media playback, point your thumb right for "next" and left for "previous." It seems like not many people had heard of Flutter (yours truly included) until Google took the company under its wing, but luckily the app is still available for download, so we snagged it and gave it a quick test.
The app works fantastically well and hand gesture detection is near-instant. It works with iTunes, Spotify, Rdio, VLC, Keynote, Winamp, Windows Media Player, and, with a Chrome extension, Youtube, Netflix, Pandora, and Grooveshark. Considering the length of that compatibility list, we suspect it's converting your hand signals into the standard media controls that adorn many keyboards.The homepageof the Flutter website has been replaced with the buyout message, but the original page is still up at https://flutterapp.com/home/.
Navneet Dalal, Flutter's CEO wrote to its users today:
When we started three years ago, our dream to build a ubiquitous and power-efficient gesture recognition technology was considered by many as just "a dream", not a real possibility. Since then, we have strived to build the best machine vision algorithms and a delightful user experience.
Even after we launched our first app, we didn’t stop our research; your enthusiasm and support pushed us to continue to do better. We're inspired everyday when we hear, for example, that Flutter makes you feel like a superhero—because any sufficiently advanced technology should be indistinguishable from magic, right?
Today, we are thrilled to announce that we will be continuing our research at Google. We share Google’s passion for 10x thinking, and we’re excited to add their rocket fuel to our journey.
We’d like to extend a special thank you to all of our users; your feedback and evangelism inspire us every day. Flutter users will be able to continue to use the app, and stay tuned for future updates.
The next question is what will Google do with a webcam gesture app? The most obvious choice is that it will integrate the functionality into Chromebooks, or Chrome itself. Flutter's hand gesture recognition could be a big differentiator and would keep the company a step ahead of the OEMs that are working to integrate Leap Motion's more frustrating hand gesture technology. With zero extra hardware required, it's much cheaper than Leap technology, too.
Using Flutter's capabilities in Android could be another path for Google. Currently, Samsung has a similar feature in its smartphones called "Air Gesture," which lets you accept calls, switch music tracks, flip through pictures, and turn the screen on, all through gestures performed in front of the front-facing camera.
If you're interested, you can try the latest edition to the Google Hivemind for yourself. The download is still up onFlutter's Web page.
AT&T's GigaPower promises "first all fiber" gigabit broadband to Austin.
by Jon Brodkin
The over 840,000 residents of Austin, Texas can probably thank Google for not just one, buttwo gigabit home Internet services coming to their city.
Google announced in April that it would bebringing Google Fiberto Austin by mid-2014. On the same day, AT&T said it would behappy to do the sameif "granted the same terms and conditions as Google" by the city.
Today, AT&T made it official—and it even hopes to get gigabit speeds deployed before Google. In an announcement titled, "AT&T to Deliver the First All Fiber 1 Gigabit Broadband Network to Austin," AT&T unveiled GigaPower, "a 100 percent fiber Internet broadband network in Austin that will deliver speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second."
GigaPower will be available in December with speeds up to 300Mbps in both directions, with true gigabit speeds arriving in mid-2014. A price wasn't announced, but AT&T promised that "Customers who sign up for 300 Mbps service will upgrade to speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second when available in mid-2014, and at no extra cost."
At the December launch, GigaPower will be available to "tens of thousands of customer locations throughout Austin and the surrounding areas." Further expansion will happen in 2014. AT&T is taking "votes" to decide which neighborhoods will be served at theGigaPower website.
Last month Googlefinallyrolled out an invite-only Beta of its real-time API for Analytics that will allow developers to programmatically take action based on the real-time data they get from Google’s service. However, competitor GoSquared, backed by London’s Passion Capital and Fred Destin’s Atlas Venture, has had an API of sorts out in the wild for over 2 years.
Today the feistyold but youngUK startup has released a supercharged version of that API, essentially providing developers with the nuts and bolts to build their own analytics service, dashboards, and make automatic data-driven changes to their sites, all powered by the GoSquared platform.
“The old API was a basic way of accessing real-time ‘how many people are online?’ style figures,” says GoSquared co-founder James Gill. In contrast, written from the ground up, the new GoSquared API introduces 10 entirely new API functions, including months of historical data, “and is unarguably the easiest to use analytics API available”, he says. “To anyone who’s tried using the Google Analytics API, the GoSquared API is like a breath of fresh air”.
Fighting words, indeed. But then GoSquared perhaps has reason to be bullish, having grown the paid-for service to 40,000 sites powered by its real-time analytics, as well as rolling out an entirely new version, including an updated Dashboard, and relaunch of Trends to include new metrics around growth stats.
“We’re tracking billions of page views per-month month, huge amounts of data, [and] we’re now handling analytics for some of the largest sites around,” says Gill.
It should benoted, however, that alongside Google the company has another heavily funded competitor inChartbeat.
Now – Real-time concurrent data about the visitors on your site right now.
Trends – Historical and trending information about your site, updated in real-time as new visitors reach your site. Also includes growth metrics for your site.
Account – GoSquared Account specific functions for easy administration and updating of settings.
Use-case examples for the API cited by GoSquared include a “trending articles” widget on a publisher’s site, a real-time analytics dashboard for internal use (GoSquared is eating its own dog food here by using the API to power its own offering), a 3D visualisation of where in the world visitors are coming from, or an e-commerce site offering visitors discounts on popular items in real-time.
More ambitiously, a service could provide analytics for its own user-base, letting GoSquared do the heavy lifting instead of building their own analytics engine. “Ultimately, if you can think of it, and it’s data-driven, you’ll likely be able to build it with the GoSquared API,” says the company.
It looks like a settlement is looming in a near-three year longEuropean Union antitrust investigation into Google’s search practices.Speakingat a European Parliament event this morning, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said Google has improved itsproposalsto allay antitrust concerns, including complaints that it presents biased search results which favour its own vertical services over rivals.
“With the significant improvements on the table, I think we have the possibility to work again and seek to find an effective solution based on a decision under Article 9 of the Antitrust Regulation,” he said today, adding: “We have reached a key moment in this case.”
Other aspects of the EU antitrust prove have focused on whether Google has been copying rivals’ content, such as reviews, and incorporating it into its own offerings. And, on the advertising side, whether it is shutting out competing providers and making it too hard for advertisers to port their campaigns to other services.
On the vertical search concern, Almunia said today that Google has made “significant improvements”, noting that rivals’ links are now “significantly more visible” and have “a larger space of the Google search result page… dedicated to them”. He also flagged up that there is space for rivals to display their logo next to the link, and “a dynamic text associated to each rival link to better inform the user of its content”.
Google’s competitors had also complained about the auction mechanism used to determine which of their links were displayed in its search results. Changes to that mechanism are included in Google’s latest proposals to the Commission.
“The new proposal foresees an auction mechanism which includes the option to bid for each specific query,” noted Almunia. “This is important to also ensure that smaller specialized search operators can be displayed.”
On the complaint about appropriating others’ content, Almunia said Google has “improved the granularity of the opt-out that is offered to third party web sites”. There are also tighter measures to ensure Google cannot “retaliate” against websites that make use of the opt-out, he added.
Google has also committed to no longer include in agreements with publishers “any provisions or impose any unwritten obligations” that would require publishers to source their requirements for online search advertisements exclusively from Google in relation to queries from users in the European region. “The new proposal improves the safeguards against possible circumventions,” said Almunia.
Regarding the advertising complaint, Almunia said Google has offered to “cease to impose any written or unwritten obligations that will prevent advertisers from porting and managing search advertising campaigns across Google’s services and competing services”. He added that this new proposal also provides “stronger guarantees against circumvention”.
Almunia also flagged up as a key commitment that Google has agreed to an “independent monitoring trustee” assisting the EC in determining that the principles outlined in its proposals are being implemented.
In terms of next steps, Almunia said the Commission will work with Google on the wording of the proposed commitment text in the coming weeks, adding that he has asked Google to provide data that shows the impact of the new proposals. The EC will also send out requests for information to industry players to get feedback on the draft proposals. This informal consultation process will take the place of another formal “market test”, according to theFT.
“We know the general positions of the complainants and other stakeholders. What we need now is to receive concrete technical elements on the effectiveness of the proposed package in order to conclude whether this new proposal is satisfactory from a competition point of view,” Almunia added.
“If our investigation on this improved proposal is satisfactory, I will continue the Commitments route and end up with a formal decision next Spring. Otherwise, I will be forced to turn to a procedure under Article 7 of the Antitrust Regulation: this would mean sending a Statement of Objections to Google in the coming months, to which Google could formally respond in writing and during an Oral Hearing.”
Almunia ended his speech by reiterating that if a company does not comply with antitrust commitments the EC can impose a fine for that breach, without having to prove an infringement of antitrust rules — noting that such afine was levied on Microsoft earlier this year, amounting to €561 million.
Search giant faces $5 billion in fines if it can't satisfy EU concerns.
by Katie Collins
Google's latest proposed concessions may be enough to bring the three-year-long EU antitrust investigation into the company's search practices to a conclusion, according to a top official. The EU's investigation centers on claims that the search giant is blocking competitors, including Microsoft, from its search results.
"Now, with the significant improvements on the table, I think we have the possibility to work again and seek to find an effective solution based on a decision under Article 9 of the Antitrust Regulation," said Joaquin Almunia, vice president of the European Commission responsible for Competition Policy, in a speech.
"Although I cannot describe the details, I can tell you that the new proposal more appropriately addresses the need for any commitments to be able to cover future developments," he added.
He went on to say that one of the most significant improvements suggested by Google involved vertical search, which was the issue that drew the most criticism from complainants. The next step of the investigation will be for the EU to invite those who have taken issue with Google's search to provide their own feedback on the proposals. Almunia has expressed a hope that a settlement will soon be reached.
Google's latest proposals weresubmitted at the beginning of Septemberin an attempt to reassure the European Commission—which is the EU's antitrust regulator—that it is was taking its concerns seriously, and to avoid a $5 billion fine. This followed a previous round of proposals submitted in April, which were rejected two months later, after which Google was givenone final chance.
"While competition online is thriving, we've made the difficult decision to agree to their requirements in the interests of reaching a settlement,"Reuters reportsGoogle's general counsel Kent Walker as saying. This suggests that while Google is attempting to comply with the EU in order to avoid the fine, it isn't thrilled about having to adjust its search practices in favor of its rivals.
Last year,Google acquired Waterloo-based startup BufferBox, which provides shipping locker service to make it easy to get things delivered reliably even when you’re not sure where you’ll be when they’re arriving. The startup built its service on the idea that people never want to see another missed delivery door tag ever again, and began rolling out availability in Toronto, a big consumer market near its HQ last year.
BufferBox is now venturing further afield (asteased earlier this year), with aprogram expansion in San Francisco that takes its kiosk service closer to Google’s home territory. The BufferBox model allows local businesses to essentially become a substitute post office, receiving packages on behalf of BufferBox users during business hours when they’re guaranteed to have someone on staff to accept delivery. Members then get an email notification as soon as the package as delivered so they know when to go to the local business and grab it.
In SF,BufferBox locationsinclude Dogpatch Cafe, Coffee Bar, Noe Hill Market, 7-Eleven, Mission: Comics and Art and more. The service is also tied to Google’s recentShopping Express service expansion, which allows people in the SF area to get their packages on the same day they place their order.
This marks the first sign of new market expansion since the acquisition of BufferBox last year, which cost the search giant a reported $17 million. At the time, Google said its motivation in acquiring the startup was to help “remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money.” Paired with its same-day service, the BufferBox experience definitely contributes to that ultimate goal, by making shopping online as easy as popping down to the coffee shop on the corner on your way home from work.
Google’s BufferBox business competes in many ways with Amazon’s Locker pick-up service, but the Google version now going live in SF tweaks the model by having humans handle package acceptance, and it has the added benefit of driving foot traffic to local stores. Google is taking its time with the rollout, however, which usually means there’s a lot to work out with the economics of the model before scaling it to any kind of wide coverage. BufferBox says to expect more integration, and more geographic expansion in the future, however.
Google todayannouncedthe launch ofWeb Designer, a new tool for building interactive HTML5 sites and ads. The company first hinted at this launchin June, but had been quiet about it ever since. Web Designer, which Google calls a “professional-quality design tool,” is now officially in public beta andavailable for downloadfor Mac and Windows.
As Google notes in today’s announcement, Web Designer was developed to allow advertisers to easily create HTML5 ads for mobile and desktop. Until recently, Google argues, advertisers “didn’t have the tools they needed to easily develop content fit for today’s cross-screen experiences” and Web Designer aims to be the tool to create these experiences.
While this ad pedigreeshines throughacross Web Designer (the default layouts are for DoubleClick rich media ads and AdMob mobile ads, for example), there is nothing in the tool that would prevent you from building interactive single-page sites and animations for other purposes, as well. Some of the features, however, are currently only available for ads, though Google says it plans to expand these tools for other purposes in the future.
At its core, Web Designer is a visual tool, but you can also delve right into the JavaScript andCSSto fine-tune different aspect of your site. Indeed, Web Designer allows you tomanipulate all of your codedirectly in a built-in editor and lets you quickly preview your creations in every browser you have installed on your machine.
The tools come with all the usual visual design tools you’re probably familiar with. Some of the more interesting ones Google has developed for Web Designer include a pen tool for free drawing, as well as a timeline for managing your animations. Web Designer also features the ability to create3D content using the power of CSS3, as well as a set of pre-built components for galleries, maps and embedded YouTube videos.
Foranimations, one of the core features of the application, Web Developer features a Quick mode for building animations scene by scene and an advanced mode that gives designersmore control over each of the elements on the page.
Returning to the
