Posts tagged: google
ZDnet:
Remember the Nexus S? It was the Google flagship phone prior to the Galaxy Nexus. It’s not that old, it was the official Google phone until late last year and is still available for purchase. As a Google flagship phone, it was promised to get the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) update shortly after it rolled out late last year. Nexus S owners are still waiting for it.
Such horrible after-sales service.
It took iOS just 15 days to get the same percentage of users on the latest OS version as are currently on any single version of Android.
Needs no further elaboration.
Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is ready! No, not really.
Google is done with Ice Cream Sandwich, but the process of getting it to customers is far from over. Having Google release the source code is just the first step in the process — now the real work for handset makers begins.
Motorola and Sony have outlined the process still left before it hits customer’s phones. As Motorola says, “Once source code is released from Google, it doesn’t automatically update to your device.”
So what are these steps?
Only 5 long steps. Android users, happy waiting!
Marco Arment:
A truly open facet of Android — the open-source codebase, minus Google’s apps — has enabled one company with a strong market position to step in, effectively close it, and make themselves the gatekeeper. And as gatekeepers go, Apple looks quite benevolent by comparison.
Sounds absolutely plausible. I’m delighted actually.
On the epically failed launch of the Gmail for iOS app:
The native Gmail app isn’t really shit (though some would disagree) — it’s just buggy as fuck and extremely underwhelming. It’s just a wrapper around UIWebView. That means the only native thing about the app is Push Notifications. And guess what they managed to fuck up? Yup.
I’m not surprised, it seems like Facebook has stolen all the talents from them.
On Wednesday, Google retired a longer-standing “plus”: the + operator, a standard bit of syntax used to force words and phrases to appear in search results. The operator was part of Google since its launch in 1997 and built into every search engine since.
Just because it clashed with Google+ profiles.
I smell a downhill for Google given the recent string of horrible product releases.
Sure way to help with sales!
Google will keep fighting, but realistically, the jury will get to see the Lindholm email. As a result, there’s a fairly high risk for Google that it could be found to have infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property rights willfully, which in turn would result in triple damages and, even more importantly, an injunction — the maximum leverage Oracle could possibly get in order to dictate the terms of a license deal.
Exciting!
On Friday, August 12, Google filed inter partes reexamination requests with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the two patents asserted in patent infringement claims by Lodsys against, among others, several Android developers. The patents subject to these requests are U.S. Patent Nos. 7,222,078 and 7,620,565.
We have had a chance to review the reexamination requests, and after that review we believe Lodsys is in for a rough time. We have seen reexam requests before, but when we saw these, the above quote came to mind. Lodsys, you shouldn’t have brought a knife to a gunfight.
Good job.
More administrator features in the control panel are now available to the free version of Google Apps. These features include delegated administration, multi-domain support, user policy management and more.
Wow. They’ve made the Google Apps (standard edition) even better!
I’ve gone from one tweet to knowing an entire family’s names, location, address, contact details, what they look like, how they are connected to the military and, potentially, where a part of the US army is coming under fire.
I stop there because I am already completely freaked out by just how far I’ve already got from a few Google searches.
In future, rather than having classes on computing literacy, we’ll have classes on privacy literacy.
Google doesn’t want to do what Motorola Mobility does (sell phones); it wants the company because it’s got a big heap of patents—seventeen thousand, apparently, with seven thousand more under review. And this is why today’s news is profoundly depressing.
I can sense that other Android OEMs, such as Samsung and HTC, would be rushing to find an alternative mobile OS, and Windows Phone 7 looks the most attractive thus far.
The smartphone landscape would be exciting to watch as upheavals are really threatening competitors without their own mobile OSes.
Judge Alsup — the federal judge presiding over this litigation — attaches a great deal of importance to that particular document. At a recent hearing, he essentially said that a good trial lawyer would just need that document “and the Magna Carta” (arguably the origin of common law) to win this case on Oracle’s behalf and have Google found to infringe Oracle’s rights willfully.
Google’s behaviour is pretty appalling. What’s happened to “Don’t be Evil”?
The project, for which the camera-laden car was plying the streets of Kesennuma last week, aims to provide the disaster zone with a precious record of the damage, and to track the progress of reconstruction. Towns and cities along the coast have signed on to the effort, despite Google’s previous problems with Street View.
Practical application of technology to solving critical and urgent real-world problems. The good thing is that there’s little corporate bureaucracy in stopping such things from happening.
On this per head basis, only Singapore, which has been criticised by Human Rights Watch as an “authoritarian state”, asked for private data more frequently than Britain. Australia came third, with 345 requests, and France fourth, with 1,021.
The said report from Google can be accessed here. The data may be interesting to some of you.
