The company recently applied for an experimental license with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for an unnamed entertainment device, which CBS Seattle say is being tested out to determine the reliability of networks and to reveal any potential engineering issues that could occur.

Outside of the Google employees testing the prototype, nobody knows what exactly the device does but there are a number of theories floating around.  The main one is that it could be a new version of Google TV, which relaunched back in November, that syncs desktop, tablets, smartphones and TV with the same content.

Another theory is that the device is linked to the Android@home framework, where Google promises users that they can control household appliances such as alarm clocks and lights through an Android device. However, the blog Android@Home (no link to Google’s actual product) says this is unlikely as while the filing mentions its WiFi and bluetooth radio interfaces, it doesn’t mention the 900MHz based radio system that Google chose for its Android@Home system.

According to the FCC filing, Google describe it as an “entertainment device”, and that the tests will help them “modify the design in order to maximize product robustness and user experience.” There is also the mention of connecting to other home electronics equipment which suggests that laptops and TV will feature when this device is launched.

Another point to note is that while the testing began on January 17th, the end date for testing isn’t until July 17th meaning that Google may not release this device until the end of the year at the earliest.

All the regular features that you would associate with the desktop version is incorporated into the mobile version. On top of that, there are some other nifty features including the option to sync across both desktop and mobile versions when you sign into your Google account.

Even better, not only are your bookmarks and search terms from your desktop version of Chrome carried over to your smartphone, but if you’ve left any pages open on it, you can then open the same tabs from mobile Chrome, ultimately making the app more convenient and useful.

However, there are one or two caveats in place, the main one being that only those with Android 4.0 operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich) on their smartphone or tablet can download and use the mobile browser. That’s limited to just a few smartphones and tablets which means download figures will be quite limited. Also, it’s in beta mode so the chances of there being one or two bugs in the system is pretty likely.

However, it’s an important step for Chrome who have been making strides towards becoming the most popular browser worldwide and knocking Internet Explorer off its perch. When the browser loses its ‘beta’ tag and if it’s made available for older Android models, expect this takeover to happen sooner rather than later. If you have an Ice Cream Sandwich enabled phone, you can go onto the Android market and download the beta version now.

Launching later today, ‘Solve For X’ is described by Google as a forum to encourage and create new technological solutions for existing problems through crowd sourcing. By allowing the brightest minds a place to collaborate and develop ideas in a wide range of technological areas, it’s hoped that the site will become a hub for scientific endeavour.

“Solve for X is a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the solutions could help billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction. And radical in the sense that there is some real technology breakthrough on the horizon to give us all hope that these ideas could really be brought to life.”

Earlier today, a invite-only conference for ‘Solve for X’ was held with the conference consisting of presentations discussing topics such as low-energy, low-cost water desalinization to stretchable silicon biosensors. On his Google+ page, the company’s Rapid evaluator (points for guessing what that job position actually means) Richard DeVaul stated that the conference videos and other materials for ‘Solve for X’ would be posted by the end of the day on the main site wesolveforx.com.

Google’s new project is hoping to become a TED-style site where users will give talks about their chosen field – a concept hinted by a leaked image which shows a ten-step guide for those interested in putting together their own presentation. While TED talks have a wide range of subjects and topics, Google’s new venture seems to be more specialised focusing on technology so developing a niche area could work in their favour.

But since these are areas that Google has links to, you could be cynical and say that this is an exercise in talent acquisition for them, finding the brightest minds who are as of yet undiscovered. It’s certainly cheaper than buying out a company which is a trend for the major companies but time will tell whether or not ‘Solve For X’ will make any ripples in the field of technology, knowing Google’s aggressive stance in promoting their own products, we’ll be sure to hear more about it over the coming weeks.

Google Chrome responded to the news on their official blog, where they said: “Security has always been a core focus of Chrome, so we’re particularly honored to see several of its security benefits recognized in the report.” Google Chrome published snippets of the report on their blog, which revealed that Chrome was recommended due to its auto-updated bundled Adobe Flash player and its sandbox technology, which according to the report is the browser that is most consistent at implementing the security.

It is interesting that the report states that: “Comparable mechanisms implemented in other browsers are either weaker, or non-existent”, which indicates how Chrome is ahead of its rivals in terms of security online, and will no doubt give users another reason to look to Chrome for browsing security and continue to build on its rapid growth. In 2011, Chrome was the second most popular browser last year, according to a post from The Verge. Internet Explorer was the most dominant browser, but Chrome was consistently growing while Internet Explorer’s grip over the market declined.

However, the fact that Chrome was recommended by a government agency for its security features needs to be viewed alongside the recent announcement of changes to Google’s terms of service and privacy policy, which will see it track users across their different sites. Users looking for a secure web browsing experience may well take Germany’s advice on board, but those troubled by Google’s latest plans include US Congress and data-protection authorities in Europe, and this indicates that Chrome’s plans for web browser victory could be scuppered by those who object to the changes to the policies and opt for another browser.

Where Is The Growth?

If you look at the Google share price over the last five years even though it has had spikes it has more or less stayed stagnant for 5 years. This can happen to big companies (Look at Microsoft) and it could be a sign that the days of huge growth are gone for Google. Another sign that they are just moving towards “ordinary”. While Apple, Facebook and Microsoft are successfully diversifying their revenue streams across different verticals (gaming, mobile, virtual goods, apps etc) Google is still completely focused on advertising. You could see it as a one trick pony or you could see it as remarkable focus on Google’s behalf. Either way if ever they do run in to problems with advertising (lets say by losing their search dominance) then the road downhill could be slippy indeed.

Social Media To Blame?

The web is shifting beneath all of our feet at the moment. Is Google In Danger of Being Shut Out of the Changing Internet? is a brilliant piece that shows how the shift in the last few years is walling more parts of the online world off from Google’s spiders and crawling ability. Google simply can’t get at the data on Facebook or within Apple’s apps and it is hurting their end product. They are still the dominant search engine but the web is no longer just static web pages. Realizing this shift Google have poured massive time, money and promotional muscle in to Google +. It’s not last chance saloon by any means but Google knows that it needs to start creating it’s own social platforms so as data can start flowing in to their system instead of Facebook and Twitter or else they could be in huge trouble. I personally don’t think Google will be able to bridge the gap. Facebook and Apple have way too much momentum and mainstream appeal. The tide is turning on Google and the harder they try to stop that tide turning the more mistakes they are making and the more “evil” they are becoming in the eyes of many. They haven’t done anything wrong but the Internet is just changing in front of their eyes and their positioning is leaving them exposed.

Trading security for accessibility may have meant less hoops for developers to jump through, which in turn means more apps are made available and more choice for users, yet the susceptibility of infection still looms large when the app in question is from a small developer

Now, Google Android have announced a new service developed to combat this problem. Codenamed Bouncer, the service provides an automated scanning of the Android Market for potentially malicious software which doesn’t require developers to go through an application process.

Announcing it on their Mobile Blog, once an application is uploaded, the service immediately analyses it for known malware, spyware and trojans. If the system finds anything that indicates that an app is not all that it seems to be, it analyses the data against previously analysed apps to determine whether it’s malware or not.

Android’s Vice President of Engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer said in his post that the percentage of device applications increased by 250% year-on-year and that the total number of apps downloaded from their market place went over 11 billion.  The biggest announcement was the decrease in the number of malicious apps downloaded from the market, dropping by 40% during 2011.  Speaking about the reasons behind this drop, Lockheimer said:

“This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise. While it’s not possible to prevent bad people from building malware, the most important measurement is whether those bad applications are being installed from Android Market – and we know the rate is declining significantly.”

Other core malware prevention features include sandboxing, which places virtual walls between applications and other software on your Android device, preventing the spread of infection; Permissions which function similar to apps that you install on your Facebook profile – allowing you to determine what an app can and cannot do – and a Malware removal option.

It difficult to determine how much of a drop in malware downloads Bouncer will bring with it, especially since -judging by the above quote where it’s malware and security companies that are spotting bad apps – Google’s approach towards tackling malware has been relaxed to say the least. Bouncer is a step in the right direction but it only highlights just how much Google really needed to up its game when addressing this problem.

One large malware problem could be enough to undermine the work and reputation Android has developed, nor is there any real factor that could discourage developers from creating malware apps with offenders being booted out and losing their $25 developer registration fee. Yet with 11 billion apps being downloaded, Google will want to make sure that there is a follow up to Bouncer to ensure that a large malware problem doesn’t become a reality in the future.

The Paris court upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographics against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free mapping services to some businesses. Bottin Cartographics provides the same services for a fee and claimed that Google’s strategy was to undercut competitors by temporarily swallowing the full cost until it gained control of the market.

The court ordered Google to pay €500,000 in damages and interest to the plaintiff as well as a €15,000 fine. A spokesperson for Google France said that the company would appeal the decision saying that the service is both beneficial for both internet users and websites.

While this is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application, the company has gotten into trouble before in France. During March 2011, the country’s data privacy regulator imposed a fine of €100,000 on the company for collecting private information while compiling its Street View service.

On Google’s support page for the Blogger platform, a category entitled “Why does my blog redirect to a country-specific URL?”, updated on January 9th 2012, explains why Blogger readers will be directed to country-code top level domains in coming months. The stand-out piece of information that reveals the move towards censoring posts, relates that the country-codes are in part being used in order to remove posts that contravene a country’s specific laws.

Q: Why is this happening?

A: Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD.

This country specific censorship is a worrying development, given that there have been other reports of Google ‘selectively censoring’ posts, and the new terms closely echo Twitter’s decision on censorship, and is part of a wider trend of government intervention in how the web is run. It seems that now your experience of the web and freedom on speech online will very much depend on where you are in world, which is a worrying prospect indeed.

paidContent report that the changes in question are based on the feedback received from OnePass’ dozen or so trialist partners.  The move is timely after Apple recently revealed its intentions to enter the education market with the publication of its own ebooks. Currently the commission required to publish on Google is 10% in comparison to Apple’s 30%.

Google has been working closely with various publishers, both publicly and privately, to try and make the system more user friendly and meet the needs of publishers. The system will continue to include flexible content payment through Android apps and through the web with its 10% commission.

The service was originally revealed as a beta product back in February 2011. While publishers decide what price and terms they sell their content through, uptake of the service remained slow while it stayed a beta product. Now the relaunch aims to make OnePass an official service and boost publication numbers which will include a deal involving eight large French publications.

The industry in France is currently in turmoil due to crumbling distribution processes, slow digital reform and dependence on state aid so the relaunch of OnePass is of great interest for French publications.

The service gives you the opportunity to select a photographer if there’s one available in your city, and arrange with them directly to schedule a photo shoot. Once that’s arranged, the photographer will arrive to take a 360 panoramic photo of your outlet to give visitors an idea as to what to expect if they arrive.

If you wish, you can blur some parts of your panoramic photo once it’s uploaded up or even have it taken down. At the moment, Google say they can’t take down individual panoramas so if you have more than one, you’ll have to take all down or leave them online. Users also have the option to add the embed code onto their web page, Google+ or Facebook page.

The service is available in a limited number of cities in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, France and the U.K. If the service isn’t available in your area, you can still upload images via Google Places. Below is an example of one: the Spice Market located in New York City.

Announcing it on their LatLong blog, the service will alert users to any unforeseen events that is happening in their area such as tornadoes, floods, thunderstorms and blizzards. When you access the service, you have access to information concerning weather reports, earthquake alerts and public safety announcements, all taken from the National Weather Service, The US Geological Survey (USGS) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Through checking the site, you will be notified of any potential warnings that may be close to you. Clicking on a particular warning will give you further details such as the exact weather report, the severity of the report, traffic diversions and advice about what actions to take if you’re in the area. There’s also the option to search particular area to see if there are any perilous conditions to take into consideration, so if you’re heading on a long journey, you can discover if there are any diversions or precautions you must take before you set off.

All weather alerts and details can be found on the Public Alerts page. So far, only the U.S. has access to the feature, but the company is planning on introducing international content as well making the feature available on other Google products sometime in the near future. While it’s in the early stages, the service could be expanded to include different emergency alerts but how specific they’ll go (will they cover major crashes, burning buildings etc?) has yet to be seen. 

The news was announced on the Official Google Blog, which explained the reasoning behind the changes: “We’re rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect, and how we use it, in a much more readable way.”

The main change is that if you’re signed into a Google Account, then they will track your movements across their sites, which may disgruntle and worry some people. Naturally enough, users will have their concerns about the information that Google collects on them, and what happens to that information. But Google aims to present this as a positive change – an improved, easier browsing experience that is tailored to each user:

“Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”

They maintain that their Privacy Principles have not changed, and that the changes will mean a smarter Google that will give you better search results, tailored to you, based on information collected on the other Google sites. But this may have the effect of narrowing your horizons of what you  see on the web, with Google dicating what they deem to be relevant to you, it kind of takes the fun out of stumbling around sites hoping to find something new and different.

The updated policy and terms will come into effect for all Google users from March 1st 2012, although the changes are not likely to be obvious to your browsing experience – as all the work is going on behind the scenes – unless a spot-on search result makes you think “Yes this is exactly what I’m looking for – how did they know?”

And the answer is they know because they are following your every move on their sites. Google suggest that if you don’t like these changes then don’t use Google, but they also list ways you can change certain settings relating to privacy in the preview of the new policy such as viewing and editing your ads preferences, using Google Dashboard to review and control information linked to your account, setting your browser to block cookies, and taking information out of some of Google’s services.

It will be interesting to see how users respond to the changes, do people care enough about online monitoring to educate themselves about the changes? The changes could come and go largely unnoticed and uncontested, or perhaps there could be a repeat of the furore about privacy that surrounded Google Buzz – no doubt Google will be hoping for the former. But already there has been negative response to the changes, with The Guardian reporting that “ Google could log browsing habits on YouTube or Google+ to sell targeted ads in Gmail or search.”

Now Google’s VP for product Bradley Horowitz announced last night that Google+ will now allow users to add alternative names to their profile.

To an extent, this is a move that makes sense. Online users are more comfortable when they’re communicating through a profile that isn’t their real one. The personal restrictions that would come from using your real identity are gone, allowing the user to be more expressive in their opinion and thoughts.

The reason why trolls haven’t been mentioned yet is because Google+ still requires your real identity to work. The alternative identity is to accompany your real name (the example Horowitz gives is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). However if you have an pseudonym and you wish to use it on your profile, you must be able to prove it to Google either through references from offline in print media, news articles etc., or prove that you have such an identity with a meaningful following.

What Google defines as ‘meaningful’ isn’t entirely clear but it should stamp out any people who create an identity solely to troll, a bane for any site and users who end up arguing against them.

A Path Towards Pseudonyms

Recently Disqus found that over 60 per cent of users who comment use pseudonyms and been found to be more expressive in their opinions and thoughts while commenting. While Google+ aren’t exactly pandering towards that group, they are trying to bridge the gap between them and their own standards to increase the number of active uses, a detail that they twisted last week.

With so many new additions to the formula being introduced in such rapid succession, it’s virtually impossible to determine how many more changes Google+ will make to make the site a success. Changes like this may help then win new members in the short term, but as mentioned earlier, it comes across as somewhat desperate on their end. Considering Google+’s stance, it’s unlikely that this will lead to them introducing full blown pseudonyms in the future but with the way they’re progressing and their need to win users over, such a change may come sooner than we think.

Blake Ross, who is currently director of product at Facebook has just launched a new project in collaboration with  Tom Occhino (developer at Facebook) and Marshall Roch to show Google up by demonstrating what its social search feature is really capable of.

Google is currently defending its position to prioritise Google+ results in social search, as they claim they are restricted from indexing certain content from other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. As Ross as shown with his site ‘focus on the user’ however, this seems to be untrue. Focus On The User presents search results with a number of other social sources, and the developers claim they never show content that isn’t already indexed by Google.

You can test the site for yourself by easily installing the button on your toolbar (found on the site here). Also check out this demo that the team put together:

The effect of the addon can be seen in the example below. The first search shows the standard Google results when searching for ‘cooking’, with Google+ profiles clearly displayed prominently on the right:

When the ‘don’t be evil’ bookmark is pressed, the results differ significantly:

I know which version of Google I’d rather have.

The war is on

While this project is exciting enough as it calls Google out completely on what they have deemed relevant social results, but even more so given that it’s come from within Facebook. Since the release of Google+, rivalry between the two has been escalating and now Facebook is getting involved in what isn’t even its native area: search, and showing that they can do it better.

And it gets a little more interesting as the site claims that developers from Twitter and Myspace were also involved in building the site. Google versus one social network is one thing, but Google versus a team of networks is another, and this may be the first real example we’ve seen where Google has taken its monopoly too far.

After all the hype of the earnings call and the plunging share price settled, it was worth having a look at the numbers in more detail and the following infographic does a great job of distilling just how Google made all its money in 2011. You would be forgiven for thinking last week that the company was in serious decline, but with $37 billion in revenues and solid year on year growth, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

If Google does have one problem, it is the fact that many accuse it of being a one trick pony with 97 per cent of their revenues coming from advertising, but if they do only have one trick it is a pretty nice trick to have. It’s also interesting to see some of the big spenders on the list with the likes of Amazon spending over $50 million on adwords alone.