Sources close to Google say the search giant seriously underestimated the demand for the 16GB version of its 7in Nexus 7 tablet, which has sold out from stockists and other sources while demand for the smaller 8GB version remains comparatively low.
Not a bad problem to have. And it makes sense, the N7 is a great device.
Google announced on Friday morning the acquisition of Sparrow, an e-mail client for iOS and Mac users that is widely considered an improvement over the GMail app for the iPhone and Apple’s native Mac Mail app.
It’s a full acquisition, meaning tech and Sparrow’s full Paris-based team will join Google. The exact terms and price of the deal were not disclosed.
While Sparrow’s team will continue to update and support its existing application, don’t expect any new features or vast improvements on the app as it currently stands. Most of what we’ll see going forward are critical bug fixes, small updates and basic functionality maintenance.
I do not use Sparrow (it doesn't work well for the volume of mail I receive), but I can understand why Mac and iOS users of Sparrow would be concerned.
Good move on Google's part, though.
David Pogue for the NY Times:
How is Google able to offer a deluxe tablet for the same price as Amazon’s bare-bones one? I asked the Nexus tablet team if it was playing a game of razors-and-blades here, losing money on every tablet with the intention of making money by selling books, movies, music and TV shows. Google concedes it makes no profit when it sells this tablet from its Web site — and therefore it must lose money on each one it sells in a store.
The New York TImes:
There Google scientists created one of the largest neural networks for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors, which they turned loose on the Internet to learn on its own.
Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Google begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
To spite Apple? Or jJust in case Apple opens up their Maps API?
MG Seigler's take on the Google Maps press conference:
The mere fact that Google decided to hold a press conference just five days before WWDC (where Apple's mapping product is widely expected to be unveiled) said pretty much all you needed to know. When it was announced last week, it seemed like it may have been thrown together at the last second to pre-empt Apple's event. Now we can be positive that it was.
The Next Web:
The timing is interesting, considering that WWDC begins on June 11th, and Apple is expected to introduce its own Google-free Maps solution including ‘mind blowing’ 3D.
Google Chrome has been long expected to leapfrog Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to take its position as the Web’s most used browser and, according to data from Statcounter, the momentous change of leadership happened last week.
Liz Gannes:
The price for the company would be about $100 million, according to one of the sources.
Social stuff.
Something for you to try if the regular stories about Android phones that can’t be upgraded seem befuddling or ponderous: don’t think of Android as an operating system the way you think of Mac OS X, iOS, or Windows as an operating system.
Instead, think of it the way you think of your car’s engine.
Generally speaking, the Android-phone you’ve purchased is married to the version of Android it shipped with, just like your car is more or less married to its engine, which has been customized to some degree just for your car. If a better engine is developed and you want it in your old car, it’ll take a lot of work to make that happen, and most people won’t (and likely shouldn’t) try doing it themselves.
The companies shipping Android phones are just like the automobile manufacturers in this regard. They start with an Android base, customize it for the smartphone they’ve made, and send it out the door. It does the specific things they’ve determined it should do in the specific way they’ve decided it should do them, and that’s it. If there’s a problem they can’t get around fixing (Pinto), they reluctantly push an update (recall).
The idea that you might later want to update the OS sometime down the road isn’t the kind of thing that concerns them. Nobody should be surprised about this and in fact, it makes good business sense for the carriers and Android phone manufacturers. What better way to encourage you to buy a new phone than to make your old one obsolete (at least from the software perspective) after only several months?
You could argue that Apple does this too but there is a difference: we can still run the latest version of iOS on all of the iPhones currently sold by Apple, which includes the three-year old iPhone 3Gs.
Managers at Google Play are considering a plan to sell films.
Ars:
About two years ago, Chris Sharp says, Google unscrewed all the light bulbs inside the hardware cages it occupied at that Equinix data center. “They had us turn off all overhead lights too, and their guys put on those helmets with lights you see miners wear,” he tells Wired. “Presumably, they were bringing up custom-built gear they didn’t want anyone else to see.”
Ooh, it’s Google. I’m so scared.
The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.
Bloomberg:
Google Inc. said it will support a industry agreement to introduce a “do-not-track” button that will be embedded in Web browsers.
“We’re pleased to join a broad industry agreement to respect the ‘do-not-track’ header in a consistent and meaningful way that offers users choice and clearly explained browser controls,” Google Senior Vice President of Advertising Susan Wojcicki said in an e-mailed statement today.
Yeah, I bet they’re pleased.
WSJ:
Google Inc. is close to launching a cloud-storage service that would rival one of Silicon Valley’s hottest start-ups, cloud-storage provider Dropbox Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
I love what Dropbox does. I’m also concerned about privacy and security issues there, and the youth of the company’s founders.
I also love what Google is capable of, its amazing infrastructure, its scalability. But I’m concerned about privacy and security issues there too, despite —and perhaps because of— the experience of the people in charge.