Google appears to have paid bloggers to write about Chrome in a way that violates its own paid link policy, according to Search Engine Land. If Google applied a similar penalty to those it’s doled out to past violators, the Chrome download page would be removed from its search engine results for between a month and a year. Don’t bet on that happening, though. The campaign is another example of how Google’s diverse business can lead it to trip over itself.

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“Google+ is about sharing the right updates with the right people – making sharing online just like sharing in real life. Just like in real life, sometimes you just want to hang out with friends. Hanging out on Google+, with your family, your friends, or new friends you don’t yet know, is more than just multi-user video chat. It’s about eliminating borders and bringing people together around the world. It’s about people.”

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As online retail sales continue to soar, brick and mortar stores are seeing margins dissipate. Online holiday sales are expected to grow 15 percent to $37.6 billion this season while retail sales in physical stores are only expected to increase by 3.8 percent to $469.1 billion. Best Buy recently reported a 29 percent drop in profits because of discounts and sales of top grossing electronics. The fact is that the electronics retailer was probably forced into offering deeply discounted deals in order to compete with e-commerce giant Amazon. And it doesn’t help that Amazon is now offering discounts to consumers on any product purchased via its price comparison mobile app, another huge blow to physical retailers.

Brick and mortar retailers need to figure out a way to compete with Amazon and other e-commerce giants that doesn’t eat into margins. Deals and coupons simply aren’t enought. And as former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson has said, retail isn’t broken, stores are. So how are retail stores going to survive? While mobile may be the technology e-commerce companies are using to jab physical stores, it is also the technology that may save these stores. Personalization and data are the two key factors that could save retail stores; and the vehicle by which these technologies can be utilized is via the mobile phone.

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The past few days, there’s been a lot of talk about web browsers. The report that Google will be paying Mozilla close to one billion dollars over the next three years to ensure that their search engine remains the default for Firefox is fascinating for a few reasons. The biggest is that Google now makes a Firefox competitor, Chrome. And it got me thinking about Safari.

Remember Safari?

While Chrome has skyrocketed from 0 percent market share in August 2008 to over 25 percent last month, Apple’s web browser lingers somewhere between 5 and 8 percent, depending on what numbers you look at. While its growth seemed to stall out in late 2008/early 2009, Safari has been growing again since then. But it has been at a very slow, methodical pace compared to the Google browser.

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The social enterprise has been growing as more and more companies look to incorporate Facebook-like communications among workers. Jive (which just debuted on the Nasdaq), Yammer, and Salesforce are all betting on the social as an integral part of productivity and business processes in the future. And it looks like Google will be entering the space soon. Google’s Vice President of Enterprise Amit Singh tells us that Google will soon bring a more in-depth Google+ social experience to businesses and institutions using Google Apps.

In October, Google announced that Google Apps users could sign up for Google+, allowing businesses and educational institutions to share posts directly to other users within their workgroups and/or universities.

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Today, SetJam, a company that describes itself as “building the future of TV,” has announced it has been acquired by Motorola Mobility. The company’s products currently include a customizable TV and movie widgets designed for embedding on websites, plus developer-friendly tools like a REST API and XML download of the SetJam database.

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Tablet use has skyrocketed over the past year, so it makes sense that advertisers are flocking to these devices and platforms to reach consumers. Google tells us that in November 2011, AdMob saw 8 billion ad requests coming from tablets, an increase from 1 billion in December of 2010, and a 700 percent increase in the past year.

To put that number in perspective, AdMob sees nearly 3 billion ad requests a day globally. In May, Google introduced new formats for tablet ads, allowing advertisers and publishers to serve full-screen interstitial ads built with HTML5 on smartphones and tablets.

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Google is full of fun easter eggs hidden within search queries. Remember the barrel roll? Here’s one more that’s been discovered, just in time for the holiday season.

Type ‘let it snow’ in search, and you’ll see snowflakes falling down the page. The first hit is the Christmas carol ‘let it snow’ by Dean Martin (which we’ve embedded below). Eventually your search results page will cloud over and the search button turns into a defrost button to clear out the clouds.

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The age of driverless cars may still be years in the future, but to those playing a long game, that just means that work now will pay off even more later. Google is getting into the business of tracking and managing driverless cars, and while the technology actually steering and perceiving the cars’ surroundings will be undergoing lots of changes, some fundamentals of their interactions with the world can actually be explored today.

For example, Google has been granted a patent for a “landing strip”: a parking spot with special markings that help the car park itself, and then allow it to determine exactly where it is without relying on GPS or landmarks.

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As you may have heard, Google is getting into the holiday giving spirit these days, as it late last night announced that it has dished out an additional $40 million in philanthropic grants, targeted at science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), girls’ education, and even fighting slavery. (You can read more in Google.org SVP Shona Brown’s blog post here.)

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We’ve been having our fun with the things Google has been saying lately, but it’s worth looking at how people with money on the table are feeling about the company. Which is, pretty good compared to most other tech rivals, including Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era.

Google stock is up 16.16% in the past three months. The only other company that’s had a net positive over the same period is, er, Yahoo.

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A surprising piece of news was buried in an article this week. Friday, The Mercury News reported the three top executives at Google, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, are offering to pay $33 million to finish the restoration of the historic airship hangar at Moffett Field. The giant structure, built in the 1930s and called Hangar One, sits a few miles from the Googleplex and it’s well known the Google executives have special permission from NASA to park their jets at Moffett.

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“Six months from now you’ll say the opposite. Because ultimately applications vendors are driven by volume. And the volume is favored by the open approach that Google is taking.”

That was Google Chairman Eric Schmidt speaking at LeWeb a couple days ago. Specifically, he was addressing a question from the audience wondering why most big application developers are still choosing to develop for the iOS platform first instead of Android.

First of all, if you haven’t watched Schmidt’s entire talk with Loic Le Meur yet, you really should. They cover a range of topics important to both Google and the broader tech space. Plus, it will avoid the small situation that arose yesterday when Schmidt was misquoted, making him sound much more arrogant about the Android platform than he actually was.

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Over the last six months, Google has been doing a full house clean — or maybe it’s been shedding an old skin. On the one hand, that’s meant sunsetting products that just aren’t cutting it anymore, like in September when it announced plans to shutter Aardvark, Desktop, Notebook, and Fast Flip, etc. and then last week it continued with saying au revoir (officially) to Wave, Knol, Friend Connect, and more. Then, on the other hand, Google has been updating its look, well, its design.

Today, Google announced on its blog that it’s “ready for the next stage” of its redesign, which apparently includes a new Google bar that will enable users to quickly switch between each of its products, and share easily with Robert Scoble (er, Google+ users). That means arrivederci to the black bar.

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It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of flipping on a television and seeing a commercial for anything Google-related seemed totally implausible. For many years, the company seemed to take a certain pride in not having to resort to traditional marketing channels, and it eschewed TV ads entirely for well over a decade of its existence. Then, in February 2010, the web giant made its TV commercial debut: with a Super Bowl Ad, no less (and a fantastic one at that).

Since then it’s become a bit more common to see Google ads running on TV — the company has started promoting its Chrome browser with ads, for example. And earlier today it ran what appears to be its first TV spot for its social network, Google+.

The ad, which appeared during the Thanksgiving Day Lions/Packers game, focuses heavily on Google+’s Circles feature and Hangouts, telling viewers that it’s “Sharing, but like real life”.

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It’s not always easy to tell when Chrome has been updated, and at any rate the changes aren’t always significant enough to even wonder about it. But a pair of features worth caring about are user-bound come early 2012, according to Google developer advocate Paul Kinlan, who spoke recently at the Develop conference in Liverpool.

The conference is focused on game development, so it’s no surprise that the features are also game-centric. First, there will be plug-and-play gamepad, webcam, and microphone support in Chrome, and second, the nascent real time communication protocol WebRTC will begin to be implemented as well. This opens the door for seamless video chat and conceivably OnLive-like gaming services.

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Like everyone else in the tech world, I’ve been reading Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Simultaneously, I’ve been reading the reactions to it. The one that seems to stand out above all others amounts to: “wow, Steve Jobs was a jerk”. Those who have followed Apple closely throughout the years have heard dozens if not hundreds of stories of Jobs berating employees. Isaacson’s book brings a handful of these stories to the masses, and it’s rubbing some people the wrong way.

Here’s the thing: the tech world could probably use more jerks.

I’ve been thinking about this since reading Robert Scoble’s post a couple days ago entitled “Why I’m treating startups more critically lately“. Depending on who you ask, Scoble is a lot of things. But I don’t think anyone would call Scoble a jerk. In fact, most would probably say he has the opposite problem. He tends to puff up startups into thinking they’re the best thing in the world. (A social network for your Roomba to take pictures of food? Brilliant! Game-changing!” — Okay, I exaggerate. Slightly.) That’s great. For five minutes. After that, reality often sets in.

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Research firm research2guidance this morning published a report that offers key findings from an analysis of mobile app trends in the Android Market. The first point is perhaps not so surprising: Although we think of Android as having significant global reach as a mobile operating system, the U.S. remains (by far) the largest market for Android apps. According to the study, with over 3.49 billion total downloads as of September 2011 and with 50 percent of Android app downloads (to date) originating at home, the U.S. is dominating the Android app market.

However, the research firm is quick to point out that, although the U.S. leads, there is some saturation happening here, while other markets abroad have come to represent significant growth areas — and hotbeds of activity. In fact, (though this may not be news, it doesn’t seem to be widely covered in the U.S.), South Korea has the second largest market in terms of app downloads and market share.

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We’re here at Mr.Brainwash’s Studios in Los Angeles, waiting for a Google “special event” to start at 2pm PST, where the company is most likely going to announce the Google Music store, because that’s what everybody and their mother is saying.

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Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. And e-commerce spending is up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season. I sat down with executives from Google, eBay, PayPal and ShopKick to discuss the trends that are expected to emerge in the e-commerce space over the next few months.  They center around mobile, tablets, and deals.

PayPal has more than doubled its mobile payments volume since the 2010 holiday shopping season, and we haven’t even hit the thick of this year’s rush. eBay is projecting $5 billion in mobile payments volume in 2010 and this number could increase in the next few months. And Google projects that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and one of the biggest shopping days of the year) will come from mobile devices. Tablet devices are now a part of the online shopping experience and retailers are taking note. Clearly, all signs point to the fact that this could be the breakout year for mobile shopping.

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There have been a number of rumors circulating around Yahoo, Microsoft, and Aol of late, most of them focusing on a potential Aol/Yahoo merger, or Yahoo’s acquisition by Aol or Microsoft, etc. Well, it seems the companies have officially become linked, but they’ve run into each other’s arms not by way of M&A, but by way of display ads. Yes, the three internet behemoths today announced agreements that they hope will improve the process of buying and selling premium online display inventory. In other words, the agreements will allow each to offer the other’s display ads to their respective customers.

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By now you’re probably well aware that Google released their long-awaited Gmail iOS app today, only to unceremoniously yank it from the App Store when people pointed out that it didn’t really work. Google offered a mea culpa by stating that they have removed the app while they correct the problem, and that they’re working on a new version to be released soon.

Here’s a thought: just keep it. At least for a little while.

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In case there was still any doubt about the long-rumored “GDrive’s” existence, a page now appearing on Google’s search results offers a pretty clear indication that something is going on. On Writely.com – the online word processing service Google acquired in 2006 –  a test page is now appearing with a title that reads “test page for Platypus (GDrive).”

Well, there you have it.

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The early years of the 21st century forever will be known as the age of
social media. I don’t know if that’s something we should be proud of,
but nonetheless, here we are. During the past decad…

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There have been many self-driving cars made with different levels of success, but probably the most well-known project is the Google car.  What you may not have heard of, though is the autonomous Google cart, or golf cart to be exact. The first video after the break explains the motivation behind the cart and the [...]

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Is Jeff Bezos really like a “giant-brained alien?” In categorizing the Amazon founder’s unusual genius, Google (and former Amazon) engineer Steve Yegge compares Bezos and those like him to “hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs.” He is not trying to be disrespectful. He is just trying to explain how to go about pitching an idea to someone like Bezos. (The short answer: assume he already knows everything about the topic you are going to present, no slides, and “delete every third paragraph” of your pitch).

Yegge does this in a follow up post on Google+ to his earlier rant on Google+ and Amazon.

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Say goodbye to Android as you know it. Ice Cream Sandwich (otherwise known as Android 4.0) is coming, and it’s the biggest upgrade Android has seen to date.

But fancy new software isn’t the only thing Google’s been working on: they’ve also just announced their new flagship Android device, the Samsung-made Galaxy Nexus. I got to spend a solid chunk of time with both the new hardware and the new software, and have returned with a venerable mountain of first impressions and the best damned demo video you’ll find anywhere.

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We already know that YouTube is seeing 3 billion videos viewed per day day, but now the online video giant is now seeing a whopping 800 million people per month visiting the site, Google revealed in its third-quarter earnings report last week. And today, YouTube is also announcing the ability to sell merchandise, tickets and more via the site.

Through a feature called the Merch Store, YouTube partners will be able to sell artist merchandise, digital downloads, concert tickets and other experiences to fans and visitors. YouTube has partnered with a number of companies to launch these stores. Topspin is helping power merchandise sales, concert tickets and experiences; SongKick will help sell tickets for concerts; and iTunes and Amazon will power transactions for music downloads.

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The list of Microsoft’s patent buddies has just gotten a little longer today: the company has announced that they have entered into yet another patent protection deal, this time with Taiwan-based Quanta Computers.

Readers may recall that Microsoft’s past partnerships range from big names like Samsung and HTC, to less prominent firms like General Dynamics Itronix.

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If you had any lingering doubts that Samsung’s upcoming Unpacked event would serve as a launching pad for Ice Cream Sandwich (the next major build of Android), let them be cast away: Google has just gone and confirmed it themselves.

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