Thursday: December 24, 2009
FTC decides to take a better look at Google's aqcuisition of AdMob.The FTC's decision to take more time digging into the AdMob deal means Google probably won't be able to take over the company for several more months, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast wrote in a Wednesday research note.
Wednesday: January 2, 2013
Avis acquires Zipcar for a mere $500 million.Avis says it expects to generate $50 to $70 million in ‘annual synergies’ as a result of the deal. FYI: The company booked $7.3 billion in revenue for the full year 2012, and employs roughly 29,000 employees today. The transaction is expected to close in the spring of 2013.
Tuesday: December 18, 2012
Why Google's GMail outage may be a sign of things to come.The answer is that most of the coders behind today’s popular websites and services are deploying their code when it’s ready—not at some pre-determined point when downtime may not be noticed. It’s called continuous code deployment, or some variation on that theme, and everyone from Facebook and Netflix to smaller services do it. While it may occasionally cause a few blips, those blips should be shorter and less catastrophic.
Thursday: December 13, 2012
Google releases standalone maps application for iPhone.The long awaited Google Maps application is finally here and it actually looks and functions very well. There have been numerous reports that this app beats out it's Android counterpart in terms of design and overall look and feel. All of the characteristics you expected from a proper maps application are here - turn by turn directions, vector maps, rotational maps and general location information. Some amazing work here from Google.
Wednesday: December 12, 2012
Want to know what the world searched for in 2012? There's a Google Zeitgeist for that.They even prepared a little video with inspirational music to go along with it. How very Google of them.
Monday: December 10, 2012
Google Fiber not coming to your neighborhood any time soon.Turns out that Google would need about $140 billion to roll out their fiber network to the entire continental United States. At present time, they only have about $45 billion in the bank and that doesn't begin to include other associative costs. Long story short, if you really want to try out Google Fiber you should think about moving to Kansas.
Monday: November 14, 2011
Everything you never knew about Google's top secret lab where they pursue future ideas.According to the article, this magical place (dubbed 'Google X') is where Google may or may not be working on the following futuristic concepts: 1) an internet fridge that orders food when it's low, 2) driver-less cars, 3) space elevators, 4) personal assistant robots for your home, 5) networked coffee pots and gardening tools and finally 6) training monkeys to fly airplanes for special covert operations.
Monday: August 15, 2011
Mozilla to do away with version numbers in Firefox with new non-numbered version update.Google has taught us all that people are too busy to remember version numbers these days. It's better just to keep updating software and have to worry about pesky version number conventions. Mozilla thinks this is a good idea and has decided to adopt this release schedule for future non-version-numbered releases of Firefox. Good for them.
Wednesday: August 3, 2011
Push Pop Press is the latest acquisition in Facebook's growing design talent roster.Mike Matas, one of the co-founders of Push Pop Press, is one of the designers behind some of the most familiar iPhone and iPad user interfaces that you've come to know and love. This kind of talent acquisition doesn't come along simply to tweak the look of an iPhone app. They must be working on something big. On a sadder note, Push Pop Press has announced that they have abandoned their planned publishing platform. However, their one offering is still available in the App Store - search for Al Gore's 'Our World'.
Monday: August 1, 2011
New report reveals that Google uses roughly 900,000 servers.The good news is that at least those 900,000 servers are the low-power high-efficiency breed of servers that one would expect a company as big as Google to be using. The source article has some other interesting tidbits regarding software that will automate data across multiple data center as well as Google's server expansion plans. Long story short, the number will probably go over a million in the near future.
Thursday: July 28, 2011
More people returned Logitech's Google TV box than actually purchased it in the first quarter.Ouch, with news this bad it can only mean one thing... price drop! If you are so bold to purchase one of these boxes you'll only be paying $99 bucks as opposed to the $249 you would have originally had to spend. You'll learn to love the clunky interface and all it's complicated intricacies, that is unless your cable company hasn't blocked you from using it. Good luck!