Introducing Google Wallet

In the past few thousand years, the way we pay has changed just three times—from coins, to paper money, to plastic cards.

Now we’re on the brink of the next big shift.

Introducing Google Wallet
Google Wallet is an Android app that makes your phone your wallet. It stores virtual versions of your existing plastic cards on your phone. Simply tap your phone to pay and redeem offers using near field communication, or NFC

Payments, offers, loyalty, and so much more
Google Wallet has been designed for an open commerce ecosystem. It will eventually hold many if not all of the cards you keep in your leather wallet today. And because Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will be able to do more than a regular wallet ever could, like storing thousands of payment cards and Google Offers but without the bulk. Eventually your loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets, even your keys will be seamlessly synced to your Google Wallet. And every offer and loyalty point will be redeemed automatically with a single tap via NFC.

The future of commerce starts today
Google Wallet is coming soon. When it launches, you’ll be able to use Citi® MasterCard® cards and the Google Prepaid Card with Google Wallet. You’ll be able to tap to pay at hundreds of thousands of merchants.

At launch, Google Wallet will be compatible with Nexus S 4G by Google, available on Sprint . Over time, we plan on expanding support to more phones.

This is just the beginning, but we believe that, in time, your phone with Google Wallet will be the one thing that holds everything you need to carry.

More info about Google Wallet, visit http://www.google.com/wallet/

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Google Acquires Zagat

Google has placed one of its biggest bets on location to date, acquiring local reviews giant Zagat.

Writing on the company’s official blog, Marissa Mayer, Google‘s vice president of Local, Maps and Location Services, wrote, “Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering — delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.”

Zagat is far cry from the startups you typically talk about in the location space. The company was founded 32 years ago and started as a printed guide to restaurants, with “Zagat Ratings” becoming an industry standard.

More recently, however, Zagat has reinvented itself on the web and with mobile apps, bringing it into competition with the likes of Foursquare and Yelp.

Location has been a tough nut for Google to crack. The company acquired early location-based social networking service Dodgeball in 2005, only to eventually shut it down and see founder Dennis Crowley leave to start Foursquare. More recent attempts include Latitude, a largely forgotten Foursquare competitor, and Hotpot, a recommendation engine that’s baked into Google Places. The company also appointed Mayer, one of its most prominent executives, to lead its location efforts in late 2010.

While we don’t have a price tag on the Zagat acquisition yet, it’s safe to call the buy one of Google’s biggest to date in the content business. Here’s a look at some of Google’s largest acquisitions through the years:

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Google Voice Users Can Now Export Texts, Voicemails & Phone Numbers

An update to Google Takeout, the search giant’s data export service, now allows Google Voice users to retrieve all of their account data.

“We believe that our users should be able to export any data that they create in (or import into) one of our many products,” Google engineer Anthony Jawad writes in a post on the news.

“This means that all of the data associated with your Google Voice account, from your call history to voicemail messages, greetings and call recordings, is now available for download,” he adds.

The Google Takeout update, also announced by way of the quirky YouTube video below, comes courtesy of The Data Liberation Front, a team of in-house engineers building products to help users move their data in and out of Google.

Google Takeout was first released in July. The service launched with the ability to export data from Buzz, Contacts and Circles, Picasa Web Albums, and your Google profile.

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Google Celebrates Freddie Mercury’s Birthday With an Amazing Animated Doodle

Today’s Google doodle celebrates the birthday of Queen’s legendary singer Freddie Mercury, and it’s definitely one of the most interesting doodles to come out of Google‘s workshop yet. Note that the doodle will become visible on Sept. 6 in the U.S. out of respect for Labor Day.

One of the best vocalists ever in rock music, Mercury was born on Sept. 5, 1946, and he died in on Nov. 24, 1991. He was known for his flamboyant presence on stage, amazing four-octave vocal range and an unforgettable series of hits which ranged from hard rock to power ballads to neo-classical pieces.

Today’s doodle is also accompanied by a blog post from Google, which was written by none other than Queen’s guitarist Brian May, who recently performed at the MTV Video Music Awards with Lady Gaga.

“Some people imagine Freddie as the fiery, difficult diva who required everyone around him to compromise. No. In our world, as four artists attempting to paint on the same canvas, Freddie was always the one who could find the compromise — the way to pull it through. If he found himself at odds with any one of us, he would quickly dispel the cloud with a generous gesture, a wisecrack or an impromptu present,” May wrote.

And the animated doodle itself … well, we won’t spoil it for you. Just go to google.com and hit play.

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The 10 Most Expensive Google Acquisitions

Global search corporation Google, Inc. added to its already hefty empire when it announced its planned acquisition of Motorola Mobility the morning of August 15. The purchase marked Google’s most expensive acquisition to-date at a staggering $12.5 billion.

Google has acquired more than 100 companies over the past ten years. Curious about its most expensive acquisitions thus far? Flip through the gallery below to discover how Google has integrated its top ten priciest purchases:

1. dMarc Broadcasting
In January 2006, Google acquired advertising company dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million. Google integrated dMarc into its AdSense app.

2. On2 Technologies
After negotiations between the two companies, Google acquired video compression company On2 in February 2010 for $133 million in Google stock. On2 designed video codec technology which Google used to optimize its WebM video format.

3. Slide.com
Google bought web 2.0 company Slide.com in August 2010 for $182 million. Originally founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin Slide.com was known as the largest third-party developer of Facebook applications until Google purchased it to “make Google services socially aware.”

4. Admeld
Google purchased Admeld. in June 2011 for $400 million. The company specialized in optimizing online ad yield by simplifying ad display. Google integrated Admeld with its additional DoubleClick and Invite Media acquisitions.

5. Postini
Google acquired web security and archiving company Postini for $625 million. It provides the cloud computing services and spam filters that Google soon integrated into Gmail.

6. ITA Software
Google purchaed travel industry software company ITA Software for $700 million in July 2010. Google uses ITA's software to optimize its travel and flight search.

7. AdMob
Google acquired mobile ad company AdMob for $750 million. The company helped Google improve its mobile advertising solutions.

8. YouTube
Long ago in October 2006 Google bought YouTube for a shocking $1.65 billion. Although the company wasn't absorbed by Google Video, YouTube continues to function as a Google subsidiary.

9. DoubleClick
Google purchased DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in April 2007. The Google subsidiary provides ad service and support to AdSense.

10. Motorola Mobility
Google's most recent and expensive acquisition to date occurred August 15, 2011 with its purchase of Motorola Mobility. Motorola is one of 39 manufacturers of Android handsets. By purchasing the mobile hardware manufacturer, Google hopes "to supercharge the Android ecosystem.”

more at Mashable

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Google Buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5 Billion [Breaking]

Google announced Monday morning that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.

Motorola is one of 39 manufacturers of handsets that use Google’s Android operating system.

Buying a hardware company is an unusual move for Google. The acquisition, Google said in a statement, “will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem.”

Google CEO Larry Page expanded on what that might mean in a blog post. In addition to citing Motorola’s home devices and video solutions business, Page references recent patent wars that Google believes to be anti-competitive.

“The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to ‘protect competition and innovation in the open source software community’ and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction,” Page writes. “Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.”

Android will continue to be an open platform, and Motorola will continue to be run as a separate business, Page added.


more at Mashable

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Google+ Posts Now Appear in Google Search Results

Google has begun integrating Google+ into search results with public Google+ posts now appearing in Social Search.

Whenever a user publicly shares a link on Google+, an annotation will show up under that link when it appears in a friend’s search results. For example, if I share a Mashable article about Google+ eliminating pseudonyms publicly on my Google+ page, users who have added me to their circles will see a note that I shared that link if they stumble upon it in Google Search.

Google+ now joins Flickr, Twitter, Quora and Google Buzz as other inputs for Google’s Social Search product. Social Search debuted in 2009 at the Web 2.0 Summit, partly as a response to Bing’s integration with Facebook and Twitter. Social Search highlights what links your friends are sharing on the web and returns results it believes are relevant based on your friends’ interests.

Social Search integration is only the beginning for Google’s plans for combining its search engine and social network. Google intends to revive real-time search with Google+ data and will launch a search engine for Google+ posts. Of course, the tech giant did the same thing with Google Buzz, and we all know what happened to that product.

Do you think Google+ makes Google Search a better product?


more at Mashable

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Google begins rollout of games on Google+

Games on Google+, now live for some.
(Credit: Google)

Google's not-so-secret gaming ambitions for its new social network are no longer under wraps.
Google today announced a gaming element for Google+, the social network the company launched at the end of June. The new offering lets Google+ users play games from within the social network, including some that can be played with other Google+ users.

Some of the launch games include Rovio's Angry Birds, PopCap's Bejeweled Blitz, and Zynga's Poker. It's a tiny collection compared to what's offered on Facebook, which has made a booming business by offering social games that players can click away at while remaining within the social network's walls.

According to Google engineering director David Glazer, the initial batch of games was intentionally kept small so as to "get the kinks out of our APIs." Glazer said Google would be adding more developers and features "in small steps" ahead of a public release.

The release comes just a few weeks after a Google+ help page cropped up detailing a "Games Stream." Before that, snippets of site code were discovered that mentioned game invites, along with a Google Games logo that was being hosted behind the scenes. In addition, a Google job posting sought a product manager for a "brand-new business" called "Games at Google."

When will users get access to games? In a post announcing the feature, Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of engineering, said that the feature is being opened up to the Google+ community "gradually" and that everyone would be getting it "soon." The social network itself remains invite only, requiring users to sign up for access as Google expands what it's called a "field trial."

To combat game-related score updates from clogging up user feeds, Google says people will only see updates if they play games on the service, keeping those who don't from seeing them at all.

"If you're not interested in games, it's easy to ignore them. Your stream will remain focused on conversations with the people you care about," Gundotra wrote.

Facebook offered a similar tweak to its own news feed late last year after noting that "tens of millions" of wall posts related to applications were being deleted by users who no longer wanted to see them. Both that and Google's approach keep it more limited based on the audience.

In related news, Facebook is said to be planning to announce updates to its gaming platform tonight, according to AllThingsD.

Google+ hit 25 million users last week according to a report from ComScore. That report pegged Google's current growth rate at about 1 million users per day, growing at a faster rate than both Facebook and Twitter in each of those service's early years.

Update at 1:47 p.m. PT: Google has posted a promotional video of the new gaming portion of Google+. It demos how games show up on the service and how users can post information from those games to their circles. It's embedded below:

more at CNET

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One of Google’s Self-Driving Cars Gets into an Accident

Update: A Google representative tells us that the accident occurred while the vehicle was in manual mode, not self-driving mode, which means there is still no recorded instance of a self-driving car causing an accident.

One of Google’s famous self-driving cars has reportedly been involved in one of its first traffic accidents.

The accident occurred near Google’s Mountain View headquarters in California. According to a report from Jalopnik, the accident involved two Toyota Priuses. It looks like the Google self-driving car rear-ended the other Prius, at least from our initial assessment of a photo Jalopnik published. We’ve reached out to Google for comment.

While this is not the first accident the Google cars have been involved in (one of the cars was rear-ended by a driver), it’s the first time we’ve heard of a Google self-driving car being the cause of an accident.

Google’s self-driving cars have been on the roads for nearly a year now, mostly in California. Recently, the search giant successfully lobbied to get self-driving cars on the streets of Nevada. We’ve even been in the back of one of the vehicles, and we can attest that they can successfully maneuver through dozens of cones at speeds up to 40 miles per hour.

While Jalopnik believes that the fender-bender is proof that self-driving cars may not be in the best interests of society, we have a different take. There were 10.2 million traffic accidents in the U.S. in 2008, which results in 39,000 deaths. That’s 17.9 people per 100,000 licensed drivers. If Google self-driving cars can beat those statistics, they could actually prevent more accidents than they create. We also waste millions of hours commuting and driving through traffic; imagine if you had that time to be productive instead.

Clearly Google self-driving cars are not ready for prime time — nobody thinks they will be for years to come. However, it’s not inconceivable that the time sink that is driving will become a thing of the past, and that would be a good thing for all of society.

What do you think of Google’s self-driving cars? Are they a potential benefit to society or a disaster waiting to happen?


more at Mashable

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Google Labs Will Shut Down

Google announced Wednesday that it plans to shutter its Labs department in an effort to focus more on its products.

For years, Google Labs has been, to quote the company, “a playground where our more adventurous users can play around with prototypes of some of our wild and crazy ideas and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them.” That playground has birthed the likes of the Google Reader and Google Goggles — to name a very few.

Google announced the loss of Labs via its blog, stating: “While we’ve learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we’re to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead.”

Many Labs experiments will end, Google says, and other products will be folded into different areas. Android apps in the Lab phase, however, will still be largely available in the Android Market.


Source: Mashable

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Google+ Update Makes Managing Circles Easier

Power Google+ users — those with lots of Circles — are intimately aware of how frustrating it can be to manage them. Your most-used Circles can get hidden at the bottom of a long list. But Google+ engineer Brett van Zuiden now comes to the rescue with some welcome Friday afternoon news: You can now reorder your circles.

“We’ve been hearing that you want a way to reorder your circles — so when you add people, view your stream, or share, that list of circles is in the order that works for you,” van Zuiden writes on Google’s thriving social network. “We thought it was a great idea, and today, we’re launching this on Google+.”

In the Circles tab, simply drag-and-drop your Circles to reorder them. Your Circles will now appear elsewhere in the social network in the order you’ve determined.

And that’s not all. “When in the circles tab, you can drag a circle up into the space where all your people are to view all the people for that circle,” van Zuiden adds. “For those in-the-know, it’s called ‘Circle in Tab.’”

The feature release is a relatively minor addition — it probably should have made the first private beta build. Still, it’s an update that could ease a little pain for Google+’s most Circle-happy users.


more at Mashable

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Google Launches Hotel Search Tool With Room Price Data

Google has launched Hotel Finder, an experimental search tool, which enables users to define key lodging preferences in hopes of finding the perfect hotel for their travel needs.

Users input their preferred location, dates, price and rating details, and Hotel Finder delivers its top recommendations, in a list or on a Google Map. For the moment, it’s only available in the U.S.

Here’s how Google aims to improve hotel hunting with this tool:

• Finding the perfect location. If you’re not a local, it can be difficult to figure out what area of a city you should stay in. Hotel Finder highlights popular areas on the map results. Google calls this the “tourist spotlight,” and it is used to determine an optimal zone for you to stay in. The shape of this area can be adjusted to focus on a smaller area. This is useful if you’ve got a rough destination in mind, such as along the Hudson River or near Times Square.

• Getting a good deal: Users can choose a price range to search within, as well as compare that hotel’s historical pricing data to its current listing price. Clicking on a hotel will bring up the cost of a room per night and how that compares to previous prices. Google calculates what percentage the cost is above or below the normal. Bargain hunters, start your engines.

• Comparing hotels: Hotel Finder simplifies comparative shopping. When users click on on a hotel, its full details pop up, including photos, Google Places reviews, pricing and other information. You quickly flip through results by using keyboard shortcuts (“J” and “K”) within the list view — a feature also found in Google Reader and Google News.

• Making a shortlist: Users can build a shortlist of hotels they’d like to compare further. These results are marked with a red dot in the Google Maps view, and appear at the top of the page in the list view.

Click on the “Book” button in either view and a list of external options are shown. Clicking on a booking option pulls up that site — such as Priceline or Expedia — in a new tab. (Google isn’t getting into the business of booking hotels itself.)

Take a look at Hotel Finder’s features in the gallery below, test it out and let us what you think about the new tool in the comments below. How does it compare to other hotel-shopping methods?

Google Map Search Results

Hotel Details

Search Results in List View

Google Hotel Finder

more at Mashable

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Google’s New Page Speed Service Promises to Speed Up Your Website

Google still wants to make your website load faster. The company started on its web optimization quest with the Page Speed browser extension, then it moved the Page Speed tool online with an API and now Google is offering up the Page Speed Service.

Google’s new Page Speed Service is invite-only at the moment, but if you’d like to request access, head on over to the sign up page and drop your e-mail and URL in the form.

Google’s new Page Speed Service is one part optimization tool and one part content distribution network (CDN). Google essentially grabs your website, caches it and serves it from the company’s extensive network of servers around the world. The best part about Page Speed is its simplicity — all you need to do is point your DNS to Google’s servers. After that Google handles the rest and you don’t need to worry about minifying your JavaScript, compressing images, caching, gzipping, or any other web performance best practices.

For your site’s visitors everything works just as it always has, the page load times are just shorter. At least that’s the theory. In reality, how much the Page Speed Service will speed up your site varies considerably depending on how well optimized your website is to begin with.

The Google Code blog reports that, on average, pages served from Page Speed are between twenty and sixty percent faster. If you’re curious to see how Google’s Page Speed service stacks up against your current setup, you can compare load times through WebPageTest. I ran my site through the test and the Google optimized version was roughly 40 percent faster, though judging by the screenshots it didn’t quite render properly.

The rendering problems may have been WebPageTest’s fault, though the Page Speed Service documentation seems to indicate that not every page is going to render properly. The Page Speed Service offers a tool to blacklist any specific pages you don’t want Page Speed to serve up because it doesn’t render them properly.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that, while a 40 percent speed boost did shave over half a second off my site’s page load times, most of the performance gain came from Page Speed’s heavily cached CDN. If your site is already well-optimized, but lacks a (somewhat expensive) CDN, Google Page Speed isn’t going to help you out any more than existing services like Amazon’s CloudFront or any other CDN.

The Page Speed docs explain some more in-depth methods of testing your website using various browser proxy add-ons so you can perform your own, more thorough speed tests before you commit to using the Page Speed Service.

For now the Page Speed Service is free, but don’t expect that to last. Eventually, when Page Speed opens up to everyone, Google plans to start charging for it. For now the company isn’t committing to actual prices, saying only that Page Speed will be “competitive.” Presumably that means something in the ballpark of Amazon’s S3, CloudFront and similar services.

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Russia Takes Gold at National Geographic World Championship

Defending champs from Canada faced off against
Chinese Taipei and Russia in a contest that host Alex Trebek called
the most challenging World Championship yet. NGS photo.

Defeating teams from 16 other regions, Russia took top honors at the 10th National Geographic World Championship held today at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Canada, the defending champion, came in second, and Chinese Taipei was third. The biennial competition, in which teams of students answer questions on physical, cultural and economic geography, is organized by the National Geographic Society. Google was the sponsor of this year’s contest.

Russia has entered a team in every National Geographic World Championship since the competition began in 1993. This is the first time the country has won. The Russian team comprised Alexander Bondarchuk, 16, of St. Petersburg; Masha Samoletova, 16, of St. Petersburg; and Egor Shustov, 16, of Sludyanka.

The Canadian team members were Alexander Cohen, 15, of Ottawa, Ontario; Aoife O’Leary, 15, of Surrey, British Columbia; and Alejandro Torres-Lopez, 16, of North Vancouver, British Columbia.

Representing Chinese Taipei were Chen-Luo Cheng, 15, of Taipei; Po-Chen Chu, 14, of Taitung; and Tong-hong Hsu, 14, of Banqiao District, New Taipei City.

In an Olympics-style ceremony, gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded to the first-, second- and third-placed teams. Alex Trebek, host of the U.S. television quiz show “Jeopardy!”, moderated today’s finals.

Russia, Canada and Chinese Taipei qualified for the final round after obtaining the highest combined scores in a written contest on Sunday and in Monday’s preliminary activity that included a hands-on activity at the San Francisco Zoo.

Students were eligible to take part in the World Championship competition by winning or being a top finisher in the national competitions of their home regions. The 14 other teams competing this year were from Australia, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Singapore, Slovakia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

John Fahey, chairman and CEO of the National Geographic Society, said the competition was a great way for talented young geographers around the world to match wits against each other and to enjoy a rewarding cross-cultural exchange. “The competition enhances geo-literacy, international dialogue and understanding, and promotes friendships around the globe,” he said.

The World Championship is held every two years. The first contest, held in London in 1993, was won by the United States, which beat teams from the United Kingdom and Russia. The Australians, competing against four other teams, won the 1995 competition in Orlando, Fla. The third championship, held in 1997 at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., was won by Canada, which bested eight other teams. The United States won the fourth competition against 11 teams in Toronto, Canada, in 1999. The United States also took first place in the 2001 contest in Vancouver, Canada; in 2003 at Busch Gardens, Fla.; and in 2005 in Budapest, Hungary. The 2007 competition at SeaWorld, San Diego, was won by Mexico. Canada took top honors in 2009 in Mexico City.

Teachers: want to compete next year? Now’s the time to apply for the 2012 U.S. National Geographic Bee.

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Google+ Traffic Falls As Users Spend Less Time on Site

After a running start, Google+‘s growth may be slowing down a bit. A report from Experian Hitwise found both traffic and users’ average time on the social network fell last week in the U.S.

Total visits to Google+ declined about 3% to 1.79 million in the U.S. for the week ending July 23 compared to the previous seven days, according to the research company. The site received 1.86 million visits the prior week. Average time on the site was down 10%, from 5 minutes, 50 seconds to 5 minutes, 15 seconds.

Matt Tatham, a rep for Experian Hitwise, was careful not to overplay the findings. “This is not a huge drop,” he says. The company extrapolates its figures from data from ISPs and from an opt-in panel of about 2.5 million users.

The report comes after Google+’s traffic enjoyed a steady climb since its June 28 debut. Last week, comScore reported that the network hit 20 million unique visitors. Some were so enamored with Google+ that they closed out their Facebook accounts and moved all their activity to the new network.

What do you think? Has the novelty of Google+ worn off or is this just a blip on the road to world domination?


more at Mashable

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Save your friends from outdated email

You’ve probably already improved the lives of your friends and family members by helping them switch to Gmail, but what about that one friend who still hasn’t made the switch? It’s time to take a stand and stage an intervention.

Don't worry. We'll help you out.

HOW TO STAGE AN INTERVENTION
Follow these three simple steps

1. Select from your contacts

2. Create a customized email

3. Send to your friend

 

more at Email Intervention

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National Geographic World Championship comes to Google

It’s summer vacation for many kids, but 51 students from 17 different regions have been spending their time off polishing and fine-tuning their geographic skills to prepare for this year’s National Geographic World Championship, a biennial geography competition hosted by the National Geographic Society.

This year, Google is the proud sponsor and on Wednesday, July 27, we’ll host the three final teams from Canada, Chinese Taipei and Russia at our campus in Mountain View, California. The preliminary rounds included a written exam on Sunday and activities at the San Francisco Zoo on Monday morning. Teams ventured to various zoo exhibits and were asked to identify climate maps and geographic locations associated with 10 different animal habitats housed throughout the zoo.

Since most of you can’t be here to witness the action in person, we’re going to live stream the finale, hosted by Alex Trebek of the game show JEOPARDY!. Tune into the National Geographic YouTube Channel Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. PDT to cheer on these young competitors from wherever you are in the world.

Through this competition, we aim to inspire the future generation of leaders and innovators to become more geographically literate and have a deeper understanding about the world they live in. We hope you are as excited as we are to see such enthusiasm and passion around geographic education.

Please join us in wishing all of these young geographic experts the best of luck!

Source: Google Blog

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Google+ adds $45 billion to market value

The launch and hyper growth of Google's ambitious Google+ social site has helped fuel a meteoric rise in the company's stock.

Thursday marks one month since the search king unveiled its Google+ to grab attention and advertising dollars away from Facebook. Google+ is the search company's foray into social networking that numbers more than 10 million members since launch.

In that time, Google stock is up nearly 30%, boosting the company's valuation by $45 billion to a market capitalization of roughly $200 billion.

"Google+ has had a lot to do with the perceptions," says Scott Kessler, equity analyst at Standard & Poor's Equity Research. "People look at Google as being … a pretty important player in social media."
Put into perspective, the valuation gain is more than half the estimated value of privately traded Facebook. The social-networking giant holds an $84.7 billion valuation on the private stock-trading network Sharespost.com. And Facebook launched more than seven years ago.

Google's one-month valuation jump is more than five times Twitter's estimated $8 billion value and more than double Groupon's $18.1 billion, according to Sharespost.com. Twitter hasn't filed to go public.

Google stock traded at $482.80 on June 27, the day before Google+ launched, and closed at $622.52 Tuesday. Google shares touched a 52-week high of $642.96 earlier in the year.
To be sure, Google's blockbuster second-quarter profit gains of 36%, reported July 14, didn't hurt in nudging up the stock. But Google opened the earnings call trumpeting whopping adoption numbers for Google+ and focused praise on the product's mojo companywide. CEO Larry Page used the call to tout Goggle+'s 10 million users, grabbed in just two weeks.

Still, it remains to be seen how well Google+ fares once the honeymoon is over. Google has already taken some lumps over its axing of business users. Google responded by saying it plans a launch for businesses later this year.

Early reviews of Google+ are mostly favorable. Many say Google's concept of letting people group those they interact with into different social circles is a key differentiator from Facebook.

"This is a nice, clean service that's really working well," says IDC analyst Karsten Weide.
"Whether it's a win or not remains to be seen. Those user numbers look good."


more at USA Today

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Google Responds to Google+ Account Suspension Controversy

Google has finally made a public statement about the recent wave of controversial Google+ account suspensions designed to enforce the company’s “common name” policy.

The policy is outlined in section 13 of the company’s User Content and Conduct Policy. It’s designed to stop users from creating fake profiles and to set a positive tone. Section 13 reads as follows:

To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.

This weekend, Google started enforcing the policy, deleting a large number of Google+ accounts. While some of the suspended accounts were indeed fake profiles, others like Limor “Ladyada” Fried and lifestyle blogger A.V. Flox were accidentally deleted and quickly restored.

SEE ALSO: GOOGLE+: THE COMPLETE GUIDE | VIDEOS | REVIEW

Google SVP of Social Vic Gundotra admitted to Robert Scoble on Sunday that the company has made some mistakes with its first attempt at cracking down on fake profiles. And in Monday, Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz wrote a more detailed post in an attempt to clear the air and set the record straight.

“We’ve noticed that many violations of the Google+ common name policy were in fact well-intentioned and inadvertent and for these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing,” Horowitz said in his Google+ post. “So we’re currently making a number of improvements to this process, specifically regarding how we notify these users that they’re not in compliance with Google+ policies and how we communicate the remedies available to them.”

Among the changes Google intends to implement:

•  Google will give users more warning and the chance to comply with the common name policy.
•  The company is improving the signup process.
•  Finally, the search giant is exploring better ways to support nicknames, maiden names and  pseudonyms.

Hotowitz also took time to dispel the rumor that a suspension of a Google+ account means that a user loses his or her access to Gmail, Google Docs or other Google services. “When an account is suspended for violating the Google+ common name standards, access to Gmail or other products that don’t require a Google+ profile are not removed,” he said.

Google+, which will hit its one-month anniversary on Thursday, has clearly been suffering from growing pains. It has received strong criticism for its handling of Google+ brand pages.


more at Mashable

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Google E-Books Gain Momentum with 'Harry Potter' Deal

Of all the literature missing from the e-book realm, the omission of the Harry Potter series was seen by many as the most egregious. And for good reason.
The mega-franchise that redefined the outer parameters of mega-franchises not only made series author J.K. Rowling a bona fide billionaire, but it's responsible for creating entire literary subcultures devoted to keeping the magic of Hogwarts alive. To say that fans can't get enough of Harry and his crew is a severe understatement.

(LIST: 10 Technologies We Want to Steal From Harry Potter)
So when Rowling announced her newest venture, Pottermore, plenty of fans were pleased that the series was finally (or at least legally) making its way to e-readers. In a blog post from Wednesday, the folks over at Google made it known that when Harry Potter e-books go on sale this coming fall, they'll be available on Google's new open e-book platform, which lets you store your e-books in the cloud to use across multiple devices (see the video above).

"Google eBooks can be read on most devices with a modern browser, through the Google Books apps for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, and on more than 80 eReaders," writes Larissa Fontaine, who works on New Business Development for Google.

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