An 'Entertainment Device' Is Expected From Google - New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Google is developing a home entertainment device, according to people with knowledge of the company’s plans.

The device, which exists as a prototype and will eventually be sold as a branded item to consumers, is the company’s most significant venture into hardware. While its initial purpose will be for streaming music, its eventual use could be much larger.

Larry Page, who last year took the reins of the company he co-founded, has been intent on moving into hardware. To compete with Apple and Amazon, Google thinks it has to have greater control over production.

Next week, Google is likely to complete its acquisition of the handset maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. That purchase puts Google into direct competition with the phone makers that use its Android software as well as Apple and its iPhone. The leader in desktop search, Google did not want to be left behind as computing went mobile.

Motorola, which made an earlier generation of home entertainment systems before stumbling, is the likely manufacturer of the new device. 

A Google spokesman declined to comment.

While Google has talked openly about its designs on consumers’ living rooms, news that the device was becoming a reality surfaced last week in an application the search giant filed with the Federal Communications Commission. In the application, Google said it would begin testing a device it labeled simply an “entertainment device.”

The device will have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and, as Google noted in the application, it will “connect to other home electronics equipment.” The application, which was first reported by the tech Web site GigaOM, said Google would test the device for stability in employees’ homes through the summer.

Analysts are wary of Google’s venture into the notoriously cutthroat hardware field. Apple has loyal, sometimes fanatical followers, and enviably rich profit margins. Amazon is willing to lose money on its devices and make it up on sales of content. Most other hardware makers have a much tougher slog.

But Google is seen as having little choice.

“Google’s future depends on extending its influence beyond the PC screen,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst. “They’ve made tremendous progress in the mobile phone business, but their attempts to do the same thing with the TV and tablet flopped because the hardware manufacturers they relied on were not able to move fast enough.”

But Mr. McQuivey noted that controlling manufacturing meant calling the shots. “It’s quite telling that Amazon introduced its tablet two months ago and is already the second tablet maker in the market,” he said.

Google’s larger goal, a person closely tied to the project said, was to connect everything in the home to the Internet, including light bulbs, speakers and TV sets. The initial version will all be controlled from an Android device.

The first version of Google TV was considered a disaster, both internally and with partners. Guerrino De Luca, chief executive of Logitech, which manufactured the Google TV set-top box, has acknowledged publicly that the Google TV was “a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature.”

Nick Bilton contributed reporting.

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Google doubling Google+ population - CNET

The Google+ team, facing strong demand for the new social-networking service, has expansion on its mind.

Google briefly let Google+ users invite new members last night in a plan to double the social network's population. And Google has begun detailing its plans for letting business users, not just individuals, use the service starting later this year.

Google has been limiting the individual sign-up rate, leading to frustration among many who want to get in. But Dave Besbris, the Google+ engineering director, said last night it was time for another growth spurt.

"Things are going well with the systems right now so we feel comfortable enough to open up invites for a brief period. Our goal is to double the user base in the field trial from its initial group," he said in a Google+ post.

Apparently the moment was indeed fleeting, because I couldn't find an invitation mechanism by the time I woke up here in England. That means Lutz Beyer's amusing cartoon about Google+ exclusivity remains relevant.

Google had opened invitations briefly last week, shortly after the mostly-closed beta test began. I've had success getting quite a few people in by a somewhat circuitous Google+ invitation route that involves sharing a Google+ post by e-mail with their Gmail addresses.

It's been an irregular process: some people told me they never got an invitation, and sometimes the message took days to arrive. And because Google throttles the sign-up rate, many of those I've invited had to check back several times before they happened to click when the window was open.

In a comment, Besbris apologized for the sporadic availability.

"We are also ensuring, as we grow, things keep working well, so occasionally we may have to pause/slow down/speed up the signup rate to keep the service smooth and fast. The combo can make it seem unpredictable," he said. "I'm sorry [about] that and thanks for your patience."

An official invitation clearly would be a far better way to handle this than the e-mail technique. Google, though, is proceeding cautiously.

"I wanted to take a moment to explain why we're growing the system slowly," Besbris said. "First, we want to make sure our infrastructure scales so the service remains fast and reliable. Second, we want to ensure that bugs are fixed while there are still a relatively few people in the field trial."

Google has made a couple tweaks--shutting down the ability to publicly share an initially private post last week, for one thing. Another change came yesterday involving profile pictures. "Changing your public profile picture or scrapbook photos will no longer generate a public post to the stream, just to the people you have in your circles. So only people in your circles will engage in discussions about the photos you post," Google+ product manager Shimrit Ben-Yair said in a Google+ post.

A look at the Google+ feature introduction page for new arrivals.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

1.7 million Google+ users so far?
Besbris wouldn't say how many people are using Google+ right now, but it's certainly in the thousands at least. Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com and president of FamilyLink.com, estimated that there were 1.7 million people on Google+ on Monday, a figure based on a statistical extrapolation from the frequency of surnames. "My model uses surname distribution data from the U.S. Census Bureau and compares it to how many Google+ users there currently are with a small sampling of surnames in the U.S. and in the world," he said of his method.

Google+ is a sprawling product, too, and it's taken time for people to grasp its many mechanisms for organizing contacts, sharing posts publicly or selectively, and figuring out details such as, say, the difference between the default stream of contacts' posts (which shows posts from people in all your circles) and the "incoming" stream (which shows posts from people who put you in one of their circles). And Google+ can be used either through a sophisticated Web app or a full-featured Android app; an iOS app for Google+ has been submitted for approval.

No wonder then that newbie guides are popping up. My favorite compendium so far is one from Andrew Shotland. I also liked this flowchart showing how comments are shared with others on Google+.

Google+'s tentacles extend well beyond Google+ itself. Google Docs notifies you of updates. E-mail invitations arrive frequently with word of new followers and discussion replies. The Google home page features a link to your Google+ page. People's Google Profile pages now anchor their Google+ identities--and in a sign that Google is serious about this social networking thing, Google will delete any profiles that aren't made public by July 31. (Here's an idea: why doesn't Google send anybody in that situation an automatic Google+ invitation to try to win them over?)

It's not clear when Google will open up the invitations again, though clearly it will. When it does, Besbris advises you proceed cautiously, too.

"We continue to throttle invites, so please don't mass invite folks as it won't work," he said. "If you invite a handful of your most important friends and family you're much more likely to get these folks into our system."

Business demand, too
Google also is wrestling with business demand for Google+--something to match Facebook pages that need not be tied to a single individual.

Business accounts will be coming later this year, Google product manager Christian Oestlian said yesterday in a Google+ post. He also noted that Google will shut down existing non-individual accounts--well, most of them at least.

"Right now we're very much focused on optimizing for the consumer experience, but we have a great team of engineers building a similarly optimized business experience for Google+. We're very excited about it and we hope to roll it out later on this year," Oestlian said in a video about the option.

Several corporations have already jumped onto Google+, but it's not "optimally suited" for them, Oestlian said, and Google is shutting them down even as it plans to test what it hopes to actually launch:

The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.

Over the next few months we are going to be running a small experiment with a few marketing partners to see the effect of including brands in the Google+ experience. We'll begin this pilot with a small number of named partners.

Given that companies had already jumped aboard, it appears that at least some businesses would prefer a suboptimal experience to none at all. A measured debut is a sensible way of heading off problems before they're big, but Google also would do well to tap into the Google+ enthusiasm while it's still strong.

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Google takes heat over Android tablet OS - Computerworld

IDG News Service - Android device makers around the world are anticipating great things from the next version of Google's mobile software, and they need the boost. Apple has a strong head start with sales of its popular iPad, while the App Store and iTunes give it apps and content, to boot.

But after a year of prodding Google, device makers think they've finally won with the upcoming "Honeycomb" upgrade to Android, which is expected by the end of the first quarter and is supposed to be the first version of the software designed for tablets instead of smartphones.

Earlier this year, for example, Samsung Electronics, had to fight to have the Android Market app, which connects users to the software's online treasure trove of over 150,000 apps, on its Galaxy Tab, according to one executive who asked not to be named due to his company's close relationship with Google.

At the time that Samsung was developing the Galaxy Tab to use Android, Google was struggling to decide if it wanted to put its upcoming Chrome OS in tablets and make Android exclusive to smartphones. The Chrome OS better fits Google's Cloud strategy, the executive said.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the issue.

Google's decision to make a tablet-friendly version of Android became a must after Apple launched its groundbreaking iPad, analysts say.

"Earlier in the year, Google probably thought that Chrome OS might be the right platform for tablets. However, the importance of the compatibility of apps across smartphones and tablets, evident from the iPad experience, has created the need for Google to ensure that the commercial success of apps can be preserved in the tablet proposition," said Martin Bradley, an analyst at Strategy Analytics.

Apple sold nearly 8 million iPads through the end of September, making it one of the hottest products of the year. (That tally is from official Apple figures from its quarterly earnings conference call and doesn't include holiday sales.)

By being first, Apple has set the tone for the entire market. Tablet makers need to put out the same OS for their smartphones and tablets so apps can be shared on either device. Even more important, apps specifically designed for tablets need to be made available, to take advantage of the larger screens, more powerful processors and expanded memory on board.

Of the 300,000 or so apps available to Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users, 40,000 are specifically designed for the iPad, and they are marketed that way on Apple's App Store.

By contrast, Google's Android Market does not offer any tablet-only apps to users, only smartphone apps. However, upstart Appslib is filling the void with its own tablet-only app store for Android lovers. Appslib is not affiliated with Google.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2010 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Google still polishing Chrome OS, postpones debut - TMCnet

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — It's taking longer than Google Inc. anticipated to deliver a new operating system designed to make computers run faster.

After more than a year building a much–anticipated system around its Chrome Web browser, Google announced Tuesday that the first laptops powered by the new software won't hit the stores until the middle of next year. The revised timetable is about six months behind Google's goal of having the Chrome OS completed in time for it to debut during the current holiday season.

Google's engineers decided they needed more time to fix bugs and fine tune the Chrome OS before the company launches its ambitious challenge to computers running on long–established operating systems made by larger rivals, Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc.

While Google polishes the Chrome OS, it will collect user feedback through a pilot program allowing a relatively small number of consumers and businesses to test unbranded devices running the software. Consumers will be invited to receive the test laptops through the Chrome Web browser and Google's YouTube video site. The companies getting the Chrome OS machines include AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, Kraft Foods Inc. Logitech (News - Alert) International, and Virgin Airlines.

Acer Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. will make the first Chrome OS laptops available in stores next year. The prices of the machines will be determined by the manufacturers next year.

The postponement threatens to intensify the competitive challenges facing the Chrome OS machines. More people already are snapping up sleek, touch–screen tablets such as Apple Inc.'s iPad to surf the Web and run a variety of applications customized for the devices. Apple sold about 7.5 million iPads in the first six months after its April debut and the tablet is expected to be among the top–selling gadgets this holiday season.

The rising popularity of the iPad and an array of copycats has started to undercut sales of lightweight laptops, or "netbooks," according to industry analysts. Even the next version of Google's Android operating system for touch–screen devices is supposed to include more features tailored for tablets.

The Chrome OS computers will have a 12.1 inch display screen and standard–sized keyboard, but no hard drive. That means the Chrome OS computers will need online access to run more programs. Google is teaming up with Verizon Communications to sell Internet access over Verizon's wireless network when there is no other way to connect to the Web. Online consumption of up to 100 megabytes per month will be offered for free during the first two years of computer ownership. Larger data plans will cost as little as $9.99 per month with no long–term commitment required.

Google decided to build its own computer operating system primarily because its views the hundreds of millions of machines powered by Microsoft's dominant Windows software as plodding, cumbersome relics unable to provide speedy Web surfing. The Chrome OS machines are being designed so they're ready to navigate the Internet within a few seconds after hitting the power button, almost as quickly as a television set is ready for channel surfing .

Developing a Web–based alternative to Windows also realizes a long–held goal of Google CEO Eric Schmidt (News - Alert), who had previously clashed with Microsoft as an executive at Sun Microsystems and Novell Inc. during the 1990s. Google's development of the Chrome OS contributed to Schmidt's resignation from Apple's board in 2009. Schmidt stepped down because he increasingly was steering Google into the same markets as Apple, raising potential conflicts of interest.

By making it easier and more appealing for people to spend time online, Google hopes to attract more traffic to its dominant Internet search engine and boost its revenue by selling more of the ads that generate most of its income.

The push for a speedier Web experience, prompted Google to introduce the Chrome browser more than two years ago. Although it still lags behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer and the Mozilla (News - Alert) Foundation's Firefox, Chrome has steadily been winning converts. Google says Chrome now has 120 million active users worldwide today, up from about 30 million at the beginning of the year.

Chrome will soon get even faster by pulling up websites as people type in an address, in the same manner that Google's search engine displays different results with each keystroke. For example, typing "e:" in Chrome's navigation bar display ESPN's site in the browser, if that is a destination that the user frequently visits.

To help whet consumers' appetite for the new Chrome OS machines, Google unveiled a new store that will distribute Web applications that offer more features and better graphics than the content found on standard Web pages. The Web apps store opened Monday with about 500 free and for–fee applications, meeting the end–of–the–year deadline Google established when it announced the idea in May. More than 40,000 applications already have been developed specifically for the iPad.

The New York Times Co., Time Warner (News - Alert) Inc.'s Sports Illustrated magazine and video game maker Electronic Arts Inc. are among the major companies already offering applications in the Chrome store. Internet retailer Amazon.com (News - Alert) Inc. also previewed an application that for the first time will allow other merchants to sell electronic books for its Kindle reader. The app enables Kindle books to be read through a Web browser.

Like programs designed for the iPad and mobile phones, the Chrome applications store could help publishers bring in more revenue from subscriptions and advertising.

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Google Launches Chrome OS Preview - InformationWeek

In recent years, consumers have had three major desktop-oriented operating systems to choose from: Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. On Tuesday, Google introduced a fourth option, Chrome OS.

'With Chrome OS, we have the development of a viable third choice for the desktop," said CEO Eric Schmidt, evidently unconvinced that Linux counts where consumers are concerned.

At a media event in San Francisco, Google announced a pilot program for Chrome OS, its highly anticipated browser-based operating system, launched the Chrome Web Store, its effort to change the way Web apps are discovered and purchased, and provided an update on the global adoption of its Chrome browser.

Chrome OS won't be ready for a stable release until mid-2011. That's when Google's Chrome OS hardware partners Acer and Samsung are expected to ship their Chrome OS netbooks.

But Google this week plans to begin shipping specially commissioned hardware to select testers through its Chrome OS pilot program.

Program participants will receive a Google-commissioned netbook, designated Cr-48, with Chrome OS installed. The company extended invitations to event attendees, to a random group of users through an invitation placed on the Chrome new tab page, and to some Facebook users who participated in a recent quiz. Would-be Chrome OS users may also apply online and are encouraged to submit a YouTube video to convey why they should be invited into the pilot program.

"Chrome OS is nothing but the Web," said Sundar Pichai, VP of product management.

Google is throwing out the things people hate most about computers -- slow startup times, the need to update and install software, and security worries -- and offering an operating system that loads its Chrome browser instead of a desktop file system.

Those using Chrome OS will have to rely on Web applications in place of familiar favorites like Microsoft Office. To ensure an adequate supply of Web apps, Google launched its Chrome Web Store, an online app store that aims to do for Web apps what Apple's iTunes has done for music and iOS apps: build a viable market by providing a mechanism for discovery and monetization.

The Chrome Web Store has some 500 apps at launch but Google expects that developers will add many more in the months ahead. Several companies sent representatives to discuss the Web apps they've created for Chrome, including Amazon, Electronic Arts, and the New York Times.

Amazon showcased an e-commerce Web app called Amazon Windowshop and Kindle for the Web, which will be available early next year. Electronic Arts demonstrated a game called Popit that will ship with future versions of Chrome. And the New York Times showed off a newspaper reading Web app that allows the user to control how news gets presented.

Pichai acknowledged that offline functionality was necessary and demonstrated a version of Google Docs that works offline (coming early next year). But he said that the Web is better when a network connection is available. That's why Google has partnered with Verizon to offer on-demand cellular connectivity with every Chrome notebook.

The Verizon plan provides for 100 MB of free data every month for two years. It doesn't require a contract and additional data can be purchased as needed, starting at $9.99 for unlimited data for one day.

Pichai also provided an update on the adoption of its Google Chrome browser. Chrome had 70 million users in May. Now it has 120 million users worldwide.

"The single most common piece of feedback we get from our users is that Chrome is fast," he said. "Speed has been our biggest focus since day one."

InformationWeek has published an in-depth report on hardening next-gen Web applications. Download it now (free registration required).

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Google vs. Amazon: Clash of the booksellers - Computerworld

Computerworld - Are you a fan of those 1960s Japanese monster movies like Mothra vs. Godzilla, where two enormous animals battle insanely while the tiny human onlookers scream in horror?

Well, if your favorite film isn't available on Netflix or Hulu, you can still enjoy a clash of the Titans this week, as Google pits its new e-reading application, Google eBooks -- and its new retail venture, the Google eBookstore -- against Amazon.com's huge inventory.

For a while, there has been some speculation that Google was going to come out with its own e-reader device, like Amazon's Kindle or Borders' Kobo. Instead, Google made headlines on Monday with a strictly software-based strategy: a bevy of applications for Android devices, the iPhone, the iPad, the iPod Touch, desktop/laptop Web browsers, and two specific e-book readers, the Nook and the Sony Reader. (Other e-book readers can also access books from Google's eBook collection if they can read either the ePub or PDF formats.)

Amazon, for its part, today announced its own desktop Web e-reader, which has been in beta since September and which, according to Amazon, should be available sometime during the next few months.

Like Microsoft with its Windows Live offerings, Google is using similar (and somewhat confusing) names for its related services. The general Google listing of free and non-free books that are available to browse, sample and review is called Google Books. The library of books that an individual reader collects, whether free or paid, and can then read on any device is called My Google eBooks.

The place where that reader can purchase new books using Google Checkout? That's the Google eBookstore. (None of these have anything to do, by the way, with Google Reader, which is Google's RSS service.) Google account holders can access all of those services by going to Books.Google.com.

I first checked out Google's browser-based e-reader, which works on any browser (unlike Amazon's current desktop e-reader, which is a separate application and must be installed on a Windows PC or a Mac).

You access it from the main Google Books page by clicking on the "My library" link. This brings you to the main page of My Google eBooks, where you can choose which book you want to read.

On the My Google eBooks page, you can choose one of your downloaded books to read.

The e-reader has a plain look that offers very few distractions from the text -- I was quite favorably impressed. Clickable arrows on the left and right let you page forward and back. Discreet gray icons on the upper left side of the page allow you return to the home page and see a table of contents.

You can change settings such as typeface, type size, line height and justification. You can also switch from "flowing text" (in other words, straight computer text) to scanned pages (images of the pages exactly as they appear in the printed book). There are also icons for search, information about the book (such as where to find a hard copy and user reviews) and help.

The reading interface for a Google eBook is clean and easy to adjust.

However, users of Google's Web e-reader may also need to exercise some patience in trying to navigate the huge and varied Google interface. For example, if you search for a book on the main Google Books page and click on the "Add to My Library" link, you will not find the book in "My Google eBooks" when you go back to your main "My library" page. Instead, you will need to scroll down a page that contains several other "bookshelves" with names like "Purchased," "Reviewed," "Recently Viewed" and so on. I finally found the "Reading now" category (which is how I'd classified a new book I'd chosen) just under "Favorites."

If you want the book to be part of your Google eBook collection -- and therefore accessible on all of your devices -- you have to click on the book and then click on the "Get it now" link on the right side of the book's screen.

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Google to Release New 'Nexus' Phone - Wall Street Journal

Google Inc. said it is launching a new smartphone, developed with Samsung Electronics Co., along with a new version of the Android software for mobile devices.

The Nexus S phone will be sold in mid-December through retailers such as Best Buy Co. Inc., said Andy Rubin, a Google vice president of engineering who leads the Android team. The Nexus S will be sold for $199 with a two-year T-Mobile USA contract in the U.S. It will also be sold for $529 without a service contract.

Google is shifting strategies it used with the last Google-branded phone, the Nexus One, which launched earlier this year and was sold directly to consumers through a Google Web store. Executives at wireless carriers said the Nexus One didn't sell well, though Mr. Rubin claimed more than 100,000 were sold in three months. Google closed the Web store a few months ago.

The Nexus S smartphone will feature front- and rear-facing cameras so users can make video calls, similar to Apple Inc.'s iPhone. It also includes technology that could help people make payments with their devices when they're on the go.

Google, in a blog post, said the new Android software that will power the Nexus S, known as Gingerbread, includes support for so-called near field communications technology. Such technology can enable third-party developers to create mobile payment applications.

The company also said Nexus S is the first smartphone to feature a four-inch contoured display, which is designed to fit comfortably in the palm of the hand and along the side of the user's face.

Google won't make any money from direct sales of the Nexus S, a spokesman said. Google licenses the Android software for free to hardware makers such as Samsung.

But the adoption of Android software helps ensure that Google's Internet search, maps and other services will be a mainstay on mobile devices. Google sells ads alongside its Internet search results and helps place ads within mobile-device applications such as games, and two months ago Google executives said the company was on track to generate $1 billion annually in mobile-related revenue.

Android is making significant gains in the smartphone market, claiming 23.5% of U.S. subscribers aged 13 years old and up in October, up from 17% in July, according to estimates by comScore Inc. Apple had 24.6% of U.S. subscribers in October, up from 23.8% in July, comScore said. Research In Motion Ltd, maker of the BlackBerry, continued to slip, dropping to 35.8% from 39.3% during the same period.

Write to Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com

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Google buys Widevine to beef up DRM - Fortune

GoogleTV, tablets and smartphones will all benefit from the technology to securely deliver video over the web.

Google (GOOG) added another little pickup to its holiday shopping list this weekend when it purchased a video DRM company called Widevine.  Widevine bills itself as a content delivery optimization and security company that focuses on bringing secure video on a wide array of platforms.

Google's YouTube subsidiary and GoogleTV are the most obvious benefactors of the new technology.  Both need to optimize the quality of their video broadcasts while ensuring that distribution partners know that their content isn't going to be repurposed by pirates.  At the same time, the video needs to be available on many different screens, from smartphones to computers to HDTVs.

In a statement, Google said,

The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that broadcast them online and on TV, to the hardware manufacturers that let you watch that content on a variety of devices. By forging partnerships across the entire ecosystem, Widevine has made on demand services more efficient and secure for media companies, and ultimately more available and convenient for users.

Current Widevine customers include AT&T (T), Blockbuster, Netflix (NFLX), NBC.com (GE), Samsung, Telstra, Best Buy (BBY), DISH Network, LOVEFiLM and VUDU.  Google has promised to keep Widevine's existing agreements in place.

The technology won't just help GoogleTV and YouTube but it could also be used to secure and optimize teleconferences and VoIP communication.  It will also help to have Widevine's IP on board.

In a prepared statement, Brian Baker, CEO of Widevine, said, "For many years, Widevine has enabled consumers to access digital entertainment content. Through a combination of content protection and video optimization technologies, we've provided consumers with the highest quality Internet video experience while giving them freedom to watch on a variety of devices. With the recent growth of Internet video and network connected devices, it is increasingly important for technology to provide consumers with the capability to watch what they want, when they want, where they want.

"By working with Google, we are even further committed to the consumer Internet video experience and to the needs of content owners. Widevine will continue to supply the industry with leading video optimization and content protection solutions. We are excited to have access to Google's vast resources as we continue to improve our products, support our customers, and meet the future needs of consumers, content owners, service providers and device manufacturers everywhere."

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Google launches eBookstore with choice of sellers and devices - Ars Technica

We expected Google to launch its upcoming e-book store before the end of the year, and the company announced Monday that the new Google eBookstore is now open for business in the US. Google is touting the "open" nature of its e-books by making them accessible to the widest array of popular e-reader devices, including the iPad, Nook, and Sony Reader. 

Google's new eBookstore works a little differently than other stores—at least when it comes to reading via computer. All purchased titles are kept in Google's cloud-based storage and accessed via a browser. When reading via an iOS or Android-based device, a dedicated app can download and cache titles for reading offline. And for devices compatible with Adobe's DRM-protected e-book formats—including Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook—PDF or EPUB files can be downloaded and transferred to your device using Adobe Editions software.

Those hoping Google meant "DRM-free" when it said "open" will be disappointed, though, as may users of Amazon's popular Kindle e-reader. "Currently, Google eBooks are not compatible with Amazon Kindle devices, though we are open to supporting them in the future," the company noted in a support document.

Google has also partnered with Powell's, Alibris, and participating members of the American Booksellers Association to offer rebranded Google e-books through their respective websites. "You can choose where to buy your e-books like you choose where to buy your print books, and keep them all on the same bookshelf regardless of where you got them," according to Google Books product manager Abraham Murray.

Google said that its library of over 3 million books is one of the largest in the world. "Hundreds of thousands" are on sale (similar to libraries from Amazon, Kobo, and Apple) while the rest are public domain titles available from the Google Books project.

The proposed settlement to sell e-book versions of copyrighted books hasn't yet received final approval from the courts, but the Google eBookstore puts all the technological pieces in to place so additional titles can be made available once it is. Some publishers worried that approval of the deal could create an e-book duopoly between Amazon and Google, but Apple's iBookstore and Barnes & Noble's Kobo-powered store have opened since it was originally announced.

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Google Acts to Demote Distasteful Web Sellers - New York Times

The change was prompted by an article in The New York Times on Sunday about Vitaly Borker, a Brooklyn-based online seller of eyeglasses. Mr. Borker claimed that he purposely shouted at and frightened some of the customers at DecorMyEyes.com because the online complaints actually worked in his favor in Google search results.

In essence, he claimed, Google’s search engine is unable to tell the difference between positive posts and withering online critiques. Therefore, the more complaints posted about Mr. Borker’s site, the more likely customers would be to find his store ranked high on a Google search, which yielded him more revenue.

In a blog posting titled “Being bad to your customers is bad for your business,” Google said that it had revised its algorithm so that it could detect Mr. Borker and “hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide extremely poor user experience.”

Google did not reveal how it had changed its algorithm, or how that change would affect online sellers like Mr. Borker. It simply said that the more it reveals about the changes it made, the easier it will be for unscrupulous sellers to game it.

“We can’t say for sure that no one will ever find a loophole in our ranking algorithms in the future,” Amit Singhal, a Google fellow, wrote on the blog post.

“We know that people will keep trying.”

With the changes, Mr. Borker has already had a harder time pushing DecorMyEyes to its previous high rankings on Google. The store once showed up on the first page of a search of “Christian Audigier” and “eyeglasses.” As of Wednesday night, it was not in the first 20 pages.

Mr. Singhal said that the change was made after the company read in The Times about the ordeal of Clarabelle Rodriguez, who bought a pair of glasses and contact lenses from DecorMyEyes in July.

When she tried to return the frames and get a refund, Mr. Borker (using one of his favorite pseudonyms, Tony Russo) commenced a campaign of phone and e-mail harassment.

That included threats of litigation and chilling statements like “You put your hand in fire. Now it’s time to get burned.”

He also sent a photograph of the front of her apartment building, and in a separate e-mail wrote “I AM WATCHING YOU.”

Ms. Rodriguez went to the police several times and on Oct. 27, Mr. Borker was arrested and charged with aggravated harassment and stalking.

He is set to be arraigned on Dec. 22.

The Internet is rife with consumer complaints about DecorMyEyes, and even the quickest search of the store’s name yields dozens of outraged testimonials.

In July, Ms. Rodriguez’s search used only the brand name of the glasses she wanted. DecorMyEyes was at the top of Google’s main search page.

“We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience,” Mr. Singhal wrote in the blog post. “Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue.”

Exactly how Mr. Borker wound up so high in Google searches has been a matter of online debate. His theory is that the great mass of grievances on all those highly regarded consumer complaint sites were the key to his success.

Google cast doubt on that idea, saying that consumer complaint sites typically include special coding along with the mentions to the companies in question so that such links do not count in the companies’ favor in search results.

At the blog Search Engine Land, Byrne Hobart also wrote in a recent posting that the review-generating strategy was not the driver of Mr. Borker’s success. His analysis found that Mr. Borker benefited chiefly from various “black-hat tricks” to improve his site’s standing, including links from what he called auto-generated spam pages. He also found that the store was frequently linked to by mainstream media sites — The Times included — when references were made to high-end eyeglasses.

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Google Editions: a history of ebooks - Telegraph.co.uk

1971: Michael Hart launches Project Gutenberg, a volunteer scheme to create digital copies of cultural works to add to an archive.

1993: A company, Digital Book Inc, offers customers a floppy disk containing 50 ebooks encoded in the Digital Book Format (.dbf) format.

1995: Amazon starts selling printed books online, and soon comes to dominate the market.

1996: Project Gutenberg announces that it has digitised 1,000 books. Its target is one million titles.

1998: Some of the first ebook readers are launched, including the Rocket eBook, SoftBook, and they Cybook.

1999: Several online retailers start selling ebooks, such as eReader.com and eReads.com.

2000: Microsoft releases Microsoft Reader, dedicated ebook reading software. It could be used on Windows computers and PocketPCs, and used ClearType technology to ensure the type was legible on small devices.

2000: Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet is offered in a digital format, to read on a computer.

2002: Publishers Random House and HarperCollins sell digital versions of some titles.

2004: Google Print and Google Book Search, which would later become known as Google Books, are announced at the Frankfurt book fair.

2005: Amazon acquires Mobipocket, a software company that built ebook reading software for portable devices.

2006: Sony launches its first Reader ebook reading device, with eInk technology.

2007: Amazon unveils the Kindle, a dedicted ebook reader that can download ebooks over Wi-Fi or the mobile network from the Amazon website.

2008: BooksOnBoard starts to sell ebooks for Apple’s iPhone.

2009: Amazon launches the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX, while Barnes & Noble unveils the Nook.

2010: Apple launches the iPad, complete with iBooks ebook reading software. It also launches the iBookstore, a virtual bookstore selling ebook downloads.

2010: Amazon announces that ebook sales have outnumbered hardcover sales for the first time ever.

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Google Editions e-book venture to launch by year's end - Computerworld

Computerworld - After months of delays, Google will launch its e-book retail business, now being called Google Editions, in the U.S. before the end of the year, a spokesman for the company confirmed today.

The spokesman gave no reason for the delay and declined to offer other details. A Google executive had said in May that the company planned to sell digital books last summer.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the venture had cleared some technical and legal hurdles and that Google Editions would launch in the U.S. by year's end and internationally in the first quarter of 2011. A federal court recently gave preliminary approval to a settlement agreement between Google and authors and publishers, which apparently has provided further impetus for the Google e-book concept.

Under the Google system, independent booksellers are expected to be able to sell e-books through Google Editions -- and they have received contracts to make that happen, according to the WSJ report. Independent booksellers would benefit the most from Google's concept.

As early as May, Google was saying that it would allow people using a variety of devices to buy books from a broad range of Web sites. Google will compete against Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and Apple, among others, but it could distinguish itself by providing access to a diversity of e-book sources and supporting multiple reading platforms.

Google is expected to allow people to make e-book purchases through Google accounts that they would access through a Web browser. Many smartphones, computers and tablets access the Web through a variety of Web browsers.

Google already offers a service called Google Book Search, which allows people to search and preview millions of books from libraries and publishers globally. The new Google Editions would allow users of Book Search to buy a digital copy of a book, and Google would allow book retailers to sell Google Editions books on their own sites.

It appears that Google Editions is moving forward now in part because of a U.S. District Court in New York's preliminary approval on Nov. 19 of a settlement between Google and authors and publishers. Google has described the agreement on its Web site.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen, or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

Read more about E-business in Computerworld's E-business Topic Center.

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Google Voice finally debuts in the App Store - Digitaltrends.com

Apple has approved the Google Voice app for its App Store, and the free VoIP is better than ever for its official release.

Sure, iTunes now has the Beatles Anthology available for download, but Apple‘s got bigger news: the Google Voice app is here. It may not have warranted a full-page notice, but there are plenty of iPhone users out there celebrating Google Voice‘s long-coming availability in the App Store.

Prior to today, users were limited to using Google Voice on the Web only, but to fantastic results. It’s been wildly popular, allowing users to make international calls for pennies and send free unlimited texts – and all with Apple’s stiff disapproval. Apple claimed concerns over the app duplicating its own primary function and has allegedly been reviewing it since. This invited some attention from the FCC and FTC, and a year and half of subversive use later, here we are.

The app allows users to bundle multiple phone lines under one number, as well as transcribe voice mails. The dirt cheap international calling and free SMS service remains, and Google is even going to bolster the app with optional push notifications and quicker call connection.

And it is definitely more powerful than its Web-based counterpart, for anyone out there wondering if the app is worth installing (for free, mind you). While we can’t imagine anyone is really wondering that (again, emphasis on free app), the so-far glowing reviews (including this one from SlashGear) say it definitely is.

What’s also encouraging about the addition of the Google Voice app is what it means for the App Store. Apple’s approval process has had its fair share of critics, and it recently implemented some policy changes as a response to user and developer frustrations. Apple claimed it would be relaxing its restrictions for app guidelines, and adding Google Voice is a significant step in that direction.

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Google personalizes local search with Hotpot - Digitaltrends.com

Google's second stab at a social network goes heavy on the practical and light on the personal. Places with Hotpot gives users a way to find local businesses they and their friends like.

Google has launched a new service tied in with its Places feature that helps you and your friends rank and recommend local businesses. The tool, called Hotpot, is its new business-integrated search engine that helps you find what you’re looking for based on what you and your friends like.

Location is taking over the digital scene, with companies like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Facebook Places (meets Deals, of course) ruling the territory. Wisely, Google is beefing up its Places application with a social side to compete.

A significant advantage that many of Hotpot’s competitors have, however, is their integration with Facebook. It’s no secret at this point that Facebook and Google are on less than good terms, which puts Hotpot in the tough position of having to rely on its own social graph. Many Google account holders don’t create profiles for the site, choosing instead to use Google for Gmail alone. The built in viewership that comes with Facebook integration is invaluable, and Hotpot simply won’t have access to it.

Still, Google’s working with what it’s got, and the “Add friends” tool is simple and non-committal enough that it should be effective. Users are shown their Gmail contacts list and invited to “Add” friends from it, which sends an e-mail inviting the selected person to see your ratings.

The user interface definitely leans toward a traditional social networking format, and includes the option of an alias, profile picture, and the friends list. Aside from that, there’s no personal information available – something Google may have learned from its Buzz debacle. The focus is on Places, your rankings, and the recommendations eventually generated for you. By offering a social service with functionality at its core, Google is making a smart, safe step into the arena.

If it can get users beyond that annoying first round of sending and receiving invites to use Places with Hotpot, it will be a worthwhile service. Google Maps is many consumers’ default for directions and business’ locations, and a more accurate ratings system – not to mention those ratings being authored by people you know and presumably trust – would be a benefit for anyone.

And even if it can’t get people to collectively jump on and invite entire contact lists, Hotpot is still useful for an individual. Based on the ratings you give, it will generate recommendations for you. Who needs friends when you’ve got Hotpot?

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Google Doodle Celebrates Robert Louis Stevenson's 160th Birthday - PC Magazine

Google's Saturday doodle is in honor of what would have been Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson's 160th birthday.

The doodle, found on Google.com, features a pirate, pirate ship, the coveted chest of gold, and the always ominous skull and crossbones flag.

Stevenson is perhaps best known for his books "Treasure Island," "Kidnapped," and "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," though he also dabbled in essays, travel writing, short stories, novels and romances, as well as poetry, plays and biography during his 20-year career, according to a Stevenson Web site maintained by Edinburgh Napier University.

"Treasure Island" was first published in 1883 and told the story of Jim Hawkin's quest for buried treasure. It prompted several film adaptations, including a 1950 production from Disney, which was the studio's first live-action film.

"Jekyll and Hyde" and "Kidnapped" were published three years later in 1886, telling the stories of a physician with a dark side and a boy's quest for his inheritance, respectively. A 1941 film version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" starred Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

In his later life, Stevenson settled in the Samoan Islands with his extended family, where he was buried after his death in December 1894.

Stevenson is not the first artist to which Google has paid homage with its doodle recently. In October, the company honored what would have been musician Dizzy Gillespie's 93rd birthday, as well as the would-be 70th birthday of former Beatle John Lennon. In September, the company celebrated its own 12th birthday with a doodle drawing of a cake.

Several cartoons have also received the Google doodle treatment. Google commemorated the 50th anniversary of "The Flintstones" with a picture on its home page, and it celebrated Halloween with the help of Scooby Doo. This spring, in celebration of the 30 years of Pac-Man, Google also converted its Google.com homepage to a full, playable game.

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Singel-Minded: How Facebook Could Beat Google to Win the Net - Wired News (blog)

One, there’s so much interaction and information being shared inside Facebook that it has become a decent-sized replica of the Web inside the Web. And Google can’t crawl and analyze much of what happens in there, which is a problem when your goal is to organize the world’s information. Google is blind because much of what happens on Facebook remains in Facebook. (Ironically, this is due to users’ privacy settings, which Facebook has relentlessly tried to chip away at over the last four years.)

Two, Facebook knows who you are and has the right to use that information because you explicitly gave it to them. Google has different kinds of data that reveal a lot about who you are and what you are interested in — some of it very private. But very little of that data is information you explicitly told the company to share, and they’ve assiduously promised not to use your searching and e-mailing data to make a profile of you.

For years, that’s not been a problem for Google. They made the majority of their $7.29 billion in revenue in the third quarter from little text ads that show up next to and above search results, all keyed off the words you type into that little box. There’s no targeting involved. It doesn’t matter to Google’s AdWords system who you are, what you’ve searched for before, or what you do in other Google services (the only real targeting available in AdWords now is by location).

Google then expanded this program to run ads on other people’s sites, its Adsense product, which includes text and banner ads. For years, those ads were also purely contextual — based mostly off the words on the site running the ads. So if you ran a blog about your life as a dentist, your readers would see ads for floss and teeth whitening.

But then, in search of a new revenue stream, Google bought DoubleClick.

DoubleClick is one of the net’s display ad giants and has been serving banners ads on sites across the net since the early 1990s, using each ad serving spot as a way to track what you are reading to make inferences about your interests and build a pseudonomymous profile of you tied to a cookie in your browser.

But despite having a large number of sites running the ads (including Wired.com), AdSense/Doubleclick still accounts for only 30 percent of Google’s revenues. And, surprisingly, the targeting isn’t very good. You can go here to see what Google thinks it can deduce about you just from your browsing.

The problem is that Google built a wall between user search data and advertising — and the mammoth financial success of AdWords proved that the separation was fine at the time. A search query was likely to show intent, and it really didn’t matter to advertisers selling something what demographics the searcher belonged to.

Google kicked a hole in that wall in 2009 when it started including the videos you watch on YouTube as a way to target display ads ads at you, when you visit YouTube and non-Google sites.

Google isn’t talking about how well those ads perform compared to its purely contextual ones, or to DoubleClick’s tracking. But according to a Wall Street Journal story from this summer, Google is “soul-searching” over ways to turn what you do while logged into Google into data that can be used for targeting ads. That’s agonizing for Google since it’s always promised that it would keep that usage data separate from its ads.

But Facebook has never made that promise and its users don’t seem turned off by the targeted ads. They know they gave up the targeting data by typing it into their profile box, by becoming a fan of a company on Facebook or clicking a “Like” button. And now Facebook is training users to stay logged-in to Facebook all the time, thanks to Facebook Connect, the new system to log-in to mobile phone apps using their Facebook credentials and the ubiquitous Facebook “Like” buttons, which only work when you are logged into Facebook.

Why does that matter?

It matters because now you are your Facebook identity all over the net, telling every site that plays in the Facebook ecosystem exactly which dog you are, that you like playing fetch and what other dogs you run in a pack with.

Which means, it’s a virtual certainty that Facebook-targeted ads are going to start showing up in your hometown’s newspaper, your favorite online music site and hundreds of other sites you visit. And unlike the targeted third-party ad systems run by Microsoft, Google and others, there’s no need to track you around the net to try to infer from your reading and video viewing habits how old you are, where you went to college or what you are into.

Facebook knows all of that already because you told them. Facebook touts the story of a wedding photographer in Michigan who’s expanded his business tremendously simply by targeting ads at locals who mark themselves as “engaged.” Gabriel Weinberg, the one-man show behind the search engine DuckDuckGo, went so far as to create an ad targeted just at his wife.

Now, Facebook advertisers don’t actually know anything about you — at least not until you visit their site and handover your e-mail address. Instead, they use a simple panel in Facebook that lets them choose what categories to target, including age, location, education and gender — and then they can further target ads based on the things you have liked or added to your profile. Facebook runs the ads on company’s behalves’ but never turns over a list of who fits the criteria.

As a private company, Facebook doesn’t have to share public numbers, but a spokesman told Wired.com that advertisers are getting comfortable with Facebook, and it has thousands of advertisers. Revenues are estimated at $1.3 billion a year and rising, while investors and secondary markets are valuing the company at more than $40 billion on Sharespost, a private stock market.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has never loved ads. He kept them off his site as long as he could and even the ones that run now are relatively small, given how big and loud ads have gotten on the Web outside of Facebook. Some marketers complain that the Facebook ads just aren’t visible enough on the site, so they concentrate their efforts on getting people to “fan” their pages, in hopes the news that you like “Starbucks” makes it into the news feeds of your friends.

Facebook says it’s not working on any third-party ad system, and right now, it doesn’t need to. It’s flush with cash from investors, who’ve poured hundreds of millions into the company, without Zuckerberg losing control. It can bide its time, making Facebook even more central to the internet, building more relationships with top advertisers and convincing more sites to turn over their login systems to Facebook.

But it’s a near inevitability Facebook takes the same, logical step Google took and starts putting ads on third-party sites, targeting Facebook users reading the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, or your hometown newspaper.

Those ads could be splashy and dominant – the way advertisers like them these days, without distracting from the Facebook experience. They can also be very targeted, without Facebook having to hand over the info about that reader to the website.

It has the potential to be the opposite of Google’s Adwords/Adsense division, with huge profits coming from outside the site Facebook controls. Facebook could then grab a giant and dominating slice of an evergrowing online display ad market, while simultaneously making display ads actually targeted.

Facebook even makes the case that its ad system is less creepy than third-party systems that track you, mostly without you realizing it, around the web. While they do see what you are doing around the web when you are logged into your Facebook account and there is a “Like” button on that site, the company says it does not mine that information and deletes it after three months. No other third-party ad network comes close to forgetting so closely, and there are a lot of them.

Facebook’s advantage is that they probably don’t need to do this sort of tracking, given all the profile data, friend connections and likes that you’ve fed into their system. If advertisers and users get comfortable enough with ads based off that data, then there’s no reason that a site such as the New York Times wouldn’t want to turn over at least some of their ad sales to Facebook. Facebook, having spent years getting advertisers used to targeting the Facebook generation, would be able to charge very high rates to advertisers.

That’s because it would not only be able to do very granular ad targeting, but it could do so on a site with the reputation of the New York Times.

Online papers love the idea of targeted ads, because contextual ads just don’t work for news. What ad are you going to put up next to a story about a flood in India? An ad for Indian rugs? What about next to a story about a plane crash? Or even a story about a run-of-the-mill mayoral election?

One hope to fix that giant problem facing the media industry is to know who your readers are.

And that means building identity into the internet.

Facebook’s the only company to have done so, and that’s why Google is fighting to catch up to “social.”

There may not be room for more than one online identity company on the net, but Google has assembled a high-powered team of coders and thinkers, including Slide’s Max Levchin, the open social Messiah Chris Messina and Live Journal’s Brad Fitzpatrick, to take on the Facebook crew.

As the underdog in this fight, Google’s best weapon will be openness — tying to turn users against the walls of Facebook, while Facebook will try to be just open enough to keep users and partners from revolting. The best case scenario? Google figures out how to turn identity into an open protocol like e-mail — something you can host and control anywhere that lets you stitch together whatever services you like.

And if that effort fails, Facebook’s relatively benign child-king will be in control of what you can and can’t do with your identity on the internet.

And Mark Zuckerberg will have built a company worth more than $100 billion — and maybe worth more than Google.

Photo: escapedtowisconsin

Follow us for disruptive tech news: Ryan Singel and Epicenter on Twitter.

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Google Instant Previews: A Hands-On Tour - PC World

Finding yourself short on time and/or patience? Good news: Google's got a little something new to make your next Web search even speedier.

Google announced the debut of Google Instant Previews on Tuesday. And no, you aren't experiencing déjà vu: This is something different from the Google Instant feature we saw rolled out in September.

The original Google Instant allows you to see search results as you type. The new Google Instant Previews takes it a step further, letting you actually peek at snapshots of sites without ever leaving the results page.

"Instant Previews provides a graphic overview of a search result and highlights the most relevant sections, making finding the right page as quick and easy as flipping through a magazine," Google Product Manager Raj Krishnan explains.

Hey, we're talking about images here -- so why try to illustrate with words? Here's a hands-on tour of what Google's new Instant Previews feature actually does and how it can work for you.

Google Instant Previews: The Newest Way to Search

Click to Zoom

Once you have Google Instant Previews enabled, you'll see a small magnifying glass to the right of every Google search result (view full-sized image). To start using Instant Previews, you simply click on one of those icons. You can also hit the right arrow key if you prefer a mouseless navigation experience.

Whichever way you do it, activating the magnifying glass brings up a preview thumbnail for the page in question. It doesn't take long, either; Google says it's usually a delay of less than one-tenth of a second. Despite my best speed-counting efforts, I couldn't quite tell if that estimation was precise -- but let's just say it was pretty darn close.

Click to Zoom

Each "instant" preview shows you a current view of the page, complete with text, graphics, and anything else that might be present (view full-sized image). If you click on the thumbnail, Google takes you to the site. If you move your mouse anywhere else within the search results, Google starts loading previews for other pages in the list.

Click to Zoom

When Google detects text that seems particularly relevant to your search, it creates an orange-highlighted pop-out box within the preview so you can read the words (view full-sized image). When I searched for "Conan O'Brien review," for example, Google Instant Previews pulled out text showing a review of Conan's first show from People.com.

Google Instant Previews: The X-Rated Question

Maybe it's just my warped mind, but one of the first things I wondered was whether Google Instant Previews would blacklist certain "obscene" terms from instantly appearing, as it did with the original Google Instant feature. Google's explanation for the blacklisting made enough sense, by the way: You can always search for that stuff by hitting the "enter" key -- but having the material pop up automatically could cause a child to be inadvertently exposed to something saucy.

Strictly in the name of research, then, I took it upon myself to search for a few terms far too raunchy to spell out here. (Hey, it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it.) The verdict: Google does not block adult-oriented content from showing up in its Instant Previews feature. In other words, depending upon what your search entails, click the magnifying glass with caution; whatever's on the sites will show up in the previews on your screen.

Google Instant Previews: Final Thoughts

In general, I found Google Instant Previews to be a fairly handy feature. While the original Google Instant option did little more than annoy me (I disabled that bad boy about 5 minutes after it came online), I could see this one being something I'd actually use. Google suggests using it for times when you want to compare results, find a result that meets a specific need -- something with a chart or image, for example -- or quickly find a page you'd previously visited without having to click through to a dozen different sites. I could envision myself using it in any of those contexts.

So there's your tour -- now, ready to try out Google Instant Previews for yourself? Head to google.com/landing/instantpreviews to give it a whirl. If the page doesn't load for you, don't worry: Google says the feature is being rolled out as we speak and will be available to everyone soon.

Hopefully, your wait won't be much longer than a tenth of a second.

JR Raphael is a PCWorld contributing editor and the co-founder of geek-humor site eSarcasm. You can find him on both Facebook and Twitter.

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Google Limits Facebook Access to Gmail Contacts - Wall Street Journal

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See a sample reprint in PDF format.Order a reprint of this article nowTECHNOLOGYNOVEMBER 5, 2010Google Limits Facebook Access to Gmail Contacts ArticleStock QuotesCommentsmore in Tech »BY AMIR EFRATI

Google Inc. is launching a salvo against Facebook Inc., saying it will no longer allow the social network to grab information about Google users' social and professional contacts in Gmail, Google's email service.

Google has always allowed Google users to transfer data, including their contacts, to other websites. Until now, new Facebook users could find out whether their contacts on Gmail also had Facebook accounts, simply by typing in their Gmail user name and password as part of the Facebook signup process.

That ...

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