Rockstar designer Paul Adams has ditched Facebook for startup Intercom. Before Facebook, Adam’s design work was integral with Google+ and circles. He’s not the first designer to leave Facebook after a 2 year stint. Read more »
Reports that Google has entered a bidding war with Facebook over the social-mapping service Waze may be just a gambit by the company to force a better deal, but there are compelling reasons why Google should make a bid. Read more »
Don’t like the cost of your cloud datastore? Wait a second, it’ll probably go down. Watch for rivals to jump in. Read more »
Voice search will be available as part of an update to Chrome for iOS “in the coming days,” Google announced Wednesday. It’s yet another part of Google’s broader effort to create a layer on top of its chief competitor’s mobile OS. Read more »
Are you ready for Google to take over the desktop? You’d better be if you use Chrome. With it, Google is making a play to rule the computing world as a back door to a new app economy. Read more »
Google’s moonshot lab Google X is buying up Makani Power, a startup that makes a kite-like wind power device. It’s probably the best place for the long shot, big idea that is high altitude wind. Read more »
An article from Data Center Knowledge points to things robots can do to increase efficiency in data centers. But hurdles lie ahead, and data centers will still need administrators, the article suggests. Read more »
Chrome was up front and center at Google I/O, but most of the developments were in services and APIs. If you add them all together, you get a nice vision of how Google plans to dominate the computing world through Chrome. Read more »
Roughly half a dozen new mobile operating systems will come to market over the next 6 to 12 months. Many of these look to be more sophisticated than the older ones controlled by Apple and Google, for whom serious competition could be just around the corner. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Fans of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer say she shouldn’t be blamed for the company’s history of failed acquisitions — but there are plenty of other reasons to be skeptical about Yahoo’s $1.1-billion Tumblr deal. Read more »
At last week’s Google I/O event, Google Voice news was noticeably absent from the stage, overshadowed by the new Hangouts service, which doesn’t yet support Voice. Hold tight, says Google, it’s coming. Read more »
Google and Microsoft slapfest continues; IBM pushes Watson for third-party apps; SAP bets big on HANA for ERP. Read more »
In case you missed the GigaOm weekly podcasts, here’s a second chance. Two of our shows had special guests to explain new technologies and our wrap-up show is fully dedicated to understanding all of the news out of Google I/O. Read more »
Fans of the social-blogging network might not like the idea much, but a $1-billion acquisition of Tumblr would arguably solve a number of problems for Yahoo — and do the same for Tumblr CEO David Karp. Read more »
No new hardware appeared at Google I/O, but a recently released phone debuts as a Nexus-like device. Meanwhile, Google updated Android, without adding further fragmentation issues, through dozens of new services, apps and APIs. Read more »
Plugin-free video chat in the browser is becoming a reality quickly: Developers can soon reach more than one billion browsers and devices with the protocol, according to Google’s Justin Uberti. Read more »
In response to a question at a Google I/O talk on Thursday, luminaries from Google Research took a stab at predicting life 10 years from now. Here’s what they had to say. Read more »
To make sure the response time for their increasingly interactive sites stays low, Chrome developers might want to look at ways to make use of the graphic processors embedded in consumer devices. Read more »
My post about the Google+ redesign and the shift in direction from Facebook design has met with some well reasoned argument. Here I present my own arguments, and reason why I think the two design philosophies are moving in different direction. Read more »
As a boom of solar panels continues to be installed on buildings throughout the U.S., companies, groups and even every day people can make money off of funding this clean energy transition. Read more »
Google launched its own music subscription service Wednesday. Currently, it’s not very different from all the other services out there. So how does it want to compete? Read more at paidContent »
Google said Thursday it is establishing a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab to trigger the next phase of machine learning with the power of quantum computers. The efforts could trickle down to ordinary people. Read more »
The titans of the web are rebels, playing by their own rules. That is to be applauded at times, but we should also be thinking about the wider, long-term implications for society and fair competition. Read more »
The GPS Navigation & Maps app combines OpenStreetMap-based maps with turn-by-turn navigation, with everything working offline as well as online. It’s a cheaper rival to TomTom and CoPilot, and one for privacy-minded Google users to consider. Read more »
Even as Google makes moves to compel developers to try out the Google Cloud Platform, developers see Amazon Web Services as the clear cloud to beat, at least for now. Read more »
Google is expanding its cloud platform with a “NoSQL-like” database called Cloud Datastore. It’s a fully managed database that’s replicated across data centers and built to scale. Read more »
Apple announced a big milestone in app downloads on Wednesday, the same day that Google’s I/O developer conference kicked off in San Francisco. The app store has now seen 50 million downloads so far. Read more »
11 months after it was announced, Google Compute Engine is now available to the masses, Google Senior VP Urs Hölzle said Wednesday afternoon. Read more »
New notification features for Google Now and richer voice recognition in searches on mobile devices and desktops keeps Google the search to beat. Read more »
Eight years after Google launched Maps as a beta product, the search giant is reinventing the map for a new data rich web that lives on fast broadband, and runs on computers with oomph to spare. Read more »
Google’s reworking of its social network, Google+ shows that the company has started to marry data with design and craft new experiences. Will that be enough to turn you and I into active participants? Who, knows, I am just happy it doesn’t look like Facebook. Read more »
Google said it will introduce location-oriented APIs so Android developers can build richer applications that make the most of the sensors on Android devices. Read more »
Google will reveal new communications features for Google Apps for Business users built on Google+ technology, we’ve learned just before Google I/O is set to begin. Read more »
Starting at 9am PT we’ll bring you live coverage of Google I/O 2013 right here. Don’t miss Google’s most significant public event of the year. Read more »
This week’s Chrome podcast brings our first guest to the show: Google Developer Advocate, Joe Marini! Joe explains Packaged Apps vs Native Client and hosted apps. Plus a Google I/O preview and an extension to make you more productive. Read more »
The first summit in London, which is produced in partnership with Google’s Solve For X initiative, will focus on emerging tech such as the internet of things, 3D printing, artificial intelligence and sensors. Read more »
Our live coverage from Google I/O 2013, Google’s most significant public event of the year, can be found right here. Read more »
A recent survey found that 76 percent of respondents store their digital photos on multiple devices using multiple services.That means ample opportunity exists for companies offering solutions that tackle this “dispersed photo problem.” This report analyzes the aforementioned survey’s results, and also measures 18 different vendors against what respondents value most when it comes to photo-organizing solutions. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Here you’ll find all our coverage of Google I/O 2013, Google’s annual showcase of its technology prowess. Read more »
SolarCity is one of the leaders when it comes to installing solar panels on home owner’s rooftops. But the company’s $31 million loss, in its latest quarter, shows the growing pains for the retail solar players. Read more »
