In a move that can be seen as a response to Apple’s iTunes, Google yesterday launched a new service called Google Music. The Google Music platform reportedly contains millions of songs. This new service also allows consumers purchase “individual songs or entire albums right from your computer or your Android device and they’ll be added instantly to your Google Music library, and accessible anywhere.”

As a kick-start strategy, Google will be giving out one free music download to each consumer.

Google seems to be offering so many “freebies” on this new platform. Below are some of the them:

• The Rolling Stones are offering an exclusive, never-before-released live concert album,Brussels Affair (Live, 1973), including a free single, “Dancing with Mr. D.” This is the first of six in an unreleased concert series that will be made available exclusively through Google Music over the coming months.
• Coldplay fans will find some original music that’s not available anywhere else: a free, live recording of “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall”, a five-track live EP from their recent concert in Madrid and a remix of “Paradise” by Tiësto.
• Busta Rhymes’s first single from his upcoming album, Why Stop Now (feat. Chris Brown), is available for free.
• Shakira’s live EP from her recent concert in Paris and her new studio single, “Je L’Aime à Mourir” are both being offered up free.

According to Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President, Mobile:

Starting today, Google Music is open in the U.S. at market.android.com, and over the next few days, we will roll out the music store to Android Market on devices running Android 2.2 and above. You can also pick up the new music app from Android Market and start listening to your music on your phone or tablet today. And don’t forget to turn your speakers up to eleven.

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Trying to sell anything in these times can be a daunting task. This is partly due to the fact that there are a whole range of products for different groups of people and you need to make your products appeal to as many groups as possible, or just to the predominant groups.

You have the ‘hip and cool’ youngster who all want to own the device that their celebrities own, you have the old accomplished businessmen who force all their workers to use their phone just because it’s been working for a long time, and you have the energy-enthusiasts who care about the greenhouse effect and energy conservation.

Well, in that light, Google recently disposed of all their lawn mowers and acquired goats! Yeah; you read that right! Real live farm goats! And no, they didnt buy the goats, they RENTED them… they still rent them. Here’s what Dan Hoffman, their Director of Real Estate and Workplace Services had to say.

“At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we’re not “kidding”).

A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a Border Collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.”

What can I say! Sounds like a good time to be a ‘goat’. The goats eat for free, and they get paid too.

Well, there you have it! But really, the questions on my mind are these:

1. How does company marketing affect the types of devices you buy?
2. Does a tech company going “green” really influence the way you see them?
3. Is it more about the device or what the company stands for?
4. What drives you to pay for a mobile device?

Google’s new social networking site, Google+ (GooglePlus), has finally been opened up to the public. G+ has been on a field test for the past 12 weeks, and was accessible only via invites from existing members.

The official launch anouncement was made today on the Official G+ blog. As such, anyone can now register for a Google+ account by visiting plus.google.com to signup.

Also, for those already on Google+, there’s now a search tab. I once looked out for this feature, but it was missing then. But now, you can search for people you want to connect with. This feature also allows you to save your searches. On the screenshot, you can see a saved search for “Larry Page” just below the “Left Stream Navigation”. The screenshot is a search for Mobility blog.

I was also successful in creating a  Google+ profile for VDrive Technologies without an invite and it was  successful.

Want Google+ for mobile?

Don’t forget that Google+ is also available on mobile. Simply visit this URL in your phone’s browser: m.google.com/plus.

Today, Chris Chabot of Google Inc announced the launch of the latest Social Networking platform’s API (Google+). According to him, “this initial API release is focused on public data only— it lets you read information that people have shared publicly on Google+.”

He further stated that they followed the best practices in initiating the platform’s API. He highlighted the following points:

• Our API methods are RESTful HTTP requests which return JSON responses.
• Our payload formats use standard syntax (e.g. PoCo for people info, ActivityStrea.ms for activities).
• We use OAuth 2 for secure trusted access to user data.

Last month, the news of Google’s acquisition of Motorola sent shockwaves through the mobile industry. Of course, very quickly a few apologists got up to say that the purchase was about the patents in Motorola’s kitty. I didn’t think so.

Well, its official now. Here are the words of Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt:

“We did it for more than just patents. We actually believe that the Motorola team has some amazing products coming,” and went on to add that, “We’re excited to have the product line, to use the Motorola brand, the product architecture, the engineers. These guys invented the RAZR. We know them well because they’re Google Apps users.”

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Come on guys, all that money just for the patents? It wasn’t going to happen. Google always had their eyes on the hardware, and now they’ve got their hands on it.

While Android partners have publicly said that they are happy about the acquisition, in my opinion that’s just PR. In reality, things have changed significantly.

For one, the Korean government has recently mentioned it plans to develop a mobile OS to rival Android with the support of both Samsung and LG.

Secondly, Chinese search engine Baidu (which dominates China’s search market) has launched its own mobile OS, called Yi. Baidu Yi is a modification of Android OS and provides alternatives to many of Android’s in-built Google services.

Acer has also now publicly stated that the Motorola acquisition is a blessing to Microsoft. As I suspected, OEMs would now have to seriously consider investing in the direction of WindowsPhone.

Samsung already has Bada OS which is being pushed hard in the market, and can always fall back on that.

How this all plays out eventually will be seen. The mobile industry is very volatile. As the famous saying goes, Expect the unexpected.

Android partners – Samsung, SonyEricsson, HTC, and LG – have responded to Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and they all sound happy about the deal. Of course, personally, I expect that all those happy quotes are simply PR.

In the coming months, what these companies actually do – as against what they have said – will tell us what they really think of the deal. After all, each and everyone of them must act in their own best interests, just as Google have acted in their own best interest with this.

Quotes from Android partners

The mobile industry is so volatile and dynamic that every now and then a player throws in something that changes the playing field. That is exactly what Google has done with the acquisition of smartphone vendor Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.

Ladies and gentlemen, this changes everything. Again.

Here is an excerpt from Larry Page’s announcement on the official Google blog:

This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.

The combination of Google and Motorola will not only supercharge Android, but will also enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater choice, and wonderful user experiences.

Finally, Google joins the exclusive club of companies who control both the software and hardware ends of their mobile products. Others include Apple (iOS), RIM (Blackberry), Samsung (Bada), and HP (WebOS). Nokia, who have been a part of this club till date with Symbian, are actually exiting the club with their dumping of Symbian and Meego in favour of WindowsPhone.

Questions

Did Nokia make the right choice letting go of control of the software end?

How will the other Android licensees respond? HTC? Samsung? LG? Sony Ericsson?

If this is the future, and I suspect that it is to a large extent, then perhaps we should actually be looking forward to a Microsoft acquisition of Nokia someday? Blasphemy? Perhaps. But like Nokia is, Motorola was once the world’s largest mobile vendor. Who would have thought that they would one day end up in Google’s pockets?

In the meantime, Android is the only one of those mobile platform in which the developer now has hardware control as well as licensees. All other things being equal, this should mean better days for the Android OS – if the other licensees don’t panic and start looking elsewhere. And who would blame them if they did that?

I’m still reeling from the shock of this news. Help me, someone!

Read the official statement: Supercharging Android: Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility

If your device runs Android 2.2 and above, you can expect an update to the Android Market app on your device in a couple of weeks time.

Google has revealed, through it’s official blog, that an update to the Android Market is due in a couple of weeks. This update brings a new and improved UI to the market and makes it much more easier to find apps.

Besides bringing users new ways to find great applications and games, U.S-specific additions include the ability to purchase books, and rent movies. This means that U.S. users will be able to rent thousands of movies, starting at $1.99, right from Android Market on their devices.

Other new features that have also been added include: “Staff Choices” and “Editor’s Choice”. These are supposed to help you see what apps Google staff are using on their Android devices.

The Google Mobile blog says:
You’ll be delighted to find we’ve overhauled Android Market to make it faster, easier, and more fun to discover great apps, movies, and books. We’ve created more space to feature some of the most interesting content of the week on the home page. We’ve added more top charts, with newer, more relevant items, and we’ve made it easy to swipe through these charts as you browse the store. We’ve also introduced new collections of great content, like staff picks and Editors’ Choice apps.

We will bring you more when we have spent some time with it. In the mean time here are some screen shots of what it looks like on the Galaxy Tab.

Source

Google’s Andy Rubin, has posted a tweet stating that 500,000 Android phones and tablets are now being activated per day.

We knew that robots were going to take over Earth one day; didn’t we?

Everywhere I turned, I heard about Angry Birds. I spend a huge amount of time interacting with people offline and online. A bulk of them would make some sort of reference to how addictive this game by Rovio was. The day I gave it a try, I was hooked on it immediately.

Angry Birds is available on Symbian, Android, iOS and other platforms. It is also available as a desktop app for PC – for a fee.

On the second day of Google I/O conference, there were lots of announcements. One was about WebGL, a solution that allows the Angry birds game to be available on chrome browser online. Once the game was running, it would store locally on your PC, and be available for you to play offline thereafter. The game plays at 60 frames per seconds, sufficient for a high resolution experience.

If you have a chrome browser you can give it a spin immediately at chrome.angrybirds.com.

If you do give it a try, let me have your thoughts.

Google has announced Android 3.1 also named Honeycomb as it only represents a minor upgrade over 3.0. One of the most outstanding additions to the Android OS with this release is USB Host mode. This will allow Android smartphone users to plug in and use USB drives and other USB peripherals with their devices.

Other features that come with Android 3.1 include:

• expanding resizable widgets
• Andriod devices can become USB host
• Facial detection with camera. So, in a case of multiple video chats, the speaker focuses on who’s talking

Full details of Android 3.1 features are available on the Android Developers website.

As reported on engadget.com:

“It’s oftentimes easy for us to get swept up in Android mania and forget that Google’s mobile platform is still in its infancy. Then we get cold hard numbers like these — showing iPhone OS owning 28 percent of the US Smartphone market and closing in on RIM’s leading 35 percent — and we face up to the realization that Android handsets still account for less than one in every ten Smartphones owned by Americans today.”

Engadget was reporting on the Nielson Company’s findings on the Android versus iPhone marketshare battle.

From the Nielson report:

Between Q4 ’09 and Q1 ’10, Android and iPhone’s share of the smartphone market grew by 2% each. At the same time, smartphone leader Blackberry lost 2% share to fall to 35% of all smartphones while Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS also lost 2% to fall to 19%.

Apparently, Android and iPhone devices are eating away into RIM’s Blackberry marketshare in the US and Android is yet to catch up with the iPhone in terms of total sales. This contradicts an earlier claim by NPD that Android had overtaken iPhone in the US market.

Readers will also be interested in Apple’s refutal of the NPD figures, of which Engadget rightly pointed out that Apple was “not disputing NPD’s report here — rather, they’re simply trying to change the subject, as any properly-trained PR department would.”

Another intriguing fact in this research was that there is strong loyalty amongst Android and iPhone owners/users. This insight from the research shows that 80 percent of iPhone owners and 70 percent of Android owners express a preference for the same OS in their next phone.

In contrast, Microsoft and RIM’s loyalty numbers stood at 34 and 47 percent respectively.

The Nielson report covers the US only and does not reflect global trends. The U.S. remains a small fraction of the global smartphone market, where both Android and iPhone, while growing, remain small players.

Here in Nigeria, both platforms have an insignificant standing with the smartphone market massively dominated by Symbian, followed from a distance by RIM (BlackBerry) and Windows Mobile.