Google - 32/42 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Feb

French Court Finds Google Guilty Of Abusing Market Dominance With Google Maps, Orders To Pay Up €515,000

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Google, News

Let this be a lesson to all major tech companies: if you have a ton of users and you want to enter a new market, you'd better charge some kind of arbitrary fee, lest you end up in trouble with the French judicial system. Google is feeling that sting this week, as a French court ordered the company to pay €500,000 in damages to Maps competitor Bottin Cartographs as well as a €15,000 fine.

The plaintiff claimed that Google was using its market dominance to muscle out smaller competitors in the mapping software market. Here's what Bottin Cartographs' lawyer, Jean-David Scemmama, had to say on the ruling:

"We proved the illegality of (Google's) strategy to remove its competitors...

Jan

Google Launches Official G+ Page For Android Developers

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Android OS, Google, News

Google's not one to shy away from engaging its developers. Between the Android developers blog, Google Groups, and a myriad of other contact methods, Google is pretty open about talking with developers. If you're looking to get a bit more social, you can now add the official Android developers page to your circles Google+.

If there's one thing we love, it's an open community of developers working together. Google has been pushing harder to try and steer its developers in the direction it wants. The style guide is a pretty big step. This should be just as welcome. No word yet, though, on whether our favorite loveable Android mascot will be appearing in a Hangout.

Jan

App Inventor Goes Open Source At Its New MIT Home

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Apps/Games, Google, News

Looks like we missed it, but back in December of 2011, Google officially stopped developing App Inventor (it was a result of the company’s shutdown of Google Labs), allowing MIT to take the reins of a very similar project. Today, that project went open source, and though there’s very little in the way of documentation or guides, you can download the code now and begin modifying the Inventor.

Additionally, MIT hasn’t yet opened its servers, so you’ll have to find your own place to upload your modified version(s) of the file – but hey, if nothing else, at least MIT deems you “free to use the term ‘App Inventor’ and the puzzle-piece Android logo” in your work.

Jan

[Updated: LV Airport, Casinos, Best Buys Too] [CES 2012] Google Maps Now Features Indoor Mapping For CES

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Applications, Google, News

Shortly after Thanksgiving last year, Google updated its Maps application, bumping its version number up to 6.0 and adding, most notably, indoor mapping. At the time it was presumed that the feature would be most useful for navigating places like major malls, airports, and similar metropolitan areas; however, Google just added a new way to use indoor mapping: finding your way around the most important tech show of the year – CES!

Update: Google's official announcement just went live - in addition to LVCC, they've also added maps of the McCarran airport, Caesars Palace, Bellagio, The Venetian, The Palazzo, MGM Grand, and many more hotels/casinos, along with some Best Buys in the Las Vegas area.

Jan

[CES 2012] Sony Introduces Google TV Set-Top Box, Blu-Ray Player

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Google TV, News, Sony

Seems Sony’s making good on its promise to keep churning out Google TV devices – in fact, the company just introduced not one, but two such gadgets.

As of now, we don’t have tech specs for either of the duo, but what we do know is what you see above: both the NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player (on the left) and the NSZ-GS7 set-top box (on the right) look splendid, and both have seriously overcomplicated names. Additionally, from the looks of it, they’ll support 3D TVs, so if you’re ~~rich~~ lucky enough to have one, I suppose that’s good news. Finally, they’ll both feature gesture and voice control, in addition to the usual Google apps and the following keyboard:

^{Hey, it’s an improvement over Sony’s last attempt at a Google TV keyboard…}

Update: According to The Verge, the keyboard is backlit and features – get this – a three-axis motion sensor that should be perfect for gaming.

Jan

LG Announces Smart TV With Google TV, Featuring LG's Cinema 3D - To Be Shown At CES

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Google TV, LG, News

Last Updated: January 7th, 2012

Well, that was quick. Shortly after new Google TV partners were announced, LG has announced one of their Android-powered offerings: the LG Smart TV with Google TV. Details are scant at this point, as the device won't be demonstrated until CES, but we do know that it will launch in two series at some point this year. Both will feature LG's Cinema 3D displays, which do not require the expensive shuttering glasses to work, and both will come bundled with remote with the Magic Remote Qwerty - unsurprisingly, a QWERTY version of their Magic Remote.

More information will arise once CES rolls around, but with many Google TV-powered devices about to be announced, it likely won't stick out of the crowd.

Jan

Google Announces New Google TV Partners, Hardware To Be Revealed At CES

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Google TV, News

Last Updated: January 7th, 2012

Google TV's debut device, the Logitech Revue, may have been a commercial failure, but Google isn't showing any signs of giving up on the platform. We've already seen the Revue receive the Honeycomb 3.1 update, bringing the all-important Market access to the platform, and now Google has announced a host of Google TV partners who plan to unveil hardware at CES next week:

LG
Marvell
MediaTek
Samsung
Sony
Vizio

Although they didn't release many specific details, it seems that many of these new Google TV-powered devices will actually be TVs as opposed to separate boxes - LG even plans to release an entire of line of TVs, powered by their own L9 chipset.

Dec

[New App] Airtight Brings Apple Airplay Compatibility To Your Google TV

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, Google TV, News

A new app just hit the Android Market that helps bridge the gap between Google TV and iDevices that use Apple's Airplay technology. The app is called Airtight, and it allows you to stream non-DRM movies and images directly to your GTV. In its current state the app cannot stream DRM content or music, but the developers note that they are working on support for the latter.

The app will only set you back $0.99, so if you have both an iDevice and Google TV, it's definitely worth grabbing. Hit the widget to make it yours.

Airtight

QR code for https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brochos.tva

[Via TechCrunch]

Dec

Millions Of Songs On Sale for $0.49 In The Android Market, Albums For Just $4.99

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Google, News

Tired of your lackluster music collection? El Goog is here to you help you remedy that with a huge sale on millions of tracks for just $0.49 in the Android Market. Buying single tracks not your style? No worries, most albums are going for a mere $4.99, too.

I searched through the Market for a few of my favorite artists - some popular, some obscure - just to see if I could find something going for more than $0.49 per track or $4.99 per album. What did I come up with? Nada. Everything I looked up had the same mega-low price tag.

Dec

Google's Monday Android Surprise? Ninja's Nexus Unboxing 3 - This One Might Take You A While

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Galaxy Nexus, Google, News, Videos

Every Nexus release thus far has been accompanied by a neat YouTube-based Nexus Unboxing ~~video~~ craziness (see 1 and 2). The Galaxy Nexus launch in the U.S. is no exception - in fact, it turns out to be the subject of Android's tease this past weekend (which some folks found kind of disappointing considering the level of expectations reached something like FREE NEXUS FOR EVERYONE!!11, ICS for all devices, and the release of Majel).

Ninja's Unboxing 3, as before, takes over the fake YouTube video page, but this time gets down 8-bit style. 3 levels later, and... never mind, I won't tell you how it ends - nobody likes spoilers, right?