Google Goes Pay To Track

Amid widespread concern about its new privacy policies, Google is now facing additional criticism over a deal to offer users Amazon gift certificates if they open their Web movements to the company in a program called Screenwise.

Google says the program launched “near the beginning of the year,” but the company’s low-key offer was disclosed Tuesday night on the blog Search Engine Land.

Google is asking users to add an extension to the Chrome browser that will share their Web-browsing activity with the company. In exchange, users will receive a $5 Amazon gift when they sign up and additional $5 gift card values for every three months they continue to share. (Amazon is not a partner in the project.) Users must be over age 13, and minors will need parental consent to participate. The tracking extension can be turned off at any time, allowing participants to temporarily close their metaphorical shades on Google.

The company says the program will help it “improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.”

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Google Ordered To Pay $660K

A Paris Court earlier this week ordered Google France and its parent company Google to pay plaintiff Bottin Cartographes 500,000 euros (about $660,000) for providing its free mapping services to companies across the country. The court also required Google to pay a 15,000 euro fine for its practice.

“We proved the illegality of (Google’s) strategy to remove its competitors,” Jean-David Scemmama, attorney for Bottin Cartographes, a company that provides mapping services to the enterprise, told the AFP in an interview earlier this week. “The court recognized the unfair and abusive character of the methods used and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed. This is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application.”

According to Scemmama, Bottin has been arguing its case against Google for two years, claiming the search giant was engaging in anticompetitive practices by using its free service to take control over the online-mapping industry.

In a statement to the AFP, Google said that it will appeal the court’s decision, adding that Google Maps is still facing competition in that market.

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Google Defends New Privacy Policy

In a letter sent to eight members of Congress, Google yesterday defended its decision to consolidate its privacy policies and users’ personal information.

The 13-page letter explains Google’s decision to change its privacy policies and answers specific questions from the legislators. In sum, Google contended that its approach to privacy remains the same, that users still have control over how they use the company’s various online services, and that private information stays private.

“Some have expressed concern about whether consumer can opt out of ourupdated privacy policy,” wrote Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy, in the letter.

“We understand the question at the heart of this concern. We believe the relevant issue is whether users have choices about how their data is collected and used. Google’s privacy policy – like that of other companies – is a document that applies to all consumers using our products and services. However, we have built meaningful privacy controls into our products, and we are committed to continue offering those choices in the future,” he added.

Google stirred up something of a privacy firestorm last week when company executives disclosed plans to rewrite privacy policies and to meld user information across its various products and services.

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Will Samsung Overtake Apple

Yesterday, DigiTimes released its comprehensive Global Smartphone Industry 2012 forecast report, which entails the total number of global smartphone shipments in 2011 along with estimates of smartphone manufacturer ranking by volume in 2012.

According to the report, global smartphone shipments are projected to top 464 million units in the entirety of 2011, with Apple being the top ranking vendor in terms of shipment volume, followed by Samsung Electronics and Nokia. On the Google Android side of matters, it is expected that Samsung will overtake Apple in 2012 as the “world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume.” In addition, HTC will overtake Nokia for the third-place spot.

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Motorola Goes After Apple

Motorola has filed a new lawsuit in Florida charging Apple with six patent infringements in the iPhone 4S and four of those patents in iCloud.

The suit names the same six patents that Motorola cited in its complaint against Apple filed in 2010 in the same court. Motorola tried to add the iPhone 4S and iCloud to the list of Apple products in the original suit but the judge ruled that it was too late to do so.

The new suit is notable amid the lengthy battle between Motorola and Apple because it must have been sanctioned by Google, noted Florian Mueller, who has been closely following mobile patent lawsuits, in a blog post. Mueller is a patent expert who is sometimes paid by companies including Microsoft for his work.

The merger agreement between Google and Motorola stipulates that Motorola not assert any new intellectual property actions without an agreement in writing by Google. That means Google must have expressly authorized Motorola to pursue this new case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Many experts believe that Google may have agreed to purchase Motorola for the cellphone maker’s extensive intellectual property portfolio, since Android has come under attack in the courts by companies including Microsoft and Apple.

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Android Catching iOS

Tablet computers loaded with Google’s Android operating system narrowed the lead of Apple’s iPad on the global market in the fourth quarter, research firm Strategy Analytics said on Thursday.

Global tablet shipments reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units in the fourth quarter, growing 2-1/2 fold from 10.7 million a year earlier, the research firm stated.

“Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes,” analyst Neil Mawston said in a statement.

Android’s market share rose to 39 percent from 29 percent a year earlier, while Apple’s share slipped to 58 percent from 68 percent a year before.

The tablet computer market grew 260 percent last year to 66.9 million units as consumers are increasingly buying tablets in preference to netbooks and even entry-level notebooks or desktops.

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Nokia Sold 1 Million Lumina Smartphones

Nokia reported a one billion year over year loss for the quarter ended 30 December 2011, only slightly offset by its launch of Lumia Windows Phone smartphones.

The firm shipped 113.5 million mobile phones during the quarter, down eight per cent from the same period in 2010. However, the figures were up from the 106.6 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2011, as the company benefited from its launch of the Lumia 800 smartphone in October, its first Windows Phone handset since it announced its deal with Microsoft.

Nokia shipped 19.6 million smartphones during the final quarter of 2011, down from the 28.6 million it shipped a year earlier, but up 17 percent from the 16.8 million sold in the third quarter of 2011.

The company reported net sales of $10 billion for the quarter, 20 percent down from the same quarter a year earlier. Full year sales were $38.7 billion, a nine percent decline from 2010.

Nokia reported that it sold one million of its Lumia smartphones since they went on sale in October. The firm said it is accelerating investment in its Lumia range of devices running Microsoft Windows Phone, claiming it has sold “well over one million Lumia devices to date”.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said, “Just six months after signing an agreement with Microsoft, we introduced our first two devices based on the Windows Phones platform – the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 710. We brought the new devices to market ahead of schedule, demonstrating that we are changing the clock speed of Nokia. To date, we have introduced Lumia to consumers in Europe, Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

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iPhone Narrows Gap With Android

Apple’s iPhone gained major ground among recent buyers in its battle against smartphones running Google’s Android, but still lagged behind its OS rival, pollster Nielsen said today.

In a December 2011 survey of U.S. consumers who had purchased a smartphone in the previous three months, 44.5% chose an iPhone, a jump of nearly 20 percentage points from the 25.1% that Nielsen measured in October.

That represents a 77% increase in the iPhone’s numbers.

But Android maintained the lead in the recent-buyers game with a 46.9% share, down from October’s 61.6%.

A majority of the new iPhone owners — 57% to be exact — bought an iPhone 4S, the newest model in Apple’s line-up, said Nielsen. The iPhone 4S debuted in the U.S. on Oct. 14, 2011.

Nielsen said the iPhone 4S had an “enormous” impact on Apple’s huge jump in share among new smartphone purchasers.

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Microsoft and Others Enable IPv6

The so-called worldwide launch of IPv6 has been set for 6 June 2012, when companies will permanently enable IPv6 connectivity in their products and services.

Following the relative success of 2011′s IPv6 day, a number of firms including Cisco, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have pledged support for “World IPv6 Launch” day, which has been set as 6 June 2012. On that day the companies have pledged to permanently enable IPv6 connectivity to their associated products and services.

IP address allocation bodies such as ARIN and RIPE have been pushing IPv6 adoption for years but it took last year’s dramatic exhaustion of IPv4 addresses to jolt companies into action. IPv6 day was supported by many of the firms taking part in the IPv6 launch later this year, to drum up awareness and see how much disruption there will be when IPv6 connectivity is enabled.

Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC said, “Operational experience and measurements on World IPv6 Launch will help content providers and ISPs to identify and rectify any potential problems with delivering services over IPv6.”

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Cars May Come With nVidia’s Tegra

One of the things that we keep hearing as a big business opportunity for ARM manufacturers is to get their chips in cars. We heard this before, but this time we are not talking about navigation / entertainment systems.

The idea behind the concept is that more and more cars will come with collision detection mechanisms, road tracking that can keep your car stay in the high way lane. It gets better, the car can now lock on the car in front of you and accelerate and decelerate with it, so called adaptive cruise control with some manufacturers.

Fancier cars today come with elaborate stability assistance systems and many other features that might put such processors to good use, for something far more useful than just navigation and playing music.

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