Google Glass Typing Demonstrated Using Minuum keyboard (video)

NSA Hacked Links Between Google and Yahoo Data Centers, Says Latest Snowden Revelation

It’s well-established at this point that the U.S. National Security Agency obtains data about people from their Internet service providers through its secret court systems. But the NSA also has a backdoor to Google and Yahoo data centers, according to the Washington Post, which has fresh documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The report details a project called MUSCULAR that grabs data from fiber-optic cables. That would be illegal on U.S. soil, but it takes place overseas. Google has said it is actively working to encrypt data flowing between its data centers, while Yahoo has not.

It’s unclear how useful MUSCULAR has been, but the Post reports that it “has produced important intelligence leads against hostile foreign governments.”

Google sounds freaked out in its statement to the Post. The company is “troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centers, and we are not aware of this activity. … We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we continue to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links.”

Yahoo’s statement is more circumspect: “We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.”

Facebook, Google Slow Their Startup Spending Spree

Want to sell your startup to Facebook or Google? Don’t try doing it in late summer.

Both Web giants, which have been very active acquirers for the last few years, slowed down considerably in the third quarter of the year.

Facebook, which had spent $246 million buying companies in the first six months of 2013, spent $14 million in the next three months. Google had a similar pattern: In addition to Waze, the mapping startup it bought for $1 billion, Google bought 15 other companies for $344 million in the first half of 2013. But Google only shelled out $25 million, on five purchases, in Q3.

Two quick off-the-cuff theories to explain the slowdown, which aren’t mutually exclusive:

• Perhaps both Google and Facebook have concluded that the startup shelves have been pretty picked-over, and there’s not a lot else they need to buy.
• Bankers need breaks, too.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/PTstock)

Motorola Teases Moto G Launch for November 13

Google’s Motorola unit on Monday sent out a “save the date” announcement, tipping Nov. 13 as the launch date for its rumored low-cost Moto G phone.

The invite, as is typical, didn’t say much. But it depicted a lush-looking globe, perhaps an indication that the company has global ambitions for this phone, as contrasted with its Moto X phone, which was aimed at regaining share in North America.

Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside indicated during his D11 appearance that the company was interested in bringing out lower-cost devices as part of its efforts, a point he reiterated in an August interview.

“Without giving too much away, one area that I talked about at D was this massive market for devices that are super high-quality, but also reasonably priced,” Woodside told AllThingsD at the time of the Moto X launch.

As part of its quarterly earnings last month, Google said its Motorola unit had $1.18 billion in revenue, down from $1.78 billion a year earlier.

Google introduces surveys to discover why you’re muting its ads

Google today announced it is introducing, over the next few weeks, a series of short surveys in English-speaking countries which will appear after a user mutes an ad. The company says its goals are to learn why users mute ads, serve better ads, spot publishers and advertisers in violation of its policies, and help improve overall ad and placement quality.

Google introduced the small [X] mute control button in the top right hand corner of most of its display ads last year. Since then, the company says users have muted “millions of ads” and the company has used these signals to make ads more relevant and useful. Now it wants more information on which ads aren’t working.

See also – Google updates AdSense to support serving ads on HTTPS pages and Google removed over 350m bad ads and 270k advertisers from its systems in 2013, up 59% and down 68% respectively

Image Credit: Adam Berry/Getty Images

Logitech’s iPhone Gamepad Case Goes on Sale Next Month, Costs $100

The leaks were right – Logitech has a gamepad case for the iPhone and iPod touch, and it will be widely available in early December.

The PowerShell is part of the gaming-focused G Series, costs $99.99 and contains a standard directional pad; four main buttons, labeled A, B, X and Y; two trigger buttons; a dedicated pause button; and a 1500 mAh battery that charges the iPhone/iPod. It works with the iPhone 5 and 5s and the fifth-generation iPod touch on iOS 7.

Notice what’s missing from that list? Logitech said the case won’t work with the new iPhone 5c because the 5c is 0.4-1.37 mm bigger in all dimensions. In order to accommodate the iPod touch, which is 1.5 mm thinner than the phones, the case includes a removable sheet of padding.

Global product marketing manager Mark Starrett said Logitech has been working with Apple since before the official announcement of iOS 7’s third-party controller support at this year’s WWDC. That OS-level support means the accessory manufacturer has not had to work with developers to ensure their games’ compatibility, but is talking with a handful about marketing partnerships.

Logitech is not currently planning to make a comparable gamepad case for Android devices, even though Google has offered third-party controller support on its OS for much longer. With “four or five” competing standards, “Android is just a mess,” Starrett said.

Unlike the Moga Ace Power gamepad case, also unveiled this week, the PowerShell does not collapse for portability. The rigid case is designed to be used in landscape mode, with the home button pointing toward the user’s right hand.

At launch, about 300 games will work with the case, but they’ll be universal, meaning that PowerShell owners won’t have to download different versions of the apps for touch and non-touch gameplay. Starrett said Logitech has already tested dozens of those games with the PowerShell, and expects Apple to roll out a new section in the iOS App Store for gamepad-compatible games.

Marissa Mayer Knows Larry Page’s Superpower

If you were onstage, talking to Charlie Rose, in front of a very crowded room of ad people, and you were asked to describe the unique qualities of Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg, you might get flustered.

Not Marissa Mayer.

Here’s what the Yahoo CEO had to say about the Google CEO and the Facebook CEO at the IAB/MIXX conference in New York today:

I’ve thought about it before. They each have their superpower.

Larry’s superpower is asking “Why not? Why does it have to be this way?”

I once witnessed a conversation where Larry really started challenging Dean Kamen, the guy who invented the Segway. He started saying “Why, why, why does it have to be this way?”

And he was actually having an argument over a physical constant. Finally [Kamen] said “because it’s a physical constant – an intrinsic property of the universe.”

And so, he loves to ask “why not, why not, why not.” His super power is asking “why not.” On everything. It helps him challenge.

Zuckerberg’s incredibly insightful about people. And that makes him a great leader, it makes him a great recruiter.

And I think it also makes him a great person to run a platform that connects us all. He really understands people and what makes them tick.”

Onavo Shines a Light on Mobile App Advertising

How mobile apps find people to use them tends to be kind of a dark secret. Though nearly everybody advertises, some app makers are a bit shy about the notion of “buying users,” particularly given that much shadiness has occurred in that industry around cross-selling apps. Analytics company Onavo says it will now shine a light on what app makers are actually doing – for paying customers, that is.

Onavo’s new Acquisition Insights will provide its customers with ways to see whether new downloads of any app were driven by organic or paid discovery by dipping into data from about 12 different ad networks.

Customers can also monitor their own campaigns and see how they compare to the competition. For that privilege, Onavo will charge annual subscriptions costing about $60,000.

For us voyeurs and reporters, the announcement gives an opportunity to look into how effective a couple of sample ad campaigns were.

For instance, some Zynga campaigns for Running With Friends Free on InMobi, Flurry and MdotM are correlated with a couple of download spikes, according to Onavo data:

And Onavo monitoring shows that Google’s pick for advertising Google+ recently was Millennial Media:

The Latest From Chrome and Android at Google Launch Event

Google will show off the latest in its Chrome and Android lines this morning.

It’s no secret that there should be a new Nexus 7 – in fact, Best Buy already has the tablet on sale in 16 gigabyte and 32GB configurations.

Android itself is due for a modest update, as well, going to version 4.3 with improvements in Bluetooth and tweaks other areas.

We’re also expecting something called “Chromecast” from Chrome, which will offer another way to get content from a mobile device on to a TV.

Earlier:
9:06 am: Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome and Apps, takes the stage.

“At Google I/O, we talked about the fact that we are living at a pivotal moment in computing,” he says. “Laptops, tablets, phones, televisions – it’s a multiscreen world.

“Our goal is to deliver an experience that is seamless.”

Pichai says, “Between Android and Chrome, we have a solution for all the computing devices that users have in their lives.”

Two things coming today: A new Android device, a new Chrome device.

By the end of 2013, consumers are going to buy more tablets per year than personal computers. How is Android doing? More than 70 million activated so far.

Almost one in two tablets sold worldwide is based on Android.

A year ago, 20 billion applications downloaded on Google Play. Today, 50 billion. And, revenue per user is up 2.5x in a year. In that year, Google Play has gone from half a billion apps to 1 billion apps.

Pichai: We’ve worked closely with Asus – the CEO, Jonney Shih is here. The Nexus 7 accounts for more than 10 percent of tablets sold. In Japan, it was the single highest-selling tablet in the holiday season, accounting for 45 percent of sales.

Android exec Hugo Barra hops on stage. We can see he has a tablet in his back pocket.

It’s tiny and thin. Barra: It’s 2 millimeters thinner, with the same display size but reduced side bezels of 3 mm on either side. And it’s 50 grams lighter. “It’s a much more comfortable grip, and of course, it fits easily into your purse or jacket.” It has the same soft touch with added gloss.

It has higher resolution – from 216 pixels per inch to 323 per inch – the highest of any in the market.

It can show a 30 percent wider range of colors, and has stereo speakers, with Fraunhofer virtual surround sound.

Even more specs: 1.2 MP front camera, 5 MP rear camera. 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro, 1.8x CPU, 4x GPU, doubled system memory to 2 GB. Dual band Wi-Fi, BLuetooth 4.0, 4G LTE for any U.S. network. HDMI, NFC, wireless charging. Some extra power compared to the original – 9 hours of HD video and 10 hours of Web browsing.

And it’s shipping with Android 4.3, the new version of Jelly Bean.

It has multi-user support with restricted profiles that give control over content and apps at a user level (for example, for parents).

Now Barra is showing off a jigsaw puzzle app on his tablet … scintillating demo material.

The app hides all the purchasing functionality and only exposes content to the restricted profile that has been approved.

And supporting OpenLG ES 3.0 to support graphics in games.

Here’s Ina Fried’s dedicated post on the Nexus 7.

Barra says they’re going to show car racing with “jaw-dropping visuals.” These demos are always a little strange because we’re watching them projected on a huge screen, not the tiny tablet.

As a lady shoots people while riding a motorcycle amid lens flares, Barra says it’s all rendered in real-time in native 1080p resolution.

Plus, there are new DRM APIs to restrict content access, which Barra says he’s “thrilled” about. Really? Oh no, he’s actually “thrilled” that Netflix has designed for it. Their new app supporting Android 4.3 is already available.

So when is Android 4.3 coming? They’re pushing an update over the air today.

Barra switches over to talk about native Google Apps to show how they look on a tablet. They’ve redesigned Google Docs, with support for offline spreadsheet editing, etc. Chrome now has “print-quality” text and 15 percent more screen space. It also includes automatic translation.

The new Google Maps includes an “Explore” feature. Barra is gushing about how the layout is “awesome” especially at such a high resolution. And lastly, Google Hangouts – it also includes screensharing so people who are video-chatting can watch each other edit docs on their tablets.

Google Play product manager Ellie Powers shows how tablet apps are featured, and says hundreds of games have added the Google Play game services shown off at Google I/O. She demos some games and leaderboards. For instance, a game that looks like Mario Kart on jet skis now features responsive splashes on the windshield, and a game with a guy jumping across rooftops, parkour-style, has the shadows on the buildings change as you shift perspective.

Google Play will have a textbook section starting in early August, she says, with books from all five major textbook publishers. It’ll include purchases as well as rentals for up to an 80 percent discount.

The prices are $229 for 16GB, $269 for 32GB and $349 for unlocked LTE. The first two will be on sale on July 30 at Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart, etc. The 4G model will be available “in the coming weeks,” as will international launches in countries like the U.K. and Germany.

After a kind of odd Nexus 7 commercial about a kid with braces giving a speech in front of his class and then Googling “how do I ask a girl out,” Pichai is back. He’s talking TV. He says every single month more than 200 billion videos are watched in the world. And Netflix and YouTube combined have 49.4 percent share of all peak downstream Internet traffic in America. And lots of that is happening on non-TV devices.

A product dude whose name I didn’t catch says Google’s goals for TV are: “Make it fast and easy to set up, with nothing new to learn, and it works across platforms and devices.”

He holds up what looks like a little USB stick, and says it’s called Chromecast. It’s running a simplified version of Chrome OS. It plugs into the HDMI port on a TV.

Let’s say you want to watch YouTube on your TV, he says – you’ll go to that site on your phone/table/PC and see a “Cast” button on the screen. When you do that, it’s pulled from the cloud and played directly on the TV. Your device doesn’t push the content, it comes direct from YouTube.

For the demo, Rishi Chandra comes onstage. In the past, he’s the guy who demoed Google TV.

Interestingly, this TV effort is built around Chrome OS, where the previous Google TV was built on Android.

Here’s Ina’s pullout story on Chromecast.

Oops, and I missed her Android story. She’s a busy lady.

“If you know how to use YouTube on your phone, you know how to use YouTube on your TV,” Chandra says.

He adds, “Even in sleep mode, the videos continue to play. We don’t drain your battery.”

But, he says, “we recognize that not everyone has an Android phone. And we need a solution that works for everyone. Let’s pretend my wife has an iPhone (heh).” It works the same.

The Cast button can also be used to bring a video back to the phone – if you click it, you can switch to your phone screen and the video will keep playing from the place you left it.

This also works for Netflix. This is the third Netflix callout of the presentation – unusually strong support for a single partner.

Chandra plays the “House of Cards” credits, which are in my opinion possibly awesomer than the show. This demo is to show that you can direct the content from any device that’s connected to the Chromecast on the TV.

In this game of dueling remote controls, you can control content between an iPhone, a Nexus 7 and a TV. It’s not exactly clear to me how this is coordinated – perhaps it’s just the fact that they’re on the same Netflix account.

This can also be used for Google Play Music and Pandora, Chandra says. The “Cast” button – which is a little rectangle with arcs in the corner – shows up there, too.

And lastly, a beta feature: You can project any Chrome tab from the browser to the TV.

“We’ll project what’s on your local device right onto the television – not the entire desktop or the URL bar, but what you want to look at.” Chandra keeps emphasizing that the TV is the best screen in the house with the best speakers in the house, so it’s ideal for content.

This will work with most Windows and Mac laptops as well as Chromebooks.

Developers won’t need to build a new app to work with the Google Cast SDK, which is out in developer preview today.

Actually, the Pandora integration is still under development.

It will retail for $35 and can be ordered today from Amazon, Best Buy and Google Play.

And it will include three months free of Netflix (another Netflix plug/tie-up!) if you buy now.

That concludes the presentation. Bye for now!

Google Axes Shopper Price-Comparison Apps For iOS And Android To Focus On Google Shopping

It looks like Google is starting to cut back on some of its less successful mobile apps. Earlier today, we reported that the Google+ Local app has disappeared from the App Store a few weeks ahead of its planned shutdown, and now, the company has announced that it is going to shut down the standalone Google Shopper app for iOS and Android on August 30.

Given how much online shopping has moved to mobile, that’s a bit of an odd move, but Google says it wants to focus on Google Shopping and Google Search “to create a better, more consistent shopping experience across all devices.” Over the last few months, Google says it introduced “360-degree product imagery, Shortlists and more relevant reviews” on Google Shopping, and it will put its resources into improving this service going forward.

Shopper, which launched in early 2010, allows users to check online and local prices by scanning cover art and barcodes, as well as through Google’s standard text and voice searches. The last iOS version only has a 3-star rating, though it looks like the Android version was reasonably popular, with over 34,000 ratings for a 4.2 star average.

Google argues that users can still find all of the information from Google Shopper through its search app on mobile and by visiting google.com/shopping.

Despite today’s announcement, the company is also teasing some new shopping products for mobile. “We look forward to sharing some great things we have coming on mobile for the holidays,” Google Shopping VP Sameer Samat writes in today’s blog post. Those new features, though, will likely be part of Google’s existing apps and won’t come in the form of a standalone app.