In Google’s earnings call, CEO Larry Page announced that Google Plus now has 90 million users, and that the vast majority are active on Google either daily or weekly.
 
“There are over 90 million Google+ users, well over double what I announced just a quarter ago,” Page said. “Plus users are very engaged with our products. Over 60 percent of them engaged daily and 80 percent engaged weekly.” The important thing to understand is that these 60 and 80 percent figures refer to users accessing any Google service whiled logged in to their Google account. These numbers do not actually represent Google+ usage each day or week. The 90 million figure, however, is correct at representing how many users created an account.
 
The huge increase in overall numbers is more than likely due to Google making Plus links part of search results and integrating the social network into Google Apps, Gmail, Picasa, and everything else Google is part of. Google+ is growing fast, but still quite a bit behind Facebook’s 800 million active users and Twitter’s 100 million active users.
 
Page also took the time to share that Google is signing up many new enterprise customers for its Google Apps suite, including 110,000 employees at BBVA, Google’s largest business productivity deal that has been publicly disclosed. Advertising, as usual, remains Google’s biggest revenue, account for 96 percent of quarterly revenue. Google stated that mobile advertising is a growing part of total revenue, but wasn’t willing to specify how much it accounts for.
 
Source: Ars Technica

Google Music went into beta earlier this year, and started as a streaming-only service. Users could upload music directly from libraries, and others could stream the music.

Google has partnered with music labels in order to sell music downloads to customers via the Android Market. They have stated that the companies they have signed deals with include EMI, Sony, and Universal. ”You don’t need to search the web anymore for music,” Google said during its presentation, “just search the market!”

This will be amazing for independent artists. They will no longer have to work through a label and third-party to get their music on iTunes. Google Music will also have the top hits from professional music artists if they so desire to upload it. Google will even have their staff monitor and keep track of the Front Page so that the more professional music is even easier to find.

Songs will also be able to be shared on Google+, where they can listen to each song you share once, as well as shared playlists. The new store is online at market.android.com and will be on Android devices running Android 2.2 or higher in the “next few days.”

Source: Ars Technica

Google has officially released Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, to the public. This was done at an event in Hong Kong, where the Samsung Galaxy Nexus was also released. Developers were left, sitting in their seats, wondering if they would be able to receive the source code from Ice Cream Sandwich.

Android is advertised and marketed as the “open-source solution,” but that isn’t the whole truth. Google didn’t release the Android 3.0 Honeycomb source code because it is tablet-based. Android chief Andy Rubin stated in March that Google didn’t want developers creating Honeycomb apps for phones that would produce a “really bad user experience.”

“While we’re excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones,” Google said in a statement at the time. “Until then, we’ve decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We’re committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it’s ready.”

Android 4.0 basically combines the best of Gingerbread and the best of Honeycomb, the phone and tablet operating systems, into one. Google has stated that they are almost ready to release the source code. “We plan to release the source for the recently-announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it’s available on devices,” Google engineer Dan Morrill wrote in a Wednesday Google Groups post.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be the first device to run Android 4.0, which will be launched next to the Motorola Droid Razr in November. It is “possible” that the phone will be released on Verizon in the United States.

Android Gingerbread source code is now available via Google servers, the URLs can be found in Morrill’s post.

Source: PC Mag

The Motorola Droid Razr, which has a dual-core processor, will be able to have Android 4 and technically could at any time, according to representatives at the Droid Razr press event. However, there is still a gap between “its release and the upgrade.”

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the big competition to the Droid Razr, was announced Tuesday as the first phone to eventually run Android 4. This device will launch with the operating system at some date in November, approximately the same date as the launch of the Droid Razr. However, as stated above, months will pass before the Droid Razr gets Android 4, which might just be too long for some users. That being said, many may give in to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Source: Ars Technica

Shortly after the app appeared, there was “very rudimentary” code found inside that hinted at a video component, which was officially reported by 9-to-5 Mac.

A Facebook spokeswoman didn’t add much to the table about when or even whether the mobile video capability might be added to Facebook Messenger, saying in an email that they are “always working on new features, but [they] don’t have anything to announce at this time.”

Video chat became popular for smartphones and was “hot” when Apple launched the capability via Facetime on the iPhone 4 last year, allowing video chat to happen if both users were connected to WiFi.

On a side note, Google also announced the Google+ social network with Hangouts, a group video chat experience that has received great reviews but doesn’t yet work for smartphones. However, other parts of Google+ work with Android and iOS. A Google spokesman confirmed via email to Computer World that Google+ does not currently support Hangouts from mobile devices, though he did not say whether or not it is an intention.

Facebook announced a Video Calling feature for its social networked, powered by Skype, that works from several desktop browsers, soon after Google+ appeared in June.

Despise the interest that video chat has in the smartphone world, the experience can sometimes be disappointing. Naturally, chat quality will depend on the wireless network connection. Wi-Fi usually works fine, but a lot of phones that work on cellular connections just are not fast enough. 4G is fast enough to ensure a better video chat, but 3G seems to be so slow, so your best bet is Wi-Fi or 4G.

Source: Computer World

With the iPad 2 now released, the tablet industry is clearly being dominated by Apple. Realistically, there aren’t any challengers. The only tablet that is even close is the Motorola Xoom, which seems to have as many commercials as sales.

One month after its launch, the Motorola Xoom has but 50 native applications available for the Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

How does that compare to the iPad? The iPad 1 had over 1,000 applications available on launch day. The Motorola Xoom had only 15 apps available on the day it was released.

The source code for Google’s Honeycomb hasn’t been released, so the developers are falling behind. And even with their number of 50 apps available after the first month, that may even be overshooting. Some of these are simply mobile apps that were resized to be compatible with the tablet.

It looks as if Apple is pulling ahead with no plan of slowing down. It would be nice to at least have some sort of competition, but until Google gets better hardware, better designers, and more developers, I don’t see that happening anytime in the near future.

Source: Ars Technica

Well, Google initially stated that the recent bug has “affect[ed] less than .29% of the Google Mail userbase.” Shortly after, they changed their estimation to only 0.08%. That being said, Engadget has calculated this to be “looking at closer to 150,000 individuals, rather than 500,000.” They ensured users that their engineers are working on fixing the bug and will have the messages, logs, and attachments restored as soon as they possibly can.

Google isn’t being very specific on when exactly this issue will be resolved. All their website says is that  “Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.” Interesting that “the near future” is an estimate, but hopefully it gets fixed relatively soon, even if it is only 0.08%, downtime isn’t something that Google wants, as every minute of it hurts business.

Update: I most likely won’t be updating this story further, but would like to note that Google revised it’s estimate once again to 0.02% of users having the issue. It is to my belief that functionality has been restored to all, but with such a small percentage, it’s hard to say for sure.

Source: Engadget

Source: Download Squad

Very neat. If you don’t want Instant, you can turn it off by clicking the text that says “Instant is on” which should is right next to the search box.