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Apture Now Acquired By Google

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:07:36 +0000

We recently got this email from apture informing about this latest acquistion by Google.. Here’s a copy of the email below:

Hi there,

We’re writing to let you know that Apture has been acquired by Google.

Since day one, we’ve been working on getting the Apture experience into as much of the web as possible. While we’re proud of having helped thousands of publishers enhance their websites, we think now is the best time to expand our efforts by joining Google’s Chrome team to help build the next generation user experience directly into the web.

On December 20 we will discontinue Apture’s product and services. When this happens, users will no longer be able to highlight and search terms with Apture on your web pages. Your website will continue to work as normal even after our service is suspended; however, you are free to remove the Apture code from your site as well.

We want to thank you personally for your support and positive feedback over the years, and we hope you’ll stay tuned for some amazing new Chrome experiences coming your way.

You can view the announcement here on our homepage, or check the FAQ below.

Sincerely,
The Apture Team

We at GoogleWatchBlog used apture sometime ago and can commend that the team would do fantastically well at Google!

All the best guys and we wait to see something new with Google Chrome!!

Google Blogger gets 7 New Dynamic Template Views

Brian Harsden — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:53:23 +0000

Google has been making constant changes and adding new features to their products. It’s been a few years since Google made any major updates to Blogger’s look and feel.

Throughout the design process, Google conducted user interviews to help identify how to make Blogger even easier and more enjoyable to use. Google also watched users trying out new Blogger interface and made many refinements based on the user’s feedback.

After introducing the new Blogger Interface, the next phase of the Blogger updates that was released is seven new ways to display Blogger blog, called Dynamic Views.

Dynamic Views is much more than just new templates. With just a couple clicks, you’ll get endless scrolling thus putting an end to “Older posts” link, images that load as you browse, integrated search, sorting by date, label and author, light box-style posts for easy viewing, keyboard shortcuts for quickly flipping through posts, and one-click sharing to Google+ and other social sites on every post.

7 Dynamic Views available on Blogger are Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot and Timeslide.

If there are lots of photos on your blog, you may prefer Flipcard or Snapshot view. If your blog has more of text then Classic, Sidebar or Timeslide dynamic view may be preferable.

Adding a Dynamic View to blogger blog is as easy as changing your template. Log in to Blogger account –> click on the Template tab present on the dashboard –> Select the view whichever you want to set as your default –> Click on the button “Apply to Blog” to save the view. Take a look at the Blogging Movies Blog, to view how different Dynamic view of Blogger blog work or looks like.

Note that readers can still choose to navigate your blog in a different view by selecting from the pulldown in the upper left of the screen.

Several other official Google blogs will be featuring Dynamic Views through the weeks and months ahead, including the Gmail Blog, LatLong Blog and Docs Blog. Google is happy to bring Dynamic Views into the fold and it is looking at how to incorporate this new technology across Google’s blog network in the long term.

Google Buys Zagat = More expansion of Local Offerings

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 17:16:09 +0000

Google buys Zagat. The company’s purchase was announced and indicates that Google is entering a new segment. The 32 year old company Zagat will be the basis of services offered by local services built maps and search.
Rumour’s say that Google might have paid $125 million for the Zagat deal. The Motorola acquisition for 12.5 billion is almost 100 times more when compared to Zagat’s purchase price.

The Motorola’s handset division was acquired by search giant last month for $ 12.5 billion – 100 times more than the supposed amount paid by Zagat.

This new siny Google toy(Zagat) is supposedly going to help Google Expand its local offers verymuch.

Google Closes Slide – RIP Social Enterprise Apps

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:39:47 +0000

Google has decided to close the operations of Slide, a an online application company.

The slide was bought two years ago for about >$200 million, and was used by Google to develop apps for various games and social networks. According to information from specialized blogs in the daily Google’s Slide was closed at the request of Larry Page, CEO of the company. He would be cutting costs and eliminating the departments that do not make money or develop tools that, somehow, bring prestige.

Another reason: the Slide would also be competing internally with other teams Google+, the company’s new social network. And that would not have pleased the Google board team.

Google announced the closing of the slide last Thursday. Among the products developed by the company are the SuperPoke! Photovine and a photo app for the iPhone. Data from these programs will be migrated to other services, said the slide in a statement. The company’s employees, about 100, will be transferred to other Google products, such as YouTube and Picasa.

Slide The company was founded by Max Levchin, a few years ago he helped PayPal and With Google’s move, Max Levchin left Google.

Droid Bionic the First Fruit of Google – Motorola Deal

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 02:22:39 +0000

A little over a week, we mentioned that Google had bought Motorola Mobility as a way to directly way to enter the mobile market and under agreements with third-party companies like HTC, manufacturer of the first Android smartphone and Samsung, manufacturer of terminals of Nexus.

The first handset that will come after this purchase will be the Droid Bionic, a next-generation smartphones with technical features that put it in top smartphone at the current market. Here are some of the features, LTE (4G), dual-core processor OMAP 4430 1 GHz with 1 Gb of RAM. The screen is not far behind with 4.3-inch diagonal QHD (960 x 540 pixels), HDMI video output, 8 Megapixel camera with 1080p recording capability and a camera for video conferencing. Moreover capabilities will Webtop. This is the first mobile LTE (Long Term Evolution) with a dual-core processor on the market. The arrival date is rumoured to be in September and obviously runs android Gingerbread or upwards.

Here is a video trailer of MotoDroid bionic:

Stay tuned for more!

Google Improves Sitelinks Feature in Webmaster tools

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:54:30 +0000

Google shows sitelinks for particular top-ranked sites. These sitelinks are automated and Google is always working to improve their sitelinks algorithms. Recently, we found out that Google had rolled out 2 new changes to improve the sitelinks feature.

1. Demote a URL from Google Sitelinks (from inside Google webmaster Tool).

Demoting a URL is just a way of teling Google that you don’t consider the URL a good sitelink to be shown in search results… The requests are considered while creating or updating sitelinks for a particular site. A website owner can demote up to 100 URLs from the Webmaster Tools.

2. Interface change for Sitelinks in search results

Google Search results now show a much wider and nicer sitemap layout for known\top sites. When we searched for “Techcrunch” just test-out how it looks.. If you want to see the older version of sitelinks, visit the QOT blog.

This feature could be experimental. Are you seeing any new changes to your sitelinks? Share your thoughts below!

Google Acquires Motorola Mobility For $12.5 Billion

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:08:25 +0000

We shared rumors that ~~Google would acquire RIM~~ but it turned out that we were wrong!

It looks the first half of the rumor was indeed true. Google is acquiring BUT not RIM instead, Motorola Mobility for $12.5 Billon. This new acquisition gives Google 706 total patents and patented applications, making Google 317 patents + Motorola mobility 706 in total = 1023 patents richer!

This deal is more about defending the Android platform from patent attacks. For most companies, $12.5 billion is a ridiculous price for patent protection, but remember Google has about $39 billion in cash on hand. With that kind of bank, it could keep shopping.

Google CEO Larry Page said in a blog post on the purchase:

We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.

This blogpost confirms the acquisition…. Seems like Android is here to stay – Go Google!

Google Secretly Testing New Instant Search Interface

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:03:10 +0000

It was found that the desktop version of Google Instant search, there have been some new User Interface based changes. In the new design of the interface, some of the elements, such as keywords, the search suggestions appear below the input box, in a separate list.

But the strange thing is that the interface below the search box only display up to three search suggestions, the first of which is completely the same with the keywords you enter, that you can only see two new keyword search suggestions.

Via GOS

Now, Google Plus Lets you Play Games (Rolled-out for all Users)

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:41:43 +0000

We reported earlier, Google is hiring PM’s for Games and now we know why Google has now rolled out Google Plus Games for all its users. With the weekend, people sure would have lot of time to stay online and play most of the games

Google Plus currently has 17 games that you can choose from. They are:

Edgeworld
Angry Birds
Diamond Dash
Zynga Poker
Flood-It!
Bejeweled Blitz Beta
Crime City
City of Wonder
Wild Ones
Collapse! Blast
Dragon Age Legends
Monster World
Zombie Lane
Bubble Island
Dragons of Atlantis
Sudoku Puzzles

After six weeks after the launch of Google Plus, games have now been added. The Games Page is accessed via a new icon at the top, next to the search field. Once you switch to the Games page, it shows the latest game updates, games and invite others who know you have played recently. This is also where your game-performance can be found.

Played it yet? Headover to http://plus.google.com/games to play!

[Rumors] Google Might Acquire RIM

GoogleWatchBlog Team — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:30:32 +0000

Google only has 317 patents and Microsoft mobile has up to 2594 patents according to recent reports.

So far, ResearchInMotion has a 3134 mobile device-related patents and patent applications in major technology companies by topping the list. Nokia has 2655 such patents and patent applications, ranked No. 2. Microsoft in 2594. In addition, Samsung Electronics ranked sixth, with 1529 patents and patent applications; Sony owns 1055, No. 8 – Motorola Mobile has 706, ranking 12th.

Motorola Solutions has 1019 patents and patent applications. If the two companies together, it actually has a 1725 Motorola patents and patent applications, enough at No. 6, a manifestation of this long-established phone makers of the potential strength.

Apple has become the second, world’s largest smartphone vendors this year… However, this mighty technology giant in the mobile phone industry can only be regarded as a recruit in 2007, it launched the first iPhone. Therefore, the company only has 477 patents and patent applications, ranked No. 16.

Google’s patent count for mobile devices is far less than the RIM, Nokia and Microsoft and other companies and this somehow tells us there could be an Google acquisition coming real soon to level the mobile patent field!