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It is hard to imagine why GOOG is down when news this exciting hits

Google began rolling out the red link redesign today to the Google Finance websites. It has not hit ours, but reader @tuanye is feeling it. The new design has made it most of the way across Google’s network.

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Get excited! Google teased a “big announcement” for the Google TV on its Facebook page last night. What in the world could this be? There is a chance tomorrow’s announcement by Google could surround the streaming home-entertainment device that was leaked last week, or it could be something entirely different. Perhaps it is new hardware out of an OEM, but we are not so sure that is Facebook-post worthy. We will know for sure tomorrow.

Get ready for Monday, we have some big announcements!

Update: It’s nothing special.

(via The Verge)

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When Google+ first launched, a good majority of people went crazy when they saw you could not use nicknames on the service. Luckily, Google is about to change that. Google’s Bradley Horowitz made a post on Google+ today, announcing that users will soon be able to add a nickname next to their full name in the coming days. You can see this modeled above with blogger Louis “Luigi” Gray.

The setting will appear under Edit Profile, where you can select your name by clicking on “More options.” It is worth noting that this will change your name across all of your Google Profiles.

For names that Google has deemed unacceptable, you can challenge it for personal use by providing the following information to the review team:

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is expanding its antitrust probe of Google to include the inspection of social network service Google+, according to Bloomberg.

The publication sourced two people “familiar with the situation,” and cited “competition issues raised by Google+” as the primary aspect of the FTC’s investigation into whether the globally popular search engine gives preference to its own services. The FTC is also inquiring whether such practices violate antitrust laws, according to Bloomberg, who could not identify its sources due to the investigation’s nonpublic status.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company rolled out “Search, Plus Your World” to its search engine Jan. 10 and dubbed the revision a “personal results” feature that displays Google+ photographs, news and comments when user’s conduct Web searches. The Electronic Privacy Information Center promptly called upon the FTC on Jan. 12 to investigate the recent search changes in a letter posted on its website…

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ASUS announced on its Facebook today that the Transformer Prime would receive a firmware over-the-air Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update starting Jan. 12. Somehow this is even before the Motorola XOOM, Google’s reference tablet? Perhaps this will ignite a war among Tablet makers to get their devices up to Ice Cream Sandwich first. Bring it on!

“Eee Pad Transformer Prime received excellent reviews and great demand when it launched in December 2011,” said the company in a Jan. 3 Facebook post. “ASUS strives to create the best products and provide the best service for our customers, and will be releasing an FOTA update for the Transformer Prime shortly.”

The version 8.8.3.33 update will also improve the camera’s focus, the touch screen’s fluidity and experience, and the APK capabilities in Android Market. 
ASUS also used Facebook to address concerns related to GPS and bootloader on the Transformer Prime.

The consumer electronics and product manufacturer said the Transformer Prime is made from a metallic unibody design, so “the material may affect the performance of the GPS when receiving signals from satellites.” ASUS elaborated and claimed the device is “not a professional GPS device, and signal performance can be easily influenced by factors.” The factors listed by the company include weather, buildings, and surrounding environments.

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CrunchFund partner and TechCrunch contributor MG Siegler made quite the stir over the past few days, when Google removed his Google+ image that showed him raising his middle finger. Once Google removed the image, Siegler uploaded the photograph a second time, only to be removed again. The second time, Google provided the following explanation to Siegler:

As the first point of interaction with a user’s profile, all profile photos on Google+ are reviewed to make sure they are in line with our User Content and Conduct Policy. Our policy page states, “Your Profile Picture cannot include mature or offensive content.” Your profile photo was taken down as a violation of this policy. If you have further questions about the policies on Google+ you can visit http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/policy/content.html, or click the “Content Policy” link located in the footer of Google+ pages.

Google explained that this is not directed just towards Siegler. Google revealed that it reviews every user’s profile when it is first created, and that all profile pictures are reviewed. Siegler himself wrote a post on the subject, and then later followed up. Marketing Land pointed to the rule Seigler broke that some might call debatable:

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Google landed in the top 5 places to work in 2012, alongside fellow technology giants Apple and Facebook, according to a new Glassdoor survey.

The fourth annual Employees’ Choice award highlights 50 of the best workplaces. The findings are measured through company employees’ survey responses on Glassdoor.com.

“The reviews are in,” said the career community website in its Dec. 14 press release. “Employees have spoken, revealing the best companies to work for in 2012; and, they love working at some of the biggest tech, science and management consulting companies in the nation…
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uwap6qTfauM]

Works now for both Android and iPad.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdERk059GNE&t=53m51s]

Mark Zuckerberg gives us a look into what he really thinks about Google+ in a small clip from this one-hour special on Facebook’s creator aired by the BBC (via TNW). When asked if Google+ is a threat or if he ‘takes it seriously’, Zuckerberg responded (skip to 54:32):

Yeah Google’s a great company, and I think we want to look at and learn from everything that they do. But at the same time, people have shared a lot on Facebook and have already told a lot of their life story on Facebook. And we think that we have by far better tools for doing that.

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With the Kindle Fire set to start shipping next week, Amazon sent out a press release this morning confirming a ton of Amazon Appstore-optimized apps will be available at launch. While the Fire runs a scaled back version of Android, the app selection through Amazon’s app store will be far from the full-fledged Android Market. Here’s what you can expect on day-one.

Most of these are expected or were already mentioned during the launch event– Pandora, Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, The Weather Channel, Rhapsody, and Comics by comiXology. In addition, Amazon says there will be “several thousand more apps” and is already working with a ton of developers including all the usual suspects–Rovio (Angry Birds), EA, PopCap, Gameloft, and Zynga.

You’ll be able to grab the Kindle Fire for $199 just about everywhere starting November 15. The press release (below) also provides the following list of other apps already optimized for the 7-inch tab:

Allrecipes, Bloomberg, Cut the Rope, Doodle Fit, Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja, Jenga, LinkedIn, Zillow, Airport Mania, Battleheart, Pulse, The Cat in the Hat, Quickoffice Pro, Jamie’s 20-Minute Meals, IMDb Movies & TV, and Monkey Preschool Lunchbox.

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[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KQlPCflWP9k#!”]

Coming up tonight on Charlie Rose, Mark Zuckerburg has made comment that “Google is building their own little version of Facebook”. While that was certainly a hit towards Google, Zuckerburg was happy to give props to Amazon and Apple as partners.

Amazon and Apple “are extremely aligned with us,” said Zuckerberg. “We have a lot of conversations with people at both companies just trying to figure out ways that we can do more together, and there is just a lot of reception there.” Meanwhile, “Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook,” Zuckerberg said.

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Google today announced that the Google Plus platform is also a gaming platform.

Today we’re adding games to Google+. With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life.

That means giving you control over when you see games, how you play them and with whom you share your experiences. Games in Google+ are there when you want them and gone when you don’t.

Facebook stalwart and Google fundee Zynga is already on the list having built an app called Poker.  So are Bejeweled and Angry Birds(below).

As an added bonus, google today announced the Google+ Developer Platform so that other game makers can build their wares into the Plus platform.
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Facebook has released Facebook Messenger, an app available for both iPhone and Android. The app is an extension of Facebook’s Messages service and will allow you to send a text message to your phone’s contacts and a Facebook message to your Facebook contacts.

Besides messaging one person, you can message a group, and it even lets you send and receive photos. Messenger is available in both the iTunes App Store and Android Market and is based off the Beluga technology which the company recently acquired.

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The floodgates are officially opening this weekend as Google is giving everyone 150 invites to Google Plus.  Pop them into your Twitter and Facebook streams to get your friends signed up.

Here’s an invite link for our readers not yet signed up (looks like ours are going pretty fast!
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwnJ5Bl4kLI&]
Today ComScore confirmed Google+ has officially hit 25 million unique users less than a month after its public launch. We told you not to worry when Experian Hitwise reported a 3% decrease in traffic for the new social network and today’s report from ComScore confirms our hunch that Google might actually be on the right track.

To put this in perspective, rival Facebook took approximately three years to reach the same milestone, while Twitter took two and a half.  Twenty-five million may be a long way from the more than 750 million current Facebook users, but it is certainly a step in the right direction after similar services such as Buzz have been long abandoned.

Its quite obvious Google is pretty serious about this whole Google+ Facebook/Twitter-killer thing and the incredible rate of growth should be more than enough encouragement to make it a big focus over at the GooglePlex. They have already done so by integrating the service into almost every aspect of their other services from Gmail, which SearchEngineLand notes seems to be tied to Google+ adoption, to YouTube Live integration, and rolling out updates for the Android app to both fix issues and add functionality.

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A new extension called Start Google Plus brings functionality of Twitter and Facebook to Google+. The extension not only allows you to post to all three social networks, but puts Twitter and Facebook into your Google+ stream too.

Another cool feature Start Google Plus offers is the ability to import your Facebook photos. SGP is available on Chrome and Firefox. Check out a few photos of the extension after the break. (via Lifehacker)

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In a report from the WSJ, a new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh used facial-recognition technology in combination with data from Facebook accounts to successfully identify one-third of volunteer participants.

In the study, researchers used PittPatt software and a webcam to snap photos of volunteers who would later be identified via their publicly available Facebook profile pictures. Raising considerable security and privacy concerns, however, was the fact Professor Acquisti was also able to correctly predict the first five digits of a participant’s Social Security number in approximately 27% of cases (those are determined where you are born and when).

Should you be worried? Not if you trust Google’s stance on privacy… Addressing the privacy concerns highlighted by the study, a Google spokesperson told WSJ:

“We’ve said that we won’t add face recognition to our apps or product features unless we have strong privacy protections in place, and that’s still the case”

Google recently acquired the facial-recognition technology and will more than likely be integrating it into various Google products including Google+ and Google Goggles. A Google spokesperson had this to say about the acquisition:

“The Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition team has developed innovative technology in the area of pattern recognition and computer vision. We think their research and technology can benefit our users in many ways, and we look forward to working with them.”
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We have already seen snippets of code revealing Games is headed to Google+, but this morning it has been confirmed. SlashGear reports on the Google+ help page there is talk about a Games stream, where users can find updates from shared games. Google+ Games will have a sharing aspect, and the Games stream will sum up what your friends have shared from within those games.There is no word on when this will be available.
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Google gave all employees moving into the Zurich office apples with the Google logo engraved.
Source: Webilus.fr

It is hard to escape the buzz flying around Google+, the search monster’s latest social thing. It raised red flags at Facebook where Mark Zuckerberg summoned a hastily organized news conference that fell on def ears with general public. The presser was a classic case of over-promising and under-delivering as Zuckerberg’s “awesome announcement” turned out a yet another dull unveiling of way overdue features, such as group chat and Skype integration. But who would have though just a month ago that Google would put the fear of God into Facebook with what many consider an unusual take on social networking?

Nobody saw it coming when co-founder Larry Page took the reigns April 4 from Eric Schmidt. What a difference a few weeks make. An invite-only service closed for public in two weeks since launch signed up more than ten million users. And when it opens for everyone later this year, the hundred million milestone will be well within reach. Page, who once famously called Steve Jobs a liar, put the pedal to the metal from his first day as CEO by tying executive bonuses to their contributions to the company’s social strides. The move quickly earned him notoriety among tech watchers and his own employees.

But unlike Mark Zuckerberg – who may try to be, but is certainly no Steve Jobs on stage  (see why in the below YouTube clip) – Page has notably been keeping low profile while cunningly taking clues from Apple’s iconic leader. We were told about “moon shots”, to the dismay of many watchers (this author included). Page was stiffing innovation and focusing too much on corporate bureaucracy, many cried…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYYfvf40ZVc]

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As we reported last week, Google is working on a photo sharing service called  Photovine.

Photovine site is now live but not “open for business”.  It doesn’t appear to be part of Google Plus though it will offer some “social network service integration”.  It is also weird that the start page has an iPhone rather than a Nexus S and the like..

Google, who barely appear on the page at all, advertises the service:

Photovine is a community that’s about creating fun and unique collections of photos that we call Vines. In Photovine, vines connect you with people through the ideas and themes expressed in your photos. A vine is like a constantly growing family of photos connected through a common caption created by you, your friends, and people all over the world. Some examples of vines could be: “What Weekends Are Made Of”, “Secret Stuffed Animal”, “Party People”, or, “Love of My Life”. As people add photos to vines, they tell their own stories about the moments, images, and ideas that define our lives in a way that’s social, creative, and fun. Start a vine by taking a photo and creating a new caption, or add to an existing vine. Other people will see your vine and join in by adding their own photo, showing their own take on the caption.

More Q&A below:
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