Google News & Articles

As Google (news, site) gets ready to unleash the Chrome OS, hardware makers such as Samsung are preparing their products to run the web-based OS.

This week, in what may be a response to Microsoft’s recent moves to integrate its products, Google Apps and NetSuite team up and the result is definitely good for SMB. Xerox and Cisco have also partnered, CA offers data protection on Azure, while TrendMicro offers backup for very small businesses.

Blogger.com (news, site) was supposed to be down for an hour of planned maintenance on Wednesday, but the outage lasted far into Thursday, heralding a major update.

Since its launch, Google Chrome (news, site) has been pretty much rock-solid in terms of security, to the extent that Google has offered rewards to hackers who can break into Chrome. A recent turn of events might prove that Chrome may not be so secure after all.

If you’re a college student with $20, you can get some tacos and a beer or two, or as Google hopes, rent a laptop. We’ll let you decide what the best deal is. 

Microsoft (news, site) has confirmed that it is buying Skype, making the product ubiquitous across MS's Windows universe, Xbox games consoles and phones. But what have the two companies got to say for themselves, as they speak in public for the first time?

This week, Forrester answers one of the questions we have been looking at for some time, notably, whether enterprises are taking to MS Office alternatives; Cabinet NG releases v7.0 of CNG-SAFE; Workshare releases an upgrade to its collaboration solution Workshare Compare; eGistics adds to its cloud storage capabilities and CloudMagic searches Gmail and Google Docs.

The world of enterprise collaboration and the social enterprise is in for a turn, as Microsoft grabs VOIP and collaboration vendor Skype in a deal valued at US$ 8.5 bil. Last week, all the talk was of Google or Facebook buying Skype for something like US$ 4-5 billion, but Redmond has trumped them both with a monster offer.

Google's Instant Search is probably a love-it or hate-it feature. Some might find it confusing, while others might find it useful to see your search results as you type. Gmail doesn't have instant search built-in, but if you want lightning-fast searches, you can try CloudMagic. You get instant-search functionality for your Gmail messages, which is something akin to OSX Spotlight or Windows 7 Search-as-you-Type. CloudMagic even gives you the added functionality of offline search. We recently gave CloudMagic a try and we're pleased with the results.

When CEO's play Top Trumps, best brand doesn't match the revenue or market share categories, but makes a nice tiebreaker, as Apple (news, site) can now attest.

Apple has recently risen to the #2 spot in worldwide smartphone shipments. But even with the popularity of Apple's iOS platform in the consumer and enterprise markets -- which includes the iPhone and iPad -- it may soon be overshadowed by Google's Android as the preferred platform for mobile development.

This week we wondered who would benefit most from acquiring Skype, and whether or not size matters in the app department. 

This week the enterprise world saw BlackBerry make Bing its default search engine, an invitation to shout at your computer screen, and a bit of solid competition for Skype. 

Viber (news, site) is the coming-up-on-the-rails alternative to Skype that offers better quality calls and is now available to the massive Android army.