Hasta La Gadget!

Google’s last Android-centric event, Google I/O in the middle of last year, treated us to a pair of delectable demos that may now finally be turning into mobile realities. One was a web client for the Android Market with OTA installations — you just browse to an app you want to install while on your desktop and choose to push it to your Android device — and the other was a cloud-based music backup and streaming service. The latter has since picked up the moniker of Google Music in subsequent rumors, and today both are receiving some speculative support for a launch at tomorrow’s Honeycomb event. Android and Me has an insider source claiming the web-based Android Market is finally ready to roll out, whereas BusinessWeek reports Andy Rubin is heading up Google’s digital music team and also has software ready for release, potentially at some point this month. Given the importance of both new additions, it’s highly logical for Google to at least announce and show them off once more tomorrow. Then we can get back to waiting for the next Android update.

Google Music and web-based Android Market could be announced tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Search engine giant Google has now claimed that Bing stole their search results. Bing is reportedly stealing from Google’s most common misspelled search terms and using it in Bing’s own search engine results. Google has reportedly known about this issue for about a year now, and finally caught Bing “red-handed”.

Since Bing came out in summer of 09, it have been battling with the search engine giant. Yahoo and Bing have become partners in order to create a larger competitor, but still faltered when it came down to the two search engines. Google claims that after doing research on this for over a year that it believes Bing is using IE’s toolbar to rip off search results from Google. Microsoft and Bing have released this statement

We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results.  The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites 

Later on when they were asked again, they issued this statement

We do not copy Google’s results

Google does not appear to have a copyright placed on the results, which means they really do not have a legal recourse to take. However, Bing should do something in order to prevent any further issues. Like remove the identical results or prove how they came up with the exact same results without ripping off Google.

Via ZDNET & Gizmodo

We’re honestly surprised it took this long, but Google is finally employing a social hook that so many of its peers (Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp, and so on) have long embraced: the location-based check-in. Coming to Google Latitude with today’s Maps 5.1 for Android, the company hopes to set itself apart from the competition with features like check-in notifications (disabled by default), automatic check-ins for your most frequent establishments (case-by-case activation), and “check out” that detects when you leave a location.

So what’s the incentive to use the service? Not much at this point — no badges, no sharing through third-party services like Twitter (Latitude-only at the moment), no support for simultaneous check-in with other services, no special vendor discounts (Google told us there’s nothing to announce yet), and no ability to create a venue like your apartment (Places only). What it does right is a tiered system of special statuses based on check-in frequency — you can become a regular, VIP, or Guru (Google says it’s not definite yet on how many check-ins each status bump will require). iOS Latitude users will be able to see where their Android friends check in, but at this point the option to pimp your specific location is for Google’s platform only. If you’re a fan of Latitude already, this is probably a no-brainer, but for everyone else, don’t expect mayoral coffee discounts just yet.

Google Latitude joins check-in game with Maps 5.1 for Android originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 13:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You could say Bing is taking a cue from its competition, but it seems to be more literally taking search results as well. Google Fellow Amit Singhal is claiming so much and has provided some amusing (if not totally clever) results from its “Bing Sting.” Here’s how it works: find a search term that returns no matches for either site, make a “honeypot” page manually appear for the term, then have about 20 Google employees make the search (and click the top link) using Internet Explorer with both Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar on. Within two weeks, Singhal claims, a handful (about 7 to 9) of the 100 or so “honeypot” results were popping up in Bing. Bizarre choices, too, like mbrzxpgjys, hiybbprqag, and indoswiftjobinproduction.

So, is this “cheating,” as Singhal specifically alleges? The experiment had to be run with Bing’s toolbar and / or Suggested Search feature activated, which it explicitly says are used to collect data and improve services. And more popular search terms do return different results, It’s not as if Microsoft is using non-public information, but is this an example of taking an unfair shortcut? That’s a debate we imagine with rage for quite some time.

Update: Microsoft’s been sending out the following statement from Stefan Weitz, director of Bing:

We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results. The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites.

That’s pretty ambiguous, so ZDNet‘s Mary Jo Foley pressed for a followup and was flatly told “We do not copy Google’s results.” We’re sure there’s going to be a lot more analysis and discussion to come — this ought to be fun.

Google accuses Bing of ‘cheating,’ piggybacking off its search results (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s been hard at work over the past 18 months on something not many of us have been paying attention to lately: art. Specifically, the search giant has hooked up with 17 art museums around the world to offer tours of their internal galleries, using its familiar Street View tricycles, while also doing high-res images of 1,061 artworks that may be viewed on the newly launched Art Project web portal. Also there, you will find 17 special gigapixel images — 7,000-megapixel versions of each participating venue’s proudest possession. The resulting level of detail is nothing short of astounding and we’ve got videos of how it’s all done after the break.

Continue reading Google Art Project offers gigapixel images of art classics, indoor Street View of museums

Google Art Project offers gigapixel images of art classics, indoor Street View of museums originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 06:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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