Like Amazon’s Kindle Fire devices, Barnes & Noble’s Android-powered Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets have always relied on the company’s proprietary app store for software distribution.
While this ensures that every app you download will work well on your slate, it also means that the app selection is limited, and nowhere near that of Android’s own Google Play store.
But that all changed today when Barnes & Noble announced it will finally be bringing Google Play to its tablets.
Google has launched a new Google Keep app for Chrome that makes it easier than ever to access the new note-taking service on your desktop. Keep was previously available through Google Drive, but that meant you needed an Internet connection; with the new Chrome app, you can enjoy offline access.
Google traditionally holds two keynotes during its annual Google I/O events — one for Android and the other for Chrome, its two main ecosystems. But during this month’s event, the company has just one scheduled.
The three-hour morning session will be held on Wednesday, May 15, and it has sparked speculation yet again that Google could be set to combine Android and Chrome into one platform.
Thanks to those leaked screenshots that appeared on Tuesday, we’re pretty confident that Google Babel is no longer just a rumor, but a real product that’s patiently waiting to get its grand unveiling. And according to sources that are familiar with Google’s plans, it’s worth getting excited about.
They claim Babel aims to be “everything we have ever asked for in a unified messenger service,” with cross-platform syncing and a “first class iOS experience.”
Google has confirmed that it will drop WebKit for its own rendering engine called Blink in “around 10 weeks.” The company has already begun testing Blink in Chrome Canary builds — the beta version of its popular browser — but it will rollout the change to stable Chrome builds with version 28 for both desktops and Android devices.
Android may have a larger share of the smartphone market than iOS, but Apple’s Safari browser is still king of the mobile web. According to the latest market share data from Net Applications, Safari accounted for 61.79% of the mobile web traffic throughout March.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt has dismissed reports that the company will merge its Android and Chrome OS operating systems into one. Schmidt told attendees at Google’s Big Tent event in New Delhi, India, this week that both platforms will “remain separate for a very long time.”
Google Now, Google’s intelligent assistant that’s been wowing Android users since its introducing with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, is coming to the company’s Chrome web browser on Windows and Chrome OS.
Its move to desktops has been the subject of rumors and speculation for a while, but until the feature recently appeared in a Chrome beta release, there’s been little evidence to back it up.
Google has developed its first touchscreen Chromebooks that will attempt to compete with the latest crop of notebooks powered by Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system, sources for The Wall Street Journal have said. It’s unclear when the notebook will be available, or which company it’ll be made by — but it seems Google has plenty of work to do before they start hitting store shelves.
