Google made a surprise announcement at the end of January that confirmed it was selling Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion, but the search giant seemingly forgot to tell us that it made a big investment in the Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer the following day.

Reuters reports that Google will pay Lenovo $750 million for a 5.94 percent stake in the company.

A leaked screenshot taken from the upcoming HTC One Plus (M8) confirms reports that the device will sport virtual navigation buttons. Its predecessor, the One, and most of the HTC smartphones that came before it, had capacitive touch buttons beneath the display — but the company’s next flagship is set to be the first to buck that trend.

Google wants to use facial recognition to let viewers customize videos as they watch them.

Love Star Trek but cringe every time William Shatner opens his mouth? Google’s new method for customizing video could allow you to mute Captain Kirk’s melodramatic monologues, skip scenes in which the character appears, or even change the channel every time Shatner’s face graces the screen.

These novel ways of slicing and dicing video on the fly are outlined in a patent application entitled “Customized Video,” published Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and assigned to Google. The system would use facial recognition to identify actors, cartoon character, etc. — and give viewers a way to find (or avoid) other videos featuring the same people.

HTC may be planning a surprise return to the tablet market to manufacture Google’s next-generation Nexus slates. Reports in Taiwan claim the company has secured orders for a “high-end model of the Google Nexus tablet” that is expected to start shipping in the third quarter of 2014.

Google is designing a new system that could help keep pirated apps out of Google Play. By scanning each app as it is submitted and comparing its assets against those used in other apps, the search giant could detect illegal clones before they make their way into users’ hands.