A lot of interesting tidbits have been coming out of the Oracle vs. Google court battle, one of which is the original “Google Phone” concept. It appears Google wanted to manufacture a phone back in 2006 and approached carriers with the concept designs in hopes of convincing adoption. This BlackBerry-esque QWERTY represent a style popular among the power users of the day and while no official specs for the concept were revealed, we do have what Google considered baseline specs for any device that would run Android:
To celebrate the launch of Zynga’s latest hit ZombieSmash!, Google gave them special permission to go ahead and zombify the Bugdroid statue outside of Building 44. That was pretty cool of Google and I’m thinking this little stunt will give rise to some decorating madness come next Halloween. Anyways, ZombieSmash! has been out on iOS for quite some time now but today marks its debut on the Google Play Store — and what a way to debut if you ask me.
Yay, the “Google Drive could launch next week” rumors can finally end. Google has officially announced the availability of it cloud storage service Google Drive. Starting today, anyone willing to sign up can get 5GB of free cloud-storage to start and if that’s not enough you can always choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month (although I’ve heard people getting even cheaper deals when they sign up). When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB. Google Drive competes with the likes of Dropbox, Sugar Sync, and other cloud storage services by offering:
It looks like Google has once again decided to start selling devices directly to consumers. In a surprise move, Google has added a new “Device” section to its Google Play Store and begun offering unlocked, contract-free, GSM/HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus devices for the low price of $399.99. The GSM version will work on more than 200 GSM providers worldwide, including AT&T and T-Mobile here in the U.S.
Apple, Google, Intel and four other tech giants failed to convince a judge to dismiss an antitrust suit brought against them. The suit alleges that the companies conspired against hiring each other’s employees and District Judge Lucy Koh in her decision said:
“The fact that all six identical bilateral agreements were reached in secrecy among seven defendants in a span of two years suggests that these agreements resulted from collusion, and not from coincidence,”
While Apple, Google, and Intel are the three largest firms in the suit, other major companies, including Adobe, Lucasfilm, Pixar and Intuit are included.
