Google announced its first computer yesterday, the ChromeBook Pixel. Yes, they’ve had ChromeBooks for a few years now, but this is the first computer product that was made solely by Google.

Over the past few years we’ve seen service and software oriented companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon venture into hardware development. It’s left many people scratching their heads, as we wonder why these companies want to shift their focus to hardware when they’ve dominated by just offering great services? Asymco’s Horace Dediu is pretty sure he knows the answer, and it all comes down to money.

Sony and Microsoft, are all coming out with new gaming consoles this year, but when it comes to handheld gaming, Apple and Google have got them beat.

A new report claims that in the fourth quarter of 2012, gamers spend more money on iOS and Android games combined than the amount spent on dedicated handheld devices.

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.

Google has countersued British Telecom, a multinational telecommunications company based in the United Kingdom, with a new patent infringement lawsuit filed in the U.S. and the U.K. BT first took legal action against Google back in 2011, but Google has called its complaint “meritless,” and accuses the company of “arming patent trolls.”

Opera has announced that it will gradually phase out the use of Presto, its own rendering engine, in favor of WebKit this year. It will utilize Chromium, the open source project from Google, which powers the search giant’s speedy Chrome browser. Opera’s first Chromium-based smartphone browser will be previewed at Mobile World Congress later this month.