Google calls Murdoch's piracy allegations 'nonsense'

Murdoch, a Twitter user for only the past several weeks, used the service to fire a barrage of accusations Saturday night against President Obama and Google.

He accused the White House of being in the employ of "Silicon Valley paymasters." Murdoch claimed Google was profiting from advertisements sold against pirated materials. He also called the search company a "piracy leader." (Read more about Murdoch's Twitter tirade here).

In an e-mail sent to CNET on Sunday afternoon, Google responded to Murdoch's statements.

"This is just nonsense," wrote a Google spokeswoman. "Last year we took down 5 million infringing Web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads...We fight pirates and counterfeiters every day."

Murdoch's Twitter blast against the president and Google was triggered when the White House raised concerns about antipiracy legislation being debated in Congress. The Stop Online Piracy Act (House of Representatives) and Protect IP Act (Senate) are backed by numerous media companies, including News Corp.

Supporters say the legislation is needed to protect them from overseas sites that trade in pirated materials but aren't bound by U.S. copyright law.

A growing list of opponents, including much of the tech sector, argues the bills would threaten free speech, due process, and innovation without offering any protection against piracy.

Google said it thinks there are better methods to fighting piracy than those sought by copyright owners: "We believe, like many other tech companies," Google wrote in its statement, "that the best way to stop [pirates] is through targeted legislation that would require ad networks and payment processors--like ours--to cut off sites dedicated to piracy or counterfeiting."

sourse: news.cnet.com

Google evangelists release bible of good Android design

Google doesn't reject apps from the Android Market just because they're ugly.

But that doesn't mean the company doesn't care--especially now that Matias Duarte has seized the spotlight as director of Android user experience. So, absent the banhammer, Google is trying gentler persuasion to get others besides itself to care about designs that look and work well in the Ice Cream Sandwich era.

For that reason, Google has released an Android design guide for ICS, aka Android 4.0. As my colleague Kent German observes, Google's accommodating ways up to this point have led to an inconsistent user experience and varying app quality. Perhaps this guide will lead programmers down the One True Path.

Maybe programmers should know intuitively that they must present alerts with short, direct, informal prose. Or that a long press now means select an item, not trigger a menu of actions. Perhaps, but I doubt it.

If nothing else, there's an army of new programmers jumping into mobile coding who need all the help they can get.

Programmer Dion Almaer called the Android guide "much-needed help to make sure your ice cream sandwich doesn't melt all over your users."

Mission accomplished?
Duarte, in an interview in Wired, called the guide the second part of the ICS launch and said, "I can feel like it's finished. Like ICS is truly complete."

Complete? There's only one phone shipping that uses it, and Samsung's Galaxy Nexus is expensive. The design guide is helpful, but coaxing programmers to implement its tenets is another matter altogether. Even eager coders will require time to adjust to the new look.
Google doesn't want any iOS-style or Windows-style objects creeping into Android apps.

Google doesn't want any iOS-style or Windows-style objects creeping into Android apps.
(Credit: Google)

Maybe Duarte meant that Google has completely laid the Android 4.0 foundation. Because in the real world, ICS has barely begun.

Duarte has been making the rounds last year ever since Google released Android 4.0, trying to convince the world that good design is a priority for Google and that it will pay off for those in the Android world. A public-relations road show is only so helpful, though.

Ice Cream Sandwich has won praise as the best Android version to date, but ICS' success hinges on more than just the apps and underlying OS that Google has released: people spend a lot of time using third-party apps. The guide could help make Android more consistent and easier to use--and therefore more competitive with Apple's iOS.

There's plenty of vagueness in the guide: "Make the user feel safe, happy, and energized," for example, or "Android apps empower people to try new things and to use apps in inventive new ways."

But a certain amount of aspirational guidance is perfectly appropriate, and the guide has lots of more concrete advice, too, for things like when to display notifications and sizing elements with density-independent pixels (dp).
What's Android's back button supposed to do? Google explains.

What's Android's back button supposed to do? Google explains.
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Room for improvement
I still see plenty of room for improvement. I can see people being confused whether they should look to the navigation bar and action bars to get things done. I've found the back button handy on Android, but it behaves unpredictably for me sometimes, and there's no forward button to undo your action. Now ICS introduces the up button as well as the back button, only the up button points left, not up. Perhaps Google should have gone all the way and ditched the back button altogether. Perhaps the idea of dropping the original design so completely in favor of something so iOS-like stuck in Google's craw.

Well, at least programmers have a better idea of what to do. Overall, the guide is helpful as a resource for programmers.

Perhaps just as important, it tells consumers that Google is trying to help them, too
sourse: news.cnet.com

Why Google is ditching search

Twitter and others are complaining that Google is throwing its massive 65 percent plus market share weight around and quashing smaller competitors. The reason Twitter and others are so threatened is that the pattern of shared links within Google+ provides a decent enough indicator as to what links are interesting. What's important is what's trending, and algorithms can get a sense of that with just a subset of everything that's getting shared on the Web.

The most interesting aspect of Google's move, however, is its tacit acknowledgement that its stalwart search links are largely irrelevant and might as well be replaced with social results. Google search results are essentially gamed results produced by search optimizers.

In other words, the search results that we supposedly value so highly are themselves paid placements, just like Google's keyword ads. It's just that in the case of search results, link owners have paid for SEO (search-engine optimization) to get Google's attention instead of paying for SEM (search engine marketing) to make Google give their links prominence. Either way, though, searches are mostly just producing ads by any other name.

In addition, Google's famed PageRank algorithm carries less and less weight these days, since fresh news and results inherently don't have as many inbound links as older content. (If it helps, you can think of PageRank as a kind of paleo-social search--just one that moves way too slowly for the modern Web.)
(Credit: Peter Yared/CNET)

As I've written in the past, Google well knows that its search results suck, and over the past few years, it has started to short-circuit those results by putting more and more direct "answers" at the top search pages. That, of course, makes the search results themselves less and less important.

As the screenshot to the right (click for a larger version) shows, ads and answers have started to push Google's quintessential search results below the fold into the netherworld of the Web. As it turns out, in many cases the actual "answers" to searches for airline flights or products are actually much more monetizable than ads.

At last year's D conference, Google chairman Eric Schmidt presaged the shift from links to answers, stating that "we're trying to move from answers that are link-based to answers that are algorithmically based, where we can actually compute the right answer." More and more, Google is simply going to answer your questions. Last month, it acquired predictive search company Clever Sense to accelerate this transition. New mobile search engines such as Apple's Siri also dispense with search links entirely and simply return a single answer.

So why not replace increasingly gamed and lame search links with socially curated links? The search results were increasingly irrelevant anyway.
sourse: news.cnet.com

A week of Apple rumor confirmations, and egg hurling

The technology world spent this past week with its collective eyes glued to the Consumer Electronics Show. But there was a truckload of news in Apple land, including announcements that confirmed three high-profile rumors.

Amid the product unveilings going on at CES in Las Vegas, Apple quietly sent out invites to an education-related event that it's holding next week in New York. That matched up with rumors from last week claiming the company was gearing up for an event across the country from its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters.

That confirmation was joined by two others. Target confirmed that it was, in fact, building special displays for Apple products in 25 of its stores as part of a larger initiative to bring boutique shopping experiences into the fold. That was joined by a report from Bloomberg, with Apple confirming that it had purchased Anobit, a chipmaker it was rumored to have bought in early December.

For more on these and other stories, read on.

Apple Talk Weekly is a collection of some of the week's top Apple news and rumors. It appears every Saturday, and is curated by CNET's Apple reporter, Josh Lowensohn.

News

Apple holding education event next week
Smack dab in the middle of the Consumer Electronics Show, Apple stole some of the thunder, sending out invites to a special event it's holding next week at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The event, which takes place on the 19th, is rumored to focus on Apple's iBookstore and text books.
(Credit: Apple)

iPhone 4S launches in China, then stumbles
This week brought the iPhone 4S to customers in China, but things got off to a rough start. Apple's flagship store in Beijing didn't open on time, and later said it wouldn't be selling the device at all. An angry crowd threw eggs at the store, and several fights broke out between customers. In a statement, Apple said it would not be selling the device in two of its Chinese retail stores, pushing shoppers to purchase one on the Web instead.

Apple unveils supplier list in supplier report
Yesterday, Apple published the 2012 edition of its supplier report, its audit of the suppliers that it says manufacture 97 percent of its products. The big surprise was a full listing of third-party companies it uses, information that up till now had not been shared with the public. Alongside the release of the report, Apple joined the Fair Labor Association, a third-party auditing group that will keep tabs on what goes on in those factories and issue publicly available reports.

ITC says Motorola does not infringe on Apple patents
Yesterday, the International Trade Commission issued an initial determination on Apple's complaint against Motorola, ruling that Motorola's Droid smartphones do not violate three of Apple's patents. The ruling is preliminary and now goes to an approval stage with the ITC's six-member commission.

Kodak sues Apple again
Kodak took aim at Apple once again, adding to its existing lawsuits with new complaints filed with the International Trade Commission and local courts this week. In its complaint, which also targets HTC, Kodak says the two companies are infringing on a number of its patents with their smartphones and tablets, and is seeking a sales ban.

Apple confirms Anobit acquisition
Where there's smoke, there's fire--or so the saying goes. That indeed turned out to be the case this week, with Apple finally acknowledging its acquisition of Israel-based flash-memory maker Anobit. Reports of the sale date back to December. Apple has acquired a handful of companies in recent years, but has a long history of not announcing those deals. Most recently that's included the pickup of Quattro Wireless, which it rolled into iAds, and Siri, which became the namesake feature of the voice assistant in the iPhone 4S.

Target details mini Apple store plans
The store-within-a-store concept that Apple Insider reported last week is, in fact, coming to a handful of Target stores. Target this week announced plans to bring specialty Apple displays to 25 of its locations. Which stores, and when they're rolling out, are yet to be unveiled.

Rumors
Apple's dual-core A5 processor rumored to be jumping to four-cores in the next iPad.

Apple's dual-core A5 processor rumored to be jumping to four-cores in the next iPad.
(Credit: Apple)

iPad 3 to bring 4G, quad-core processor, HD display?
A report from Bloomberg yesterday pegged March as the month we'll get a follow-up to the iPad 2. Citing manufacturing partners in Asia, the outlet said the new tablet will be packing a quad-core processor, along with support for 4G LTE networks. The display on the tablet is also said to be making the jump to HD, falling in line with a number of earlier reports pegging this next model as the one with the same pixel density as can be found on Apple's latest-generation iPhones and iPod Touches.

iPad 3 not so different on the outside?
The iPad 3 is seemingly months away, but in a report this week, iLounge says it's already gotten its hands on the device. iLounge Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Horwitz wrote that the new model looks nearly identical to the iPad 2, right down to the button placement. The only change is that it's 1mm thicker, the report said.

Sharp no longer making iPad 3 displays?
Display maker Sharp is out of the running for sourcing Apple with displays for Apple's next-generation iPad. That's according to Korean outlet Electronic Times Internet News, which said that the work instead went to LG Display and Samsung after Sharp could not meet Apple's specifications for the high-density pixel displays.

sourse: news.cnet.com

CES 2013 will be Google's show

Not that many years ago, nearly every computing product on the CES exhibit floor ran Windows. This year, that was not the case. Sure, the new "ultrabooks" are Windows-powered, but Android is everywhere else: in tablets, in phones, and in TVs.

Even though Microsoft Windows still dominates the PC and laptop markets, Microsoft itself is no longer the leader in consumer tech innovation. It's sad but appropriate that the company will no longer be kicking off the leading consumer electronics trade show.

After Apple, Google is leading the charge in consumer electronics. Apple doesn't officially participate in CES, leaving Google as the most influential platform company there. The most interesting tablet products at CES ran Android (examples: Asus 370T; Asus Transformer Prime; Samsung Galaxy Note, while the the Windows-powered ultrabooks appeared pedestrian in comparison (except perhaps for Lenovo's Yoga). And it's a safe bet that most of the smartphone manufacturers see Google Android as their only feasible defense against the iPhone juggernaut. Windows Phone 7, good as it is, is too late.


It would make sense for Google to get the 2013 CES keynote spot. It was the most important vendor at this year's show and it's likely to be even more critical to the CE industry next year.

Google rose to this position in CE by using the same playbook as the company it's displacing. As Microsoft did with Windows, Google now makes the operating system that every manufacturer knows how to bake into its hot products and that developers like to build for due to its expanding market footprint and technical flexibility. In consumer computing, Microsoft perfected this virtual cycle, but in the new era of mobile devices, it's Google that's doing the best job implementing the model.

Will it be Google?
Jason Oxman, senior vice president of Industry Affairs at the Consumer Electronics Association, wouldn't tell me who has been invited to give the keynote at CES 2013. But he did discuss with me the process. CEA execs will decide on the "thematic direction" for the 2013 show shortly after the 2012 show closes. Then they'll extend invitations to speakers.

Another safe bet: the CEA isn't going to determine that the thematic direction for CES 2013 will in any way relate to portable PCs running Windows 8. Nor for any sensible 2013 theme (mobile computing, search, social computing, the cloud, or media), does Microsoft sit at the head of the class.

At some point, a major manufacturer like Samsung, Sony, LG, or Toshiba may manage to get real traction with an integrated media-sharing platform that competes with Apple (they are all building them). If it does, it could end up as a good keynote candidate. But as of CES 2012, these initiatives all seem secondary to these manufacturers' hardware lines. They're not as well integrated, or nearly as good, as iTunes is with Apple TV, its iOS devices, and the Macs.
CES 2013 keynote
Which company should keynote the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show?



Apple, for its part, does participate in CES. The company sent hundreds of employees to CES this year. Some reports called them "spies" because they were quiet deal-makers and observers, not press-facing flag-wavers. But if Apple sent spies, Google sent generals. Eric Schmidt and Marissa Meyer, for example, both appeared on CNET livestreamed events. Google is already laying the groundwork to dominate CES.

Next year, when Microsoft has neither the keynote slot nor its mega-booth in the Central Hall (which it did not renew), the company will do a similar thing: It will send hundreds of employees and likely "embed" them in the booths where Windows 8-running products are being pushed. But no matter how ever-present Microsoft is in partner booths, it won't be able to control the message to the same extent it would if it had a native exhibit. Microsoft will be Apple-like in 2013.

The 2013 CES will belong to Google even if it doesn't get (or accept) the keynote spot. Google was the most influential company at CES 2012, it's arguably the most important company for other CE vendors to work with, and it deserves the top billing at CES 2013.

(Tidbit: No matter who gets the nod as the kick-off company for CES 2013, it's not clear if they'll get what the CEA calls the "Microsoft keynote," the talk the night before the show officially opens. In fact, no one might. That pre-show kickoff slot was created 14 years ago specifically for Microsoft. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have anchored that talk, but no other company has. The CEA is considering eliminating that slot and pushing the media to treat the official opening-day keynote as the show launch instead. This year, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs had that spot.)

sourse: news.cnet.com