Google Maps now gives you the weather
On its official blog today, Google announced that its adding a weather layer to Google Maps that displays current temps and conditions around the globe.
To add the weather layer, users hover over the widget in the upper right corner of Google Maps and select the weather layer from the list of options.
Google buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion
Google and Motorola Mobility announced this morning that the search giant will buy Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion USD.
The search giant and creators of the Android Smartphone operating system has agreed to pay $40 a share for Motorola, a premium of 63% over its closing price on Friday.
Google announces eBook reader
On its official Google Books Blog today, the search giant announced the first ebook reader with the ability to buy and download titles directly from the Google eBookstore.
The iriver Story HD goes on sale in the United States on July 17th in Target Stores nationwide and on the Target website.
YouTube serves up 3 Billion videos a day
In a corporate blog posting today, the firm announced the video site now serves up over three billion videos a day, up 50% from two billion views a day in May of 2010.
In addition, videographers are uploading more than 48 hours (two days worth) of video to the site every minute, a 37% increase over the last six months and 100% over last year.
Blogger down and posts lost
Blogger, Google’s blogging and online publishing service, announced earlier this week that its blogging platform would go into read-only mode on Wednesday night at 10pm Pacfic Time for some routine maintenance.
Google said the shutdown would last about an hour, however, a day and a half later, bloggers are still unable to post.
Google’s Nexus S smartphone coming to Canada in April
Big box retailer Future Shop announced today that it would be accepting pre-orders for Google’s Nexus S smartphone starting next Monday, March 21, 2011.
Available in store in early April, the device will be available for Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility customers.
Google email snafu should be fixed soon
A software bug that left a small percentage of Gmail users without access to their email for the last day or two should be fixed by the end of today according to an update on the Google Blog.
The company says it released a storage software update on February 27th that introduced an unexpected bug that caused about one in five thousand Gmail users to temporarily lose access to their email.
Google says new search formula reduces the ranking of low quality sites
In a Google Blog posting this week, the search giant has announced a major change to its search algorithms in the United States which the company says will affect about one out of every nine queries.
Google says the change, which has been in the works for several months, is designed to reduce the rankings of low-quality sites which simply copy content from other websites or are simply not that useful while increasing the rankings for higher quality sites which feature original information and content.
