FTC may launch antitrust case against Google over Android
Google is currently under the spotlight in a number of countries for possibly abusing its market position and the US’ Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may also be back on Google’s case, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The FTC is said to have reached an agreement with the Justice Department to spearhead an investigation into Android. More specifically, to examine whether or not Google has been hindering competitors’ access to its Android mobile operating system.
As we have heard a few times before, the concern is that Google gives preference to its own services that often come bundled with its Android operating system. By installing these services by default, some suggest that this gives the company an unfair advantage over its competitors. The fact that OEMs are not free to fork Android without losing access to seemingly essential services, like the Play Store, is also likely to be part of the investigation.
It is important to note that this inquiry is said to still be in its early stages, meaning that the FTC’s investigation may not even end up producing a case to bring against the company. The FTC previously led a U.S. antitrust investigation into Google’s search business back in 2011, but a case was never brought forward as there was a lack of evidence.
See also: Google told to unbundle apps from Android in Russia
Google is also under similar Android-based anti-trust investigations in the EU and Russia this year. The Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has already found Google guilty of abusing its market position following a complaint from search rival Yandex. The Russian investigation would rather that phones simply shipped with the Play Store, forcing customers to choose all their other services.
Read more: European Commission launches antitrust investigation into Android
The European Commission is concerned that pre-installed applications, such as Chrome, Hangouts, and Youtube, are offering Google an unfair advantage over rival pieces of software, especially if the tech giant is forcing or encouraging handset manufacturers to install these apps by default.
Neither the FTC nor Google commented on the matter.
US will probe Google for anti-competitive Android behavior
The FTC and US Justice Department have launched an antitrust investigation into Google’s Android operating system, according to Bloomberg. US regulators reportedly decided to launch the inquiry after meeting with rival tech companies, which complained that Google limits their access to Android in favor of its own apps. The US move follows a similar investigation into the Android platform in Europe, where regulators are looking into Google’s search and bundling of apps like Gmail, Chrome and Play. The concern is that it creates a monopoly and crowds out rival apps like Microsoft’s Outlook or Nokia’s Here mapping.
Microsoft, of course, was itself dinged heavily in EU for pre-installing Internet Explorer on Windows 7 without giving consumers other browser options. Google’s situation with Android is similar, given that it owns over 50 percent of the smartphone market. However, consumers have realistic options to Android, like iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry, so according to US law, regulators may not have a case. For now, the FTC and DoJ have reached a “clearance agreement,” that lets the FTC take charge of the query.
Two large regulatory bodies — the FTC and European Commission — are now investigating Google’s Android practices.
The proceedings, of course, may never amount to anything. In fact, the FTC launched a similar probe into Google’s search business in 2013, but elected to not bring any charges. However, the FTC was heavily criticized for that decision, especially after it accidentally posted a document leaking the names of the complainants in the case. This time, however, two large regulatory bodies — the FTC and European Commission — are investigating Google at the same time (though not exactly for the same thing). It could get awkward if they arrive at different decisions. There’s no word about the investigation yet from Google or the FTC, but we’ve reached out for more information.
Source: Bloomberg
Android Marshmallow update for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 should arrive Oct 5th
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Google is holding an event on September 29th, and while most of the attention will be on the new Nexus smartphones, the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, owners of the older Nexus devices are mostly just interested in when they’ll be getting the next version of Android, Android Marshmallow. Thanks to Canadian mobile provider, Telus, we might have a tentative date for the Android Marshmallow update for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 – October 5th. The information was available for all to see on the Telus forum earlier today, but has since been taken down – naturally, we have a screenshot of the information in case you don’t believe us:
If that’s the timing of a carrier-based update to Android Marshmallow, the update to unlocked devices should be even faster – whether it will be available as soon as Google says the word on September 29th seems doubtful, but it does seem like it will only be a matter of days. It’s also important to keep in mind that carrier updates take a few weeks even if they start quite early, so don’t get your hopes up too high just yet.
What do you think about the timetable for the Android Marshmallow update for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Telus via Android Police
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Google voice search can now hear what you’ve got to say
Need a better reason to say “OK Google” in public? Well, the search engine just announced a refinement to voice search on its research blog. Now, it can more accurately pick out your voice even in noisy surroundings, and perform the necessary analysis in real-time. This is all made possible by software that can make faster phoneme predictions by listening further ahead in a user’s speech.
In addition to this, acoustic models utilize feedback loops to tell the difference between similar sounding letters. For example, the word “museum” is broken up into / m j u z i @ m/ in phonetic notation and normally the sounds made by “j” and “u” would be difficult to separate. But with feedback loops, the software takes in all letters and sounds at once, just as the word itself is said in one breath. This is achieved with the help of newly developed memory cells that work with a sophisticated gating system. You can test Google’s upgraded digital ears on both Android and iOS now.
Source: Google
New Marshmallow features part of Google Play Services 8.1
Google finished rolling out a Play Services 8.1 update and Android Developers are now being urged to start prepping their apps to take advantage of some new features available in Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The SDK is now available and developers can go ahead and start their work to incorporate the new features and APIs.
One of the big changes coming to Android 6.0 is a new permissions model that will let users select permissions at runtime. According to Google, developers will need to update to the new 8.1 SDK to incorporate this permissions model if they want their app to be fully compatible with Marshmallow.
To help developers generate potential sales leads for their apps, the new framework includes an App Invite feature. Using this, a user can invite people in their Google contacts to check out an app. The service enables this via email or SMS. Developers will be able to customize the invitation text, add a custom image and even include a call-to-action button.
For developers who are trying to support Android Wear and incorporate the Google Maps API into their app, they will find they can take advantage of the ambient mode. This mode provides a low-color version of a map by reducing power consumption through limitations on the number of pixels lit up. This provides a visual cue for users who can see the map, but can recognize it is not active for input.
A final batch of changes brings a new Google Nearby feature that developers can tap into. Apps can receive callbacks when a Nearby publish or subscribe expires. Google says this will enable apps to more accurately reflect the status of a Nearby. Google also added a new Player Stats API to Play Games so provides better information about the progress players are making through games and developers can better connect with their more valuable players.
Google also notes that they have made changes to the GoogleApiClient and PendingResult which could break changes in a developers code.
Check out the video Google produced explaining these changes to Google Play Services in the 8.1 update.
Click here to view the embedded video.
source: Android Developers
Come comment on this article: New Marshmallow features part of Google Play Services 8.1
[Deal] Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ album is free from Google Play
Pink Floyd fans, listen up! The group’s Wish You Were Here album released in 1975 is available for free through Google Play.
Here are the songs on the album:
- “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)”
- “Welcome to the Machine”
- “Have a Cigar”
- “Wish You Were Here”
- “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX)”
Come comment on this article: [Deal] Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ album is free from Google Play
Better models and neural networks power improved Google voice search
Google has announced that their research labs have introduced some new models to power Google’s voice search function and dictation on smartphones thanks to the adoption of Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) and sequence discriminative training techniques that make up a form of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). The RNN model replaces the Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) that Google adopted in 2012 to replace the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) that had been the industry standard for the previous 30 years. Google says the new technology will produce more accurate results, even in noisy environments, and can produce those results much more quickly.
The new RNNs that Google is using make use of feedback loops in order to capture temporal data to feed into the model. Older models only looked for the presence of sounds while this new technology also accounts for where the sound occurs in time relative to other sounds. Google also indicates their new RNN uses memory cells and a gating mechanism to help memorize sound information, which helps to improve accuracy over time.
Once the RNN recognizes all the sounds in a given utterance, Google feeds it through the CTC. This steps helps the technology recognize sounds in an utterance without having to predict the sound instant to instant. Eventually the software builds a sequence of “spikes” that reveal a waveform that can then be processed.
One of the challenges that Google researchers faced was making all of this happen in real-time or as close to it as possible. One of the changes they incorporated was to train the models to use larger audio chunks than the 10 milliseconds traditional methods employed. This move in turn meant less computations had to be performed, making everything work faster. Google researchers also added artificial noise and reverberation to the data to make the technology better at coping with background noise.
The final step in crafting this new technology to be deployed to end users was training the model to output predictions closer to when speech was occurring. Google found that the neural network was so “smart” that it had figured out that it could delay output by around 300 ms so it could listen further ahead for additional speech signals that would help it improve its predictions. Unfortunately, this introduced some additional lag that the researchers had to eliminate.
The bottom line users is that voice searches using the Google app on both Android and iOS should perform much better now.
source: Google
Come comment on this article: Better models and neural networks power improved Google voice search
64GB Motorola Nexus 6 on sale for just $369.99 through Expansys USA
That’s right, folks. Motorola’s 64GB Nexus 6 is on sale for just $369.99 through online retailer Expansys USA, indicating that a handful of new Nexus devices is just over the horizon.
The Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X is expected to be unveiled on September 29 at an event in San Francisco. That said, the Nexus 6 has been on sale quite a bit from different avenues, and it’s probably because retailers are trying to get rid of as much stock as possible to make way for the new devices.
This is a drastic price cut considering that the Nexus 6 when it first launched costed a whopping $699. Another important thing to keep in mind is that, despite the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P being on the way, the Motorola Nexus 6 is still an amazing smartphone. If you don’t mind not having the latest and greatest, this is a perfect device at such a low price point.
Anyone picking one up?
source: Expansys USA
Come comment on this article: 64GB Motorola Nexus 6 on sale for just $369.99 through Expansys USA
Android 6.0 Marshmallow set to roll out October 5, according to Telus
According to Canadian mobile service provider Telus, Google is planning to roll out Android 6.0 Marshmallow to both the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 beginning Monday, October 5th. We already know that Google is holding an event on Tuesday, September 29th, where the company will most likely announce its two new Nexus devices, the LG-made Nexus 5X and Huawei-made Nexus 6P. This is when we’ll get more availability details regarding the next version of Android as well.
As you can see from the attached screenshot below, Telus’ software update information appears to be three months old. However, MobileSyrup says this information has been just recently updated, but we might still want to take this information with a grain of salt.
Even though this rumored roll out date is tentative, the date still fits in perfectly with how Google normally handles software updates with Nexus devices. Do note, however, that October 5th is when the update will likely begin rolling out to devices, so it may be a little while longer than that before all Nexus devices get the update.
Be sure to stay tuned to Android Authority for more information regarding Android 6.0 Marshmallow, new Nexus devices and more.
Google Keep brings Evernote-style productivity to iOS
Google’s note taking and to-do list app, Keep, has been available on Android devices and the web for quite some time. Well over two years, in fact. Looking to offer the productivity software to the Apple faithful as well, Mountain View announced today that Keep is available for iOS. This means that all of the app’s handy tools like location-based reminders, shared lists and quick search and filtering are ready for your iPhone or iPad. And if you’re already using an Android Wear device with iOS, Keep plays nice with those wearables, too. The goods are available over at iTunes now, via the source link down below.
Source: iTunes
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