Technology blog + Google

IBM's decision to abandon the open source Harmony project just as Oracle is suing Google could have big implications for Java

Wait just one minute before you export your data to Facebook, says Google: are you sure you want to hand it over to some New Evil Empire^W^W^W other site?

Google Street View car, parked in Mountain View. Photo by sanchom on Flickr. Some rights reserved

In no more than seven months, Google Street View has found itself the subject of investigations in 20 countries around the world.

Launched in May 2007 in five US cities – New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver – exactly three years later the product began to morph into a global pressure point for invasions of privacy by companies operating in the stratosphere of the internet.

Just this morning, the US Federal Communication Commission became the latest regulatory body to scrutinise the so-called "payload" data collection by Google Street View cars. We'll leave it there, you can follow our ongoing coverage into the fallout here.

For now, we need your help keeping on top of the Street View scrutiny. Search Engine Land has done a wondrous job in collating a scorecard of the developments, which we've tweaked and embedded below.

Problems or developments? Email them to josh.halliday@guardian.co.uk or, better still, tweet me with a link at @JoshHalliday. Click the headers to sort.

Google's Tom Uglow on their Creativity Lab, Dentsu London on some Tokyo innovation and the future with HTML5

Facebook pole vaults Google's data blockage, heating up the technological sparring between the two. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Updated: The great internet war heats up, as Google slams Facebook for leaving users in a 'data dead end'

Google's X-ray doodle celebrates 115 years since Wilhelm Röntgen realised he had discovered a new form of radiation

'Bones' doodle celebrates Wilhelm Röntgen's work of 1895 with Crookes tubes and radiation, and adds a nod to eight years of jokes about pigeons doing the hard work of ranking pages

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the f8 Developer Conference in San Francisco in April. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Microsoft the underdog? So thinks Mark Zuckerberg, who explains why he is offering its search engine Facebook data that Google might kill for. And speaking of Google, where's Marissa Mayer moving to?

In this week's Guardian technology podcast, Stephen Fry - known for his love of Apple gadgets - gives his take on Microsoft's new smartphone and the wider mobile phone world

Google's driverless car: exterior view (click for larger version)

Like the James Bond filmmakers closing the Thames or Top Gear persuading Marines to use a car as a landing craft, Google can get away with automatically-driven cars because of its reputation

BT's plans for broadband, mobile phone patents, Jason Calacanis reviews AOL's purchase of TechCrunch, and our Startup Surgery offers financial advice

Sony's Google TV remote, as seen on ABC TV in the US. Screen capture by Engadget.

Google TV makes watching the internet on your TV as simple as clicking a button – all 81 of them

No API yet, but it does have a very neat addition in the form of QR codes to take you to web pages. We road-tested it, though not on a road.

It doesn't add up. According to Ofcom, TV viewing is up 3% over 2009. At the same time, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, more than 90 million people access Twitter each month, and during the World Cup campaign, 5 million UK adults watched games online and 1 million on mobile phones. How are we fitting it in – have the days got longer or are we all just sleeping less?

The point of course is that we're doing it all at the same time: watching, talking, rating, sharing and commenting – and these actions enhance the TV experience. Thousands of people like me found the absence of Terry Wogan from Eurovision easier to bear thanks to the many wannabe Wogans on Twitter, each attempting to outdo the other with acerbic put-downs of the Macedonian entry in real time. Continue reading...

As change happens at the top of Nokia, we visit its worldwide conference and developer fair to hear what Michael Gartenberg makes of the company's fortunes

Google in New York. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

Google will begin the introduction of "layers" of social-networking features later this year, the company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has said.

Speaking at the Zeitgeist conference yesterday evening, Schmidt suggested that plans for a social network to rival the likes of Facebook – and now Apple's Ping – are further away than previously thought.

Schmidt told reporters: "We're trying to take Google's core products and add a social component."

"If you think about it, it's obvious," he said. "With your permission, knowing more about who your friends are, we can provide more tailored recommendations. Search quality can get better."

The Wall Street Journal cites people familiar with the matter in suggesting that Google plans to be something of a portal to the wider web for users, allowing access to content created on sites like Twitter and Flickr.

However, rumours of a social network dubbed Google Me have not entirely dissipated. Mashable predicts that the speculation kickstarted by Digg founder Kevin Rose and a former Facebook staffer will see a launch before the end of the year. Yesterday Schmidt moved to dismiss talks of a "Facebook killer", saying:

"Everybody has convinced themselves that there's some huge project about to get announced next week. And I can assure you that's not the case."

Google Wave, the company's more recent social platform, was unceremoniously dropped from development last month, you'll remember. And Google Buzz has so far failed to grab and retain the imagination of Gmail users whose social appetite is already sated externally with Twitter, Flickr, Facebook etc.

But a wave of summer acquisitions has shown Google to have big ambitions for the future of its social services.

In August, e-commerce engine like.com was added to Google's expanding portfolio in a $100m deal enveloping the four-year-old company's "visual search technology". Jambool, the virtual currency company allowing developers to integrate payment systems into their games, was next on the list for Google in a rumoured $70m buy.

Schmidt announced a future partnership with social gaming platform Zynga in June, leading many to speculate about a forthcoming release of Google Games. Earlier that month, Schmidt said Google aims to "improve the way flight information is organised", announcing a $700m bid to buy airline ticketing firm ITA software.

Schmidt's announcing of a timeline for social networking plans came as Twitter, now at 160 million users, revealed a significant new look for the site. Twitter.com will now display images and videos embedded in tweets on a seperate panel on the page, eradicating the need for users to click away from the site – potentially ringing bells with Google's rumoured plans to integrate access to third-party sites from one page.

''It's going to increase the value that people are getting out of Twitter, so in less time you can get more information and value," Evan Williams, Twitter's co-founder and chief executive, said. Earlier, Twitter's vice-president of business and corporate development said: "Twitter is not a social network – Twitter is news, it's information."