According to the blog post, 40% of Google Maps usage comes from mobile devices and Google wants to ensure these users get a consistent experience. Before now, the mobile website was missing a number of popular and useful features that it will now include. While some of it (like seeing your current location - you could do that already, yes?) sounds familiar, here's what Google says it has updated on the mobile website:
Pick up a book like James Joyce's Ulysses and you'll likely want a library at your side to help define, translate and help give the context needed to understand the plethora of heady content inside. Before the days of the Internet, reading some of the more scholarly literary texts involved just that - having a dictionary or other reference materials on hand.
Now, Google has brought these things together by adding search, translation and word definitions directly to its Google eBooks offering.
Microsoft's stunning $8.5 billion offer for Skype has the industry talking. Just as they got out from under the consent decree imposed by the U.S. Department of Justice as a settlement for antitrust practices, Microsoft made its biggest acquisition play ever.
Microsoft has no shortage of cash at the moment, so perhaps this will be the beginning of a huge buying spree in Redmond. The Microsoft of a decade ago dominated the industry, but today's Microsoft has been playing catch-up to companies like Apple and Google that are flying high, particularly in the mobile market. Developing new products from scratch takes time, and time isn't on Microsoft's side. Yet buying your way into a market isn't a sure path to success either, and it can be expensive.
