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Google has launched Google Now, a new search interface which improves the search results based on the time and location of the search. It is available as part of Android Jelly Bean, the latest iteration of its mobile OS, and works by using the time, search history and location data to provide better search results.

Google's Nexus Q is many thing to many people. A miniature Death Star, an alien being, necessary but overwrought or, umm, a media streamer. It also has an extra, hidden function: it works as a magic 8-ball.

Pitting Google search against Siri using a monster 1600-question test shows how useful Siri really is: not at all. Google answered correctly 86 percent of the time. Siri achieved just 68 percent accuracy. At that point, it's not much better than a crystal ball.

On most days, Twitter is now generating the majority of its revenue from ads shown to its users on mobile gadgets, rather than from ads on Twitter.com, company executives said. One key reason: People who see a Twitter ad on their phones are more likely to click or interact with it in some way, which is how Twitter gets paid for advertisements.

Google moved to take on Amazon.com in the fast-growing market for what the industry calls cloud services, allowing companies to run their applications and store data on computers managed by the Internet giant.

The idea, it seems, is to allow everyone with an empty Google+ page—that'll be most of us, then?—to fill it up with content that has previously been posted online. It's a bit like buying a new house that you don't want to live in, then filling it with all your old junk from your adolescence so it looks used. Used, yes. Only a little hollow and depressing at the same time.

Right after the keynote address at the I/O conference in , loaned me a Nexus 7 tablet and, while a couple hours isn?t enough to put it through all of its paces, I have had a chance to try out several of its features. My first impressions are positive.

How sweet it is! Google has given developers a taste of " target="_hplink">Android 4.1 (codenamed "Jelly Bean"), the latest update to the company's OS for mobile devices.

Google will sell a small tablet computer bearing its brand in a challenge to Amazon's Kindle Fire. The Nexus 7 is designed specifically for Google Play, the online store that sells movies, music, books, apps and other content - the things Amazon.com Inc. also sells for its tablet computer.

Apple's patent case against Google's Motorola Mobility unit in Chicago was dismissed on Friday with prejudice, keeping both parties from refiling claims against one another.