Google, Android | featured news

The search giant is hard at work on its new Google TV 2.0 product. Developers have been joining Google’s new “Fishtank” program to get early access to tools that will allow them to create compelling new content for Google’s next attempt at entering our living rooms. Google TV 2.0 runs a barebones version of Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) and there are reportedly only 50 developers partaking in the initial Fishtank program.

Google on Wednesday began fixing a security flaw that affects some 97% of Android smartphones.

Mike Cleron, a Google software engineer for the Android operating system, made an ambitious pronouncement onstage at the company's annual conference last week.

Android Open Accessory creates platform APIs for standard devices, such as phones and lightbulbs. With this, Android joins the ever-growing list of protocols (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Insteon, X10) competing for attention in the connected home.

Research In Motion shares were sharply lower Friday, after the company issued a steep first-quarter earnings warning late Thursday, heightening fears that the BlackBerry maker is buckling amid competition from Apple and Google.

Politicians and privacy experts demanded answers of Google and Apple Friday following the discovery that smartphone software from the tech giants regularly transmits information about a user's whereabouts back to the companies.

The search-engine giant is facing complaints in South Korea as mobile phones using its Android software gain dominance.

Apple will remain firmly in control of the tablet market through 2015, according to market research by Gartner, which also shows Google’s Android will take the baton from Nokia’s Symbian to dominate the smartphone market through the same time period. Experts agree, though, that it will be strong ecosystems, allowing for tablets and smartphones to deliver a combined experience, which will take the day, possibly weakening Research in Motion’s capacity to deliver in a new environment.

A major software attack that distributed malicious programs to around 260,000 Android phones has put pressure on Google to do more to secure its market for smartphone apps.

A new report released Thursday by Nielsen, a market research firm, said that the Google Android platform had become the most popular operating system among United States smartphone users.