Search Engine, Mobile | featured news

Following a nearly four-month trial period, Google is taking its mobile commerce application, Google Wallet, nationwide. In a blog post announcing the news, the search giant said it needed the time to extensively test the app, which lets users pay for goods by tapping their smartphones against special wireless readers, which are powered by MasterCard’s contactless “PayPass” technology.

Google Inc. is buying cell phone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion in cash. It's by far Google's biggest acquisition and a sign the online search leader is serious about expanding beyond its core Internet business and setting the agenda in the fast-growing mobile market.

To recap, Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, sent a shot across the bow of Apple, Microsoft and Oracle, accusing them of participating in an “organized campaign” to take Google’s Android platform down through patent lawsuits.

Google Inc. launched its bid to dominate a world where the smartphone has replaced the wallet as the container for credit cards, coupons and receipts.

Microsoft said its Bing search engine and mapping service will be the default options for Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices.

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 strong holiday shopping season will help Google Inc beat Wall Street's quarterly targets again, but investors may need more convincing to buy into the Internet giant's longer-term future.

Google and a number of other companies have finally won an ongoing legal battle over the Android trademark. The judge sided with the companies using Google's mobile OS and dismissed the infringement suit, which was originally filed by Illinois entrepreneur Erich Specht.

Google Mobile Platform VP Andy Rubin literally arrived with a bag full of tricks at the D: Get Into Mobile Conference, showing publicly for the very first time an Android "Honeycomb" tablet. The roughly 10-inch, Motorola device was sleek, black, thin and sported an Android interface unlike any we've seen before. There was a very clean homepage, but the app page looked almost Apple iPad-like. Plus, when Rubin brought up the Gmail app, it looked almost exactly like Gmail on the iPad.

Google Inc. will continue to provide the search results on AOL Inc.'s websites under a new, five-year deal the companies signed this week. The agreement largely reinforces an arrangement that has been in place between the two companies since 2005. But the new contract, announced Thursday, also expands their cooperation onto AOL sites for cell phones and other gadgets. And it will put AOL video content on Google Inc.'s YouTube site for the first time.