Google

It’s been fairly obvious for a while that Amazon is planning to release a fully-fledged tablet. Having already got their hardware feet well and truly wet with the Kindle, the online retail giant has been slowly putting the building blocks in place for their own tablet ecosystem built atop Android. Now rumours are beginning to circle that they have tapped giant OEM Quanta to build the device, to be released later this year.

It’s long been suspected that Google is taking a cloud-based approach to productivity on tablets and other portable devices, recently enabling mobile editing for their widely-used web office suite. However Google today surprised everybody by rolling out a full-featured Google Docs app for Android, with a couple of other goodies in tow.

It always raises a wry smile when well-intentioned customer relations moves result in a user backlash, which is why we smiled with more than a hint of wryness when Motorola’s “Let’s engage our users!” Facebook activity saw fans of the manufacturer voting with their feet and demanding an end to locked bootloaders.

Media reports that Apple Inc. (AAPL) can track a user’s every movement are teeing up a new round of debate on privacy concerns as regulators and we common folk question …

Hot on the heels of Google’s earnings call at the beginning of the week, today was Apple’s turn to publish their figures and, surprise surprise, they beat expectations and sold a whole load of bushed aluminium to mobs of doe-eyed consumers.

Google may have to fend of Canadian firm Research In Motion Ltd (RIM) when it comes to snapping up Nortel Networks Corp.’s patent portfolio, according to Bloomberg news, which says the BlackBerry maker could beat Google Inc.’s $900 million offer.

Google Maps is one of the few things that is universally loved by internet users. Find a person who doesn’t like Google Maps and I can guarantee you they’re either insane, a moron, or both. That said, the ubiquitous cartography service isn’t without its little quirks.

Google are historically quite prolific buyers of other companies (94 and counting, according to Wikipedia), and don’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down. Although most of their acquisitions are small companies, they also swallow up some reasonably sized fish, most recently air fare aggregator ITA Software for a cool $700 million.

Jews across the globe will be starting the celebration of passover tonight, as they have done for the last couple of thousand years. But why is this year different from other years? Well, it has a really superbly made video telling the entire passover story with a slightly modern mobile twist.

Yep, it’s quarterly earnings season again. Google are usually first out of the gate with their numbers, and as expected they dished the dirt yesterday on the absolutely obscene amounts of money they’ve been making across the board. However the announcements were marred slightly by Google not managing to match analysts’ forecasts.

Spint Nextel Corp. has joined the likes of AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA to allow direct carrier billing through apps purchased on the Android Market, leaving Verizon Wireless as the …