Clint Boulton

Thanks to Apple’s App Store and Google’s rougher-around-the-edges Android Market, mobile-application-store sales will top $15 billion in 2011, Gartner said Jan. 26. The $15 billion number, up 190 percent from $5.2 billion in 2010, counts both users buying applications and applications generating ad revenue on smartphones and tablet computers. Consumers will download 17.7 billion applications […]

Google served notice to rivals such as Apple and Facebook Jan. 25 when it put a big help wanted notice up on the Web and the media gobbled it up. After hiring more than 4,500 full-timers in 2010, Google is adding more than 6,200 new workers in 2011. Or, at least, it’s hiring more than […]

Google confirmed Jan. 25 that it has acquired SayNow, a signal that the company wants to bring social applications into its Google Voice phone management platform. “SayNow will work closely with the Google Voice team, but we don’t have any specific plans to announce at this time,” a Google spokesperson told eWEEK. “We are impressed […]

Facebook has added Sponsored Stories, a new ad unit to help brands cash in on the popularity of the like button without asking users’ permission. As reported by AdAge, the ad includes the “like button” or check-in functionality that has become so popular among the social network’s 600 million-plus users. Facebook provided the example of […]

Google has nearly caught up to Apple in smartphone popularity and is closing the gap in tablets, according to 2,200 developers polled by Appcelerator and IDC earlier this month. The joint survey showed 87 percent of respondents are “very interested” in writing applications for Android smartphones, compared with 92 percent who selected the iPhone as […]

Facebook is throwing its muscle into its vaunted application platform, requiring that its Facebook Credits system be used by all social game developers to process payments on the social network. Launched to beta in 2009, Credits is a virtual currency system that lets consumers enter their payment information once to buy goods and earn money […]

Google on Jan. 25 officially made number portability part of its Google Voice repertoire, allowing users to take their longtime mobile phone number to the phone-management service. Google Voice is a phone-management application that lets any user route all their landlines, work and mobile calls through one special number and mailbox, accessible through the Web […]

Twitter will earn $150 million in revenues in 2011, up more than 200 percent from only $45 million in 2010, when it launched its trinity of Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts. eMarketer did some number crunching and expects most of Twitter’s ad sales to be generated in the United States, where it has […]

Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that real-time and identity-based services related to social networking are important areas for Google as it seeks to stem the tide of traffic flowing to Facebook. He also allowed that the search engine has only “touched 1 percent” of what social can lend to search. Brin’s admission was a response […]

Amazon Web Services Jan. 25 launched a bulk e-mail service for businesses and developers, providing a messaging option for the cloud-computing provider’s arsenal of Web-based services. AWS intends Amazon SES (Amazon Simple Email Service) as an alternative to the thorny work of building a custom messaging platform or licensing an e-mail service from a third […]

After helping the Justice Department exorcise the demon that was Microsoft more than a decade ago, attorney Gary Reback is preaching about why he sees Google as the new antitrust antichrist. It’s a tasty tongue-twister to be sure, but it’s a serious matter. Reback, a partner at law firm Carr & Ferrell LLP, shared some […]

More than 25 percent of all tablet computers will be purchased by enterprises, an incredible figure for a market that only established credibility with Apple’s successful launch of its iPad last April. Deloitte, a consultancy that released its annual predictions Jan. 18, also predicts that one-quarter figure could well rise in 2012 and beyond as […]