More than a year after announcing plans to buy Fitbit for $2.1 billion, Google has announced that the deal has closed. The announcement may be a little premature, but Google says that despite the company’s reputation for shutting down the companies it acquires and for monetizing everything with ads, there are no plans to sell […]
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Android phones with Qualcomm chips could get up to 4 years of updates moving forward
Buy an Android phone from Google, Samsung, HMD (Nokia), or a handful of other companies and you should get OS and security updates for at least three years. But soon we may start to see phone makers promise four years of updates… and if we’re lucky, more device makers will hop on the update bandwagon […]
Lilbits: Google acquires company that lets you turn Windows PCs into Chromebooks (and other recent tech news)
4 Comments on Lilbits: Google acquires company that lets you turn Windows PCs into Chromebooks (and other recent tech news)A company called Neverware has been offering software called CloudReady that lets you turn old computers into pseudo Chromebooks since 2015. But in order to do that, the company has been using software based on Chromium OS, the open source version of Chrome OS. Now Google has acquired the company and, among other things, that […]
Lilbits: Samsung and LG leaks, Chrome OS Phone Hub, and Raspberry Pi HiFi
Google makes the Android operating system that powers most of the world’s smartphones. And Google makes the Chrome OS operating system that powers a growing number of laptops. So you’d think that the company would want to make sure the two play nicely with one another… and you’d be right. It’s just taking a bit […]
Lilbits: Facebook faces antitrust suits, Google plans big changes for Chrome, and Adobe Flash is finally (almost) dead
5 Comments on Lilbits: Facebook faces antitrust suits, Google plans big changes for Chrome, and Adobe Flash is finally (almost) deadFacebook wasn’t the first social network – remember MySpace and Friendster? And it’s not exactly the last one standing. Twitter’s still a thing. But Facebook is the biggest, most influential social network in the US, at least… and according to new lawsuits filed by the FTC and 48 attorneys general, Facebook abused its market dominance […]
Lilbits: ARM computers, Linux phones, and the Pixel 2 rides off into the sunset
After rocking a Google Pixel 2 as my primary smartphone for the past three years, I took advantage of a Google Fi Black Friday promotion and traded in my phone for a brand new Pixel 4a 5G for $298 after trade-in. There were two reasons I decided the time was right to upgrade. First, my […]
Google’s Fuchsia OS is an open source project that now accepts community code contributions
5 Comments on Google’s Fuchsia OS is an open source project that now accepts community code contributionsGoogle already has two popular operating systems: Android for phones and tablets, and Chrome OS for laptops, desktops, and… some other tablets. But for the past few years the company has also been working on a new operating system called Fuchsia. Development has been semi-public, with Google publishing the source code online. But now Google […]
Google brings new features to old Pixel phones (and new ones too)
Google’s latest Pixel Feature Drop brings some new features that debuted with the Pixel 5 to older phones. For example the Hold for Me feature is rolling out to all Google Pixel 3 and newer phones, allowing users to have Google Assistant to “listen” when you’re placed on hold and alert you when a human […]
Google and NVIDIA are bringing game streaming to iOS (via the web browser)
There are a growing number of ways to stream console-quality games to a smartphone or tablet… as long as they’re running Android. Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Amazon have all launched game streaming services in the past year, and Apple’s App Store policies have kept all of those companies from making iPhone or iPad apps available. […]
Lilbits: Porting apps to ARM
The list of companies jumping on the Apple Silicon bandwagon is growing. Google just released a version of Chrome for Apple’s new computers with M1 processors, and Mozilla is developing a version of Firefox that will support the new chips as well. Meanwhile, Adobe’s recent move to release a beta version of Photoshop for both […]
Lilbits: Internet at the speed of light
Delivering high-speed internet usually requires running cables across long distances. But that can get tricky when you’re trying to bring connectivity to a place where there isn’t already a lot of infrastructure for it… so recently we’ve seen solutions ranging from satellites to balloons. Now Google’s parent company Alphabet is partnering with internet service providers […]
Lilbits: Google’s antitrust woes, new Intel and AMD chips, and MS Edge for Linux (for some reason)
1 Comment on Lilbits: Google’s antitrust woes, new Intel and AMD chips, and MS Edge for Linux (for some reason)The US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, claiming the company abuses its dominance in the search and advertising spaces to… stay on top of the search and advertising spaces. Xda-developers has a pretty good write up of the allegations. The case is likely to play out in years rather than […]