Google

Google is in talks to buy GrandCentral, which offers a way to merge all phone calls into one number, according to TechCrunch.

"We have a high degree of confidence that the deal has actually been closed. We are trying to nail down the acquisition price," writes TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who speculates that Google could use the technology with its Gmail and Google Talk applications.

Google representatives said they do not comment on rumor or speculation and GrandCentral did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Google on Monday said it's still not convinced that Microsoft's planned tweaks to Windows Vista go far enough to head off its antitrust concerns.

"It appears that more may need to be done to provide a truly unbiased choice of desktop search products in Vista and achieve compliance with the Final Judgment," attorneys for the search giant wrote in a seven-page amicus brief obtained by CNET News.com and filed with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

The filing arrived one day before Kollar-Kotelly, who has been overseeing Redmond's compliance with a 2002 antitrust consent … Read more

Looks like Google will finally have to stop using the Gmail trademark in Germany. A German appellate court ruled against the company, says German venture capitalist Daniel Giersch, who brought the case against Google. The court is expected to provide a written ruling on July 4, according to Google and Giersch.

Giersch runs an electronic postal delivery business that goes by the name G-mail, which is short for "Giersch mail." Giersch says he only wants to use the trademark in Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Monaco.

A Swiss court also has ruled against Google.

Separately, Google had to rename its e-mail service Google Mail in the United Kingdom … Read more

Google has produced enough electricity from its headquarters in the last four days to watch about 251,073 hours of television on a flat screen.

The news comes from Google's site dedicated to letting folks know exactly how many kilowatt-hours its solar project is paying out.

The search giant has covered the roofs of eight buildings and two carports at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with solar panels in an effort to build the largest solar panel installation of any corporate campus in the U.S.

On Monday, the system was turned on and Google has been monitoring its … Read more

Google's pay-per-action ad pricing beta test is now available to advertisers around the world, the company announced on Thursday.

The AdWords Pay-Per-Action beta, launched in March, allows advertisers to set the price they want to pay and they are only charged when someone makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter or takes some other action as a result of seeing the ad. The ads show up on Google's AdSense publisher network of Web sites.

Pay-per-action is heralded by some as an answer to click fraud with the currently common pay-per-click system in which advertisers complain they end … Read more

While the list of former Yahoo employees is long and growing, Google's has stayed relatively short. That may be changing soon, as employee stock options vest nearly three years after the initial public offering.

The two latest to go are Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, two of the head engineers behind Google Maps, according to VentureBeat's Matt Marshall.

The 26-year-olds are now "entrepreneurs in residence" at Benchmark Capital, where they are percolating their new idea for a consumer Internet company, the article says.

Taylor and Norris were only at Google since 2003, and as a result, … Read more

Google now has 56.3 percent of the share of Web searches in the United States, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Yahoo's share is 21.5 percent, followed by Microsoft at 8.4 percent, AOL at 5.3 percent and Ask.com at 2 percent. Google had nearly 45 percent growth year over year in the number of searches conducted on its site.

Hitwise's latest figures give Google even greater U.S. market share--more than 65 percent, with Yahoo at 20.9 percent and Microsoft at 8.4 percent.

Google cares what you think about local businesses and thinks other people do too. The company on Tuesday added a new feature to Google Maps that allows people to post user ratings and reviews of local businesses. The maps previously had professional reviews, but not reviews from users. More information is on the Google Blog.

I must say it was faster to do than writing a review on Yelp or CitySearch and a tad more intuitive than posting a review on Yahoo Maps.

Google has just announced its acquisition of Zenter, a small company that makes software for creating online slideshows--a much rumored, and fully confirmed product Google's CEO Eric Schmidt officially announced a few months ago at the Web 2.0 Expo.

Zenter joins Tonic Systems, another presentation-creation service Google picked up back in April.

Zenter first unveiled its service in mid-March and has since stayed fairly quiet. The service lets users import Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, as well as grab bits of content from all over the Web for making presentations that can be viewed and shared in the Web browser. … Read more