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Report: Google fires engineer who leaked raise memo

If you don't want anyone to know about something you've done, then you shouldn't do it.

Such words, first offered by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, might just occasionally be revolving around the Google compound this morning. Word has leaked out that the engineer who leaked a memo announcing that every Google employee would get a 10 percent pay raise has been fired.

According to CNN Money, Google took the draconian action and announced it to its staff. Visual evidence of this announcement is, as yet, strangely lacking.

While Google has declined to comment to several news outlets more

Wolfram Alpha app comes to Android devices

Wolfram Alpha is now available on Android-based devices, the company said today.

Dubbed the Wolfram Alpha App for Android, the program offers the same computational functionality available on the service's Web site. According to Wolfram Alpha, its computational engine features "over 10 trillion data elements" and "tens of thousands" of computational models.

The app allows for text or voice input. The company said that people can search for data in a slew of fields including math, science, engineering, and sports. The app is available only to devices running Android OS 1.6 or higher. It costs $1.99.

Wolfram more

Can Google lead CIOs to the Linux desktop?

Editors' note: Google is using a distribution of Ubuntu Linux that it calls Goobuntu.

Two million businesses have "gone Google," according to the search giant's latest marketing. To date that has meant embracing Google Apps. Will it come to mean embracing Linux, as well?

Google, after all, is reportedly moving away from Microsoft's Windows operating system and is now requiring employees to choose Mac OS X or Linux. It's not a stretch to believe that Google's sales force will talk up Mac and Linux while talking CIOs out of their dependence on Microsoft Office and Exchange.

Memo to Microsoft: Get a new brand for mobile

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has a new job: overseeing the company's entertainment and mobile businesses in the wake of high-profile executive departures. It's not the first time Ballmer has taken the reins of struggling business units, having managed the Windows and Internet search businesses directly at different times, but arguably Microsoft doesn't need new management.

It needs new brands. Especially in mobile.

Microsoft has sought to extend its Windows brand to a diverse array of technology, from SharePoint to Windows Phone. Windows is a powerful brand. But it's also a brand that screams "20th century."

And more

Google vs. Apple in the battle of the fanboys

Something strange happened last week at Google I/O, Google's big developer event. Google may have attained cult status. There was an energy in the halls normally reserved for Apple events like WWDC, as 5,000 attendees chattered about Google TV, Android, WebM, and more.

Google is ascendant, and it may take the fanboys with it.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs may believe there's "not a chance" that Google is leapfrogging Apple, and assures the faithful that "[they] won't be disappointed" at WWDC, but worrisome signs abound for the iconic technology company.

The media, for one thing, is

Mozilla's Firefox was born during a time when Microsoft's Internet Explorer had grown so fat and lazy that hacking off a massive chunk of its market share was almost a moral duty, one with a built-in fan club. "Anything but IE" was the mantra for some, and Mozilla delivered with aplomb.

That was then, this is now, and "now" is bound to be much, much harder.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes correctly notes that "the five years ahead of Mozilla will be far tougher than the five years that's behind the company." The reason? Mozilla is no longer the white

Fragmenting Linux is not the way to beat Apple

In an attempt to copycat Apple's hardware-plus-software vertical approach to the mobile market, the Linux industry is fragmenting fast and risks undermining its best chance for beating the iPhone.

The mobile Linux market has always had more variants/distributions than sense, ranging from Google Android to LiMo to Moblin (now MeeGo) to Bada to WebOS to...you name it. Whereas Linux has been a rallying force in the enterprise server market, with diverse competitors and partners collaborating on a common code base to save costs and boost innovation, in the mobile market Linux has tended toward entropy.

Such entropy more

The upside to Apple's control freakishness

Google attracts an ever-growing horde of Android-loving developers. But can Google's developer growth outpace Apple's?

It's not clear, especially as the developer battle spans both client and cloud.

I'm a big fan of Google's open-source approach, but there are signs that Apple's control-all-delete-competitors approach is working and will continue to work. That is unless, of course, Google can effectively counter consumer lust for Apple gadgets with compelling cloud services that tie to a broader range of devices.

Google, while making a lot of progress with Android, has a long road ahead of it. However more

Google: Numbers favor Android over iPhone

The more you roll the dice, according to the law of large numbers theorem, the more likely you are to hit an expected average of 3.5.

And according to Google VP Andy Rubin, the more the search giant blankets the industry with competing Android-droid based mobile handsets, the more likely Google is to hit its expected value of market dominance over Apple's iPhone.

"It's a numbers game," Rubin said. And the numbers look increasingly rosy for Android.

Consider AdMob's new report (PDF), which pegs Android as accounting for 25 percent of mobile ad requests from smartphones more

Apple channels Google, Microsoft to attract developers

Is Apple joining the "Don't be evil" brigade?

I can't help but ask after reading Apple's attack on Adobe's Flash for being "closed and proprietary," while dressing itself up as the openness prom queen because of its support for HTML5, JavaScript, and other industry standards.

Flash may be closed and proprietary, but Apple is hardly the patron saint of openness. Nor has it ever seemed to care much about pretending to be anything other than religiously devoted to a beautiful consumer experience, regardless of open standards, open source, open anything.

What has changed? Developers. Lots of more