Google(KANSAS CITY, Kan.) -- Google detailed its fast new Internet and TV service called Fiber on Thursday, and residents of Kansas City can now pre-register to get it.
"Google Fiber starts at a speed 100 times faster than most Americans have today," Milo Medin, vice president of access services at Google, said at the Fiber event today in Kansas City.
According to Google, the connection will run at 1,000Mb per second -- much faster than Verizon's 300Mb-per-second FIOS service, which is also fiber based. Fiber-optic connections provide much faster speeds than DSL and cable.
The faster Internet connection will enable faster web surfing, video streaming, and uploading; downloading a movie will take just a few minutes. Google's Network Box, a box it will provide to customers, will serve as a hub for the service in houses, but it will also require special installation to get the hook-up. The box is also a Wi-Fi router and has four Ethernet ports.
Google's also providing the TV offering to compete against other cable and Internet providers. The company will provide the full TV channel lineup and an HD TV box that is capable of recording up to eight shows at the same time. The box has built-in Netflix and YouTube streaming capabilities. It doesn't come with a traditional remote; instead it uses Google's latest Nexus 7 tablet.
The pricing structure is also unique. For $120 a month Kansas City residents can get the Internet connection and TV; there's no construction or installation fee. For $70 a month, they can just sign up to get Internet connectivity.
On top of that Google is offering Internet with no monthly fee. However, to get it you need to pay a $300 construction or installation fee. There is no data cap on any of the plans, meaning customers will get unlimited Internet access every month. The free option is guaranteed for at least seven years and includes the network box.
Google is planning to accommodate everyone in Kansas City, Mo. and Kansas City, Kans., but it is requiring people there to pay $10 to pre-register now with their neighbors. The areas that have the most registrants will be the first to get the service in their neighborhoods -- or what Google is cleverly calling "Fiberhoods."
"We believe Google Fiber is best when you have a critical mass of users," Medin said at the event.
Technology analysts point out that this is just a project.
"It's all part of a larger experiment which is typical Google. Put something out there as a stake in the ground. Learn from the effort and iterate quickly," Michael Gartenberg, Gartner Research Director, told ABC News. "It certainly looks to be a compelling deal at face value, but when it comes to this level of effort, it's all about the details, levels of service and overall experience that matter."
Google has not discussed plans to expand its Fiber offering beyond Kansas City. If you live in Kansas City, you can pre-register here.
Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images for TechCrunch/AOL(NEW YORK) -- Yahoo has had an unlucky executive streak lately, but that may be coming to an end. Marissa Mayer, one of Google's top executives, will join Yahoo as its new CEO, the company confirmed Monday.
"I am honored and delighted to lead Yahoo!, one of the Internet's premier destinations for more than 700 million users," Mayer said in a statement. "I look forward to working with the Company's dedicated employees to bring innovative products, content, and personalized experiences to users and advertisers all around the world."
Mayer joined Google in 1999 and was one of its first engineers. She leaves Google as its vice president of location and local services. She has been named as one of the most powerful women in technology time and again.
Yahoo has struggled to find a standing CEO since Scott Thompson left in May after admitting that his official biography included a college degree he never earned. Thompson was the third to assume the leadership position since 2011, when Carol Bartz resigned after failing to revive the company.
Mayer, 37, has worked on Google's search homepage, Gmail, and other successful Google products.
Mayer resigned Monday from Google. She will begin Tuesday as Yahoo's CEO.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- For more than two years Apple has dominated the market for tablet computers. Now it’s feeling the heat from competitors and may be getting ready to introduce a smaller, cheaper version of the iPad.
Last week, Google began shipping the Nexus 7, and Microsoft recently announced it would create a new tablet. Both are likely to compete with Amazon’s Kindle for the less-expensive part of the tablet market.
Apple isn’t standing still.
“The company is developing a new tablet with a 7.85-inch screen that is likely to sell for significantly less than the latest $499 iPad, with its 9.7-inch display," The New York Times reports.
iStockphoto/Thinkstock(LONDON) -- In an airline industry first, British Airways' Know Me program uses Google images to identiy its best customers even before they set foot in the airport. The airline has equipped its customer service agents and senior cabin crew with iPads so they can easily tap into and share information about customers, including their preferences, flight history and yes, photos.
While British Airways says the program, which launched earlier this month, helps "put a face to the name," it's got some people asking whether the airline is going the extra mile or just acting downright creepy.
The idea behind the initiative, the airline said, is to personalize the flying experience. It gave the example of a Silver Executive Club member flying in business class for the first time. Crew members would know to welcome that customer and explain the benefits of the cabin.
Or if a regular traveler has experienced problems on previous flights, such as delays, crew members would be informed of that so they could acknowledge the previous problems and thank the customer for his or her continued patronage.
Jo Boswell, head of customer analysis at British Airways, said, "We're essentially trying to re-create the feeling of recognition you get in a favorite restaurant when you're welcomed there, but in our case it will be delivered by thousands of staff to millions of customers."
Despite such stated good intentions, the program is not without its critics. "Since when has buying a flight ticket meant giving your airline permission to start hunting for information about you on the Internet?" Nick Pickles, director of the London-based privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, told the Los Angeles Times.
But George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, told ABC News he thought the program was a "great idea," saying the airline wasn't snooping into private records, only using information that's already been made public and is easily obtainable on the Internet.
"I think the more the airline knows about the passenger, the better service they can provide," Hobica said. "I wouldn't be creeped out by this. I'd be somewhat flattered that at least on BA, I'm finally famous."
British Airways isn't the first in the travel industry to collect information beyond what's given when a reservation is made. Starwood hotels, which owns such brands as W, Westin, Sheraton and St. Regis, uses social media to collect information about its guests as part of a program called Global Personalization at Starwood. Starwood calls it game-changing innovation, but criticism on at least one popular travel message board has been blistering.
As for Know Me, British Airways plans to grow the program. "This is just the start, said Boswell. "The system has myriad possibilities for the future."
Apple/Samsung/Hemera/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- While Apple and Samsung’s phones and tablets battle it out on store shelves, the companies (along with Google) have been battling it out in the courtroom in ongoing patent disputes.
Apple has accused Samsung and Google with its Android software of copying the workings of its iPhones and iPads. Earlier this week the dispute came to a head as a California judge granted Apple an injunction — banning the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone until the case is argued.
“In sum, Apple has shown a likelihood of establishing both infringement and validity,” Judge Lucy Koh wrote in granting the injunction. The judge ordered Apple to post a $96 million bond for the injunction to take effect. Apple posted the money on Tuesday, making it illegal for the Galaxy Nexus phone to be sold in the U.S.
Samsung filed a motion to stay the ban, but Koh denied the request.
The Galaxy Nexus was the first phone to ship with Google’s Android 4.0 operating system, known as Ice Cream Sandwich.
The injunction is primarily over the “Quick Search Box” found on the Galaxy Nexus, a feature that allows users to search the phone’s memory and the web at once. Apple said it already holds a patent for a “universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system.”
On Monday night the Galaxy Nexus phone was pulled from Google’s Play Store.
“Samsung is disappointed with the court’s decision that denied our motion to stay. We believe today’s ruling will ultimately reduce the availability of superior products to consumers in the United States,” a Samsung spokesperson told ABC News. “We will continue to pursue an appeal of the Galaxy Nexus preliminary injunction, which we filed on July 2 to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Meanwhile, we are also working closely with Google to resolve this matter, as the patent in question concerns Google’s unified search function.”
Google told the technology site The Verge that it planned to issue a software update that would fix some of the disputed patent issues. The update, the company said, would disable users’ ability to search the phone and just allow them to search the web. Thursday afternoon, no such update had been sent out to Galaxy Nexus phones. Google did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Apple’s patent war with Google and Samsung continues. While Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that he doesn’t enjoy the litigation and went as far to call it a “pain in the ass,” he also said, “We just don’t want people ripping us off.”
Joanna Stern / ABC New(SAN FRANCISCO) -- Take a look at the myriad Android phones on the market today and you’ll notice that most of them no longer have actual keypads -- only virtual keyboards on their screens. But Google’s director of Android User Experience, Matias Duarte, said he still hopes there will be Android phones with hardware keyboards.
“I am still a huge fan of hardware keyboards,” Duarte told ABC News in an interview. “Many of the products I have worked on in the past have had them. I think there is a place for them -- it’s all about choice and different types of devices. I would love, personally, to have a portrait oriented device, like we made at Palm.”
Before joining Google, Duarte headed up software design at Palm and worked on the company’s Palm Pre device, which had a physical keyboard and touchscreen.
On the heels of RIM’s major loss and struggles to put out a new operating system and phones, Duarte said he would love to work with the BlackBerry maker. “If RIM wanted to work on Android devices, I would really welcome that. They clearly make great physical keyboards.”
Duarte is one of the leads on Google’s Android Nexus program, in which Google works closely with hardware partners to make phones or tablets to highlight the software. Google and Asus released the Nexus 7 tablet Wednesday with the new version of Android called Jelly Bean.
Just Thursday RIM announced plans to cut 5,000 employees after reporting lackluster earnings. The company does allow for Android applications to run on its own software, but has continued with its plans to develop BlackBerry 10, the next version of its BlackBerry software for its phones.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images(SAN FRANCISCO) -- Google's futuristic, Internet-connected glasses, known as Project Glass, are now real enough that prototypes will be sold to developers for $1,500, company co-founder Sergey Brin said on Wednesday.
"This is new technology and we really want you to shape it," Brin said at the Google I/O conference for computer programmers in San Francisco. "We want to get it out into the hands of passionate people as soon as possible." They are not ready for sale to the public.
The glasses, which are comprised of a tiny camera, display screen and processor that fit over the upper corner of a pair of glasses, are meant to display information literally before a user's eyes. The camera would allow people to transmit video or still images of what they're seeing to others wirelessly, allowing them to see your world as you live it.
Google said it had been quietly working on Project Glass for two years. But until now, the outside world had only seen fanciful versions of what the glasses might be able to do. On Wednesday, Google said, they're far enough along that programmers are invited to try them out -- and come up with all sorts of ideas for how they might be used.
"Obviously capturing images and video is only one of the things a wearable computer can do," said Brin.
To make the point, Google had parachutists jump out of a blimp over San Francisco, wearing the glasses. The 6,000 programmers and reporters at the meeting saw a live video feed from the skydivers' glasses as they descended, landing on top of the Moscone Center where the I/O conference was taking place. The applause when the skydivers walked into the convention center was thunderous.
Google this spring had shown a video of Project Glass, suggesting what might be possible. Look up at the sky, and a weather forecast will appear on the little screen over your eyebrow. Head down the stairs into the subway, and the glasses will show you whether trains are on time. Walk down the street and get turn-by-turn directions. See something you'd like to share with friends, and the images your glasses shoot will go to their Google+ social-media accounts.
Brin said that's just the beginning. Programmers can place orders at this week's meeting, he said, and get a pair early next year. The company is counting on them to come up with new uses for a wearable computer before the glasses are sold generally.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images (SAN FRANCISCO) -- Google executives took the stage today at the company's annual Google I/O developers conference to announce their newest Android products, including the Nexus 7 Tablet, a new $199 Android tablet built in partnership with Asus to run the latest version of Google's operating system, Android 4.1 or Jelly Bean.
The tablet has a 7-inch, IPS (In-Plane Switching) 1280x800 HD resolution display, Tegra 3 clip set with a quad-core processor and a 12 core GPU, which makes everything, including games, run quickly and seamlessly.
"Everything works smoother," said Hugo Barra, director of product management for Android.
The other specs include a micro USB port, a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, 1 GB of memory, WiFi, and Bluetooth. It also uses NFC, or Android Beam, a system to allow users to transmit data from one device to another simply by tapping them against each other.
The super-thin handheld tablet is about the size of a large greeting card, 10.45 mm thick, and weighs just under 0.8 pounds, about as much as a small paperback book.
Nexus 7 is now available on the Google Play store for pre-order, starting at $199 for a version with 8GB of storage and $249 for 16GB, and the devices will ship in mid-July.
But hardware isn't the big story with the Nexus tablet. Google is putting the focus on the tablet's software and price.
Like the Nexus phones Google has released in the past, Google isn't making the hardware, but instead worked very closely with Asus, a large Taiwanese computer manufacturer, to craft the hardware to work with the new software.
In keeping with the theme of alphabetically naming its Android operating systems after sweets -- Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich -- Google's latest version, Jelly Bean, features a new technology dubbed Project Butter, which it says allows for a smoother experience overall.
The Nexus 7 tablet will be the first device to run Jelly Bean. It will have Google's Chrome as its default web browser. Google also said the device would have up to nine hours of battery life.
Google engineers showed Jelly Bean could recognize the touch of a finger more easily than previous devices. They said it displays app pages in a neat, clean "card" layout with seamless swipe-through capabilities.
But perhaps its most exciting feature is the new search experience with Google Now, the company's answer to Apple's Siri. Google Now uses your search history, location history and calendar to help you get around.
Smartphones are only as smart as you tell them to be," Barra said. "But with Google Now that starts to change."
Google Now will tell you when to leave for appointments based on traffic times and transit routes. For example, when you commute to home and back, Google Now will track your route and offer a faster one, or if you take public transit, it will tell you when the next bus or train will come. It will work with flights too, keeping you up-to-date on status, updating you if there's a delay. Sports fans will go gaga for Google Now's automatic score updates for their favorite teams, the company said.
"You don't need to set up your favorite teams. You've already done that by searching for them [on Google]," Barra said.
Jelly Bean also includes improved voice-recognition software called Google Speech, which Barra said was "shrunk" to fit on the mobile device. If users have a poor wireless connection or are offline, they can still dictate by voice to their device, which will recognize and transcribe their words.
Smartphones had been able to take dictation for years, but usually the voice-recognition software was too complex to be included in a phone's operating system. Jelly Bean also introduced the "gesture mode" so that visually impaired users can use gestures on the phone, as well as voice recognition.
A surprise to many developers was the announcement of Google's Nexus Q, which engineering developer Joe Britt called the "first ever social streaming device."
Designed to live in your home, the small, spherical Android-powered computer can communicate with your phone using NFC or Android Beam to stream music to your speakers, or video to your television, from your Google Play library, simply by tapping on the screen of your phone or tablet.
Nexus Q will be sold for $299, with pre-orders taken today, and units shipping in July.
"It plugs into the speakers in your house and is always connected to the cloud to stream music," said Matt Hershenson, Google's Senior Vice President of Hardware. "You use your phone or tablet to control the cloud."
Nexus Q makes listening to music or watching a video interactive. Friends with the Nexus 7 device can add videos or music to your queue, and can move songs around in real time.
"It's a cloud-connected jukebox," Britt said. "Everybody that has the device can see the music that is about to be played ... [and] your friends can add their own music to the Nexus Q's music queue."
"It's pretty cool that my friends can play their music in my living room," Britt said. "No more passing around a keyboard or laptop, everyone is in control."
Google tablets have been hampered by a lack of applications. While there are a number of Android tablets currently on the market, there are fewer than 10,000 tablet-specific apps for Android tablets. That's compared to the more than 225,000 apps written only for the iPad.
Just last week, popular social news magazine Flipboard co-founder Evan Doll told ABC News that he was still not convinced there was a market for Android tablets.
"We are still in a wait-and-see mode with Android tablets," Doll said. "The iPad is the flagship tablet and we are going to stay focused on it."
The Nexus 7 faces steep competition not only from the iPad, which remains the most successful tablet on the market, but also from its own Android kin. Amazon's Kindle Fire, which is priced at $199, is built on Android, but isn't an official Google Android device since it doesn't have access to Google's own Play Store or other Google apps.
But the Nexus 7 could be a contender because of new features from the Google Play online Store. Users can now browse through interactive magazine covers and jump to different articles and back without leaving the main page. Through the cloud, the store will also offer recommendations for apps, books and more. Google said the recommendations will "get smarter and more accurate the more you use them."
Microsoft announced its own Windows 8 Surface tablets last week, which are expected to hit the market later this year.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images(SAN FRANCISCO) -- Apple and Microsoft both had their turns to show off their latest software and hardware this month, and on Wednesday, it's Google's turn.
Google executives will take the stage at the annual Google I/O Developer's Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where they will show off the latest versions of Google software, including Android and other services.
Google's next version of its Android operating system is expected to be one of the major points of conversation. Like earlier Android versions, this one is named after a dessert -- Jelly Bean. Ice Cream Sandwich, the current version of Android, was announced last November. Before Ice Cream Sandwich, there was Gingerbread and Honeycomb. Google put out a statue of a bowl of jelly beans at its Silicon Valley campus on Tuesday.
While there haven't been many details to spill out yet about Jelly Bean, Google is likely to announce a tablet to go along with the new operating system. Rumored to be called the Nexus 7, the tablet is said to have a 7-inch screen, a fast quad-core processor and a very affordable $199 price. The tablet is expected to go head-to-head with Amazon's Kindle Fire.
While there have been lots of Android tablets released, none have been as successful as the iPad. It is expected that the Nexus 7 will ship in July and that Taiwanese manufacturer Asus is making the tablet itself. Microsoft's Windows 8 Surface tablets, which were announced last week, aren't expected until later this year.
But Google isn't only expected to talk about Android and its tablet strategy. The search giant will discuss its maps platform and other services like its Cloud storage solutions, including the new Google Drive.
Apple recently ditched the Google Maps app in iOS 6; it has created its own 3-D mapping system for the iPad and iPhone.
Google(SAN FRANCISCO) -- The next version of Android is coming, and like the others, it’s going to be very sweet. Google has rolled out a jelly bean statue on its front lawn at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., marking the arrival of the newest version of its Android operating system.
The jelly bean statue joins other dessert-themed statues on Google’s lawn, including an ice cream sandwich, donut, cupcake, and an eclair; all represent the different versions of Android.
Google will share details on Jelly Bean Wednesday at its Google I/O conference in San Francisco. There Google will preview and demonstrate the software for developers and press; no real details have been shared on what the operating system will include.
The current version of Android, called Ice Cream Sandwich or Android 4.0, was released last November and brought sweeping changes to the mobile phone and tablet operating system. Google released that software with a phone called the Samsung Galaxy Nexus; it worked closely with Samsung to create a phone for the new software.
And this time Google is expected to release a new Nexus device, except this time it is a tablet. Rumored to be called the Nexus 7, Google-watchers say they think the tablet will have a 7-inch screen, a quad-core processor, and a $199 price. It is also said that it would be made by Asus. A leaked image of the tablet appeared on Gizmodo Australia earlier this week.
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Google(KANSAS CITY, Kan.) -- Google detailed its fast new Internet and TV service called Fiber on Thursday, and residents of Kansas City can now pre-register to get it. 
