Tech Giant News

Google on Saturday announced the new Samsung Chromebook for India at Rs. 26,990. The Chromebook, weighing 1.1kg, comes with a 11.6 inch screen, 1.7GHz Exynos 5 dual processor, 2GB of DDR3L RAM, and 16GB of SSD. The company has already released Chromebooks from HP (for Rs. 26,990) and Acer ( for Rs. 22,999) in India recently.

A Huffington Post report says that Facebook is pondering to introduce a Sympathize button in their news feed, in near future. Notaby, the Sympathize button was created by an employee during Facebook hackathon held some time back, and reportedly became an instant hit. This button would appear in place of 'Like,' when users post a gloomy update.

Amid concerns of growing online surveillance, eight US web giants -- Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and AOL -- have joined hands to start a public campaign for new limits on how governments collect user information. The companies issued an open letter to US president Barack Obama and Congress to bring in reforms and restrictions on surveillance activities.

The American financial services company, Standard & Poor's on Wednesday said Facebook Inc will join its S&P 500 stock index after the close of trading on Dec-20. This move will cement the social network's rise into one of the biggest, most powerful US companies. Facebook shares rose 4.3% to $51.51 following S&P's announcement after regular market hours.

Aiming to cater to the world's fastest growing consumer technology markets, Google on Wednesday opened it's first data centres in Asia (Taiwan and Singapore). However, the company has no plans to open one in China or India due to the regulations. The tech giant also announced that it abandoned plans to build a third data centre in Hong Kong.

With a view to make its product usage easier and more effective, Google on Thursday launched a new site called Google Tips, which gives helpful guidelines on how to use Google products. The site is broken into cards, each of which offers a quick description of the products. At present, the site accommodates 13 products like Search, Gmail, Chrome etc.

In order to keep pace with other websites offering short online commercials, Facebook is testing video advertisements that automatically play in users' news feeds. The new service, which plans 15-second video ads, would reportedly let marketers buy their way directly into a person's feed. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly delayed the service to ensure that ads don't taint user experience.

In its first quarterly report under the new chairman John Chen, BlackBerry has reported a massive $4.4 billion loss in the third quarter. Moreover, BlackBerry reported revenue of $1.2 billion, down from $2.7 billion in the same quarter last year. Delay in the launch of it's phones this year, has led the company to loss.

BlackBerry on Friday said, it was entering a handset production deal with Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest electronic parts manufacturer and a major partner of Apple. The stock rose as much as 17% after the company announced the 'unconventional' five-year partnership with Foxconn. The partnership will initially build low-end devices for sale in Indonesia and other emerging markets.

According to Chinese technology website Digitimes, Apple is all set to unveil its big screen iPhone in May 2014. The website, which has leaked Apple gadgets accurately in the past, also reported that a big screen iPad (12.9 or 13.3 inch display) would be launched in October next year. Apple is working with Taiwan's Quanta Computer to manufacture this tablet.

For the first time since 2002, Canadian firm Blackberry has called off its annual conference BlackBerry Live Conference. The company reportedly cancelled the event so that it can focus on running a number of smaller, more targeted events. The struggling smartphone maker has also cancelled plans of two new phones prior to their launch.

With nearly 1,24,000 media mentions during 2013, Google has dethroned Apple (1,20,500 mentions) to become the most talked-about company of the year, according to a report by Dow Jones. Microsoft and Bank of America were ranked third and fourth with 84,000 and 71,000 mentions, respectively. Google's highest month of mentions came in May, while for Apple, it was in September.

Internet giant Google has raised concerns about consistent demands by governments and law enforcement agencies across the world to remove content that is critical of them. Google received 3,846 government requests between January and June this year to remove 24,737 pieces of content. Also, the company regularly receives requests from all around the world to hand over user data.

According to the latest numbers from NPD, Chromebooks accounted for 21% of all laptop sales and almost 10% of all computer sales to businesses in 2013 -- a big leap from virtually nothing in a year before. Moreover, Amazon this week reported that two out of its three best-selling laptops during the holiday season were Chromebooks.

Samsung has developed the world's first 4GB RAM meant for mobile devices. The new DDR4 mobile RAM will offer 50% higher performance than today's DDR3 memory chips, and still consume 40% less battery. Other benefits of this new memory chip include faster and more responsive applications, more advanced features and higher resolution displays.

Struggling US computer giant Hewlett-Packard has planned to slash 5,000 more jobs, a regulatory filing shows. The company will now eliminate 34,000 positions by the end of October, 2014 - up from an earlier figure of 29,000. The California-based firm is in the midst of a multi-year restructuring to cope with the shift away from PCs to mobile devices.

Internet giant Google has entered a key partnership with the Election Commission (EC) of India to help it manage online voter registration and facilitation services, ahead of the 2014 polls. Google will offer EC its resources to enable voters to locate their polling station using Google Maps. Notably, Google will not charge the EC for these services.

Samsung Galaxy S5, reportedly having an eye scanner and 5.25-inch 2K resolution display, will be showcased at Mobile World Expo at Barcelona in February, hinted Samsung's VP (Design) Doon-hoon Chang. Earlier, a Samsung device believed to be Galaxy F (S5’s higher-end variant) having 3GB RAM, 2.5GHz processor, 16MP rear camera and running Android 4.4 Kitkat already appeared on AnTuTu benchmarks.

Yahoo Inc. Wednesday announced that its recently fired COO, Henrique de Castro, who left the Internet company will get a severance package of $58 million even though he lasted just 15 months on the job. The company said most of the severance stemmed from the costs of luring de Castro from his previous job at Google Inc.