UPDATED 13:41 EDT / SEPTEMBER 16 2011

Google is A Restless Conglomerate: This Week’s Highs and Lows

It’s a Google-stuffed week, indeed.  From gleeful launches and milestones to gloomy legal battles, and flickering social networking hopes, the Google ensemble is still at the center of interest of the tech community.  See how its products and services fare in their respective industries at present:

Google and Its Mobile Bet: Android

An ounce of prevention is what Google bought to secure their beloved Android from any more infringement cases, and found themselves returning to IBM’s care to buy another 1,023 patents from this company to boost Android’s immune system.  But despite the looming smartphone lawsuits, Google’s mobile arm has tons of reasons to celebrate, including a massive win in the European market, posting a nearly 400% increase from July of 2010’s 6% share to this year’s 22%.

And speaking of the European region, another big development comes anew—the new Android Voice Actions, an application that just supported American English, can now play along with accents from EU nations.  According to the Google blog, Android Voice Actions will be available in the following languages: British English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. In other news, as Google gets more involved with open source, as Android’s pairing with Intel spells big trouble for Microsoft and ARM.

Google and Its Browser Bet: Google Chrome

Updates with Google Chrome seemed to be more promising than the last few change-ups I can remember.  The latest release introduced two technologies that will allow more developers to explore the plains of gaming and other applications: the web audio API (for cool audio effects) and Native Client (allowing apps to run in C and C++).  However, one question is at the tail of this launch: where do we place the line between native apps and regular apps??  This is a question that’s readdressed with Google’s ongoing focus on the Chrome browser, as it sets the stage for web-based interactions on PCs and eventually mobile devices, where Android’s building a strong foundation for future Google Apps integration.

Google Chrome is also gaining a foothold worldwide, placing second (after Intel) as the best malware blocker browser.  Its market share is steadily climbing up the charts.

Google and Its Social Networking Bets: Google+ and Propeller

Maybe Google+ started too strong and peaked prematurely.  Google’s social networking weapon is in a daze following a great first few weeks’ review, suffering from a massive drop in traffic with possible loss of interest from users.  But before they consider giving up on Google+, the organization should be reminded that their search engine business may also be at risk without a social strategy injected at some level.

On a more positive side, Google beefs up to launch another social warrior, Propeller. This product will directly assault Flipboard for the digital magazine app market, an area all the big players are squeezing into these days.  Propeller could resurrect the company’s magazine-style browsing segment, which was recently shut down.

 


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