Google pointer activity monitoring could influence search engine results, probably won't

For the latest development in Google's mad quest for search engine efficacy, the company was granted a patent titled, in the necessarily wordy way that these things are, "System and method for modulating search relevancy using pointer activity monitoring."

Graffiti for Android scribbles Palm OS memories all over Google's platform

Gather around the campfire, children, as we tell you a story from or youth. You see, back in our day, we carried around PDAs driven by Palm's operating system (no, not that one).

Google's Amit Singhal tells us about the dreams search engines are made of

Do Googlers dream of electric algorithms? For a little insight into what makes the search engine that became a verb tick, we recently attended a talk by Amit Singhal, one of its chief engineers. Amit is part of the team in charge of tweaking and improving Google's ranking algorithms and has 20 years of experience when it comes to sorting through data, with that time split into even decades spent within the academic sphere and over in Mountain View.

Google is the latest to support the FCC's new IP video gateway

The FCC is currently accepting comments about the replacement for CableCARD and amongst the usual suspects of cable companies, consumer electronics manufactures, and industry groups is a comment by one company that stuck out -- don't worry, we're still going to read the rest.

Google App Inventor is an Android Dev Kit For Non-Programmers

Google has revealed its latest smartphone war weapon—Google App Inventor for Android. It's a drag & drop app creation tool to help those without a collection of SDKs on their computer build apps, games and more.

Google Open Spot alerts Android users to freed parking spaces

Oh, sure -- this has certainly been tried before, but given that things like this need a critical mass of followers to be effective, we're particularly jazzed about Google's own initiative. Dubbed 'Open Spot,' this bloody brilliant Android (2.0 and up) application enables motorists to search for unclaimed spaces that have been reported by other Open Spot users, and once they head elsewhere, it allows them to mark their spot as open and available.

Google Quietly Invests Over $100 Million in Zynga, Readying Google Games

Whoa. TechCrunch reports that Google has invested between $100 and $200 million in Zynga, the social gaming behemoth behind Farmville, Mafia Wars, and others, in preparation for the launch of Google Games later this year.