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The Federal Trade Commission is nearing a partial settlement with Google in its long-running antitrust investigation, according to reports today from Politico and Reuters.

Both outlets, citing sources familiar with the matter, said Google is prepared to agree not to use its patent war chest to block the sale of products it believes infringe on its intellectual property. The agreement would cover what are known as standard essential patents, which cover technology used in technical standards. (Reuters uses the example of a patent that ensures one brand of wireless phone can call another brand.)

Google has used those patents in … Read more

For Groupon Chief Executive Andrew Mason, there are a lot more questions than answers.

The young executive wasn't exactly verbose during an interview today with Fast Company's E.B. Boyd at the Mobile Loco conference in San Francisco. It was evident pretty quickly (aka after the first question) that there are a lot of things he's not really interested in chatting about right now.

He didn't want to talk about the rumor that Google was interested in buying Groupon, and he didn't want to broach the topic of possibly being acquired by someone else. That'… Read more

Google finally got around to releasing a YouTube app for the iPad, and after using it for a few days, I applaud the search giant's efforts. The app feels quick and responsive, and all of the basic features -- accessing your account, commenting on videos, subscribing to channels, AirPlay support -- are present. (The ability to play audio of a video in the background after closing the app, however, is not.) The app also lets you create playlists, but this feature is somewhat buried. In this post, I'll show you where to go to create a playlist and … Read more

Google's bid to offload the Motorola set-top box business, which it acquired during the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility earlier this year, is proving more difficult than the search giant first thought.

According to sources speaking to Bloomberg, Google is considering financing options to companies looking at the division in order to get swiftly rid of the ageing unit.

Bloomberg says Arris Group and Pace Plc have shown the most interest in the Motorola Home division and are leading their bids to buy the unit. While Pace is an already-established set-top box maker, Arris offers back-end telephony … Read more

Google's email service crumbled yesterday for about 40 minutes, leaving millions of enterprise and consumer users without access to their cloud-stored email. 

Gmail didn't fall down due to a denial-of-service attack as was reported initially yesterday (which was quickly amended), despite no initial evidence to suggest that it was. The search giant said on its dashboard status pages:

Then millions of Google Chrome browsers crashed at around the same time. … Read more

Google CEO Larry Page was friendly with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs off and on, Page says in a new interview.

Speaking to Fortune in an interview published today, Page said that he and the late Apple co-founder were friendly "at times." He failed to elaborate on when he wasn't so friendly with Jobs. He did, however, hint that it might have had something to do with Android.

In Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, the Apple co-founder said that he was willing to go "thermonuclear war" over what he believed was Google's theft of … Read more

Google's Motorola Mobility unit has signed a deal to sell its Chinese manufacturing operations to Flextronics, which has agreed to run its Brazil facility as well.

Under the deal, announced yesterday, employees and assets will transfer to Flextronics once the deal closes, expected in the first half of 2013. The deal also calls for a manufacturing and services agreement for Android and other mobile devices between the two companies. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

The deal allows Motorola to run more efficiently under Google, which has continued to absorb the unit's losses since taking over the business earlier … Read more

Count on Google to deliver the future before you're even quite ready to receive it, and to deliver it via a team of skydivers with Sergey Brin in tow. The company made clear its lofty ambitions for the Google Glass project -- the aptly named effort to put a smartphone's brains in a pair of interactive spectacles -- with an unprecedented press event at Google I/O in June.

Google says it wants Google Glass to help users interact with the virtual world without distracting them from the real world. The tech community responded with excitement, poring over … Read more

Was it the impressive pixel-dense screen or possibly the fact that someone decided to throw a quad-core processor into such a small package? The little tablet that could, Google's Nexus 7, proved that if you make a powerful, well-designed tablet with a user-friendly operating system, it will sell in droves.

Actually, the iPad proved that first, but the Nexus 7 showed that you don't have to be Apple to pull it off. The $200 price didn't hurt.

For more on this story, see our full Google Nexus 7 review.

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