Facebook Home demo video

Facebook home product designer Joey Flynn demos his product on a HTC First. The HTC First goes on sale tomorrow, April 12, 2013, and will retail for $99.99 with contract.

Is Google’s Android OS a Trojan Horse?

A recent article from Cris Crum over at WebProNews highlighs a EU filing by FairSearch.org that claims Google is participating in anti-competitive activity.

As I understand it, the filing centers around concerns that Google will have too much access to consumer’s mobile Internet usage data as Android continues to dominate mobile phone operating system usage.

So what does Google get? I don’t for sure, as I’m not a Google engineer but my best guesses would be:

• Access to mobile search queries
• Access to mobile search locations (provided location services have not been disabled by the user)
• Access to locations whenever Maps is used
• Access to addresses whenever Maps is used
• Access to time of day
• Ability to combine all of the above to predict what sort of advertising is relevant where and when

As of right now, I think Google’s cookie and ad re-targeting make for a better user experience than the days of yore, when ad serving was so terrible it almost killed display advertising all together. Adding mobile to the mix should improve that even more.