The good news for Google+: it may now have 18 million users, less than a week after Google CEO Larry Page said it had signed up 10 million users. The bad news for Google+: growth seems to be slowing. Those are two bullet points Ancestry.com Founder Paul Allen said he arrived at following his latest round of surname search on Google+, the social network that would challenge Facebook. However, it's important to note that Allen's calculations may be liberal.

Some folks who have been waiting for an alternative to Facebook and enjoy the newly-minted Google+ social network enough to want to move their data their have a few options. You may have already heard that Facebook blocked Facebook Friend Exporter , a Chrome extension that automates the extraction of user data, and Open-Xchange's Social OX, which lets users take their contact list to other services such as Google+.

MySpace Founder Tom Anderson addressed whether social is in Google's DNA in light of the early success of Google+ in a guest post on TechCrunch . Google+' primary differentiator from Facebook is the Circles construct, where users manually follow other people they choose. Some Web luminaries have been questioning whether this is a good thing; others welcome it. I welcome it; it helps get my messaging out and if I can get more notable users to follow me, my social rank improves.

The title of this post may well have been: Nicholas Carr Vindicated! I'm referring of course to the fact that another study has come to the fore showing empirical evidence that Google is bad for our brains, specifically impinging our ability to recall. If ever there were redemption for Carr's book " The Shallows ," which explores how the Web is reshaping our learning and thinking,

The latest spin on the Amazon Android tablet rumor mill has the e-commerce giant pumping out a 9-inch tablet this October to try to catch some of Apple's iPad magic. You know, the kind of magic that goes with selling between 25 million and 30 million tablets in less than 18 months. Here are the latest details, according to the Wall Street Journal : The device will run Android,

If you're interested in the background and social construct behind Google+, you really need to read Paul Adams' post on why he left Google, where he designed what would form the core behind Google+ Circles. Unlike Facebook, where the default broadcasting is one-to-many, Google+ Circles let users select who they want to friend, follow or connect with to view their links, photos and videos. As a user experience designer at Google, Adams wrote the Real Life Social Network ,

Growing like a weed. Racing like a comet. There are a lot of ways one might describe the trajectory of the Google+ social network , which launched to limited field testing June 28 and has been opening and closing its access ever since. What is hard to do is nail down a user number for long. Two days after Ancestry.com Founder Paul Allen used Google+ surnames to estimate that the service was fast-approaching the 5 million user mark ,

One of the most painful memes about the Oracle Vs. Google Android patent lawsuit is that if Oracle wins it could demand licensing fees based on their use of the open source platform. Now we have some theoretical numbers to back that notion. Network World , citing Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg, said Oracle could ask handset makers to license its software for $15 or $20 a phone.

One has to appreciate the timing of Facebook unveiling a group chat application one week after Google+ launches a social network to not-so-subtly compete with Facebook, which has more than 750 million users. However, there are some differences between the services, which may matter if people use both + and Facebook and may not if they use one or the other. As a journalist covering the space, I'm going to try both. But first, a little info clarity.

What is Google+ killer application? Is it Circles, the friending mechanism that lets users bucket their contacts in gradual, careful curation rather than Facebook's firehose contact intake? Is it Sparks? My guess is not. I've been on + for a week and haven't had much reason to go back there. What about Hangouts, the group video chat app? Jenna Wortham of the New York Times said this chatroom construct "changed my life." Lofty praise indeed.

Rocky Agrawal, guest-writing for TechCrunch , does a good job discussing the signal-to-noise ratios underpinning social networks like Facebook, Twitter and especially Google+, where users manually assign people into buckets. Agrawal wrote: The biggest unsolved problem in social networking remains unsolved with Google+: separating signal from noise. Twitter, it seems, doesn't even want to try. The timeline is as dumb as it has been since the beginning,

The programmer responsible for laying the foundation for Google+ - particularly the complex Circles method of social graphing - now works for Facebook. This recalls news from nearly a year ago, but it begs a refresher course after Paul Adams responded to questions about his influence on a Google+ thread. Here's the current backdrop: Adams updated his status on Google+ by writing "test" June 30. Soon after, folks following him were commenting about how much they liked Google+.

Google is taking to the skies to market notebook computers based on its Chrome Operating System, the lightweight platform designed to tout Web applications over local software. The search engine has tapped Virgin America to let travelers on four different flight routes check out and use Samsung Series 5 Chromebooks paired with complimentary WiFi access free for the duration of their flight. Google's marketing goes bigger than that.

Sorry, I have no more Google+ invites today. And neither does anyone else, according to Google+ co-creator Vic Gundotra, who posted this message on + 15 minutes before midnight PDT June 29: I especially like how Gundotra pitched Google Takeout , the service that will let users migrate their Google Profile, Stream, Buzz, Contacts and Circles, and Picasa Web Albums in one fell swoop. Basically all of the data you'd want in +. Let me back up to how the invites came about.

There are lot of things flying around right now regarding the Google+ social network the company rolled out to invitees only June 28. With all apologies to those out of the circle of trust, the Google+ URL is https://plus.google.com/. Joe Wilcox of BetaNews asked if Google got + right. I don't know if it got it "right," but it doesn't feel "wrong" and it is different from Facebook. Rather,

Now that the Federal Trade Commission is making like it's putting the screws to Google, the inevitable comparisons between the Justice Department's antitrust case versus Microsoft more than a decade ago are coming to bear. Fairly or not, DOJ Vs. Microsoft set the standard for modern high-tech cases.

Do you fear Google has its ladle in too many drinking wells online, so much so that it had diluted the company's quality? Are Google's only strengths search and advertising? These are important questions whose answers may well determine the company's future. Jean-Louis Gassée, general partner for Allegis Capital normally focuses on the mobile ecosystem, but he has just published a nifty little analysis of Google's strategy of being everything to everyone,

It's not surprise that a Google executive would be pounding the tablet for tap-and-pay mobile payment solutions powered by near field communications. The company one month ago introduced its Google Wallet NFC mobile payment solution, which is expected to go live in New York and San Francisco soon. Yesterday, Google said it was testing NFC-based ratings and review basestations in Japan, perhaps the NFC capital of the world.

Geek.com got a nice little scoop for Google TV fans: images of next version of Google TV, running Google's Android 3.1 flavor of "Honeycomb." Google TV fans - it's time to get excited, but first a little perspective helps. I just upgraded my Google I/O edition Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to Honeycomb 3.1 yesterday and am just beginning to appreciate the nuances of the new system, including expandable widgets and other perks. My Tab was only on Android 2.0 for 40 days,

Google released WebRTC software to open source in May and now the company is tucking the technology into its Chrome browser, according to some sleuthing by CNET . WebRTC comprises real-time chat software Google's gained from buying Global IP Solutions )GIPS( in 2010, a deal that frankly I'd forgotten about. Open-sourcing that technology recalls what Google did with On2 Technologies codec, which it turned into WebM.