I'm not convinced of the exact characterization when Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster - who loves Apple - told Bloomberg TV that Google has "given up" on social. Or in the paraphrasing from Silicon Alley Insider: Google has given up on social. Facebook owns the social graph, Google can't replicate it, and that race is over. I disagree with the first sentence, fully agree with the second. Google hasn't given up on social, even if it seems like it should.

In one of the worst-kept secrets among Google Watchers, Google is building a payment and ad service that would let users buy products tapping or waving their mobile phones against a register at checkout. The service is propelled by Google's near field communications technology, a short-range wireless communications protocol. The technology lets users take a smartphone equipped with an NFC chip and sensors touch their handsets to a contact terminal,

Google's Don Dodge is having a grand ole time with his Google Chrome-based Cr-48 test notebook. I have fun with mine, too, and I've been installing apps from the Chrome Web Store left and right, including Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Maps, Amazon Window Shop, TweetDeck and NPR for Chrome. All worked well. Noting that the Chrome Web Store has over 2,000 apps and over 10,000 extensions and themes, Dodge likes "apps for News like USA Today, NPR, New York Times, and ESPN.

Today, Jan. 3, is the first official business day of the New Year, so welcome back to work in 2011 all you Google Watchers. Before I fly out to the Consumer Electronics Show tomorrow, where I'll be covering all gadgets Android, let's briefly rundown what I think will be top of mind for Google in 2011. As I wrote this weekend, it won't concern becoming a phone carrier , which is actually a prospect that has people salivating in anticipation of ridiculously low price points.

CNN Dec. 29 aired a debate between a Google spokesperson and an attorney representing FairSearch.org, the coalition forged by Expedia, Kayak and Orbitx to halt Google's $700 million bid for ITA Software. Long story short: Google bid to buy ITA July 1 to acquire the software makers' wealth of data on airfare pricing and schedules. Several online travel companies who use this software fear Google will tightly manage the ITA data,

The beauty of blogging is that we can double back and rethink certain assertions and assumptions. I half-cheered when Google struck out on grabbing Groupon. I listened to naysayers and pundits who follow the local e-commerce market and I too believed $6 billion was an egregious case of over-valuation for a one-trick company with little upside. Sure, Google has $33 billion in cash on hand to spend on acquisitions, but Groupon? I wrote Dec.

Good for Logitech. The maker of the $300 Revue companion box that serves Google TV has come out swinging verus the media to refute the Digitimes report that it had asked Gigabyte Technology to halt sending new appliances so that Google can upgrade the product. Logitech's rationale is that they would have no need to request a stay on new components because the Google TV upgrades are delivered over the air, the same way software updates are sent to Android phones.

Samsung Hub reported Dec. 27 that Samsung vowed to launch its Galaxy Player at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. The publication said: The 9.9mm thick Galaxy Player )YP-GB1( runs on Android 2.2 Froyo OS and features a 1GHz CPU, 4-inch Super Clear LCD screen supporting up to WVGA resolution )800×480(, T-DMB, SoundAlive audio enhancing technology, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, 3.2MP rear camera with front facing camera for video calling, GPS, HD video playback, microSD card slot,

Yes, I'm bookending the weekend with more Google-Groupon talk, going back to that abundant well where speculation floweth over. Just days after we learned that Google was looking at snapping up Groupon rivals after missing out on the market leader for local deals, the Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 24 that Google has hired several hundred sales representatives to call U.S. spas, restaurants and hotels to promote Google's Tags and Boost ad efforts.

Word came from the New York Post this week that Google was eyeing Groupon's rivals LivingSocial and BuywithMe after striking out on the local deals giant. Groupon, which reportedly left $6 billion on Google's bargaining table, has an 80 percent local deal market share. LivingSocial, after banking $175 million from Amazon.com, is the second-largest coupon site. BuyWithMe is next in line. Suppose Google were to get LivingSocial, the No. 2 player.

I knew Google eBooks was coming a week before the search engine launched the service months after it's original summer target date. I was excited to cover it and see what Google had to offer as an alternative to Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad. There are 3 million free and paid titles, all accessible through the computer Web browser, e-readers, Apple iOS devices and Google Android smartphones and tablets.

By now many of you who read this blog realize I care intensely about the rivalry between Google and Facebook. So you can safely conclude why I believe this next spot of news portends a black hole of trouble for Google. Paul Adams, Google's social research lead who has an excellent handle on the type of social graph relationships Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is famous for, is joining Facebook next year . Adams, who worked on Google Buzz,

Gmail creator Paul Bucheit and coiner of Google's "Don't Be Evil" credo has as good a non-technical explanation of Google's cloud strategy and Chrome Operating System on his personal blog Dec. 18. Bucheit added the color after his cavalier tweet, "Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year )or "merged" with Android(," kicked the proverbial hornets' nest . As Bucheit explains it, the cloud is essentially synonymous with mobile computing,

Google should be prevented from buying leaders in adjacent markets so rivals such as Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo and other companies can acquire them and make the online market more competitive. That's the clarified position Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein offered for Google's response to his complaint that Google has grown to powerful . The discussion has clearly vaulted off the rails of logic,

What you're looking at above is Google Body Browser, an experiment from Google Labs that leverages the WebGL graphics standard from the latest Chrome 9 browser beta to model the human body and all of its intricacies in 3D. Here's how Google describes it : Body Browser is a detailed 3D model of the human body. You can peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, and navigate to parts that interest you. Click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more.

For the third time in December, Google found itself defending its business practices from allegations of monopolistic and anticompetitive behavior. After refuting claims that it is squeezing out search engines in Europe and local review sites in the U.S. Google disagreed with Washington Post columnist Steve Pearlstein, who suggested Google's acquisition wings should be clipped. Google has acquired about 45 companies this year that we know about. Most of these have been small.

There's a fun, potentially contentious debate afoot now that Chrome Operating System has been released on the Cr-48 test flight notebook . Pundits are coming out swinging against Chrome OS, predicting its outright demise, or possible merger with Android, Google's other operating system. With nearly one quarter of smartphone market share in the U.S., and 300,000 smartphone activations per day ,

So I've had this nagging feeling in the back of my head, like a snake licking the base of my skull. From the inside. I haven't been able to put my finger on it, but then I read Mark Cuban's column from Dec. that asks " Am I Living the Google Lifestyle?" Cuban tells this brief anecdotal process: As I installed my Logitech Google TV box I checked my email, I mean GMail, on my G2 Slide. Someone needed some info,

So Google missed out on getting local deal provider Groupon one week ago today. I submitted that this was a good thing because of the price tag, but things can change. This week word came from Tnooz that TripAdvisor was blocking its reviews from appearing on Google Places, where content from Priceline.com, UrbanSpoon, CitySearch and other local search content providers has been indexed for users to see in Google and Google Maps searches.

Autonomous search. Serendipity engine. Call it what you will, but that's not what Google is calling it anymore. Google's future plans to make its search engine more actionable by delivering results to user unbidden is one of the company's core missions in 2011. And it's not called contextual discovery. And it's far more interesting to me at this point than Google Me + Emerald Sea + Google + 1= Google Zero, Facebook Take All.