Google Quietly Launches Google Play Movie Rentals In Germany

Google today quietly rolled out movie rentals in Germany. German Google users have long been able to buy movies through the Play Movies store, but according to German blogger Carsten Knobloch, the rental feature only went live earlier today. So far, Google hasn’t officially announced this launch and the Google Play help page doesn’t acknowledge it either, but a growing number of German users now report that they are able to rent movies from the Play store on the web and on their Android phones.

Movie rentals in the German Play store cost between 2.99 Euro or 4.99 Euro, depending on the movie and whether users want to see the SD or HD version.

Just like in the U.S. German users will have up to 30 days to start watching a video after they rent it. Unlike in the U.S., though, where you can only continue to watch the movie for 24 hours, German users will have 48 hours to finish watching it after they hit the play button for the first time. At almost $5 for a movie rental, the prices in the German store are significantly higher than in the U.S., though.

Earlier today, Google also brought Hangouts on Air to the German market. One Google Play feature that is still missing in Germany is the music store. German users also can’t currently buy the Nexus 7. The launch of more content services, however, could foreshadow the impending Nexus 7 launch in Germany.

Image credit: Cachys Blog

Launch Date: September 7, 1998

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

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Google Maps Now Features Schedules For More Than 1 Million Transit Stops Worldwide

Google Maps now features public transit schedules for more than 500 cities and one million transit stops worldwide. To make all of this information more accessible to its users on the go, Google today launched an update to Google Maps for Android. The updated Google Maps app now, for example, allows users to choose which specific mode of transportation (train, bus, tram or subway) they want to see on their maps.

Additionally, Google’s redesigned station pages now make it easier to find information like departure times, which lines serve a specific station and the distance to nearby stations. Users just have to tap on the name of a station to get to these new station pages.

While Google’s announcement puts the emphasis on the new public transport features, the Google Maps team also made a number of other changes to the app. Whenever you search for a city or postal code, for example, you will now see the borders of that region (just like on the desktop).

The My Places feature now also makes it easier to access your saved offline maps and custom maps, and if you have Location History enabled, you can now use the app to “browse the places you’ve been on a daily basis with an updated Location History dashboard.”

For the time being, of course, all of these features are only available on Android. Now that Apple has decided to use its own maps on iOS, however, chances are we will soon see a dedicated Google Maps for iOS app, too. In the long run, that may actually prove beneficial for Google and its users, given that Apple only updates the maps app with every major OS release.

Google Maps is Google’s free web-based mapping application. As of May 2008, Google Maps includes photos, videos, and user-created maps along with location searches. It uses Panoramio and YouTube for the content.

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A Google project headed by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google+ is designed to be the social extension of Google. Its features focus on making online sharing easy for users. “Circles,” think social circles, akin to Facebook’s lists. “Sandbar,” a user-unifying toolbar. “Sparks,” a search engine for sharing content between users. “Messenger,” a group messaging app that allows users to share with certain “Circles.” “Hangouts,” group video chatting designed to allow up to 10 users video chat at once. Each Google+ user can replace his...

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The End Of Postini? Email Security Tool Now More Tightly Fit With Google Apps

Google Apps and Postini now have a tighter fit, making it easier to manage routing and basic filtering of email to on-premise systems as well as email to Google Apps users.  The move is one of several to be made over the next several months to make the email security environment part of Google Apps. A full Postini migration to Google Apps is expected by the end of 2013.

Google has been slowing integrating Postini into Google Apps, adding Postini features such as user policy management; email content filters; archiving, retention and eDiscovery with Google Apps Vault. As you may know, Postini is an app used by the enterprise to fight spam and other uses such as keeping track of data that has to be archived for compliance reasons.

Compliance can make it a bit tedious for administrators when trying to balance with an online service such as Google Apps.  The trick is in the routing. Without routing to special archives, administrators have been hesitant to migrate to services such as Google Apps.

The Google Apps team is hoping that will change now that Google Apps administrators can use a new routing feature that will make it easier for groups like sales, support and operations to use generic email addresses such as sales@ or support@.

Historically, messages to these addresses typically have been routed outside Google Apps to on-premise ticketing or alert systems. Now Google Apps has the mechanisms in place to get messages to their proper destinations.

In the coming months, more Postini features will become part of Google Apps:

As we look ahead to 2013, we’ll continue these feature integrations and gradually transition Postini Google Message Security (GMS) and Google Message Discovery (GMD) customers to Google Apps. This will enable them to take advantage of the Postini features built directly into Google Apps that are more flexible, powerful and user-friendly.

Customers will be notified later this year. Access to the Postini control panel will eventually be built right into Google Apps.

Does this mean the end of Postini? It looks like it. Google is pulling all of its enterprise apps to fit with Google Drive.Google’s vision is to use Google Drive as the hook for people to use Google’s collaboration tools such as Google Docs. Email security is just one more way to make that full integration a reality.

The move is another example of how Microsoft and Google are battling head-to-head. Email security is an important weapon to include as more customers consider how to use the cloud to do more of their work.

Here’s more about the Postini transition:

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Judge orders Google and Oracle to disclose “paid bloggers and journalists”, Google says it will comply

According to The Verge, the Google vs. Oracle case isn’t over just yet. An order issued by Judge William Alsup calls for both companies to reveal any compensation they’ve given to journalists and bloggers, along with a list of who.

I reached out to Google for comment, and a spokesperson tells me that the company “will comply with the order.”

According to the order, Judge Alsup would like to know if any coverage of the trial was influenced directly or indirectly due to this type of financial compensation or future rewards.

We’ve seen press coverage pop up during court cases before, most recently a piece by a GigaOM writer in the Apple vs. Samsung case.

One of the publications in question as it relates to Oracle vs. Google is FOSSPatents, run by Florian Mueller. He has shared in the past that he is a paid consultant for Microsoft and Oracle. Here’s the bio from his site:

Florian Mueller is an award-winning intellectual property activist-turned-analyst with 25 years of software industry expertise spanning across different market segments (games, education, productivity and infrastructure software), diverse business models and a variety of technical and commercial areas of responsibility, enabling a holistic perspective. Florian advises clients on the patent wars surrounding mobile devices, and on their economic and technical implications. His consulting services are available directly (contact form, LinkedIn profile) as well as through two primary research firms (Gerson Lehrman Group, Coleman Research Group) serving the financial community. (In order to avoid conflicts of interest, Florian does not hold or initiate transactions in any technology stocks or derivatives thereof.)

I think it should go without saying that The Next Web isn’t swayed by anything like this, but it will be interesting to see what the court unearths. Both companies have until Noon on August 17th to offer up all of their disclosures.

Time to empty out your pockets, folks.

We’ve also reached out to Oracle for comment, but have yet to hear back.

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