Author: Clinton

How good was the last quarter for Google’s parent company Alphabet?  They still made $2.8 billion after you factor in the recent $5 billion fine from the European Union.  If that doesn’t impress you, then perhaps 26% growth year-over-year will do the trick.

It was a monster quarter for the Mountain View company.

Overall, the company had $32.7 billion in revenue (top line number) with a bottom line revenue number of $2.8 billion.  If you take out the European Union fine, Alphabet would have made just shy of $8 billion for the quarter which would have been around a billion more than the same quarter last year.

After skipping June, Google has published the latest Android Distribution Report for Android and it is extremely positive for Android Oreo.  The current version of the mobile platform saw a 6.4% increase in devices that came to the Google Play Store for the 7-day period ending July 23, 2018.  It is the biggest single increase that Oreo has seen and it doubles the install base since the last report in May.

In fact, digging into the report shows that Android Oreo was the only version of the version of the platform tracked that gained any usage in this report.  The two biggest losers in the report were Android Lollipop and Android Marshmallow which both saw a drop of 2% since the last report.

After being announced for the education sector in March, the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 is finally available from a wide range of retailers.  Priced at just under $350, the tablet is powered by Chrome OS and is the first true Chrome OS powered tablet in the market.

The QXGA 9.7″ backlit LED display of the Chromebook Tab 10  renders at 2048 x 1536 which supports stylus input.  In fact, it comes with a stylus and it can be stored in the device.  Camera wise, you have a 5MP rear camera and a 2MP selfie camera.  Connectivity is handled by the 2x2MIMO 802.11ac WiFi antenna and you have Bluetooth 4.1 built in too.  Finally, it 34 Wh battery that provides 9 hours of power to the tablet.

The anticipated Google event later this year to announce the new Pixel 3 lineup is shaping up to be far reaching like last year.  Rumors and leaks suggest that in addition to a new Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, we will likely see a Pixel branded smartwatch and updated Google Pixelbuds.  Now we can add an updated Google Pixelbook 2 to the mix.

Evan Blass, one of the most reliable sources for leaks and information, Tweeted over the weekend that an updated version of Google’s flagship Chromebook could be coming at the event, which is believe to happen around the October time frame.

Add to this fall hardware lineup a second-generation Pixelbook, with smaller bezels, scheduled to ship before the end of the year.

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) July 22, 2018

Truthfully this isn’t too surprising given that the Mountain View company appears going with a yearly cadence on all of their hardware updates now.

A fifth Chrome 68 build has arrived for the Chrome OS Beta Channel, the last stop before a Chrome OS build arrives for the masses in the Stable Channel.  The new build is 68.0.3440.70 (Platform version: 10718.58.0) and it is rolling out to the majority of devices in that channel now.

The update comes a week to the day after the last update and contains a number of bug fixes and stability improvements to the platform.  The Chromium team did not release a change log with this update which is generally a good sign that they are confident that the build is ready for prime time in the Stable Channel.  Given that Chrome 68 is expected to land in the Stable Channel on July 24th, this is very likely the last Chrome 68 build for the Beta Channel.

While it doesn’t get updated as often as the Office 365 suite of apps, Microsoft SwiftKey does see an update every couple of months on average and they tend to be sizable updates.  The update that the Redmond company released today for their Android keyboard app is no exception.  It brings a significant number of improvements with a heavy emphasis on improvements around Arabic.

The update is version is 7.0.9.28 for those keeping score at home.  It is in the Play Store now and if you have the keyboard installed, you likely have the update waiting or it has been installed if you have Automatic Updates enabled.