The search wars and social wars seems to have conflicted majorly because of Google's 'Search Plus Your World' (SPYW). Google's promotion of Google+ has not pleased any of its rivals, especially Twitter and Facebook. On the other hand, Microsoft is trying to flesh out this opportunity to the fullest.

Mountain View, California -- In a fresh move that depicts simplicity with uniqueness, global search engine titan Google has begun experimenting with a biggest new design to date for its venerable home page, reducing its recently-added grey menu along the top of the page to a grey logo at the upper left, and it looks a lot like Chrome.

New York -- In an environment where schedules are tight, users of Google Docs have quite a few alternatives when it comes to synchronizing their online documents with local computer systems. Touting itself as an inexpensive Dropbox alternative with a better feature set, file synchronization and sharing platform Insync has been in closed beta for the past 15 months, and today, the eponymous startup has rolled out a totally revamped version of its “Dropbox for Google users”, and that too for Free.

Google! Google! Google! Google can be the kindest and the best at times, but potentially, the search engine giant can be an equally notorious and evil giant too. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land noted that Google is attempting a notorious act to campaign for its browser, Chrome.

Google has finally turned to its own advertising formulas, to promote itself. It seems Google wants to have a bite of its own advertising recipe. The search engine giant is one of the biggest advertising companies in the world, and the best part it, the company knows about it. Google, earlier in 2010 had embraced the advertising platform for the very first time, with a Super Bowl ad. But since then, there were a few real efforts focused to keep people reminded that Google services are being used by them in their day-to-day life and how further they can make use of it.

France -- It seems that France is not a big admirer of Google's automated search suggestions, and this lack of human interference is costing the company. According to a French newspaper, The Local reports that Google France has been forced to pay €50,000 ($65,000) to a French insurance company called Lyonnaise de Garantie, after its search engine automatically added the word “escroc” (“crook” or “swindler”) after the company's name.

Mountain View, California -- Not a single day goes by when the global search engine giant is factually or falsely involved in some or the other violations. In the latest turn of events Google is being sued for patent infringement by a company called buySAFE, a company which offers a safe-shopping service to online retailers and their customers, TechCrunch reports.

Google's Indian media advertisers will now be able to place their ads in a new search format. Google India has unveiled a format for media advertisements (ads), which would target, pay for and experience video ads on its web search engine.

Mountain View, California -- The holidays are certainly a big time of the year for air travel, indicating that it is also a big time of year for flight search. And, on the search scene, Google began placing its new flight-searching feature at the top of general search results for airline booking information earlier this month, taking heat from travel companies that claims its new competitors in the $110 billion online travel industry are not happy about the search giant crashing the party, according to a Tuesday Wall Street Journal report.

The year is to end in three days, but with Google, it seems things never come to a standstill. The experts have already started betting on or rather banking on the success notes of Google's very own social networking site. Paul B. Allen, founder of Ancestry.com, who updates regularly with facts and notes related to Google+, said that according to him, the search engine giant, Google, might be able to rope in 400m+ users on Google+ by the end of2012. That might not be impossible, but to a great extent, it is really difficult. Moreover, unlike many long term goals for Google, this still seems to be rather a short term goal.

Google+ Hangouts are in news, yet again. Yesterday the Muppets were On Air and today the news is that Singer songwriter Daria Musk will be hanging on to the Hangouts. Daria will be hosting a worldwide Google+ On Air Hangout to ring in the New Year. It seems Google's efforts are finally paying off. Business promotions, presentations and family get togethers are on the rise, using the Hangouts platform.

Mountain View, California -- Back in 2008, it looked like the Google Books legal saga might finally be over. But, Google yesterday in a novel twist, filed a motion in a federal court to dismiss copyright claims against its Google Books project by the Authors Guild as an associational plaintiff from the long-running book-scanning case, and also moved to sever the American Society of Media Photographers from its related suit against Google, saying the groups could not sue over copyrights they did not own.

Google+ Hangouts are back and the session is only on an interesting track. This time one would see the Muppets tickling your funny bone. The search engine giant has released an ad, featuring the Muppets, which was rolled out last week. The ad had a defined motto, which was detailed in the scenario. It read as, “famously good friends get together in a Google+ Hangout, to rock out and blow off steam.” Interestingly, the tune use was even a catchy one, noting that the Muppets were having a role over the screen. The ad makers used the tune of David Bowie’s classic hit, “Under Pressure.”

Cloud services are what one would see the tech giants fighting for in the near future with rigorous efforts. The start of the same is here and the parties to the fight are the old rivals, Google and Microsoft. The software giant, Microsoft, has lost its preliminary battle against the search engine giant, Google as University of California, Berkeley chose to go with Google instead of Microsoft in a battle over campus cloud services. UC Berkeley announced this week that it has chosen Google Apps for Education over Microsoft's Office 365 suite.

Google's “Let it Snow” feature was catchy and cool, suiting the situation. But there is more on the offering from Google. Google Gmail powered 'Send a Santa Christmas Card' application has been launched by Google. Many experts had expected something even bigger coming from the Google's warehouse, when the search engine giant broke the news of the “let it Snow” Google (Easter Egg).

Google+ is still seeing a low turnout in terms of usage, but as far as the marketers and advertises are concerned, it seems to be of great help. Notably, out of the top 100 brands from all over the world, 77 already have a Google+ page till now. Last moth the count was 61, which has increased by 16 now. Even the fans, adding these pages to Circles has grown 50 percent in a month. The count is small now, that is 222,000 fans combined, according to BrightEdge. But considering the fact that Google+ pages are new to the world of techies, the count is really good.

Mountain View, California -- If you are a book lover and often gets interrupted due to connection failure, but now you can uninterruptedly read all those tomes you have collected through Google Books offline. Google has finally announced a new offline feature they have added to their Google eBooks service for those using Chrome or Chrome OS, so they can continue reading books even when they lose the Internet connection.

Amazon has always been a popular brand name, but with the launch of Kindle Fire, the company has tried to change a number of things. Entering the tablet war, it earned a reputation that it was a direct competitor to Apple's iPad, leaving behind the most popular tablets in the league. Additionally, its economical cost called for a number of cheap tablets. It led the cheap tablets wars too, with the number of facilities it has been provided.

Google has never hesitated from launching a new service or product, but at the same time, it has always left the techies with a bit of confusion and a number of questions. The recent to the addition is a rumor that the search engine giant is working out ways to come up with a tablet of its own. Eric Schmidt told “Il capo di Google”, told an Italian newspaper this week the company would start marketing a new tablet computer in the next six months. To be specific, he termed things as the company would start 'marketing' a new tablet.

New York -- The future of Google's association with Mozilla was called into question earlier this month. But Mozilla, the maker of of Firefox, on Tuesday dancing to the tune of search leader, revealed that it has endorsed a new three-year pact with Google in which Google will remain the default search engine in the browser.