Google is set to unveil a new feature to its Gmail service that aims to separate a user’s important emails from the ones that do not get read often.

The new feature called “Priority Inbox” will help users focus on messages that matter without having to set up complex rules, Google said in its official blog.

The Priority Inbox application splits the inbox into three sections: ‘Important and unread’, ‘Starred’ and ‘Everything Else’.

“As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most and which messages you open and reply to,” the company said.

Google and HTC are working together on a tablet-style computer to compete with Apple’s iPad, according to reports.

The tablet computer will run Google’s Chrome operating system, and will hit shops in November, possibly in time for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States when electrical goods are traditionally heavily discounted.

According to technology blog Downloadsquad, the tablet will be available on the Verizon mobile network in the United States.

The blog, which cites an anonymous source, says that the Google tablet is likely to be subsidised by Verizon, and therefore will be cheaper than Apple’s iPad. Although the source did not provide the blog with any information about the specifics of the rumoured tablet, Downloadsquad expects the device to be based on NVidia’s Tegra 2 platform, boast a 32GB solid-state drive and a built-in webcam.

Just because mobile phones are becoming more like small computers doesn’t mean you should have to do a lot of typing on them.

That’s the thinking behind the latest update to Google Inc.’s popular Android software for mobile phones.

The latest version of Android 2.2, released Thursday, includes 10 new voice commands that can be used to operate phones without using a keypad.

Although Google says about 200,000 Android-powered phones are being sold each day, not all of them are equipped with the 2.2 operating system, also known as Froyo. Google’s Nexus One phone already runs on Froyo, but users will need to download free updates through its Android Market. Motorola Inc.’s Droid 2, which went on sale this week, already has the necessary updates. The features are expected to be added to HTC Corp.’s Evo and Incredible phones when they get Froyo in the coming months.

Google’s new “Voice Actions” tool” enables people to dictate their text messages and e-mails. The voice recognition technology automatically translates the spoken words into text.

Phone calls can be made simply by speaking the name of a person or business. The feature can also find and play songs with spoken commands.

Oracle Corp. said Thursday it has filed a patent and copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google Inc.

Oracle said in a statement that Google’s Android system for mobile phones infringes on its patented Java technology.

Google spokesman Andrew Pederson said the company can’t comment because it has not yet reviewed the lawsuit.

In its complaint Oracle said Google’s Android operating system software consists of Java applications and other technology. As such, it infringes on one or more parts of seven different patents - something Google should know, Oracle argues, because it has hired former Sun Java engineers in recent years.

Oracle is seeking an injunction to stop Google from further building and distributing Android, plus higher monetary damages for willful and deliberate infringement.

Only a year after launching its ‘Wave’ communication project, Google has decided to pull the plug on Google Wave since very few people understood the new communication platform, reported CNET. Google Wave is a real-time collaboration tool aiming to combine various forms of online.

communication. It includes email, instant messaging and social networking features to help users work together. The tool was launched last year with a great deal of hype around it. In fact, invitations were selling for up to $70 on eBay at one point, but Google says it attracted very few users after going public earlier this year.

From ZDNET:

“Companies with a high page rank are in a strong position to move into new markets. By “pointing” to this new information from their existing sites they can pass on some of their existing search engine aura, guaranteeing them more prominence.

This helps companies such as AOL and Yahoo as they move into the low-cost content business, says Mr Bonnie. “They can use their Google page rank to make sure their content floats to the top,” he says.

Google’s Mr Singhal calls this the problem of “brand recognition”: where companies whose standing is based on their success in one area use this to “venture out into another class of information which they may not be as rich at”. Google uses human raters to assess the quality of individual sites in order to counter this effect, he adds.”

The security of Android apps was called into question by a report issued on Tuesday by SMobile Systems, an Ohio-based mobile security company.

The survey of over 48,000 apps in the Android Market notes that “one in every five applications request permissions to access private or sensitive information that an attacker could use for malicious purposes.”

It further states that one in twenty Android apps have the potential to place unauthorized calls. “One out of every twenty applications has the ability to place a call to any number without interaction or authority from the user,” the report says.

Google says the report has problems. “This report falsely suggests that Android users don’t have control over which apps access their data,” a company spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement. “Not only must each Android app gets users’ permission to access sensitive information, but developers must also go through billing background checks to confirm their real identities, and we will disable any apps that are found to be malicious.”

Google Inc won a landmark victory over media companies as a Manhattan federal judge threw out Viacom Inc’s $1 billion lawsuit accusing the Internet company of allowing copyrighted videos on its YouTube service without permission.

Viacom claimed “tens of thousands of videos on YouTube, resulting in hundreds of millions of views,” had been posted based on its copyrighted works, and that the defendants knew about it but did nothing to stop illegal uploads.

But in a 30-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton said it would be improper to hold Google and YouTube liable under federal copyright law merely for having a “general awareness” that videos might be posted illegally.

“Mere knowledge of prevalence of such activity in general is not enough,” he wrote. “The provider need not monitor or seek out facts indicating such activity.”

Viacom said it plans to appeal to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Wi-Fi traffic intercepted by Google’s Street View cars included passwords and e-mail, according to the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL).

CNIL launched an investigation last month into Google’s recording of traffic carried over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, and has begun examining the data Google handed over as part of that investigation.

Google revealed on May 14 that the fleet of vehicles it operates to compile panoramic images of city streets for its Google Maps site had inadvertently recorded traffic from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Google’s intention was only to record the identity and position of Wi-Fi hotspots in order to power a location service it operates, the company said. However, the software it used to record that information went much further, intercepting and storing data packets too.

At the time, Google said it only collected “fragments” of personal Web traffic as it passed by, because its Wi-Fi equipment automatically changes channels five times a second. However, with Wi-Fi networks operating at up to 54M bits per second, it always seemed likely that those one-fifth of a second recordings would contain more than just “fragments” of personal data.

That has now been confirmed by CNIL, which since June 4 has been examining Wi-Fi traffic and other data provided by Google on two hard disks and over a secure data connection to its servers.

Web search group Google Inc is phasing out internal use of rival Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system because of security concerns following a Chinese hacking incident, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Citing several Google employees, the FT said the decision to move to other operating systems including Apple Inc’s Mac OS and open-source Linux began in earnest in January after Google’s Chinese operations were hacked.

Internet security firm McAfee Inc said at the time the cyber attacks on Google and other businesses had exploited a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, which was vulnerable on all recent versions of Windows.

A pedestrian injured by a motorist while following an online route has filed a lawsuit claiming Google Inc. supplied unsafe directions.

Lauren Rosenberg filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking more than $100,000 in U.S. District Court in Utah. It also named a motorist she says hit her.

Rosenberg used her phone in January to download directions from one end of Park City to the other.

Google Maps led her to a four-lane boulevard without sidewalks that was “not reasonably safe for pedestrians,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Northridge, Calif., resident.

The case has become a sensation on tech blogs, websites and cable television channels, with critics assailing the woman for ignoring her own safety to blindly follow online directions. Her lawyer, Allen Young, said the truth was different.

Rosenberg believed she could reach a sidewalk on the other side of Deer Valley Drive and tried to cross the boulevard, but didn’t even make it to the median, he said.

She was struck by a speeding car on a pitch-black night and received multiple bone fractures that required six weeks of rehabilitation, Young added.

Google has taken the latest version of Chrome for Windows out of beta, launching the Web browser’s fifth revision in less than two years.

In addition, Google on Tuesday took the Mac and Linux versions out of beta for the first time. While the three Chrome models share many of the same features, the Mac version has a native application feel for the Apple operating system.