The fate of Google’s massive book scanning project has been up in the air since a legal settlement collapsed last year. New court filings this week suggest a possible end game.

Google’s bid for Motorola (NYSE: MMI) is likely to get a thumbs up from the U.S. Department of Justice, but still could face opposition from other regulators both in the U.S. and in Europe. The landmark $12.5 billion deal is essential for Google’s attempts to play defense in the mobile…

In Hollywood, $100 million will buy you about half of a Jerry Bruckheimer action movie. But YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) is spreading that sum out to launch more than 100 new video content channels this year, with the hope that one of these inexpensive video plays will become the kind of…

All is indeed fair in love and war, but not everything is fair in patent licensing. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) are working on measures to level the playing field in the mobile patent disputes by clarifying what is “fair” when it comes to patent licensing terms.

Today brings news of yet another round of capital-intensive cost-cutting for the challenged mobile phone maker Nokia: the company today announced that it would be transferring smartphone assembly from factories in Hungary, Finland and Mexico, and putting the operation in Asia.

For years, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) watchers have wondered why the company has used a unique browser on its Android software while maintaining a separate browser project in Chrome. Those days are over: Google has released a beta version of Chrome for Android, uniting two very important projects and raising questions…

Research In Motion is undeniably on the ropes at the moment, with the mobile handset maker weathering a decline in global market share, delays on new products, and the departure of its co-CEOs/founders in the last month after several bad quarters. But at a developers’ conference that kicked off today…

For the most part, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has found the mobile industry willing to bow to its patent-licensing strategy. Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) decided to dig in and fight and it could be poised to score a point.

Android held on to its title as the most-popular smartphone platform in the U.S. in the last quarter, but when it comes to sales of specific devices, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is running away from the competition, with Samsung swiftly behind, according to research out from the NPD Group.

It’s a little stunning to contemplate how wrong things have gone for Google (NSDQ: GOOG) in just the first month of 2012, as the company hopes to put a disastrous January in the rear-view mirror with perhaps another tear-jerking Super Bowl ad this Sunday. Larry Page and Sergey Brin haven’t…

Even if you throw the exploding tablet market in with the staid PC market, shipments of smartphones surpassed those of “client PCs” in 2011, a milestone for the computer industry.

The U.S. government likes to do things its own way. Along those lines, it has decided to embrace Android as a smartphone platform for soldiers and other government employees because of the control it can exert over the software, which in turn underscores how much control Android partners have over…

The French are kicking Google (NSDQ: GOOG) again. This time, in a strange ruling, Paris’ commercial court has found the company is anti-competitive because it offers Google Maps for free to businesses.

An influential European privacy body has urged Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to “pause” its new privacy policy due to be implemented in March. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party wrote a letter to Larry Page…

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in the last 24 hours has been dealt not one but two blows in court cases involving Motorola (NYSE: MMI) and patents in Germany, one involving IP licensing on older iPhone models (not the 4S) and one involving iCloud. However, as the day progressed, an injunction on…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has a dilemma when it comes to the Android Market: its permissive no-review-necessary policy means that anyone can write nearly any kind of application for the platform, including malware. The company is introducing a new service Thursday that attempts to strike a balance between protecting Android users…

Do Kindle Fire owners still like their devices now that they’ve had a few months to kick the tires? A new survey indicates that for the most part, they’re more pleased with their purchase than those who bought other Android tablets last year but less satisfied than iPad owners.

Mobile advertising may not yet be something that Facebook has explored in its strategy to monetize its massive user base, and given the growth we’ve seen in the space, you can argue that it might be missing a trick.

It was five years ago that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) executives brushed off the idea of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) as “not a threat” to Nokia’s top position in mobile sales. After all, Apple was only making smartphones and Nokia was still leading in that still-niche category, as well as mobiles overall.…