Yoichiro Akiyama/Flickr

Andy Rubin

Not so fast. At a joint T-Mobile and Google media event Friday morning, Andy Rubin, a vice president of engineering at Google, said Chrome OS isn’t a substitute for mobile operating systems like Android, which have to solve many problems unique to mobile phones, such as managing battery life and ensuring calls don’t drop as a user is moving between cell towers.

“Chrome has a very Web-centric view of the world,” he said. “There are different problems to be solved in different categories of consumer products,” he went on. “You need different technology for different solutions.”

Rubin crystallized the differences during a wide-ranging discussion in San Francisco with T-Mobile’s chief technology officer Cole Brodman about T-Mobile’s new Android phone, the myTouch, and where Android — the thick stack of software Google developed to power higher-end cellphones — is headed.

The new phone, which will hit stores later this summer, is T-Mobile’s second Android device. It illustrates how the software, and the way companies are customizing it, is evolving, the executives said. One of the new features is a search button built into the hardware of the device. When pressed, it brings up a Google search box that will search within the content the user is looking at at the time.

There’s more to come. Rubin said that future versions will support more social-networking features. (He added that Google has been naming each new Android release a dessert, alphabetically. This spring, Google shipped “Cupcake.” “Donut,” “Eclair” and “Flan” are next.)

“Social is a big push for now,” he said, saying eventually an inbound phone call could show the caller’s photo, name and the last update he or she posted to Facebook, for example. Another focus is expanding the ways software developers who build applications for Android phones can charge for them through the Android market, its storefront.

Currently, the store only supports Google’s payment service Google Checkout, but eventually, Rubin said, it will support multiple billing systems. Brodman said that T-Mobile will soon allow customers to charge application purchases directly to their T-Mobile bill.

Despite the fancy software features, many handset makers have been slow to release Android phones. In the U.S., T-Mobile is the only major carrier that has launched one. Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo launched its first Android device — made by HTC — this week.

Rubin said momentum will pick up and that he is aware of roughly 15 to 20 Android devices likely to be in the market this year. He recently met with a hardware company that showed him 18 different devices running Android, he said.

Google notes that Android was designed for non-computer devices other than cellphones; Mr. Rubin said he’s seen robots, GPS terminals and even refrigerators running the software. “We are agnostic to the physical infrastructure that we are running on,” he said. “Fundamentally, we are trying to connect them all.”

Power.com, a site that allows users to log in to multiple social-networking sites.

Power.com bills itself as a “social inter-networking site,” in which users can sign on to their other social accounts, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace. It has some 8 million users.

That list once included Facebook. But the popular Palo Alto, Calif., site, which has more than 200 million active users, blocked Power.com and sued it late last year, accusing it of copyright and trademark violations.

Power.com responded with a countersuit today, saying that sites allowing users to log in to other sites are commonplace on the Web — indeed, even on Facebook, where members can log in to their email accounts to “friend” address-book contacts. “Today’s lawsuit seeks to put a stop to Facebook’s attempts — in violation of California’s unfair competition laws and federal antitrust laws — to block Power.com from helping users access their own data,” Power.com said in a statement.

It has also enlisted Scott Bursor, who has fought early-termination-fee disputes with wireless providers Verizon Wireless and Sprint, as its legal counsel. “This lawsuit is similar to the cellphone cases because you have a large company putting locks on its customers’ property to prevent those customers from using competing technologies,” he said in the statement.

Facebook said it has made numerous attempts to work with Power.com, including encouraging it to implement Facebook Connect, a service Facebook members use to log in to third-party sites with their Facebook account. Although Steve Vachani, Power.com’s founder, mentioned implementing Facebook Connect after the initial lawsuit, the company hasn’t done so, a Facebook spokesman said.

“Facebook Connect has been very successful, with more than 10,000 Web sites using Connect and our other APIs to build rich and robust experiences for their users, including the functionalities that Power.com has now alleged that we are trying to prevent,” the company said in a statement.

“We filed the lawsuit against Power.com only after it refused to follow the rules that we have established to protect the privacy and security of our users’ data,” it added. “Users rely on us to protect their data and enforce the privacy decisions they make on Facebook. We take this trust seriously and work aggressively to protect it.”

Facebook called Power.com’s claims “without merit” and said, “We will fight them aggressively.”

UPDATE, 3:42 p.m.: Power.com’s Mr. Vachani called Facebook’s data-security accusation a “distraction,” saying “This is not about security. This is about users’ control of their data.” The company didn’t use Facebook Connect, he said, because it disagreed with Facebook’s terms for implementing the service.

He added that Power.com hasn’t been blocked by or scuffled with any of the other social-networking sites it links to, including Google-owned Orkut, Twitter and MySpace.

Check out more photos of the moguls and other attendees at this year’s Allen & Co. media summit in Sun Valley, Idaho, including Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Tom Brokaw, LeBron James, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Evan Williams.

That’s at least part of the thinking behind Evian’s new advertising campaign, which has taken off on YouTube, thanks to a troupe of infants breakdancing and roller-skating across the screen. The campaign, called “Live Young,” broke last week and has gotten more than 2.8 million views on YouTube in the U.S., and another 2.3 million internationally.

Evian

Babies breakdance and roller-skate with some CGI assistance in Evian’s new “Live Young” ad campaign.

“Live Young” begins with a baby tapping one roller-skate-clad foot and playing a version of Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (remixed by hip-hop producer Dan the Automator) on an old-school boombox.

Another baby takes a ramp-enhanced leap over a chain-link fence to join a posse of tykes dancing through a city park. More antics ensue via computer-generated animation, such as daredevil jumps and zigzagging footwork around bottles of Evian.

Evian, owned by Danone Group, released the one-minute campaign on YouTube’s U.S., United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany and Canada properties and will air a shorter version on television soon. The was directed by Michael Gracey and developed by ad agency Euro RSCG

The “Live Young” microsite features outtakes from the filming of the commercial, “interviews” with the babies and even links to some of their Facebook pages.

This isn’t the first time Evian has used babies to get the point across. In 1998, it ran a campaign featuring babies doing a synchronized-swimming routine.

But are these dancing babies cute, or are they creepy? The whole baby-doing-adult-things-like-talking idea proved to be wildly popular in the film “Look Who’s Talking,” but other baby-related phenomena get mixed responses from grown-ups (see: Anne Geddes, whose cutesy works feature babies sitting inside giant pumpkins or curled up in serving bowls).

Evian’s ad is getting plenty of adoring responses, mixed with the occasional “creepy” and “SOOOOOOOOOO fake.” What do you think of it?

Cuomo Blasts Tagged.com Over Emails: New York’s attorney general plans to file a lawsuit against social-networking Internet site Tagged.com over its email marketing practices.

Heard on the Street: In Tax Tangle, Amazon’s Loss Is GSI’s Gain: It’s no secret that not all e-commerce companies are created equal. Those without a physical partner don’t have to levy sales taxes. Those allied with bricks and mortar stores do.

Firms Offer Software to Fight Korean Virus: Two antivirus companies offered free software to combat a rogue software program that has been attacking U.S. and South Korean Web sites.

Sprint, Ericsson Reach Agreement: Sprint agrees to pay up to $5 billion to Ericsson to maintain its network as the carrier looks to focus on new products and customer retention.

Broadcom Ends Bid for Emulex: Broadcom said it is dropping its quest to buy Emulex, after that company rejected a sweetened bid valued at $912 million.

Associated Press

Google co-founder Larry Page, left, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speak to reporters at the annual Allen & Co.’s media summit in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 9, 2009.

In a wide-ranging on-the-record press conference, Messrs. Schmidt and Page described the origins of the combination browser/operating system.

“At the time, Google was a small company,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Having come through the bruising browser wars, I didn’t want to do that again.”

Eventually, however, Messrs. Brin and Page hired some Firefox developers who built a demonstration of Chrome. “It was so good that it essentially forced me to change my mind,” Mr. Schmidt said.

“I think we just wore you down,” Mr. Page joked.

“I just gave up,” Mr. Schmidt said. “But there is no question I am hugely supportive of Chrome and Chrome OS. They are game-changers. They change the way you think about your computer.”

Mr. Page described the Chrome operating system as a kind of anti-operating system — one that is basically indistinguishable from a browser. Netbooks loaded with Chrome will boot up almost instantaneously and will store data on the Internet instead of a hard drive.

Associated Press

Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google, takes a picture of members of the press gathered outside the Sun Valley Inn on Thursday.

“I wanted the operating system to kind of be out of the way,” Mr. Page said.

“If you live your life in the browser maybe you don’t want all the stuff that came from Eric’s generation,” Mr. Page added, putting his hand on Mr. Schmidt’s shoulder.

Mr. Schmidt leaned back in his chair and groaned at being characterized as an old guy. “Why am I always in this position?”

Messrs. Schmidt and Page were also careful not to position Chrome as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. They argued that Chrome will expand the market for netbooks, rather than eating into Windows’ share of the netbook market.

“Microsoft is welcome to put Internet Explorer on our operating system,” Mr. Schmidt said, although he conceded that “it’s highly unlikely they would do it. They would have to port it and the port is not trivial…the ball is in their court.”

He added that because Chrome is open source, Google won’t be able to block Microsoft.. “All of it is open,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Even if we had an evil moment, we would be unsuccessful.”

Although Chrome will be free, Mr. Schmidt said it will still boost Google’s business. “We benefit when people spend more of their life online,” he said. “So for us it’s a very straightforward strategic initiative that ultimately results in more revenue.”

During the more than one-hour press conference, Messrs. Schmidt and Page also touched on some other topics:

• Apple: Mr. Schmidt said that he will talk to Apple about whether he should recuse himself from discussions of Apple’s operating system. “I recused myself from iPhone because it was a direct competitor,” he said. “There is no change at the moment.”

• Twitter: “We’ve talked about everything with Twitter,” Mr. Schmidt said. “We like Twitter a lot. We’re big fans of Twitter.” Mr. Page added that his previous comments about improving Google’s real-time search had been blown out of context. “I made some comments we could do a lot of things better. We could do a lot of things better.” He added that Google is seeking more data sources for real-time search but is not aiming to create a copycat of Twitter. “We have a rule of not doing what everybody else does,” Mr. Schmidt said.
• Twitter and Facebook: “We were worried that these guys might be competitors,” Mr. Schmidt said, “but it looks like people who use Twitter and Facebook start using Google more.”
• The economy: Mr. Schmidt said the mood at the conference was “sober, realistic.” He dubbed the current state of the economy “the new normal.” “The reality of the new normal is sinking in,” he said. “You run your inventories really tight, credit is not widely available, and you can’t waste money.”
• Android: Mr. Schmidt said that there are a lot of commonalities between Chrome and Google’s mobile operating system, Android. “Although it appears they are two separate projects, there’s a great deal of commonality,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Eventually they may merge even closer.”
• Online advertising: Display advertising “is something we’re working really hard on,” Mr. Page said. Mr. Schmidt said display advertising “is likely to be the next billion-dollar business at Google.”
• YouTube and Hulu: Mr. Schmidt said YouTube would like to have more of the kind of premium content deals that have fueled Hulu’s success. But he added that YouTube didn’t need to get the same shows as Hulu. “We can make money even if we don’t have the top TV shows,” he said. He declined to predict when YouTube would become profitable.
• Book Search: Mr. Schmidt said the Google books settlement is not being resubmitted because of antitrust concerns. “It’s in front of a judge,” he said. “I’m not sure we can renegotiate.” He added that “inevitably the thoughtful criticisms fall short because they don’t propose an alternative.”
• AOL: Mr. Schmidt said the discussions regarding Google’s buyback of its stake in AOL have been “friendly” and “straightforward.” “I don’t think it’s going to be an issue,” he said.
• MySpace: Mr. Schmidt declined to comment on whether Google would renew its $900 million MySpace deal on the same terms when it expires next year. He said “we haven’t broken the code yet” for monetizing social network search.
• TV Everywhere: Mr. Page was mildly optimistic about Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes’ TV Everywhere initiative. “Any way to solve rights issues are a good thing,” Mr. Page said.
• Bottled water: Mr. Page said that Google has eliminated bottled water from its campus. “We did a long analysis and discovered that reducing bottled water didn’t cause people to drink less water. So we got rid of water,” Mr. Page said. Mr. Schmidt disputed that, saying he’s sure he has seen some bottled water around the Googleplex.

Bloomberg News

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., left, walks with David DeVoe, News Corp. CFO, in Sun Valley, Wednesday.

Stuart Varney, Fox Business: Now the who’s who of media, technology and the investment world all gathering right now, gathering at the 27th annual Allen & Company Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. One of the biggest names there is News Corporation’s chairman and chief executive officer, Rupert Murdoch, who joins us right now.

Mr. Chairman, thanks very much for joining us. We appreciate it, sir.

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.: Fine. Good afternoon.

Varney: The story that is really buzzing all around the country and certainly here in New York, is that the News of the World, a News Corporation newspaper in Britain, used…

Murdoch: I’m not talking about that issue at all today. I’m sorry.

Varney: OK. No worries, Mr. Chairman. That’s fine with me.

Murdoch: (Inaudible)

Varney: OK.

Murdoch: I’m sorry.

Varney: That’s all right, sir. Media attitudes towards President Obama, do you think there is a switch? Do you perceive a switch from very much a supportive attitude to perhaps a little bit more critical?

Murdoch: Not yet. I think it will come in time. I think the media is pretty — apart from The Wall Street Journal and Fox News and a few of our outlets, it has been very — it remains very supportive of him, perhaps not of all of his policies.

I’ve seen attacks in the Financial Times that he’s not tough enough or left wing enough. On the other hand, you know, I think when the mood of the public sees unemployment go above 10% before Christmas, things like that, if the bad things happen that are predicted, I think it’s inevitable the public mood will change.

Varney: Do you have a feeling about President Obama’s strategy in dealing with this recession, which is really to use the government as the agent of change? A lot of government spending, taxes increasing coming down the road at us, do you have an opinion on that as to whether that’s the right thing to do to get us out of this problem?

Murdoch: Yes. I think, you know, some of the stuff he had to do and is correct. But basically the methodology, which is saying, well, here is $800 billion or whatever, let Congress work out how to spend it, I think that’s crazy. I think that leads to tremendous waste.

Varney: Now this conference…

Murdoch: It’s much more important for him to go and say, look, here’s $100 billion for education, here’s my policy how to reform education, how to spend this money, and I’ll fight for it whatever the teachers union says or whatever the Congress says. He would have a lot more public support and a lot more effect.

Varney: What’s the opinion of the other people at that conference? I mean, they’re the movers and the shakers, certainly, the media and the technology industries.

Murdoch: Well, there has not been a lot of politics talk really. But I was — I’m shocked at the business mood, which is talking about either that we’re at the bottom of the recession or we’re going lower, but that it’s going to take years and years, like five years at least, before we see any real growth coming out of this.

Varney: That’s the mood of that conference. They’re not optimistic, then? There’s…

Murdoch: I would say the conference is definitely — you know, it’s a very bearish — very bearish.

Varney: May I ask you about making money out of digital? That seems to be a big problem in the Internet area. How do you take…

Murdoch: Yes.

Varney: …your analog dollars and turn them into digital dollars? Has anybody got any good answers there at that conference?

Murdoch: Yes, we have the answer. We’re doing it now very well at The Wall Street Journal. You’ve got the wallstreetjournal.com and you pay for it. And there is 1.25 million people nearly who are doing that. And we get a lot of advertising with it. It’s a big business for us.

And no one else has had the nerve to do that yet. And I think, you know, we’re very specialized there and people in finance or with investments probably need us more than they need, you know, an ordinary local newspaper.

But I do believe you’re going to see — and we have a lot of plans I’m not ready to disclose yet, to really lead the newspaper industry into monetizing what it has. It’s true what people say, the distribution of news, it gets cheaper every day because of new technology.

And one day you won’t need printing presses or paper. But you’ve still got to have something to move, and that — i.e. content, the news itself. And that can’t come free.

Varney: There has been some speculation that maybe News Corp…

Murdoch: It’s not because we don’t want it to be free, it just costs money.

Varney: Yes. Some speculation that News Corporation wants to introduce a Kindle-like electronic reader which would mean News Corporation is getting into the hardware business as opposed to just purely the content business.

Would you comment on that.

Murdoch: Yes. I don’t think that’s likely. We’re looking and talking to a lot of laboratories and big companies around the world like Sony, Fujitsu, Samsung. We’re all working on wireless readers for books or for newspapers or for magazines.

I think they’re a year or two away, being marketed in a mass way, high quality ones. And we will be absolutely neutral. We’re very happy to have our products distributed over any device provided it’s only going to subscribers who are paying for it.

Varney: Rupert Murdoch, chairman, chief executive officer of News Corporation, parent of this company, of course, this network. Thank you very much for joining us, sir. We do appreciate it.

Murdoch: Thank you. Thanks very much.

Varney: Thank you, sir.

MORE: Schmidt Didn’t Want to Build Chrome Initially, He Says, Photos From Sun Valley

Associated Press

As part of a new deal announced Thursday with consumer-electronics retailer Best Buy, TiVo said Best Buy will promote TiVo products by “substantially” increasing its marketing of TiVo’s recording device.

Best Buy also plans to add TiVo’s digital recorder to its Insignia lineup of high-definition TVs, as well as technology to funnel advertising to TiVo users. Financial details of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo has been knocked for how little it spends on marketing itself, a recent byproduct of cost-cutting efforts. TiVo’s sales and marketing spending fell 5% in its fiscal quarter ended April 30, as it slashed costs to regain profitability.

As a consequence, TiVo now relies on deals like the one it struck with Best Buy to use its marketing resources more efficiently.

TiVo Senior Vice President Joe Miller said TiVo is looking to strike similar promotional deals with the bevy of other electronics retailers selling its digital video recorder.

“Best Buy is the first time we’ve had this kind of relationship, which is very unique on multiple levels,” Miller said. “Other retailers can add this level too.”

Best Buy is trying to use the TiVo deal to help differentiate its consumer-electronics products from the array of competitors by adding a sought-after feature. Shares of both companies were up in Thursday afternoon trading.

Herdict

HerdictWeb, a site run by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, collects outage reports around the world.

Take, for example, Wednesday, when some Chinese Internet users began reporting an inability to access Amazon.com, the U.S. Web site for the online retail giant. Yet Amazon spokesman Craig Berman said that “nothing happened.”

To back up the claim in blog posts and Twitter discussions, Chinese Internet users and watchers pointed to Herdict Web, a four-month-old system run by the Berkman Center at Harvard University, which aggregates reports of Web site accessibility into one database. On Wednesday, 12 reports on Herdict claimed Amazon.com was inaccessible in China, and as of the time of this posting three claim it is back up. The reports came from users all over the country, including people whose Internet service providers are in Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Ningbo and Tianjin.

They didn’t report any trouble accessing Amazon’s Chinese site Joyo.

Amid the recent unrest in China’s Xinjiang Province, people have been reporting inaccessibility for many sites that normally make it past the country’s notorious Great Firewall, including Facebook and Twitter. Sites come up and go down in China all of the time; YouTube has been largely blocked since March.

But talk of an Amazon.com outage left many people scratching their heads. If the government was behind it, what could be its issue with Amazon? China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment.

Amazon’s denial adds to the mystery. Berman characterized claims of an outage as “rumors.”

Laura Miyakawa, the project manager for Herdict, stands by her site’s reports of the outage. “All the data that we post is coming directly from users in those countries,” she said. “Assuming what we are receiving is what people are seeing, we are getting a good read.”

Herdict is fast becoming the de facto source of information on Internet filtering around the world, with 25,000 unique visitors per month. Miyakawa said she’s not aware so far of any blatant misuse of Herdict. Since outages are self-reported, it is possible that users could be entering false information, or be facing issues other than government filtering, ranging from problems with their own computers to problems with their local ISP.

But the benefit of Herdict, points out Miyakawa, is that all of those reports get aggregated, and the anomalies usually get weeded out.

Russ Taylor was looking for a very good espresso machine.

Amazon.com/russtaylor.info

A screenshot from reader Russ Taylor, of the Amazon listings in question.

So the Atlanta lawyer did what many of us would — he surfed to Amazon.com and began trolling user reviews for high-end espresso makers.

On the DeLonghi Perfecta Digital Super-Automatic Espresso Machine, an $1,800 metallic blue machine with a built-in burr grinder and five coffee-strength settings, he saw that user “T. Carpenter,” a self-described “espresso addict,” raved about the product. Then he saw that the same user had posted an ecstatic writeup for another, less-expensive DeLonghi model. Could it be that the espresso addict had two high-end machines?

As he chronicles on his blog, he clicked on the Amazon reviewer’s profile. (It has since been taken down by Amazon.) Taylor found that “T. Carpenter” was indeed a gadget aficionado, having written 12 reviews. All for DeLonghi products, and all raves rated with 5 stars.

He did a Google search and found that a Tara Carpenter was employed as a communications manager with the company. (Screenshots are on his blog.) He says he notified DeLonghi customer service and received a cursory email with no response to his specific questions regarding the reviews. So he contacted us.

We called DeLonghi, where a representative confirmed that Tara Carpenter is employed by DeLonghi and did write the reviews. The company issued the following response:

The Amazon.com guidelines “prohibit positive reviews for products in which the author has a financial investment in,” and for that reason only, the reviews were removed from the Amazon website. While T. Carpenter did not personally gain any financial stake in the process, we have since opted to respond to on line reviews in a more official capacity using the vendor response platform provided by Amazon to clarify product use and care issues, or address specific compliments or suggestions by the consumer community.

We find no false statements in any of the reviews posted by T. Carpenter. Our employees are passionate about the products we make and sell and this is a quality we are quite proud of in all our associates.

Carpenter will continue to be employed at DeLonghi.

Amazon user reviews are a powerful tool for shoppers. And companies know it. (Belkin experienced a similar snafu for faking positive reviews.) The thought that some would masquerade as objective users is upsetting to Taylor and poses a problem for Amazon, which hosts millions of user reviews and strives to keep them all legit.

Amazon guidelines for reviews state that a customer needs to have made a purchase on the site. They’re filtered for naughty things and allow readers to flag sketchy listings, which are then reviewed and removed, if necessary. Ratings themselves are also graded for how helpful they were, creating an incentive for constructive feedback.

They also prohibit “the use of the Service for commercial purposes such as advertising, promotion, or solicitation” and “the impersonation of any person or entity or forging of any email communication or any part of a message.”

Amazon has to police a huge and exponentially growing space. So it’s up to shoppers to take any star rating or comment with a grain of salt. The real-life equivalent would be questioning someone standing outside a store yelling “shop here!”

“I think the majority of reviews are fantastic reviews,” Russell Dicker, Amazon’s senior manager of community content, says.

Dicker declined to comment on specifics of how Amazon spots phony listings for security reasons. (The U.S. Mint isn’t going to tell us all the things that make a dollar bill special, either.) “Making reviews helpful and making them a pristine source of consumer opinion is incredibly important to us,” he says.

And as for Taylor and his espresso machine hunt?

“I’m still looking around,” he says.