Google’s reported plan to buy WhatsApp for $1 billion would really tick off Facebook

Google (GOOG) and WhatsApp have reportedly been locked in negotiations about an acquisition for more than a month — and WhatsApp is pushing for nearly $1 billion valuation, Digital Trendsrecently reported. This sounds like a huge number, but even though WhatsApp has not released its user base estimate, it is widely assumed to be more than 300 million. This past New Year’s Eve,WhatsApp processed more than 11 billion outbound messages. The company has started counting outbound and inbound messages separately due to the popularity of its group chat feature that has been one of the cornerstones of its franchise. WhatsApp has become a massively popular service on all continents, but it is particularly big in Europe and Latin America where its market penetration among smartphone users tops 80% in countries including Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Germany.

[More from BGR: Sony’s PS Vita comeback continues as Wii U flails]

However, there is one recent trend that explains why WhatsApp might be considering selling out right now: several rival messaging services have managed to gain apparent locks on major Asian markets such as China (WeChat), Korea (KakaoTalk) and Japan (LINE). Attempting to challenge any of these giants could require really deep pockets and major investments in areas like social gaming and location-based services, which are quickly becoming hugely popular add-ons for Asian messaging champions. As mighty as WhatsApp seems in Europe, Latin America and the United States, there is a small chance that the Asian challengers could leverage their gaming expertise to undermine it in coming years.

[More from BGR: iPhone said to be too pricey for Europeans]

For both Google and Facebook (FB), essentially missing the messaging app revolution of 2010-2013 is a huge embarrassment. Google, of course, debuted the enormously popular Gmail service more than a half a decade ago and went on to vanquish the once formidable Hotmail service. Facebook’s messaging feature has also been very popular for years. Perhaps the very success of these two platforms blinded Google and Facebook to the necessity of creating separate mobile messaging apps.

Facebook is now trying to fix its neglect in the messaging app space by binding text-messaging and photo-messaging tightly to Facebook messaging and placing the whole package smack in the center ofits new Home service for Android phones. It would be a bitter blow for Facebook if Google could trumpet the acquisition of WhatsApp just when Facebook is trying to catch up in the messaging wars.

WhatsApp has a reputation for fierce independence and an ironclad anti-advertising philosophy. Selling out to a mobile ad champ like Google would be completely at odds with the company image — but a billion dollars have been known to turn a head or two. It would remain to be seen how WhatsApp fans would react to a Google takeover and how big the backlash over privacy issues would be. It is 100% certain that such a backlash would follow the acquisition.

For Google, the purchase would suddenly open delicious opportunities not only in the messaging app market, but also in the mobile game industry. Google could try to quickly revamp WhatsApp into a social game platform and thus copy the highly successful formula that Line and KakaoTalk have used to morph their messaging apps into major mobile game marketing machines. This combined with the Facebook Home program might actually be the two triggers for the negotiations.

The acquisition would definitely give Apple (AAPL) some food for thought. The closed messaging system on the iPhone and iPad already runs the risk of getting left behind due to its proprietary nature.

Android App Manager (Free)

Do you have device memory management issues?
Do you want to get notification when newly installed app can be moved?
Do you want to auto clear all applications cache on start-up?
App Manager is smart app for smart users.
App Manager helps you to manage applications easily by providing categorized application view as Movable, Internal, External and Installer

There are many app management related apps, so why chose this one ?
- It is simple and well designed. Try it. It's simply the best at what it does.

Features:
★ Manage applications separately, categorized as Movable (Move2SD), Internal, External and Installer
★ Move installed applications to either internal or external storage via default android system settings
★ Install applications directly from the external media (SD card)
★ Quick way to export all installed applications to the external media (SD card)
★ View system (built-in) applications
★ One tap to clear all app cache
★ Easy way to view Battery usage information
★ Enable/Disable Notification to notify movable newly installed app
★ Sort apps in ascending or descending order based on it's name, data size, code size, cache size or total size
★ View available and total storage space on internal (Phone) and external (SD card) media.
★ Share app and it's Google Play link through Bluetooth, Email, Message, Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter etc.
Android Apps are in APK format. App Manager makes it easy to import/export APK files. One can install the app by simply running APK file.
Disclaimer: App Manager does not intended to copy licensed Apps.

Note:
* If app uses any of the following features, it cannot be installed on the external storage.
* App Widgets, Services, Input Method Engines, Live Wallpapers, Live Folders, Alarm Services, Account Managers, Sync Adapters, Device Administrators.
* No Notification Ads - we don't use any notification ads.

* Movable feature does not works with devices: Galaxy S3, Note 2, Galaxy Nexus, Tablets

TAG: battery info, uninstaller, manager, auto cache cleaner, app assistance, cache eraser, App2SD, App to SD, move to sd,

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Gmail goes Down for some time Today

Gmail goes Down for some time Today When it comes to email, Gmail is the leading email service provider today. Powered by Google, gmail also known as Google Mail, is used for its simplicity and trustworthiness. But since Google also depends on electronic servers it would be wrong to say that it can’t go down. Today morning (that is around 2 hrs earlier from this post), Gmail was reported down for both consumers and enterprise users making use of google servers. The issue was reported on Twitter widely by the users however the reason behind this issue is still not clear. The gmail outage stayed for around 10 minutes after which Gmail came back and started operating fine. Although outage of ten minutes is not a huge time but when it comes to google and its email, the effect worldwide would be massive. For sure, it must have affected the email delivery and communication in this brief outage period of Gmail.

PNR & Indian Rail Enquiry PRO (Android app)

View App Tutorial

PNR & Indian Rail Enquiry (PRO) is ad free & fully functional android app with beautiful UI and quick access to Indian Railways information ANYTIME ANYWHERE. It helps to plan trips, track trains and PNR numbers.

Features:

★ Know PNR Status
★ Offline feature- load last successful pnr status (Pro Only)
★ Improved Find Trains [between stations] (Pro Only)
★ PNR History [Refresh all pnr status (Pro Only)]
★ PNR Status Notifier (Pro Only)
★ Book Tickets By IRCTC
★ Seat Availability
★ Train Fare Enquiry
★ Arrivals / Departures
★ Train Schedule [Save schedule (Pro Only)]
★ Train Running Status
★ Favorite Trains

★NOTES
* PNR & Indian Rail Enquiry Pro does not require the extra permissions required for ads
* PNR & Indian Rail Enquiry Pro does not require the extra ad required files and is therefore a smaller file
* PNR & Indian Rail Enquiry Pro uses less memory and cpu because no ads are shown
* PNR & Indian Rail Enquiry Pro uses less bandwidth and data because no ads are shown

App also facilitate to share travel details with friends and family members.
* Refer to legend to know codes and it's description.

What you feel ! give your valuable feedback & rate us.
We heartily appreciate our pro user's suggestions.
also report bugs/errors for improvement if any. info.irobotz@gmail.com

TAG: PNR, train running status, train, rail, ticket, arrival, departure, fare, schedule, ticket booking, inquiry, offline PNR status, offline train schedule, pnr status notification

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Android Developers From India Can Now Sell Paid Apps In The Play Store

Following the addition of a number of countries way back in April, Google has updated the Google Play for Developers site to indicate that developers in India can now sell apps on the Play Store. Obviously, this is a big deal. Not only because India is the second-most populous nation on earth, but because mobile technology and software development have absolutely exploded there. Android is absolutely dominating the country thanks to budget handsets.

Doubtless, many developers in India have greatly anticipated this day. India joins a list that now includes 32 countries, though this is inarguably the biggest addition in some time.


Google Play for Developers Support

Rediff Launches News App For Android

Rediff.com India Limited has announced the launch of the Rediff News application for Android hand-held devices. Rediff.com’s Android news app can be downloaded from Google Play by visiting rediff.com/newsapp on mobile phones and tablets running on the Android OS. 

The app offers readers access to a collection of the latest stories across Rediff’s News, Business, Movies, Sports, and Get Ahead sections, in a tiled interface and comes with an option to enable or disable images, and an offline mode to read all the content.

Article Interface: One can tap on any specific tile to view the respective story. We noticed that the app only provides an excerpt for the story with a link to read the full article. Tapping on the link opens the article in an in-app browser, allowing one to read the article and view slideshows (if any). Since this is an official Rediff app, we believe Rediff should’ve removed the additional step to access an article and rendered the full article within the app itself. Rediff should focus on delivering a good app experience rather than looking to garner extra pageviews.

Sharing of Articles: We quite liked the fact that the app allowed us to share articles through Android’s default share intent option, since it will enable users to share any specific article through various apps installed on their Android phones, rather than sticking to a specific sharing mechanism.

Besides this, there is a small refresh button at the top and a small gears icon which opens the setting menu to offer various customization options like the ability to turn off image downloading to reduce data usage, and play a sound alert for every update notification, although there is currently no option to customize the sound alert. The app also allows one to set a specific refresh time (1hr, 3 hrs, 6 hrs, Daily, Manual) for the app, although we were glad that the app was set to manual refresh by default.

Quora Finally Releases An Android App

Quora connects you to everything you want to know about.

Quora for Android makes it easy to get the information you need, wherever you are. With your Quora account, you can ask and answer questions, connect with friends, and follow topics to get updates in your feed.

FEATURES:
• Find an answer right away with fast, voice-enabled search
• Add Quora to your phone search for integrated results
• Stay up-to-date with rich push notifications
• Install the widget to see a feed of the best answers on Quora right now
• Share interesting Quora content with friends on any social service you use

NOTES:
Quora is only for English-language content at this time. In order to promote transparency and authenticity, we require that everyone have a Quora account using their real, full name.