Google’s instant site preview thumbnails havedivided opinionsince theylaunchedlast November and now the company hasrolled them outto mobile browsers too, albeit in rather pleasingly different way. On Android (2.2+) and iOS (4.0+) devices, search results now have a small magnifying glass icon next to them. Tap that and a separate screen of preview thumbnails is revealed, allowing you to get a visual idea of the pages you’ll be clicking through to....

With reports that Google’s Groupon competitor Google Offers has gotten off to a slow start, the company has announced another acquisition in the Daily Deals space, snapping up German deal siteDailyDeal. The Berlin-based deals website was founded in September 2009 by brothers Fabian and Ferry Heilemann, with reported sales of 252,000 vouchers in the first three months of 2011. The company has already expanded outside of Germany to Austria and Switzerland, with the Austrian website already surpassing Groupon in the country – according to Fabian Heilemann....

Google has bought UK price comparison websiteBeatThatQuote.com, acquiring the web property for £37.7 million earlier today. John Paleomylites, Managing Director of the newly acquired company, took to the website to announce the deal, posting: BeatThatQuote.com was sold to Google for GBP37.7 million. We think this deal is a tremendous opportunity for our company to develop new and innovative options for personal finance in the UK. Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google....

This week sawGoogle Buzzhit its first birthday. No-one seemed to notice the anniversary, and that got me to thinking just how little long-term impact Buzz has made following its high-profilelaunchon 9 February 2010. On paper, Buzz sounded like an exciting evolution of microblogging. The location-aware discussion and content sharing service seemed like a step forward from Twitter’s text-centric approach. Yet despite the hype around Google’s first real social media play, privacy concerns dogged its first few days as the service automatically imported contacts from Gmail to be your Buzz friends, a ‘helpful’ feature that led tolawsuits....

“Oh, hello there!” I said to my shiny newGoogle Calendarthis morning. Google has been busy revamping its products to reflect its new look, likely in celebration of its massiveGoogle +social push. Here’s a screen shot of the new look: Starting today, you’ll notice a fresh new look for Google Calendar, whichGoogle saysis the first in a series of changes to make their products “more consistent and intuitive so your experience is more enjoyable and productive....