One and two-letter ‘.co.uk’ domain names were madeavailableby Nominet last December, and as wereportedback in June, Google was attempting to buy g.co.uk, but was up against at least one other company in its quest to secure the domain. Other big brands had previously been granted their single letter domain – for example, Yahoo! secured y.co.uk, whilst Virgin had nabbed V.co.uk. Domains that weren’t covered by trademarks and with more than one applicant went to auction and, as the Telegraphreportstoday, Facebook, Google and Mercedez Benz were among the big digital brands seeking to stake their claim to the new ....

A scheduled Google maintenance update for its Blogger platform has seemingly brought down the search giant’s popular blogging service, with the main site now inaccessible and all blogs using the site placed into read-only mode whilst engineers work to bring the service back to normal. On Monday, Google posted to theBlogger Status Blog(and it’sofficial Twitter account) to warn users that “Blogger will go into read-only mode Wednesday (5/11) 10:00PM PST for about an hour for maintenance”....

Google has announced a new Android@Home initiative at Google I/O today. The system consists of open source libraries that will enable developers to build apps that can discover, connect and communicate with devices and appliances in the home. This framework makes Google’s own home automation service that developers can build using the newAndroid Open Accessory API’s. The API’s will allow Android devices to access and control items in the home like lights and speakers....

Users of Google’s popular Picasa photo storage platform will now notice that the amount of free space on their account has suddenly increased, with some storage indicators falling drastically overnight. InstantFundas indicatesthis is because Google implemented an update to its Picasa service, adapting the way it handles photo uploads, potentially unlocking an option that could see many Picasa users take advantage of unlimited photo and video uploads. The changes were detailed by a Google employee who was responding to queries regarding the drop in total storage space used on Picasa accounts,noting:...

Google has justannouncedthat it’s rolling out a new security option for its accounts – 2-step verification. Here’s how it works: When the new option is switched on, you log into your account as normal with your password. Google then asks you to enter a code. You can ask Google to call you with the code, send you an SMS message or give you the choice to generate the code for yourself using a mobile app on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device....