Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin tweeted this morning to announce that Google is now activating 500,000 devices each day, a 100,000 increase since it’slast announcementat Google I/O in May. Rubin’s tweetalso states that Android activations are growing at 4.4% week on week: There are now over 500,000 Android devices activated every day, and it’s growing at 4.4% w/w Google’s huge rise will have been helped by the launch of Honeycomb-powered tablets as Motorola, Samsung and HTC, with its Gingerbread tablet, try to make inroads into Apple’s iPad dominance....

Google hasannounceda nice tweak to the way it displays images in its main search display. Analysing your search query for “High image intent”, it will now know when you’re searching for images and display a larger grid of images in the results without you having to head into the Image Search section. Additionally, taking inspiration from last year’srevampof Google Image Search, the row of image results at the top of many results pages will now display in a tile format, with a nice ‘pop-out’ effect when you hover over them....

Google has just rolled out anew featurethat allows users to search-as-you-type while using Google labs. The feature is in the settings page which filters the visible labs you type. Have you ever found it just a little bit tricky to find what you were looking for on theGmail Labs Settings page? Scrolling was ok when there were a handful of Labs, but now that there are over 50 it’s another story....

Google has been busy announcing its latest computing innovation, the Chromebook.Available to consumersby way of Samsung and Acer, Google has also announced that businesses, governments and schools in seven countries will be able to take advantage of these notebooks for a flat fee each month. With corporate environments struggling to update numerous versions of Windows, Google received 50,000 applications from companies to test the CR-48 series of Chromebooks, with a few hundred getting the opportunity....

Google has launched a new scheme to help consumers identify quality retailers. As theannouncementexplains, TheTrusted Storesprogram awards a badge to e-commerce sites that “demonstrate a track record of on-time shipping and excellent customer service.” When users visit a Trusted Stores member, they can hover over a badge on the site to view metrics on its shipping and customer service performance. Google is offering optional, free purchase protection for up to $1000 for consumers using sites participating in the scheme....