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Google would like you to use two-factor authentication for their Gmail service to help prevent unauthorized access. Using this extra layer of security can protect you and your data, which makes it sound like a good idea. The advice comes after the recent publication of Mat Honan’s tragic and life changing, account hack thee have been many changes to the way that the companies involved do business. While we sympathize with Mat completely we are actually kind of glad that it was someone of note that had this happen. If this had been a regular consumer it is unlikely that Google, Apple, or Amazon would have done anything to fix these issues. In fact most of the issues that allowed this hack to happen have been in place for a very long time.

The Company that is behind the Steam download platform is set to open its distribution system to non-gaming software. They stated that “... the first set of software titles is heading to Steam, marking a major expansion to the platform most commonly known as a leading destination for PC and Mac games.”. The change was made becasue our customers requested it, Mark Richardson,  Valve’s business development representative said “The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games, They have told us they would like to have more of their software on Steam, so this expansion is in response to those customer requests.”

One of the thing things that we find interesting in many leaks and even official documents about upcoming products is the use of percentages and multipliers without much real data. We saw this with Microsoft and their performance claims for Windows 8’s new desktop and 3D graphics performance. They used a ton of percentages and yet forgot to list the hardware they were comparing or any of the raw numbers. Not too long after that we saw ARM claim a base 50% performance increase with their next generation Mali GPUs over their current generation Mali GPUs. Again we do not have any real numbers or the basis for these claims. Unfortunately for ARM even a 50% performance increase will not make their next gen faster than some of their competition.

Correction 8-09-2012 Google has contacted us wityh ammedned figures on their earnings. We have adjusted the article to reflect the correct numbers.

Last year Google's UK subsidiary made a pofit of £3.95bn ($6.182 Billion USD)  £395 Million for which they have to pay only £6m ($9.4 Million USD) in taxes. If you recalculate that to a tax rate it works out to only around 0.15%, or £1.519  1.5% or £15.19 for every million pounds in turnover (about $23 USD). It is certain that this tally will fire up critisism over how much the search giant contributes to the UK's coffers. According to figures in The Telegraph, in the six years up to 2010 Google handed over only £8m in total. However, the 2011 payment is a jump in corporate tax for the company which might have been triggered by the ongoing monetary crysis. Last year Google had to pay £935,000, against £2.39bn £239m of revenue.