Google Product Search was already useful, but the addition of local inventory info makes it even better still. The new feature works on the iPhone and any PalmOS or Android device. Just search for Shopping results and Google will return not just pricing information for the item in question, but it will tell you which retailers have it nearby and whether they’ve got it in stock or not.

That saves you a trip and the cost of gas. The problem right now is that only a few retail partners are signed up. There are some major ones like Best Buy, Sears, and Williams-Sonoma, but the feature needs more participation from both big stores and local merchants. We are sure that will happen given some time.

Buzzie, the first iPhone app aimed at users of Google’s new social networking tool Google Buzz is now in the iTunes App store. The app allows non-Buzz users to tune into Buzz conversations in their local area without logging into the service.

Once logged in, you can start conversations, or join in with your followers. You can also mark your Buzz as private or public and decide whether you want to publish your location, which is selected using the iPhone’s GPS.

Rupert Murdoch hates Google. The publishing giant and Google have been at each other over Google’s book scanning program and the fact that Murdoch owns many of the newspapers whose stories are indexed by Google and then offered to readers free.

Murdoch thinks that we should all be thrilled to pay to read online news just as we pay for newspapers. Google has a new patent that will really make Murdoch unhappy. The patent is titled “Segmenting Printed Media Pages Into Articles.”

Google has announced the latest stage in their plans to accelerate broadband speeds, with a plan to offer 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections for between 50,000 and 500,000 people across the US. The planned service is described as “competitive” and the network would offer connections about 100 times the speed of the current average US broadband.

Once the new system is in place, Google is hoping to experiment with new uses of high-speed connectivity, like bandwidth-intensive apps and services, together with looking at the physical ways in which fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is deployed.

The Google press conference we heard about on Tuesday, as expected, brought us a new social networking “widget” called Google Buzz. The new feature integrates into Google Gmail with almost no setup whatsoever and provides a way to share and keep up on information with friends or the general public.

By going to the Google Buzz website users can quickly add Buzz to there Gmail account where they can see a feed of posts from others and posts their own statuses, all integrated with the existing Gmail inbox. Users can choose to share these with just their closest friends through the application or to everyone. Google even gets users started by automatically having them follow the contacts they chat and email with currently through Gmail and Google Talk.

Interpreting languages can be a real challenge. It’s especially difficult for frequent overseas travelers or those who converse with foreign clients over the phone. Google wants to make things easier with smartphone translator software that will instantly convert the words you speak from one language to another while on the phone.

They’ve been doing it for some time with text translation, and now speech-to-speech translation is possible with ‘high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition’ only. The idea is that the users phone would adapt to the user by learning their style of talking and make it easier to translate in real time.

[GW]

Looks like Google Street View may be expanding. Apparently a New York retailer named Oh Nuts, allowed some people from Google to come into the store and take pictures of the inside, every 6 feet, in all directions. Pictures of the items on display were also taken.

Apparently its for a new Google Maps feature called “Google Store View”. Google Store Views will allow people to basically walk into the store from Google Street Views. So imagine you are looking at the store, and then you can click on the door to enter, all on Google Maps.

As we told you yesterday, Google took a stand against the Chinese government by refusing to censor their search results. Well, it looks like some citizens are already in mourning.

Chinese citizens have been placing flowers on the Google logo as if it were a gravestone. And it just may be if the Chinese government decides they don’t like Google’s stance.

Google has made a bold statement today and most would say that it is about time. It has announced that it will no longer censor search results on the Chinese version of the search engine. Apparently they are serious about it, even if it ends in the shut down of Google.cn. It seems that enough is finally enough. From the Official Google Blog:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Those outdated billboards in Google Street View are not just outdated, but they’re an opportunity for Google, who has filed a patent entitled “Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising,”. The patent should allow them to cut out billboards shown in Street View and replace them with their own current ads.

Apparently this would be done by working with whoever owns the space. For instance a theater owner could keep the posters out front up to date at all times. We can’t think of any other way in which this would work, since they are putting ads on other people’s property without permission. It’s an interesting move by the big G.

Want to find a local coffee shop? Maybe you need a new restaurant. As usual, Google can help. The big G has introduced local search for iPhone and Android phones.

Now when you’re on Google’s page on your mobile browser, just hit the “near me now” link to bring up search results that are near your location. Find coffee and ATMs easily at long last. Pretty soon we will get completely lost without our phones to the point where we will be zombies during service outages.

Google is expected to release it’s own mobile phone in a press conference schedule for today, going by the name of Nexus One. The new phone will be the first to actually be sold by Google and will also run Google’s very own Android software stack for mobile devices.

The Nexus One is rumored to also become available through the T-Mobile and their wireless carrier network in addition to the unlocked version direct from Google. The Android software has already been available on a number of mobile phones starting back in 2008 with a device from HTC. The device Google is introducing today is expected to also be from HTC, touting a 3.7 inch touch screen, 5-megapixel camera and a Snapdragon processor.

The specs for Google’s Chrome OS netbook have leaked. Spoiler alert: It’s looking good. Apparently the Google netbook will pack the Nvidia Tegra platform with an ARM CPU. Some other specs include a 10.1″ multi-touch HD screen, 64GB SSD, 2GB of RAM, Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, a webcam etc.

Obviously, the netbook will run Chrome OS and come with a bunch of Google Apps. Maybe a dedicated “I’m feeling lucky” button.(Okay, I made that last part up.)

There may be a Google-branded netbook on the way soon. Google has been talking about working with a bunch of manufacturers in order to be sure its Chrome OS runs well and now on top of that, multiple sources say that Google will hire an unnamed netbook maker to build a device specifically for Chrome OS.

Word is that we might see this gBook as soon as next Christmas. And by that time there will be more tiny and powerful processors to choose from, which will give this net-connected laptop some real power.

Has anyone noticed the somewhat hidden countdown timer on Google’s main page? You don’t see it until you hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button without anything to search for. Then it mysteriously shows up.

In US time, the timer ends at the New Year, but obviously that isn’t it. What else is going on with Google that they might want to announce? The launch of the Google Nexus One perhaps? That’s what our money is on.