Looks like both TomTom and Garmin might be having a bit of a bad day to put it mildly, thanks to the announcement of Google Maps Navigation. As the graph shows, things are not looking good. Nope. Not at all.

GPS makers can at least take some comfort in the fact that the new Google Maps Navigation is available on Android 2.0 at the moment, which requires you to have a specific phone to download the maps real time. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

Word is that Google is planning to launch a music service and according to sources quoted by TechCrunch, the company is securing content from major labels right now. One source calls the service “Google Audio”.

It’s unclear if this music platform will be download-based like iTunes, or streaming-based like Pandora, but apparently it will be available to “at least” the US. Google already has a music service in China that lets users download tracks for free, and it has a music search engine that can be accessed by typing “music:” before your query in the search box. However when you access a song that way they aren’t available to listen to.

Google has now started public testing by invitation only of Wave, a new online tool for communication and collaboration between people online. Wave has been described by its designer as what email would look like if it was invented today, and contains real-time communication through text, photos, video, maps and more according to Google.

The communication using the Wave tool is live somewhat like an instant messenger allowing users to see others edits as they make them, character by character. Should a users not be online at the same time, the communications will still be available to view at a later date, much like emails waiting in your inbox.

A New York District Court judge on Thursday announced the delay of the Google Book Search hearing and instead will hold a status conference on the scheduled October 7th date. Google Book Search is a settlement case that has been pending for more than four years between Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The deal would allow Google to digitize millions of out-of-print, coprighted books and make them available for sale to readers online. The authors and publishers of the books would share in sales and advertising profits.

The delay from judge Denny Chin comes due to a recommendation from the Department of Justice who felt that the settlement proposal violates copyright, class-action and antitrust regulations. Chin stated that the hearing currently “makes no sense…as it does not appear the current settlement will be the operative one.”

Google announced on Wednesday that the company has acquired reCAPTCHA, a company with an online product used for providing a test that humans can pass and computers generally cannot. A CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) tool is used in many places on the internet and often when submitting information to ensure that it is a human submitting the information and not some bot software filling out forms automatically on the internet.

A CAPTCHA program would provide text that is not easily and usually impossible for a automated character recognition program to decipher, but easy enough that a human could identify the letters in the text. The person submitting the information would then enter the text they see to “prove” that they are human and not a machine.

On Monday Google released a new online service to the public called Fast Flip on the companies experimental Google Labs site. The new tool is designed to allow users to see full pages of different magazines and newspapers more as if they were physically viewing them by allowing them to flip through the pages, which it kind of does.

The Fast Flip page is laid out into into sections of popularity, topics and even some particular sources. Static images of the pages of different articles are then shown for the section you are looking for that you can click on. Clicking them shows a larger static image on the page, but not necessarily all of it. You can then move back and forth to static pages of other articles on the subject, or click the source you are viewing again to actually get the web page.

On Monday Google unveiled what they are calling a “next-generation infrastructure” for their web search, and they are asking the public to give it a try. The “secret” project has been underway for months according to a recent post on the Google Indexing blog, and is almost complete. According to the post, the new system “…will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions”.

Google has codenamed the new underlying search indexing “caffeine”, and is looking for the general public to give it a try and provide feedback in the way of differences between the new and old. The new indexing can be tried out at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, where you can do a search and see if you can tell any difference in the results. According to the blog post from Google, they are only looking for feedback in differences at this time.

It’s finally here. Chrome OS will be an open source platform that can “power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems,” and they claim the OS will be virus free and run a newly-designed windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

It will be capable of running on x86 and ARM chips. It’s separate from Android, but there will be some overlap in concept and functionality between the two platforms. A large chunk of its Google Apps suite already supports an offline mode, so it’s all ready to go. The company says it’s currently working with several OEM manufacturers and it will initially appear on a number of netbooks coming to market sometime in the second half of 2010.

What’s this? A branded myTouch 3G? Yep. The first T-mobile branded MyTouch 3G shots in the wild. Can a launch be behind? Maybe. Who knows when.

According to the poster on Android Forums, this device was handed out by someone at Google, not T-Mobile. Not much else going on here though. It looks like a nice successor to the G1.

It hasn’t really been a secret that Google wants into the ebook market. Now it’s happening. Tom Turvey (Google’s director of strategic partnerships) says that the program will be ready by the end of 2009. Details are still a bit scarce, but according to The New York Times, the plan involves selling the books at prices set by the publisher.

This is a departure to the rather strict Amazon pricing guidelines that sees most Kindle titles selling for $9.99 (Many publishers don’t like that). Also, the company will be selling readers online access to the titles. This means that access to your books won’t be limited just to a specific device, but it will require Internet access and some sort of off-line caching.

The British Broadcasting Corporation which brings us such cool programs as Top Gear, Doctor Who and Planet Earth, is said to be in talks with Google to bring their VOD service to America. Anyone who has ever watched and enjoyed the BBC’s programming knows that this is a good thing.

The BBC produces a bunch of channels that have a wide variety of content and many of these programs never make their way to BBC America, which pretty much just shows fluff. Good news indeed. Once you’ve seen enough English programming, you start to realize just how terrible our own shows are in the states.

Google wave should be making waves in no time. Think of it like a live chatroom with a spread of documents, photos and/or videos, where you can reply to any part of any message or anything that’s shared, and it all operates in real-time. Basically TMI.

It’s a combination of Twitter, IM, Friendfeed and other service with semi-real-time stuff. In Google Wave, you can share and collaborate on projects, and all of this is going on at once. Probably great for those with ADD. You start a wave with any message or photo or whatever, and you bring people into the stream, and then they can bring people in.

My Pre is reporting that a tipster with a webOS emulator has found that the Pre will use IMAP IDLE. This means that users on GMail will have near instantaneous reception of new emails. Because it’s getting pushed to the phone from the GMail servers.

Pre users are going to love that. At the moment, the only phone to support GMail push is the G1 (and soon the HTC Magic or any other Android device). Palm’s relationship with Google is proving to be extremely awesome for Pre users.

Android got off to a very slow start with the only handset being offered for a long time being the T-Mobile G1. Android has its share of early teething woes that were fixed for the most part with updates and patches. Android is now picking up steam in the market.

Analytic firm Strategy Analytics says that this year Android smartphone shipments will grow by 900%, making it the fastest growing mobile OS in the market. The second fastest growing Os is expected to be the iPhone OS growing 79% over the year.

T-Mobile G1 users will be like well behaved kindergarten children in that they will be rewarded a new cupcake. The Android Cupcake 1.5 update is now available. Just realize that custom ROMs will make it so that the G1 will not have the ability to receive the update notification.

Lucky for you it’s easy to remove those ROMs. Once that’s done, the official Cupcake update can be applied. With sprinkles on top.