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Google’s upcoming Tuesday press conference is likely to mark the debut of the Nexus One, the search company’s own Android-based smartphone.

Nexus One should showcase the latest generation of the Linux-based open source Android operating system. It’s also the first phone that is expected to be directly marketed by Google, setting higher expectations for the phone.

Here’s what we know about the phone so far.

Hardware

The Nexus One was designed by HTC, which has a close relationship with Google. HTC created the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, and has released at least five Android handsets since the operating system launched in October 2008.

Though packed in a big, white box with the Google logo printed prominently, the Nexus One clearly shows the stamp of HTC’s design sensibilities. Photos show a device similar to the HTC Droid Eris phone with its trackball and four buttons at the bottom of the phone.

The Nexus One has a 1-GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 display, 512 MB of of RAM and an expandable 4-GB microSD card, says Engadget. The 1-GHz processor alone should make the Nexus one of the fastest smartphones available currently.

By contrast, the Palm Pre has a 600-MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor and the Motorola Droid runs a 550-MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor. Click here to read more.. »

Some of tech’s biggest battle lines may soon be shifting. Apple is in talks to make Bing the iPhone’s default search engine, according to a report published in BusinessWeek today. Microsoft’s search would replace the iPhone’s current default — yep, you guessed it — Google.

The story, which cites the always-popular “people familiar with the matter” for its information, says talks between Microsoft and Apple have been underway for weeks. If true, it could mark a monumental shift in one of tech’s most relentless wars.

Apple and Google: A Changing Story

Let’s start by setting the stage: Google and Apple, you see, used to be pals. They played nicely together, with Google holding valuable spots as the default search provider for both the iPhone and Apple’s PC-based Safari browser. The real rivalry, of course, was always between Apple and Microsoft — just look to the ads if you need any proof.

It wasn’t until Google began testing the waters of mobile development that the tides began to turn. With the open-source Android platform, the plethora of Google-supported anti-iPhones, and that one Google-sold super-duper-phone, the G-Force suddenly stopped looking so sympathetic to Apple’s interests.

Throw in the spats over mobile apps (e.g. Apple saying “We don’t want Google Voice or Google Latitude for vague reasons that don’t quite make sense”) and the rumored native maps app coming to iPhone 4, and our former buddies suddenly don’t seem so chummy. Click here to read more.. »

Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it would shorten the time it stores Internet users’ addresses from Web search queries from 18 months to six months following a request from a European Union data privacy panel.

It said the change would make its Bing search a better choice for privacy-conscious users than the world’s leading search engine Google Inc., because Microsoft will delete the entire Internet Protocol address from search queries — the string of numbers that shows a computer’s location.

“We believe that the balance between privacy and efficiency is very much in the mind of consumers,” Microsoft’s associate general counsel John Vassallo told reporters. “Getting the balance right does make the search engine more attractive.”

Microsoft says its search engine has some 2 percent of the European market, well below Google on 80 percent.

Google says keeping data from search queries is important to improving the way it processes search results and “represents a crucial arm in our battle to protect the security of our services against hacks and frauds.”

It says it makes users’ search details anonymous after nine months and allows people see and control some of the information that is stored on their searches.

Yahoo says it deletes IP addresses and makes user log data anonymous after 90 days, with some exceptions to fight fraud, secure systems and meet legal obligations.

EU data protection officials have questioned the need for search engines to keep data on searches and had asked for a six-month limit.

Microsoft’s announcement comes days after the German government warned users against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser until it fixes a security flaw.

The company will also likely see more competition for the browser, the most widely used, when European users start to see a box urging them to choose between Internet Explorer and rival browsers in coming months — a move that helped end an EU antitrust investigation into the browser.

A critical zero-day flaw in Internet Explorer was exploited as part of the attack on Google and other companies, according to both Microsoft and McAfee.

The flaw allows for a Web-based attack against IE 6 SP 1 on Windows 2000, along with IE 7 and 8 on XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. According to Microsoft’s security advisory, the company has only seen active attacks against IE 6 so far.

Those attacks were part of the campaign against Google, Adobe and other major companies that sought to break into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In response, Google has threatened to stop censoring search results on its Google.cn site, or to shut it down entirely.

The invalid pointer reference flaw allows for remote code execution, according to Microsoft, which means that viewing a malicious Web site could allow an attacker to execute any command on a vulerable computer. Typically that would mean installing a Trojan or other malicious software. According to the bulletin, IE’s Protected Mode on Vista and later versions of Windows mitigates the threat, which could also be leveraged by a banner ad.

Setting IE’s Internet zone security to high will protect against the threat, according to Microsoft, as of course would using an alternate Web browser. Redmond says it may release an out-of-band patch for this threat outside of the normal monthly patch cyle.

Also, while antivirus maker McAfee warns that “there very well may be other attack vectors that are not known to us at this time,” the company says that its investigations into the attacks “have not shown a vulnerability in Adobe Reader being a factor in these attacks.” According to McAfee’s analysis, the malware that hit the IE flaw opens a back door on victim PCs, which allowed the attackers to take complete control. (Note: the link provided by McAfee for its post is not currently responding.)

SAN FRANCISCO – China’s government gave little indication Thursday that it’s willing to loosen its control over Internet search results, pushing Google Inc. closer to the brink of closing up shop and leaving the country.

In the government’s first official statement since Google issued its ultimatum two days earlier, a Chinese official endorsed the country’s current rules governing Internet content.

“China’s Internet is open,” said Jiang Yu, a foreign ministry spokeswoman. “China welcomes international Internet enterprises to conduct business in China according to law.”

Google is still hoping that it can persuade the Chinese government to agree to changes that would enable its China-based search engine to show uncensored search results. “We are optimists,” Google spokesman Scott Rubin said.

If a compromise isn’t worked out within the next few weeks, the company intends to shut down its search engine at Google.cn and pull out of China completely. Rubin said Google hasn’t set a deadline for breaking the impasse.

Google has been in touch with the Chinese government to alert officials about its plans, but Rubin didn’t know whether the two sides have scheduled additional meetings yet. Click here to read more.. »

Security firm McAfee said today that the recent China-based attack on Google and other companies was the result of a new security hole in Internet Explorer. McAfee says the vulnerability is not publicly known, but they have informed Microsoft and expects them to take action soon. So a Microsoft product could be the indirect cause of Google pulling out of China. This must be Microsoft’s favorite software vulnerability ever.

McAfee’s George Kurtz wrote on the companies official blog, “These attacks will look like they come from a trusted source, leading the target to fall for the trap and clicking a link or file. That’s when the exploitation takes place, using the vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.” Kurtz was also careful to point out that they have only confirmed that Internet Explorer was a vector of attack; there could have been others.

Further, McAfee says they have cleared Adobe Reader of involvement in the attacks. This comes after several reports implicated the oft exploited software suite.

Calling it their “superphone,” Google unveiled the Nexus One on Tuesday, marking the online search giant’s first leap into the smartphone market.

The phone, which goes head to head with Apple’s darling of the market, the iPhone, is sold only through a Web store operated by Google and, unlike the iPhone and most other current smartphones, is available either with or without mobile service.

“We are very happy to be able to offer a choice,” said Mario Queiroz, Google’s vice president of product management.

T-Mobile is the initial service provider. Verizon in the United States and Vodafone in Europe will be coming on board later, and more operators are expected.

Already available Tuesday, the phone costs $180 with a contract or $530 unlocked, leaving the phone open to other carriers.

Among the Nexus One features Google announced at an invitation-only event at its California headquarters was text without typing. A voice-enabled keyboard allows users to send texts, e-mails or Facebook updates by speaking into the phone.

It is a global-system device with a 3.7-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, an accelerometer and a compass, according to Google. Click here to read more.. »

Engineers didn’t make huge improvements to technology in 2009. The year’s big tech names — Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon — all existed before January.

Instead, this is the year technology changed us.

At year’s end, we’re connected to each other and to the Internet like never before. In 2009, we carried tiny computers in our pockets, through which we fed the Internet constant real-time info about where we were and what we were doing.

Our app-laden phones helped us manage our on-the-go lifestyles; our books fell off the shelves and into e-readers; our televisions and video games unchained themselves from home entertainment centers; and our mobile updates helped organize protests and even threaten governments.

We could have done any of these things in 2008. But we embraced in unprecedented numbers a digital-centered life in 2009.

Here’s a look back at how it happened. It’s CNN.com’s 10 biggest tech trends of the year, listed in no particular order. Think we missed something? Please let us know in the comments below. Click here to read more.. »

A Paris court ruled Friday that Google Inc.’s expansion into digital books breaks France’s copyright laws, and a judge slapped the Internet search leader with a euro10,000-a-day fine until it stops showing literary snippets.

Besides being fined the equivalent of $14,300 for each day in violation, Google was ordered to pay euro300,000 ($430,000) in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere, which brought the case on behalf of a group of French publishers.

Google attorney Alexandra Neri said the company would appeal.

The decision erects another legal barrier that may prevent Google from realizing its 5-year-old goal of scanning all the world’s books into a digital library accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

A U.S. legal settlement that would give Google the digital rights to millions of books is in limbo because U.S. regulators have warned a federal judge in New York that the arrangement probably would thwart competition in the budding electronic book market and compromise copyrights, as well. Click here to read more.. »