A U.S. Senate subcommittee may have spent the better part of Tuesday grilling Apple executives over untaxed offshore fortunes, but Cupertino isn’t the only tech company taking advantage of the same loophole.
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that search giant Google Inc. is among a long list of companies who, like Apple, have set up corporations in Ireland as a way to avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes on income made offshore.
Even as the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations puts pressure on Apple to pay income tax on billion made overseas during the last four years, it turns out that Google and Yahoo! are both guilty of the same tactics.
In Google’s case, Mountain View established a pair of tax shelters in Ireland and the Netherlands, referred to as “Double Irish” and “Dutch Sandwich” by tax attorneys. According to the company’s own filings, Google avoids billion in income tax payments to the U.S. each year by shifting profits to Bermuda — a country with no corporate income tax.
Yahoo! also has an Irish subsidiary where its overseas profits are deposited, but claims to be a tax resident of the Cayman Islands rather than Ireland. The report notes that profits totaling “hundreds of million of dollars” have been funneled through the suburban home of the company’s Dutch bookkeeper, where it eventually lands with subsidiaries based on Mauritius and Switzerland.
Apple executives were quick to note that the company does not hold money in the Caribbean as Google and Yahoo! have done, and current U.S. tax laws are based on where a company is incorporated, not where it is actually managed.
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Google is making a big push for Hangouts to be your new best friend, but users of the company’s free Voice service are discovering that enabling messaging on their Gmail account eliminates convenient access for the elder service.
The Verge reported Sunday that Google’s new Hangouts has created a bit of a conundrum for users of Google Voice: Gmail users who choose to enable Hangouts on their account have discovered Google Voice vanishes as a result.
While Voice users can still use Voice from their mobile devices or even the dedicated web app, the convenience of initiating such calls from within Gmail appears to be gone after enabling Hangouts there — it’s one or the other, at least for now.
Thankfully, users can revert from Hangouts back to the classic Google Talk, which also restores Google Voice calling from Gmail. Google has plans to integrate Voice into Hangouts at some point in the future (along with SMS support, which is completely lacking at the moment), so it’s possible this is only a temporary dilemma.
For now it seems that the best solution for Google Voice users who enjoy calling direct from Gmail is to keep Hangouts a mobile-only option — Google Talk on the desktop will still work with third-party clients such as Adium in the meantime, but without a lot of the swanky features introduced by the new Hangouts.
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Strange but true: Windows Phone has no official YouTube app, and now Google wants to eliminate the only real option available to users, claiming Microsoft is violating terms of its API by eliminating ads.
Within an hour of the Google I/O keynote wrapping up Wednesday, The Verge reported that Google had slapped a cease and desist order on Microsoft in an effort to stomp out Redmond’s unofficial YouTube app for Windows Phone.
According to the letter, Google is demanding that Microsoft “immediately withdraw this application from the Windows Phone Store and disable existing downloads of the application by Wednesday, May 22, 2013.”
The issue appears to be mobile advertising, or rather the unofficial YouTube app’s lack of it, which Google says is in violation of its API rules.
“Unfortunately, by blocking advertising and allowing downloads of videos, your application cuts off a valuable ongoing revenue source for creators, and causes harm to the thriving content ecosystem on YouTube,” the cease and desist letter from Google reads.
Within a few hours of the story going public, Microsoft responded in kind by claiming they’d be happy to add mobile ads to their YouTube app for Windows Phone — with no indication as yet that they plan to actually shut the app down next week.
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Lots of cool stuff to report on for this mid-month Tuesday, but the lead story won’t be good news for those of you who have been vacillating about grabbing an iPhone 5 on T-Mobile US — the handset will now cost you an extra 50 bucks compared to last week, proving once again that you snooze, you lose. The rest of our Monday recap is better news, with the exception of AT&T and HTC, who appear to have a loser on their hands with Facebook Home…
As noted by TMoNews, T-Mobile US has quietly raised the up-front price of an iPhone 5 by following a Mother’s Day weekend trade-in promotion. Instead of a .99 down payment for the 16GB model, T-Mo is now asking 9.99, which also raises the price paid over 24 months from 9 to 9 accordingly. The higher down payment also affects pricing on the 32GB and 64GB models sold through the company’s website, but the good news is the monthly equipment fee on all models will remain the same as it was before.
The Google Drive Blog announced Monday that free storage between Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos will now be unified into one pool for a shared storage total of 15GB. The change will be welcome to those who don’t use Gmail too much, but need extra space for documents, photos and other files on Google Drive. On the flip side, if you’re a heavy Gmail user, unified storage means you’ll no longer be limited to a 25GB upgrade there. The change is expected to roll out “over the next couple of weeks,” so if you’re not seeing it yet, no cause for alarm.
Agile Bits released 1Password for iOS 4.2, a pretty massive update that adds the Strong Password Generator to the app’s built-in “1Browser” on iPad as well as desktop-style Go & Fill Logins, complete with AutoFill if you roll like that. 1Password items can now be shared via Messages or email using a one-tap obfuscated format or as plain text, depending on how secure you’d like to make it. Last but not least, 1Password for iOS 4.2 adds the ability to search URLs for Login items with an option to “expand search to all fields,” which should turn up whatever you seek. The update is now available from the App Store.
Amazon has been on a roll lately with marketing its cloud-based services, following up its new Cloud Drive Photos for iPhone app with a dedicated Amazon Cloud Player for Windows computers. Using the free application, desktop and laptop users can stream all of their albums, songs or playlists, download MP3 purchases for offline playback while keeping everything up-to-date through the cloud. Although it’s not available at launch, the e-tailer promises a Mac version is on the way, but for now you can give Amazon Cloud Player for PC a spin if you’re running Windows 7, Vista or XP.
BGR reported Monday that AT&T may be planning to eliminate the Facebook Home-equipped HTC First from its lineup with extreme prejudice as a result of poor sales thus far. How bad did the Android handset sell? The report claims the carrier “sold fewer than 15,000 units nationwide,” which includes last week, when the up-front price of the smartphone dropped to a mere 99 cents with two-year agreement. That’s apparently worse than AT&T’s previous Facebook-enabled handset, the HTC Status (i.e. ChaCha), which came and went two years ago. AT&T has yet to confirm or deny the rumor, stating only that “we do pricing promotions all the time and have made no decisions on future plans.”
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The rumor mill is really going into overdrive this week, foaming at the mouth on every little scrap related to iOS 7 or OS X 10.9, which are both expected sometime this year. But not everyone is enamored with these wild flights of fancy, so we’re here to mix things up with some good old-fashioned tales ripped straight from the pages of real life. At least you won’t have to wonder “when” or “if” with this batch of stories!
AT&T announced this week that owners of older smartphones can now bring their device to one of the company’s retail stores and receive a minimum of 0 off the purchase of a new one. While the press release pimps new Android handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One or the BlackBerry Z10, the promotion is good toward any smartphone, and the credit is applied immediately. For devices priced at .99, that means an upgrade is free, and certain models may have a trade-in value even higher than 0. Just make sure your existing smartphone is no more than three years old and in good, working condition, then head to a company-owned location or participating authorized reseller to cash in.
Have you noticed the GPS icon on your iOS device appears to be running constantly after updating to the Google Now-powered Google Search 3.0 update? According to Technology Tell, the issue is being caused by the app latching onto the Location Reporting feature built into iOS, causing the icon to stay active at all times. While Google claims the Now service was designed to cause “minimal battery impact,” iOS users are discovering what Android junkies have known all along: That’s not quite true. Until Google can suss out the problem with an update, the only solution appears to be disabling Location Reporting (at the expense of niceties such as live traffic reporting) or deleting the app entirely.
UPDATE: A Google employee has refuted reports that Google Now causes battery drain, saying, “Reports that Google Now on iOS drains battery life are incorrect. We understand people’s concern about seeing the Location Services icon stay on when they use Google Now. Many apps that keep the icon on actually do drain the phone’s battery because they require very accurate location. (For example, some apps have to run your GPS all the time during navigation to keep you from missing your turn.) This update to the Google Search app is built very differently: it uses cell towers and wifi hot spots for much lower battery impact.”
Despite a series of updates, many podcast lovers still haven’t warmed up to Apple’s free Podcasts app, instead choosing to stick with iOS solutions like Instacast. If you’re one of those people, you’ll be head over heels to learn that developer Vemedio has just introduced a public beta of Instacast for Mac, which brings all of the slick podcast fun to your desktop or notebook computer. As long as you’re running OS X 10.8 or higher, you can download the beta and join the fun — and if you really love it, you’ll be able to purchase an advance license for only .99 right from within the app itself. Sadly for Mac App Store lovers, Vemedio has no current plans to offer Instacast for Mac through Apple’s storefront, citing “some features that might raise concerns in the review process.”
If you’re a fan of Final Cut Pro X transitions of various shapes and sizes, the folks at Stupid Raisins have teamed with Noise Industries to offer Shape Pop Transitions, a collection of 30 transitions that can be customized at will. The FxFactory package breaks outgoing and incoming video into a variety of different shapes with the usual drag-and-drop simplicity the plugin hub is known for, and potential buyers can always download and install the trial version to get a feel for the package before buying.
Just how much money would you be willing to spend for a proper Google Reader replacement? If you said .99 per year, then Feed Wrangler may be exactly what you’re after. The latest contender to the RSS feed reader throne even allows importing Google Reader content straight across (as long as it’s done before the July 1 shutdown) and features free iOS apps and a slick web interface, with an OS X app and dedicated iOS Podcast client coming soon. The annual subscription price includes all future products Feed Wrangler might launch, and a full third-party API is promised for launch later this month, which should allow existing software to tap into the new service.
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