Update 2: Google has now reportedly lowered the $350 fee to $150, and launched a support line for the phone at 888-48-NEXUS.

Update: The FCC has sent letters regarding early termination fees to Google, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. In its letter to Google, it says:

...where new options may subject consumers to substantial ETFs, potentially from more than one entity, the Commission has a special interest in ensuring that consumers have a clear and complete understanding of the rates, terms, and conditions on which the communications services are being offered and the rationale for those rates, terms, and conditions. The combination of ETFs from Google and T-Mobile for the Nexus One is also unique among the four major national carriers. Consumers have been surprised by this policy and by its financial impact. Please let us know your rationale(s) for these combined fees, and whether you have coordinated or will coordinate on these fees and on the disclosure of their combined effect.

Original Article: Google made big waves in the mobile industry early in the year, and the effects of those waves are being felt quite hard by some users. The Nexus One's release has gotten off to kind of a rocky start.

The issues plaguing customers of the much-anticipated Google phone have been widely publicized. Most of the gripes have dealt with Google's customer service (or lack thereof) for the device, and trouble with 3G connections. More recently, however, complaints of outrageous early termination fees have popped up.

The trouble for users is that if they got the Nexus One with a two-year contract from T-Mobile, they end up having to pay about $550 to terminate early. The thing is, they have to pay T-Mobile's regular fee, but they also have to pay Google a fee. Needless to say, that has caught some people off guard.

Google's fee is a $350 "Equipment Recovery Fee". It applies to customers who cancel their contracts within the first 120 days.

According to Niraj Sheth with the Wall Street Journal's Digits Blog, "A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the fee is "a way for the company to recoup the subsidy it gives to contract customers."

"'This is standard practice for third-party resellers of T-Mobile and other operators,' she said. A T-Mobile spokesman said that the carrier’s early termination fee is standard for its customers on contract."

While the combination of the aforementioned problems may not bode well for Google's reputation in the mobile industry at the moment, the good news for the company is that they are projected to come out on top in the smartphone race eventually. Crunchgear says Google and Android will "own the smartphone market" eventually. Time will tell if that is an accurate depiction of things to come, but for now, people just seem upset.


Related Articles:

> Google Unveils Nexus One "Super Phone"

> Nexus One Sales Of 5-6 Million Units Forecast

> Google Tries to Carve Out its Place in Mobile

Do you hate the Google Street View car for its supposed invasion of your privacy? Looks like this is what drove members of the group Free Art & Technology (FAT) when they’ve attached a GPS device to the Street View car containing Google’s camera used for photographing streets in Berlin.

So, now with the use of Google Maps, the group were able to track down the whereabouts of the Google Street View car in real-time. And what better way of pulling a prank to the controversial Google car than to pull down their pants andplay various gestures as the passes by a pre-determined location?  So, whose more evil now?

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Google Maps Used to Track Down Street View Car

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Well, what do you know? After the FCC formally sent letters to various mobile operators including Google about the high early termination fees that they are charging consumers, Google seemed to be the first to heed FCC’s call.  So, if you got you’re Nexus One with the T-Mobile contract you can now cancel the deal earlier than the 24-months lock-in period.

But that’s not after paying Google a $150 termination fee, lower than the previous $350 ETF.  However, what is not clear though is whether you still need to pay the $200 that T-Mobile is charging.  Although the WSJ is reporting that Google is negotiating with T-Mobile to lower its fee which in its case is the recovery cost for the Nexus One unit.

Still, it’s a fair deal, although many of us will probably not be solved with this idea. It’s still is a better deal than getting that Nexus One unlocked for $525. If you get it through a T-Mobile plan, you get to pay only around $125 then cancel it one month after and pay Google’s ETF plus T-Mobile’s equipment recovery fee. Overall, you get a Nexus One unit for only $475.

To think that it cost me around $590 to get an unlocked Nexus One? Oh well, I’ve got no regrets anyway. I’m enjoying my Nexus One as much as I did when I got my iPhone.

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Google Lowers Nexus One’s Early Termination Fee to $150

Google has (possibly) done it again! Word on the street says that Google engineers are working on a translator for the Android smart phone that will translate one language to another- almost completely in real time. Now, there’s a few problems in the past that have appeared when trying to do anything involving voice translation. First off, the pronunciation problem. Everybody has different ways of saying things and often times it doesn’t translate correctly.

Ever use those voice to text translators? If you say “the fish is in the lake bed” it translates it to text and says something like, “the dish is in the cake head”. What?! The other problem is that the dictionaries are so limited that often times it can’t even keep up with the human language. Throw slang and a foreign language into this and it spells trouble.

I used Babel Fish one time to translate a Japanese message that was saying “I’ll call you tomorrow” and the translation came out to say “tomorrow I will use the telephone on you!!” Something innocent turns into somewhat of a threat when a literal word by word conversion is used without artificial intelligence.

Google has come up with a few solutions to these pesky problems for its up coming Android translator. It will be crawling through various web pages and documents in different languages so that it can get an artificial grasp on the human language. The translator will also be able to view the words as part of a whole; fully understanding the complete sentence rather than each word separately.

This tool is expected to support a 52-language text translation, along with voice recognition and text to speech capabilities.

Communication is a vital part of everything we do. We need it for everything, including sitting down with the CEO of a Japanese company via video conference with your corporation. While the internet allows communication overseas and makes business easier, the language barrier that accompanies this freedom often stands in the way. If all goes well, this tool could be utilized by individuals and businesses to bridge the gap in culture and language.

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Google to Break the Language Barrier With Android Translator

Ask.com has ended its NASCAR sponsorship after one year. That’s according to The Sporting News, which reports that the sponsorship was actually fairly successful for Ask.com. Jared Cluff, Ask’s senior VP of marketing, says the deal produced some measurable results in 2009: “We saw double-digit increases in usage among NASCAR fans. With the fan cards that our [...]

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There are several reports today that Google is set to announce a new social feature inside Gmail, allowing users to see (and add to) a stream of status updates from friends and connections. While Twitter is all abuzz over the news, this is something that Yahoo Mail has offered its 300 million users since last [...]

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