Inspired by Microsoft that killed KIN Phones within few weeks of the launch, Google too has now decided to not launch Nexus Two, the sequel.

It’s a pretty intense undertaking just, literally, hooking into the billing systems that are available in all these operators in all these countries, and what we decided to do was to focus our resources on the platforms and the apps to make the platform shine rather than hooking into provisioning systems and billing systems.

It was so successful, we didn’t have to do a second one. We would view that as positive but people criticised us heavily for that. I called up the board and said: ‘Ok, it worked. Congratulations – we’re stopping’. We like that flexibility, we think that flexibility is characteristic of nimbleness at our scale." – Eric Schmidt (source)

Google essentially sold around 500,000 Nexus One phone (distributed to employees as well) and the decision is a proof that even a giant like Google failed to compete with carriers.

When the phone was launched, it was looked upon as a PoC of what Android can do and for Google, it probably never wanted to get into handset business.

Related: Google Nexus One in India – Unofficially Available for ~32K

Chrome OS Up for Gaming

Chrome has added ‘orientation’ support’ in Chrome making it ready for gaming.

The orientation interface plumbing is being built into the WebKit browser project that underlies Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, according to a Google’s Chrome issue tracker.

The technology would let the browser provide an application with hardware-supplied information about which way a computing device is being held, information that’s particularly useful for mobile games that rely on that for a user interface. For example, tilting a device can turn it into a steering wheel or a tabletop on which a marble rolls. – source

Twitter’s EarlyBird Programme

Twitter is set to launch @earlybird 

Exclusive Offers are special time-bound deals, sneak-peeks, and events that are promoted by the official Twitter @earlybird account. We partner with select advertisers and retweet offers that they have crafted only for the Twitter community. Our advertising partners determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and price. As with other forms of advertising from Twitter, we are focused on bringing value to our users and will keep your interests in mind as we develop this program. – source

Firefox Beta 4 Beta 1 Released

Firefox has released Firefox 4 beta that supports CSS3, WebM and HTML5. Given the harakiri Chrome has been carrying on to the browser industry, FF needs to move fast (Opera’s latest release packs Geolocation Features , Supports WebM).

Also see: 3TB External Drive from Seagate