According to Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Northeast securities , Google is going to launch their own Google-branded phone. Ashok Kumar says that the Google Phone 2.0 will also be unlocked, and he also claims to have talked with Google’s design partners about an upcoming Android device.

None of this is going to happen any time soon! In fact I doubt Google will ever make their own Google Phone. Google’s Android operating system is already being used by six manufacturers and three carriers. Why would they make their own phone? Google is not a hardware company, they are mainly a software company.

Google did help Verizon with the Droid, but it’s not likely that they will ever launch their own Google Phone. Take what analysts like Ashok Kumar say with a pinch of salt!

As of this posting, Google is down, Gmail is down, and Adsense is down. Thankfully YouTube, and Blogger are still up. I’m wondering what happened. Did someone hack in to Google.com? It is unlikely for Google to ever go down. Every second they are losing a lot of revenue, and making many people disappointed with their services. A lot of my online activity involves Google, but now that it’s down I  actually have to get up and do something else.

If you want to search, I recommend you use Bing. Go to http://www.bing.com and search! Hopefully Google comes back up soon.

Update: Google was only down for Comcast users, but it’s back up now.

Update #2: Google and Gmail services are still down for RCN users.

Update#3: Are you on RCN and still having these issues? Follow the guide below to learn how to fix it. Credit goes to Ben Stewart for this solution!

1. Open your Control Panel.

2. Click on the Network and Sharing Center icon.

3. Find the name of the network you’re connected to, and then click on View status.

4. In the Networking tab click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and then click Properties on the bottom-right corner.

5. Select “Use the following DNS server addresses:” and enter in the following:

• Preferred DNS server: 207.172.3.16
• Alternate DNS server: 208.59.89.21

6. Click OK. Open your web browser, and Google/Gmail and other Google services should now be working. If this doesn’t work then call 800-RING-RCN and get help from RCN Tech Support.

The logo you see on Google today is a bar code! The homepage of Google in USA and many other countries have this logo. Why did they do this? On this day in 1952 the first patent for the bar code was issued. Google wanted to recognize this so they replaced their whole logo with the bar code.

iPhone users can try decoding the Google logo by downloading a bar code scanner iPhone application (I believe there is one called Cardify). Android users can use the Barcode Scanner application to decode the logo. I went to DataSymbol.com, and used it to decode the bar code logo online. Of course, it was decoded as “Google“! For you geeks out there, the Bar code uses Code 128 encoding.

The Google homepage of many other Google homepages also has the bar code logo! Below is a list of Google homepages that have this logo, and their translation for the word “bar code”. Have a scan-tastic day everyone!

• Bar code (USA)
• Strichcode (Germany)
• streepjescode (Belgium)
• código de barras (Chile)
• stregkode (Denmark)
• viivakoodi (Finland)
• code-barres (France)
• codice a barre (Italy)
• kod kreskowy (Poland)
• cod de bare (Romania)
• čiarový kód (Slovakia)
• streckkod (Sweden)
• Barkod (Turkey)
• штрих-код (Ukraine)
• الشفرة الخيطية باركود (United Arab Emirates)

Google has changed the logo on their homepage once again. It is now featuring a logo linking to search results for Crop Circles. The Google logo also has all circles in every letter, except for the letter “l”.

The URL of the image points to http://www.google.com/logos/goog_e.gif with a missing “l”. Last time Google’s logo linked to results for “unexplained phenomenon” and their logo and URL both had an “O” missing. A post in the Google Korea Blog says that their will be 3 logos total to celebrate a famous person. The Crop Circles is the second logo.

The hints posted on the Google Korea blog included: “mystery, transparency, and  novel”. Which famous person is Google celebrating with their logos? If you’ve figured anything out, feel free to share with us in the comments.

Today Google linked to search results for Unexplained Phenomenon, and they even posted a twitter message with a cryptic message: “All your O are belong to us”. Hans posted it on QuickPWN earlier, but we didn’t know why Google had this logo on their front page. Some people thought it was because of the District 9 movie, but that’s not true.

After doing some further research, I’ve figured out that Google is doing this because today is the Exeter UFO Festival in New Hampshire. There is no need to create any silly stories or jump to any conclusions. Google loves to celebrate special days by creating custom logos, called Google Doodle logos. Before this post, what did you think this Google logo was about?

Unexplained Phenomenon: All your O are belong to us

While going to the Google homepage today, I noticed an unusual logo. Google has a UFO which appears to be sucking the second “o” in their logo. Clicking the logo shows search results for unexplained phenomenon.

Explanation of the “Unexplained Phenomenon”

Not only did Google change their logo today, but they also posted the following message in their @google Twitter feed:

1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19

This is a coded message. It’s very simple to decode this message! All you need to do is write down all the letters of the alphabet and number them in sequential order ( A=1, B=2, C=3, and so on). Once you decode this message it will read: “All your O are belong to Us“.

Explanation of:  “All your O belong to Us”

As you can see in the logo, the UFO is sucking in one of the O’s from the Google logo. If you right-click and click properties, you’ll also see that the image URL for Google’s logo is: http://www.google.com/logos/go_gle.gif. Google purposely left out the O from their URL. The “All your O belong to Us” is Google’s reference to the popular internet meme “All your base are belong to us” All Your Base are belong to us was a phrase started in 2000-2002 and spread through a flash animation which had this slogan in it. It became popular through the Something Awful message forums. A gif of this can be seen below.

What is the unexplained phenomenon?

Is there any special reason Google has this logo on their website today? Why are they showing us search results for “unexplained phenomenon”? I know they’re just doing it for fun, but are they also doing it for any special reason? Post your thoughts on this in the comments. If you find anything out please do share it with us.