Google Ramps Up It's Product Business with Nest Labs

Google has announced plans to purchase the smart thermostat company Nest Labs for £2 billion ($3.2 billion). Nest Labs creates a smart thermostat that learns your routine, can understand when the house is empty, and can be controlled via a smartphone, thus bringing cost and energy savings. Another recently released product is a smoke detector called Nest Protect which has numerous features that make is distinct from regular smoke detectors such as alerts to your phone.

In interviews the company founder and CEO, who was previously an Apple Executive, has said that Nest will be run separate to Google but can now use it's huge resources to improve their products faster.

Their acquisition of Nest Labs really proves that Google is becoming more of a products company with it's sights set on automation and machine learning.

This is the latest in a series of recent acquisitions by Google including robotics firm Boston Dynamics and Motorola.

Who's next up for Google? Leave your thoughts below.

Google Buys Bitspin

A small swiss company, Bitspin, that makes a good looking Android app called Timely has been acquired by Google. Timely is an intuitive alarm clock app with a great looking UI. What would Google want with a small company like this? Developers.

What Tech IPOs Can We Expect in 2014?

Well, 2013 has certainly been the year for tech IPOs. Facebook shares have jumped 116%, Google, Twitter and Amazon are each up almost 60%, Yahoo climbed over 100% and even AOL shares grew by over 50%, this doesn't even include the likes of LinkedIn and Netflix who also had a bumper year on the stock market. This leaves us thinking that 2014 is likely to be another great year for tech IPOs but which companies can we expect to go public in the next 12 months?

First in the limelight is the Alibaba Group. China's biggest e-commerce company, a mix between Amazon and eBay, on one day alone in November they topped $5.7 billion in sales across the group. Now, the company is looking to go public on the US market and it's expected to be the biggest tech IPO of all time, possibly worth $100 billion.

Next up is Dropbox. The cloud storage company with over 200 million users recently valued itself at around $8 billion and with a healthy business plan that doesn't revolve around the fluctuating advertising market it's probably not far off. Dropbox's biggest issue is competition from the likes of Microsoft who already have business users in the palm of their hands.

The mobile payments company, Square, has recently been talked about with regards to an IPO. It's founder Jack Dorsey, who also co-founded Twitter, has supposedly been in talks with bankers about going public in 2014. The company was recently valued at just over $3 billion and has a more than healthy share in the mobile payments market that it helped revolutionise.

There's a whole host of other possibilities including the likes of Spotify, King, Rovio, and Pinterest but one we're not likely to be seeing is Evernote who's CEO, Phil Libin, says he doesn't expect the '100 year start-up' to IPO before 2015.

Will you be investing in any of the tech companies in 2014 or do have a thought on who might go public? Leave your comments below.

Apple Strikes Deal with China Mobile

Apple has struck a deal with China's top mobile phone network, China Mobile, which sees them now offering the iPhone 5s and 5c to it's 760 million customers. The deal is expected to be worth 10s of millions of devices per year for Apple who's stocks jumped to almost $570 on the news.

Instagram Direct

At a fairly low key event a few days ago Instagram announced a new service - Instagram Direct. This allows users to send photos and videos to individual users rather than posting to the public - essentially Snapchat but without the 'self-destruct' timer. The update is available to download now on Android and iOS.