Google Buys Motorola. Nobody saw this coming: Google has just handed over $12.5 billion to buy Motorola Mobility. As the press release puts it, “Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers.” It’s really about melding hardware and software of course, in a bid to rival Apple’s moves in the smartphone and tablet world. But will the ailing phone maker be the key to Android’s success?

Time Warner Cable Buys Insight. Time Warner Cable has announced that it’s paying about $3 billion in cash for Insight Communications. Insight is a large cable TV operator serving the Midwest, and the acquisition will add about 680,000 subscribers to TWC’s existing fold of 12 million (meaning TWC’s paying about $4 for each–no doubt planning on earning back much more than this). There are also “programming expense savings” en route, which will save $100 million a year, as Insight is harmonized into TWC’s bigger business.

Wired’s defense dude, Noah Schachtman, has a fascinating story about Google and the CIA being joint investors in a web monitoring firm. Both Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s investment arm, have injected sums (less than $10 million each) into Recorded Future, a company that goes through “tens of thousands” of websites and looks for related actions and conversations between, for example, Twitter accounts, blogs and websites, and analyzes them in order to spot events and trends as early on as possible.

Describing its analytics as “the ultimate tool for open-source intelligence,” Recorded Future markets itself towards corporations and brands, but it’s also got one very large foot in the counter-terrorism field–which is what makes it so attractive to In-Q-Tel. The firm’s CEO is an ex Swedish Army Ranger who holds a PhD in Computer Science, and he says that what sets Recorded Future apart from other analytics firms is “you can actually predict the curve, in many cases.”

As well as the “business intelligence” side to the firm, there’s a real feeling of Minority Report, here. It sounds like the kind of tool that will be used to predict crimes and terrorist activity as well. Analytics are already being used by the Memphis Police Department, whose Operation Blue CRUSH uses predictive analytics by IBM.

Bing just upped its effort in the search engine war against Google with an updated iPhone app. Just in time for iOS4′s firmware update, the app has a bunch of tweaks, but one, real Google-beater: Barcode scanning for quick product IDs.

TV meets web. Web meets TV.

BumpTop is a desktop replacement, used by both Windows and Mac. HP’s convertible tablet computers like the TM2 use BumpTop as an easy way to make your computer’s desktop more touchable. It turns files, folders, and software shortcuts into icons that can be manipulated more directly with fingers. For example, you might have a photo on your desktop. To post it on Twitter, you’d simply tap on the photo and fling it into the Twitter icon shortcut on the side of the screen.

The beef between Google and the Chinese government has been rocking along for a few weeks. Now we hear it’s been elevated to “boxing fight” status. The warning came from the Minister of Industry and IT, Li Yizhong, who was speaking to reporters at the annual National People’s Congress meeting. Li was very diplomatic about the matter, although noted that the government does actually support Google in its efforts to “expand its business and market share in China.”

Google continues to revolutionize the energy industry with a new type of mirror that would cut the cost of building a solar thermal plant in half. Google claims it could be ready in one to three years if all goes to plan.

So how is Twitter is going to make money? It got $100 million in funding last summer, although there are now whispers about how it’s planning on going down the Google route with an ad platform similar to AdWords. We’ll see how that pans out.

Apple has reminded us a few times recently that it does not like flash. It is one of the few programs that can actually make a mac freeze. So, the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch will NOT get Flash. With Google already working hard on replacing Flash in YouTube with HTML5 video, it’s really heading towards HTML5 world.

According to a source via Silicon Alley Insider claims, that Google pays Apple $100 million dollars a year to be the default search engine for the iPhone.

For Apple, that’s not a lot of money. For me that is a lot of money. If Apple wanted more money or options, there’s always Microsoft’s Bing and a big checkbook.

Google has just purchased Aardvark, a small San-Francisco-based social search startup that was created by former Google employees. Google also unveiled Buzz this week, so what can Aardvark do for Google? Answer: A lot!

Aardvark is a question-and-answer service more than a search engine. You ask a question via email or instant message, and it looks through your list of friends as well as your friends’ friends before sending your question to those who would be able to answer it best. Your answers won’t be a list of external links, but a genuine human reply. You know what humans are right?

As the Google Nexus One smartphone celebrates its first month, we hear that Mountain View has sold only 80,000 units so far. Google’s mobility chief Andy Rubin, says that number is just fine with him. Google promotes this as a super-phone, although we know that title still sits with Apple’s iPhone.