It wasn’t long ago when both Garmin and ASUS announced that they were teaming up to bring the nuvifone G60 to market and promised to out new models soon. True to their word, today the nuvifone M20 was treated to some press release love. Powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, the M20 touts a quad-band EDGE / tri-band 7.2Mbps HSPA chipset, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 4 to 8 GB of internal memory all under a 2.8″ VGA touchscreen display. Did we miss anything? Oh yes, GPS. Obviously with Garmin working on this thing its something of a sat nav monster and will be able to run your favorite LBS services, though if Garmin-ASUS had their way you’d be using Ciao! which sounds like their alternative to Google Latitude. Still, the M20′s GPS chip will work even without the phone itself being connected to a cellular network meaning you can mount the M20 with the included car dashboard mount (with power cable) and drive around like crazy in the Australian outback without having to fear getting lost. Now where’s that Android nuvifone at?

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Rather than take Google head on in the search wars which given Google’s dominance is probably an impossible feat, Microsoft is honing in on Google’s weaknesses instead. This strategy is apparent in its latest acquisition announced Sunday in which Microsoft purchased Greenfield Online, owner of Europe’s largest shopping price comparison website ciao.com, for a cool $486 million. Ciao.com provides online product price comparisons and user submitted reviews. Users are encouraged to write reviews by paying them a small amount for each positive comment received. That’s cool. Microsoft intends to expand this program by offering a cash back program for all users who purchase products through the site, not just US users who have been demoing this new feature for the past few months. Even cooler. Active in seven European countries, it receives 19.6 million unique visitors per month in Europe. Though hardly the purchase to finally propel Microsoft over Google, it may help Microsoft increase its market share, especially in Europe where it garners a pitiful 2%.

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