LG had a number of gorgeous HDTVs on display at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and apparently we aren’t the only ones who noticed how strong LG’s next-generation televisions are. Mere rumors of an HDTV in the works from Apple has set the industry aflutter, eying apps, voice and motion controls, and the Android OS in an effort to recapture consumers’ interest ahead of whatever Apple may be planning to announce as soon as this summer. Now, a new report from Bloomberg suggests Google may be in negotiations to enter the TV space as well. Unnamed sources speaking with the business news site claim Google is currently in talks with LG to create a Google TV-powered HDTV in a partnership said to be similar to the arrangement Google had with HTC and then Samsung to build Nexus-branded smartphones. Google is also reportedly working on a Nexus tablet and with connected TVs in the spotlight this year, a Nexus TV could be a crucial next step for the Mountain View-based company.

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Mozilla announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with Google in which Google Search will remain the default search engine in Firefox for the next three years. “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Google’s senior vice president of search, Alan Eustace. While terms of the agreement remain confidential, Mozilla reported in October that its partnership with Google helped the company achieve a large portion of the $123 million in revenue in reported last year, CNET said.

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Apple’s Siri and Nuance-powered “Assistant” voice control feature expected to launch with iOS 5 has hardly been a secret, and now MacRumors has commissioned a video mock-up of the service based on what we know so far. The video shows, for example, that a user might be able to hold down the home button to activate the application and speak a command, not unlike Apple’s simple voice controls today. Assistant should step today’s capabilities up quite a bit, however. The service will likely scour your phone’s contents or the web to deliver results, and it may even be capable of replying to you; in the MacRumors video, Assistant asks the user if he would like to text a contact’s mobile or work number. We expect to hear more about Assistant during Apple’s iPhone event on October 4th. Read on for the full video.

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Microsoft has lost $5.5 billion, an average drain of $1 billion per quarter, on Bing since it introduced the search engine in 2009, CNNMoney reported on Wednesday. Despite the losses, Microsoft’s Bing reached a 30% share of the U.S. search engine market in April of this year, slowly narrowing the gap with Google, although comScore’s figures pin the search engine’s share at just 14.7%. Despite the constant drain, Microsoft still has a plan for Bing. During the company’s financial analyst meeting in California recently, Microsoft’s president of online services Qi Lu said his company hopes to use Bing to “reorganize the web” to “change the game fundamentally” instead of taking on Google in a head-to-head dogfight. Read on for more.

“We are able to try things with much more flexibility,” Bing director Stefan Weitz said. “If we make a mistake, it’s not going to take down the company.” Analysts believe Microsoft will continue to lose money, however. “Bing will likely be better than Google over time, but even if it is, users and advertisers still need to go to them,” McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Sid Parakh told CNNMoney. “To be clear, this will take a long, long time to play out. This is something Microsoft will continue to lose money on.”

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Antitrust investigators with the Federal Trade Commission are focusing on Google’s Android operating system and web search services, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Reportedly, there is some concern that Google prevents its Android partners from implementing services provided by Google’s competitors to their smartphones. One example comes from backin May, when Google blocked Motorola from using Skyhook Wireless’ location services on its phones. The FTC is also investigating whether Google promotes its own services over its rivals, and whether it actually uses data that its competitors have collected, such as local reviews, to populate its own results. The FTC announced that it was opening an investigation into Google’s business practices on June 24th and, at the time, Google said that it was not clear what the FTC’s concerns were. The search giant said that it will cooperate fully and will continue to follow its five pillars: “do what’s best for the user,” “provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible,” “label advertisements clearly,” “be transparent,” and “loyalty, not lock-in.”

The European Commission now has a total of nine formal antitrust complaints targeting Google, Reuters reported on Tuesday. “The new complaints come from small companies,” one source told the news outlet, and another said two of the complaints were new while three came from national regulators. Until Tuesday, the EC had only confirmed that there were four total complaints. Microsoft has also filed a formal complaint with the European Commission and its general counsel, Brad Smith, said that the search giant “has engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers.” Microsoft has argued that Google has a 95% grip of the European search market. The European Commission is also investigating Google for anticompetitive advertising practices and, in June, the Federal Trade Commission in the United States announced that it will investigate Google’s business practices. The search giant has said in the past that it will be fully compliant with the investigation.

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Microsoft accidentally spilled the beans on a new social network it has been working on called “Tulalip.” According to VentureBeat, a splash page for the the social network appeared shortly on Socl.com on Thursday before it was immediately taken down. In an effort to conceal its mistake, Microsoft issued a statement. “Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest,” Microsoft said. It’s unclear if Tulalip is a legitimate social network or if it really is just an “internal design project,” but given the similarities between Tulalip’s user interface and the tiles found in Windows 8 and Windows Phone, it would certainly be a nice fit.

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Google took the wraps off of Google Maps 5.7 for Android devices on Wednesday, and the software update adds quite a few new features. The most noteworthy addition is Google’s Transit Navigation beta feature, which provides navigation instructions for public transportation in more than 400 cities around the globe. You don’t have to leave it open, either. Once you’ve started your trip, Transit Navigation will automatically remind you with an alert when your stop is coming up. Google also made it easier to find driving or walking directions in one click, improved search suggestions with category icons, and added a photo viewer to the Places feature of Google Maps. The update is available free from the Android Market for devices running Android 2.1 or newer. Hit the jump for a video of Transit Navigation beta in action.

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Google officially announced on Friday that it received word on Thursday that the Federal Trade Commission will begin reviewing its business. Google said that “it’s still unclear what the FTC’s concerns are,” but early reports have suggested the complaints involve the Internet giant’s search and online advertising businesses. Google said that it will continue to follow its five pillars: “do what’s best for the user,” “provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible,” “label advertisements clearly,” “be transparent,” and “loyalty, not lock-in.” “These are the principles that guide us, and we know they’ll stand up to scrutiny. We’re committed to giving you choices, ensuring that businesses can grow and create jobs, and, ultimately, fostering an Internet that benefits us all,” Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, wrote on the company blog Friday. There are, however, some groups that are concerned Google is becoming a monopoly. Read on for more background.

This morning we reported on an article from The Wall Street Journal, in which Fairsearch.org, a watchdog group, said “Google engages in anti-competitive behavior…that harms consumers by restricting the ability of other companies to compete to put the best products and services in front of Internet users, who should be allowed to pick winners and losers online not Google.” The group, whose customers include Expedia, Kayak, Sabre Holdings, and Microsoft, is worried that Google will point users to its own services using its own advertisements, instead of directing them to offers from competing firms. Google said that it will work with the Federal Trade Commission’s process to discuss its services and practices.

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The Federal Communications Commission may subpoena Google during the next five days as part of an anti-trust investigation related to the company’s search and web advertising practices. According to The Wall Street Journal, it is only illegal to purchase or abuse a monopoly, and so a subpoena and an investigation aren’t particularly damning to Google. Reportedly, investigators will examine if the search giant has purposely pushed users towards using its own services, as opposed to those offered by its rivals, using its own online advertising and search network. “Google engages in anticompetitive behavior…that harms consumers by restricting the ability of other companies to compete to put the best products and services in front of Internet users, who should be allowed to pick winners and losers online, not Google,” Fairsearch.org said. The watchdog group is representing a number of Google competitors Expedia, Kayak, Sabre Holdings, and Microsoft. Google faced a similar threat from the Justice Department in April when it proposed buying ITA software, but it settled by allowing the government body to examine some of its practices. The WSJ said a subpoena and an investigation could take a year to wrap-up, and it’s entirely possible nothing will change.

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Google on Tuesday unveiled several tweaks to its core search product, including the ability to search by voice or image. Image-based searching has been around for quite a while now, but Google intends to popularize the alternative search method by supporting it right from within the main Google Images search engine. Users can initiate searches using images hosted on the Web, or they can upload images from a PC to start a search. Searches initiated by a photo will return both text and image-based results. The second major feature announced on Tuesday might have slightly less utility among the majority of users — voice search for Google’s desktop site. The service works just like Google’s mobile voice-based search service, but it is integrated with the company’s desktop search engine. We’re not sure what benefit voice-based desktop searches provide for the typical user, but the feature is live and ready to try in the latest version of Google’s Chrome browser. Hit the break for videos highlighting Google’s new voice and image-based search services.

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Twitter on Wednesday unveiled two new services tied to its massively popular social network. The first is one that companies like ImageShack and Twitpic will be none too happy about — a photo-sharing service built right into Twitter.com. Users will see a new camera icon beneath the tweet composition box on the site, and clicking it will allow them to upload images that will display with their tweets. Twitter has partnered with Photobucket to host the photos, and uploading will not initially be supported from mobile devices. Twitter says it is working with carriers on MMS upload support, and the company made no mention of integration with various official mobile apps. The other major announcement out of Twitter HQ is a revamped integrated search service that will now list images and videos alongside tweets on results pages. The new search is available immediately and Twitter’s photo-sharing service will roll out over the next several weeks. Hit the break for a video showcasing Twitter’s new photo sharing service.

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It looks as though Google may be testing a voice search feature for its desktop search homepage. According to blog Search Engine Roundtable, several users have begun seeing the oh-so-familiar microphone icon in the search box on google.com — we can confirm that we have seen it on our Google home page as well. The icon will look extremely familiar to those Android users out there, as voice search has been an operating system staple for nearly a year now. No word on when/if this feature will roll out to the masses.

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Just moments ago on stage at BlackBerry World 2011, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis (no, the other one is also CMO, dummy) announced a strategic mobile partnership with Microsoft (translation: we’re super scared of Andy Rubin). Starting around the holiday timeframe, Microsoft’s Bing maps and search will be the preferred search and mapping solutions for BlackBerry products. We’re talking about a system-level integration, “far beyond a search box,” RIM said. Check out our live coverage of RIM’s BlackBerry World 2011 keynote for more!

Can’t say we all didn’t see this one coming. According to a new report from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), annual revenue for Internet advertising surpassed newspaper ad revenues for the first time in 2010. The IAB said the record breaking $26 billion in ad revenue last year was up 15% from the $22.66 billion reported in 2009. Search remains the biggest category in online ads and represented 45% of all revenues during the fourth quarter of 2010, but the IAB says display/banner ads are growing the fastest. Retail outlets were the biggest spenders during 2010, followed by telecom services, banks, and auto manufacturers.

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