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Google, generally described in news articles as a search engine giant, will become a cell phone manufacturer following news that it will purchase cell phone makers Motorola for $12.5 billion.

From the San Jose Mercury News:

The deal, by far the largest in Google's history, has  been approved by the boards of both companies. It  will give the Mountain View company its own  hardware products and allow it to compete more  closely with phone- and tablet-makers such as   Apple (AAPL), Research In Motion, Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ) and the new alliance between Microsoft and Nokia.

The acquisition also gives Google access to more  than 17,000 patents held by Motorola, which  pioneered the cellphone business. Analysts said  that could help Google stave off a barrage of patent  claims levied by Apple, Microsoft and other rivals  battling the company's Android operating system.  The deal could also boost Google's faltering efforts  to bring the Internet to living room television sets, by  allowing Google to leverage Motorola's expertise in  set-top TV boxes.

Fundamentally, the decision to buy Motorola  underscores the growing importance of mobile  computing to Google, which draws most of its  revenue from selling advertising associated with  Internet searches, as consumers and workers  increasingly perform more computing tasks with  handheld devices. Google's lead in mobile search is  thought to be even greater than its search  dominance on desktop computers.

"It's no secret that Web usage is increasingly  shifting to mobile devices, a trend I expect to continue," Google CEO Larry Page said in a conference call Monday morning.

If you have Internet access, you have probably heard of Google+, which is basically the search engine giant's answer to Facebook.

If you don't have Internet access, how are you reading this?

Like Facebook, Google + lets users and their friends share every detail about their personal life. The difference, and Mountain View-based Google's selling point, is that you can put your friends, acquaintances and family members into different, customizable "circles," so different information is shared with different users.

At first glance, it seems like a decent way to manage information feed and the dreaded "mom is on Facebook" dilemma. Also, users' contacts won't know which circle they are in, which would avoid the complications of having to publicly describe peers as "friends" or "acquaintances."

If circle scheme works, users may indeed be able to acknowledge that they do indeed have a mother while still having the freedom to post pictures involving massive amounts of tequila and poor judgment.

Following news that Apple's popular iPhone and iPad products keep files tracking users' movements, the Wall Street Journal reports smartphones using Google's Android operating system transmit users' locations to Google.

Apple phones also transmit similar data, the Journal reports.

Google and Apple are gathering location information as part of their race to build massive databases capable of pinpointing people's locations via their cellphones. These databases could help them tap the $2.9 billion market for location-based services--expected to rise to $8.3 billion in 2014, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

In the case of Google, according to new research by security analyst Samy Kamkar, an HTC Android phone collected its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour. It also transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any nearby Wi-Fi networks, as well as a unique phone identifier.