Some still contend that Google+ is a ghost town, a social playground largely devoid of active participants. Others, like Google's Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra, see Google+ as "the fastest-growing network thingy ever." Backing up his claim with numbers, Gundotra claims Google+ is home to 500 million people overall and 235 million active users who are +1ing apps, hanging out in Gmail, and connecting with friends in search. Some 135 million are active in just the stream, Vundotra says.

Google's recently launched Nexus 4 smartphone is apparently turning out to be this holiday season's hottest handset. At the very least, Google is having trouble keeping up with demand. After resuming online orders the other day, users who purchase the 8GB from Google Play are looking at waiting 8-9 weeks for the device to ship, while the 16GB model ships out in 6-7 weeks. That means the calendar could flip a year before it actually arrives, if you order today. Demand is so hot that Ebay is limiting the number of Nexus 4 devices some users are allowed to sell.

In its continued quest for relevance amid a sea of Ultrabooks and the ghosts of netbooks, Google's Chromebook may getting a touchscreen upgrade by the end of the year. So says news and rumor site DigiTimes, which is getting its information from a Chinese language financial newspaper published in Taiwan (Commercial Times). Details are sparse, but here's what we know so far.

It's no secret that Google's open source Android platform is the popular kid on the block, but even Google may not have envisioned a time when its mobile OS would account for 75 percent of all smartphones. Yet here we are, with Android installed on three out every four smartphones shipped in the third quarter of 2012, according to data by International Data Corporation (IDC).