While Microsoft is all about its Windows Phone platform, Google's Android OS is proving a profitable nugget for the Redmond software giant. What some people don't know is that Microsoft collects license fees from several manufacturers who use Android in their products, and in exchange Microsoft agrees not to sue them for infringing on its IP. LG is the newest company to ink an Android license agreement with Microsoft, whose patent portfolio now covers nearly three quarters of all Android smartphones sold in the U.S.

Google's attempts to transform your living room into one big Web-fest have fallen flat, to say the least, and if you ask Logitech, it will tell you it made a "big mistake" getting in bed with Google, a decision that cost the company $100 million. That hasn't stopped LG from being smitten with the sultry sultan of search, and once the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas kicks off, LG will unveil a Google TV that combines Google's Android OS with its own 3D and Smart TV technologies.

In the future, we'll all have jetpacks, flying cars, meals in a pill, and affordable OLED televisions. Can you guess which one of those is the front runner to materialize in 2012? If you cheated and read the headline, pat yourself on the back anyway, you got it right (and if not, you're wrong, jetpacks are too much of a TSA nightmare to go mainstream any time soon).

With CES 2012 just around the corner, we can expect to see a handful of product announcements trickle out ahead of the convention. Take for example LG's 55-inch OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) TV panel, the largest of its kind in the world, according to LG Display, which announced the TV panel today. LG hopes this will help popularize the OLED TV market.