Samsung Quietly Continues To Conquer The World

Is there anything Samsung doesn’t do? The same week I bought myself a shiny new Galaxy S II, they launched a solar-powered netbook for use in the developing world. Unlike any American or European company, Samsung Electronics manufactures smartphones and their memory chips, TVs and their screens, computers and their hard drives. They’re the only entity that’s both arms dealer and aggressor in the midst of the biggest arms race the tech world has ever seen. (Meanwhile, their sister companies in the Samsung Group build both ships and skyscrapers, sell life insurance, and operate theme parks.) Their revenue exceeds that of Apple or Microsoft, and their global reach is unparalleled.

Sure, they’re fighting a massive patent war with Apple around the world – but at the same time, every iPhone is 26% Samsung; even if they lose every legal battle, every iPad/iPhone/iTouch sale will still cha-ching in part into Samsung’s coffers. Their flagship phones and devices are Android, but they also maintain their own entirely separate Bada smartphone platform, and have even kept one finger in the MeeGo pie, while declining to acquire it. Oh, yes, and they’re also apparently launching a Windows 8 tablet any day now. Six months ago this seemed like a pointless lack of focus, and reminded me of William Gibson’s Josef Virek: “Aspects of my wealth have become autonomous, by degrees; at times they even war with one another. Rebellion in the fiscal extremes.” But now that Google has bought Motorola, and there’s a real risk of other Android vendors becoming second-class citizens, it seems like wise long-term thinking.

So does that solar-powered netbook. Developing markets are ripe for a massive boom in consumer technology, but are still hampered by shoddy infrastructure, especially power cuts and shortages. That means both rural areas and megacities alike will welcome tech whose lifespan is prolonged by solar power. Of course, the real action will be in cheap smartphones, as I predicted last year, and as shown in Kenya this year, where Huawei’s $90-with-no-contract Android phone has quickly become a bestseller. I expect that within the next six months, Samsung will launch its own bare-bones, cut-price Android phone — and maybe a companion solar charger — to join Huawei in targeting the five billion people who live outside the current “traditional” smartphone market.

And here’s another intriguing left-field prospect. Their products compete directly with Apple’s, in both the courtroom and the market, and now that Google has bought Motorola, they too have become half a competitor. But Samsung doesn’t have anything remotely like the software talent or online presence you find in Cupertino and Mountain View. If they wanted to expand into that space as well (admittedly a big if) they could take a half-step in that direction by acquiring poor crippled Yahoo!. It would be relatively cheap, by Samsung’s gargantuan standards; it would fit nicely into their megaconglomerate soup-to-nuts strategy; and I suspect it would also be the best thing to happen to Yahoo! in a long time.

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Facebook Also Quietly Rolled Out A Like Button Chrome Extension

MG Siegler has been writing for TechCrunch since 2009. He covers the web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, essentially everything. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch, he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where... ? Learn More

Yesterday, we noted that Google quietly rolled out their +1 Button Chrome extension a couple days ago. It’s more powerful than it may seem because you can now easily +1 any page you’re browsing on the web regardless of if the owner of that content placed a button on their site. Just imagine if Facebook has such a extension for their Like Button.. Actually, you don’t have to imagine.

Shortly after our post went up, we were pointed to this extension in the Chrome Web Store. Sure enough, it’s a Facebook Like Button extension, that according to Google’s “verified author” service is indeed built by Facebook itself. What’s surprising is hardly anyone knows about this extension, it has just 500 users!

Perhaps Facebook isn’t touting it at all yet because it is kind of weak. When you click the thumbs up icon, you get a drop-down menu asking you to click an actual Like Button in an overlay. So it’s two-clicks to “like” something. But it does also come with the nice ability to leave a comment as you share something (which the +1 Button extension doesn’t do yet). And it adds Facebook share options to your right-click menu items. From here, you can like a page, share a page, or recommend a page.

It’s certainly possible that this was just a quick hackathon project that one developer threw together at Facebook. It may also be related to their tie-in with Rockmelt, the social browser that is built on top of Chromium (a screenshot on the extension page references it). Quite frankly, it’s surprising this extension exists at all, given the heated relationship between the two companies. It looks like it has been live since July.

After yesterday’s story about the +1 Button extension, a number of readers seemed concerned about Google’s ability to track all of your web movements. Obviously, they’ll have the same concerns about Facebook with this button. Here’s what Facebook has to say on the matter:

You do not need to be logged in to Facebook to install this plugin, but to like, share or recommend a page you will need to log in to a current Facebook account, or create a new one. While the plugin is installed, it will display the total number of likes for the page you are viewing. To provide a personalized experience, Facebook will see some technical information such as the URL of the page you are on, your IP address and the date and time you visited the site. All information collected before you log into Facebook is anonymous or aggregated and will not identify you.

All of the information after you log in…

I’d also like to give a shout out to Hrishikesh Kale who created his own Facebook Like extension after our story yesterday, also not realizing that Facebook already made one.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It...

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Apple Quietly Kills 99¢ TV Show Rentals

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More

Bad news for anyone who was looking to rent the latest episode of Top Gear from iTunes, as Apple has quickly and quietly removed their 99¢ television rental option today.

The functionality has disappeared from both the Apple TV’s interface and the iTunes store proper, signalling a drastic shift in Apple’s pricing policy. Individual episodes of a series can still be bought as usual, and movie rentals still cost the same going rates, so not every iTunes customer will be weeping over the loss.

AppleInsider has also found that support documents pertaining to iTunes episode rentals were similarly pulled, although cached versions can still be found for those who don’t mind a little digging.

In a perfect world, this would be a not-so-subtle signal that Apple’s looking at different ways to handle television rentals. Apple’s big push into cross-device music and app sharing with iCloud could carry over, and rentals could reappear in a new form (and maybe a new price point) but with the ability to be pulled onto any iDevice for the same 48 hour period.

Alas, it’s also completely within reason that factors like mounting studio strife forced Apple to axe the rental service. Major studios have scoffed at the low price tag for iTunes episode rentals, with players like NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker stating that such renting episode for 99¢ “devalues” their content. Rentals, to be fair, weren’t terribly well-priced for people who have cable television, but here’s hoping they live on in a new shape.

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