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Google has announced today that their Gmail email service is now the largest in the world.

The service has surpassed long-time rival Hotmail, and now has over 425 million monthly active users.

Yahoo Mail used to be the market leader, but has since lost its luster. A year ago, Hotmail announced it had reached 360 million unique users per month, after 15 years. Google launched Gmail, as an invite-only service, in 2004.

Google has seen large growth in the past few months alone, moving from 350 million monthly active users in January to 425 million now.

comScore, however, had a different tale to tell, claiming Google is still in third. The analytics company claims Hotmail is in first with 325 million uniques, Yahoo in second with 298 million and Gmail in third at 289 million uniques.

The analytics company did note, however, that it did not include smartphone, tablet or Internet cafe usage.

The end of Flash on smartphones is upon us.

Adobe has confirmed today that there were will be no "certified implementations" of Flash for the upcoming Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

The company hasn't even been developing and testing Flash for the OS effectively putting an end to the era of Flash on Android.

Google removed Flash support from their Chrome browser, and Chrome recently came out of beta, soon to become the default browser for Android phones.

After August 15th, Flash won't even be available in the Google Play Store, meaning if you want it you will have to find the APK online and install it manually, or download it now.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft is looking to unveil a large Xbox music service that will include Spotify-esque streaming and a la carte downloads.

Additionally, the service will have cloud storage functionality similar to that of iTunes and Google Music. The streaming service will cost a certain price per month, or per year, that remains unclear.

Microsoft is in negotiations with the major record labels and indies for the licensing rights, and expect to close the deals and launch the service before the end of the year.

All former Zune Music users will be migrated to the new Xbox Music service, say the sources.

Microsoft has been busy this month, introducing their own branded tablet and showing off updated to the upcoming Windows 8 operating system.

Google has announced that its popular Chrome browser has come out of beta for Android devices.

The browser was launched in beta back in February, and it was updated earlier this month to be more stable. The update also brought a number of performance tweaks.

If you don't already have it, the app is available in the Google Play Store and is about 20MB. You will need Android 4.x or higher.

The recently launched Nexus 7 tablet will also be the first to have Chrome as its native browser, moving away from the Android browser seen on all Android devices before it.

Says Google: "This update picks up important stability and performance fixes since the last Beta, along with some minor UI adjustments, especially for tablets. Known issues are available on the Chrome support site."

Dying smartphone maker Research in Motion (RIM) has posted their latest quarterly earnings today, and unsurprisingly they were horrendous.

On top of a large loss, the company says they are laying off 5000 employees and delaying BlackBerry 10, again. RIM lost $518 million for the quarter, compared to a profit of $695 million in the same quarter last year. Revenue fell to $2.8 billion, well below the company's own expectations.

Expected to be launched last year, the new operating system (and its line of phones) will not see retail shelves until at least the first quarter of 2013.

The layoffs will equal 24 percent of RIM's entire work force, and will help them to reach their goal of slashing $1 billion in costs per year.

New CEO Thorsten Heins had this to say of the work force reduction: "It is necessary to change the scale and refocus the company. I fully understand the impact a workforce reduction of this size has on our employees and the communities in which we operate. I assure you that we wouldn't move forward with a change of this size if we didn't think it was critical for our future."

Shares of the stock fell another 16 percent to $7.70. The company hit its high of $144 the week the iPhone 3G was released in 2008.

While Android 4.1 is more of a minor update compared to what 4.0 was to 2.3, Jelly Bean brings some impressive new features to Android.

Jelly Bean will be the fastest, smoothest and most responsive OS yet, as it offers the lowest touch latency, says the company. Additionally, 4.1 "extends vsync timing across all drawing and animation done by the Android framework. Everything runs in lockstep against a 16 millisecond vsync heartbeat -- application rendering, touch events, screen composition, and display refresh - so frames don't get ahead or behind."

Major Updates

While it is well known that Apple customers pay heavy premiums for the Mac products, it appears they may pay extra for regular items, as well.

According to the WSJ, citing travel site Orbitz, Mac users pay $20-$30 more for hotels than Windows users do.

The site has been experimenting with segmenting their audience by operating system. Reads the report: "The sort of targeting undertaken by Orbitz is likely to become more commonplace as online retailers scramble to identify new ways in which people's browsing data can be used to boost online sales."

Orbitz even admitted that Mac users were seeing targeted ads/search engine hits with higher prices than Window's counterparts were seeing.

For now, it is safe to say that Mac users will likely not be buying through Orbitz, especially when Expedia and other rivals are not "experimenting" with higher prices.

According to new reports, the Amazon Kindle Fire 2 will be unveiled next month to rival the newly launched Google Nexus 7.

The Kindle Fire was first released last November and quickly became Amazon's best-selling item of all time. The tablet is also the best-selling Android-based tablet of all-time, although its sales numbers are far below that of the Apple iPad.

Launched just today, the Nexus 7 features a quad-core processor, all the major Google apps and a front-side camera, all of which the Kindle does not have.

The Kindle Fire 2 will keep the $199 price tag of its predecessor, while adding a camera and better resolution to the display.

Additionally, the original Kindle will drop $50 to $150, marking a price point that Amazon hopes will attract more customers.

Google Vice President Vic Gundotra announced some important Google+ milestones today.

The exec says Google+ has reached 250 million users around the globe, a strong number for the social network that launched last year.

Rival Facebook, around since 2004, has 925 million users.

Of the 250 million users, 150 million sign in at least once per month, and 75 million sign in daily.

Most notably, it appears users spend about 12 minutes each time they use Google+, and most users access the site via their mobile devices.

Thanks to the strong demand, Google has launched a dedicated Google+ app for tablets: "We think it's the best version of Google+ we're ever designed."

During its I/O event this afternoon, Google unveiled its entry in the fight for the living room, showing off its mysterious orb, the Google Nexus Q.

As Google describes it: "Nexus Q streams your favorite entertainment directly from the cloud to your living room. Just use the Google Play and YouTube apps on your Android phone or tablet to surf an ocean of music, TV, movies and music, and Nexus Q will play it all on the biggest speakers and screen in the house. There are no downloads, no syncing, no running out of space. Just the stuff you love -- at home and out loud."

The all black orb has a flat bottom to place it on tables and a middle LED strip that goes on when the Q is being used to stream songs, videos and other content.

In terms of connectivity, there's a Micro-HDMI output, an optical audio port, Ethernet jack, plus a Micro-USB port, a set of banana jack speaker outputs, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC (near-field communication) support. The banana jacks allow for speakers to connect to the built-in 25-watt amp with no separate AV receiver required.

As expected, Google unveiled their first branded tablet today at the much-hyped I/O event.

The Google Nexus 7, built by Asus, will hit hands in 3 weeks, with pre-orders already available through the Google Play Store.

Google's first tablet has a 7-inch 1280x800 HD (216 ppi) back-lit IPS display, is powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 SoC and comes in 8GB or 16GB models. Additionally, the device is the first with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which is a slight update to Ice Cream Sandwich that adds a slightly "frosted" look to the OS and also adds Google's own version of Siri or S-Voice.

Additionally, the tablet has a large 4325 mAh battery for 8 hours of use, has built-in NFC, GPS and a 1.2MP front-facing camera.

Vizio has introduced their first entry into the Google TV market, at a price that will likely crush the competition.

The $99 Co-Star will also be the first Google TV device to have built-in OnLive support, allowing for cloud-based gaming.

On top the standard Google TV features, the gadget will have pre-loaded Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, iHeartRadio, and OnLive apps.

"Our focus to deliver the best consumer experience continues with today's announcement of the Co-Star, which delivers a superior smart TV interface that anyone can add to their existing HDTV," Matt McRae, VIZIO's Chief Technology Officer said in a released statement. "We combined the powerful features of Google TV with an intuitive and easy to use interface, giving users the power to enjoy an entire world of entertainment."

The Co-Star will come with a dual-sided Bluetooth remote, with one side being a full QWERTY keypad. The set-top has 802.11n Wi-Fi and USB ports.

According to Bloomberg, Google will in fact unveil their first branded tablet tomorrow at their annual I/O event.

The tablet will be built by Asus and retail for $199, say the sources speaking with the site.

As rumored, the tablet will also come with Jelly Bean, the latest iteration of Android, said to be version 4.1.

Although completely unconfirmed, the rumored specs are a 7-inch WXGA 1280x800 IPS display, a powerful 1.3GHz Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and a 12-core GPU. Furthermore the tablet will have 8GB of internal storage, Android Beam, NFC and Google Wallet.

Starting this week, Facebook has changed everyone's default email address to their Facebook one.

The social networking giant unveiled the email service in 2010, but it appears to be DOA, with hardly anyone using it.

Using your @facebook.com email address allows you to send emails as you normally would through traditional email services, except you have to be logged into Facebook.

For now, on your profile page, Facebook has made the @Facebook.com address your default contact address.

If you changed your Facebook URL, that is your email address, if you haven't, then Facebook will just assign you some random numbers, making for an easy to forget email.

Microsoft has shot down the rumors that it is looking into creating its own branded smartphone.

The rumors were started by Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund, who said Microsoft was looking into ways to make their own smartphone. The device would be used to boost the presence of the upcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system, said the analyst.

This week, Greg Sullivan, the senior marketing manager for Windows Phone, was asked if the company had a branded strategy in which he responded, "No. We do not."

Microsoft recently unveiled their own branded tablet, the Surface, at an event last week which was a mystery even to Microsoft's closest partners until just days before.

The tablets will run on Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro, and be released when the new operating systems are launched, likely in October.