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Google has announced today that it will take a huge loss on its stake in Clearwire, the wireless internet service provider.

The company purchased a $500 million stake in the company in 2008, after Sprint Nextel agreed to take over the WiMax operations of Clearwire. The deal was also backed by Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Intel was the primary backer of the failed standard.

Google will sell its 29 million shares at $1.60 each, taking back just $46 million of its $500 million investment. The company, in a filing with the SEC, says the shares will be offered to existing shareholders and then the public.

Although the move clearly seems like a major player abandoning ship, Google would only say "Google periodically rebalances its investments based on its goals and its evaluation of market conditions."

Although Clearwire ran out of money in 2010, Sprint saved the company by paying $1.6 billion to access the WiMAX service, used as 4G on the carrier, until 2015.

Netflix has made it clear today that they have no plans for BlackBerry support, now or in the future.

When asked, the company responded on Twitter that: "We don't have any current plans to support BlackBerry devices, including PlayBook."

Netflix's streaming catalog, which has over 25,000 TV episodes, movies and original shows, has been available on Apple's iOS platform and Google's Android platform for over a year.

The question was posed as to whether Netflix would change their stance now that RIM had updated the BlackBerry tablet operating system to version 2.0, adding much needed features like a native email and calendar app. The tablet can connect to HDTVs and can also now be remotely controlled by BlackBerry phones.

Netflix has over 24 million subscribers, mainly in the U.S. and Canada, but it expanding internationally.

According to the latest data from Strategy Analytics, Nokia has quickly become the world's top Windows Phone maker.

In the Q4 2011, global shipments of the devices jumped 36 percent to 2.7 million units following Nokia's entrance into the market. Nokia managed to take a full 33.1 percent share, beating out HTC. Nokia says they sold 1 million units in the quarter but Strategy Analytics said that number was closer to 900,000.

Nokia began offering their Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 in November around the world.

The company has an exclusive agreement with Microsoft to license Windows Phone and both companies have a lot riding on a successful partnership. Microsoft has backed the marketing campaign for the platform and the Lumia devices while Nokia tries to regain some footing in the smartphone market for which it reigned supreme for over a decade.

Rapidshare has confirmed it is throttling the download speed "free users" of its service receive in an effort to reduce piracy.

Free users have complained over the past week that their speeds max out at 30 Kbps, far lower than usual, and a useless speed if downloading any file of significant size. Most assumed Rapidshare was cashing in on the demise of Megaupload, Filesonic and Fileserve by pushing free users into purchasing premium accounts.

Rapidshare has once again taken the throne as king of cyberlockers, despite a cash rewards program for uploaders that made hosters like Megaupload, Hotfile and Filesonic popular. Having a free user option is great for many who do not want to "pay to pirate," or are scared of having their personal details linked to an account that can be used to abuse copyright.

In response to a question by TorrentFreak, Rapidshare had this to say about the slow speeds:

On January 19th Megaupload was shut down by the FBI. Shortly thereafter, several other file hosters curbed their services or entirely stopped their operations.

RapidShare has been faced with a severe increase in free user traffic and unfortunately also in the amount of abuse of our service ever since, suggesting that quite a few copyright infringers have chosen RapidShare as their new hoster of choice for their illegal activities.

Forbes has reported today that Sony's upcoming PlayStation 4 console will move away from Nvidia and instead use AMD for the GPU.

Sony used Nvidia to power the graphics of the current generation's PlayStation 3, while Microsoft uses AMD in their Xbox 360 and is expected to use them again for their next Xbox.

The note comes via former AMD employees, says Forbes.

Both companies declined comment, and Sony went as far as to not even acknowledge that the PS4 is coming, at all

While the move would be significant, the report must be taken as speculation as moving to a custom AMD Radeon graphics chip would likely kill backwards compatibility with PS3 games, says Xbit, unless Sony pays dual royalties to AMD and Nvidia.

LG has unveiled its 2012 flagship Android device, the Optuimus 4x HD.

The device will run on a 1.5GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor (with 5th ninja core), Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, 1GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage.

Additionally, the phone has a massive 4.7 inch True IPS display with 1280 x 720 pixels, an 8MP rear camera with backside illumination sensor, a 1.3MP front-facing camera and a large 2,150 mAh battery.

The device is LG's successor to their Optimus 2x, the flagship device of 2011.

Pricing and availability will be released at the Mobile World Congress event next week.

T-Mobile has announced today that it will invest the money it was just given by AT&T into building their own LTE network in 2013.

Last year, after a failed takeover attempt, AT&T had to pay a $3 billion break-up fee and give T-Mobile USA $1 billion worth of AWS spectrum, as well.

The carrier says it will use that new spectrum and the $3 billion to launch their own rival LTE network in 2013, as well as install new equipment at 37,000 cell towers.

Says T-Mobile: "Today, we operate America's Largest 4G Network delivering a fast and reliable 4G data experience with HSPA+. Launching LTE next year lets us take advantage of technology infrastructure advancements and benefit from a more mature LTE device ecosystem while continuing to meet the growing demand for data with a powerful 4G experience."

The carrier will actually be the first U.S. carrier to have integrated 4G radios in its cell towers, which should offer higher performance and less hiccups than Verizon and AT&T's networks currently have.

For now, the plan is set but T-Mobile is still awaiting the final transfer of spectrum from AT&T.

Samsung has announced today that the Galaxy S II has reached a new sales milestone, 20 million units.

Since its global launch in April, 2011, the smartphone has become the most popular Android device.

Its predecessor, 2010's Galaxy S, saw 22 million units sold.

Overall, Samsung sold 95 million smartphones last year, just barely beating out Apple which sold 93 million iPhones for the year.

Samsung is expected to launch the Galaxy S III at an event in March. If spec leaks are accurate, the device will have a large 4.6-inch 720p multi-touch display, run on Android 4.0 and a 1.8Ghz dual-core Exynos processor, have a 12MP rear camera and 2GB RAM. Each one of the features is practically unheard of in smartphones, currently, especially not together.

India's $35 subsidized Aakash tablet has run into issues.

The tablet has a 7-inch resistive display, runs on Android 2.2, has a 366 MHz processor, 256MB RAM, 2GB internal storage, Wi-Fi, USB slots, SD slot and a tiny 2100 mAh battery and sells for just $35 because the Indian government subsidizes the price of the tablet.

Aakash was created to help "students in higher education and to give them the technological skills" that are needed for 2012. Additionally, only 10 percent of the Indian population is connected to the Internet.

In its first two weeks of availability, the building company, DataWind, took 1.4 million orders, but has so far only shipped 10,000, angering the Indian Human Resource Development Ministry, who is now re-opening the contract to other bidders as partners to built the tablet. The British manufacturer will complete the pilot program, with 100,000 tablets, but will likely lose out on the second part of the contract, to ship 1 million units.

Users have also complained of overall sluggishness, including lag, short battery life and an almost unusable resistive touchscreen.

Video game industry analyst Jack Plunkett has noted today that Sony will need to sell a ton of PlayStation Vita to make a profit on the handheld.

The handheld went on sale in the U.S. and Europe today, after being available in Japan since last year.

Plunkett seemed very enthralled by the console, but still sees Sony needing a monster hit: "It's a pure game machine aimed at absolutely avid gamers who want to spend some real money on it. And that's going to be interesting to see what happens.

It's potentially a real redeemer for the company and based on everything I've seen they have a really good chance with it."

In order for the company to turn a profit, Plunkett estimates Sony will need to sell 50 million units of the Vita and over 500 million games by 2017.

The PlayStation Vita is available now for $250 (Wi-Fi version) or $299 (AT&T 3G + Wi-Fi version).

Last night, ABC had a Nightline special which reported on the working conditions in the Foxconn plants at Shenzhen and Chengdu.

Each supply plant makes Apple products like the iPad and iPhone. The special, which was only 17 minutes long, confirmed what many already believed; that workers are extremely overworked and underpaid.

Mashable has collected a great amount of facts from the report, some of which are pretty shocking. For the most part, however, the conditions were not as horrible as most media would have you believe.

First, each worker makes $1.78 per hour, and live in a cramped dorm room on the factory's campus for $17 per month. Each worker has seven roommates. Lunch costs $0.70 for meat and rice, and each worker gets two one-hour meal breaks during their 12-hour shift.

To create just one iPad, it takes five days and 375 people. However, workers can make 300,000 iPad cameras for the device in just two 12-hour shifts. Some workers create the aluminum exterior design (with Apple logo) at the rate of about 10,000 per hour.

Some workers were as young as 13, but most were in their late teens, said the report.

As of this morning, fans of The Beatles can buy and download official ringtones from the band's songs.

For now, the band's 27 #1 hits are available, exclusively through iTunes.

The Beatles made their official digital debut via iTunes and other music download sites in early 2011 after years of negotiations.

Full list:

The Beatles #1 ringtones

"Love Me Do"
"Yellow Submarine"
"From Me To You"
"Eleanor Rigby"
"She Loves You"
"Penny Lane"
"I Want To Hold Your Hand"
"All You Need Is Love"
"Can't Buy Me Love"
"Hello, Goodbye"
"A Hard Day's Night"
"Lady Madonna"
"I Feel Fine"
"Hey Jude"
"Eight Days a Week"
"Get Back"
"Ticket to Ride"
"The Ballad of John and Yoko"
"Help!"
"Something"
"Yesterday"
"Come Together"
"Day Tripper"
"Let It Be"
"We Can Work It Out"
"The Long and Winding Road"
"Paperback Writer"

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has had his 2011 salary slashed by $2 million following the company's failed bid to acquire T-Mobile.

The board of directors at the company noted the pay cut was directly tied to the takeover attempt and its expensive fallout.

Because of the failed takeover, AT&T had to pay a $3 billion breakup fee (the largest ever) to T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom, and give a large package of mobile communications spectrum and a long-term agreement on UMTS roaming within the U.S. for T-Mobile USA, all of which was worth about $1 billion.

AT&T had bid $39 billion to try to acquire T-Mobile, which is the fourth largest carrier in the United States and the only other major to use GSM networks. Late last year, however, the FCC and Department of Justice blocked the deal, citing anti-trust issues. Had the deal gone through, most believe the U.S. wireless world would have become a duopoly controlled by AT&T and Verizon. Sprint, the third largest carrier in the nation, was a vocal opponent of the deal, which likely would have seen them squeezed out of the picture.

According to figures from NPD In-Stat (via TND), most Internet-enabled TVs remain unconnected to the Web.

Instead of using the built-in connectivity of the TV, many consumers are still using set-top boxes or ordering video-on-demand. "People are buying connected TVs, but they are not all using them," added Norm Bogen, vice president for digital entertainment at NPD In-Stat.

For those that do connect their TVs, many of the more "active" features go unused, says the report: "I think that people like some aspects of smart TVs. They don't often use features that require them to be active. Social networking and games - those are pretty lightly used. People type on laptops and mobile devices."

Some other consumers just do not know their new TV has Internet access, or the retailer they purchased from did not explain how to use the features, including connecting.

New devices from Samsung and others hope to make Internet features more prominent, even adding voice and motion control features to make using the sets as easy as possible.

Asus has followed through with their promise to unlock the bootloader of the popular Transformer Prime tablet today.

The company has released the unlock tool, giving users the ability to add a custom recovery and install custom ROMs, if they so choose to.

Reads Asus' support page:

Unlock Device App: Unlock boot loader(Only works with TF201 ICS OS)
Notice:

1. Only suitable for Andriod4 .0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS version.

2. Before you download, install, and use the Unlock Device App you acknowledge and assume complete risk to the quality and performance of this App, including but not limited to the following: once you activate the App you will not be able to recover your ASUS product (Original Product) back to original locked conditions;the Original Product with the activated App will not be deemed the Original Product; the Revised Product will no longer be covered under the warranty of the Original Product; the software of Revised Product will no longer be deemed the software of the Original Product and can no longer receive ASUS software updates; your purchased digital content may also be affected.