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It appears that Google has big plans for Google Now beyond the Android operating system.

The feature, which serves users relevant information when they are most likely to need it, without them having to search for it on their own, was introduced last year as part of the Jelly Bean version of Android. Since then, evidence pointing to a Chrome-based version, and even an iOS version has been spotted.

Now, it appears Google is even going so far as to test Google Now right on the Google homepage. After being tipped by someone named Florian, Alex Chitu at Google Operating System points to a Google test page with source code suggesting the feature could make its way to the homepage.From Chitu’s post:

“Get started with Google Now. Just the right information at just the right time.” That’s how Google introduces the new feature. “Google Now uses your Home location to show relevant information like weather, traffic conditions, and nearby places,” explains Google. You can edit the home location, work location and the current location. Another feature lets you track your favorite stocks.

Google, of course, tests features all the time, and few every become actual features. That said, Google Now appears to be a big part of Google’s overall strategy. The company has talked about making search faster by pushing info to users when they don’t even realize they need it for years, and with Google Now, we’ve begun to see this strategy implemented. It only make sense that Google wants to get the feature in front of as many users as possible. I can’t think of a better way to do that than by making it part of the immensely popular Google homepage.

But we’ll see.

Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today and former chairman of Gannett died on Friday, reportedly after falling. He died in his home in Cocoa Beach, Florida at the age of 89.

USA Today has compiled a round-up of reactions to his death. Among these are comments from Gannett CEO Gracia Martore, Tom Brokaw and Larry King.

Martore said, “This is a great loss for all of us. Al was many things — a journalist, a leader, a serial entrepreneur, and a pioneer in advancing opportunities for women and minorities. But above all, he was an innovator with a unique sense of the public taste. The single greatest marker of those qualities is USA TODAY — built, as he said, to be a reader’s newspaper. That principle continues to guide our journalism today. I will miss his counsel, and I will miss the man. But as with all great people, what Al built will live on.”

“To the end of his life, he was a contrarian in how he tweaked the journalistic establishment, dressed in his flamboyant wardrobe,” said Brokaw. “Al often said (his early failure with a South Dakota sports newspaper) was a humbling and instructive experience, which he didn’t forget as he moved up the executive chain at Gannett and became a newspaper baron. It was a wonderful American life, from a poor family on the Great Plains to the infantry in World War II to the heights of American journalism.”

Read the article for the rest.

Neuharth was from South Dakota, where he co-founded a local sports newspaper early in his career. The paper went bankrupt within a year, but after that, he went on to the Miami Herald, climbed the ranks, and eventually went to the Detroit Free Press before later buying Gannett. He founded USA Today in 1982.

Image: USA Today

Pennsylvania gun store Pittsburgh Tactical Firearms was running a giveaway for an AR-15 on Facebook, when the social network shut it down without warning.

In fact, Facebook shut down the store’s entire page, though as pictured above, the store has another one that is currently running. That one, however, is focused on survival courses.

According to The Blaze, the contest had been running for a couple months before Facebook shut down the page, along with another page the store had tried to replace it with. The Blaze interviewed the store’s Erik Lowry:

“I still don’t know what’s going on,” Lowry told TheBlaze in a phone interview Sunday afternoon.

Lowry said three days ago he awoke to calls and emails from fans asking where his Facebook page had gone. Lowry used the page to keep Pittsburgh Tactical Firearm’s more than 27,000 followers updated on store and stock information and Second Amendment news.

Lowry has reportedly been sending Facebook message after message without response, though Voativ recently ran an article about gun giveaways on the social network, which shared a statement from a company spokesperson, saying, “Our Ad Guidelines prohibit promotion of the sale of weapons and the Ad Guidelines apply to pages with commercial content on them. Ads may not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives.”

Lowry thinks the article is what led Facebook to take notice.

Google has similar policies. Groupon recently caused some controversy with its decision to pull gun-related deals as well.

Facebook’s Ad Guidelines can be found here. The relevant section simply states, “Ads may not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives.” The Pages Guidelines also clearly say, “Ads and commercial content (including Page post content) are subject to the Advertising Guidelines.”

Google is still taking heat and being fined over the Wi-Fi data collection fiasco that took place between 2008 and 2010.

This morning, Bloomberg reports that a German regulator has fined the company 145,000 euros ($189,230) over the debacle. From Bloomberg’s Karin Matussek:

Hamburg data regulator Johannes Caspar said in an e- mailed statement today. He had reopened the probe after prosecutors dropped a related criminal case last year.

“In my view, this is one of the biggest data protection rules violations known,” said Caspar. Google’s “internal control mechanisms must have severely failed.”

In 2011, France fined Google $142,000.

Last year, Google was fined $25,000 by the FCC for obstructing an investigation into its related practices, though the Commission ended up dropping the investigation.

Last month, Google settled with 38 states in the U.S. over the issue.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune paints a happy picture for the ARRA-funded Lake County Fiber Network…

Since the northern Minnesota county won the state’s largest package of federal broadband grants and loans, $66.4 million, in 2010, it’s been fighting a running battle with its competitors — cable TV company Mediacom and telephone company Frontier Communications — over whether a publicly funded network should compete with private business. But the opponents were unsuccessful at stopping the project, and about half of the 1,500-mile fiber network will be built this year.

“Our funds are committed,” said Lake County Commissioner Paul Bergman in an interview Friday. “We’ve already applied for $40 million of our loan and grant money. It would take an act of Congress to kill the project now.”

They report that both Mediacom and Frontier are backing off the project. There is one potential hiccup, but even if that doesn’t go well, the network will press on…

The county’s only remaining challenge related to the broadband project is a $4.9 million, 2011 lawsuit over the way the county originally planned to obtain bonds for its roughly $3.5 million share of the nearly $70 million broadband network. The plaintiff, Orix Public Finance, alleged that it was initially asked to participate, then dropped from the project. It has asked U.S. District Court in Duluth for a summary judgment in its favor.

Even though solar panel makers are struggling mightily, the solar panel market is expected to grow steadily. That’s why Swiss grid giant ABB announced on Monday morning that it will spend around $1 billion to buy one of the leaders in the solar inverter industry, publicly-traded, Power-One. Solar inverters convert power from solar panels into usable power.

ABB is spending $6.35 a share for Power-One. Power-One has 3,300 employees, and in 2012 produced $120 million in earnings, with $1 billion in sales. Bloomberg reports that the deal is 7.7 times Power-One’s earnings (EBITDA), which is lower than the average price of 8.5 times earnings that has been paid over the past three years for clean power companies.

There was a record-breaking 3.3 gigawatts worth of solar panels — or 16 million individual solar panels — installed in the U.S. in 2012, making solar power the fastest-growing energy source domestically. Another record year is expected in 2013.

Solar panel makers are struggling because the price of solar panels is so cheap right now, and that has led to an oversupply of panels in the market. There will be more consolidation and bankruptcy this year for solar panel makers.

In recent years the solar inverter market has also been developing new technology, and have begun to introduce micro inverters, or smaller inverters coupled with each solar panel. Traditional solar inverters are larger are there have commonly been one per solar panel rooftop installation. ABB has been aggressively acquiring technology across the power grid sector, and has also been investing in clean power tech through its venture arm, over the past two years.

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