Amazon Says It Added 3M Prime Members In The Week Before Christmas

Amazon is a company famous for press releases that are devoid of actual information. (As we saw after Thanksgiving this month.) But, in a moment of selective truth-telling, the company just revealed that it signed up over three million members for its Prime program during the week before Christmas.

There are caveats, of course, as ever.

Amazon confirmed to Geekwire that this figure refers to new trial and paying members. So the actual number retained as ongoing, paying members may prove to be lower. (This is the case with over services that offer free trials, such as Apple Music.)

The company just gave a figure for the third week of December — which, in case you forgot, is right before Christmas falls — so we’re unable to gauge how much more popular the service was than a more normal week. Offering free shipping is clearly most appealing during last-minute Christmas shopping time.

(Fwiw, last year, Amazon said it added 10 million new Prime members over the entire “holiday period.)

And finally, in typical Amazon fashion, there is no word on the total number of subscribers that the service has, although it was apparently a “record-breaking holiday season.”

“Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and there are tens of millions of members worldwide,” the company added.

But the three million figure does give a small glimpse into the service’s popularity.

The $99 per year Prime service gives Amazon customers free-shipping for Amazon.com products, other shopping perks and access to its Prime video service.

Netflix, which rivals Amazon on the latter, has 69 million customers across 60 countries worldwide. Amazon Prime Video is only available in the U.S., UK, Austria, Germany and (recently added) Japan, however, though Prime membership services are supported in more countries.

That’s the most meaningful part of Amazon’s holiday announcement. Other carefully selected metrics — some of which include no actual, raw figures and therefore give little to no insight — include:

• Nearly 70 percent of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday — last year that was approaching 60 percent, but we don’t know how many went beyond browsing and actually bought items via mobile
• Prime members made The Man in the High Castle the most watched TV season on Prime Video this holiday by 4.5x and doubled their total viewing hours of Prime Video titles, compared to 2014
• Biggest holiday ever for Amazon Devices – up 2x over last year’s record-setting holiday


• Over 200 million more items shipped for free with Prime this holiday season
• Prime Now has busiest day ever on Christmas Eve
• • Amazon shipped to 185 countries this holiday
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Alibaba To Invest $1.25B In Restaurant Delivery Service Ele.me, Says Report

Alibaba will reportedly invest $1.25 billion in Ele.me, a food delivery service based in Shanghai, says financial news site Caixin (link via Google Translate). The deal would Alibaba the startup’s biggest shareholder, with a 27.7 percent stake.

According to Crunchbase, Ele.me has raised about $1.09 billion dollars. Its list of investors is noteworthy because it includes Alibaba rivals Tencent and JD.com. Ele.me’s largest round, a $630 million Series F, was announced in August.

If the deal goes through, it strengthens Alibaba’s O2O strategy. O2O, which can stand for online-to-offline or offline-to-online, is shorthand for the business of convincing e-commerce customers to spend money at offline businesses or, on the other hand, getting customers who usually shop in brick-and-mortar stores to make online purchases.

Alibaba’s other O2O investments include its affiliate Alipay, China’s largest mobile payments platform, electronics retail chain Suning, and taxi app Didi Kuaidi.

Top 10 Websites to Download Free eBooks

Digital Books or eBooks as they are popularly known have become a rage ever since the influx of eBook hand readers like Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad, Sony PRS eBook reader etc. Reading eBooks was never more fun. Here are some useful websites indexing hundreds and thousands of Free eBooks. Some are simple search engines, while others host free eBooks.

Top 10 Websites to Download Free eBooks

1. Google Books – It is a web search engine by Google specially for Books. Google digitizes books from different sources and then make them available on its servers. Copyright oblige, some are only partially published. Google Books allows public-domain works and other out-of-copyright material to be downloaded in PDF format.

2. Mega PDF – Mega PDF indexes more than 379 million free downloadable eBooks in PDF format. From novels to biographies to technology books, you can find everything here.

3. Pdfgeni – It lets you find and download books, novels, manuals, articles, document templates, reports, data sheets, and pretty much any information that is stored in PDF format.

4. Project Gutenberg – Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or other portable device. PG has the largest collection of public domain books. Lots of books from the world’s greatest fiction authors such as Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Dickens are present here.

5. NeoTake – Neotake is a new eBook search engine which has indexed several eBooks in various formats like ePUB, PDF, LRF, TXT, Mobipocket etc. It also has a mobile version of the site. More than 200,000 eBooks have been indexed currently.

6. Free-EBooks – Free-eBooks is an online source for free ebook downloads, ebook resources and ebook authors. Besides free ebooks, you also download free magazines or submit your own ebook. A bit of a downside is that you need to register before downloading your favorite eBooks.

7. ManyBooks – ManyBooks provides free ebooks for your PDA, iPod or eBook Reader. You can randomly browse for a ebook through the most popular titles, recommendations or recent reviews for visitors. There are more than 26,658 eBooks available here and they’re all free!

8. Search PDF eBooks – It’s another cool PDF eBooks search engine with millions of books in its database. Ignore the excessive ads and just enjoy the free ebooks!

9. ReadPrint – Free online books library for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast. Thousands of stories, poems and novels listed down here.

10. KnowFree – It is a web portal where users are able to exchange freely e-books, video training and other materials for educational purposes and self-practice. It contains loads of free technology, engineering, web development and Business skills ebooks and in addition, there are lots of video tutorials available.

So which one is your favorite? If you have any recommendation worth mentioning here, mention that in the comments section.

Huawei Nexus 6P gold colour special edition goes on sale in India at Rs 43,999

New Delhi: The 64 GB Gold Edition Nexus 6P is available for pre-orders on Flipkart starting Monday at Rs 43,999.

Huawei today announced the availability of the limited edition Nexus 6P Gold in India. The smartphone would be exclusively available on Flipkart at Rs 43,999.

The 64 GB Nexus 6P special edition would be available with an additional 10 percent bank offer for first 3 days starting 21st December, 2015.

Running on its latest version of Android 'Marshmallow 6.0', Nexus 6P offers a pure android experience, sweetened by amazing apps and sandwiched by some cutting-edge hardware, available across Nexus devices.

Elegantly designed the Nexus 6P is designed with an all-metal unibody. Crafted from aeronautical-grade anodized aluminum with diamond chamfers encircling its edges, the sculpted back of the phone accents the low-light-loving, fast-movement-capturing camera.

Nexus 6P features a 5.7-inch WQHD 518ppi AMOLED display perfect for playing games, watching movies and getting work done in stunning clarity, and front-facing stereo speakers for crisp, clear sound. With the latest version of the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 processor under the hood, Nexus 6P delivers great performance, and the 3450mAh battery keeps you talking and texting from day to night.

Nexus 6P also features an 8MP front facing camera with Google's innovative HDR+ technology, making it one of the best selfie cameras in the market.

Amazon Beats Flipkart as the Most Visited eCommerce Site; Gifts Vouchers to All Users

After two and a half years of setting foot in India, Amazon.in has claimed to have become the most visited e-commerce site in India. In order to celebrate this occasion, Amazon has decided to give away a gift voucher worth Rs 200 to every buyer who will buy anything worth a minimum of Rs 500 today.

Jeff Bezos said that “We have built a vibrant marketplace with tens of thousands of sellers offering everyday low prices on India’s largest selection of over 30-Million products and bringing alive our promise to the customers. We will keep growing our investments in India and continue to work hard for our Indian sellers and customers.”

The terms of the offer limit the beneficiary to one gift card. The Gift card will be automatically added to your account on or before January 20 2016. The offer will be valid only till 12AM today and it will hold good for all modes of delivery including COD.

In October, a time when e-commerce companies battle out to sell make the most of the festive season Amazon.in topped the comScore list with a cumulative visit of 200-Million while its arch rival Flipkart attracted a lesser 164 million visitors. Amazon also seems to have achieved the largest growth rate in visitors from the mere 85-Million in October 2014 to 200-Million in October 2015.

Interestingly, although Amazon.in saw 7- percent of its sales from the mobile app it still witnessed a sizeable 30-Million visitors on its desktop site. All the while Flipkart had been busy forcing out its App only strategy literally barring buyers from using their desktop site, a much controversial move which was sort of redacted later. Amazon has always been bullish when it comes to the Indian markets it is infact heavily investing on the Indian front, first the $2-Bn warchest and also the recent promise to invest a total of $5-Bn for the Indian operations.

A Wireless USB Stick that Expands your Phone’s Storage (And a Giveaway)

What do you do when your mobile phone has limited storage and there’s no option to add an external SD card? How do you carry all your videos and documents where there’s not an iota of space left on the device? Yes, you do have cloud-based services like Dropbox or Google Drive that add virtually unlimited storage to your phone but you’ve to be connected to the Internet to access your files.

This week I’ve been testing a wireless USB stick from Sandisk that adds storage to your phones and tablets much like a regular USB drive. To get started, you plug the USB device into your laptop or desktop computer and let it charge for about an hour or two. You can also transfer the files to the stick from the computer through Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac.

Once the device is charged, you tap the little power button on the stick to turn it on. Now install the Sandisk Connect app on your mobile phone, go to WiFi settings on your phone and connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot created by the USB stick. That’s it.

The content of the USB drive can now be accessed from your mobile phone. You can stream audio and video files stored on the stick, you can browse photos, open PDF files and other documents in associated mobile apps and you can easily transfer files between the phone and the wireless drive. It is much like plugging a USB stick into your mobile phone but without the wires.

The Wi-Fi network has no security by default but you do have an option to add a password to prevent other nearby devices from connecting to the USB stick.

Unlike using cloud storage, Sandisk’s Connect USB stick requires no Internet connection (it will create a hotspot that your mobile device will connect to) and multiple devices can connect to the same USB drive over Wi-Fi. So if you are carrying an iPad and an Android phone, not only can the two devices connect to the stick simultaneously but it can be used as a temporary medium to transfer files between the iOS and Android device.

The USB stick itself is solidly built with a transparent protective casing though it is obviously heavier and looks bigger than regular USB sticks. The Sandisk mobile app does have some issues but none of them are a deal breaker. In my testing, the iPad app frequently crashed especially when reading big PDF files. The Android app would not allow me to browse the web using cellular connection while the phone was connected to USB drive over Wifi.

Sandisk Connect (Amazon, Flipkart) is compatible with both Android and iOS devices and is available in various capacities from 16GB to 128GB. If you are running out of storage space on your mobile phone and upgrading is not an option, the Connect stick is probably the easiest way to expand your phone’s existing storage.

SanDisk Connect Giveway

SanDisk India is giving away 5 units of the SanDisk Connect Wireless USB stick to @labnol readers in India. All you have to do is fill this short form to participate in the giveaway. SanDisk will announce the winners on November 30 (Monday). Good luck!

Amazon Is Giving Away Unlimited Cloud Storage For $5.00

Amid a slew of deep discounts appearing on the web today as a part of the shopping holiday Black Friday, Amazon has introduced one deal that’s sort of a no brainer. The company is giving away unlimited online storage on its cloud servers for just five dollars. The normal price for this is $60 per year, so this – 92% off – represents a significant savings.

The deal is aimed at promoting Amazon’s Cloud Drive service – an online storage site that competes with similar services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and more. Cloud Drive allows you to store documents, music, photos, videos and other files in the cloud, which you can access from any web-connected device, including smartphones and tablets by way of Amazon’s Cloud Drive mobile applications.

However, be aware that if you’re planning to use the now $5 service primarily for photo backups, you may already have that option enabled. Amazon Prime currently offers free, unlimited photo backup as one of its benefits, so you may not need to sign up for Cloud Drive if you don’t need to archive other file types, as well.

What’s also great about this deal is that it’s not just being offered to newcomers, as a way to incentivize them to try out Amazon Cloud Drive for the first time. Current customers can take advantage of discount, too, says Amazon – you’ll be given a prorated refund on your current plan after you buy the $5.00 deal.

But be aware that the $5.00 is not a one-time fee. Cloud Drive is sold as an annual subscription, which means when the service comes up for renewal, you may be again paying full price (unless the company runs a similar promotion, of course.)

For Amazon, giving away storage space – basically a commodity at this point – is not much of a burden. The company introduced the option for unlimited cloud storage earlier this year, with the simplified pricing to make it competitive with tiered-based services that charge more than Amazon’s $5 per month to host so many files.

But at the end of the day, consumers may not choose their storage service based solely on price – user experience, including ease-of-use and feature set, will also come into play. While Amazon’s software has gotten better over the past months, it’s still not as developed or as polished a service as those from rivals like Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, Box and others. Competitors’ cloud drives tie into their other services – like their software for collaborate document editing in the cloud, for example, among other things.

But for $5.00, there’s really not much reason not to grab a huge chunk of online storage space for yourself – at least for the year ahead.

How To Create An Account In Google Analytics

Google Analytics has become very much popular among the businesses that are on the look for tracking the traffic coming towards their website. It also helps them analyze how their website is performing among the website visitors. Thus this tool allows website owners to understand whether their website is providing the best experience for the website visitors or not.

Here is how an account can be created in Google Analytics.

Navigating to Google Analytics Website

• Type Google.com/analytics/ in the browser
• Click button denoted as 'Access Analytics'
• A new web page will be displayed that consists of a brief introduction of how the Analytics works
• Select the 'Sign Up' button for creating an account
• Users can either sign up with their own personal Google Account or can create a new Google account specifically for tracking the analytics data which users do not want to mix up with the personal Google account

Website or mobile app tracking

Navigate towards the top of the page and choose buttons that help you choose among either a website tracking or mobile app tracking.

Add account information

Users will have to provide some basic information to Google as a means to create a Google Analytics account.

These are the basic information that has to be provided.

• An account name has to be entered
• Navigate towards the 'Setting up your property' option and enter the website name and URL or app name
• Select the industry that suits your website and the business that you are dealing with and also choose the time zone

Additional Details

Other details that has to be included in creating an account include,

• Choose among the four data sharing options that can be enabled as well as disabled as per the user requirements
• Users will have to navigate towards an admin page where in users can get the tracking ID for their website or mobile app
• The implementation and changes in the analytics tags can be performed much easily using the Google Tag Manager website
• An account can be then created and a container can be added

Here is how a tag can be inserted within the websites using Google Analytics and help the website owners to start monitoring the results regarding how the website is performing among the site visitors.

Tag insertion in websites

• When a container is created, a tag would be displayed which has to be copied and has to be inserted in each of the web pages that needs to be tracked
• The source code will have to be opened in order to insert the tags
• The copied code can be then placed right below the opening <body> tag
• Navigate to the configuration page of the container and click the 'Add a new tag' link
• Choose 'Google Analytics' from the product list
• The tracking ID then has to be copied and pasted from the Google Analytics Admin page
• Choose a Trigger for the tag
• Click the 'Save Tag' button
• Click 'Publish Now' to send the tag towards website and activate it

You will receive analytic reports after 24 hours and thereby can start monitoring the results

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9147679

You Can Buy Google Play Gift Cards Online In India with COD Option

AAre you an Android power user? Are you the kind of person who’s always wanted to support your favorite app developers but couldn’t because you didn’t own a credit card? Well, we have some good news further down below.

Couple of months back, Google finally launched Google Play Gift Cards in India. But, there was a catch. They were only available in “select” outlets, only in a couple of metro cities in India. Google had partnered with chain stores like Vijay Sales to carry them out. But it wasn’t clear which showrooms would carry the cards. When I went to the Vijay Sales outlet closest to my home, there were no Google Play Gift Cards in sight.

Finally, Google Play Gift Cards are available to buy online from Amazon.in andSnapdeal. Currently you can buy them in Rs 750, Rs 1000 and Rs 1500 denominations. The better news, Amazon.in and Snapdeal both support debit cards AND cash on delivery. Oh and a pan India delivery. Not just a handful of stores in metro cities.

I’ve always felt that Google wasn’t doing enough to help users pay for apps. No carrier billing, no debit card support, no support for local/electronic wallets. Just credit cards. And of course, that makes sense. Google is an advertising company. Android is one of the platforms for delivering ads.

I’m a grown human being who makes his living from the internet. And yet, all this time, I had to use my dad’s credit card every time I wanted to buy an app.

Now finally, I can support my favorite developers without alerting my dad about the upcoming charge first.

Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 runs Android 5.1 or Windows 10 at $155 and up

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that, because it packed an Intel Atom x5 chip, the Android-runningXiaomi Mi Pad 2 recently benchmarked in pre-release form would also offer a Windows 10 alternative on the software side of things. Especially when you consider how the Chinese manufacturer has been warming up to Microsoft of late.

Earlier today, alongside the mid-range, budget-friendly Redmi Note 3 phone, the Mi Pad 2 was announced, and just as expected, it lets you choose your preferred OS. Once again fairly similar to an iPad mini, the 7.9-incher touts an all-metal body, and delivers 2,048 x 1,536 resolution for a pretty remarkable 326 ppi density.

The Intel x5-Z8500 “Cherry Trail” processor inside is hardly a powerhouse, and in certain tasks, it could even fall behind the OG Nvidia Tegra K1, but so far, it’s only taken care of Windows tablet and convertible business, so at least for productivity purposes, it must be the right choice.

It’s not like you can complain either way, given the 16GB Mi Pad 2 is priced at 999 Yuan ($155), and 64GB models with Android 5.1 Lollipop or Windows 10 are set to cost a measly CNY 1,299 ($200). For that money, you also get 2GB RAM, 8 and 5MP cameras, 6,190 mAh battery juice, Wi-Fi 802.11ac dual-band connectivity, Bluetooth 4.1, and a reversible USB Type-C port.

A beaut in both dark grey and champagne gold, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 manages to somehow keep the lights on for up to 12 hours on a single charge despite measuring under 7mm in thickness, and tipping the scales at 322 grams, close to 40 grams less than the 2014 edition. November 27 will see the Android flavor ship to early adopters, while the Windows configuration rolls out sometime in December.

Micromax sells a million Canvas Spark series 3G phones in six months on Snapdeal

Home-grown handset maker Micromax Informatics has sold more than a million Canvas Spark series 3G phones in less than six months of its launch exclusively on Snapdeal.

The Canvas Spark series 3G phones– Canvas Spark and Canvas Spark 2–received more than 90,000 positive consumer ratings, the company said in a release. Canvas Spark 2 is now available bundled with a data package from Airtel that allows consumers to use Whatsapp free of charge for a period of five months.

Micromax Informatics has now decided to make the phones available on open sale exclusively on Snapdeal without any pre-registrations.

Vineet Taneja, CEO, Micromax, said, “The consumer response for the Canvas Spark series has been phenomenal and overwhelming at the same time with the demand for the range is increasing with every passing minute. We expect the sales of this device to touch a new high in the coming weeks and hope to further strengthen our leadership in mass smartphone category in India.”

Kunal Bahl, Co-founder and CEO, Snapdeal, said, “We are delighted with the response that this phone has received. The Canvas Spark series has been amongst the best performing smartphones on Snapdeal with a phenomenal response from our customers across more than 5,000 towns and cities of India. There is a huge untapped market for smartphones in India and we will continue to offer our customers access to the best smartphones at great value.”

Here are the Asus smartphones that will get the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update

Ever since Google released Android 6.0 Marshmallow, many manufacturers such as HTC, Motorola, Sony came up with their list of devices that will get the update. Following the trend, Asus has also announced the names of its smartphones that will get the latest Android 6.0 update.

Here are the Asus devices that will get the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update:

• PadFoneS (PF500KL)
• ZenFone 2 (ZE550ML/ZE551ML)
• ZenFone 2 Deluxe / Special Edition (ZE551ML)
• ZenFone 2 Laser (ZE500KG/ZE500KL/ZE550KL/ZE600KL/ZE601KL)
• ZenFone Selfie (ZD551KL)

Asus has not revealed whether it will add more devices to the list in the coming days. The model numbers of Asus phones mentioned above should be taken into account, as Asus has many variants of a single device, and it varies them by model numbers. The company needs to simplify its device naming. Moreover, the company has also not mentioned any launch timeline for the update roll out to the devices mentioned above. We hope Asus will come up with more information about the update timeline soon.

Get the perfect two-toned lips

                       

                                 

In flat two minutes, get the hot-on-trend two-toned pout, using our easy-to-follow guide…

1. Splash some water on your lips and use a mild scrub or exfoliator to clear off the dead skin. If you don’t have an exfoliator, take some sugar granules on your finger tips and rub them gently on your lips. Once they are well polished, apply a lip balm or a not-too-shiny gloss.

1. Using a nude lip liner, line your lips and fill the upper lip with the darker of the two lipstick shades. Try and pick shades from the colour family of ombre. Or, for a more experimental festive look, you can include metallic shades of gold and mixing them with pinks, reds and oranges.
2. On the lower lip, using a brush, sweep the same colour along the outer edge, blending upwards and keeping the centre of the lip free of colour. Use a lip brush or your finger tips to blend.
3. Apply the lighter lipstick shade on the centre of your lower lip and blend the two shades together, going from light to dark.

Google Invests More Than $60M in Mobvoi, Its Android Wear Partner In China

Google’s services are not available in China, but that isn’t stopping it from making a significant investment in a company based on Chinese soil. The U.S. search giant is backing Mobvoi, a three-year-old company specializing in mobile voice technology, to the tune of more than $60 million.

The duo already have business ties. Mobvoi is the company that Google picked to bring Android Wear, its operating system for wearables, to China, so this deal takes things up to the next level.

The size investment, which is a Series C round for Mobvoi, has not been disclosed, but Mobvoi’s Yufan Wang confirmed that Google has become a minority shareholder. The deal, she said, takes the company to $75 million in investment to date. Since Mobvoi previously raised $10 million Series B and $1.6 million Series A rounds, Google’s investment is just shy of $65 million.

Beyond the Android Wear deal, the two companies have plenty in common. Beijing-based Mobvoi was started by ex-Googlers — CEO Zhifei Li and CTO Mike Lei are both former research scientists with Google U.S. — and Wang said the company’s DNA is heavily influenced by the tech giant.

“We used the Google model from day one,” she told  in an interview. “We wanted to have same culture and team values. The co-operation [on bringing Android Wear to China] went really well… and [Google] showed interest and decided to make an investment.”

On the business and product side, Mobvoi is very Googley, too.

The company is probably best known for Chumenwenwen, a mobile voice search service very much in the style of Siri or Google Now. The service is akin to a virtual butler, allowing users to perform a range of tasks — including search, checking weather, buying items, and more — just using their voice. Wang said the company has struck deals with over 100 content partners to give users access to various services via Chumenwenwen.

Mobvoi used its natural language technology to build out its own smartwatch software, too. Ticwear is a ROM that pairs with Android Wear to make the service — which is kneecapped in China thanks to the government’s blockage of Google services — work in mainland China.

Beyond developing smartwatch software, which works on selected watches like the Moto 360, Mobvoi went a step further and developed its own hardware: the Ticwatch. Wang said the company has sold 30,000 units of the smartwatch, which is priced between $160-$190 in China, but it remains focused on software development.

“Our goal isn’t to be a watch manufacturer, [but] we’re happy to see early adopters buying our product,” she said.

Mobvoice plans to use its new financing to hire talent from across the world and continue refine its software services — Ticwear is updated every two weeks, much like Xiaomi’s approach to its MIUI Android software — while it is also working on its own in-car software and dipping its toes into robotics. Again, that’s much like a Chinafied version of Apple’s CarPlay or Android Auto from Google.

Given the many similarities with Google and reports that the U.S. firm is looking to open up its services in China — and in particular the Google Play Store — is today’s investment a sign that Google has found the company in China to rebuild its business there?

Perhaps there’s even the potential for a full Google buyout in the future?

Not so, according to Wang.

“We value this partnership a lot, and respect Google as an investor, [but it is] still a minority investor and we will focus on what we believe in and in our products,” she told TechCrunch. “We’re not changing what we’ve planned, but there are definitely more opportunities [that will open up].”

Google, for its part, said it has “nothing to announce at this time” when we asked about potential plans to expand the scope of its partnership with Mobvoi and potentially reopen the Google Play Store in China.

The company may be coy on its China plans, but today’s news is undoubted evidence that those plans do exit in some form. Google Inc and its Google Capital VC arm have made investments in China in the past — including a $5 million stake in music and video site Xuneli way back in 2007 — but this deal with Mobvoi is certainly its most strategic to date, and it sets off thoughts about what the search giant has up its sleeve.