WASHINGTON: First Lady Michelle Obama said that Google is opening doors to the White House on the Internet by letting users pay virtual visits to all the public rooms.The US president’s home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is part of a Google Art Project that lets online visitors step into museums, galleries and other famous spaces and look around as though they were there. "The White House isn’t simply a home to first families or a meeting space for world leaders, it’s also known as ‘The People’s House,’ a place that should be open to everyone," Michelle Obama said in a video message. "Thousands of people have walked these halls and gazed at the artwork. They’ve examined the portraits of Washington, Lincoln, and Kennedy," she said.They’ve imagined the history that’s unfolded here. And now you can do all of that without leaving your home."

                       Google used Street View cameras in rooms to capture images in 360 degrees to provide a sense of being able to gaze around full circle, zooming in on pieces of art or other features.President Barack Obama and the First Lady have been known to unexpectedly drop in on groups touring the White House, which has logged about 2.5 million visitors during the past three years.The online opening of the White House came with word of the expansion of the Google Art Project, launched early last year, to include more than two dozen new partners.The website at GoogleArtProject.com was not live when the addition of the White House was announced.

 SAN FRANCISCO: Google is teaming with Asia-based hardware makers on a low-priced, 7-inch tablet computer to challenge offerings by Amazon.com and Apple, reports said on Thursday.Android software backed by the California internet giant will power hardware built by partners including Samsung and Asustek to compete with iPad and Kindle devices, according to Digitimes and the Wall Street Journal. An Asustek tablet could be released as early as May with a price of $199 to make it an option for shoppers considering the Kindle Fire made by Amazon.com, said Digitimes.Google putting its weight behind an economical tablet would likely put pressure on other gadget makers to lower prices. Google did not respond immediately to an AFP request for comment.

Google and Microsoft, two of the world’s largest technology firms, are raining blows on each other as they hard sell their so-called cloud services and vie for dominance in a market estimated to grow to $15-18 billion by 2020.Although these companies used to be thought of as being fundamentally different, similarities are beginning to show more prominently with both offering office productivity software, besides computer operating systems. While it may be too early to gauge business gains, the war of words has begun. Google is the largest cloud services company in India," claimed Rajan Anandan, Google’s India head since January 2011. "We have 2,00,000 businesses that use Google cloud solutions. We have orders of magnitude bigger than Microsoft," added Anandan, who used to head Microsoft in India before he took up the Google job.