The Federal Trade Commission has been satisfied with the remedial actions of Google, including new privacy leadership for the engineering teams and product managers of the company, said Reuters. Other elements that contributed to relieve the concerns of the agency were an internal review process for measures of privacy as well as expanded training involving other employees.

In contrast to the FTC, the CNIL claimed that Google was sometimes uncooperative with its investigators, as a report of ABC News said. The company was asked to provide the source code for all its devices used in the Street View vehicles, but the information was never given for review, it is said.

In spite of the Federal Trade Commission’s closure, the search giant is still subject to potential actions from government agencies in various other countries and US state prosecutors as well.

The vector-based mapping is also present and provides more useful maps when it is offline. The system is able to dynamically render areas of the maps that were not part of the original view and this way keep directions going in case the user is wandering outside the route originally planned. Google says this method uses about 70 percent less information than the old tiling system and therefore is not subject to roaming costs that Garmin criticized trying to maintain users on dedicated GPS.

Google says that maps are supposed to auto-cache areas whenever the handset is powered on and connected to Wi-Fi. Full offline caching and rerouting are not in place but are expected to improve over time.

The 5.0 is a free update for Android 1.6 or higher devices, although only handsets with Android 2.0 or later are able to get 3D features. A staple of tablets having Android 3.0 will also get the update. Some of the features depend on the country, city as well as performance of the device.

Niren Hiro, Business Development vice president, is known to have left since May to CrowdStar. Product Management vice president Ali Diab also left at an unspecified point to TechCrunch to start the hedge fund Caturra Capital.

The leave undermines the incentive for acquiring AdMob as the advertiser remains without its leadership very soon after its union with Google. The acquisition plans were made public in November 2009, but FTC concerns related to antitrust abuse and competition made possible the AdMob deal only in May this year. Hamoui would have spent five months at Google before his leave.

AdMob was bought by Google after the latter realized that Apple has attempted to bid and could have preempted any important inroads into mobile ads with internal efforts. Apple’s service, iAd, has been fighting to gain adoption but it has several high-power clients.

Together with Hamoui, Lars Rasmussen has also left Google. The engineer’s departure was recent and he was considered one of the most significant early developers of the company. He contributed to the creation of the omnipresent now Google Maps and the high profile Google Wave, unfortunately short-lived.

According to sources from TechCrunch, Rasmussen may go to Facebook. There he would join other few but important Google employees working now for the social network, like Android Senior Manager Erick Tseng and Chrome lead Matt Papakipos.

How Rasmussen’s leave would affect Google Maps is not predictable, but the feature has certainly been a very important asset for Google, both on the desktop and in mobile. Even if the application itself is not necessarily written by Google itself, the underlying engine can be also found, beyond Android, in webOS and iOS as core features.

The application supports all the features encountered in the version that was previously bundled with iPods and iPhones. A mid-run coaching as well as a hand-picked boost song for getting through the peak of the session is included. Information can be sent to the Nike+ site and is included in the running stats.

At least an iPhone 3GS or an iPod touch of second generation is required by Nike to use the application. Regardless of the platform, at least iOS 4 is needed. The shoemaker has not said if full background support is available, although the operating system allows both music and location to run behind other applications. The Nike+iPod shoe transmitter is still sold by Apple and will not be probably removed because the new nano version of the iPod still requires the pedometer support in order to make the exercise feature to work.

It could be even worse for other travelers because of the new European roaming data caps which could limit the roaming fees to the amount of 50 euros or $64, with a possible cut off of data in mid-trip.

The roaming fees are correct but the claims do not refer to how this kind of free service works or addresses every competitor. Considering Google Maps Navigation, it is able to cache the whole planned route and download data only for the return trip or in case of veering off a normal intended course. Nokia’s Ovi Maps, for example, contains fully offline maps while it does not charge at all. Other applications, which work on the iPhone, provide free GPS, although only a few of them have offline maps.

The truth is that smartphone GPS has been threatening Garmin which has felt compelled to enter the smartphone area with devices like its Garminfone.

Even when there are no free services available, smartphone owners, those of the iPhone especially, have always had paying for GPS applications as an option and had benefited from the same maps offline as had dedicated GPS devices.

Mayer did not provide other details, but the new feature is likely to be integrated as part of primary searching. It would give desktops, and probably smartphones, a built-in search tool for flights, implemented through the company’s Google Maps. A significant threat is generated to services like Kayak and Expedia. It could bypass such tools for some flight search process.

Help in flight location is already provided by Bing, which is probably the first important target for Google when concluding this deal.

This release comes a month after T-Mobile declared that the Samsung Behold II will not get any extra upgrades beyond Android 1.6. Neither Android 2.0, nor other later builds will be released by the company.

Users of other Samsung Android-based devices seem to face similar upgradeability issues. It is already known that the Galaxy Spica will soon be upgraded to Android, even though the original Galaxy will most likely remain attached to Android 1.5.

Directions can be changed, like it happens with other routing options, and will align to biking routes for those cyclists wanting to take detours. Coverage for the new option is limited to the United States for the moment.

The extra layer is now in beta version and was made possible thanks to a recently added terrain base accounting for elevation. Google has not mentioned whether the new feature would reach mobile tools, such as the Maps software of the iPhone or Google Maps for webOS or Android, although they already include existing public transit as well as walking directions provided by Google.

Available for all Android 2.0 devices, Google Maps Navigation could also be extended to the iPhone through this one’s built-in maps tool. There is no information yet of when this feature could be implemented for the iPhone.

Although most GPS-aware Nokia phones, as well as RIM’s BlackBerry line include turn-by-turn applications, these ones have limited functionality or need a paid subscription to work. Most stand-alone applications, including those for the iPhone, require a significant initial fee and afterwards may charge extra for eventual map updates. Google Maps Navigation requires an Internet connection for map data downloading, but is a free to use service.