Google's Week: Pressuring a president, Glass return rumours, and 'Brillo' IoT push

Firm also worked with Twitter to allow tweets to be displayed in search results

This week saw Google joining Apple and others to urge president Obama to let firms encrypt data or face economic disaster.

The company also cut its cloud prices to keep competitive with Amazon and Microsoft, allowed tweets to appear in search results and posted job adverts hinting at the return of the Google Glass smart glasses.

Google and Apple urge Obama to let firms encrypt data or face economic disaster

Google joined Apple to be part of a 140-strong group of companies, academics, white hats and researchers that has warned US president Barak Obama to halt the government's war on encryption, or face an economic disaster.

The group wrote an open letter to Obama urging him to reject proposals that will let agencies legally collect and decrypt data from smartphones and "other communications devices".

The letter claimed that the move will aggravate existing trust issues with US firms.

Twitter posts now appear in Google searches on iOS, Android and web apps

Google has worked with Twitter to enable tweets for the social network to appear in Google searches on iOS, Android and web apps.

Twitter said that the integrating of tweets with real-time Google searches will make it easier for people to discover more about their interests across both companies' services.

Google job ads hint at the rebirth of Glass wearable

Google posted several job adverts that hint at the next generation of Google Glass, the wearable technology project canned in January.

The adverts now show that the firm is looking for people with skills relevant to wearables, including an audio hardware manager and someone with experience of human factors design.

Google slashes cloud prices by 30 percent to undercut Amazon and Microsoft

Google revealed the latest batch of price cuts to its cloud computing services as it looks to undercut rivals Amazon and Microsoft.

The search firm will make its cloud services up to 30 percent cheaper, with more reductions in the future.

Google to launch Brillo Internet of Things software

V3's sister site The INQUIRER reported that Google will make a play in the Internet of Things arena by launching a software platform called Brillo for connected devices.

Brillo will apparently be based on Android, and will be aimed at low-powered devices with as little as 32MB or 64MB RAM, significantly less than the 512MB minimum Android can currently run on.

NSA planned to hack Google Play to spy on Android users

It was also this week that the US National Security Agency (NSA) planned to hack the Google Play store in an attempt to snoop on millions of Android users, according to a report from The Intercept based on a document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The report claimed that the NSA developed the plan with allies in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, a group known as the Five Eyes alliance, to plant spyware on smartphones through data links to the app stores operated by Google and Samsung.