After recently taking a stand against pirated content by making moves to relegate certain sites lower within search results, Google is now looking to take on malicious web content.

The web search giant has acquired VirusTotal, a free web-based service that analyses suspicious files and URLs, and in addition facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, as well as all other types of malware. No details surrounding pricing were revealed.

As a result of this deal VirusTotal says it will now be able to boost the quality as well as the power of its malware research tools, making these much quicker. Additionally, the firm believes that Google’s infrastructure will ensure that its malware scanning tools are always available to users, as and when these are needed.  

“VirusTotal will continue to operate independently, maintaining our partnerships with other antivirus companies and security experts, a blogpost by the VirusTotal team read. “This is an exciting step forward. Google has a long track record working to keep people safe online and we look forward to fighting the good fight together with them.”  

Search giant supasses new Android activiation milestone

Beyond this latest acquisition, Google also revealed some updated stats surrounding its popular Android mobile operating system (OS). A Google+ post by Hugo Barra, Google’s director of product management for Android, revealed that more than half a billion Android-powered mobile devices have now been activated.  

“Today is a big day for Android...500 million devices activated globally, and over 1.3 million added every single day,” Barra’s short post read. This is up from 400 million smartphones and tablets by the end of June 2012.

In related news, Google recently released the latest Android mobile OS usage information, revealing which version of the platform is employed most on user’s smartphones and tablets. These figures showed that Gingerbread (Android 2.3-2.3.7) is still the most utilised version of the OS.