This is an April Fool’s post.  Cochlear Implant HELP strives to provide timely and accurate information.  So as not to mislead our readers, we now identify April Fool’s posts that mention specific cochlear implant manufacturers with this header.  Our posts often hint at features that would exceed the hopes of many of our readers by far.  While the posts are intended in jest, they do reflect some of the wishes of the community, and manufacturers might benefit from accepting these as inputs for longer-range product possibilities.

In a dramatic move certain to shake up the already heated competition in the cochlear implant industry, Google and MED-EL announced that Google will purchase MED-EL.  Both companies see tremendous amounts of room for technology improvements.

Perhaps the most interesting comment is Larry Page’s offhand announcement of ‘Google Ear,’ which will start out like a hybrid between a smart phone and a cochlear implant processor, but will evolve into a paradigm shift for how anybody interacts with the Internet.