Image by tuexperto_com5, licensed under Creative Commons Google rules the virtual world but if it ruled the real one, would things be a bit different? Google.org which is the philanthropic arm of Google blogged that it wants to see America weaned off fossil fuels by 2030 for its electricity. Also, Google's own energy efficiency initiatives will be equivalent to shutting down 10-20 coal-fired ...

Three price comparison websites, Foundem, ejustice.fr and Ciao! have accused Google's search engine of burying their ads at the bottom of websites because their products were in direct competition with Google. "We follow the users and everything else will follow," Google's legal counsel told journalists today (24 February), arguing that the company itself does not decide where co...

The Sunday Times investigates Google’s tax arrangements in the UK. Well, actually, they have Richard Murphy read the accounts for them. In a nutshell when you buy an ad from Google you do so from Google Ireland rather than Google UK. Thus tax on any profits ends up in the Irish Treasury rather than the UK

As TechCrunch reports, following the $125 million dollar settlement with the American Authors Guild last October, the Google Book Settlement site is now live, enabling copyright holders to make claims for scanned books available online through Google Book Search. Authors, publishers, and other...

Google is talking about moving some of their data centers offshore, which in their mind apparently means at sea. Some are calling this a "Google Navy" but it appears to have more in common with Greenpeace than a Navy, as the intent is to take advantage of tax loopholes while going "green" by using wave energy. The Times covers the details in this story. The company is considering deploying the sup...

This won't make any sense unless you first look at this rather good and amusing piece on Paul Staines' blog, about the predictive suggestions Google gives you when you type "Gordon Brown is". Then go to google.co.uk, and type in "Paul Staines", and see what predictive text Google suggests. FIRST PLACE GOOGLE SUGGESTION IS "PAUL STAINES BNP". As Paul says so wisely "GOOGLE KNOWS". Those g...

As today’s Times reports: Google’s Street View service got off to a bumpy start in the UK as privacy campaigners tried to block Google’s car-mounted cameras from photographing Britain’s streets. Now, Google is heading off the beaten track. The internet company has loaded its 3-D Street View cameras on to rickshaw-style tricycles in an effort to capture

Google will listen to 21 speakers against the digital books settlement today at a fairness hearing in New York, where the French and German governments are the only governmental opponents of the deal. Other opponents include companies like Amazon and Microsoft, among others. The US settlement would pave the way for Google to develop a $125m Book Rights Registry in a compromise the company had reac...

1) Write about Google at a well known media outlet. 2) Write something about Google at a well known media site that Google would like to finesse. 3) Profit!

Today's New York Times has a fun piece about Google X, the secret lab where Google is working on its special projects. The ideas are, suitability, far out. They are, apparently, looking at connecting household appliances to the internet and creating a robot that could go to the office so you don't have to. It would be tempting to laugh if not for what Google has already pulled off. Indee...