Google

In what looks to be brewing into a mutual smear campaign, London-based Privacy International has ranked Google among the worst top Internet sites for privacy protection, and Google is reportedly taking the watchdog group to task.

Privacy International isn't scheduled to officially release its report ranking privacy performance of the top sites until 7 p.m. EDT Saturday. But the Associated Press and other media outlets, who apparently got sneak previews, are reporting that Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade, a category reserved for companies with "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." (NOTE: … Read more

People will bet on anything these days. Along with betting on who will win in football games and horse races, a site called Bodog.com is offering risk takers a chance to wager on which company will be the next bought by Google. The best odds, at 3 to 1, are on Facebook. There are 7-to-1 odds that it will be Associated Press and the same odds on CNET Networks, parent company of CNET News.com. So far, the loser in terms of odds is Automattic, which created blogging software WordPress. It has odds of 12 to 1.

People can … Read more

On this week's Security Bites podcast, I asked Robert Hansen, aka RSnake, the security researcher who disclosed the man-in-the-middle attack on the Google Desktop last week, what readers can do to avoid becoming a victim.

Hansen said: "They could turn off the integration between Google Desktop and the Web. Or they could wait for a patch to come out, which I'm sure there will be. Or my favorite answer is to uninstall the Google Desktop entirely.

"I'm not exactly quick to tell people to stop using applications, but Google Desktop's had, like I said (… Read more

Twelve Midwest universities are joining Google's book scanning and digitizing project, nearly doubling the number of universities participating. The group has agreed to allow Google to digitize up to 10 million bound volumes. The universities in the group are: University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Indiana University, University of Iowa, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The contract between Google and the schools, which are in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, is for six years with an option to renew.

The … Read more

BERKELEY, Calif.-- Michael Jones, chief technology officer of Google's geography software, on Tuesday counted Google Earth as fifth among the most populous nations, by a measure of how many people have installed the mapping application that lets people see their house from space.

More than 200 million people have downloaded Google Earth, according to Jones, who spoke here at the Fifth International Symposium on Digital Earth. That's just under the population of Indonesia at roughly 233 million and the United States at just more than 301 million. Brazil's population falls short of Google Earth users with … Read more

In reality, Google co-founder Larry Page just wanted to finish his doctorate, said Luis Mejia, a senior associate in the Office of Technology Licensing at Stanford University.

Mejia, who was working behind the desk one day in the mid-1990s when Page came in, said Page wanted Mejia's office to license the PageRank invention and get some royalties while he went back to his academic work.

Unfortunately, licensing proved difficult. Only one search engine company made an offer, and it was more of a token offer. "They (Page and fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin) got frustrated so they decided … Read more

Google Maps' new Street View feature might be getting all the buzz these days (Hello, kitty) but that's not the only thing that's new with the popular online map application. On Monday, Google announced that Google Maps now has improved information about public transportation in many cities worldwide.

Subway stops, in addition to building outlines and car traffic data, first appeared on Google Maps in February. Now, the subway and train stops provide additional information: which lines are serviced by a particular station, a link to the Web site for the corresponding transportation company, as well as upcoming … Read more

Salesforce.com and Google are expected to launch a combined Web site on Tuesday that is designed to allow the online customer relationship management software maker to act as a reseller for Google's AdWords.

For Salesforce.com, the alliance expands its efforts to tie its hosted CRM software with Google AdWords, following its acquisition of privately held Kieden last year. Salesforce.com will expand beyond allowing its customers to launch Google AdWords from a Salesforce.com application to one in which it will act as a reseller of the Google AdWords platform.

The two companies jointly developed Salesforce Group … Read more

So, to further demonstrate that the world cannot get enough of Google's Street View feature--or at least to demonstrate that I can't move on--I'd like to invite our readers to participate one more time in a gallery, this time by sending in any Street View images that can demonstrate, without question, when the image was taken.

Last week, I asked for your favorite Street View images, and dozens of you responded.

The result? Here.

So, while there could be many ways to prove when an image was taken, some might be a newspaper front page that's … Read more