Looks like Google is acquiring Zingku, a site that offers a social network for mobile users. “We’ve entered into an agreement to have Google acquire our Zingku service,” the site says. (Credit: Zingku) A Google spokesman confirmed the news: “I can confirm that we acquired certain assets and technology …

Americans using Google are 10 times more likely to encounter a problem accessing the Google search site than Brazilians, according to a new study. From September 1, 2006 to September 1, 2007, Brazil had only three minutes of downtime on Google search, compared with 31 minutes for the U.S., …

Wednesday night, my colleague Anne Broache and I posted our article previewing the U.S. Senate hearing Thursday where Microsoft and Google will face off regarding the search company’s attempt to purchase DoubleClick. The hearing is about to start and can be watched via Webcast. Anne is there and …

I’m sitting here at Microsoft’s “Searchification” event in Mountain View, Calif., but I can’t tell you any of the news because it’s all embargoed until tonight at 9 p.m. PT. Check back then for the full story. In the meantime, you can get a mini preview leaked by a Microsoft employee last week. …

For some time now, we here at CNET News.com have been hearing whispers that Google might be looking to get into the virtual world space, particularly in light of the increasing interest of existing environments like Second Life, and the the success of Google Earth and the search giant’…

Gmail may be getting a long overdue UI update soon. Gmail’s interface has been essentially the same since it launched over 3 years ago, so it should be interesting to see how the update looks. According to Garett Rogers over at ZDNet, Google has been asking users to translate …

Watch out Bill! Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, each worth an estimated $18.5 billion, have joined the ranks of the top 10 richest people in the U.S., according to Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 most wealthy Americans. The 34-year-olds are tied for fifth place, …

Google is sneaky. They have quietly launched a new service that lets people share book marks. It is called Google Shared Stuff. To get started, you drag an “Email/Share” button to your browser toolbar. When you click on the button, you have the option of e-mailing the link or …

(Credit: Hardmac Blog) With widgets hailed as the “next small thing” for advertising, and newspapers going “widget-happy,” it was about time that Google expanded the beta release of its new Google Gadget Ads to advertisers worldwide today. Google Gadget Ads are interactive ads that contain rich media capabilities. They can …

Hitwise released statistics today that showed Google has nearly 64 percent of the U.S. search market, compared to Yahoo’s 23 percent, Microsoft’s 8 percent and Ask’s 3.5 percent. Year-over-year, Google’s share inched up, Asks’ and Yahoo’s were fairly flat and Microsoft lost market …

As expected, the proposed union of Google and ad-tech firm DoubleClick is about to get some congressional scrutiny. According to an aide, the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee that deals with antitrust issues has scheduled a hearing for September 27 entitled “An Examination of the Google-DoubleClick Merger and the Online …

Nathan Weinberg at Inside Google sure can write a dramatic blog entry. For instance, in this one on Google closing a security flaw in its new Presentations feature of Google Docs, he starts out with a screen capture of e-mail addresses that were leaked through that flaw. Ofcourse, the addresses …

Website owners and SEOs alike often feel at odds with the search engines, but times are changing. This was often the case in the past when the engines made updates and changes to their algorithms that seemed to send websites into a SERP tailspin, leaving everyone scrambling to regain their …

This is just in time for all those teams considering building a robot lunar rover to win $20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize. NASA said Tuesday that it has added new lunar imagery to Google’s Moon Web site, a photographic display of the moon with information graphics …

Microsoft has overhauled the look of its Live.com search page, part of a series of changes expected in the coming weeks. While the first visible changes are to the user interface, fonts and look of the Live.com search page, the bigger changes are coming to the engine itself, …

Tonight, Google announced the launch of their long awaited, web based competitor to PowerPoint. Google Presentations is part of their online office suite, Google Docs. Right off the bat, you will notice that Presentations has some of the same basic functionality as Microsoft’s PowerPoint. Although it allows you to …

Google is launching AdSense for Mobile.(Credit: Google) Google is launching AdSense for Mobile, which will allow marketers to place contextual ads on sites viewed via mobile devices. The company has been running mobile ads through its auction-based AdWords program since mid-2006. Now it will be automatically converting AdWords ads …

According to the Hindustian Times, Google plans to release an offline version of Gmail. I think that it’s safe to assume that it will be running on Google Gears, much like Google Reader’s offline feature. Obviously the lack of offline email reading is the one huge downside to …

Several analysts are predicting that the mortgage crisis in the U.S. will ripple through to the online advertising market. One of the most popular types of online ads happens to be for mortgages, so the theory goes that if lenders have to cut their ad budgets Google, Yahoo and …

Is JewTube easily confused with YouTube?(Credit: JewTube) Apparently, Google doesn’t have a sense of humor when it comes to puns related to its YouTube video site. The company is preparing to challenge the use of the name “JewTube” for a Jewish-related video site on trademark grounds, according to …

First with Net neutrality and now with so-called “open access” rules for forthcoming wireless networks, there seems to be no end to the discord between Google and Verizon. The latest evidence of tensions surfaced when Verizon Wireless this week quietly filed a petition asking a federal appeals court in Washington …

Search results… they are a-changing. You may have noticed some changes in your Google search results over the last few months. These subtle changes are just a sign of what is coming as Google continues to roll out their universal search results. While much has been said and speculated about …

LOS ANGELES–The Google Lunar X Prize, a robotic race to the moon, has drawn its first contestant. Not even an hour after the prize was announced here Thursday at the Wired NextFest, Carnegie Mellon University robotics pioneer Red Whittaker said he’s putting together a team to build a rover …

It’s great to be rich. I’ve decided that since Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin are paying $1.3 million annually, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, to NASA to be able to land their uber-luxe Boeing 767 at the space agency’s airfield near Mountain …

It’s great to be rich. I’ve decided that since Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin are paying $1.3 million annually, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, to NASA to be able to land their uber-luxe Boeing 767 at the space agency’s airfield near Mountain …

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Adam Bosworth, who headed up Google’s health-related projects, is leaving the company. The news was first reported on Search Engine Land. A Google spokesman said Bosworth was on vacation and had “decided to pursue other opportunities after that.” He joined Google in …

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Adam Bosworth, who headed up Google’s health-related projects, is leaving the company. The news was first reported on Search Engine Land. A Google spokesman said Bosworth was on vacation and had “decided to pursue other opportunities after that.” He joined Google in …

The privacy commissioner in Canada says Google Maps’ new high-resolution images in its Street View feature could violate Canada’s privacy laws because citizens may not know they have been photographed, according to The Canadian Press. Street View isn’t available yet in Canada, but has been rolled out to nine major cities in the U.S. …

The privacy commissioner in Canada says Google Maps’ new high-resolution images in its Street View feature could violate Canada’s privacy laws because citizens may not know they have been photographed, according to The Canadian Press. Street View isn’t available yet in Canada, but has been rolled out to nine major cities in the U.S. …

Google is earmarking more greenbacks to make cars greener. The nonprofit arm of the Web search giant, Google.org, on Wednesday issued a $10 million request for proposal from companies involved in commercial plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and other forms of sustainable transportation. The RFP process–to be done entirely online–is …

Google is earmarking more greenbacks to make cars greener. The non-profit arm of the Web search giant, Google.org, on Wednesday issued a $10 million request for proposal from companies involved in commercial plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and other forms of sustainable transportation. The RFP process–to be done entirely online–is …

ComScore has released its figures for top Web sites in the United States in August, and UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter has analyzed them. Acknowledging that the data “may be unreliable in many cases,” the report says: “We are generally cautious on reading too much into month-to-month data points. However, the …

ComScore has released its figures for top Web sites in the U.S. in August, and UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter has analyzed them. Acknowledging that the data “may be unreliable in many cases,” the report says: “We are generally cautious on reading too much into month-to-month data points. However, the …

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped has information about a leaked video with details about Google Reader and the company’s social efforts. Lenssen was tipped off by a reader using the alias “Fanboy,” who provided some notes from the video, which was presented by a Ben Darnell. Lenssen says he …

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped has information about a leaked video with details about Google Reader and the company’s social efforts. Lenssen was tipped off by a reader using the alias “Fanboy,” who provided some notes from the video, which was presented by a Ben Darnell. Lenssen says he …

Reporters on the front lines of climate change ate locally grown food from biodegradable tableware at the annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference held at Stanford University last week . Yet, they also boarded gas-guzzling, air-conditioned buses to tour Google’s solar headquarters, green buildings in San Francisco and area ecosystems. …

Reporters on the front lines of climate change ate locally grown food from biodegradable tableware at the annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference held at Stanford University last week . Yet, they also boarded gas-guzzling, air-conditioned buses to tour Google’s solar headquarters, green buildings in San Francisco and area ecosystems. …

The latest figures from Nielsen/NetRatings on the most popular Web sites in the U.S. are in, and Microsoft and Google are on top. But that’s a simplification because there is more than one list and several metrics can be used to gauge popularity. For instance, Nielsen/NetRatings has two Top 10 lists (PDF). …

The latest figures from Nielsen/NetRatings on the most popular Web sites in the U.S. are in, and Microsoft and Google are on top. But that’s a simplification because there is more than one list and several metrics can be used to gauge popularity. For instance, Nielsen/NetRatings has two Top 10 lists (PDF). …

SAN FRANCISCO–Google’s influence on the Web can be likened to game theory, said Google Director of Research Peter Norvig. Very simply defined, game theory applied to economics is a study of the strategic interactions among players and their influences on each other. “We (once) thought of ourselves as observers …

SAN FRANCISCO–Google’s influence on the Web can be likened to game theory, said Google’s Director of Research Peter Norvig. Very simply defined, game theory applied to economics is a study of the strategic interactions among players and their influences on each other. “We (once) thought of ourselves as …

After Jim Gray, a Technical Fellow for Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley, was lost at sea in January, Amazon set up its Mechanical Turk service to let the public help examine Digital Globe satellite photos of the ocean outside San Francisco Bay for signs of Gray’s sailboat. Unfortunately, Gray was never found. I spent an evening going through these images on the Tu

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This fall, Google plans to start charging visitors to access full digital versions of books in its database in partnership with publishers, according to an article published Thursday by The New York Times (subscription required). Google currently lets people read only excerpts of books online, as part of its agreements …

The U.S. judge overseeing Microsoft’s antitrust compliance has ruled Google may file a brief complaining Redmond hasn’t done enough to provide an unbiased selection of desktop search products in Windows Vista. Whether the action bodes well for Google or will influence Microsoft’s fate in the antitrust …

We’ll be performing routine system maintenance this Saturday fromapproximately 10am to 2pm PST. You won’t be able to accessAdWords or the API during this time, but your ads will continue to run asnormal.-Aaron KarpAdWords API Team

Several signs are pointing to the imminent launch of Google Wiki and the company’s long-awaited presentation service at this week’s Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. The biggest indicators are history and vague comments by Google officials. Last year’s Office 2.0 brought the launch of Google Docs and Spreadsheets, …

(Credit: The Economist)The Economist has an amazingly good article this week on Google, and its growing influence and power. Rather than ring alarm bells about Google’s sometimes casual approach to privacy concerns, the article suggests that Google… …needs a deeper change of heart. Pretending that, just because your founders are nice young men and you give away l