During the Vietnam War, an American major said, “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Well, in a slight twist on that, Google’s shareholders have decided that they must continue censoring Google China in order to keep it alive.
Google’s Press Meeting (censorship)
There’s a lot of great reports coming from Google’s annual press and shareholder meeting, held yesterday at the Googleplex. To make it a little easier to digest, we’re going to break it down into three parts for you. Here’s part four, you can also read part one, part two and part three.
Google Maps For Mobiles Finds Way Into UK
When Google invited a group of British tech reporters to a briefing, those journalists got pretty excited. The event involved “a product for mobiles,” you see, and the reporters were hoping to find out about the Google phone. They didn’t. But Google did release a full, UK-specific version of Google Mobile Maps, which is kinda nifty, too.
Google Maps For Mobiles Finds Way Into UK
Don’t Trick The Google Ad Click
Placing Google AdSense units and navigation elements on a website can be accomplished without leading to accidental clicks. Webmasters should beware of doing otherwise.
Google Apologizes, Thailand Drops Lawsuit
Quite a line was forming up, but it appears there’s now one less organization in the world that wants to sue YouTube; since the video-sharing site decided to take down clips in which the king of Thailand was insulted, the Thai government has dropped its criminal lawsuit.
Google Apologizes, Thailand Drops Lawsuit
Google Earth Scares The Spooks
The director of a U.S. intelligence agency has cautioned that the government may have to censor satellite images that could be a potential security threat to the country and its armed forces.
The warning came from Vice Admiral Robert Murret, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides security information using satellite imagery.
In an interview with the AP he said," If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act."
Microsoft’s Switchboard Better than Google’s
Have you ever tried to call someone at Microsoft or Google? I have. I’ve even memorized Microsoft’s number but won’t give it here cause I’d hate for Jeff Sandquist to get a ton of crank calls. Anyway, both Microsoft and Google have switchboard numbers.
Google Seeks Friendship; Newspapers Curse
Google said it wants to be “best friends” with traditional newspapers. A newspaper executive replied (with more humor than anger), “I don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.” That exchange should give you an idea of what took place during a panel discussion at the Newspaper Association of America’s convention in New York.
Google Seeks Friendship; Newspapers Curse
Google & the WWW Issue
It would appear as if both www and non-www versions of websites are no longer being treated by Google as separate pages, at least where Page Rank is concerned. We know that the visible PR in the tool bars is only a loose indication of a site’s actual PR, but it can still be frustrating when you see a low PR for the non-www version, and a higher PR for domains with the www. Recently we have noticed that the PR displayed is now the same for both versions.
Media Companies Viewing Google as the Enemy
Media companies have started sending a message that they view Google as the enemy. Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons described Google and its ilk as Custer in his last stand.