Google Asked to Pay $77 Million for Publishing News without Permission
	The Mountain View-based company Google is, once again, sent to court for copyright infringement, being accused by the copyright organization CopiePresse that it has published news belonging to Belgian newspapers without authorization. The copyright group demanded damages of $77 million due to the fact that Google posted on Google News stories written by Le Soir and La Libre Belgique, eFluxMedia reported. Google didn't commen ... [read more >>]
	28 May 2008, 06:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google News - Now on Google Earth
	Google takes no shortcuts when it comes to offering its users the stamp of high quality for its products. Over the past few weeks, we've seen a number of updates released for the Google Earth application. Google's mapping solution can provide users with satellite imagery of various locations and landmarks found on Earth. All of the recent updates are meant to increase the quality of Google's products and even provi ... [read more >>]
	20 May 2008, 09:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Even More Google Efforts for the Myanmar Crisis
	Besides the special Google Earth layer and the donation links published right on the main Google Search page, the Mountain View-based company has taken a new step into helping the people affected by the Myanmar cyclone and created a special Google News category especially focused on the crisis. "The section is available in the English language editions of Google News in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South A ... [read more >>]
	16 May 2008, 06:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google News Adopts Related Searches
	Google News has just adopted Related Searches, an old function which was integrated into Google Search a long time ago and which may represent quite a useful addition for those who read news on Google's website. Just like on the main search engine powered by Google, the Related Searches provide alternative queries related to the query entered by the user. "We think that this feature can be useful not just for adjust ... [read more >>]
	06 May 2008, 03:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google News Helps You Track Your Favorite Actor
	Google News, the Mountain View-based company's service that receives headlines and articles from more than 4,500 sources around the world, has just got a new feature which will surely help you track the activity of your favorite actor, singer, politician or whoever you like. The search function integrated in Google News now allows users to look for a certain celebrity and read the most recent quotes and sayings included in G ... [read more >>]
	17 April 2008, 16:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Demographics Targeting for All Advertisers
	After having monetized on its advertising programs for so long and taking the cash while only offering a platform and a few choices to advertisers, Google is now finally sharing with the world what only few have been able to test since January: demographic targeted ads. The feature was announced with little buzz, but the feedback the Google AdWords team received from those ‘on the inside’ made them decide it should be made availa ... [read more >>]
	24 March 2008, 15:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

News Comments Update from Google
	The Comments feature that Google added to its News service was launched a couple of months back, and allows people mentioned in a particular story to comment on the respective articles. That’s basically giving a voice to anybody worth hearing and making every version of the story very easily accessible. There’s no better way to make the various perspectives available to Google News readers. There’s been an update for the Comments featur ... [read more >>]
	24 March 2008, 09:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Responsible for Hacker’s Wrongdoings, McAfee Says
	The wave of URLs that appeared to lead to Google, but were created by hackers for their devious deeds, has caught the eye of security company McAfee, and boy, were they mad about it. There’s no way not to be upset when you see that fraudsters turn one of the Internet’s symbols into a means of committing cybercrime, but at least there’s something Google can do about it. Unfortunately, at least this far, it didn’t, and that ticked ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 18:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Loses Spectrum Auction to Verizon but Somehow Wins
	For a couple of days, rumors that the Spectrum Auction has been closed at $19.6 billion have been floating around and even Google confirmed it. The Mountain View-based company did not, however, say who the winner was, as this announcement was to be made by the FCC alone. The big day came yesterday, when Verizon was dubbed the big winner, with six large regional licenses for the C-Block of spectrum and another 77 smaller licenses ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 11:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sticky AdSense
	After Yahoo! turned to radio ads, it’s Google’s turn to step down from the clouds and have a hands-on approach to advertising. And a real sticky one, at that. The Mountain View-based company has decided to morph the traditional ‘sticky’ internet concept, the quality that entices web users to stick around a particular site, into a more down-to-earth approach involving glue and paper. Or something like paper, the images aren’t quit ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 05:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Kicks Tibet News off Search
	Compromise is all this life is about for most people. Meeting your better half mid-way in every crisis that might result in tension between you two is the way to resolve everything, and the same goes for any negotiations being held between two companies, when one doesn’t have the upper hand. There’s only one area where compromise should never be an option, and that is the freedom of speech. China has yet to learn that lesson, and ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 04:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google SafeSearch Showing XXX Picture
	The all-knowing and all-algorithm writing Google has failed utterly in what it has been bragging to do so well: keeping children from having access to pornographic material. Their SafeSearch option missed a very explicit photo of a woman’s vagina, and, as beautiful as it might be or not, there was no reason for it to show on top of the web search results, where the Google Universal Search returns are shown. The image was there ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 15:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Revamps Homepage
	Japan found out yesterday that their defaulted Google homepage looked like nothing they had ever seen before. The clean white background was tainted by some tabs that weren’t there the previous night, but overall the feedback the team responsible for the change received was ranging from "good" to "hell yeah!," or at least that’s what it must have been, I can’t really read Japanese. The post on the Official ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 13:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Slowing Down
	Google has seen its web search market share fall some nought point three percentage points globally from January to February, according to comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world but, as an all-time crowd favorite would say, it’s all good. The US share rose over the same period. The minuscule drop was however foreseen by the company, as its CEO Eric Schmidt announced somewhere at the beginning of the year that his compa ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 11:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Search Got Sped Up on Mobile Phones
	The new flat-rate data plans from phone carriers is overwhelming, pure and simple, and it is fueling the rate at which the Internet is accessed via mobile handheld devices up to rocket speed. That has not always been the story; there was a time (which I like to refer to as "The Dark Ages") when the per-minute charging made having a phone that could access the web completely useless – nobody really used that function on ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 08:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Fallas Google Doodle
	The Spanish version of Google has been quite fancy in the past two days. Doodle after doodle after… no, just two of them, but in a very rapid succession. The first had to do with a local holiday from Valencia, Spain, where the 19th of March celebrates Saint Joseph’s Day in a different way than the rest of the countries. A falla is basically a c ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 04:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Maps Opens to User Edits
	Google allowed its users to edit the maps before, by moving markers of their homes and businesses, but nothing of this magnitude has ever impacted the online community like the latest option added. It’s heavenly manna for those in the need for pinpoint accuracy and, to be honest, a big help to the engineers that constantly had to manually operate the adjustments as they happened. It’s final, Google Maps is open for heavy user ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 14:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

For Easter, Google Docs Reveals Cliply
	No, Clippy, I do not want any suggestions on what to do next. I just type in an article and there’s nothing you can do to stop me! Once again, no, I do not want to find out about the help you can provide. Should I need it, I can get it on my own. Or are you acting up all of a sudden because you have seen the Google Docs Cliply that’s had me riled up over it lately? That’s actually not a joke, nor is it a hoax meant for April F ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 13:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

China Blocks Google and YouTube Again!
	Tired of reading about the Chinese government censoring the media and then going halfway for the compromise? Well, you’re not going to enjoy knowing that it happened again, and in a period that was supposed to show the world that all is not as bad as dissidents make is sound like. The first pointer that the government was set on lowering its standards, at least for the period of time prior to the Olympic Games, was given when, in ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 05:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Privila Dropped from Google for Fooling It
	Google, the care keeper of the Internet, as some like to call it, has announced on the 8th of March that Privila sites have been removed from its index after the elaborate scheme that the Chicago-based company attempted and even managed to pull through, fooling the world’s biggest search engine. To make a long story short, Privila bought sites with a relatively high enough search engine ranking, immediately after the original ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 16:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Viacom VS YouTube $1Bn Lawsuit Punitive Damages Denied
	Google might breathe easily, as US District Court Judge Louis Stanton denied the media conglomerate’s claim for punitive damages in the case, the Silicon Alley Insider reports. Interestingly enough, the Mountain View-based company did not object to the amendment, nor did it attempt any means to avoid it being submitted to the file. Could it be possible that Google’s lawyers might have actually wanted this to happen, so it might h ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 10:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

GOOG Going Down Like a Plane on Fire
	I’m sure everybody interested remembers about the big names at Google saying they are certain that the coming recession will not harm their company and that they have ensured that "everything will be well." This expression is overused in movies, but unlike with the stock market, whenever a character says it, he most likely will die a long, slow and excruciating death. Back to business, Google managed to drop to a 52-week low y ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 04:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Gmail Archiver Scam
	Gmail backup software G-Archiver, that should save all of the emails in the inbox on your hard drive, proves to be a user’s nightmare, as Coding Horror reported that, besides doing what it is advertised to, the software also emails the user name and passwords of those who have installed and used it, to the apparent creator, John Terry. Fortunately for those who now feel like they’re in peril of losing everything, Dustin Brooks ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 15:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Another Country Blocking YouTube
	Censorship is all but the latest rage, nevertheless people and even governments use it abusively and obsessively. It might be ok to censor a kid’s drawing on a wall if it has an obscene touch, you’re doing that to protect the others, but censoring the Internet (see Iran’s upcoming elections) or the second most trafficked site in the world, Youtube, as in Armenia right now, is a totally different thing. After the Armenian president decla ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 07:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Plant Opened
	…Google engineers seemed to be singing, as the Mountain View-based company has opened the biggest engineering centre in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) in Zurich. But unlike in the children’s song, they will not be doing without pay. As a matter of fact, they will be cashing the pretty big paychecks, like all of the Google employees, in the banking heaven country, Switzerland. The projects worked upon in the newly opened cente ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 06:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Trademark Search Ad Keyword Law Reversed
	Allegedly, comparative advertising is good for consumers, competition and free speech, or at least it is according to the Google Public Policy blog. Well, that was all a bunch of hooey for the legislators in Utah, who last year passed a law that prohibited search engines from allowing trademarks to be used as keywords for ads triggering and displaying. All of the other states have nothing like it, so the uniqueness of this poi ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 04:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Pentagon Bans Google Maps
	A Google team entered the Fort Sam Houston army base in Texas and mapped everything, but the Mountain View-based company spokesman, Larry Yu, said that it was only a mistake. Naturally, the army had to take measures towards this possible security threat in the future, so it banned Google map-makers from filming and conducting detailed studies of bases. I say naturally because the three-dimensional panoramas of the Texan base have ... [read more >>]
	07 March 2008, 20:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google and Microsoft Going at Each Other over Digg
	Digg is shopping itself around, and a purchase is really likely to happen any time soon, according to Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch. The user-generated news site has been working with investment bank Allen & Co., that I last mentioned was the one behind Bebo being sold. An inside voice quoted by Arrington said that at the moment there are four companies interested in the acquisition, two major media / news companies and ... [read more >>]
	07 March 2008, 06:40GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Offline in Germany
	Not being able to access any of your favorite services on the Internet is a major bummer for everybody, and knowing that Google is the uncrowned king of the Internet, there’s hardly a way to manage without using it even a little. Yet that was the situation in Germany yesterday, when Google Reader, Google Analytics, Google news, Gmail and so on couldn’t be accessed for about two hours. Google Germany was prompt to answer any q ... [read more >>]
	07 March 2008, 06:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Syncs Calendar with MS Outlook and Adds API for Contacts
	The Mountain View-based company has it good, judging from the requests it has pouring in. People have long asked Google to synchronize its Calendar service with mobile devices and Outlook, and after a pretty long period of time it did just that. First came syncing with Blackberry phones, but today the proverbial olive branch has been shown to Microsoft, when Outlook finally got support. Like all the Google features rolled out, it is sti ... [read more >>]
	06 March 2008, 16:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google with Major Security Goof-Up
	Accessing the Google Account through AdWords, AdSense, Analytics is proving rather tricky these days, and not only for the services mentioned above, but for every Google property that requires SSL certification. Nobody wants to see a security warning when they want to see how well their advertising is going, thoughts of phishing start running through mind automatically and panic could be there as well. All of the above is happ ... [read more >>]
	06 March 2008, 15:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Be a Master of Deceitfulness with Gmail
	Not everybody likes to have his or her inbox stuffed with all sorts of emails and newsletters from companies that have absolutely nothing interesting to read, but they had to agree to receiving because of the ‘I Agree’ button once used in times of need. Gmail is dishing out options to avoid situations like this left and right, and it couldn’t do it at a better time. Going through all of the difficulties of creating a filter fo ... [read more >>]
	06 March 2008, 15:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

YouTube’s Most Popular Video, a Fraud?
	After watching the old number-one video that topped the charts for months, The Evolution of Dance, and sharing it with friends, I find it difficult to believe that the new number one managed to outperform the former occupier of the all-so-wanted position. Cansei De Ser Sexy has managed to gather some 89,750,739 views at the time I’m writing this, but there’s no way in hell people can find it so good that it deserves the top spot. A shor ... [read more >>]
	06 March 2008, 13:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google’s Advanced Search Page Updated
	Google’s cash cow is its advertising program, as everybody knows, but the search engine is the core of what the Mountain View-based company stands for. It’s only natural to want to improve it, but at this point, there’s no point in doing that, at least not in the traditional companies fighting over who rolls out the best changes that would impact the market kind of way. Although there has been no official notice yet on any of the Google ... [read more >>]
	06 March 2008, 10:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Microsoft, Read It and Weep: DoubleClick Deal to Be Approved!
	Whatever hopes Microsoft might have still had, after Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick was approved in Australia and the United States, should have died by now. As a matter of fact, the Redmond-based company could have reached resignation after the deal was given the OK in the US, because historically there hasn’t been any case of EU regulators ruling against a decision made by their counterparts across the Atlantic. The Fin ... [read more >>]
	06 March 2008, 09:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Bulky Google Reader
	Google Reader is hands down on of the best ways of managing your feeds on the Internet at the moment and it’s not budging an inch when confronted by similar products. It is able to land the top spot in the hearts of its users because unlike the same service coming from other web companies, it is constantly being worked upon, and that gets highlighted with every possible occasion. Most of the features that have been added so far were not ... [read more >>]
	06 March 2008, 04:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Facebook Stealing People from Google
	Google’s Vice President of Global Online Sales & Operations, Sheryl Sandberg, has been signed on by Facebook and will start as the social network’s COO on the 24th of March. After having a good run with the Mountain View based company, she is now going after something a little more challenging, apparently. Time and again I’ve asked whether a managerial position at Google isn’t the ... [read more >>]
	05 March 2008, 13:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Introduces Navigational Site Search Boxes
	When Google introduced Sitelinks, it attended to navigational searches. It’s not always when you know the URL you need to type, and by being the biggest search engine in the world, the Mountain View-based company had to address this special category of searches. Sitelinks provide users with a more in-depth approach, providing links to the various pages and tabs found on the main site of the queried item. In other words, the o ... [read more >>]
	05 March 2008, 03:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google 4 Times More Admired Than Microsoft
	When it comes to showing off power of innovating and coming up with new products every day, entangling the Internet in a web of products, all branded, Google cannot be matched. Microsoft is trying its best, making its engineers work towards different goals at the same time, but the Mountain View based company clearly owns the stage. A recent Fortune and Hay Group survey asking 3,700 experts from dozens of industries to select ... [read more >>]
	04 March 2008, 17:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google: The Return of the Grieving Widow Strikes Back
	It was just last week when a security company noticed that Gmail captchas had been cracked, or should I say, a way to crack them had been found. The percentage of the successful attacks is pretty low, about 20 percent, but the number of attempts makes up for it. Once one of the most spam-free email services, Gmail is now slowly sinking into the pool of never-ending treacle that unwanted messages create. And it’s not only Gmail having t ... [read more >>]
	04 March 2008, 15:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Gmail, Arrow in Your Email
	Google is trying hard to compete with Yahoo! in the email category because it knows that’s one of the last strongholds the Sunnyvale-based company is left with on the Internet. At the moment, it’s bringing more changes to Gmail in a month than Yahoo! does in a year, and that’s according to statistics. Then again, when you’ve got a late start, that’s the only way to do it. Not many people know about the personal level indicators that [AD ... [read more >>]
	04 March 2008, 14:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Change YouTube Video Resolution
	Last November the YouTube co-founders announced while attending in a TeeVee conference, that their company was toying with higher resolution videos replacing the low res that currently makes up for more than three quarters of the total clips uploaded. Because of the cryptic and almost Spartan ‘leak,’ the media jumped and all sorts of estimates started floating. "Will it be HDTV? Obviously, the Google owned video sharing serv ... [read more >>]
	03 March 2008, 15:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

YouTube 1st of March Update
	Late last week, the YouTube development team flashed before our eyes the option to virtually add a social layer to the popular video sharing site and said that the changes would come ‘soon.’ Naturally, a couple of days later when you read that there’s been an update, you have your hopes high that it be the one promised, but no such luck. The experimental personalized homepages are still in the testing, with only few people actual ... [read more >>]
	03 March 2008, 14:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Advised to Bid for ~20% of Yahoo!
	As the weeks keep flying and nothing worthy of mentioning is happening after Yahoo! turned down Microsoft’s unsolicited bid, rumors are starting to get leaked and suppositions made. The lawsuits filed against the Sunnyvale-based company are something of lesser importance, because they are in a unsolvable situation whichever way the coin flips. Out of the seven suits, there are two accusing Yahoo! of encouraging MS to bid, and oth ... [read more >>]
	29 February 2008, 20:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Justice Department Sued over Google
	Whenever the Freedom of Information Act is mentioned in a lawsuit it’s obvious it’s going to be a very interesting one. As long as somebody has something to hide, you just know that information is worth knowing. The Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy group has asked a federal court to order the release of all communications between Google Incorporated and Jane Horvath, the Justice Department’s chief privacy and civil libertie ... [read more >>]
	28 February 2008, 15:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Docs More Office-like
	Revamp aplenty from Google these days. Yesterday, YouTube came with the big announcement that it would introduce a new personalized experimental homepage, today Google Docs looks totally different, yet in the same lines we’re familiar with. The update was most likely rolled out for everybody, as I’m receiving heads-ups about it from people in Canada, the US and some countries in Europe as well. You might want to check your accoun ... [read more >>]
	28 February 2008, 07:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

YouTube’s Pakistan Ban Related to Election Fraud Videos?
	The Pakistan ban that knocked YouTube unconscious to the floor, for almost two hours, might not be as religious related as the state officials initially hinted. Some local users believe that the blocking of the site was actually closely connected to some footage proving election fraud in the South Asian country. With the result of the ban making it impossible for others to view them, probably the clips have silently been removed. ... [read more >>]
	27 February 2008, 15:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New YouTube Personalized Homepage
	The world’s biggest video sharing service is preparing to revamp the personalized homepage for everybody. Their work is not out yet, but the team has already been creating a lot of buzz around it, and offered a short written description for all of the changes that would occur. The blog post relating to it is extremely joyous and unimaginably optimist as to how the users will react. Truth be told, if the changes are half as good as the Y ... [read more >>]
	27 February 2008, 08:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Share Price Drops 8% on Recession Fears
	A comScore US industry report, published earlier this week, indicates a decline in the key measure for how the Mountain View-based company is getting paid by advertisers, and that freaked everybody out. Despite Google’s repeated statements that any upcoming recession would not affect it, it saw an 8 percent fall in share value just from one day to the next. Many analysts have cut their 12-month target on Google, Reuters report ... [read more >>]
	27 February 2008, 06:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia