Google has launched a website called "Verteidige dein netz" or Defend your network, to warn people in Germany about proposed changes to German law, specifically the Copyright Act of the Federal Republic of Germany.
A baby girl has been born and given the name Hashtag. Hashtag may prove to be a nice trendy name for a young lady as we slide deeper into the 21st century. Or it may not. Regardless, we can't wait for #Jameson to compose her first tweet.
A press release posted to PRWeb announced Google's acquisition of a wireless Internet provider for $400 million. One giant problem: it was a hoax. The story was reported on by the Associated Press and numerous technology publications.
The websites, all of which had .pk for Pakistan domain names, mostly had their usual content replaced with a photo of two penguins and the text "Pakistan downed". Some others had only one penguin, while there were variations on the text.
In August, Google promised to begin lowering the search rankings of "piracy" websites, but now there are complaints that Google is being too slow about it. As a result, Google now faces the prospect of a government review in the UK.
Google has been successfully sued for defamation in Australia by a man who found his image associated with gangsters in search results. The man won the defamation lawsuit after showing Google's search results linked him to an underworld figure.
Google announced that it is closing down more of its services, bringing the total for the year to 60. Closing down now are the publisher tool AdSense for Feeds, Classic Plus, and Places Directory, an Android app for finding things locally.
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has reportedly backed down from blocking Google and says that he will let tje search engine index his newspapers. In the past, Murdoch has gone so far as to call Google "a parasite" that "steals" his content.
The "ocean collection" will let users dive down into six of the world's most incredible underwater spots, including coral reefs (and their inhabitants) in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii, says Google by way of introduction on a YouTube video.
The Iranian government has started filtering Google searches and Gmail in order to increase its own security. The Iranian government announced its intention to screen Google communications on Sunday and has already made good on its promise.
Microsoft has added a 'Privacy Protection' page to its Bing website, where it reminds anyone who will listen that earlier this year Google was fined $22.5 million by the FTC. Google was tracking Safari users through what it called a mistake.
U.S. citizens who fell for a work from home scam that capitalized on the Google name are being refunded by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC said that it is sending out over 90,000 refund checks worth around $2.3 million to consumers.
Google will no longer suggest that visitors head to The Pirate Bay. The search giant has removed the website's name from its autocomplete suggestions. According to The Pirate Bay this sort of thing does not have much of an impact on its traffic.
YouTube was rather unceremoniously removed from iOS 6 version 4 when it was released early in August. At the time Apple said this was because its license term had run out, but added that you could still visit YouTube via the Safari web browser.
Opera will continue using Google as its default search engine for its mobile and desktop web browser through August 2014. The firms have worked together since November 2009. The deal will see Opera promote "various Google products and services."
The update adds Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, European Portuguese, Finnish, Galician, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak and Swedish to the Google roster, bringing its supported languages up to more than 40.
Google has signed a new three-year agreement with Mozilla to keep its search engine as the default choice in Firefox. Financial terms were not disclosed, but both firms were pleased with the result, according to a joint release.
Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee have written to the FTC (PDF) about their fears that Google could be abusing its dominant position in the market, or could do so in the future, asking the FTC to launch a formal anti-trust investigation into Google.
