If you follow the usual crop of technology news sites, you will have read yesterday morning that Google had apparently acquired a little-known WiFi hotspot company for $400 million. This story spread with the help of the most popular (and most reputable) sites, like TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, The Next Web, and others. Only one small detail: the story wasn't actually true. [more inside]
posted by nickheer on Nov 27, 2012 - 54 comments

The 2011 Edublog Awards are on. The nominee lists provide rich resources for everyone, perhaps most especially in the free web tool category. A personal selection: Online Convert (free online conversion of dozens of video formats), GeoTrio and TripLine (recorded tours around the world), CorkboardMe and LinoIt (online, shared pibboards), Cover It Live (online event presentation) and A Google A Day (daily questions and puzzles, presented by Google (previously)). For kids, there’s Artsonia (the world’s largest children’s arts museum) Tarheel Reader (illustrated readers for multiple platforms) and SweetSearch (a search engine for students),along with much, much more. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Dec 5, 2011 - 1 comment

A worrisome set of posts from Princeton University's 'Freedom to Tinker" Blog:
In many situations, it may be far easier to unmask apparently anonymous online speakers than they, I, or many others in the policy community have appreciated. Today, I'll tell a story that helps explain what I mean. Second post: what BoingBoing knows about John Doe. Third, and most concerning post: The traceability of an online anonymous comment. Related post: a well researched review of the privacy concerns around the roll-out of, and push-back against, Google Buzz.
posted by Rumple on Feb 18, 2010 - 41 comments

Google shuts down music blogs without warning for "violating terms of service". In what critics are calling "musicblogocide 2010", Google has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google's Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet.
posted by meadowlark lime on Feb 11, 2010 - 96 comments

For those times when MeFi isn't enough on its own: Google Reader has just started showing the number of subscribers to various blogs, adding hard numbers to the existing top blog listings, which use links to measure popularity. Here is a detailed comparison between TechMeme's Top 100 and actual subscribers, as well as a list of top blogs by subscriber in a neat embedded spreadsheet. They offer a good way to find interesting things to read.
posted by blahblahblah on Oct 15, 2007 - 28 comments

Google turning to the dark side? From the article: In short, Google and Dell have teamed up to install some software on Dell computers that borders on being spyware. I say spyware because it’s hard to figure out what it is and is even harder to remove. It also breaks all kinds of OpenDNS functionality. At the end, I’ll tell you what we’re doing about it.
posted by psmealey on May 23, 2007 - 104 comments

The New York Times reports that community forum sites like Digital Point Solutions' have created a system whereby forum participants share in the Google AdSense revenue (Revenue sharing FAQ). Digital Point claims that no gaming of the system has occurred so far. A google search turns up at least a handful of other sites that are doing the same (but no major sites, it seems), and the latest drupal adsense module apparently makes it easy to set up. Curious. [Full disclosure: I know nothing about any of this. I mean, I barely know what a 'blog is (and I'm sticking to that leading apostrophe -- it's the only thing standing between us and Babelian anarchy and we're not even sure 'Babelian' is a legitimate word so now we're really mired in the hypocrisy, huh?).]
posted by nobody on Jan 16, 2006 - 9 comments

Pro-Ad Blog is a website for bloggers who choose to put advertising on their blogs. Aparently an answer to Ad-Free Blogs, this bunny seems to be very happy for the monthly check from Google Adsense.
posted by neo on Nov 22, 2005 - 24 comments

Google Blog Search -- in beta, of course. Works by crawling blogs' RSS feeds. Should Technorati be nervous?
posted by mcwetboy on Sep 14, 2005 - 36 comments

Today's entry on the Google blog was altered in a subtle way. The earlier entry boasted of their Bangalore data center, but the afternoon's version now features the Zurich center more prominently and relegates Bangalore to a footnote. Could it be that the company is a little less boastful in their handling of the outsourcing debate than they thought they could be?
posted by clevershark on May 11, 2004 - 16 comments

Sorry Matt, you can't post in this thread. Google changes its Adsense agreement so that anyone participating in the program is barred from talking about the program. First rule of Adsense, there is no Adsense.
posted by Mick on Oct 3, 2003 - 30 comments

Google, everyone's favourite search-engine, is planning a seperate category for Blogs, to help searchers "filter out blog noise," from primary search results.
posted by Blue Stone on May 9, 2003 - 45 comments

Evan Williams could not be reached for comment. "Evan Williams, Pyra's co-founder, blogged his day-to-day life for the last three years right up until it got interesting. Williams pulled his blog offline earlier this week." Leander Kahney at Wired asks Why Did Google Want Blogger? and thinks it might have something to do with that slippery idea of a semantic Web.
posted by tranquileye on Feb 22, 2003 - 22 comments

Roddick vs. Google, Round II begins with Roddick's blog entry again charging Google with "insidious censorship." John Hiler leaps to Google's defense. And we discover that the AdWords director has never heard of weblogs.
posted by brookish on May 24, 2002 - 14 comments

Somebody found my blog while searching for a 'doctor's surgery webpage'. AltaVista, Yahoo, Lycos -- has anyone ever found anything useful from any search engine ever? Really? I don't believe you. Never ever has any search engine -- not even lovely, nifty little Google -- given me what I want in any useful way whatsoever. You would not believe how long it took me to find a sodding picture of Steve McQueen smoking the other day. And for God's sake don't get me onto the utterly pointless localised versions or the abyssmal AltaVista picture search.
posted by James Bachman on Oct 16, 2000 - 24 comments