Google

If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

Google's announced they're closing or ceasing development of a variety of products as part of an already continuing move to keep efforts focused on other products with greater usage. These include an end to video uploads to Google Video, closure of Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Dodgeball, the microblogging service Jaiku and the Google Mashup Editor.

Google is soliciting contributions to Google Maps with their Map Maker service.

With Google Map Maker, you can become a citizen cartographer and help improve the quality of maps and local information in your region. You are invited to map the world with us!

They've posted several videos to YouTube that show timelapsed edits to maps; here's Islamabad, Pakistan coming into existence.

As the year comes to a close, it's time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist--the spirit of the times. We've compiled some of the highlights from Google searches around the globe and hope you enjoy looking back as much as we do.

Verizon Communications Inc, Google Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and Ericsson, are believed to have a joined a group calling itself the Allied Security Trust. The companies will pay roughly $250,000 to join the group and will each put about $5 million into escrow with the organization to go toward future patent purchases...

Great, now the patent trolls have a target audience.

The market of CMSes has become hotter since the web 2.0 movement. Drupal and Joomla the top 2 open source CMSes are consolidating in the market. This consolidation could be beneficial to software giants Microsoft and Google; therefore Microsoft and Google could secretly finance Drupal and Joomla.

Drupal and Joomla are the top 2 open source CMSes, are consolidating in the market (whatever that means). This consolidation could be beneficial to the CIA since the CIA would love to be pulling all the strings so they could install backdoors into the software and have complete access to all the content in the CMSes; therefore the CIA could secretly finance Drupal and Joomla.

No, really. First, what does "the top 2 open source CMSes are consolidating in the market" mean? I think the author meant to say something along the lines of many people shopping for an open source CMS tend to pick Drupal or Joomla, giving them both a large chunk of the market share.

I fail to see why these two open source CMS packages is beneficial to either Microsoft or Google. Microsoft's bread and butter is Windows and Office and they won't lose this any time soon since the corporate world is quite entrenched (or as some might say, a victim of vendor lock-in). Google's primary source of income is from advertisers placing targeted ads on search results (which Google will only keep showing lots of as long as they continue to be the number one place to go when you're looking for something on the web and as long as advertisers still consider it worthwhile to advertise via Google). Drupal and Joomla could disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow and neither company would have any issue whatsoever. In fact, I bet most employees at both companies and almost all the stockholders wouldn't even notice.

Even if the success of these two open source CMSes were beneficial to Google or Microsoft, that doesn't mean that is the reason why Google and Microsoft could secretly finance them. No, because both Google and Microsoft are the 800 pound gorillas in the room with billions of dollars to throw around, that is how they could do the funding. Why would they do the funding? I don't know. I don't think it would help them directly.

(Though it is worth noting that Google runs their Summer of Code program so Google is not-so-secretly funding many open source projects, including Drupal and Microsoft.)

You can use your Google Account to log into any site that supports OpenID!

But can you log into Google with another site's OpenID?

Looking through the "gallery" of demo apps built with Google App Engine, the only one that seems more than half-baked is HuddleChat, written by Google employees Darren Delaye, Braden Kowitz, and Kyle Consalus. But HuddleChat is just a feature-for-feature clone of 37signals's Campfire. The layout is the same, the tabs at the top of the screen are the same, the right-side sidebar listing participants and file uploads is the same. It even copies Campfire's trick of formatting a message as "code" if it contains literal newline characters.

Borrowing ideas is fair game, but copying an entire app is wrong. And it's creepy, in a Microsoft-of-the-'90s way, when it's a $150 billion company cloning an app from a 10-person company.

A couple from Pittsburgh has sued Google because a photo of their house appeared on Google Street View. They are demanding in excess of $25,000 to make up for the 'mental suffering' and the diminished value of their home. Their street is apparently marked with a 'Private Road' sign, and they claim that putting a photo of their property online is an 'intentional and/or grossly reckless invasion' of their privacy. Google, on the other hand, claims that this lawsuit is pointless since anyone can ask them to have pictures removed without legal action.

Well, since it was a private road, I don't think that legally Google was in the clear. If the photos were taken from a public road, they would be fine.

This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community. Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had. While the OpenID Foundation serves a stewardship role around the community’s intellectual property, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any decisions about the specifications the community is collaboratively building.