Google Maps Updates Satellite Photos


The service will help Internet searchers uncover material, which in some cases dates back more than 200 years, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The new feature, to be named Google News Archive Search, will direct Google searchers to both paid and free digital content on publishers' Web sites, but will not directly generate revenue for Google, according to the report.
Google would not announce that how many publishers were taking part in the new service, for which Google has independently indexed material from online databases and will display the results both as part of standard searches and through a new archive search page, news.google.com/archivesearch, said the report.
However, it announced a number of partners including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Guardian Unlimited, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, HighBeam Research and Thomson Gale, the report added.
In contrast to Google's book scanning project, which has led to legal skirmishes with some publishers over copyright issues, some of the partners involved with the new service said they had been pressing Google to offer access to their archives for several years.
The databases included in the service are part of what some have called the "dark Web," because they cannot be "spidered," or indexed, by standard search engines and thereby have not been accessible through them. Enditem
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-09/07/content_5060556.htm
But Brazilian prosecutors say that pedophiles, anti-Semites and racists are also using Orkut to peddle less innocuous messages. And they accuse Google of protecting them by balking at revealing the IP addresses and other information that could help law enforcement track them down. A judge last week gave Google 15 days to hand over the incriminating data or face a daily fine equal to $900,000. "Making it easier for those Brazilians who use anonymity of Orkut to commit crimes of child pornography and racism reflects a profound disrespect for national sovereignty," Judge José Marcos Lunardelli said in last week's ruling. "Brazilian law is applicable here."
Google argued otherwise, saying that because the information on Orkut is stored on U.S. servers, its Brazilian subsidiary has no access to it and thus cannot hand it over. The company asked prosecutors to withdraw the summons against Google Brasil and address new ones to parent company Google Inc. Only then, Google officials said, would the company hand over incriminating data, as it has done in more than 70 similar cases elsewhere in the world.
Brazilian authorities complied and rewrote the court orders, and Google now says it will hand over the data on pedophiles and other criminals. But Google's argument infuriated Brazilians, who charged the company was putting bureaucratic niceties in the way of tracking down pedophiles and racists. To Internet watchdogs, however, the company stood up for the important principle of establishing international norms on what information global Internet companies should hand over to local authorities and what procedures both sides must follow.
"I think Google's decision to make the legal procedures go through the American justice system is a good thing, not because of Brazil but because of the world," said Julien Pain, director of the Internet freedom desk at Reporters Without Borders. "This way, if you make a request to Google in the U.S., the request can be supervised by American justice. This kind of procedure may seem useless in the case of Brazil, which is a democracy and respects human rights. But it's crucial when Google has to deal with repressive regimes. If a Chinese or a Syrian judge asks information about a dissident or a journalist, it's important that Google could say no."
Google denies it is consciously trying to set a precedent, and, recognizing that the issue of child porn is a sensitive one, is anxious to play down the controversy. However, experts praise the company for taking a more principled stance than some of its rivals have. According to a Human Rights Watch report issued last month, Yahoo voluntarily handed over incriminating info that led to the arrest of four Chinese dissidents; Microsoft censored searches and deleted blogs in China; and Skype configured its Chinese software to censor certain words in its chat function.
"You could argue Google is wrong in protecting child pornographers, but maybe they are not being driven by the fear of bad PR, but rather by what they think is right," said Esther Dyson, the former chairperson of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers who now writes a blog on developing technologies. "The next time the Brazilian authorities say we want e-mail addresses for some reason other than child porn, Google will have a much stronger position, because they have established, both here and in the U.S., that they do not blindly accede to government requests."
Now the question is whether other governments and Internet giants are watching.In a ZDNet Image Gallery, I've gone through 7 products that may become part of a future Google Web Office. Right now, Google doesn't have a full web-based office suite on the market - but this year they've gradually been compiling Web Office parts. For example if you click on "all my services" in the top left corner of your Gmail, you'll go to your Google account and see a list of products that Google offers. Many of them are Web Office parts, or could easily become a part of a Web Office. Here is the current list:

Google Spreadsheet
So there are 9 current Google services listed - the 6 I've highlighted are Office candidates. You can add word processing app Writely to that, which makes 7 possible Web Office suite parts. Some of the pre-beta products from the Google Labs page are possible additions in the future, as well as Labs "graduates" like Google Desktop. But let's not worry too much about what's missing (presentations and project management aren't even Google products yet).

Writely
Indeed there's a lot of work to be done to integrate the 7 office-like products listed above. While recently Google released the oddly named Google Apps for Your Domain - which bundles together Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar and Page Creator - it's just the start of what could be done to integrate products into an office suite.
Even so it's worth looking at the current product mix, for clues to a future Google Office. In the Image Gallery I've compiled, I've focused on the 7 office-like products listed above. I've highlighted a few promising Web Office features from most of the products, even if there's work to be done by Google yet.
[ths gseeker]
[via readwriteweb]


Google Brazil on Friday asked a federal judge to review his decision that it disclose the data of users of Google's social networking site, Orkut, who were accused of criminal activities.
Judge Jose Marcos Lunardelli ruled on Thursday that Google Brazil turn over within 15 days user information from websites that promote crimes like racism or child pornography, threatening the company with a daily fine of 50,000 reals (23,400 U.S. dollars) if it does not comply.
Statistics released by web monitor ComScore revealed that Google properties attracted 156.3 million unique visitors during the month.
In comparison Microsoft sites racked up 144.1 million visitors, while the Yahoo network managed 99.5 million.
In addition to topping the charts, Google also had a higher share of surfers in Europe than the US.
[via vnunet]