After Google announced in January that they will stop filtering content on their Chinese search engine, China fought back, warning Google of their laws in censorship, insisting that Google obey those laws.  If Google does obey their laws, the country will welcome the search engine, however, disrespecting Chinese laws might have "significant impact on US/China relations."

In addition to their prophecies of restricting web access with download caps and such, it seems that Verizon is adding some stranger restrictions on its products. Apparently if you want a Verizon based Nexus One, you'll only be able to get it directly from Google. This isn't particularly surprising, but it is a bit silly. It is their phone (well.. partly theirs anyway); and they can sell it any way they want, but there isn't much that making it a "web exclusive" would do for sales. What's more interesting is that in the same leaked document that revealed this fact, was an implication that the new phone might be running HTC's custom mod "Sense."

On Thursday, Google has made a new Blogger layout tool, Blogger Template Designer, available on their "test lab" site Blogger in Draft.  The new template tool allows users to have more custom control over their blog by using professional designs, prebuilt templates and control colors.

On top of all their recent software pushes, Google decided to put a little icing on the cake; and this icing is green.  The new Google Bike Maps is a web based service that works allot like the normal Google maps, except it is designed to promote and encourage the usage of bikes.  Rather than just showing you basic road topography and giving you directions (both of which it can do), it has a number of features geared towards making logistic biking actually effective.

With the advent of the Google App Marketplace, there is a question on many analysts' lips: how will this actually effect Microsoft?  The new marketplace’s focus on business applications combined with the recent acquisition of DocVerse is clearly a play at Microsoft's business supremacy.  Will this actually effect them, and if so how will Microsoft react?

Well, there may yet be some fight left in Google’s app war.  Google has just officially released the new Google App Marketplace.  It seems that someone in the ivory towers at Google was thinking; because this is very much what they needed.  By centralizing cloud applications under a major corporate banner and being extremely easy on third parties who want in, they are playing to all of their strengths.  For only $100 and 20% of sales, any developer can host and sell their applications through Google’s cloud network.  This way, they keep their faux anarchist hacker charm while providing us software consumers with the stability we want.  The use of the marketplace, of course, costs we the consumers nothing.

Well, if failing to fully support their operating system  like they’ve promised us wasn’t enough sabotage, apparently the Nexus One’s hardware is starting to fail.  First, the screens are already starting to develop cracks in them after only months of having been released.  Upon inspection, apparently these cracks are a result of wear and tear from pressing buttons and (get this) being put in people’s pockets.  The representative actually said "people sometimes forget that they don't go in pockets."  Maybe companies sometimes forget that they DO go in pockets.  Only half of us have purses to carry our phones around in thank you very much.

 

In al

Well, when Google isn’t sabotaging itself, all that “wrench in the gears” mastery is artfully turned on their competitors.  If there’s one thing that they haven’t forgotten how to do, it’s how to ruin the day of someone charging for software that they think should be free.  This time, Google has upped the ante in their freeware crusade against Microsoft office by acquiring DocVerse.

 

There is one slight glimmer of hope left for HTC in their upcoming legal battle.  Google has publicly announced their support for HTC.  At first this may seem a bit strange, but it really shouldn’t be that surprising.  Not only have Google and Apple been feuding and taking potshots at each other for quite a while, but given the precedents at stake the Apple HTC suit is more of an attack on other smartphone providers as a whole than it is about HTC in particular.  What then happens if HTC successfully defends itself (perhaps with the help of Google)?

Google continues to get deeper and deeper into the app game. Just last week Google announced Google Earth Mobile for the Android Operating System. As if it wasn’t enough to be able to search via voice or typed search, the most recent addition to the Google App entourage is Gesture Search. Gesture Search allows users to search their phone’s contents with a few finger movements.

The announcement comes less than a month after Picnik claimed its one billionth edited photo. The Web based software allows users to edit photos from a variety of places where users store images online. The list includes your usual internet photo sharing sites such as Webshots and Photobucket, but it also includes social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. Picnik photo editing software has gained much familiarity and exposure in the online photo community because of the editing services it provides Flikr users.

The internet has brought a world of information to your fingertips and gone great lengths to connect people all over the world. The only problem is all of the Web’s contents don’t come in just one language. Yesterday Google Chrome introduced a new beta, which provides a new feature to help users navigate the multilingual web. The coolest feature added is the instant language translation of Web pages, without the need for any browser extensions or plug-ins.

Google Street View was launched in May 2007. The feature provides 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic street level views within Google Maps. Over the past few years Google has used a variety of vehicles including cars, vans and most recently a pedal powered trike. Google collects the street view images using special cameras and equipment that capture and match images to a specific location using GPS devices. Today Google announced the results of their most recent Street View Trike Suggestion Contest.

Google offers an assortment of search features all of which are aimed at a particular search task to make online searching easier. When searching for local options though, Googlers have had mixed results. Yes you can use Google Local to find local restaurants, stores, etc.; but until now the only option for finding local information was entering a location in with your search phrase. That is until now.

Earlier this week Google announced that Google Earth was now available for the Android Operating System. Google Earth can be customized with the layers to match with the users individual interests. This takes Google one step deeper into the App game. Google even went as far as saying that this was the fastest version of Google Earth Mobile.