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Google no longer intends to censor search results in China, and if the Chinese government balks, it may take its servers and go home.

The stunning change in Google's policy toward doing business in China--which was always a complicated dance--came after Google discovered that it and other businesses were the victims of "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack" aimed at gathering information about human rights activists. It is not clear whether the Chinese government was behind the attacks, which Google said in a blog post were also directed against other U.S. companies.

Adobe Systems later confirmed … Read more

Yahoo has finally offloaded its open-source enterprise e-mail division, Zimbra, to VMware.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the sales price is believed to be far less than the $350 million Yahoo paid for the company in September 2007. Kara Swisher at Boomtown reported that the sales price was "well below" the acquisition price, but didn't specify an amount.

Zimbra makes e-mail and office collaboration software, and some parts of its technology will continue to stay within Yahoo as part of Yahoo Mail and Calendar, Zimbra's Jim Morrisroe, vice president of sales, said in a blog post … Read more

Google has stopped adding news stories provided by the Associated Press into Google News, the latest move in a long-running spat between the two organizations.

As of December 23, Google stopped putting AP stories into Google News, although you can still read AP stories through Google News if the story was picked up by one of the AP's partners. Google confirmed earlier reports by Search Engine Land and Techcrunch that "at the moment we're not adding new hosted content from the AP."

The AP has been perhaps the highest-profile organization leading the fight against Google and … Read more

This post was updated at 3:10 p.m. PST with a new headline and more details after Google said translation errors in earlier reports mischaracterized the nature of its apology to Chinese authors. See below.

Google apologized over the weekend to authors in China whose books it scanned as part of the Google Books project and promised to stop scanning books in that country.

Tensions had built between Chinese author groups and Google--as they have in many other parts of the world--over Google's decision to scan books by Chinese authors as part of its quest to build a … Read more

Yahoo has found a producer for its original content push: the guy who brought you "The Office" and "Knight Rider."

Electus, the production company founded by former head of NBC programming Ben Silverman, has signed a deal with Yahoo's media group to produce "exclusive premium content for Yahoo and its advertising partners," according to a press release. Silverman oversaw NBC's programming from 2007 to 2009, and prior to that founded Reveille Productions, which created the U.S. version of "The Office" and "Ugly Betty." His tenure also coincided … Read more

The launch of the Nexus One is giving Google's approach to customer service a workout.

Days after Google started selling the Nexus One exclusively through its Web site, IDG News Service noticed that Nexus One support forums were flooded with questions, complaints, and more than one rant about distribution and technical problems. It's always hard to tell the size and scope of a problem from Internet message boards, but comments were flying in at an astonishing rate: almost one a minute around midday Pacific on Friday.

Much of the confusion stems from T-Mobile's upgrade policies for existing … Read more

Could virtual billboards one day show up in Google Street View?

A few months ago, Google gave a presentation to marketing and ad agency types in Europe as part of an event called "Above and Beyond 2009," an educational seminar/infomercial on how Google can help get their clients' messages out to the public. One of the presentations was on the exploding opportunities in mobile advertising, something with which Google is clearly obsessed these days.

In the presentation, Google tossed out the notion that ads may one day appear in Street View, the feature in Google Maps that … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Forget about the Google Phone already: the Nexus One is merely a blip on Google's long-term strategy for the rise of mobile computing.

One could be forgiven for assuming Google was about to knock over the smartphone market--two and a half years after Apple did just that--with one quick blow going into Tuesday's Android event with a phone designed by Google and sold at retail by Google. After all, that's what the Internet said would happen leading up to the event.

But what actually emerged from Building 43 on Tuesday is just … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's first consumer phone has arrived.

You've read all the exhaustive coverage of Google's Nexus One phone over the last month. The Android-based device emerged at a company holiday party and has been the talk of the smartphone industry ever since. And at an event here at its headquarters Tuesday, Google is unveiling the Nexus One and announcing a plan to sell it directly to consumers.

This post is our live coverage of the event, which lasted about 90 minutes. You can also get a summary of today's announcement and some of my colleague Kent German's initial thoughts about the Nexus One here.

9:52 a.m.: We're awaiting the start of Google's Android event here in Building 43 at Google's headquarters in Mountain View. The event is expected to start in about 10 minutes, and the requisite pounding get-excited music is blaring inside a large conference room. There are maybe 100 people crammed into the room, and Google executives Vic Gundotra and Andy Rubin have already been spotted.

10:06 a.m.: Mike Nelson, a PR representative for Google, kicks things off by promising a series of short presentations. Mario Queiroz of Google has been leading Google's efforts in this area, and he starts off the presentation.… Read more