SAN FRANCISCO--Baidu CEO Robin Li was also frustrated by Chinese censorship when he returned to his native country to found a search engine, but he said he didn't have the same options that Google had earlier this year.

Li, speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit here in what host John Battelle said was his first U.S. appearance before an industry conference, fielded several friendly questions but was also asked about Google's decision to leave the Chinese mainland earlier this year in favor of a Chinese-language search operation based in Hong Kong, where censorship laws are different. … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Google plans to support Android phones with near-field communications chips in the next version of Android, which CEO Eric Schmidt said today would arrive in the next few weeks.

Schmidt, kicking off the Web 2.0 Summit at the Palace Hotel here in downtown San Francisco, held up an "unannounced product" that appeared to be the Nexus S, which leaked out on Best Buy's Web site last week. The phone--Google unhelpfully covered over the brand label--was running Android 2.3, code-named Gingerbread and used a near-field communications chip that Schmidt thinks could eventually replace credit cards.… Read more

As the retail industry anxiously awaits another holiday season amid difficult conditions, Google is also hoping to attract shoppers with new search features.

Over the next several days Google plans to introduce several new features to Google Shopping, the product search category of its site. As detailed by CNET earlier this summer, the idea is to blend online and offline shopping by providing information such as the location of local stores and whether a product is in stock at a retail store, said Sameer Samat, director of product management.

Starting today, Google users will see two new links on search-results … Read more

Google gave all of its employees raises earlier this week, but it saved the best raises for its senior management team.

Four of Google's seven named executive officers--Patrick Pichette, Nikesh Arora, Alan Eustace, and Jonathan Rosenberg--are getting 30 percent raises for 2011, bringing each of their base salaries to $650,000 from $500,000, Google announced in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday. Earlier in the week, Google gave everybody else a 10 percent raise, along with a $1,000 bonus, as it tries to hang on to employees amid a talent war … Read more

A slip-up at Best Buy could indicate that Google, despite all statements to the contrary, has plans for another Nexus-branded phone.

Phandroid noticed a briefly available link on Best Buy's mobile site this morning offering a teaser for the Nexus S, said to be "pure Google" and available on T-Mobile's network. The image and link didn't last very long, but the magic of Google's own caching technology preserved the error long enough for screenshots to be grabbed left and right

So what exactly is Google planning here? Unsurprisingly, they aren't saying, declining to … Read more

Add the Federal Communications Commission to the list of legal headaches for Google caused by its Wi-Fi spying debacle.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the FCC opened an investigation into the Google Street View scandal earlier this year, but hadn't disclosed it until recently. As is common knowledge by now, Google disclosed in May that Wi-Fi sniffing equipment on its Google Street View cars--which the company says were intended to capture only benign data--also captured so-called "payload data," including e-mails and passwords.

It's not clear exactly what the FCC could be looking at, but … Read more

It should make us nervous when two of America's most important Web companies resort to sniping through the media over which service really has our best interests at heart.

If you enjoy a good catfight in your tech news arena but can't be bothered to figure out what the hell Larry Ellison and Ray Lane are talking about, we present Google vs. Facebook: No, I'm More Trustworthy. Long headed for a collision, Google and Facebook are currently exchanging blows over which company is a better steward of personal information stored on the Web.

This dispute has been … Read more

Google's spat with Facebook over data portability and contacts isn't over.

A few days after Google changed the terms of service for sites using Gmail contacts data to require two-way data exporting if they want to allow their users to automatically import Gmail contacts, Facebook figured out a way around the restriction. TechCrunch noticed that Facebook installed a button on its "find your friends" page that lets Gmail users automatically download their contacts as a CSV (comma-separated value) file and then import that file into Facebook.

In response, Google e-mailed tech reporters an unsolicited statement on … Read more

SAN BRUNO, Calif.--YouTube thinks it has found a better way to help its users find exactly which videos they're looking for on its site: smart tags.

At some point tomorrow evening, YouTube will turn on an experiment in TestTube, its lab, in which users will be able to see what the company is calling "topics" above videos they find through search results or that are shared among friends. These topics are sort of like tags, but are the product of sophisticated analysis of comments, viewing patterns, and other signals that will automatically appear above videos, said … Read more