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Bombs have been falling on Lebanon for two weeks now. The news is all over the Web. But, as a generous tipster pointed out: In Google Earth, the skies over Beirut are clear, the grass is green and the buildings are standing.

What' up, Google?

A Google representative said the freshness of the images is solely the responsibility of Digital Globe, the company that provides satellite images to Google Earth. "Google has no editorial control or control over the time line," she said.

She couldn't say how often new images are streamed to Google, but said that, … Read more

An Arkansas judge has given final approval to a $90 million settlement that Google reached to settle a click-fraud lawsuit.

In the ruling, the judge rejects claims by opposing attorneys that the amount was not adequate compensation for advertisers who have been charged for fraudulent clicks on online ads.

"We're pleased Judge Griffin has affirmed the settlement as appropriate and fair to advertisers," said Nicole Wong, associate general counsel at Google. "We look forward to continuing to manage invalid clicks effectively and provide our advertisers with an outstanding return on their investment."

Attorneys for the … Read more

Google posted on Thursday second-quarter earnings that beat analyst expectations as revenue from advertising continued to rise.

Net earnings for the quarter were $772 million, or $2.49 per share, excluding one-time items like stock-based compensation. Revenue was $1.68 billion, excluding traffic acquisition costs, which are commissions paid to content partners.

Analysts had expected Google to earn $2.22 per share on revenue of $1.65 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Financial.

Confused about the direction of search technology? We certainly are. That's why we were particularly interested in this primer on "Search 2.0 vs. Traditional Search."

A lot of blogs and sites write about this important area of development, often in generalized or densely technical terms. But Read/WriteWeb, a part of the Web 2.0 Workgroup blog network, helps explain the status of search technology the best kind of learning tool: examples.

Specifically, the blog summarizes five hot technologies that are on the front lines of search development--Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty, Wink and Lexxe. (Is it … Read more

Yahoo shares fell nearly 22 percent on Wednesday to a two-year low of $25.70 one day after the search giant posted second-quarter revenue that fell shy of analyst estimates and said it would launch a new advertising platform a quarter later than expected.

Shares of Google, which reports its second-quarter results on Thursday, slipped 1 percent to $399.

Several analysts downgraded Yahoo after the announcement, including Jackson Securities, which downgraded Yahoo to "hold" and JP Morgan to "neutral."

One of the hottest interactive battlefields between Yahoo and Google involves a land grab. But rather than the virtual kind of the late '90s, this one involves real brick and mortar.

Yahoo may have raised the stakes significantly by doing a deal with Zillow, the popular site that just came out this year but is already changing the game in property search and research. The partnership makes perfect sense for Yahoo as it tries to strengthen its presence in local markets while pursuing a strategy as the social-networking portal of choice, having already acquired such sites as Flickr and Delicious.… Read more

Don't try this at home!

H. D. Moore, creator of the Metasploit hacking tool, has crafted a search engine that finds malicious software using Google queries. The new "Malware" search engine finds Web sites hosting malicious files after a person enters the name of a virus or Trojan horse.

To find the malicious software the new search tool uses a fingerprint of the executable and then searches for it using Google, according to the Web site. However, those who do try it won't find much. Google has not indexed most malware yet and the signature database … Read more

A North Carolina public school district went to court to get Google to remove Social Security numbers and test scores for more than 600 students after the information was exposed on the Web, according to article in the Winston-Salem Journal online.

Catawba County Schools said it contacted Google after a student found the data on the search engine. The data was up until late last Friday, when the page was removed, the article says.

Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, got more information from the school district's chief technology officer, Judith Ray, who said that Google somehow bypassed … Read more

Ohio University, a school that has become a poster child for lax computer security, says it will spend up to $4 million this year to upgrade its network.

The announcement comes after an audit revealed that for 10 years the university's Computer Services department spent too little on firewalls while spending big on cell phones and gym memberships for employees.

That's the reason the school's computer system became a hacker amusement park. The University began investigating at least five separate Internet intrusions in April, which resulted in the compromise of personal data for more than 300,000 … Read more