Google

Dodgeball founder Dennis Crowley posted on his blog this morning that he and co-founder Alex Rainert have ditched their Google-owned mobile networking company.

"It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected," Crowley wrote in the entry, which CNET News.com was alerted to via a link from Robert Scoble's blog. "We couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space." Crowley could potentially have been referring to Twitter, a Dodgeball rival that'… Read more

just in Google says it has agreed to buy online advertising company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. The acquisition will give Google the ability to sell online ads that appear on Web sites other than those in its network. The deal will mean that Web site publishers will get access to new advertisers, and agencies and advertisers will be able to manage search and display ads in one centralized spot, Google says.

Google is buying DoubleClick from San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, which acquired DoubleClick in July 2005, and JMI Equity and Management.

"It … Read more

The folks at Google definitely have a sense of humor. Directions on Google Maps from New York City to Paris starts out innocently enough with "Head southwest on Broadway toward Warren St." But once you get on the Massachusetts Turnpike and take a few turns things get a little fishy:

"Turn right at Long Wharf" and then "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean, 3,462 miles, 29 days, 0 hours."

Sure enough, the map shows the route crossing the sea.

Asked for comment on the cross-Atlantic directions, Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn said: "It's … Read more

Google and PennySaverUSA.com are working on a deal in which free "shopper" publications would contribute classified listings to Google's search index and add local merchant pages with coupons to Google Maps, according to a consultant who heard a presentation on the deal at an industry conference.

The companies also are talking about running a "bid-for-print" advertising test between PennySaverUSA.com's parent Harte Hanks and Google. Under the deal, Google also could end up training sales reps at the "shopper" publications to sell AdWords to offline merchants that Google otherwise would have … Read more

Another day, another Google Earth layer. One of the latest content types customized for Google Earth will make any hiker happy: GPS-marked hikes and trails, videos, photos and audio clips, as well as 3D trips of running, bicycling and hiking destinations. The data can be exported to any WAP-capable mobile phone or downloaded to a standalone GPS device. It also can be experienced via a GPS-enabled mobile phone with special software from Trimble Outdoors, which launched the Google Earth layer for outdoor enthusiasts on Thursday.

YouTube is hosting official and exclusive videos from presidential candidates, including U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain and John Edwards, among others. The popular video sharing site, now owned by Google, is expanding its election programming and providing a special forum for candidates to have a video-based dialogue with their constituents.

Under the "You Choose '08 Spotlight" initiative, which launched on Wednesday, candidates will post videos addressing the audience and YouTube users will have a week to post their own video responses to the candidate. The candidate will then post a video responding to the … Read more

Imagine being able to use Google to find the nearest computer store, but also to find out whether that store has the laptop you want in stock and what the price is. That could very well happen. A new report from research firm Gartner paints a scenario where Google could be a sort of Web-based shopper's helper if it were given access to inventory and other data from retail stores.

"If Google were able to access public Web services they would provide a significant shopping tool, a front-end for consumers," says Hung LeHong, a research vice president … Read more

Last week Google announced a deal to sell ads to run on the Dish satellite network. Now comes a report from blog VentureBeat that Google is negotiating a similar agreement with DirecTV, the country's largest satellite broadcaster.

"The DirecTV deal is taking more time than Dish's to close because DirectTV is managing the ownership change announced last last year (when News Corp. said it would sell its ownership stake to Liberty)," VentureBeat reports. "The deal with Google will go through eventually, says a source who wants to remain anonymous." Neither Google nor DirecTV would … Read more

Google has purchased a minority stake in a Chinese company with ties to Israel that makes the Maxthon Browser, a popular browser in China that can be used to funnel traffic through a Web proxy to circumvent government controls on information in search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Tech blog site TechCrunch cites multiple sources in reporting that Google has invested $1 million as part of a larger strategic deal between the companies. No comment yet from Maxthon or Google yet.

"At the very least we expect the strategic deal to involve replacing the default search option in the … Read more