Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's affront to Google did not go unanswered as top executives from the two companies engaged in a rare war of words Nov. 7. Zukcerberg appeared with his COO Sheryl Sandberg on PBS' Charlie Rose show yesterday. When Charlie Rose asked Zuckerberg about Google and its Google+ social network effort, Zuckerberg said Google is "building its own little Facebook." He's right. There is a lot in Google+ that recalls Facebook; there is a lot that is different,

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's answers to questions in the wake of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee failed to satisfy the majority of Congressmen on Capitol Hill, so they sent him plenty more in writing. This one, from Senator Richard Blumenthal, stands out: Mr. Schmidt, your company is overwhelmingly dominant - it really has only one rival, and that rival is losing incredible sums of money each year. Given the tremendous market power of your company,

Kevin Fury, a former Google Reader lead designer, has offered to fix Google Reader, which the search engine has streamlined and stripped of social tools such as to render it unusable by several of its loyal users. Google started the firestorm earlier this week when it ripped out Reader's comments, shares, likes and other information-sharing tools .

What do you get when you cross Google+ with Google News? For journalists, you could get a big bump in visibility if you play Google's new game. When reporters link their Google profile with their articles, Google News will show the writer's name and how many Google+ users have that writer in their circles . Moreover, for the lead article of each story cluster,

There was a good reason Google sent out Street View trikes to shoot footage of those hard to reach places two years ago : footage of parks! The search engine provider's trike team has traversed 22 countries to add a number of parks for its real-world, street-level footage . Google even added a "parks of the world" section to Google Maps : As the button says, click to see the image on Google Maps, such as this view of New York City's High Line Park,

In case people haven't heard enough griping about the new Google Reader changes, which kill off comments, sharing, likes and other social tools, former Google Reader Product Manager Brian Shih weighed in Oct. 31 with his own thoughts on the product. For a recap, Reader's social tools were nixed in favor of the Google +1 button and Google+ sharing integration, which began across Google's Web services in July. Shih,

So I've been reading the handful of articles that covered Facebook's Open Compute launch in depth and I have to disagree with one of the main story angles. Naturally, when one covers a news item regarding Facebook it makes sense to look at it from a competitive standpoint. As in, how does a new feature initiative position the company for strategic growth versus its rivals? Trying to position Open Compute as a blow to Google is like trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

Google's gross Android fragmentation is the stuff of legend among developers by now. Here's a quick rundown: the company has pumped out Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo and Gingerbread for smartphones,forked the platform with Honeycomb 3.0-3.2 earlier this year to make a tablet-friendly OS, only to merge the two branches with the new Ice Cream Sandwich platform.

While Apple and Samsung continue to sue each other silly, there's one big patent an copyright infringement case we tech reporters can take off of the books for 2011: Oracle versus Google, a case concerning Java patent and copyright infringement in Android. The major case was supposed to go to trial this Monday, Oct. 31, but FOSS Patents blogger and IP guru Florian Mueller said Judge William Alsup , the federal judge presiding over Oracle's lawsuit against Google,

Where is the Google+ integration with Google Apps? Not to be a stickler )okay, when a journalist says that, a stickler is exactly what they are being( but one week ago today Google Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra told the Web 2.0 Summit crowd that he and his team would enable Google+ to work for Google Apps users within days. Now it's been a week. The better question is perhaps: Why isn't it already here? As Gundotra noted,

It feels painfully petty calling a deceased man who brought the world so much joy with consumer electronics devices hypocritical, but bloggers have to tell it like it is. One of the themes that have bubbled up in the wake of Apple founder Steve Jobs' passing has been the idea that Jobs blasted Google for copying the iPhone with Android after spending so many years copying Zerox Parc, and even Android's notifications.

One of the many tidbits pulled early out of Walter Isaccson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs, titled "Steve Jobs," is that Google CEO Larry Page sought Jobs' advice earlier this year before taking back the CEO reins in April. Jobs originally wanted to blow Page off, seeing as how he felt Google betrayed him in launching Android. Who could blame him? It's a great story. A few years ago, Jobs had then Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Apple's board.

AllThingsDigital's Ina Fried, one of my favorite mobile reporters, scored a nice little chat with Google Android creator Andy Rubin about Apple's new Siri virtual personal assistant software, arguably one of the biggest draws of the iPhone 4S. Rubin said: I don't believe that your phone should be an assistant. Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn't be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.

Well, I learned something new from Sergey Brin's appearance with Google+ guru Vic Gundotra at yesterday's Web 2.0 Summit . Did you know that Brin is leading Google's driverless car effort to enable cars to tool around autonomously powered by an on-board computer and cameras. There is a token human behind the wheel just in case. He noted that while it will take a lot more development to get them to market,

To my mind, the best question put to Sean Parker )he of Napster fame( here at the show in San Francisco Oct. 17 was whether or not Google+ had a shot at challenging Facebook and its massive user base of 800 million people. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney asked: "What's the chance you think that 3 or 5 years from now Google+ really takes share from Facebook? Under what circumstances would that happen?" Parker answered: It's very tough to compete with network effects.

These are exciting and excruciating times to be a Google watcher. One of the things I've tried to pay the most attention to in the past 3 years are emerging threats that rise up to challenge Google. I mean, they've got search as we now know and use it down cold, right? So I like to pay mind to either the new kids on the block - Facebook - or the girzzled veteran challengers such as Apple,

Great news for Google Voice users. The phone calling application, which lets users route phone calls to several phones using one phone number, will now allow users to receive photos and other multimedia messages from Sprint subscribers . Google said any multimedia attachments will display on their mobile forwarding phone and in their e-mail inbox when they enable text to e-mail forwarding in their Google Voice settings.

As promised, Samsung and Google have rescheduled their Galaxy Nexus launch event. It will now take place Oct. 19 in Hong Kong at 10:00 a.m. HKT. If you recall, the partners in Android were slated to launch the smartphone during their Samsung Mobile Unpacked event at CTIA Oct. 11 . However, the companies canceled the event, claiming they wished to show respect for the passing of Apple Founder Steve Jobs Oct. 5 . That's the kind way to spin it.

Another Chicken Little has surfaced to cry the sky is falling on Google+, or at least talk about how much the social network blatantly mimics Facebook and that's why it won't succeed. Normally, this is grain-of-salt fodder from tech pundits like myself. But this rant comes from Jeff Yegge , a 6-year plus Google veteran who accidentally posted his pent-up frustration publicly on Google+. Trouble is, it was intended only for his fellow coders.

At a time when the majority of blog posts concerning Google+ either have the social network credibly challenging Facebook or dying on the vine, GigaOm's Matt Ingram offers a refreshingly balanced summary of what people may or may not be getting out of Google+ to keep them there. His conclusion is that he's not sure whether or not Google+ has staying power. I think Google+ has staying power because enough people are actively using it for now.