AdAge scored a delicious dish about what companies spent on advertising on Google based on an internal document the publication scored. What makes this scrumptious is that ad spend by specific clients is a closely guarded secret, like any doctor-patient or attorney-client confidentiality protocols. We're simply not supposed to know how lavish or cheap brands are when it comes to dropping dollars online to spread whatever message they intend to convey. Specifically,

What does Bing have going for it beside some cool, graphically-pleasing search tools? Not market share, that's for sure. Even as Yahoo's search results pages are usurped by Microsoft's search engine, I can't help but view Google's renewal and embellishment of its search deal with AOL as a minor blow to Bing. People aren't searching AOL they way they were five or 10 years ago; its Web properties sport about 3 percent market share.

Consumer Watchdog is ratcheting up its rhetoric in a move to get Congress to investigate Google over data privacy concerns. The advocate group released a devastating video of Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a creepy ice cream man giving free ice cream to children and conducting full body scans with Google Analytics. Who knew that traffic measurement and click-through data suite had gotten so advanced? Here's the full video: Having this go viral on YouTube is bad enough,

Google, whose Place Pages aggregate information about restaurants and landmarks on Google Maps, has integrated ads directly into Google Maps by offering branded icons for, well, whatever store or franchise wants to participate. Google is letting businesses pay to sub their brand icons on the map for the standard icons. The search engine isn't saying how much it's charging. Sponsored map icons are being offered as a limited beta to companies in the U.S.

Yesterday I discussed how Google's Gmail Priority Inbox feature is aimed at combating Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 by providing a more efficient messaging experience . I still believe that is one of Google's goals with Priority Inbox. I use Exchange 2007 for work e-mail and Microsoft simply doesn't offer this sort of filtering by importance or even preference. It's not in Office 2010 or SharePoin 2010 either, from what I can tell.

Google's Gmail Priority Inbox feature is a nice little tool that lets users sculpt their inbox in such a way as to make sure their most important messages are front and center while their least important exchanges are put on the back burner. The software uses algorithms that sort incoming email into sections deemed important and unread, starred, and everything else, based on messages users open and reply to. This tool gets "smarter" with more use,

Google added ocean views to its Google Earth for Android application, a move that should have greater import when tablet computers based on Android arrive en masse to tantalize folks looking to surf the Web with a larger palette. Google Earth for Android 1.1 will let users check out the aquatic landscape and terrain in Monterery Bay Canyon, where users can leverage the "look around" button to tilt the view the undersea canyon. Google Earth for Android 1.

Dear Google Watchers: Some 14 months after resuming my Google Watch post I'm taking my first full week of vacation from writing and posting for both eWEEK.com and this blog. Of course, like so many professional athletes these days, I've promised that before and proven myself a liar time and again. I'm going to try to stick with it this time. Wish me luck and look forward to Google Watching by August 30.

When Deadline.com got the scoop that Groundswell Productions is making a feature film out of Ken Auletta's book "Googled: The End of the World As We Know it," media summarily claimed that such a film would be boring. I've read Auletta's book. He does a fine job telling the story of how Google came to be. Read this New York Times book review of Auletta's book from last November and tell me you're not interested.

Google August 19 opened Chrome Web Store to developers in a preview, preparing for an October launch to the public. Developers can upload apps, package them and install them in Chrome using the latest Chrome dev channel. They may also integrate Google's payments and user authentication technology. Google May 19 introduced the Chrome Web Store at Google I/O to help developers put free and paid Chrome Web apps in front of consumers.

Google August 18 added bike lane and trail data to cover an additional 80 cities for its Google Maps biking directions service. The search engine doesn't release stats very often, but with all of the vitriol expended over the "Google Maps Street View WiSpy" scandal, its clear Google could help its cause by pumping up Google Maps, even if it is for bikes and not cars. To wit, the company proudly said more than 10,000 people have submitted some 25,

Google developers Mark DeLoura and Michael Mahemoff showed off the latest progress of the Chrome Web Store at the Games Developer Conference in Europe, which is fitting because the Web Store is initially geared around serving online games for Web users. Google May 19 introduced the Chrome Web Store at Google I/O to give help developers put free and paid Chrome Web apps in front of consumers.

Adobe August 16 made its Flash Player 10.1 generally available for download on the Android Market for Google Nexus One phones. For those scratching their heads because they believed Flash was already on the Nexus One, that was a beta launched to partners in June. Before that, EWEEK's Nicholas Kolakowski tested Flash and Android 2.2 running on the Nexus One and found it wanting. But that was in May, when Android 2.

In what has become an all-too familiar rite of technological punditry, techperts are crawling all over the latest comments from Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the future of search being more predictive, pretty much telling people what they want before they know they want it. You know the story.

File this one either under the banner of high-tech discrimination by a U.S. state or sour grapes from a company in the face of growing competition. You pick. Google, which scored a coup in securing the city of Los Angeles as a Google Apps customer, feels left out of a $60 million e-mail contract with the state of California because it feels the state's requirements were too stringent.

Google launched Gesture Search in March and the tool has proven pretty useful for people who want to search by tracing letters on an Android smartphone. Gesture Search 1.2 launched August 11 with a potentially useful but really silly looking feature called the "double flip." Users of Gesture Search can flip their phone over and back to start the Gesture Search app, a Google Labs experiment. This gestures obviates the need to trigger Gesture Search from a home screen shortcut.

Where have all of the privacy watchdogs and consumer advocates gone? If tradition were holding steady they would be knocking on doors on Capitol Hill, demanding Congressional hearings in light of the advertising plans Google employees began bandying about two years ago, according to this fun, well-done expose on the machinations of the search engine's product managers.

Less than a week has passed since Google vowed to ax new development on Google Wave and dismayed users of the user-generated content persuasion are already going to bat for a real-time collaboration service. Google Wave rolls e-mail, instant messaging, live character typing and social networking on one palette and it didn't catch on because it, well, offers e-mail, instant messaging, live character typing and social networking on one palette. People weren't ready for it ,

No one but Google and Verizon may know exactly what the two companies are brokering behind closed doors to meet in the middle on network neutrality, but every Google watcher worth his weight in punditry is hazarding guesses. The New York Times set the blogosphere afire last week when it said Google and Verizon are hashing out a deal in which content providers would pay the carrier to shuttle content to users faster. YouTube videos, for example,

So Google Wave is on life support , as many of you must have seen if you follow Google as closely as I do. In the spirit of taking up Google CEO Eric Schmidt's claim that Google "celebrates our failures" )newly minted in the department of positive executive spin"( Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan couldn't resist using Schmidt's comments as a leaping off point to enumerate the other Google Web services it has shuttered. Most of them - Dodgeball, Jaiku, Notebook,