This goes out to all of you who think I'm an unabashed Google non-basher. There's been a lot of talk in the last two weeks about the Google Me social network layer cake Google refuses to confirm but everyone knows is coming in 2011. I've steered clear because most of it dealt with silly semantics such as what it's called. Google Me. Emerald Sea. Emerald City. Now it's Google + 1, a dumb nickname I hope will change a 12 more times until launch.

Google Android chief Andy Rubin graced the stage at Dive: Dive into Mobile Dec. 6, talking all things mobile with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Rubin, whose team launched the Samsung Nexus S earlier in the day, said 172 phones are now running Android, an amazing number of gadgets for a platform less than 3 years old. He complimented Apple for making good consumer products, something that's no doubt easier to do with Android gaining on Apple in market share,

Ding dong, the Google Groupon deal is dead, the wicked Google Groupon deal is dead. La la la, la, la, la. Google has purchased 42 companies in 2010, including Phonetic Arts and Widevine Friday, but for the second year in a row Google whiffed on locking up a popular Internet startup that would have beefed up its local search and advertising presence. Don't mean to bask in the glow of that just imploded deal ,

I appreciate good Google acquisition stories as much as the next fellow, but the search engine really need to tread lightly with this Groupon stuff. In case you haven't been following the wickedly spinning rumor mill, Google has been in talks all week to buy local shopping Website Groupon, which e-mails millions of users daily discounts from participating providers based on location. When talk about this Groupon deal started in earnest in October,

It's getting harder and harder for Google to do a big deal in the wake of its $750 million consummation of mobile ad maker AdMob. Against the backdrop of concerns that Google could buy Groupon for $5 billion or so, a U.S. Senator is asking the Justice Department to carefully scrutinize Google's bid to buy travel software maker ITA Software for $700 million. Senator Herb Kohl said in this Dec. 1 letter to Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney,

Search engine experts are exasperated by the European Commission's pending witchhunt of Google for alleged anticompetitive behavior. While these folks may question the scrutiny, they need to be reminded of something Google discovered when the complaints came to light last February: Microsoft may be behind it . I'll circle back later. The complaint is basically that Google is favoring its product search and other Web services in Google.

My how the rumor mill is churning around the alleged Google-Groupon acquisition. Just yesterday I noted how Vator News pegged Google's offer for the local deals and social shopping Website was $2.5 billion. Now AllThings Digital and The New York Times say the deal has a stunning price tag of between $5 billion and $6 billion. Stunning is the operative word here because Groupon after is valued at about $1 billion. The Website supposedly does $350 million a year in revenues.

The New York Times has a great exposé on how Vitaly Borker and his online DecoMyEyes eyecare wear business uses negativity to bolster his PageRank and profits. Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan is consulted in the piece and blogged about it , summing it up thusly: Any publicity, even negative publicity, means a win with Google's ranking algorithms. Is he right? Maybe. Certainly the story illustrates the fallacy of Google's "gold standard" search results. First,

We may look back on Google CEO Eric Schmidt's speech at TechCrunch Disrupt Sept. 28, 2010 as one of those watershed talks, certainly for the company, and maybe for the Internet industry many of us toil in. Allow me to qualify such a dramatic statement. Disrupt was were Schmidt introduced Google's informal serendipitous search plans for the future.

Royal Pingdom Nov. 19 published an interesting post about how our resident Web giants are sucking the soul out of the startup industry. Don't like the hyperbole? Try Pingdom's phraseology: The problem is, no matter how brilliant your software or service may be, there's always a cloud on the horizon. There are elephants out there, the likes of Google, Microsoft, Apple, and now also Facebook, and those elephants can come crashing into your glass house at any time.

One week ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt surprised we media folk at the Web 2.0 Summit with the news that Chrome Operating System was a " few months away ." Try as I might, I never did get a good reason why. Now it seems Google, after months of hyping the Chrome browser on ESPN.com and The New York Times onlone, has turned to serving up print ads. For Google Chrome. The Web browser? Search Engine Land discovered this ad Nov. 21 in the Los Angeles Times,

Boomtown last week set the blogging world ablaze with the rumor that Google is working up the nerve to buy local deal-making phenomenon, a startup several experts at the Web 2.0 Summit was worth billions. Groupon , which Boomtown said Google would shell out $3 billion for, offers subscribers local daily deals and the ability to pass them deals along to other users via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.

Google TV was a frequent topic of conversation at the Web 2.0 Summit this week. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings provided a very CEO-style answer Nov. 17 when asked what he thought about the Web-meets-TV-surfing service and Apple's own Apple TV streaming service. He's a good man to ask, though not exactly unbiased; Netflix is a big reason to buy both services. "Long term, I'm very bullish. Short term, both have product attributes that need to continue to be improved," Hastings said.

Google in May began retooling its Google Apps infrastructure to make all Google applications available via single sign-on from users' Apps accounts. The company ratcheted up this effort in September, allowing users of Blogger, Google Reader, Google Voice and calling-in-Gmail Picasa Web Albums, AdWords and iGoogle from their Google Apps accounts. Google Nov. 18 said it is now enabling Google Apps users to access more than 60 Google-made apps. The company links to them here ,

As demonstrated at AdAge in September, Google is leveraging the Google Goggles visual search technology for its advertising purposes. Goggles is a mobile application that lets users take pictures with their Apple iPhones and Google Android phones to search products, landmarks, places and other items on the Web. Because it lives on the Web, leveraging Google's cloud of servers, the app naturally lends itself to online advertising. To wit, Google began working with Buick,

San Francisco - A bunch of us media peeps here at the Web 2.0 Summit had the pleasure of chatting with Google CEO Eric Schmidt after his mysterious non-unveiling of the Nexus S smartphone powered by T-Mobile Nov. 15. Schmidt waved around the smartphone you see above, which he declined to name. However, he noted that the device was loaded with Android 2.3 and a chip to enable near field communications,

When we journalists talk about the rivalry between Google and Facebook, which Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu sees )WSJ paywall( as our new resident monopolists, we tend to speak in blanket scenarios. We might juxtapose the fact that Google has 1 billion searchers to Facebook's 500 million-plus users with the fact that Facebook is now leading Google and other Internet powers in minutes users are engaged on the social network.

It might be one of the most clichéd aphorisms running, but Apple has again proven to be the the rising tide that lifts all boats. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on how the company's iAd in-application advertising platform for its iPhone, iPod touch and iPad is boosting advertiser interest in mobile phones and other gadgets with full Web browsers.

Google TV hasn't been on Logitech Revue boxes or Sony Internet TVs and Blu-ray players for a month, but are sales lagging? Google won't say, but the company promoted Dish Network's amazingly reduced sale of the Logitech Revue for $179, or 40 percent off of the $299 retail price from last month. The offer, which requires a DVR integration service of $4 per month, is good for any of Dish's 14 million-plus subscribers. More details on Engadget here . Sure,

Blekko said Nov. 9 that users made more than 1 million queries per day and created more than 30,000 slashtags in the curated search engine's first week in public beta. Launched Nov. 1, Blekko tries a crowd-sourced approach to search results to help users better pinpoint answers. The idea is to provide an alternative to the traditional machine-generated search from Google, Bing and Yahoo. See the eWEEK tour of Blekko here . Blekko's key curation feature is called the slashtag,