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,

Roughly two weeks ago, media )and Microsoft, quietly( jeered when Google missed its implementation deadline with the city of Los Angeles for its Google Apps contract. Google last year positioned this contract , which is supposed to provide the city's 34,000 workers with e-mail and other collaboration applications, as a shining example of how the Google Apps suite is besting Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite.

Google continues to leverage HTML5 for drag-and-drop functionality in Gmail. The Gmail team is letting Google Chrome browser users drag attachments out of e-mail messages to save them on their desktop, laptop, netbook or tablet. Users need only hover over the attachment's download link or file icon. A tool tip surfaces inviting users to "click to view or drag to your desktop to save." Just click,

CNET has an interesting interview with Ian Freed, Amazon vice president for the wildly popular Kindle electronic book reading device, that makes me wonder whether Google should even bother launching its Google Editions online bookstore. Freed claims Amazon commands 70 to 80 percent of the e-reader market. He doesn't just mention it offhand, it's more boastful and assertive than that. Here's the question-and-answer exchange : CNET: Well,

The New York Times August 1 ">published this nice piece about how Google is aping some of Microsoft Bing's newer features. That's something I've been tracking for awhile and been meaning to write about but backburnered for other newsy things. Good thing Google Watch lets me opine on others' coverage. But I don't think the Times has zeroed in on what this means for Bing and Google. I'll come back to that. Here's what the Times said: Microsoft closely,