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News

• Google reveals winners of Android Developer Challenge 2

  Google named the winners of its second contest aimed at encouraging software developers to make applications for the Android mobile operating system.

• Can Google really hack it in business?

  After conquering the search world, Google is now pushing hard to be a major provider of business software, tackling longtime dominator Microsoft over productivity and collaboration apps. But does this company, most famous for free consumer-oriented offerings like search and basic apps, have what it takes to be taken seriously by business? Can you really rely on Google Apps?

• Racist image tops Google search results for Michelle Obama

  The top-ranked result for U.S. first lady Michelle Obama on Google's image search engine Wednesday was a racist caricature that depicted her with the face of a chimpanzee, just below a link to a suggested Google search for the terms "Michelle Obama Monkey."

• Google to buy display ad company

  Just two weeks after buying mobile advertising company AdMob, Google on Monday announced plans to purchase Teracent, an online display advertising company.

• Report: Microsoft may pay News Corp. to delist from Google

  Microsoft has discussed paying News Corp. to remove its news Web sites from Google's search results and list them on its Bing search engine instead, The Financial Times reported Sunday on its Web site.

• News Corp and Microsoft Plot Anti-Google Pact

  Why a reported deal between Microsft and News Corp. that would delist News Corp. content from Google wouldn't work.

• Microsoft, other rivals slam Google Chrome OS

  Microsoft is, predictably, not all that impressed by Google's demonstration of its upcoming Chrome OS, but neither were a number of potential rivals in the Linux and instant-on operating system space.

• Judge sets schedule for Google book search case

  The judge in the copyright infringement case pitting the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) against Google and its book search program has set a date for the final hearing on the parties' controversial settlement proposal.

• Google adding IPv6 to YouTube

  Google plans to upgrade its YouTube video streaming Web site to provide support for IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol.

• Google goes for speed, security in Chrome OS

  Google released its Chrome operating system to the open-source community on Thursday and said it has designed the netbook OS to be faster, simpler and more secure than existing ones.

• CIOs talk Google Apps migration

  Chief information officers heard first-hand accounts from their colleagues about moving to Google Apps at a recent roundtable, with New Zealand Postal Services, AAPT and Mortage Choice all migrating to the cloud applications.

• New result clusters swirl into Google's image search

  Google is publicly testing a new image search interface whose results, when clicked on, don't take users to an external Web page but instead display the clicked-upon image at the center of a radiating cluster of similar thumbnails.

• Google offers templates for Sites project collaboration app

  Google Sites, the wiki-based hosted application for building group Web sites, is gaining its first wave of templates with a set for workplaces and a set for personal use.

• Is Google's cheap cloud storage worth the price?

  Google has always been generous with its storage space for Gmail and Picasa, giving users roughly 7GB and 1GB, respectively, for free. For most people, this is plenty of room to accumulate e-mail and post high-resolution photos online and have them backed up and protected by Google's powerful servers. What some of you might not know is that Google offers additional storage at a price. Now those prices have been slashed and the storage increased — but is it worth it?

• Google aims for faster Web downloads with SPDY protocol

  Google is hoping to make Web pages download up to twice as quickly using SPDY, a new application-layer protocol it's experimenting with, the company said in a blog post.