Here's a thread about some recent Google developments:

The Wall Street Journal reported on GBuy (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115136840690491346-E4glfTR5gPZj_GXxCSFVLL_JMog_20070627.html?mod=blogs) :

"Google plans to charge merchants a 2.2% commission on a sale, plus 30 cents per transaction using its payment service, according to people briefed on Google's pricing. That is higher than Pay-Pal's lowest published rate of a 1.9% commission plus 30 cents per transaction.

Google's rate doesn't include the dis-cou-nt pricing that the company will give to merchants participating in its AdWords advertising program, according to these people. Merchants who spend money on Google's ad program could get the cost of payment processing through Google dropped to nothing, these people said."

Regarding the Catawba County Schools injunction against Google for spidering sensitive content, Search Engine Watch Blog has posted the school's response (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060626-133521):

"We asserted that Google had somehow bypassed our login information, not that they had hacked their way into the system. Hacking, to me assumes malicious intent and we never intended to imply that Google was doing anything other than spidering all the web sites available.

We acted so aggressively with Google because, until the media got involved, we could not get beyond an operator at Google. We could not get operators to connect us with technical support, the legal department, or to anyone higher up in the organization. We were only given an email address to which we could submit a complain – which we did but got no response. Google has a link to submit an emergency request [see here] but on both Thursday and Friday of last week, the link took you to a dead page. Only when the news media submitted its own inquiry to Google did we get a call regarding the situation. And [Google] has been most helpful in working through this situation with us."

Well Niraj, nice job, but as Philipp is back, it can be stopped already ;-) . Maybe we can keep in mind that this thread exists for if Philipp'll be visiting an other symposium...

Yeah, he showed up within just 5 minutes of this thread's creation :)

I will definitely find a way to integrate the forum on the frontpage next time I'm away, one way or another, perhaps with an iframe or so.

(Either that, or offer the posting interface to some co-bloggers...)