Free Republic

A recruiter who left Google last year says that the company had maintained a "do not touch" list of companies including Genentech and Yahoo, whose employees were not to be wooed to the Internet search giant. That revelation could be significant in light of this week's disclosure that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Google, Yahoo, Apple, Genentech and other tech companies conspired to keep others from stealing their top talent. Although Google declined to comment on the list or other aspects of the investigation, Palo Alto attorney Gary Reback, who has been involved in a number of high-profile...

In 2006, Thailand announced it was blocking access to YouTube for anyone with a Thai I.P address, and then identified 20 offensive videos for Google to remove as a condition of unblocking the site. ‘If your whole game is to increase market share,’ says Lawrence Lessig, speaking of Google, ‘it’s hard to . . . gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or in ways that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.’ In March of last year, Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, was notified that there had been a precipitous drop in activity...

Turns out Google already had another cartographic controversy on its hands. Earlier this week we learned of an Israeli city's slander lawsuit against the search giant based upon Google's refusal to remove a user-generated Google Earth notation that identifies the community of Kiryat Yam as Arab Ghawarina. A Google spokesperson told me that the notation violated no aspect of the company's terms of use agreement, no matter how much it violated the sensibilities of Kiryat Yam officials. In this second controversy, however, Google does not have the "We didn't do it" card at its disposal. That's because Google itself has...