Google Archive

Forget about all of those ubiquitous police surveillance cameras in your city: the new sheriff in town is that shifty Google Street View camera wheeling through your neighborhood. Even though Google Maps, has been garnering criticisms for its alleged privacy invasions, but it is actually a pretty good crime-solving tool, and it is being embraced by police all over the world. Of course besides acting a handy tool for the police, Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth can also be used for a plethora of things too.

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Google has worked its way to being one of the most audacious companies of all time, for its genius in customizing data for individual use. But in choosing to pick a fight with China over a business impediment presented as a lofty principle, that of defending Internet freedom, it could emerge eventually that Google thought itself too big to push. Even for a widely admired firm, that's being foolish. Its declared wish to stop censorship in all its forms may be only half of the story, as there are deeper security implications in allegations that its computer systems in China had been attacked. But just now, the audacity it displayed in tossing a googly at Chinese government censors by directing mainland search users to its Hong Kong service has elevated a dispute that could still be negotiated, into a taunt.

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Will Google shut its website in China? The answer is probably a "Yes". A recent news report revealed that Google advertisers in China are being advised to switch to rivals such as Baidu while business partners are exploring alternatives, as speculations grows that the American company will shut its website in the country. In other signs, Chinese regulators have told some of Google's biggest partners that they should plan for the company's retreat from the country. The authorities also told local news websites that Google's Chinese site is likely to close and that, if it does, the news sites will be required to use only official accounts of the situation, rather than publish stories from anywhere else, according to a person familiar with the matter. "When we talk to clients, we have been pushing them in the direction of Baidu," said Mr Vincent Kobler, managing director at EmporioAsia Leo Burnett in Shanghai, which buys advertising space from Google and Baidu on behalf of customers.

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