Good cop, bad cop, Google cop

Blogger Successfully Defends Against Lawsuit tells how Pamela Greenbaum failed in an attempt to make a New York State court order Google to hand over details about anonymous critics on a Blogger-hosted blog. On her blog, "Orthomom" objected to Greenbaum, who was standing for re-election as a school board member, proposing use of public funds to teach private school classes; her commenters called Greenbaum a 'bigot'. Greenbaum lost the subsequent election. Google had apparently agreed to disclose the identities of the blogger and the commenters if Orthomom, an "Orthodox Jew and a mother of five" agreed -- but she didn't.

On the other hand, via Dave Lull, here is an article in Slate reminding us of the controversies over Google's book search, and focusing on its "Android", a Linux-based operating system for mobile phones that comes with a free set of tools that should make it easy for anyone to write applications. According to the Slate article, it is "conquering the business culture of the telephone, as opposed to the computer—that is Google's great challenge." Worth a read.