If you cannot access Gmail, or Chrome continues to crash for you, you are not alone. Their status page is confirming that there is a service disruption. Many have taken to Twitter to confirm that they are also experiencing Gmail being down and their Chrome browsers crashing. Google is working…

Google had made shopping, sight-seeing and travel even easier, by making the indoor floor plans of malls, museums, libraries, transit stations and airports, worldwide, available through Google Maps. The feature, previously exclusively available through Google Maps for Android, is now available on your desktop so that it can be used by all.

Update: We have just learned that Senator Leahy has withdrawn his support for the amendments to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). He received resounding criticism from many groups and private citizens who felt that the revisions are unconstitutional and a gross invasion of privacy. In a series of tweets, below, Senator Leahy said that he did not support the bill amendments, and seems to deny that he ever did.

For those of you who are fed up with Siri’s lack of understanding you when ask to do a search, then the Google Voice Search app may be just what you need. When you ask Google Voice Search where the nearest taco shops around you are, unlike Siri, which will likely come back with a list of the nearest tackle shops, the Google Voice Search app will deliver your request with consistent precision.

Google is going beyond Google Street View and rolling out the backpack cam operated Google Street View Trekker, a wilderness cam that offers a wilderness view of all the corners of the world that Google Street View has previously left untouched, namely woods views and forest views. The backpack cams can be carried by hikers and campers who are on foot and already headed to spots where cars and planes cannot easily go and Google is starting with the Grand Canyon.

Google is yet again finding themselves in hot water as the Federal Trade Commission is poised to slap them with an antitrust lawsuit. The FTC staff recommendation for the antitrust lawsuit is not unexpected given the swift investigations of Google by California, New York, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. On top of the U.S. investigation, there is also an antitrust investigation of Google taking place in Europe.

Google is again blaming technical glitches for violating privacy policies and collecting personal data, this time from those using Apple’s Safari web browser. Google has agreed to pay the Federal Trade Commission $22.5 million – the largest amount that the FTC has ever fined – because they sneakily undermined the privacy settings of millions of Safari users by using computer code to trick Safari into granting Google access to user activity through cookies.

Google Street View is back for iOS 6 users. It seems that Google is the knight in shining armor to the whole Mapplegate fiasco that has left scores of iOS 6 users frustrated with the quality of Apple maps. The victory is small, but at this point, iOS 6 users will take any scrap thrown their way.

With the news that California has become the second state, after Nevada, to permit self-driven cars (also known as ‘self-driving cars’, ‘robotic cars’ or ‘robot cars’), many are waiting in anticipation for other states to follow suit. With Google co-founder Sergey Brin estimating that driverless cars are going to be a reality for the public within five years, many car and tech enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting the day that they can get their hands on one and start driving it, or rather, being driven by it.

On Tuesday California Governor Jerry Brown passed Senate Bill 1298, legalizing robot-controlled cars, or self-driving cars (also known as ‘self-driven cars’, ‘robotic cars’ or ‘robot cars’), with high praise from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who says that driverless cars will be a reality within 5 years.

The Iranian government has blocked Gmail and Google until further notice. In an announcement, that included sending a notice to citizens via text message, government officials stated that the services would be filtered, and indeed it appears that, while Google is accessible, it doesn’t actually work for searching purposes.

Mapplegate is taking over the Internet world. Apple released their iOS 6 two days ago with one change in particular that has people buzzing – their new Maps app. Many are comparing this to Apple’s infamous 2010 “Antennagate,” when Apple released an iPhone with shoddy antennas, prompting a hasty PR cleanup job by then-CEO Steve Jobs.

From the BlackBerry outage, to Yahoo giving it the boot, BlackBerry makers Research in Motion (RIM) have not been having the best week, and many are concluding that it is the beginning of the end for the beleaguered company. Whether it is the end, or just a series of unfortunate events, there is no doubt that they’re are struggling fiercely to stay afloat amidst market-dominating Apple, and their runner-up, the Android market.

In the past we’ve shown you how to create a foreign language filter in Gmail, and we’ve shown you how to have Gmail automatically delete certain spam without your having to sift through it. But we have finally figured out the holy grail of beating the Gmail spam filter into submission: How to have Gmail automatically delete foreign language character spam – for example spam in Chinese, or spam in Japanese. It seems that there should be a way to tell Gmail “I will never receive legitimate email in Chinese or Japanese (or Korean or Russian, etc.), in Kanji or Hanzi or Hanja or other logograms, so always delete it” but there is no built-in way. But there is a way to have foreign character spam automatically deleted by Gmail, and we have discovered it, and here it is.

Google has made every geek heart sing with the unveiling of today’s Google Doodle: an homage to the 46th anniversary of the original Star Trek series. Google has outdone themselves by taking users through a little vignette, quickly re-enacting the well known scene from the “Arena” episode.