Google announced yesterday that they have started putting sponsored images in their Google image search results. By allowing Adwords advertisers to put image ads in the Google image search results, Google says that it is a new way “to be there and be useful for mobile shoppers.”

Google is once again trying their hand at capturing a corner of the real-time meetings and collaborations (or “collabs” as the hip people call it) market, this time with Google Spaces, which was just launched today. The Google Spaces App (and we use the term to mean just about anything you do online now, gone are the days when an ‘app’ meant specifically something on your phone) allows you to create groups of people and share stuff with them.

If you don’t have kids who use children’s apps, you may not be aware of the lawsuits against Apple, Google, and Amazon for allowing children to make unauthorized (because unauthenticated by password) purchases in apps that are geared towards children.

Last week a Google driverless car pulled right into a bus. It is the first time, at least on record, that a Google autonomous car has caused an accident, but not the first time that a Google driverless car has been in an accident.

Did you get a message recently across the top of your Gmail account that says “Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer. Protect yourself now”? Worried that someone may have hacked your Google or Gmail account? Read on…

Today Google rolled out a new feature for their Google Adwords advertisers (the businesses you see advertising in the “Ads by Google”): “give us the email addresses on your mailing list and we’ll target ads to them.” Google calls this “Customer Match”. We call it “email privacy fiasco”. Here’s why.

If you have been on any website that has Adsense ads by Google on it (including this one), you may have noticed that Google is running its own ads for Gmail for Work and Gmail for Business. The ads show small businesses with cute domains, such as “gizmocam.com” and “puppyscrubber.com”. Shockingly, apparently nobody at Google thought to feature only domains registered to them; leading to a windfall for scammers who snapped up the domains and put ad links on them (these sorts of sites are known as ‘link farms’ or ‘linkfarms’).

If you are on Match.com, you may have seen the new Match.com verification system. This is an option that let’s you verify who you are by connecting to your social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, even LinkedIn. Let us repeat that: on a dating site, Match, you connect to your social media accounts so people know who you are.

Those Google slippy maps (the term for maps that you can pull around and zoom in or out on) are the result of far more effort than you may realize. The Google street view vans (and backpacks) are only a small part of what goes into the Google mapping project Ground Truth. (A list of countries mapped by Google Ground Truth is below.)

If you are using a Gmail calendar (actually a Google calendar), but are used to creating your calendar events on your computer rather than directly in the Google calendar interface, you may have gotten used to being able to create a “custom” repeating interval for your events (such as every X days or every other week, instead of every week or every month). Then, when you need to create an event with a custom repeat interval in the Google calendar interface, you may be perplexed at the seeming lack of the ability to create a custom interval. It’s actually easy to do, but like so many other things designed by Google’s engineers – and there’s the problem, they think like engineers, not like mere mortals – it isn’t obvious. Here’s how to do it.

Today Google unveiled the new Google Inbox. While Google’s announcement says that it’s not Gmail, in fact Google Inbox seems to be a layer on top of Gmail, with a bunch of enhanced features such as Bundles, Assists, Reminders, and Highlights. And, oh yes, it’s by invite only, just like Gmail was all those years ago.

The New York Times recently did a comparison of Google searches originating in areas where, according to the NYT, people have life the easiest to areas where life is the hardest. Here’s what they found.

Google has just announced that it has rolled out a new feature in Gmail. Says Google, “Now when a sender includes an ‘Unsubscribe’ link in a Promotions, Social or Forums message, Gmail will surface it to the top, right next to the sender address.”

It’s true. It’s sad. Google is acquiring song curation service and playlist creator extraordinaire Songza. Why do we say that it’s sad? Because to us Songza was already a nearly perfect service, so while it can do good things for Google, it’s hard to imagine that Google will improve Songza.

Coincident with the Reset the Net effort, in which they are taking part, Google and Yahoo, along with Microsoft and Facebook, and others, are moving at speed to block the NSA’s snooping, and to tighten up their systems to make it more difficult for the NSA, and others, to eavesdrop on their data.