Google

TECHNICALLY, kale is not a "superfood. " This cabbage-like leaf, rich in cancer-busting antioxidants and crunchy goodness, is in a class by itself, of "Super-Duper-food. " And now a super-duper-fun way to enjoy it is catching on: kale chips. I noticed the kale-chip trend (Ooh, a food trend! Must credit "V for Veg!") when Appetite for Profit author Michele Simon tweeted about making them and got a crush of replies from people, including me, who either had also just done so or wanted to. By the time I'd made my first batch, it seemed everybody was on the kale-chip bandwagon.

THIS WEEK, Google turns 10, and becomes the smartest 10-year-old in the history of the universe. The company indexes billions of Web pages using a patented ranking system to find the most relevant search results. For millions of people, Google has replaced everything from phone books to the public library. Research that used to take hours or even days can be done in seconds. News searches make it easy to follow headlines around the globe. Information can be exchanged over e-mail at blinding speed with someone thousands of miles away.

Way to go, Google. Google said this week that it would no longer censor its search engine service in China. The Internet giant began redirecting searches by users in China through Hong Kong. The move is unlikely to give users in China access to unflattering information about China's occupation of Tibet or crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square. But it sends a clear message that Google isn't going to cooperate with the censorship efforts of the Chinese Communist Party.

Google Inc. is adding 625,000 users a day to the Google+ social-networking service, which may total 400 million members by the end of next year, according to an independent analysis of its growth. The site's popularity has accelerated in recent weeks, with almost a quarter of its total user base joining in December alone, said Paul B. Allen, founder of Ancestry.com Inc., who tracks the numbers as Google+'s "unofficial statistician. " Google, the world's largest Internet-search company, aims to challenge the social-networking supremacy of Facebook Inc., a site with more than 800 million members.

A few years ago, I walked into an Internet room in Tibet's capital, Lhasa. There were no Chinese soldiers in the room and no visible government censors nearby. A sign on the wall, however, reminded users that China's all-seeing eye had not disappeared. "Do not use Internet," the warning instructed, "for any political or other unintelligent purposes. " Since then, China's ruling regime has perfected the science of controlling what the Chinese can read or write on the Internet to such a degree that it has become the envy of tyrants the world over.

No doubt, many centuries ago, bards in the mountains of Serbia, confronted by scribes with quill pens, cups of ox blood, and sheepskins on which to transcribe into fixed versions their ever-improvised 50,000-line epics, protested loudly. So did the historians whose hand-scripted chronicles of the rise and fall of empires were suddenly set in newfangled movable type and reproduced in many copies over which they had no control. Technology, ever changing, has unanticipated effects on the products of authorship.

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. cofounder Larry Page is known for his vision, passion, and intelligence. Yet there is concern that his other known traits - aloofness, a rebellious streak, and an affinity for pursuing wacky ideas - might lead the company astray. Page takes over as chief executive officer Monday as fast-rising rivals and tougher regulators threaten Google's growth. Investors used to Google's consistency in exceeding financial targets worry that new leadership will bring more emphasis on long-term projects that take years to pay off. And many people are not sure he has enough management skills to steer the Internet's most powerful company.

The Federal Trade Commission hired a top Washington litigator to run its antitrust investigation of Google Inc., signaling that the agency might be preparing a lawsuit against the world's largest search engine. The FTC is bringing in Beth Wilkinson, who is known for winning the death sentence against Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Wilkinson, 49, has never lost a case. Google disclosed in June that the FTC had opened a broad antitrust investigation of its business practices.

If you use the Web, you have probably encountered an annoying invention called a CAPTCHA. They're the squished-up, stretched and squiggled, color-blotched collections of letters you often have to decipher before you can send an e-mail, post a comment, or buy a ticket. Is that an i or an l? you wonder. A zero or an O? Maybe you see three letters where it seems there should only be two. You tilt your head. You scoot your chair back and squint. You wonder if you need new glasses.

Google Inc.'s purchase of mobile-phone maker Motorola Mobility, completed Tuesday, makes the California-based search-and-software giant a major employer in suburban Philadelphia. At least for now. Horsham remains headquarters for the company's Motorola HomeTV systems arm, still headed by veteran engineer Dan Moloney. Beyond that, Google is not talking about its plans for the site, spokeswoman Niki Fenwick told me. Descended from the former General Instruments and its predecessor, the late Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp's Jerrold Electronics, the business has built generations of set-top boxes and other equipment for cable TV purveyors led by Comcast Corp.

If you use the Web, you have probably encountered an annoying invention called a CAPTCHA. They're the squished-up, stretched and squiggled, color-blotched collections of letters you often have to decipher before you can send an e-mail, post a comment, or buy a ticket. Is that an i or an l? you wonder. A zero or an O? Maybe you see three letters where it seems there should only be two. You tilt your head. You scoot your chair back and squint. You wonder if you need new glasses.

The Federal Trade Commission hired a top Washington litigator to run its antitrust investigation of Google Inc., signaling that the agency might be preparing a lawsuit against the world's largest search engine. The FTC is bringing in Beth Wilkinson, who is known for winning the death sentence against Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Wilkinson, 49, has never lost a case. Google disclosed in June that the FTC had opened a broad antitrust investigation of its business practices.

SAN FRANCISCO — Google chief executive Larry Page recently wrote that he hoped to show that the company was "deserving of great love. " But the Internet search leader may need to win more trust, based on the suspicions swirling around Google Drive, a new online storage service for personal documents, photos, and other content. Within a few hours of Google Drive's Tuesday debut, technology blogs and Twitter users were pouncing on a legal clause in the "terms of service" that could be interpreted to mean that any content stored in Google Drive would automatically become Google Inc.'s intellectual property.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has joined the worldwide Google Art Project, offering more than 200 high-resolution images of everything from medieval armor to Van Gogh's Sunflowers , in an effort to make the museum collection more accessible, museum officials announced Tuesday. The overall Google project now involves 151 partners in 40 countries and more than 30,000 hi-res images. Users will be able to find Art Museum objects at the Google Art Project through a variety of searches: artist, title, category, museum, country, collection, and time period.

NEW YORK - U.S. solar developers are luring cash at record rates from investors ranging from Warren Buffett to Google and KKR by offering returns on projects four times those available for Treasury securities. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., together with the biggest Internet search company, private equity companies, and insurers MetLife Inc. and John Hancock Life Insurance Co., poured more than $500 million into renewable energy in the last year. That's the most ever for companies outside the club of banks and specialist lenders that traditionally back solar energy, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data.

When Google instituted its new privacy policy on March 1, it reignited debate about personal privacy on the Web. If a new Pew Research Center poll is right, we have a split personality about the Internet. We love searching the Web - really love it - but we don't like our choices and behaviors being tracked. Which they are. We know that. And we still don't like it. And we still love the Net. What's clear is this: What we once called privacy - so 47 seconds ago - is gone, and you can't get it back.

Privacy in the electronic age seems to be vanishing, with the introduction of Google's new privacy policy March 1, telling users that for their "convenience" all their Internet searches, data, and contacts will be shared across various platforms. Then came revelations about how electronic applications on your computer, smartphone, and tablet may copy your personal photo files without your permission. Staff writer Melissa Dribben spoke about the loss of control over personal information with Jeffrey Rosen, law professor at George Washington University and co-editor of "Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change.

If you're amazed - and maybe a little alarmed - about how much Google Inc. seems to know about you, brace yourself. Beginning today, March 1, Google will operate under a streamlined privacy policy that enables it to dig even deeper into the lives of its more than one billion users. Google says the changes make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, and allow the company to create more helpful and compelling services. Critics, including most of the country's state attorneys general and a top regulator in Europe, argue that Google is trampling on privacy rights in a relentless drive to sell more ads - the main source of its $38 billion in annual revenue.