search engine

Twitter is working on a way to allow Chinese users to sign up to the social networking site in their own language, a co-founder of the site said Monday night, but access to the popular site remains blocked in the country.

Jack Dorsey said at a panel that Twitter is "hard at work" on allowing users to register in Chinese. Dorsey was responding to a question from Chinese avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei.

Ai has been an outspoken critic of Chinese authorities and their continuing efforts to impose censorship. He said he spends about eight hours a day on Twitter.

In an international Internet drama, Google seems closer to ending operations in China after threatening two months ago to pull out of the market. Google's Chinese-language search engine is the only major foreign competitor in the communist nation.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a person familiar with the situation said Google is likely to take action within weeks. Meanwhile, Chinese government officials told state news outlets that Google's Chinese site is likely to close, and that if Google exits, those news outlets are required to publish only government accounts.

China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or "pay the consequences," giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking.

"If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences," Li Yizhong, the minister of Industry and Information Technology, said on the sidelines of China's annual legislature.

With its mind in the clouds and an eye on rival Microsoft, Google on Tuesday launched an online application store for third-party programs that can be integrated with its online Google Apps office suite, with a single log-in and Google's universal navigation. The programs can sync with Gmail and Google's calendar, and use document-sharing features.

With the stakes high in Microsoft's bid to add its search engine to the iPhone, a few words of praise by the software giant's CEO have drawn a considerable amount of attention.

"Apple's done a very nice job that allows people to monetize and commercialize their intellectual property" in the App Store, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a University of Washington audience last week.

Playing Bing-o

Facebook and Omniture, the Web analytics software maker, said Wednesday they are working together to help companies use the world's largest social network as a marketing channel.

Using Omniture's products, companies will be able to measure how effective their ads are on Facebook. They will also be able to use Omniture's search engine marketing management tool to buy Facebook ads. And they will be able to compare how well their ad campaigns do on Facebook compared with other outlets.

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer intends to keep the regulatory heat on Google as his company strives to lessen its rival's dominance of Internet search.

In an appearance Tuesday at a search engine conference, Ballmer said Microsoft believes Google Inc. has done things to gain an unfair advantage in the Internet's lucrative search advertising market. He didn't specify the alleged misconduct.

"We are expressing some of the issues and frustrations we see" with antitrust regulators, Ballmer said. "Sometimes (it's) unsolicited, sometimes because we have been asked."

Jared Starkey is going all out for Google broadband. The day after Google said it would provide high-speed Internet access to as many as 500,000 people around the U.S., Starkey set up a Facebook page to lobby Google to bring the service to his hometown, Topeka, Kan. Since then, Starkey has passed out bright-orange necklaces made of the kind of fiber-optic cable used to deliver fast Web connections and rallied 100 people to show up at a downtown redevelopment meeting wearing T-shirts that play on Google's motto for the broadband plan.

Google is being probed by the European Commission for antitrust behavior. EC officials confirmed Wednesday that the Internet search giant is under investigation after a trio of companies filed complaints against Google.

The complaints came from Foundem, a price-comparison web site; French legal search site Ejustice; and Ciao from Bing, a search site operated by Microsoft.

Google is being probed by the European Commission for antitrust behavior. EC officials confirmed Wednesday that the Internet search giant is under investigation after a trio of companies filed complaints against Google.

The complaints came from Foundem, a price-comparison web site; French legal search site Ejustice; and Ciao from Bing, a search site operated by Microsoft.