The Wall Street Journal's Pepper ... & Salt has never been particularly cutting-edge. But a recent cartoon reads like a time capsule: An entrepreneur at startup WotsHot.com says, "Here's our timetable: launch, grow rapidly, be bought by Google." How quaint! During the lean years earlier in the decade, when Google was the only show in town, startups may have dreamt of getting bought by Google. But more recently, getting bought by Google has proven a ...

A former neo-Facist, Gianni Alemanno, is the new mayor of Rome. He got the job promising to bulldoze homeless encampments, deport foreign criminals and install surveillance cameras, all in an effort to be tough of crime. So it isn't surprising to read reports that when Google's black Street View car, with its 360-degree camera mounted on top, came rolling down Viale Trastevere in Rome, citizens on the street immediately fled as though it were a ...

Like the fictional Jason Bourne, played by Matt Damon in the upcoming Bourne Ultimatum, Google can't decide who it really is. A good guy trying to save the world? Or an amoral mercenary? It can't be both. As Google Blogoscoped points out, Google is slanting search results by placing an extra-large advertisement for Bourne Ultimatum in its search results. How ... evil. How evil? Here's how:The promotion, of course, includes Google's YouTube website, which lets ...