After China's Internet censors blocked access to YouTube because of clips depicting riots in Tibet, Google immediately began work to restore access to the online-video site in the country. But news stories regarding the Tibet protest remain censored from Google News China, Blogoscoped's Phillip Lenssen reports. Below, screenshots from Google News Hong Kong, which features the Tibet protests, and Google News China, which does not.

A tipster emails us to ask about strange goings-on at the Googleplex.

Sexual harassment is no laughing matter, people. But age verification on the Internet is a joke. It's easy for users to lie and, in this case, age verification serves only to bar youth from reality. Below, screenshots showing that in South Korea, Google asks users their age before finishing a search on the term "sexual harassment."

Born in Soviet Russia, Google cofounder Sergey Brin likes to declare his opposition to censorship against free speech. But he has a hard time keeping the rest of Google on the same page. In December, lawyers for the jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky posted a video to YouTube which appears to depict violent abuse in the Yekaterinburg prisoner camp. After a February 12 Wall Street Journal editorial directed readers to the video, YouTube moderators removed it. Now, but only after protests, it's back. Clip — NSFTWI, or not safe for the willfully ignorant, at Google or elswehere — below.

Inner City Press editor and self-appointed United Nations watchdog Matthew Lee says Google banned his site from Google News because he wrote an article critical of the company. Lee told Fox News that at a press conference to announce a partnership between Google and the United Nations last November, he Google why it hadn't signed a U.N.-sponsored global human-rights compact. Google, Lee says, responded harshly. And on February 13, it blocked Inner City Press from Google News.

Harper's Magazine has this to report: Google's motto may be "Don't be evil," but the profitmongers in fact are evil. Why? Google's plan to build a massive datacenter complex in Oregon "has triggered an arms race" that has lead Microsoft and Yahoo to build their own gargantuan server farms. These server farms, Harper's warns, will combine to draw more than "90 megawatts of electricity — more than the World Trade Center humming at peak power on a hot summer day." For this reason, Harper's opines, Google's "motto is perhaps due for an addendum: 'Lead others not into temptation.'" Oh, that's what happened with the WTC. I always wondered.

Google's cafeterias are an arm of its PR machine. One can read endless paeans to their free, organic, locally-sourced, employee-engorging meals. But you'll never read about how they're serving up homelessness as a side dish. Google pays its chefs so little that at least one has ended up in a San Francisco homeless shelter, unable to find a $1,000/mo. studio he can afford.

City officials from Kiryat Yam, Israel have filed a police report demanding Google remove a user's note from Google Earth which describes the town as "one of the Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." The Israelis say Holocaust survivors built the town on barren land. Google said no. Last week, 143,000 protesters signed an online petition demanding that Wikipedia take down a medieval image of the prophet Muhammad. Over the weekend, Scientologists called an Internet-organized group of protesters "terrorists." And in 1415 Catholic authorities burned Jan Hus at the stake for distributing the vulgate Bible.

Google has banned all personal attacks from political ads running on its ad network. "'Crime rates are up under Police Commissioner Gordon 'is okay, but 'Police Commissioner Gordon had an affair' is not,' writes Peter Greenberger on the Google Public Policy blog. Which of course means if Google had its way with the rest of the world, you'd never have heard of John McCain's black baby, Hillary Clinton's cookies or Barack Obama's drug dealing. Boring!

In December Internet evangelist Vint Cerf promised that Eric Schmidt would furnish any inquiring journalist with an official statement within an hour, regardless of where the Google CEO happened to be. Well, that was a lie. And Cerf now admits it. Google Blogoscoped, which originally unearthed the pledge, diligently awaited Schmidt's reply for over a month. Fed up, it asked Cerf why Schmidt had dissed the blog. "Rapid responses might only reasonably be expected for on-the-record corporate policy questions," said Cerf. Corporate policy, such as the speed with which the CEO will respond to questions?

Google.org, Google's for-profit charity, announced all kinds of new initiatives today. The short version: health, climate change, good government. The basic idea, as MarketWatch notes in a video report about the project, is to approach "giving" like a venture capitalist. Thing is, Google's only "investing" about 3 percent as much as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No matter, says Google's Larry Brilliant in this clip.

The suspect Google helped Indian police arrest last fall says he was forced to eat from a bowl he used for a toilet and that he was beaten with a lathi (pictured). A lathi, according to Wikipedia is the primary weapon of Indian Riot Police. It can give "gravely injurious blows" to rioters. "Generally, it leaves many of them crippled." I found that information via Google. Such a helpful company. (Photo by AP/Mahesh Kumar A.)

Remember the man Google and an Indian ISP helped Indian cops arrest for the crime of posting an allegedly defamatory picture on Orkut? He now says that during the 50 days he spent in jail, Indian police beat him and made him eat from the same bowl he used as a toilet.

Over 13 and got 240 hours to spare? Well, if you're good enough, Google's got $100 with your name on it. That's right, kids! It's time for The Google Highly Open Participation Contest. If that name's too long, just call it "Google Sweatshop"! Looking for more details?

Google may not be evil, but it's not much interested in fighting it, either. At least, that seems to be the takeaway after Google-owned YouTube shut down award-winning journalist and antitorture activist Wael Abbas's account. Abbas had uploaded nearly 100 clips depicting police brutality, voting irregularities and antigovernment demonstrations in Egypt. And last year, some of Abbas's clips of police brutality against an Eygptian bus driver lead to the conviction of two policemen who were sentenced to three years in jail. But for now, Abbas's YouTube account reads, "This account is suspended."

The change came quietly. Few noticed, at first. But yesterday morning, Google turned against its long-held motto and became evil. The appearance of the sign? On every stock ticker.

Google's ads are paid for; its search results, supposedly, are untainted by commercial concerns. But French blog Zorgloob landed itself a screenshot that calls Google's purity into question. It shows what Google search results look like to a member of Google's AdWords sales team. The picture raises more questions than it answers. For example, why are there dollar signs among so-called "natural" search results? And why does Google note whether a website in its search results belongs to an advertiser? Here's the image.

Palestinian militants use Google Earth to target rocket attacks on the Israeli military, the Guardian reports. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade rockets have killed about a dozen people in Sderot over the last three years. Of course, the news is hardly a mark against the company's "don't be evil" credo. Google Earth is only as good, or evil, as its users. Right now, KPBS in San Diego is using Google Maps to alert residents to the locations of nearby out-of-control fires.