ComScore, the online traffic tracker, told us that 62 percent of the 1.2 million fans who downloaded Radiohead's latest album "In Rainbows" weren't willing to pay for it. Now the band's management wants to kibosh those reports.

Ready for a Googlephone? Wait until Monday. A source in the wireless industry tells me that Google is already quietly briefing reporters, under embargo, on its mobile plans — and that an announcement could come as soon as next week. The first partner? T-Mobile. It makes perfect sense. In 2005, Google bought Android, a startup founded by Andy Rubin. Before Android, Rubin ran Danger Research, the designer of T-Mobile's Sidekick. But if you're all hopped up for a Google-designed piece of hardware, you'll be disappointed by the announcement, whenever it comes.

Here's the newsflash: Not only is Google not making its own cell phone, it's hoping other people will do most of the work of coming up with new software. Honestly, are you people dense? I don't know how many times I have to tell you this: Google is not coming out with a Googlephone. But the idea is clearly so entrancing that tech reporters keep returning to it, as in a new Wall Street Journal article. The short version: Google will announce plans that, instead of involving its own models of cell phones, will work with existing carriers and handset makers.

"My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile," says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone's profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation. If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.

It was only last week that Comcast was getting called the Antichrist for disrupting BitTorrent users on its network and preventing the Associated Press from downloading the Bible. Since then, Comcast has offered nothing but excuses. Now, Comcast might get sued.

I've been saying it for ages: There is no Googlephone. Last week, at the Web 2.0 Summit conference, I finally got confirmation that Google's not getting into the cell-phone business. How? I overheard a rep from Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, chatting up a vice president at Google. Now, I know this particular executive is utterly guileless; she wouldn't lie. And when the Foxconn rep tried to pitch her on getting a contract to make the Googlephone, she replied, flat-out, "We're not making a Googlephone."

NBC Universal has quietly pulled the official channel on YouTube the two companies established last June. Of course, that was a long time ago, in Internet years, and the relationship had run its course. NBC got buzz for a revived Saturday Night Live and The Office, and YouTube, through the sheen of legitimacy NBC gave it, got a $1.65 billion buyout. With NBC set to launch its own video site, the laughably named Hulu, the pulling of the YouTube plug was just a matter of time. Speaking of time: Could this move be a sign that Hulu, scheduled for "private beta" testing this month, is finally ready?

Oh, god. For a few months, there have been rumblings of Comcast, the cable and Internet provider, intentionally disrupting BitTorrent traffic. The Associated Press verified the dusruption by trying to download a copy of the King James Bible via BitTorrent over Comcast-connected computers. A devilishly clever move, downloading a public-domain work unprotected by copyright, and suggesting that Comcast opposes the distribution of the Holy Book.

Goat-bearded Wall Street Journal gadget sage Walt Mossberg published his annual fall PC buyer's guide today. Great advice, but eight times too long. I've whittled it down to a PowerPoint-friendly bullet list.

Sci-fi writer Douglas Adams liked to trace technology back to a stick. For example, a computer is an advanced typewriter, which is an advanced pen, which is an advanced stick in the dirt. All right, can we do that with an iPod?

New York Times gadget reviewer David Pogue got into an email back-and-forth with Valleywag after he was tricked into writing an article by advance misinformation on a pre-launch product. In theory, it's good for reviewers to test and write up products before release day, so consumers can make informed choices. In practice, Pogue and we wish the industry standard would change.

Want to read a review of a gadget you first heard about three months ago? Why, then, turn to the back of just about any print magazine. There you'll find the obligatory page or two covering gear. The ostensible reason? So-called "reader service," of course, the notion that electronics are part of the full spectrum of readers' interests, and editors would be remiss in not filling that need. The real reason, of course, is that ad salespeople need to show pages covering gizmos in order to attract tech advertisers. But the painfully slow publication cycle of monthly magazines is crashing into the ever-faster world of gadgets — with embarrassing results, as seen in the October issue of Entrepreneur.

Motorola CEO Ed Zander claimed that his company considered buying Navteq, the mapping-services company rival Nokia snapped up last week, but decided to pass. "We are not in the applications business," said Zander. Right. That explains, of course, why Motorola bought Good Technology, an email software company, last year. We have another theory: Bitches just jealous.

David Pogue of the New York Times wrote a humiliating column today correcting a huge pricing error in his last piece. He wrote about cellphone startup Cubic Telecom, which carries international phone calls over the Internet to give really cheap rates. Pogue listed off a bunch of rates to places like Greece or Iraq and excitedly wrote that "the appropriate world traveler's response ought to be involuntary drooling." Except the prices he quoted were just plain wrong. That'll stop up your salivary glands.

The reason to buy Dell's $800 Ubuntu notebook, according to a freetard New York Times piece today, is that it beats Microsoft-equipped machines on price, because the buyer doesn't pay for a Windows operating system license. But how much is that license? Fifty bucks.

Why, in this age of lightning-fast publishing, do members of prestigious national publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal still agree to embargoes? Microsoft, it seems, has placed an embargo on its new Zune models, but Gizmodo already has photos, and the Silicon Alley Insider, too, has already scooped its much-larger business-news rivals, with reports that Microsoft will introduce new Zunes with flash-memory storage, competing with Apple's iPod Nano line. Jay Greene from BusinessWeek, Jeff Leeds, music reporter at the Times, and Nick Wingfield of the Journal, we hear, were among the reporters scribbling away at the Microsoft launch event in the Seattle area today. And what did they get in exchange for agreeing to sit on the news?

What does EchoStar's $380 million deal to buy Sling Media mean? In some ways, Sling's decision to sell out seems odd. Satellite TV is on the downswing, most people believe. Rupert Murdoch, after all, sold News Corp.'s stake in DirecTV, in part to raise cash to buy Dow Jones — favoring content, in other words, over distribution. But Charlie Ergen, the obstreperous entrepreneur behind EchoStar, may have a larger plan for Sling's Net-connected set-top boxes. "This is just the beginning," says Sling founder Blake Krikorian in an interview with PaidContent. He's not kidding. The rich EchoStar buy, I believe, is a move by Ergen to prepare his company for life after satellite TV.

Sorry to get your hopes up, folks. After early reports that American Express was giving cardholders $200 refunds on their iPhones — after Apple slashed the price earlier this month — it now seems the company has reconsidered its generosity. Early adopter Muhammad Saleem blogs that he only got a $100 refund, not the $200 he requested. An AmEx rep told him that he had to apply to Apple, which now offers a $100 credit to premature iPhone buyers, to get the other half. Saleem and other cardholders should consider themselves lucky to get anything at all, though. American Express discontinued its price-protection benefit last fall, and the company is only offering iPhone refunds at its discretion — likely because it's a high-profile case of a price drop, and it hopes to win positive publicity and customer goodwill.

Fox News television host Geraldo Rivera is looking for offended iPhone early adopters. If you're aggrieved by Apple's price cut and not satisfied with the $100 Apple Store credit, then a Fox producer wants to talk to you, like, now for tonight's 8 p.m. program, according to this Craigslist posting. We can't wait to see who Fox drums up to whine like a little baby, on air, over the time-honored custom of getting royally soaked when buying brand-new technology.

Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton, the owner of this site and my worthy predecessor as its editor, has weighed in triumphantly on the battle of the gadget blogs, declaring his Gizmodo site the winner in its heated competition with Engadget, the rival site started by founding Gizmodo editor Peter Rojas and now owned by AOL. The last time I covered this fight, I was working at Business 2.0, and an ostensibly neutral party. And so I got a fusillade from all sides. Scarred from that experience, and hardly neutral now, I'm not going to comment, save to observe that in the days to come, you're sure to hear an elaborate, exhausting point-counterpoint from Gizmodo and Engadget about international licensees, traffic-counting methodologies, and so on and so forth. Trust me, you won't want to hear it. And anyway, I'm more interested in my boss's obvious, embarrassing gaffe.