That which we feared most hath come to pass: Mean, anonymous people are being forcefully purged from the internet, with lawsuits. First the skankblogger affair, and now it's happening again! Uh, sort of.

The best time to say "sorry" to your customers is when no one else will hear you say it. That seems to be the thinking at Google, Amazon and AT&T, which are all ready to grovel to you, today.

Poor Google! The company's Chinese expansion hasn't been easy: they've been shamed for giving into government censors and continue to play second-fiddle to a state-supported competitor. And now they've lost their regional leader. What will become of the company?

Not to step on Brian's toes — full Top Chef recap is coming — but it was not a good night for Googlers. If you click this, you do not get to complain about spoilers.

After a five-and-a-half-year fight, Google and its attorneys have managed to convince federal bureaucrats to bestow a patent on the company's iconic home page. We always thought the page was brain-dead simple, but apparently it's an innovative "graphical user interface."

GMail is officially down; Twitter is in full panic mode. Google offered some small hope of salvation:

Eric Schmidt wants so badly for the cool kids in Hollywood to like him. The Google CEO bought that Southern California house. He tried and largely failed to get studio content on YouTube. Maybe if he offers the crown jewels?

Attached are pictures of a van that tailed a vehicle shooting pictures for Google Street View. Looks like a stereotypical child rapist van, right? That's the thing: It apparently pulled out from beside the home of rapist-kidnapper Phillip Garrido.

Chairman Bill Gates famously cursed out Microsoft programmers. CEO Steve Ballmer screams and throws chairs. But online chief Qi Lu is as subtle as he is lethal, a corporate terminator who will hunt Google endlessly until it is dead.

Microsoft convenes regular "Screw Google" meetings on Capitol Hill, Daily Finance reports, as part of an effort to tear down rival Google's image. Who would want to help Microsoft do this? The better question is who wouldn't?

Say what you will about Google's propensity for funneling money to a tight, back-scratching coterie of friends; but co-founder Sergey Brin does right by his mother-in-law, which is more than many husbands can say. Witness his new half-million-dollar donation.

• A&E has agreed to acquire Lifetime, which means it's not entirely out of the realm of synergistic possibility that Duane Chapman of Dog the Bounty Hunter will make a cameo on Project Runway sometime next season. Yay. [THR, NYT]
• The Daily News has dropped its restaurant critic, Danyelle Freeman, and doesn't appear to be making any plans to replace her. [P6, NYT]
• Another luxury magazine is coming! The Financial Times plans to bring its quarterly glossy, FT Wealth, to American shores this October. [Crain's]
• It's been nearly two years since Oprah announced plans to launch a cable channel, and the venture's been riddled with problems ever since. [LAT]
• Italian officials are now investigating Google for its "lack of transparency." Yes, the same Italy that's governed by a man named Silvio Berlusconi. [NYT]
• Larry David will be bringing the cast of Seinfeld together for a multi-episode appearance on the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Which makes sense considering it's not like Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, or Michael Richards have anything better to do, now do they? [EW, LAT]

Google's London office building briefly caught on fire, and there's a very good chance you heard about it, because internet geeks are great at instantly broadcasting images of flames, globally. If only they were as good at igniting grills.

Yes, Steve Jobs is that evil. Silicon Valley spent the past month convincing itself AT&T just absolutely had to be responsible for kicking the useful Google Voice application off the iPhone App store. Whoops, it was Dear Leader.

Google must not be big on fresh shellfish in the company cafeteria, judging from executive chief Preeti Mistry's Wednesday performance on Top Chef. The Cordon Bleu graduate figured she'd just shuck the little beasties like oysters. Whoops!

"Pursue a certificate in terrorism!" Google's worst contextual ads, as collected by Business Insider.

Some extraordinary communications have leaked to Bloomberg, showing Steve Jobs threatening his counterpart at Palm. It seems the Apple CEO — and supposed empowerer of creative workers everywhere — wanted to keep his workers locked down like so much chattel.

After kicking Google off its board, will Apple compete with the company on its home turf? Quite possibly: Apple's new server farm "would qualify as a big-ass data center," an official backend expert told Cult of Mac. OK then! (Pic)

Google is such an insult to French national pride that the country is pumping $153 million of government money into building a competitor to the search engine. And then the national library went and struck a deal with the enemy.

Google has deployed its much-anticipated spy-cycles to the streets in Europe, complete with nine cameras and freaking laser beams. This is helping the company get even closer to your windows.