Already, computers are more intelligent than most people you watch on television. But what will happen when they are smarter than everyone? Google is starting a new institution, the Singularity University, to ponder that question.

New York, NY—"This site may harm your computer." That was the chilling message with which internet users were greeted for nearly twenty minutes this morning when they searched Google.com [GOOG]. Widespread panic ensued.

What scrapes will those goofy Street View cars get into next? Google's roving panopticons ran over a baby deer and captured a guy toting a gun on the street. America, you are Google Maps!

Nobody outside the Valley knows much about Symantec CEO John Thompson, the frontrunner to be the next Secretary of Commerce. But if anyone Googles the software chief, they'll get an eyeful.

Google will never be free of Marissa Mayer, the cupcake-loving gigglepuss VP who oversees the company's multibillion-dollar search engine. Or so says Marissa Mayer.

Hope and change has come to Google Maps. The official residence of the vice president, obscured until Dick Cheney's last days in office and residence, now shines in satellite sunlight.

A tipster is hearing from inside the Googleplex that the company, which is set to report earnings today, could lay off 5 percent of its engineering staff.

The latest cut in the ever-shrinking kingdom of Larry and Sergey: Google Print Ads, a program which brokered ads in newspapers and magazines. So much for the notion of Google saving the printed word.

Someone buy something, please. Our New York sighting of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock missed one: Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who'd like to unload AOL.

Some Google users feel lucky. And others are born lucky. Benji Brin, the baby son of Google cofounder Sergey Brin and biotech entrepreneur Anne Wojcicki, falls in the latter category.

Googlers do things differently. But Google's founders are quirkier than you might imagine. Take the diaper-fetish party Larry Page threw to celebrate the coming birth of Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki's first child.

Google has axed six services, from Google Video uploads to a shopping-catalog search. But none has sparked more outrage than the closure of Dodgeball.com. Dennis Crowley, the friend-locating service's twentysomething founder, is miffed.

The Magical Kingdom of Larry and Sergey has laid off 100 full-time recruiters, a tipster tells us. Inevitable, given the economy. But a crushing blow to Google's self-image as a kinder-than-thou employer.

Sometimes the best art is the tiniest. Google's revamped favicon, a 16-pixel-by-16-pixel representation of the website, may be the best design work yet from a company not known for its visual flair.

How soul-draining it must be to work at the world's best company! Hence the introduction of Google's School of Spiritual Growth, an arm of the search engine's in-house university.

In October, before Google's cost-cutting campaign began in earnest, the company had more than 10,000 contractors, founder Sergey Brin said. In a mid-December SEC filing, it reported only 4,300 temporary workers.

Everyone wants a sugar daddy to save them. Wall Street has found one in Washington. But the newspaper industry has been batting its eyes in the direction of Mountain View, Calif., home of Google. Ha!

What did the ex-wife of Google executive Omid Kordestani (net worth: $2.2 billion) do after getting dumped for a younger woman? She hooked up with a doctor and hired Julio Iglesias as her wedding singer.

An airplane flies into two vertical objects: For many ordinary New Yorkers, it's a horrible, still-living memory. For Internet commenters, it's absolutely hilarious.

Liskula Cohen, a Vogue model known for her clubland adventures, is suing Google to make it reveal the identity of a blogger who called her a "skank."