"Is GOOG Shafting Its AdSense Partners?" Yes. Next question? Google paid out 2 percent less — from 78.6 percent to 76.7 percent — of AdSense revenue to partners this quarter compared to last. [SiliconValleyWatcher]

Finally, Google has done it: They've made a fundamental change to their search results that could drive me, and a host of other bloggers, to rival search engines. If you blog, you know the routine: Looking for a relevant link, I type a few keywords into Google, and copy and paste the link into a post. More often than not, it's a link to a page I've already visited, so there's no need to click through to the page. Except that now, Google is forcing me to click through; instead of displaying a copy-and-paste friendly link, Google's using awkward redirects that look like this:

When Google first started pounding its chest about not being evil, one practice in particular was the target of its engineers' self-righteous anger: Overture's practice of mixing advertisers' links in with regular search results. Yahoo, after it bought Overture four years ago, continued the practice. But now, years later, Yahoo is finally making it explicit that some high-ranking search results are paid for by advertisers. Why make the change now? At the time, Google and other search engines beat up Yahoo over the sponsored links. (Yahoo defends the paid placement as a means of guaranteeing the most deserving site appears at the top of results rather than allowing other sites to game search terms.) Since then, Yahoo's dwindling search market share has given Google little reason to continue the fight: Why kick someone when they're already down? Which raises the question: Do Yahoo execs now think that they're a contender in search, so they need to clean up their act? Or is this just a sign that it takes Yahoo three years to do anything?

The San Francisco Chronicle has another look into Google's China offices. The pictures come from inside the Googleplex Zhongguancun (say that five times fast — hint, the "c" is pronounced "ts"). Most importantly, there's a rundown of a typical lunch menu — seafood pizza, pumpkin risotto, braised mushroom with bamboo and steamed crab. The most interesting takeaway? Google China's head, the underemployed, noncompeting Kai-Fu Lee, has his workspace on the traditionally unlucky fourth floor, though he pooh-poohs any talk of bad luck. "We don't believe in superstition." Good for you, Kai-Fu. We've always thought that "don't be evil" was an old engineer's tale, too.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. I'm not sure if Euripides, the Greek playwright, had Google's management team in mind when he wrote that, but it sure fits. Google, despite the occasional lost deal, billion-dollar lawsuit, and PR black eye, continues to succeed spectacularly as a business. "Somehow they continue shitting more money than you or i could realistically comprehend," writes one Valleywag reader. Indeed. And that money is driving the people who run Google insane. CEO Eric Schmidt's cosseting of girlfriend Marcy Simon with a plum PR job is just the latest, most blatant sign of that madness.

Success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan — unless you can somehow spin an adoption tale into the mix. That seems to be what Marissa Mayer is trying to do. In a recent interview, Marissa Mayer tries to take credit for both Google's Gmail email service, as well as AdSense, the immensely profitable system which places Google-sold ads on blogs and other independent websites based on their content. Her claim over AdSense? She didn't kill the product outright, despite her fears that it would be "creepy." But she also reveals that Paul Buchheit, the Googler who burdened the company with "don't be evil" as an unsheddable corporate motto, is the true inventer of a system that matched ads to a Web page's content — whether that content is a blog post, an email message, or anything else.

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 searchers pop open a movie trailer right on the page. Google previously placed the ad on searches for "Jason Bourne," but now limits it to searches for "Bourne Ultimatum." Google's Marissa Mayer likes to parrot the truism that "the best answer is still the best answer." But now, it appears that the best answer changes depending on the size of an advertiser's wallet. Or how much public criticism Google gets for a particular marketing deal. Don't be evil — except for the highest bidder.

On Google Blogoscoped, Philipp Lenssen outs former Google developer Paul Buchheit as the man behind Google's "don't be evil" slogan. As Google gets ever larger, ever more complicated, and ever more — oh, let's say it — evil, Buchheit's brainstorm looks ever more unwanted, and ever harder to shed. Which is exactly what Buchheit wanted:

In every insult, there's a backhanded compliment. Privacy International has named and shamed Google, ranking it as the single worst privacy offender it surveyed in a new report (PDF), dinging it for a range of what it claims are objectionable practices and attitudes toward privacy. It's a charge that Googler Matt Cutts finds highly offensive. But Cutts misses the real reason why the nonprofit has targeted Google.PI's privacy booby prize is ultimately nothing but a nod to Google's power. It's not just the data Google controls. The things thought private that Google's robots uncover as they crawl the Web are equally unnerving. AOL might be dodderingly clueless in releasing users' Web searches; Microsoft may come off as phony in its efforts at transparency. But only Google has the power to violate our privacy in a way that matters.

Re-educate yourself with this morning's Valleyspeak lesson. Ten points every time you use one in a sentence!

Okay, stop for a minute. There is a wrong to be righted. If blogs are supposed to be leading the New Media, can they pull one string regarding Google? With the censorship, FBI subpoenas, and overall creepy hugeness of Google, the "evil" thing is coming up a lot. But no one gets the phrase right.

Google's new infrastructure, now rolling out, is named Bigdaddy. No comment needed. [Matt Cutts]
Bubble's back, babe. [Techdirt]
CBS proves its loyalty to Google Video. [LA Times]
Okay, so Robert Scoble was the "big-name blogger" who wanted his evil back — turns out he even blogged it. The pain of discovering this scoop's old age was mollified by the discovery of Google: Evil or Not? [EvilorNot]
Linus Torvalds joins the "Sliding Scale of Evil" movement [CNet]

A big name blogger and Microsoft employee was recently overheard at an industry event defending his employer when it was called the "Evil Empire." He said, "Two kids from Stanford stole our evil, and now we want it back."

How evil is Google? Link-forum Digg, inspired by the giant's latest choice of the lesser evil, resurrects an old Internet gag. The Gematriculator gauges a site's evilness by vowel content (or something. It's SCIENCE).

Sergey Brin and Larry Page on Google.org:

January 24: Google launches Google.cn, a Chinese search page with censored results. Every tech media outlet raises a stink.

Are your image searches clogged with symbols of oppression? The Google Blogoscoped provides a handy Google Image tip.