The "Google Glasses" video that swept the web yesterday — a point-of-view shot featuring all of the helpful little maps, messages and answers that Google Glasses will theoretically provide for you one day — was ridiculous for a couple reasons: one, who takes the 6 train one stop from 23rd Street to Union Square?? And two, if this is Google — where are the ads? Luckily, RebelliousPixels' Jonathan McIntosh remixed the video to provide a more realistic idea of what Google Glasses will be like. Annoying. [via The Atlantic]

We've seen plenty of dystopian tech since 2000. Phones that track and record your every movement. Drones that stalk and kill people. An enormous database of your feelings, ruthlessly exploited for commercial purposes. But the "Google Goggles" unveiled today take creepy tech to the next level.

Eric Schmidt has either gone through a sudden midlife transformation or is a hopelessly tangled web of contradictions. Either way, the Google chairman and longtime CEO wants to make one thing clear: He is still devoted to his wife, despite all the, you know, extramarital girlfriends.

Google has just released video of its self-driving car (possible Transformer?) helping a legally blind man run some errands. It's much less scary than the last nerve-wracking footage of Google's self-driving car, even though it does feature a trip to the humid lair of the Doritos Locos Taco.

It's been almost one year since Eric Schmidt stepped down as CEO of Google, and sometimes it seems like he's experienced a midlife identity crisis. Schmidt drives a Ferrari, will reportedly divorce his wife, and now he's calling on programmers, like those at Google, to speak out against any evil practices their bosses ask them to perform.

Google is set to begin a project called Screenwise that will pay some of its users to allow access to their search history. On a sign up page that is not yet active, Google explains:

Today, it is tricky for governments and corporations to constantly spy on people using drones. By 2015, it wil be much much easier, thanks to a Monday Congressional vote authorizing drones above 400 feet, in the same airspace as commercial airliners.

For the past week or so, everyone's been discussing that Google disclosure page showing what the search engine has inferred about your age, gender and interests. Some interesting patterns have emerged. For an advanced distribtued search supercomputer, Google reaches some remarkably old-fashioned conclusions.

It might be built on science, but Silicon Valley can be as fickle and fashion conscious as any Paris couturier. Back in 2004, for example, social networking looked trivial and grubby; truly cool programmers worked on swapping copyrighted music and movies. Even robotic Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was swept up in the trend, planning to sacrifice his now-$75 billion social network for a file-sharing venture, according to newly released instant messages.

Barack Obama convened the "first completely virtual interview from the White House" today in an attempt to connect directly with citizens. It turned out one of those citizens wanted the president to dance for her. Bet that never happens in the White House press room.

Paid Content's Jeff Roberts discovered what may be the world's geekiest stretch of graffiti on the Pulaski bridge in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. There was this Google stencil, a "Stop SOPA" tag, and a painted Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask.

Here's today's fun internet game: who does Google think you are? Google thinks I am a 65+ year old man, possibly because I am always searching things like "what time does The Good Wife start" and "movies with no violence or sadness in them" and "when will I die." (Google also thinks I am interested in "Arts & Entertainment - Celebrities & Entertainment News." Fair enough.)

Well, this is certainly interesting: Google's CEO Larry Page knew all about ads his company ran for an illegal Mexican drug ring run by a convicted con artist and described in detail to Google executives. But the advertisements for illicit steroids were allowed to continue because, hey, more revenue for Google.

Google announced today a major overhaul of its privacy policies, and everyone on the Internet shrugged and continued what they were doing.
Haha, just playin'—people are freaking out.

The anxious cyborgs who rule Google have decreed, after much controversy and deliberation, that they will alllow people to register accounts that do not match their official hu-man names. All you need to do to obtain a pseudonym is to furnish a printed "offline" news article, government document, popular Twitter account and three (3) types of bodily fluid.

Steve Jobs would likely approve of successor Tim Cook's ascetic condominium, designated "unit A" on a shared Palo Alto single-family home lot. He would be far less happy with the high-ranking Google executive in the "unit B" in-law dwelling right behind it.

You never call, you never write, and Google has had it: If you would like entry into the spiffy new Google search results, and you are a social network, Google would like you to send the company a letter first.

Google today started incorporating private Google Plus data into search results, and competitors and pundits are already crying foul. Twitter Inc. called the move "bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users." This hurts tweeters and respectable humans? Ouch.

Hundreds of bloggers were bribed to write posts promoting Google Chrome in recent weeks. The scandal is only worsened by Google's excuse: The whole scheme was dreamed up by the company it hired to help make things popular on the web.

In 2011, we watched as tech villains found creative new ways to violate our privacy. They misappropriated our social networking profiles, stalked us through our phones, and plucked secrets from our wifi networks. To help you better prepare for 2012's inevitable privacy attacks, we enumerate below the most worrisome threats you should monitor in the coming year.