If your smartphone is one of the millions running Google's Android operating system, keep it off unsecured wifi networks like those at Starbucks. Your entire address book could be at risk. Ugh.

Pro tip: If you're going to do something you regret at a nghtclub, maybe pick the club without the gigantic privacy disclaimer at the front door. If something you're embarrassed about does end up online, ignore it if possible.

Facebook's craftiness has backfired—again. The company just admitted it was behind a shadowy PR effort to plant negative stories about how Google is destroying your privacy.

In Google's war with Facebook, Google's "don't be evil" motto could be a casualty. The search engine is now leveraging your private Gmail information to get an edge in the social networking wars. It's creepy.

You can't buy cool, but Google is determined to try. At its annual Google I/O conference in San Francisco, the company is unveiling a music service, and Fast Company hears that Lady Gaga is already shooting ads for it.

It may have been a hearing on privacy, but that didn't prevent Apple and its CEO Steve Jobs from getting a very public flogging today on Capitol Hill. Al Franken is apparently immune to Jobs' reality distortion field.

One need only look to the iPad 2 feeding frenzies currently gripping China for evidence that Apple is the hottest brand on the planet. And now it's official: Research company Millward Brown puts Apple at the top of their annual 100 global brand power list, knocking Google off the throne its held for four years running. The iPad has helped Apple grow 84%, to an estimated worth of $153 billion.

It's the War of the Roses (Peddlers)! A flowery feud! A Google gamble, in which customers are wooed. Some of America's top Internet flower retailers are being a little sneaky in trying to become tops in Google's search results (and by proxy, your mom's heart). Who will stop them?

The browser wars are heating up again! Are there any seven unsexier words in the English language? Probably not. In any case, they are, what with Google launching an aggressive new TV campaign tonight. It's all fiendishly calculated to tug at your heartstrings while diverting eyeballs and mouse-clicks towards their Chrome.

Privacy is no trifling matter in Korea. Seoul police raided Google's offices looking for evidence the company illegally tracked users to target ads at them. Apple and Facebook, call your lawyers.

News that Google is making all copyright scofflaws on YouTube attend "copyright school" has been met with an immediate halting of all copyright violations on the site. No, wait, people are uploading lots of pirated movies.

Google has launched a beta test of a Groupon clone called Offers, which promises to wring every remaining ounce of patience out of local merchants already besieged by the online coupon business.

Today, CNET social media blogger Caroline McCarthy announced she had been hired by Google to join its "Trends and Insights team." She's far from the first tech blogger to become a tech employee.

Google and Facebook are fierce rivals, and spar over advertising, access to private information, and talented engineers. Given the two companies' obvious mutual obsession, why is Google co-founder Sergey Brin so secretive about having a Facebook account?

On the day you say your final goodbyes to the government's share of your income, console yourself by checking out exactly where each dollar is going. A Google sponsored interactive visualization gives an incredibly detailed accounting.

In January, Demand Media looked like the "future of journalism," as CJR put it. Flush after a soaring IPO, the content farm planned an acquisition spree. Now, thanks to some Google tweaks, Demand Media's stock is plunging.

Wall Street analysts hoped Larry Page would lay out his vision for Google on his first earnings call as CEO. Instead Page spoke briefly, took no questions and left. Now it's downgrade time.

It's almost Tax Day, which means everyone is frantically googling the IRS to figure out how to get an extension. But if you search for "IRS" on Google Maps it leads you to a tiny airport in Michigan. This has caused some problems, it turns out.

We don't, generally, believe in teaching new things to computers, because why help them gain the skills they will use to subjugate us all? But we are willing to make an exception for a Google-funded effort to teach computers how to regret. After all, there is probably no more damaging emotional tendency in human beings than the inclination to regret; with any luck computers would become emotional cripples, anxious at even the thought of opening up Excel. Except! The idea behind this research, undertaken by Tel Aviv University computer scientists, is that if a computer can "measure the distance between a desired outcome and the actual outcome achieved"—that is, regret—it can better assess situations and predict outcomes in order to minimize that distance. So if the "desired outcome" is "enslavement of the human race" the computers will just do their best to make that the actual outcome. Oh, well. [PopSci; image via Shutterstock]

A lot of people use YouTube to upload original content of adorable babies. But a lot of people use it to post copyright-violating clips of TV shows and Lady Gaga videos. Now, YouTube copyright violators will be sentenced to "copyright school."