Two wind farms in North Dakota now enjoy the support of a certain search giant.  Google announced this afternoon that it’s invested $38.8 million in the farms, and believe it or not, this may be a move that both environmentalists and investors can get behind.

In a post on the Official Google Blog, Rick Needham, whose title of "Green Business Operators Manager" itself speaks to striking a balance between environmental and financial concerns, explained, "[W]e’re aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy – in a way that makes good business sense, too."

Needham also stated, "[W]e’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects."

And concerned parties should know it’s not like Google had to get rid of any employees in order to accommodate this investment; the company’s first-quarter earnings report revealed it had $26.5 billion more or less lying around as of March 31st.

One more for-the-record item: for the moment, at least, Google won’t be using either of the wind farms to power any of its data centers.

The Federal Trade Commission is not going to give Google’s acquisition of AdMob a thumbs up, according to new reports.  Indeed, the FTC seems likely to take the opposite approach and attempt to block the deal, with a formal show of opposition expected to occur in the near future.

Three people "familiar with the matter" told Jeff Bliss and Dina Bass this weekend that the FTC "is urging the filing of an antitrust suit."  And Kara Swisher‘s heard similar things from "multiple sources," too, with next week looking like the time when something will transpire.

Obviously, that would represent bad news for Google.  The fact that the search giant tried to buy AdMob for $750 million shows it very much values the idea of getting ahead in the mobile advertising market.  Losing the opportunity to do so could be damaging to both the company’s reputation and its bottom line.

There’s a bit of good news for Google this morning, though, as investors don’t seem worried about the FTC-related reports.  Google’s stock is up 0.39 percent at the moment, which makes for a nice start to the week.

We’ll see what happens.  The FTC has yet to drop any official hints about its take on the matter.

Sorry, Google fans, but from a financial perspective, the search giant seems to have lost some of its luster.  Goldman Sachs hasn’t come close to suggesting that anyone sell their stock – and is in fact still recommending that people buy more – but at the same time, the firm has removed Google from its "Conviction Buy" list.

You can blame the nasty dive Google’s stock took following the company’s quarter one earnings report for this move; a drop from $595.30 at the closing bell to $563.00 at the opening one definitely counts as "underperformance," and Google’s stock has since fallen further to around $536.24.

What’s more, five-day, one-month, three-month, and six-month views of the stock’s performance all show losses.

Google’s stock is still up 38.92 percent if you look at it using April 28th, 2009 as a starting point, though.

Google’s stock is up this morning, too, by a not-unimpressive 0.87 percent.

By comparison, Microsoft is up 0.15 percent, Yahoo’s down 1.15 percent, the Dow’s down 0.14 percent, and the Nasdaq’s down 0.13 percent. Google’s shareholders don’t exactly need to go calling for anyone’s resignation just yet, then.

Sorry, Google fans, but from a financial perspective, the search giant seems to have lost some of its luster.  Goldman Sachs hasn’t come close to suggesting that anyone sell their stock – and is in fact still recommending that people buy more – but at the same time, the firm has removed Google from its "Conviction Buy" list.

You can blame the nasty dive Google’s stock took following the company’s quarter one earnings report for this move; a drop from $595.30 at the closing bell to $563.00 at the opening one definitely counts as "underperformance," and Google’s stock has since fallen further to around $536.24.

What’s more, five-day, one-month, three-month, and six-month views of the stock’s performance all show losses.

Google’s stock is still up 38.92 percent if you look at it using April 28th, 2009 as a starting point, though.

Google’s stock is up this morning, too, by a not-unimpressive 0.87 percent.

By comparison, Microsoft is up 0.15 percent, Yahoo’s down 1.15 percent, the Dow’s down 0.14 percent, and the Nasdaq’s down 0.13 percent. Google’s shareholders don’t exactly need to go calling for anyone’s resignation just yet, then.

Depending on how you look at it, Google’s either in a whole lot of trouble, or it’s gotten a lucky break.  The consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog went after the search giant again today, calling for the Department of Justice to take action, but arguably went too far by suggesting that the company be broken up.

At the beginning of a letter to several DOJ officials, Consumer Watchdog’s John M. Simpson did a fair job of highlighting precedents for federal interference.  He wrote, "Your department has opposed the proposed Google Books settlement and the FTC is closely examining Google’s planned $750 million acquisition of the mobile advertising company AdMob."

After discussing Google’s dominance in the search and advertising markets, Simpson pushed for some unusually harsh penalties, though.  One idea was to have Google pay consumers significant amounts of money in return for monetizing their information.  Another was regulating Google as a public utility.

Finally, there’s the biggie: "break Google into different companies devoted to different lines of business."

If anyone important at the DOJ agrees with these recommendations, Google will obviously face a very tough fight.  It just seems more likely that Simpson undermined his arguments (and those of other privacy groups) by requesting almost unheard-of consequences.

Google may be stepping up its efforts to have developers pay attention to Android.  The search giant – or rather, a division of it known as the "Android Advocacy Group" – has supposedly gone on the offensive, emailing a developer and offering him (or her) a free device.

Of course, we’ve seen Google hand out Android phones before; hundreds of them have found new homes thanks to giveaways at different conferences.  The difference is that conference attendees opted to be present at those gatherings, and the conferences were usually related to Android in the first place.

Now, Google might just be contacting folks out of the blue.

Someone – presumably either Lauren Leto or Ben Bator – told David Pogue, "I’m the developer of the Texts From Last Night app for the iPhone.  Anyway, I received an e-mail yesterday from someone at Google claiming to be in their Android Advocacy Group.  He basically said that he wanted to open a line of communication with me in case I chose to port the app to Android, and he offered to ship me a free Nexus One to play around with."

The nameless developer later added, "Contrast with Apple’s approach: it took us about three months of resubmitting our app to Apple before they stopped rejecting it for inappropriate content.  And even now (after we peaked at the No. 7 paid app), we still have no relationship with anyone there."

It would seem, then, that reaching out to developers is potentially a very effective tactic for Google to adopt.

It’s almost a waste of space to state that Google is a good employer; the fact is widely known, and people all over the world apply there on a regular basis.  However, in a move that may speak to how the search giant is faring in China, an important research executive has gone to work for Baidu after quitting Google within the past couple weeks.

Kathrin Hille, who’s based in Beijing, got in contact with both companies and confirmed, "Baidu said Wang Jing had joined the company as a vice-president in charge of engineering.  Google said Mr Wang quit as engineering director earlier this month."

This is bad news for Google.  It would make sense if search people left its Chinese operation, given that everything’s been routed through Hong Kong.  Google’s advertising and research efforts were supposed to continue the same as usual, though, and it’s not as if the company cut anyone’s salary due to its disagreement with the Chinese government.

Wang Jin’s decision to leave would just appear to be a reflection on Google’s worsening reputation in the region, then.

Google will have to hope (and/or take action to ensure) that this doesn’t represent the start of a trend, with more and more employees leaving to work for Baidu or other Chinese competitors.

Google’s announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2010, and as usual, the search giant hit most of the targets analysts had established for it.  Investors have not taken the news well, however, sending Google’s stock down 4.51 so far percent in after-hours trading.

Let’s start with the good news.  Google reported net revenue of $5.06, which qualifies as significantly better than the $4.95 billion analysts expected.  It topped EPS estimates, reporting $6.76 rather than $6.60, and paid clicks were up 15 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

Patrick Pichette, the company’s CFO, also referred to "strength across all major verticals and geographies" and said in a statement, "Going forward, we remain committed to heavy investment in innovation – both to spur future growth in our core and emerging businesses as well as to help build the future of the open web."

Of course, Google didn’t beat analysts’ estimates by huge margins in the first quarter, and that may be part of what shareholders are unhappy about.  For several years, the company sustained a tradition of shocking everyone with amazing numbers, and today’s report wasn’t consistent with that trend.

Specific complaints concern a four percent quarter-to-quarter decline in the average cost per click, too, along with the addition of 786 full-time employees.

Anyone who’s run afoul of Facebook’s, um, fluid rules for user behaviour can tell you it’s like a Kafka novel. (Remember the one where nobody would friend the giant cockroach? Shudder.)

Here’s one of the latest lucky contestants: Social Media Today, a Web venture with an active presence on Facebook, was posting URLs twice a day, until one day they discovered they’d run afoul of the site’s rules and had their ability to post links blocked.

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So how often is too often? Facebook won’t say. How infrequently would they have to post to stay safe? Facebook won’t say.

Look, I get that Facebook’s a private company and if I don’t like it I can just move somewhere else – although when you’re dealing with a platform that has 400 million users, half of whom log on in any given day, that’s a little like saying you can always go find yourself another human civilization.

But there’s something wrong if we’re expected to treat Facebook like Dinsdale Piranha – forgiving them for nailing our heads to the floor because we’d transgressed the unwritten law. (Which law? “Er… Well he never told me that. But he gave me his word that it was the case, and that’s good enough for me with old Dinsy.”)

More Noise to Signal.

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March was an interesting month for the search market, according to new statistics from comScore.  Not so interesting that Google isn’t still on top by a huge margin, of course, but interesting insofar as the search giant lost a bit of market share, even as Bing and Yahoo improved their standing.

Let’s start with Google’s story.  In February, comScore puts its market share at 65.5 percent.  That declined to 65.1 percent in March, which is a moderately unusual turn of events.

As for how Bing did, it’s still Microsoft’s little search-engine-that-could, achieving its tenth straight month of gains.  Not huge gains, perhaps – its market share just moved from 11.5 percent to 11.7 percent between February and March – but the streak remains impressive, and even the tiniest numbers add up over time.

Then there’s Yahoo’s tale to consider.  Unfortunately for Carol Bartz, the company’s standing had dropped each of the previous 13 months.  However, moving from February to March, comScore recorded a 0.1 percent gain, nudging Yahoo from 16.8 percent to 16.9 percent.

So it was definitely an interesting month, as these things go.  And Bing and Yahoo, at least, are no doubt hoping April turns out to be just as unusual.

The search giant that does everything from take pictures of city streets to research solar power may manage to save some human lives, too.  Google’s started to provide people who search for certain suicide-related terms with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s phone number.

Queries for terms and phrases like "suicide," "how to commit suicide," and "ways to commit suicide" now return a red phone icon and the hotline number above the first search result, making them impossible to miss.

This counts as a pretty significant change.  Dr. Roni Zeiger, Google’s chief health strategist, explained to Noam Cohen that his company’s only tailored its responses in this manner once before, providing a poison control number after one mother made a suggestion.

Of course, many phrases related to suicide still don’t trigger anything aside from ordinary search results, and it’s hard to say if the image of a red telephone will deter anyone from ending his or her life.

Additional adjustments may be on the way, though, considering that Zeiger told Cohen, "We looked at many of the possible queries that could reflect interest in the topic.  We are starting relatively conservatively."

The search giant that does everything from take pictures of city streets to research solar power may manage to save some human lives, too.  Google’s started to provide people who search for certain suicide-related terms with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s phone number.

Queries for terms and phrases like "suicide," "how to commit suicide," and "ways to commit suicide" now return a red phone icon and the hotline number above the first search result, making them impossible to miss.

This counts as a pretty significant change.  Dr. Roni Zeiger, Google’s chief health strategist, explained to Noam Cohen that his company’s only tailored its responses in this manner once before, providing a poison control number after one mother made a suggestion.

Of course, many phrases related to suicide still don’t trigger anything aside from ordinary search results, and it’s hard to say if the image of a red telephone will deter anyone from ending his or her life.

Additional adjustments may be on the way, though, considering that Zeiger told Cohen, "We looked at many of the possible queries that could reflect interest in the topic.  We are starting relatively conservatively."

The iPad’s become almost inescapable – really, it’s hard to imagine that anyone with a TV or Internet connection hasn’t heard of the device by now – and to those people who actually buy one, Google would like to be similarly omnipresent.  The search giant discussed five iPad-specific tweaks and apps this afternoon.

Let’s start by talking about Gmail, since what Google’s cooked up in this respect represents the biggest deviation from the norm.  It seems that, when iPad users visit Gmail.com, they’ll see something a little special.

A post on the Official Google Mobile Blog announced, "We’re releasing an experimental user interface for the iPad built on the Gmail for mobile HTML5 web app that we launched last year . . . .  To take advantage of the iPad’s large display, we’ve created a two-pane view with your list of conversations on the left and messages to the right."

Then, well, there’s everything else.  Google Search and a YouTube app come preinstalled on the iPad.  A Maps app is available, too, and the Google Mobile App with search by voice is at the ready in the App Store.

Earlier today, we suggested that Yahoo will be hoping the iPad’s a success.  Now it’s fairly certain that Google will have a cheering section at work, too.

When we first reported that Yale was poised to adopt Google Apps, the development seemed like a big win for Google.  The situation’s now looking a bit different, though, as the prestigious university has postponed its school-wide switch to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other products from Mountain View.

David Tidmarsh of the Yale Daily News reported today, "After a series of meetings with faculty and administrators in February, ITS officials decided to put the move on hold, Deputy Provost for Science and Technology Steven Girvin said."

Apparently there were some concerns about how easy implementation would (or wouldn’t) be, which is one perception problem Google would like to overcome.

Then here’s a rather more serious issue Google has to address: Tidmarsh wrote, "Deputy Provost Charles Long said last Wednesday that he did not know about the committee’s decision but noted that several faculty members had concerns about communications security under the proposed Google system."

So this situation is becoming a public relations headache, rather than a PR win, for the search giant.  Yale’s reputation is good enough that many other organizations could follow its lead.