Google’s practice of channeling its revenues through Ireland is getting the company into trouble yet again.  This time, onlookers in Australia have taken note, and although no government officials have become involved, people are definitely unhappy that Google may be shirking its tax obligations.

Here’s the thing: Ireland offers a lower corporate tax rate than most other places in the world.  So Google set up its EU headquarters in Ireland, and can save money by letting Ireland tax all sorts of revenue, regardless of its point of origin.

This approach necessarily deprives other countries of funds, though.  Accountants and politicians in the UK have calculated that Google avoided paying their government $160 million in 2007 and $725 million in 2008, in fact.

And now folks in Australia are performing similar calculations.  Julian Lee observed today, "Despite its near total dominance of the search advertising market, Google does not make one red cent through advertising, according to its latest set of accounts.  Instead Google Australia, which analysts estimates makes about $700 million a year from Australian advertisers, is a mere ‘service provider’ that makes about a sixth of that collecting fees from its head office and a subsidiary in Ireland."

As a result, Google only paid $714,457 in taxes in Australia last year, and Australians might well like to see a bigger piece of the pie.

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.

Google has launched a new version of Image Search for Android 2.1 devices and iPhone 3.0+. This version provides a slicker user interface that fits in with how users of these devices would browse native images.

Here’s a demo:

Thumbnails are square, as to maximize the amount of images that can be shown on the screen at once. Users can swipe to see the next/previous page of results, or tap the next/previous page buttons to navigate. Google says it optimized the experience for speed, so images appear quickly as you browse.

When a user actually views an image, they are now displayed as largely as possible with a new special image viewing page. This has a black background to emphasize the image, and the buttons fade out after a few seconds, so you can just look at the image. You can browse through the image results while in this view with a simple swipe, just like the results pages themselves.

Users of compatible devices need only go to google.com on their phones and go to "images". The new version works in 38 languages.

In its continued effort to custom tailor search results and suggest that what your searching for might actually be something else, Google has brought its similar page results onto the front page of your search results.

You’ve likely seen the feature we’re talking about before, but never clicked on it and now you won’t have to, as it will be included directly at the bottom of your first search results page.

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The feature follows along the lines of many other improvements the search engine has made recently, such as localizing its search suggestions list, adding search suggestions to Google Maps and even suggesting a suicide hotline number for select search phrases. While we’ve certainly taken some issue with Google’s personalization of search results, there are obvious benefits to the user experience as a whole. The difference here is that Google is not, it would seem, making these suggestions as a result of studying your surfing history and personal habits, but instead by analyzing linking structures.

Google offers an example of how this new feature could prove to be handy to its users:

For example, with the recent earthquakes around the world, many of us have been looking for international relief organizations. We knew that Direct Relief International has been actively involved in Haiti, so we started off by searching for [direct relief international]. The first result on the page linked us to the Direct Relief website, where we found many ways to help in Haiti. But what if one wants to support several organizations? If you click the “Similar” link that’s on the same line as the “www.directrelief.org/” URL, you’ll find other nonprofits that are also involved in relief efforts.

The feature seems to be rolling out in waves, so don’t worry if you don’t see it yet, it will be there soon.

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Internet Evolution has come up with their first-ever list of the top 100 most innovative and influential people in the Web 2.0 world. In the social networking category, Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder of Facebook, beat out Kevin Rose, the Founder of Digg. In the search category, the heads of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! were named, but surprisingly Jason Calacanis of Mahalo was named, as well.

Internet Evolution has narrowed down the list into 10 different categories, which include the most innovative and influential people in each category:
Social Networking
Enterprise & Cloud Computing
News/Media
Greentech
Wireless & Gadgets
E-Commerce
Search
Security
Digital Entertainment
Most Over-Rated

I am particularly interested in the Search category, where Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Founders of Google, were named first. Stefan Weitz of Microsoft and Carol Bartz of Yahoo were also named, and Jason Calacanis was also named in the Search category.

Here is the list of the top 10 most innovative and influential people in search:

1. Larry Page, Founder, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)
2. Stefan Weitz, Director of Search, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
3. Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO)
4. Jason Calacanis, Founder, Mahalo.com Inc.
5. Robin Li, originator of Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU) search technology
6. Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia
7. Vipul Ved Prakash, Founder, Topsy.com
8. Jack Ma, Founder, Alibaba.com Hong Kong Ltd.
9. Alan Emtage, creator of pre-Web search engine Archie
10. Suranga Chandratillake, CEO, blinkx

Being in the search industry, I’m not sure if I totally agree with this list, as there are some websites that are in the list that I don’t necessarily think are really “search engines”. I would also name a few individuals like Danny Sullivan to the search category before I named Jason Calacanis to the search category. I agree that Calacanis should be named somewhere, but not in the search category.

Here is the list of the top 100 most innovative and influential people in the Web 2.0 World:

1) Social Networking

1. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Facebook
2. Kevin Rose, Founder, Digg
3. Jonathan Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) (MySpace )
4. Philip Rosedale, Founder, Second Life
5. Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn Corp.
6. Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr
7. Adam Christensen, Social Media Communications Manager, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)
8. Jonathan Abrams, Founder, Friendster
9. Mark Goldston, CEO, United Online Inc.
10. Jason Rosenthal, CEO, Ning.com

2) Enterprise & Cloud Computing

1. Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)
2. Bradley Horowitz, VP, Product Management, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Apps
3. Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)
4. Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)
5. Amitabh Srivastava, SVP, Server & Cloud Division, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
6. Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO, Salesforce.com Inc.
7. Simon Crosby, CTO, Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS)
8. Randi Levin, CTO, City of Los Angeles
9. Andrew Brown, Managing Director, Bank of America
10. Manesh Patel, CIO, Sanmina-SCI Corp. (Nasdaq: SANM)

3) News/Media

1. Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)
2. Fiona Spruill, Editor, Web Newsroom, The New York Times
3. Arianna Huffington, Founder, Huffington Post
4. Jim Walton, President, CNN Worldwide (including CNN.com)
5. Matt Drudge, Founder, Drudge Report
6. Michael Arrington, Founder, TechCrunch
7. Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired
8. Julian Assange, Co-Founder, WikiLeaks
9. Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix
10. Cory Doctorow, Editor, Boing Boing

4) Greentech

1. Steven Chu, US Secretary of Energy, DOE
2. Hal La Flash, Director of Emerging Clean Energy Technologies, PG&E
3. Guido Bartels, Managing Director, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM); Chairman, GridWise Alliance Inc.
4. Elon Musk, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, Tesla Motors
5. Chuck Powers, IT strategist, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
6. Paul Maritz, CEO, VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW)
7. Joel Selanikio, software developer
8. Lisa Wood, Executive Director, Institute for Electric Efficiency
9. Andres Carvallo, EVP, Chief Strategy Officer, Grid Net
10. KR Sridhar, Co-Founder & CEO, Bloom Energy Corp.

5) Wireless & Gadgets

1. Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)
2. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK)
3. Kevin Dallas, General Manager, Windows Embedded Business Unit, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
4. David Yach, CTO, Software, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; Toronto: RIM)
5. Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman & CEO, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)
6. Greg Brown, Sanjay Jha, Co-CEOs, Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT)
7. Min Kao, Chairman & CEO, Garmin Ltd. (Nasdaq: GRMN)
8. Jeff Hawkins, Palm Inc.
9. Don Eigler, IBM Fellow, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)

6) E-Commerce

1. Jeff Bezos, CEO & Chairman, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)
2. Pierre Omidyar, Chairman, eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY)
3. Craig Newmark, Founder, craigslist
4. Barry Diller, Chairman, Expedia
5. Scott Thompson, President, PayPal
6. Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL)
7. Raul Vazquez, President & CEO, WalMart.com
8. Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp Inc.
9. Greg Blatt, CEO, Match.com
10. Joey Levin, CEO, MyFunCards.com (Mindspark Interactive Network)

7) Search

1. Larry Page, Founder, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)
2. Stefan Weitz, Director of Search, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
3. Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO)
4. Jason Calacanis, Founder, Mahalo.com Inc.
5. Robin Li, originator of Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU) search technology
6. Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia
7. Vipul Ved Prakash, Founder, Topsy.com
8. Jack Ma, Founder, Alibaba.com Hong Kong Ltd.
9. Alan Emtage, creator of pre-Web search engine Archie
10. Suranga Chandratillake, CEO, blinkx

Security

1. Robert S. Mueller III, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
2. Scott Charney, Corporate VP, Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
3. Al Zollar, General Manager, IBM Tivoli
4. Whitfield Diffie, cryptography expert
5. Art Coviello, President, RSA Security Inc. (Nasdaq: EMC)
6. Dave Cullinane, Chairman, Cloud Security Alliance; CISO, eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY)
7. Richard Clarke, Chairman, Good Harbor Consulting
8. Jeff Moss, Founder, Black Hat Inc.
9. Jeremiah Grossman, Founder & CTO, WhiteHat Security
10. Bruce Schneier, Blogger

9) Digital Entertainment

1. Eddy Cue, VP, iTunes (Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL))
2. Mitch Bainwol, Chairman, RIAA
3. Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu LLC
4. Chad Hurley, Founder and CEO, YouTube Inc.
5. Bram Cohen, Founder, BitTorrent Inc.
6. Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix Inc.
7. Rob Pardo, Executive VP, Blizzard Entertainment Inc.
8. Tim Westergren, Founder, Pandora Media Inc.
9. Cédric Tournay, CEO, Dailymotion
10. Leslie Moonves, CEO, CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS)/TV.com

10) Most Over-Rated

1. Evan Williams
2. Biz Stone
3. Sergey Brin
4. Larry Ellison
5. Howard Schmidt
6. Ashton Kutcher
7. Barack Obama
8. Tim Berners-Lee
9. Stephen Saunders
10. Robert Scoble

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Social commerce applications provider Bazaarvoice has partnered with Google to share product reviews in Google searches and advertisements.

Retailers and manufacturers using Bazaarvoice can use their product review content to drive more traffic from Google as well as provide brand exposure to shoppers.

Consumers will be able to access opinions from other customers as they research and complete purchases, adding more relevance to the process. Google says the program will feature full-length product reviews and user ratings from retailers and manufacturers to help with the shopping experience.

"In the past four years, there has been a tremendous change in consumer shopping behavior as people increasingly rely on information from their friends and peers to make purchase decisions," said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice.

"Our clients’ innovative use of the voice of the customer has helped Bazaarvoice become one of the fastest growing technology companies today. Now, Google is affirming the power of social commerce with this partnership to integrate Bazaarvoice reviews content into Google.com – the heart of its business – as well as throughout product search and advertising vehicles. It is a big honor to be Google’s partner in this industry first, and this will be transformational for our retail clients and their suppliers."

On Google Product Search, Google will feature a brands logo beside reviews from the brands website with the goal of increasing both exposure and conversions.

Some of Bazaarvoice’s clients include Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Macy’s, Proctor & Gamble and QVC.
 

People who – deep breath – live in the UK or Ireland, don’t like to get lost, can tolerate beta software, and own a new-ish Android phone are in luck.  An unfinished version of Google Maps Navigation has been made available in the UK and Ireland for Android devices 1.6 and higher.

Google’s idea here is to simplify the task of driving around.  A post on the Google Mobile Blog explained, "Like other satnav devices, Navigation includes 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance, and automatic rerouting.  But because Google Maps Navigation is connected to the Internet, it also features powerful functionality you can’t get from other satnav services, including the most up to date map, business, and traffic data, access to satellite and street views, and of course, search."

And Google Maps Navigation offers voice search, too, perhaps making the tool safer to use than some alternatives.

Of course, this rollout isn’t exactly huge.  However, the release of something in the UK has often represented the start of a domino effect, with Google offering it in several other countries soon after.

We’ll see what happens.  At any rate, there’s at least a certain segment of the population that should appreciate this development, and Google’s shown it remains interested in the mobile market.

Google has announced that it’s expanded its Services for Websites program in which hosting companies integrate Google services into their platforms, to include Parallels, a provider of control panel software for hosting companies. Parallels will integrate Google Services for Websites into the new version of its Plesk Panel, a platform Google says millions of site-owners use to manage their sites.

This may work to get a lot of site-owners using Google products that they weren’t necessarily using before, and in theory could help their visibility, traffic, and revenue in the long run.

"Website owners generate more traffic to their websites by optimizing them using Webmaster Tools," says Google Search Group Product Manager Rajat Mukherjee. "They can engage their users with inline Web Elements, including maps, news, videos and conversations. Custom Search and Site Search provide Google-quality search on their websites for better user retention. AdSense helps website owners monetize their sites with relevant advertising. And besides providing these valuable services to millions of customers, hosting companies can also generate additional revenues through referral programs."

This also marks the first commercial control panel to offer Google Services for Websites, allowing the hosting companies to monetize the services, according to Parallels. "These significant updates enable shared hosting companies to generate new revenue streams and deliver better services to their small business customers," says Parallels President Jack Zubarev.

Google Services for Websites was announced last year. Other partners include DomainHost, GoDaddy, FatCow, Aplus.net, and about 15 others. Such partnerships provide hosting providers with a few bells and whistles to offer their customers.

Google has launched a new search option that allows users to look at an archive of tweets on any given topic in a timeline format. Users can essentially "replay" the public Twitter conversation in th order in which it each piece occurred.

To utilize the feature, users can go to "show options" on a search results page, and select "updates". There’s a chart at the top of the page that lets you select the year, month, or day, or click any point to view tweets from that time period.

"With the advent of blogs and micro-blogs, there’s a constant online conversation about breaking news, people and places — some famous and some local," says Dylan Casey, Google’s Product Manager for Real-Time Search. "Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into what’s happened and how people have reacted. We want to give you a way to search across this information and make it useful."

The chart also lets you see how much Twitter activity took place around that topic at any given time. Naturally, you’re more likely to get more information during these spikes.

"By replaying tweets, you can explore any topic that people have discussed on Twitter," says Casey. "Want to know how the news broke about health care legislation in Congress, what people were saying about Justice Paul Stevens’ retirement or what people were tweeting during your own marathon run? These are the kinds of things you can explore with the new updates mode."

"All of us are just beginning to understand the many ways real-time information and short-form web content will be useful in the future, and we think being able to make use of historical information is an important part of that," he adds.

The feature is in the process of rolling out. It will be available around the world in the next few days. If you can’t wait, you can check it out here.

OffiSync is launching an all-new version of its Microsoft Office to Google Docs synchronization tool, a plugin that’s a “must-have” for anyone still straddling the two worlds of office suites: that is, the desktop-based world of Microsoft software and the web-based world of Google Docs. In the updated version of OffiSync, set to arrive minutes from now, you’ll be able to co-author documents in real-time between Microsoft Office and Google Docs, no matter what version of the Office software you use. There are a few other new features too, including improvements to search, added Google Sites support and the ability to store any file type, but it’s the co-authoring feature that’s today’s biggest reveal.

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Real-Time Co-Authoring!

Previously, the OfficSync plugin integrated into Microsoft Office’s toolbar, appearing as a new menu or tab in its ribbon interface. From here, you could choose to open, save, search or share a Microsoft Office file in any of the suite’s flagship programs (Word, Excel or PowerPoint).

However, when it came to the “collaboration” aspect – the standout feature of Google Docs, OfficSync only provided the tools that gave others’ access to files hosted on Google Docs. It didn’t provide the real-time editing capabilities, such as those found in Google’s spreadsheets program (or, as of yesterday, in Google’s documents program, too).

But now, OfficSync users can use the software of their choice – Office or Docs – and their changes are sent to the other collaborators in real-time. The changes don’t magically occur, keystroke by keystroke, but are pushed to others when the “Save” button is clicked in Microsoft Office or when changes to the Google Docs online version are saved. Office users will see a pop-up message informing them the file was changed and they can then preview the changes, ignore them or update the file. That message is sent in real-time to all users.

You can see the co-authoring feature in action here on YouTube. 

Other Features

In addition to the standout real-time collaboration feature, OfficSync also now includes a few other features worth mentioning too, such as:

• Support for any file type: OfficSync now supports Docs’ ability to store files of any type. What this means for Office users is that you can chose to store your Office documents in their native format without “converting” them to Google Docs format. This is ideal for preserving some of the advanced formatting that Docs doesn’t support.
• Improved Google Sites Support: OfficSync automatically detects all the Google Sites you have access to and lets you edit those files. You can even create new Google Sites from within Office.
• OfficSync Task Pane: A sidebar panel for Office that shows collaborators, recent documents, documents starred in Google Docs, recently shared documents and more.
• Improved Integrated Search: The new version includes improved integrated Google Search/Google Image Search functionality, available from the toolbar.
• Beta support for Office 2010, the next release of Microsoft Office software, itself still in beta, too.

To download the newly updated OfficSync plugin, visit offisync.com/download (available at approximately 12:30 PM EST today).

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Google has acquired the UK-based visual search engine company Plink, which makes PlinkArt, a mobile app that lets users take a picture with their phone and identify paintings and artworks. Google is adding Plink to work on its Google Goggles project.

Google introduced Goggles as a Google Labs project back in December. It was cool from the get go, but the potential it displayed was far greater than the actual functionality. The addition of Plink will allow Google to expand on that functionality. Google Goggles lets you search Google using pictures from your camera phone. They take an image as input, and using "several image recognition backends," such as object recognition, OCR, face matching, etc. Goggles returns relevant results (at least in theory). It even lets users get local business information without even taking a picture. For that, it uses GPS and compass data.

"We started Plink to bring the power of visual search to everyone, and we’re delighted to be taking a big step towards that goal today," say founders Mark Cummins and James Philbin. "Google has already shown that it’s serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up."

"The visual search engines of today can do some pretty cool things, but they still have a long long way to go," the pair add. "We’re looking forward to helping the Goggles team build a visual search engine that works not just for paintings or book covers, but for everything you see around you. There are beautiful things to be done with computer vision – it’s going to be a lot of fun!"

PlinkArt will still be available for download and will continue to work, but the company will no longer be updating it. They will instead focus all thier efforts on Google Goggles.

Financial terms of the Plink acquisition have not been disclosed.

Google has acquired the UK-based visual search engine company Plink, which makes PlinkArt, a mobile app that lets users take a picture with their phone and identify paintings and artworks. Google is adding Plink to work on its Google Goggles project.

Google introduced Goggles as a Google Labs project back in December. It was cool from the get go, but the potential it displayed was far greater than the actual functionality. The addition of Plink will allow Google to expand on that functionality. Google Goggles lets you search Google using pictures from your camera phone. They take an image as input, and using "several image recognition backends," such as object recognition, OCR, face matching, etc. Goggles returns relevant results (at least in theory). It even lets users get local business information without even taking a picture. For that, it uses GPS and compass data.

"We started Plink to bring the power of visual search to everyone, and we’re delighted to be taking a big step towards that goal today," say founders Mark Cummins and James Philbin. "Google has already shown that it’s serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up."

"The visual search engines of today can do some pretty cool things, but they still have a long long way to go," the pair add. "We’re looking forward to helping the Goggles team build a visual search engine that works not just for paintings or book covers, but for everything you see around you. There are beautiful things to be done with computer vision – it’s going to be a lot of fun!"

PlinkArt will still be available for download and will continue to work, but the company will no longer be updating it. They will instead focus all thier efforts on Google Goggles.

Financial terms of the Plink acquisition have not been disclosed.

More so than when a nice, big keyboard is at hand, every moment and character counts when someone is trying to search using a smartphone.   It’s rather significant, then, that universal search features have been introduced to Google Suggest for mobile.

Universal search features met Google Suggest on the desktop in December, and although not revolutionary, they’re useful.  It’s thanks to them that you can see a five-day forecast after just typing "weather," or see the results of a zip code query or currency conversion without going near the "enter" key.

Now the same sort of stuff (including stock quotes, time zone info, and flight data in addition those other universal suggestions) is available to people who are on the go.

It’s available to lots and lots of people who are on the go, too, considering that Google’s supporting Android devices, iPhones, iPods, and Palm WebOS devices in America.

This may help Google become more popular than ever in the U.S. mobile market; it probably won’t take people long to realize that the second or two that’ll be saved per search will add up over time.

Today Google introduced two new elements to its popular advertising system, a Search Funnel and something it is calling Ad Innovations.

The company’s VP of product management, Susan Wojcicki, described the Search Funnel as a “set of reports describing the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion.”

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The idea is that users of the Sales Funnel will, over time, tighten and focus their use of Google Ads to such a degree that they will be able to sell a grommet to an Albanian from outer space.

“The data you see in Search Funnels can help you understand how users search for your products before converting so that you can optimize these conversion paths.”

Ad Innovations is a specialist website Google has set up to “work closely with advertisers on what comes next.” They intend to use the space to debut ad-tech ideas and solicit user feedback.

Photo by Danny Sullivan.

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