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Over the last year, the television and movie Web site Hulu has grown from a clever idea to YouTube's greatest rival, netting tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue in a matter of months. YouTube, meanwhile, has struggled to figure out how to attract advertisers spooked by the amateur video clips and format that buries more professional (and ad-supported) films beneath a cacophony of submissions. Now, YouTube has reportedly figured out how to respond: steal Hulu's best ideas.

OK, let's go through the allure and danger of Google's cloud-computing vision. Here's what Google hopes: It will create a new model of computing in which users' hard drive memory and software will all be provided by a grand universe of servers and data centers, allowing you to access everything you need without being anywhere near your computer. Instead, all you need is a machine with enough power to drive a screen, a keyboard, and an Internet browser.

Over the last couple of days, a video supposedly showing Chinese police beating hand-cuffed Tibetan protesters has made the rounds of the Internet, appearing on YouTube, among other Web sites. As of a few hours ago, like clockwork, YouTube has been blacked out in China.

Boy, Google really wants to help you with that problem you have e-mailing while drunk. First, it launched "Mail Goggles," a function that forces you to solve math problems before you can profess your love to that special someone you met at that dive bar two hours ago.

Courtesy of The Big Money's fearless leader comes word of what may be the most unnerving Google Earth image yet: a swastika carved into the sands of New Mexico, and just east of Roswell to boot!

Just days after the Wall Street Journal floated Asia ad sales chief Sukhinder Singh Cassidy as a possible replacement for outgoing Senior Vice President Tim Armstrong, Google has gone in a different direction.

Now that Google Senior Vice President Tim Armstrong has bailed on Google to run Time Warner's anemic AOL, the Wall Street Journal wonders if anyone can replace his unique schmoozing skills as the company tackles the challenge of expanding its advertising base beyond search.

Once upon a time, more than 15,000 Google engineers and marketers saw a company whose stock price was guaranteed to soar above the $500-per-share range and slavered over the prospect of cashing in their stock options. When Google's stock started sliding toward $300 a share, these code-monkeys and flaks got jumpy, and in January, Larry and Sergey offered them a chance to reset their stock options at around $308 a share, to stave off a feared exodus of talent.

Google's utility and power have remade the way we think, acquire knowledge, and live in the world, unleashing the power of the Web in ways we never thought possible 10 years ago. But it has always fallen short of its most ambitious goal: getting a computer to answer a simple question, asked in natural language. Now, British scientist Stephen Wolfram claims that he may have the answer, and his new search engine could theoretically remake computing as dramatically as Google did a decade earlier.

Attentive readers may recall that last August, someone with an unhealthy beef with New York City model Liksula Cohen created a Web site dedicated entirely to what a "psychotic, lying, whoring, still going to clubs at her age, skank" he or she considered her. Dubbed "Skanks in NYC," the site consists of pictures of Cohen doing some PG-13 cavorting with a few friends, accompanied by some less-than-charitable captions.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt fired an exquisitely crafted shot across Microsoft's bow yesterday in response to rumors that the software company may still team up with Yahoo and challenge Google for supremacy in the search business. At San Francisco's Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, Schmidt announced that if the two companies gang up on his little service, "[W]e wish them the best of luck."