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Google's grand project to digitally archive the world's body of printed knowledge may have just run into a serious roadblock. To recap: Google Book Search aims to scour university libraries across the country, scan every book it can, offer a short excerpt for free on the Web, and sell the entirety of each book, or access to the catalog, for a fee. This both advances Google's goal of making all information available to the public and nets a tidy piece of revenue for the company. But not everyone is thrilled with the project.

Wondering where the Swine Flu has broken out while stockpiling industrial respiratory filters? Of course you are. That's why Google (GOOG) is mapping both outbreaks of Swine Flu worldwide and flu infection rates in the United States. Click here, and you'll see all the confirmed, suspect, and lethal cases reported so far.

Google's (GOOG) Street View camera cars are revving up around Britain once more, as the country's information commissioner has rejected a request to shut down Google Street View on the grounds that the service violates citizens' privacy rights.

Yesterday, the smart fellers over at Google (GOOG) unveiled two new nifty services in Google Labs, the online space where interesting tools in beta mode can be tested by the public. The first out of the gate was a new twist on Google's image search function. Heretofore, search terms that have multiple meanings brought you completely unrelated images, with no way to cull the images you didn't want to look at.

The numbers are out for the first quarter, and, in one sense, Google (GOOG) met all of Wall Street's expectations. The company's revenue reached $5.5 billion, which is 6 percent higher than the same time last year but 3 percent lower than the fourth quarter of 2008; this marks the first sequential decline in revenue in the company's history. But Google's cost-cutting was slightly more significant than analysts expected, and the company notched a nice profit of $1.42 billion.

Google (GOOG) will release its first-quarter numbers on Thursday, and the investing world will find out if the company can shrug off the recession or will face the same hammer as the rest of Wall Street. Analysts predict that Google will announce a drop in its quarterly revenue for the first time in the company's history, although they haven't exactly reached consensus on a figure.

It's no secret that YouTube has run into its share of problems. Advertisers have shied away from the site's clutter of amateur videos, and finding more professional films has been extraordinarily difficult, given YouTube's present navigability issues. As a result, the ad rates have stayed in the basement, right with the number of eyeballs.

On Monday, the Associated Press announced a new campaign to force Web sites that use its stories to obtain permission and share revenue with it. Although it's not entirely clear how the company will enforce this new rule, there's little doubt who will be the biggest target: Google (GOOG), whose Google News scans and aggregates headlines, angering publishers who feel the service makes Google money by mooching off their hard work.

Yes, it's true; there's more buzz that Google will snatch up Twitter and add it to the monolith. The first rumors cropped up in late February, when Google set up a Twitter account and prompted speculation that the search engine was on the cusp of a deal.