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Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt is urging North Korea to shed its self-imposed isolation and allow its citizens to use the Internet or risk being left behind economically....

Executive chairman Eric Schmidt is accompanying former U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson on a "private humanitarian mission." The State Department wishes that they'd stayed home.

The US state department says a planned visit to North Korea by Google chairman Eric Schmidt is not "particularly helpful".

U.S. regulators on Thursday closed a long-running investigation of Google with a relatively mild agreement that is likely to disappoint rivals and critics of the Web search giant. Under the agreement, Google agreed to end the practice of "scraping" reviews and other data from rivals' websites for its own products, and to allow advertisers to export data to independently evaluate advertising campaigns, the Federal Trade Commission said.

Google once was seen as such a ripe target for investigation that the nation’s antitrust enforcers battled over the right to claim it as their own, as a potential high-tech pelt to be posted on the wall alongside Microsoft and AT&T.

In its biannual report, Google reveals which countries are asking for the most data... Governments around the world made nearly 21,000 requests for access to Google data in the first six months of this year, according to the search engine. Its Transparency Report indicates government surveillance of online lives is rising sharply. The US government made the most demands, asking for details 7,969 times in the first six months of 2012.

Turkey topped the list for requests to remove content.

The idea behind mobile payments currently holds more appeal than the reality does. Can Google change that? Retailer support for mobile payments is hard to find outside major metropolitan areas, and even then, the gaggle of tap-to-pay options means your favorite NFC-friendly store may not accept your preferred mobile wallet technology. If a new leak proves true, Google may have worked its way around the hurdle, albeit in an NFC-free manner.

For Web sites that depend on their ranking in search results, Google’s secret — and frequently fluctuating — search algorithm can evoke a complex blend of admiration and fear.

The search giant now has brought its all-seeing eyes — mounted for the first time on a backpack — down into the Grand Canyon, showcasing the attraction's most popular hiking trails on the South Rim and other walkways.