Gay marriage wouldn’t have passed in the Washington state Legislature this year without Gov. Chris Gregoire’s decision to reverse course and push for it. Legislators’ personal pleas to colleagues, as epitomized by Republican Rep. Maureen Walsh’s passionate floor speech about her desire to throw her daughter a wedding someday, also played [...]

Stung by concerns that using Google is bad for the planet, the Internet search giant has revealed exactly how much electricity the company uses and how much greenhouse gases it produces in an effort to show its business model is environmentally friendly. Experts say it’s true: Watching a video on Google’s Youtube [...]

A collaboration between the UN and Google presents information on the state of the world’s poverty and development in graphics. Working with Google the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has come up with an ingenious tool for plotting and understanding human development indicators across the world. Using Google Public Date Explorer technology it is now [...]

A new California lawsuit accuses Apple, Google, Adobe Systems, Intel, and other tech companies of violating antitrust laws by allegedly conspiring to fix employee pay, as well as working out “no solicitation” deals with one another. The suit (PDF), which seeks class action status, was filed today with the California Superior Court in Alameda County [...]

Google has just sealed a deal to invest $168 million in a Mojave Desert solar energy plant. The investment is going to BrightSource Energy, a company that developes and operates large-scale solar power plants, specifically to fund its Ivanpah project. Ivanpah is a solar electric generating system that uses solar thermal technology [...]

Silicon Valley high tech firms are on the hot seat over accusations that they’re not hiring enough minorities. Three non-profit groups targeted Google for a protest because it wouldn’t provide a breakdown of its workforce by race or ethnicity. “The only way we can solve the problem is finding out what [...]

Google has decided to compete against Microsoft by donating to charities based on usage of their products. The company has released a new Google Chrome Extension named chrome for a cause extension. The extension would calculate the number of tabs you open in a day and at the end of the day, you get [...]

Earlier this year Google launched an innovative “Government Requests map,” which showed how regularly governments around the world were asking Google to remove information or content from its index and services. Google won plaudits for the initiative, as well as criticism from some governments that the map allegedly made look like [...]

Google is partnering with U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation (USBCDC), a division of U.S. Bank; to create an $86 million Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) fund. According to a release issued today, the funding will be used towards the construction and operation of 480 affordable rental housing units for low income families [...]

Today Google registered the largest amount of news items in Covalence EthicalQuote database, all negatives. This information flow is due to massive protests in Germany regarding Google Street View.
Many Germans are not willing to have their house pictured by Google, claiming this violates their privacy. Thousands of home owners are expected to require Google to [...]