The Internet was built on freedom of expression. Society wants someone held accountable when that freedom is abused. And major Internet companies like Google and Facebook are finding themselves caught between those ideals.

Google Inc and No. 2 U.S. satellite TV operator Dish Network Corp are jointly testing a television programing search service, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

China has pledged to punish hackers who attacked Google if there is evidence to prove it, but said it has yet to receive any complaint from the world’s top search engine.

Google sent shockwaves across business and political circles in January when it declared it would stop censoring Chinese search results, and threatened to pull out of China — the world’s largest online community with 384 million users at the end of last year — over hacking and censorship concerns.

Google had never filed a report to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology over the cyber attacks or sought negotiations, Vice Minister Miao Wei was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua late on Saturday.

DULUTH, Minn. – Wearing just a T-shirt and shorts, Mayor Don Ness strolled to the end of a dock jutting into frigid Lake Superior. He grinned, waved his arms to a cheering crowd, and jumped in.

“I’ve laid down the gauntlet!” Ness cried, shivering and dripping as he emerged from the lake in a video posted on YouTube. “All right, you other mayors! You want Google Fiber, you jump in Lake Superior!”

They may not be taking a lake plunge, but city leaders around the country are competing hard for Google’s experimental fiber-optic network, which promises to be more than 100 times faster than the Internet connections currently available to most Americans.

Topeka, Kan., informally renamed itself “Google, Kansas,” for the month of March. A group in Baltimore launched a Web site that uses Google mapping to plot the location of more than 1,000 residents and gives their reasons for wanting the service. Other cities in pursuit include Cincinnati, Portland, Ore., Grand Rapids, Mich., Rochester, N.Y., Baton Rouge, La. More than 200 groups on Facebook are pushing different cities and counties for Google’s broadband plan.

China is in consultations with technology giant Google to resolve its dispute with the company, which has threatened to abandon the Chinese market over hacking and censorship concerns, said a Chinese official on Friday.

Microsoft said on Friday it will stick to its development strategy for the China Internet search market regardless of the outcome of Google’s high-profile spat with Beijing.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer intends to keep the regulatory heat on Google as his company strives to lessen its rival’s dominance of Internet search.

In an appearance Tuesday at a search engine conference, Ballmer said Microsoft believes Google Inc. has done things to gain an unfair advantage in the Internet’s lucrative search advertising market. He didn’t specify the alleged misconduct.

Two telecom operator-backed mobile software groups signaled closer co-operation on Tuesday as carriers face increasing competition from the new rivals Google and Apple. The two consortiums, wireless Linux group LiMo and application alliance WAC, offer operators alternatives to the software and services of Apple, Google or Nokia as they can brand and customize their software.

BRUSSELS – EU data protection authorities have urged U.S. Internet search giant Google to shorten the period it stores images from its controversial Street View web service because of privacy concerns.

Launched in San Francisco in 2007, Street View allows users to navigate around a 360-degree view of city streets, buildings, traffic and people, using pictures taken by Google’s camera vehicles.
Now available in many countries, critics of the service accuse Google of failing to obscure sensitive images and setting its cameras in a way that allows them to peer over fences, hedges and walls into private property.

Google, which now keeps the images for a year should halve this period, privacy authorities wrote in a letter to the company’s global counsel, Peter Fleischer.

SEATTLE – Microsoft Corp made its most vehement and public attack on Google Inc on Friday, calling its internet rival’s actions potentially anti-competitive, and urging victims to file complaints to regulators.

The broadside comes days after a Microsoft-owned business, along with two other small online companies, complained to European Union regulators about Google’s operations there. Microsoft is also fighting a plan by Google to digitize millions of books, currently under scrutiny by the Department of Justice.

“Our concerns relate only to Google practices that tend to lock in business partners and content — like Google Books — and exclude competitors, thereby undermining competition more broadly,” wrote Dave Heiner, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, in a blog published on the company’s website on Friday.