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Epicenter The Business of Tech Google Poaches Social Search Service Aardvark * By Ryan Singel Email Author * February 11, 2010 | * 3:49 pm | * Categories: Search * aardvark-answer1The coolest search engine you've never used got snapped up by Google Thursday for a reported $50 million. Aardvark, a company that lets you use IM, Twitter and e-mail to ask full-text questions and then get answers from people in or close to your social network, confirmed it signed a deal with Google. TechCrunch, which first reported the news, put the figure at $50 million, but Wired.com could not confirm the purchase price.

"Consumers who have been misled by advertisements into buying expensive products or services - or who are just plain irked to be confronted by yet another cheesy ad about working at home - might wonder where those ads are coming from, and why they appear on otherwise respectable websites. The answer is complicated, but becoming less so."

"A federal court policy-making body is belatedly entering the internet age by proposing that judges clearly inform jurors they must not electronically discuss cases they are hearing."

Gmail users will soon have more ways to keep up with their friends via a widget that shows quick status updates like Facebook and Twitter do, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Facebook is denying it illegally breached the privacy of its users in a proposed $9.5 million settlement to a class action challenging its program that monitored and published what users of the social-networking site were buying or renting from Blockbuster, Overstock and other locations.

If an exemption to the DMCA is granted for jailbreaking iPhones, it likely won't apply to the iPad.

Google will have users who have already started Buzz confirm their privacy options in wake of the privacy kerfuffle.

Regarding the Google Books settlement & book digitization project.