Google came close to completely taking over our weekly list of top IT news this week, including headlines out of China that the company's content provider license has been renewed and out of Europe related to its Adwords court case there and Street View.
1. Google says China has renewed its content provider license, Google, China look for way to coexist and Restored Google search site very limited in features: We hope this gives us (at least) a one-year reprieve from all the breathless speculation about what would happen if Google abandoned its Chinese operations, either by choice or force.
2. Five reasons why China will rule tech: Speaking of China.
3. iPhone 4 complaints mounting: a rocky rollout and AT&T acknowledges iPhone 4 upload speed problems, promises fix: The iPhone 4 may become a case study in the potential pitfalls and woes of being an early adopter.
4. EU rules that Adwords don't infringe trademark laws: The European Court of Justice provided Google and its Adwords service with a legal victory, ruling that companies using competitors' names for Internet advertising keywords do not infringe on trademarks under European law.
5. Google acknowledges YouTube attack: Malicious hackers got to YouTube last weekend, exploiting a cross-site scripting vulnerability that seems to have used singer Justin Bieber as a target. We'll take this opportunity to express personal pride that we really don't know his music or much of anything about him other than that YouTube helped to make him famous. But then YouTube also has made famous a cat who likes to sit on a robotic vacuum for long periods of time.
6. Google will resume Street View photography in four countries: Starting next week, Google will again send out its roaming, camera-laden vehicles to photograph street scenes in Ireland, Norway, Sweden and South Africa. The company says that it has removed Wi-Fi collection equipment from its vehicles and that it will collect only photos and 3D images for its Street View service, as it previously had. We gather that this is supposed to reassure us.
7. Microsoft to patch Google engineer's zero-day next week: Microsoft promises a light set of patches next week, including one to patch the zero-day flaw that a Google engineer publicly disclosed a month ago. (We promise this is the last mention of Google in this week's list.)
8. NSA says "Perfect Citizen" is a research program and NSA "Perfect Citizen" program is only one piece of cybersecurity puzzle: Following a Wall Street Journal report about a U.S. National Security Agency program meant to protect the country's critical infrastructure, the NSA confirmed the existence of "Perfect Citizen," but said that it's a "research and engineering effort" and "there is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor." Upon reading this news, that it's a research program, we felt a Monty Python moment come upon us of the nudge, nudge, wink, wink variety.
9. First look: Firefox 4 beta: Turns out that the Firefox 4 beta, while giving us a glimpse at the next browser version, is still very much, you know, a beta version.
10. Inside the Celtics' infosecurity playbook: Check it out -- a story related to professional basketball this week that is not about LeBron James!