Google recently announced a new privacy policy that has users and privacy advocates up in arms. Effective March 1, this new policy will consolidate information from users' various products — from Gmail to YouTube to the Android mobile phone operating system — in order to "better tailor its services" for customers. But the move could potentially violate a users' privacy simply to better target advertising. Estimates say between 50-75 percent of the world's internet users utilize at least one of Google's products.

A Senate panel will open an antitrust inquiry into the business practices of Google today. The search giant's executive chairman Eric Schmidt is expected to testify. Federal authorities are accusing the company of playing favorites with its own businesses in search results. Microsoft endured a similar antitrust case, which took nearly a year to resolve.

Google is attempting to acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings and — as part of the package — Motorola's 17,000 patents. Google’s CEO, Larry Page, explained the motivations in a blog post about the deal: "Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google's patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies."

In the largest wireless equipment deal in at least a decade Google Inc. will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash. The deal exponentially increases Google's patent portfolio and makes the company far more competitive in the mobile phone market. Google currently owns and operates Android, today's deal is expected to give the smart phone the patents it needs to compete against Apple iPhone. Joining us is John Abell, New York bureau chief for Wired.com.

Google announced last week that they would close the doors on their medical project, Google Health, leaving an opening for a new player in the medical record tech industry. Google Health was designed as a “personal health record service," a place where patients could voluntarily store all of their health records, in hopes of centralizing their treatment information. The medical industry has limitless room for growth, considering that almost 80 percent of medical records are on paper.

Google's eight-month-old think tank, Google Ideas, is paying for 80 former Muslim extremists, neo-Nazis, U.S. gang members, and other former radicals to gather in Dublin today, to discuss what draws people to violent extremism and how technology can carry out de-radicalization efforts. Google is calling the group "formers," and they'll be participating in the talks with 120 activists and business leaders. 

Accounts belonging to hundreds of Gmail users, including U.S. government officials and political activists in in China, were hacked. Google has said that the hacking originated in China. The Chinese government has categorically denied any involvement with the hacking. However, China is paying attention to "information warfare," says Jeremy Goldkorn, who works for Danwei, a site that monitors the media in China.

Facebook has more than 500 million active users. Every link you click, every post you like, every piece of information you share with your friends on the site is also shared with Facebook — and their advertisers. Facebook isn't the only Internet company tracking you. Google, Yahoo News and plenty of other sites do the same. But how are these companies using your information? As the Internet becomes the primary way we get our news and understand our world, how might this filtering affect our world view? In other words, what aren't we seeing?

One of the biggest PR firms in the world, Burson-Marsteller, was hired by Facebook to smear Google, essentially briefing reporters about a feature of Google's social networking service called Social Circle. And the most shocking issue might  just be the clumsiness of the PR firm, which blatantly tried to get bloggers to write an Op-Ed bashing Google. While Social Circle "is kind of creepy," says Dan Lyons, Newsweek editor who wrote the story for The Daily Beast, but what really got Facebook angry wasn't the privacy issue, but the fact that Google is also mining Facebook for their new feature. "Facebook is scared that Google might beat them at their own game," says Lyons.

Later today 55-year-old Eric Schmidt leaves his post as Google CEO, to be replaced by the company’s 38 year old co-founder Larry Page. The last time Larry Page lead the company was in 2001. Then, Google had about 200 employees. Today, the monolithic company employs over 24,000. Is Page ready for his old role, and more importantly, what changes will his new leadership bring to the direction and focus of the company that built its fortunes around his visionary search algorithms? For the answer we speak to Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of law and media studies at the University of Virginia and author of "The Googlization of Everything."

This tragedy and disaster in Japan is framed by a moment in technological history. The tsunami waves were recorded from helicopters with cameras, images of the earth shaking office buildings and street signs and the heart wrenching images of the devastation are sweeping the world. Technology has also enabled numerous tools and datasets that have become another way of following what is happening in Japan. Google has set up a crisis response page to help those affected by the crisis. Prem Ramaswami, product manager with Google.org's crisis response team explains what they have done. Ramaswami says that crisis mapping is key in getting help to those who need it.

Google is changing the way it ranks websites in search results, by changing its famous, mysterious algorithm so that sites deemed "intuitively low quality" get lower rankings. Takeaway digital editor Jim Colgan looks at what's changing and why Google is doing it now.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple saw a new competitor enter the e-book market yesterday. Google launched its own e-bookstore, boasting more than three million titles. While paper book purists will very likely continue scoffing at the idea of electronic books, independent bookstores across the country are joining forces with Google on this venture, in hopes that it could bring some benefit to their businesses.

An estimated 300 million people use the internet search engine Google every day. They do more than search the web with Google. They write emails with it, plan their lives with the Google calendar, exchange documents and images, translate from one language to another. And while Google doesn't have a monopoly, but seems to have become ubiquitous in our everyday lives.

Earlier this week, The New York Times discovered that Google and Verizon were working on a backdoor deal which, as many online activists worried, would threaten the future of “net neutrality.” In essence, “net neutrality” means that the Internet carries traffic as quickly as it can, regardless of the source. If this neutrality were to end, particular websites could pay ISPs to carry their traffic faster than their competitors.

In theory, the Internet provides a level playing field for businesses and consumers alike. That’s because, since its creation, the Internet has been built around the principle of “net neutrality”: all traffic online travels as quickly as it can, given the technology and congestion it encounters along the way.  According to an article published by our partner The New York Times, however, a backdoor deal may be nearing between Google and Verizon, which could give a speed advantage to those websites who are willing to pay more.

Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel, the investment arms of Google and the C.I.A., are both backing a start-up company called Recorded Future that monitors activity and text on the Web in real time and uses the information to spot early trends and events. The company also attempts to take current data and model what's going to happen in the future...

Google is not directly collaborating with the C.I.A., but its actions are likely to cause some unease for those already worried about whether the company can be trusted to protect consumers' privacy.

Yesterday, we talked about Google's emerging foreign policy, as it deals with take-down requests from governments around the world. Today, we speak to the executive who is in effect the company's "Secretary of State."

Last month Google said enough is enough and moved its search operations out of mainland China, causing noticeable diplomatic waves. Yesterday, the company took another step, revealing some of the extent of its foreign policy. It published this explanation of censorship requests from all the governments with whom they deal.

• GOOGLE TAKEOUT:  Google revealed that they were hacked into back in January, and John Markoff, technology reporter for The New York Times, has found out through an inside source what exactly was stolen from the Internet giant.
• SPORTS TAKEOUTS: With the NFL draft looming, sports contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, takes a look at the crop of quarterbacks who are looking to become first round picks and continue their success on the pro level.