Money Talks, Bullshit Walks - Spinal Tap*

Now is your chance to buy a Green Goddess and if that doesn't tickle your fancy how about a yellow one? The UK MoD's Defence Disposals Agency online.

Old-Maps.co.uk has been the hit sensation this week in my office. It's fascinating to see how towns have changed and on the 1850 maps most of the places I have lived were fields.

Google censor services
Google have succumbed to the lure of filthy yuan and have agreed to censor its services on its new Google.cn site. Google have said that when a search result is censored they will inform the user that this is the case which MSN and Yahoo search engines, already in China, do not do. They are also not introducing certain services into China, like blogger in order to avoid ever being put in a situation where they are asked to release user detail to the Beijing government. However it is still censorship and avoidance of a potential problem;one they are fighting in the States at the moment.

A lot of moral froth is being generated about this right now, but I think that Google are making the best out of the bad hand they are holding. Google have shareholders and in order to satisfy them they must maximise their profits through increasing their market share - expansion and then squeezing the punter dry until he squeaks sorry exploit that market share efficiently for revenue - the Google ads you see to your left for instance. Faced with the huge potential market that there is in China, principles like silver can get a little tarnished. I do not like the regime in China and am not condoning what Google have done but I can understand why and China is now such a big economy that none of us can avoid doing business with them, clothing, computers, sundries, white goods all made in China.

* Possibly my favourite line from Spinal Tap, that and "None more black"