On March 26, Google announced in a blog post that more than 600 communities have applied to be part of Google Fiber. Google has promised to pick at least one city by year-end. And Topeka, K.S., has been one of the most active and inventive in trying to persuade Google to come to its town. The city even jokingly renamed itself Google, K.S., for the month of March. Now Google is returning the favor. “Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google,” CEO Eric Schmidt wrote in an April 1 blog. “We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture,” Google said in an April 1 blog. “Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka. We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name.”

“Our new product names will take some getting used to,” Schmidt wrote. “For instance, we’ll have to assure users of Topeka News and Topeka Maps that these services will continue to offer news and local information from across the globe.” He noted that the renaming will have no bearing on which community Google chooses for its Google Fiber project.

On March 26, Google announced in a blog post that more than 600 communities have applied to be part of Google Fiber. Google has promised to pick at least one city by year-end. And Topeka, K.S., has been one of the most active and inventive in trying to persuade Google to come to its town. The city even jokingly renamed itself Google, K.S., for the month of March. Now Google is returning the favor. “Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google,” CEO Eric Schmidt wrote in an April 1 blog. “We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture,” Google said in an April 1 blog. “Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka. We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name.”

“Our new product names will take some getting used to,” Schmidt wrote. “For instance, we’ll have to assure users of Topeka News and Topeka Maps that these services will continue to offer news and local information from across the globe.” He noted that the renaming will have no bearing on which community Google chooses for its Google Fiber project.

Searches done on ten “sensitive” keywords in the Mandarin language on Google.cn, the company’s Chinese search site, yielded 52% fewer results than searches for the same keywords on the uncensored, English-language site, the analysts said in a research report on March 5. That confirms the censors are still in effect. And there may actually be a higher level of filtering on Google.cn now than there was in January, when Piper Jaffray found 40% fewer search results on the censored search engine for the same ten keywords.

The likelihood that Google will shutter Google.cn has diminished to 50% from 70%, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes in a research note.

The results of this study are line with reports that the company’s executives are in talks with Chinese officials, and are waiting to lift censorship in the country until the parties reach some resolution. Google employs hundreds of people in its Beijing offices, and some analysts take recent actions – such as looking to hire new workers there and introducing new mobile products – as signals that it intends to keep operating in the country to some capacity.

Still, it’s unclear how Google and China could reach a compromise, as the search giant remains resolute in its ultimatum. Google deputy general counsel Nicole Wong t Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told the US Senate Judiciary Committee on March 3 that the company is "firm in our decision that we will not censor our search results in China and we are working towards that end."

Searches done on ten “sensitive” keywords in the Mandarin language on Google.cn, the company’s Chinese search site, yielded 52% fewer results than searches for the same keywords on the uncensored, English-language site, the analysts said in a research report on March 5. That confirms the censors are still in effect. And there may actually be a higher level of filtering on Google.cn now than there was in January, when Piper Jaffray found 40% fewer search results on the censored search engine for the same ten keywords.

The likelihood that Google will shutter Google.cn has diminished to 50% from 70%, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes in a research note.

The results of this study are line with reports that the company’s executives are in talks with Chinese officials, and are waiting to lift censorship in the country until the parties reach some resolution. Google employs hundreds of people in its Beijing offices, and some analysts take recent actions – such as looking to hire new workers there and introducing new mobile products – as signals that it intends to keep operating in the country to some capacity.

Still, it’s unclear how Google and China could reach a compromise, as the search giant remains resolute in its ultimatum. Google deputy general counsel Nicole Wong t Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told the US Senate Judiciary Committee on March 3 that the company is "firm in our decision that we will not censor our search results in China and we are working towards that end."

By Guest Blogger Suzanne Robitaille

Ah, video and search. Frank Sinatra said it best: Try, try, try to separate them – it’s an illusion. Here’s proof of that: Speech Technology. This week, Google sealed the deal on video search capabilities for its YouTube portal, saying it would provide auto-captions for all of its uploaded videos using proprietary Google's Speech Technology.

Google’s initiative, piloted in November, began with a handful of partner channels including PBS, Stanford University and National Geographic. It has now expanded to all uploaded English-speaking videos, with more languages to be added later this year.

With this news, Google establishes itself as a frontrunner in the Internet programming space. As a company built on search, search, and more search, Google is now able to capitalize on its investment in speech-to-text technology to index videos, target advertising and create an actual profit margin for YouTube. In fact, video search is likely why Google acquired YouTube in the first place.

The bigger news is that auto-captions will have clear benefits for the deaf and hearing-impaired population, who now will be able to better understand dialogue on uploaded videos. Up to now, this group had to rely on the goodwill of YouTube users to manually add captions to their videos. A time-consuming process, most users didn’t bother to do so.

At a press conference on Thursday, YouTube says accessibility is a key goal for the years to come. Even as Google touts a serious business purpose for auto-captions – search -- it’s not hard to also believe in their commitment to making their products and services more usable for more of their customers.

Furthermore, Google is now removed from any ill will associated with Internet programming issues – such as the ones plaguing network and cable broadcasters. On March 17, the Federal Communications Commission will unveil a proposed broadband plan that is designed to ensure, or at least improve, equal access to Web TV and movie programming for people with disabilities, which could including requiring captions.

Meanwhile, a House congressional committee is mulling the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009 that would make captions for the deaf and audio descriptions for the blind into law for Internet broadcasters. The bill is backed by nearly 240 disability organizations known as the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology.

TV broadcasters – unlike Google – already have transcripts available to them – either on paper or in the form of regular TV closed captions, which have been required for almost all programming since 1990. And ABC has publicly committed to captioning all long-form content – so the heat is on everyone else.

While YouTube videos are technically outside of the FCC’s realm, consumers don’t see it that way – and they shouldn’t. That makes Google’s auto-captioning move financially savvy, and buys them consumer altruism at a time when broadcasters are facing down a potentially ugly battle over access issues.

This post was written by guest blogger Suzanne Robitaille. Robitaille is the founder and publisher of abledbody.com, a website covering assistive technology issues. She is the author of The Illustrated Guide to Assistive Technology.