My wife was curious about just how good a bargain she had landed. The stamp in the bag boasted “Made In Italy”.

I figured it would only take 4 seconds of Google and we’d know. But, I was quickly flummoxed. I searched the name of the manufacturer.

No luck with “di rito” in the U.S. So, I expanded to Florence Italy. I quickly determined that ‘di rito” does not have its own web presence. Odd, for this kind of workmanship.

I ended up finding the name on the sites of a few distributors. But, they were in Italian. So, Google Translate came in handy. Among other things, I learned that a “pelletteria” was Italian for “leather goods”. And, I finally got an address:

VIA FAENZA, 50/52 – 50123 Florence (FI) – Tuscany

On to Google Maps.

Well, we were right in Tuscany. By this point I was more excited about where than bag was from than how much it might be worth. I grabbed the little Street View guy and dragged him to the map.

Unfortunately, the street I was aiming for had not been photographed. But adjoining streets had. And, I was soon looking right down Via Faenza.

The street, no wider than alleys in the U.S., was under construction at the time the Street View van went by. But, you can see down far enough to see what business is like. This is where my bag was born!

I decided to swing around and see what the area was like.

To people in Italy, this might not be a big deal. For me it was thrilling.

I have used Google Street View twice to look at houses and neighborhoods when moving. We’ve checked out schools, workplaces, found area businesses, all without being within 500 miles of the place.

Last week, I was reading Stephen King’s book “11/22/63″ (go read this book, not spoilers). In it, he describes some areas in Dallas, Texas in 1963, including a church and an alleyway. I used Street View from my iPhone to check out how the area looks now. And, I did it sitting in a waiting room – Kindle in one hand, iPhone in the other.

Sometimes we gloss right over these modern-day miracles because we understand them. We would be disappointed if we didn’t see leaps of progress in gadgets and software.

But, sometimes, all this just looks cool.

To make matters worse, Schettino, who has been arrested and will likely face manslaughter charges, told the court in Italy that he escaped the ship after he tripped and fell into a lifeboat, which left the ship before he could get back out.

After coming ashore, Schettino had a conversation by radio with the Italian Coast Guard. When he refused to go back to his ship and assist in rescue efforts, Coast Guard Captain Gregorio De Falco told him, “Perhaps you have saved yourself form the sea, but I will make you look very bad. I will make you pay for this. Get on board, dick.”

That last phrase – Vada a bordo, cazzo! in Italian – has captured the Italian social media. A Facebook page went live late Tuesday, Italian time, complete with a picture of Captain Schettino, links to places where you can by “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” t-shirts, and an image of the phrase included in the “Keep Calm and Carry On” meme.

Also, #vadaabordocazzo has been trending in Italy. Check some examples below:

Sometimes – maybe once in a lifetime – a situation comes along where we have the opportunity to see what sort of person we really are when the chips are down. Are we a hero? A villain? A coward? The crash of his ship was such a moment for Captain Schettino, and now we can all see what he is. A meme.

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper reports that the captain executed a swing-by maneuver near the island of Giglio so the ship’s head waiter could wave to family on shore. It is not known if the waiter asked for the maneuver, or if the captain intended to surprise him.

The waiter’s sister had posted a Facebook status:

Which translates to:

‘Shortly the “Concordia di Costa Cociere” will be close. A salute to my brother, who will finally disembark for a holiday in Savona.’

However, apparently the captain misjudged the maneuver and crashed the ship into the rocks near the island. More than 4,000 people were evacuated in the night. Six have been found dead so far; fifteen are still missing.

Leading up to the reading, you could see that Knox was anxiously awaiting the official word from the jury. You saw her breathing quite heavily and bring her hands up to her face several times. At one point her lawyer leaned in and was talking with Knox, it looked as though she could be sick at any moment.

Below are some powerful images from the verdict reading:

The Google Merchant Center is in large part what makes Google Product Search work; it’s a site that allows businesses to submit data product feeds, ensuring that users see up to date information.

This led Kirill Kounik, a product manager responsible for the Google Merchant Center, to recommend in a blog post, "If you’re a new merchant and would like to start submitting your products to Google for Spain, Italy, or the Netherlands, we recommend checking out the ‘Getting Started’ articles in our Help Center, and then reviewing the data feed instructions and requirements for your target country.  Existing Merchant Center users now have the option to select Spain, Italy and the Netherlands from the target country drop-down menu when registering their feeds in the Merchant Center."

Kounik also noted, "As we launch in new locations, we want it to be easy for you to make your products accessible to customers around the world.  Our data requirements differ by country, so you can now view the data feed specifications for all countries in your native language by using the drop-down box on the top of the Data Feed Specification help article."

These may be significant steps for Google.  Google Product Search isn’t something the average person uses every day, but together with offerings related to maps, news, and financial info, the tool helps make the company’s brand more appealing.

Don’t be surprised if Google’s global market share increases as a result.

Google’s problems began when an Italian organization representing newspaper and periodical publishers claimed its members were being more or less forced to share content on Google News.  Publishers who didn’t share were being excluded from traditional Google search results, according to the group.

Italian police then searched Google Italy’s offices as part of an investigation, and we learned that the maximum penalty for the alleged offense was ten percent of the unit’s revenue.

All’s well now, though.  Google will just have to play nice and be a bit more open.  Catherine Hornby reported this morning, "Google has now ensured newspaper publishers will not have content excluded from the search engine and pledged to disclose revenue-sharing mechanisms . . ."

Google itself also added in an official statement, "While we comply with Italian and EU competition laws, we also understand that there is always room for improvement in our business."

This may count as an especially important win for Google considering that Italy is the country in which three execs were convicted of criminal defamation over a random bullying video uploaded to YouTube.

Up to one million out-of-copyright works may be digitized as a result of this arrangement, which is one reason it’s important.  There are probably some academics who would kill for access to just 20 or 30 of them, never mind such a huge number.

Two other interesting facts are that Google’s never before worked with a ministry of culture or any Italian libraries, meaning it’s done extraordinarily well on this first try.

Anyway, on the Official Google Blog, Gino Mattiuzzo, a strategic partner development manager, hinted that more deals are on the way, writing, "We believe today’s announcement is an important step, and we look forward to working with more libraries and other partners.  We envision a future in which people will be able to search and access the world’s books anywhere, anytime."

That short statement also makes clear that Google doesn’t see any lawsuits or new regulations putting a stop to its digitization project.

Twitter first moved beyond English by launching in Japanese in April of 2008.  More recently, it’s added support for Spanish and French.  Obviously, every time Twitter does something along these lines, it allows for the possibility of adding a lot more users.

The Italian expansion looks ready to get off to a good start, too.  A post on the Twitter Blog (written in Italian, of course), noted that journalist Beppe Severgnini, radio station Radio Deejay, and singer Laura Pausini have all established Twitter accounts.

What’s more, according to a slightly shaky translation provided by Google, Twitter’s Jenna Dawn wrote on the corporate blog, "Our friends @ pizzatwit will be happy to organize a pizza party and if you want to meet lots of new friends and Twitt all night, you should follow their account and help them to organize one of their famous Twitter Pizza Party!"

Anyway, the next language Twitter supports is almost sure to be German, since Biz Stone wrote about FIGS (French, Italian, German, Spanish) back in October.

Related Articles:

> Twitter "Tweets From Strangers" Problem Persists

> Google Translate Gets A Makeover And More Features

> Yahoo Launches Spanish Version Of Mobile Homepage

In September of 2006, a clip showing several teens making fun of a classmate with Down syndrome was uploaded to YouTube.  Employees took it down about two months later, but prosecutors have made the case that Google knew about the clip before then and violated defamation and privacy laws by leaving it up.

Arvind Desikan (who was Google’s head of videos in Europe), David Drummond (Google’s chief legal officer), Peter Fleischer (its global privacy counsel), and George Reyes (its old CFO) were charged as a result.

But here’s a catch that may address the outrage some people feel: Eric Sylvers wrote today, "If found guilty, the four defendants, none of whom were present in court, would not serve jail time because sentences of less than three years are commuted in Italy for those who do not have a criminal record."

So as long as YouTube isn’t (allegedly) slow to remove objectionable content again the future, the outcome of this trial might not matter much.

The next hearing is scheduled for December 16th, in any event.

Related Articles:

> Google Takes Us To Law School

> Google News Italia Probe Expands

> Italian Antitrust Regulators Investigate Google

Things began to heat up last week when an Italian newspaper federation claimed that Google would exclude papers from its normal search results when they opted out of Google News.  Google Italy’s offices got searched, and the concept of an $18.5 million fine was mentioned.

Now, according to an AGI article, Italy’s antitrust authority has stated, "On the basis of inspections by the authority, it has been found that the management of the Google News Italia service, currently under a preliminary investigation, was handled by Google Inc."

What brilliant detective work, right?  Sherlock Holmes has been reincarnated in Rome.

Still, given a choice between chuckling at obvious statements and not facing an inquiry, Google would probably pick the second option.  The fact that this investigation’s picked up speed in just one week isn’t a great sign.

As always, stay tuned, and we’ll report any updates.