Earlier today, a feature on Google’s new Experimental Search site drew a comparison between Australian politician Kevin Rudd and Hitler.  The primary engine also caught Wikipedia at a bad time – a search for “George Washington” showed a result claiming our first president had, um, “defecated” on a stick.

Architecture is one of those subjects that appeals, on some level, to just about everybody; from your basic suburban house to St. Basil’s Cathedral, it’s just too entwined in our lives to go unnoticed.  Now architecture is being noticed by Google Earth – The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has helped design two new 3D layers for the software.

Last week, a high-ranking Google executive confirmed that the search engine company is developing a mobile phone.  Now another exec – one with even more influence – has denied the rumors.  “[B]ecoming an equipment manufacturer is pretty far from our business model,” said Vinton Cerf.

Google has gone to great lengths to defend free speech, and has protected a lot of questionable material (posted by users) on both Orkut and Blogger. It appears that Google draws the line at death threats, however, as a blog containing threats against a New Zealand politician was shut down this morning.

Disappointment reigned through the Sydney area, as Google’s scheduled flyover for photographing the Australian city had to be altered to suit aviation requirements.

In their existence, Google Maps and Google Earth have displayed quite a few odd images. Prepare to see a lot more, courtesy of the citizens of Sydney, Australia. Google is going to take some new pictures of the area, and the search engine company has not only given the public a heads up – it’s encouraged them to put on a show for the cameras.

In America, Google is pretty much omnipresent. Elsewhere in the world . . . well, it’s getting there. The search engine company has announced plans to enter Portugal in order to access the African market indirectly.

Australia may make changes to its copyright laws that, according to Google, would cause the Internet to “promptly grind to a halt.”