Ones and Zeros: Google Down, AOL Back, Troll Out, and Too Many Patents

Our weekly dissection of the beautiful and the heinous.

ZERO: GOOGLE DIDN’T MAKE AS MUCH MONEY AS IT WAS SUPPOSED TO

They missed earnings by a lot, a report that was erroneously leaked early. It was a costly bungle that immediately sent shares tumbling 9 percent. Why? It’s hard to say, but the easy scapegoat everyone talks about these days is mobile and it seems like Google isn’t immune either (Motorola isn’t helping). But everyone chill out. Revenues still grew by 45 percent. How does Wall Street come up with these earnings predictions anyway? Thank you Facebook, for crashing the party.

ONE: RIP, PHYSICAL VERSION OF NEWSWEEK

The fading weekly is moving forward and cutting costs, but this still feels weird.

ZERO: THIS VIDEO IS SORT OF AWKWARD NOW

ONE: YOU’VE GOT MAIL REDUX

First Digg, then MySpace, now AOL? Granted, Digg 2.0 is MIA and I’m still not sure what the new MySpace is or does or whatever. But I will give props to AOL for making my command-line-looking Gmail inbox really pretty.

ONE: SILENT CIRCLE, A NEW “SURVEILLANCE-PROOF” APP

Since that construction worker is obviously a drug dealer.

ZERO: OUR PATENT DYSTOPIA

The patent system is supposed to foster innovation. Right now, it’s killing it. Mostly in smartphones: one in six active patents have something to do with those things we can’t stop checking. 250,000 active in total.

ONE: INTERNET CREEPS UNMASKED

After being outed by Adrian Chen, “the biggest troll on the web,” Michael Brutsch AKA Violentacrez is on CNN. So reddit learns about speech the hard way. Not that that was what this was about in the first place.

ONE: WE FOUND AN EARTH-LIKE PLANET IN ALPHA CENTAURI

And it’s only 4.4 light years away!

ZERO: TWITTER BLOCKED USERS BECAUSE A GOVERNMENT WANTED IT TO FOR THE FIRST TIME

At least they were Nazis. Part of the company’s new “country-withheld content" policy.

ONE: NO ONE CARES ABOUT AIRTIME

Reddit without creepshots. Chatroulette without dicks. This is not what the Internet needs. Wants?

ZERO: ANOTHER DEBATE, ANOTHER MEME GONE WILD

Yes, that one. And apparently the democrats have a team ready for stuff like this. For those who missed it (or didn’t), a friendly GIF recap. (No word yet on that climate change thing.)

ONE: THE ECONOMICS OF JAMES BOND

But having soldout to Heineken, Skyfall’s Bond only drinks beer.