In its yearly Word of the Year vote, the American Dialect Society (ADS) said that the word ‘tweet’, derived from sending a short message by means of Twitter (noun) and the act of sending such a message (verb) was the top word of 2009, reports the Telegraph.

The society said the usage of the word Google, a verb that means to “to explore the Internet”, came because just about everyone in the world uses the term nowadays.

The ADS chooses words for their current importance or notability in American English.

Other word-of-the-year nominees included ‘H1N1’ (the virus that causes swine flu) and ‘Dracula sneeze’, which is covering one’s mouth with the crook of one’s elbow when sneezing.

Nominees for word of the decade included ‘9/11,’ ‘blog,’ ‘green,’ ‘text,’ ‘war on terror,’ and ‘Wi-Fi.’

If T-Mobile is ready to subsidize the price of the Nexus One in return for a services contract, why can’t Google subsidize the gadget, given that it’s efficiently a one-way trip into Google Land and each and every one of its services?

Tom Foremsky correctly notes that “Nexus phone does nothing to confront the power of the telcos,” given that it leaves them in the place to order what customers can do with their phones.

He goes on to disagree that Google must purchase a telco and thus emphasize control over the entire customer experience.

It’s a good consideration, though totally out of keeping with Google’s business model of leveraging others’ infrastructure, however Google could get much of the way there, by just subsidizing the phone itself, thus cutting into the telcos’ influence over their customers.

That’s what the unlocked $529 version does, after all. It positions the customer to be one SIM card swap away from a latest telco. It makes wireless ready for action again.

Chrome jumped from 3.9 percent to 4.6 percent of usage, according to statistics that analytics firm Net Applications publishes based on the 160 million monthly visitors to the system of Web sites using its services. Safari improved from 4.4 percent to 4.5 percent. Chrome’s leap came as Google released the first beta version of its browser for Mac OS X and Linux computers. Earlier only a developer-preview version was obtainable.

As of previous month, Google had been planned to modify the Chrome 4.0 beta version to “stable” on January 12, although mention of that release date has currently been removed from the Chromium development calendar. One likely glitch: the Mac beta version and the current Mac developer-preview version don’t yet support one key characteristic of the newer 4.0 personification of Chrome: extensions. That means the feature, which allows people tailor what the browser can do to some level, has yet to obtain extensive testing on Mac OS X machines.

In addition according to Net Applications’ statistics, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer sustained its stable slide, dropping from 63.6 percent to 62.7 percent usage. The majority of IE’s share loss has been picked up by No. 2 Firefox; however that open-source browser slipped from 24.7 percent to 24.6 percent from November to December.

Better news for Microsoft, and for Web developers who hate sustaining the IE 6 browser first released in 2001: IE 8 has approximately edged the older browser to the side as the top browser version in use.

IE 8 rose in usage from 19.3 percent to 20.9 percent from November to December, whilst IE 6 dropped from 22.1 percent to 21 percent.

After overwhelming Netscape in the first browser wars of the 1990s, Microsoft grew self-satisfied. But the entrance of Firefox and increasing usage of other browsers has revitalized the Internet Explorer team.

Following a two-hour trial, the court ordered both sides to have a discussion although did not set a time limit for reporting back, according to the author’s lawyer.

She is looking for compensation of 61,000 yuan ($8,950; £5,576) and a public explanation. The court case was filed in October subsequent to Google scanning one of Mian Mian’s books, Acid House, into its library.

Google said it had removed the book once it learned of the court case, however had no additional remark on the case.

Mian Mian writes risqué novels – together with titles such as Panda Sex and Candy – about China’s underworld of sex, drugs and nightlife. Most of her work is debarred in China.

She is not alone in complaining on the subject of copyright issues raised by Google’s online library. The China Written Works Copyright Society is in addition looking for compensation for other Chinese authors whose work is integrated in the project.

In France, a court ordered Google to discontinue digitizing French books without the publisher’s consent. The search engine was in addition told to pay 300,000 Euros ($430,000; £268,000) in indemnity and interest to French company La Martiniere, which had sued for copyright breach for scanning book excerpts.

In the US, Google decided a $125m settlement with American authors and publishers – even though this is still waiting for last court approval.

The search engine giant said previous month that it hoped to purchase the Silicon Valley start-up for $750m (£449m) in stocks.

Google’s group product manager Paul Feng wrote in a blog post that the business “doesn’t see any regulatory issues” with the planned contract.

He admitted that the inspection intended the deal would not be closed right away. It took months for the FTC to consent Google’s previous acquisition of an additional internet advert company, DoubleClick.

“Closer scrutiny has been one consequence of Google’s success,” added Mr Feng.

Admob was founded four years ago and sells adverts intended to run on mobile phones.

Both Google and Yelp refused to comment. It is still unclear as to why the deal fell apart in what was believed to be the final stages. According to industry blog, TechCrunch, it was Yelp that walked away – but it is still a mystery whether the site has had a better offer from elsewhere or has decided to stall for separate unknown reasons.

Yelp was founded in 2004 by Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, both formerly software engineers at PayPal. It is the market leader for local business listings and adverts in the US, with over 25 million people accessing it a month, and has a presence in the UK and Canada. Its biggest rival, Citysearch, was recently was in the news for being the first site to use Twitter’s new login API.

Google has been increasingly focussing on local businesses, especially in the US, and has given them more incentives and control over their presence on the search engine. In June 2009, Google gave local businesses control of their profile pages and has expanded what these pages can contain – for instance, they can now include maps.

In this context Yelp’s local search expertise would have been a good strategic fit.

It was one amongst many to take Google to court for digitizing its books with no precise authorization. Google was in addition was ordered to compensate 10,000 Euros a day until it removes extracts of the books from its entire database.

Google desires to scan millions of books to make them accessible online. This court case will be seen as a triumph for critics of the plan who fear Google is creating a domination over information.

Publisher Herve de La Martiniere launched his court case three years ago however Google unrelenting scanned books throughout this period.

La Martiniere, the French Publishers’ Association and authors’ group SGDL who started the court clash at first demanded that Google be fined 15m Euros (£13.2m).

The book publishers claimed that scanning books was an work of reproduction and, as such, was something that should be paid for.

According to comScore’s November statistics (via eWeek), Google and Bing are basically having a feeding whirl on Yahoo’s vanished market share. Yahoo’s share fell by 0.5 percent previous month to 17.5 percent. Bing grabbed most of those searches, increasing from 9.9 percent in October to 10.3 percent last month.

Google took the break, bringing its entire market share from 65.4 percent to 65.6 percent in November. It is, however, a slower gain than the previous month, when Google gained a half percentage point.

Strangely enough, comScore’s numbers show an unusual development than those from Hitwise, released a week ago. Hitwise claims that Bing in fact lost market share in November, staying well below the double digits at 9.3 percent.

Google and Bing have occupied a bit of a search arms race recently. Both search engines have incorporated Twitter results, with Bing’s Twitter search and Google’s real time feeds of Tweets. Last week, Google introduced “Google Goggles,” which lets Android phone users carry out Web searches based on camera photos. Bing has a diverse type of visual search that shows results as graphics. Microsoft is in addition building out its Map features with Bing Maps Beta, and just released an iPhone app akin to Google’s Mobile app.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is flailing, its market share down 2.9 percent since November 2008. The company lost toolbar deals with Acer and HP, the two biggest computer manufacturers in the world, and simply isn’t innovating on search anymore.

Called the Nexus One and made by Smartphone maker HTC, the phone will run on the search giant’s Android operating system — about which Motorola and other cellphone makers have built devices — and will be sold online, the newspaper cited persons recognizable with the matter as saying.

Cellular service will have to be bought independently, it added.

The Internet search leader may be sounding a confrontation to wireless carriers such as Sprint and Verizon, in addition to Smartphone makers like Apple. It marks a departure for the leader in Web advertising, which has infrequently sold devices directly to consumers, the newspaper said.

Google’s Android phones have won attention in the mobile industry recently, with Motorola and Sony Ericsson choosing to launch it with their latest top models.

Analysts say the aim is to increase access to precious consumer information that can be used to sell ads at premium prices, rather than to make money from direct hardware sales, as companies for example Nokia or Research in Motion do.

Research house IDC estimates the market share for Android operating software rose to 5.4 percent from 4.2 percent in July-September in Western Europe, a key market.

Executives at HTC, the Taiwan-based world’s No. 4 Smartphone brand, were not available for comment. Google was too not available for comment. Google began sharing a version of the Nexus One with employees in recent days; the newspaper cited its sources as saying.

The company filed a court case on Monday in federal court in Salt Lake City in opposition to Pacific WebWorks and other, unidentified defendants alleging trademark infringement and dilution, unjust competition, federal cyber piracy, and infringement of customer sales practices. The lawsuit can be amended to include the names of further defendants as they are exposed.

“This action seeks to discontinue a prevalent Internet advertising scam that is defrauding the public by misusing the prominent Google brand,” the suit says. “The scam victimizes innocent consumers by highly displaying the famous Google mark, by signifying sponsorship by the petitioner Google Inc., and by urging consumers to acquire a kit apparently showing them how to make money working from home with Google.”

A call to Pacific WebWorks looking for comment on allegations of scam was not returned on Monday.

People are targeted either via online ads, pop-up ads, or promotional e-mails that guarantee information on how to make money by working at home. The ads characteristically show the Google brand significantly and comprise a link to a site with what looks like genuine news articles, blog postings, or social-networking posts and sites featuring testimonials from people claiming to have made thousands of dollars for each month from the program.

Consumers are asked to pay an “instant access” fee for access to a members-only portal or a “shipping and handling fee” for a DVD that allegedly explains how to make money through the program, according to the court case. Many victims who shell out the fees, normally a few dollars, either do not get DVDs, they receive DVDs that include viruses or they get access to not related free site, such as Google’s online help center, the suit says.

In the meantime, people who have provided their credit card information, e-mail, and home addresses discover that their credit cards are subsequently charged $50 to $79.90 every month, according to the lawsuit. Customers find it hard, if not impossible, to terminate the charges or get refunds, the suit alleges.

The defendants are part of a network that reuses Web sites and shares tools to be responsible for the scams with little attempt, the lawsuit alleges.