Some users have been seeing the tests for a while, and now Google has formally launched a new Google Maps display that makes the different viewing options much more visible. The old display, with its horizontal row of text-based buttons … … has been replaced by what Google is calling an… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

For the past year or so, there’s been a rising meme that Google is altering its search results in ways to favor itself over competitors. Now a new survey is out showing the opposite. Google is far more likely not to show its own products in the first spot of its search results.

How many different languages can you Twit?…or is it Tweet? Since the July 2006 launch of the famous micro-blogging platform, Twitter has grown phenomenally in popularity and recognition, with over 175 million registered users and still increasing

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Knol Still Alive & Fixed, But Questions Linger About Its Future Google has fixed a bug that temporarily made Knol look like a ghost town this week….

Every country seems to have some kind of problem with Google, but it’s rarely with  all of Google. Rather, countries seem to select a specific service that the search engine giant provides and focus on that.

Google provides a lot of big-name services — in fact, depending on how you qualify a “service,” there are over a hundred items that you could add to this list. However, these have varying levels of success and get various levels of attention, with Buzz and YouTube forms opposite sides of this spectrum

The headlines on Google-related news stories recently haven’t all been kind. Some of them contain language like: “Why we need a better Google”; “Is Google going the way of Yahoo” (what a jab!); “Most Google users concerned with spam”; etc

Immediately after Google announced that they were dropping the H.264 video codec — the codec being used by major competitor Apple, for one thing — in their Chrome browser, there was an uproar in the community. Some accused Google of favoring one product simply to hurt a competitor. Others felt that Google had presented a double-standard, since Flash videos also use H.264, but these were still being supported

Everything about Yahoo seems vaguely up in the air right now. Ever since an employee leaked a slide show from a company presentation that revealed which parts of Yahoo were being sent to the graveyard, Yahoo fans have wondered at the fate of their most beloved services.