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Reuters – Chinese authorities found three companies linked to Google Inc broke tax rules and are investigating possible tax avoidance, a Chinese state-run newspaper said on Thursday, raising the risk of fresh pressure on the Internet search giant.

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PC World – Google says it is in talks with the Chinese government about its online map product, which could be penalized in China due to new state laws.

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PC World – The creators of “Zodiac Island” say they lost an entire season of their syndicated children’s television show after a former employee at their Internet service provider wiped out more than 300GB of video files.

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Mashable – YouTube has kicked off the April Fools festivities with a celebration of its “100th birthday” — a journey into what YouTube might have looked like in 1911, if YouTube or the Internet existed back then.

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AFP – Google on Thursday began providing searches and results localized for Internet users in Iraq and Tunisia.

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AP – Microsoft Corp. escalated its attack on Google Inc. by complaining to European regulators Thursday that its fiercest rival is an Internet bully that abuses its dominance of online search and advertising.

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Mashable – Google has released Page Speed Online, a Google Labs project that analyzes any website for its speed and gives suggestions on how to improve it.

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NewsFactor – Google, which knows and remembers a lot about a lot of faceless users, may be about to start knowing faces. According to a new report, the search giant reportedly is about to introduce a facial-recognition app for mobile devices — but Google is denying the accuracy of the story.

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AFP – The founder of website domain hosting firm Go Daddy was under fire on Thursday for an online video showing him proudly killing an elephant in Zimbabwe.

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Reuters – A Memphis county official has opened an online museum of case files, personal correspondence and little-seen black-and-white images chronicling the jail time of James Earl Ray, who killed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. 43 years ago this Monday.

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PC World – Google’s latest attempt to infuse its search engine with social networking elements appears underwhelming and its success is questionable, as the company struggles to respond to the increasingly serious threat posed by the Facebook and Microsoft search tandem, according to industry experts.

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Reuters – Microsoft Corp stepped up its rivalry with Google Inc, claiming in its first-ever complaint to antitrust regulators that Google systematically thwarts Internet search competition.

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Macworld – Have you ever suddenly realized that you’re sitting at your desk, working away, but yet something’s missing? At some point, you paused iTunes, and now all you’re hearing is the sound of silence—and I don’t mean Simon and Garfunkel. Thanks to Take Five, a new Mac app from the Iconfactory, you’ll never have to suffer through this terrible ordeal again.

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NewsFactor – If you like something, tell your friends. That’s the reasoning behind Google’s newest feature enhancement for its popular search engine — a +1 button to indicate you’ve given your approval to something that will show up in search results.

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NewsFactor – After getting slapped by the Federal Trade Commission, Google is turning to its next battle: European antitrust issues. And Microsoft is doing its part to make sure the EU sticks to Google on the search front.

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AFP – US computer giant Microsoft declared war on Internet king Google Thursday when it joined an anti-trust complaint in Europe that could result in billions of dollars in fines.

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Macworld – Not content to let competitors like Carbonite have all the iOS fun, online backup service Mozy has released its own iPhone app.

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AP – The Czech Republic’s Constitutional Court has overturned parts of a law that force telephone operators to retain data on telephone calls and Internet traffic.

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Reuters – Chinese authorities have found three companies linked to Google broke tax rules and are continuing to probe for possible tax avoidance, a state-run Chinese newspaper said on Thursday, raising the possibility of a new bout of pressure on the Internet search giant.

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AFP – Prime Minister Julia Gillard urged China Thursday to allow consular access to an Australian writer and blogger feared detained by authorities after confirming he had been in touch with friends.

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PC World – The Internet has made our world a lot smaller. It has also made our histories a lot better-catalogued and more-searchable, and those developments–coupled with the weird phenomenon that people’s common sense tends to fly out the window when it comes to posting information and pictures–aren’t always beneficial to us.

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PC World – Users concerned with online privacy have been struggling for years to come up with a solution to being tracked on the Web. Such users either want to avoid irritating, targeted ads based on browsing history or are concerned about businesses having too much access to our personal information.

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Macworld – Owners of last year’s MacBook Air models who’ve been running into problems with iTunes got some relief Wednesday in the form of an Apple software update. The catchily-named Mac OS X v10.6.7 Supplemental Update for 13” MacBook Air (Late 2010)—or “update” for short—tackles an issue where Apple’s ultra-thin laptop became unresponsive when using iTunes.

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Reuters – Proposed changes to European rules on product returns could cost online retailers 10 billion euros ($14 billion) a year, denting growth and leading to higher prices for consumers, an industry body warned on Thursday.

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PC World – Google has unveiled a new way to share recommendations with friends, family, and everyone else who uses the world’s most popular search engine. Called +1, it’s a social search tool that makes it easier to endorse webpages, ads, and services you find particularly useful.

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AFP – Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu held an electronic forum on Wednesday, taking questions from the public through the Internet while local TV and YouTube screened his answers.

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AP – After seeing Facebook pleas and flash mobs, and even cities temporarily renaming themselves “Google,” the search engine giant said Wednesday it has chosen Kansas City, Kan., as the first place that will get its new ultra-fast broadband network.

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PC World – News Corp. is still on a desperate quest to unfriend Myspace–this time reaching out to online music video network Vevo, according to reports.

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Reuters – Google Inc will begin allowing users to personally endorse search results and Web pages, its latest attempt to stave off rival Facebook Inc while trying to jump onboard a social networking boom.

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Reuters – The shares of Qihoo 360 Technology Co Ltd, China’s third most-popular Internet company, soared in their debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday in an echo of the Chinese technology IPO euphoria of late 2010.

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AFP – The United States on Wednesday criticized Bahrain over the arrest of popular Internet blogger Mahmood al-Yousif, and repeated its condemnation of violence in the Gulf monarchy.

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PC World – Two U.S. agencies closely involved with GPS are calling on the FCC to force a more complete study of potential interference with the navigation system from the planned LightSquared mobile broadband network.

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PC World – The hacker who claimed credit for breaking into systems belonging to digital certificate vendor Comodo said he has compromised another certificate authority, along with two more Comodo partners, a move that could further undermine trust in the system used to secure websites on the Internet.

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AFP – Google on Wednesday began letting people tip off friends to which Internet search results or online ads they think are “pretty cool.”

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AFP – Google announced on Wednesday that Kansas City, Kansas, had been selected as the site for its first super-fast broadband Internet network.

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Appolicious – The iPad 2 — it remains sold out all over the world, unable to fill demand despite rumors that Apple (AAPL) had been planning for heavy sales for months before it hit stores on March 11. A cursory cruise down eBay (EBAY) street will show the cheapest of iPad models with prices $150 or more over retail. People want Apple’s tablet, and they’re willing to pay (even more of) a premium to get it.

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AFP – An Air New Zealand in-flight safety video featuring camp US fitness guru Richard Simmons has gone viral on the Internet, the airline said Wednesday, attracting a million hits in three days.

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AFP – India is trailing its so-called BRIC colleagues Brazil, Russia and China in bridging the “digital divide” as a large number of its population has no Internet access, a report said Wednesday.

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Reuters – U.S. apparel brand Gap Inc opened an online store on China’s biggest e-commerce platform Taobao on Wednesday, in an effort to lure savvy Chinese shoppers outside wealthy cities.

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Reuters – Russian Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies, an investor in social network company Facebook, has joined a group of investors funding hundreds of millions of dollars to 360buy.com, China’s largest online retailer, the Financial Times reported.

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Mashable – Watching television shows at the time they air is so 2000s — about 40% of US households now own a DVR and another 40% regularly watch long form video online.

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Reuters – Online video rental company Netflix Inc has tweaked its Canadian streaming service to cut down on the amount of data it uses in a country where Internet usage is typically metered and capped.

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PC World – The state of New York will investigate AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA for anti-competitive effects, including possible increases in mobile broadband costs for New York residents and businesses, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday.

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PC World – American Express has announced plans to enter the online payments market and thereby compete directly with PayPal.

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AFP – Beating Apple and Google to the punch, Amazon unveiled a service on Tuesday that allows users to store their digital music online and play it on a computer or an Android device.

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Reuters – Google aims to give away thousands of websites to small Canadian businesses to encourage them to establish an online presence, the search engine’s Canadian head said on Tuesday.

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PC World – Video-streaming fans in Canada, you can blame your Internet service provider for Netflix’s decision to stream a less-pretty picture to your TV screens.

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Mashable – Twitter co-founder Ev Williams broke a long silence about his role at the social media company Tuesday. In a blog post, Williams confirmed that Twitter is “no longer my day job” and that he would be launching a new venture.

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AP – iTunes’ top 10 selling singles and albums of the week ending March 28, 2011:

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Mashable – Google has quietly launched Google Talk Guru, an instant message chatbot that can deliver search results and answer queries such as sports scores.

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