Publishers of all kinds--books, newspapers, even music distributors--are lining up to complain about the treatment they receive from Web giant Google. "Google should pay me for X" tends to be their mantra, and GigaOm's Mathew Ingram points out that the number of complaints seems to accelerate in lockstep with the decline of content-related industries of all kinds. As Ingram says, "everyone from the World Association of Newspapers to the American Authors Association seems convinced that the Internet owes them a living, and that Google...is the best one to settle the bill, especially since it has billions of dollars just …

Facebook is celebrating its fifth birthday this week. In five short years, the social network has gone "from a pet college project to a global communications platform," Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang tells the BBC. With 150 million worldwide users (about 1 in 5 Internet users), Facebook is now the Web's No. 1 social network, beating out News Corp.'s MySpace (130 million users) for top spot. According to Owyang, who is conducting research on the future of social networks, Facebook has created an environment "where you can communicate with people you actually know. It's different from other places on …

Google is increasingly moving into digital music, CNet's Greg Sandoval reports. On the one hand, YouTube, the search giant's video service, is in talks to renegotiate music licensing deals with three of the four major record labels. On the other, partner Amazon.com, which provides a music store through Google's Android mobile operating system, is turning over big music sales. Google declined to comment on just how big those sales are, but sources tell Sandoval that the music labels are "very happy" with the Google's mobile arrangement with Amazon. The CNet writer also suggests that Google could one day tap …

Google has released a new mobile application that uses location-based technology to track the movements of your friends. Once a user downloads the software to his or her mobile phone, the app then displays a user's location on a map for friends to see, so they can track where that person is at all times. Called Google Latitude, the feature comes with the new version of Google Maps, and is accessible on Google's G1 phone, most color BlackBerrys, most Windows Mobile devices and a few other smartphones. Google says it will soon support the iPhone, iPod Touch and Sony Ericsson …

What happens when you emphasize third-party ad networks at the expense of premium ad sales? You get AOL's dismal fourth quarter results, says Silicon Alley Insider writer Henry Blodget. AOL last year consolidated each of its advertising properties under Platform A, in a strategy shift signaling that ad networks would be the company's revenue driver of the future. Since then--thanks to a glut of unsold inventory on the Web--ad network rates have fallen off a cliff. Accordingly, so, too, have AOL's ad revenues, down 18% year over year (and, as Blodget points out, this included growth in AOL's search …

Google announced today that users can now explore the ocean through Google Earth. This is not a significant move revenue-wise, says CNet's Stephen Shankland, but it could be a very significant move brand-wise. As Google gets larger and larger, the company runs the risk of losing its goodwill with consumers. However, Google Earth, in becoming a more complete product, "gives the company a new way to bring its brand to the world, notably with students for whom the software will help supplant atlases and encyclopedias." Meanwhile, Google Earth and Google Maps are becoming "a widely-used virtual window on the …

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Michael Arrington interviewed Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. This is Sandberg's first interview since joining the social network in March 2008. In describing her first year, Sandberg explains why Facebook matters: "You go to different things from users to marketers to people like Obama running for office, who really want to connect with people and want a more authentic way to communicate and to listen and I think we are one of the forces and in some ways the leading force helping to provide that and that's just a really exciting thing …