Facing an uncooperative and arguably unethical Chinese government, Google on Monday moved to shut down Google.cn and reroute users to Google.hk. Google thought its solution "would give China the possibility to save face, and give [Google] a way... to save face," Gartner analyst Whit Andrews tells eWeek . Alas, "It doesn't look like it's working." Google's goal was to do an end-run around China's censorship laws, according to Search Engine Land 's Danny Sullivan, but its efforts were premature." Google's Sergey Brin now believes that the US government should make fighting Chinese censorship a …

The iPad will no doubt rocket a few lucky apps to stardom, and some industry tastemakers say Instapaper Pro will be one of the first. Quite simply, the app presents newspaper and magazine articles in basic black-on-white text, and lets users flag interesting stories for later reading. Instapaper presently offers an iPhone version, but its maker Marco Arment felt the need to go back to the drawing board for Apple's forthcoming tablet PC. Like many developers, however, Arment was not given the privilege of owning -- or even handling -- an iPad before its official launch, and therefore had to …

Fox Mobile has unveiled a subscription service for smart phone owners, which delivers both streaming and downloadable movies and TV programs to smart phone users. For Bitbop to succeed, however, the News Corp. subsidiary will have to convince consumers to shell out cold hard cash to watch TV on the mobile devices. When Bitbop launches in the next few weeks, the app will be free to download, but will only offer sneak previews. Full content will cost $10 monthly over 3G and Wi-Fi connections. At launch, the app is expected to work on devices such as the iPhone, Droid and …

Meet GameCrush -- a new social networking service that lets guys pay cash to play video games with attractive females. We can't imagine the service bodes well for young men, or the development of their interpersonal skills, but a popular service it might be. The site lets guys view the profiles of "PlayDates." The profiles say what the girls' "turn ons" are, and shows their photos. If they find a girl they like, they can send her a game invite. If she accepts, users get six to ten minutes of one-on-one game time. At launch, the service supports the Xbox …

Google has long struggled with monetizing YouTube as advertisers balked at associating their brands with random user-generated content. But that's begun to change with an influx of higher-quality material and a Web video audience that doubled in 2009. Run-of-network pre-roll ads on YouTube now typically command double-digit rates of $10 to $15 CPMs and daily ad buys on its home page range from $200,000 to $300,000, according to new research from The Business Insider. Overlay ads, meanwhile, are getting $8 to $10 CPMs. Revenue for online video more broadly is expected to grow 30% to 50% this year, driven by …

It may sound like an unlikely strategy, but Huffington Post says it's turning to the Big Three automakers to boost ad sales. To that end, the left-leaning news aggregator has hired Detroit agency Focus Media & Marketing to lead its direct sales effort aimed at the city's auto manufacturers. "Given the size and importance of the big three domestic carmakers, hiring a designated rep to work with them is a milestone for HuffPost in our continued national sales expansion," said Greg Coleman, in announcing the agreement. Given that one of the Big Three almost didn't survive last year and …

Despite all the Twitter-driven excitement over real-time updates, YouTube is having trouble tapping into the trend. The Google unit has therefore decided to scrap a relatively new feature that let visitors see (in "real-time") which videos friends were watching, and what they were saying about them. Originally, YouTube said the goal was to give users "another way to share and find videos on the site." But, according to paidContent, "It never gained much traction (and in fact was only ever available via an invite)." "The invitation-only feature never got a wide roll-out, and some users complained …

In this TechCrunch rant, Paul Carr tackles two equally pressing ecommerce issues at once: 1) Publishers' policy of delaying Kindle releases to protect hardback sales: "It's an idiotic move but it's one that many publishers feel forced into due to Amazon's policy of charging $9.99 for most popular Kindle titles," he writes. And 2), Amazon's policy of letting anyone review a book. "Amazon needs to -- immediately -- change its review policy so that only people who have actually bought a book are allowed to review it," argues Carr. "It's hard, in fact, to think of a downside to restricting …

Among "a small portion of users," Google is testing a new feature within Google Maps that displays specific hotel prices, reports Mashable. When these users search for hotels within a specific region, they then have the ability to check the prices of hotels that show up in search results -- based on the date and the number of nights they plan on staying. The data, according to Mashable, is based on advertised prices from sponsored results. "The prices are essentially ads, albeit useful ones," it notes. For now, Google is not changing its ranking system for hotels. Rather, the experiment …

One third of all Google mobile searches pertain to some aspect of the searcher's local environment, according to Diana Pouliot, director of mobile advertising of Google, speaking at a Mobile Marketing & Advertising event in Las Vegas covered by Mobile Marketing Watch. At the same event, Paul Feng, Google's mobile-ads group product manager, expounded on Google's efforts to make the search giant's advertising reach as local as possible. "Building on the changing ad formats foreshadowed by Google in recent months, Feng suggested further tweaking of those formats in the near future -- changes that may even involve new forms of …