After people over at England showed some resentment on being pictured by Google’s Streetcar, Google has been given an ultimatum to delete images taken by the said Streetcars every six months. Google’s Street View is updated annually with new photos but it looks like the retention policy will be revised from here on.

Now this is quite a sensitive issue and should entail additional costs for Google. If that is the case, don’t be surprised if this issue is brought to court to settle the issue. Any ideas who would have the upper hand folks?

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It has finally happened, after years of lobbying by Microsoft and other competitors, the European Union has opened up an investigation into Google about its search dominance in Europe.

Three companies have filed complaints against Google, but one of them is directly owned by Microsoft, and another is partially funded by Microsoft as well. Google has already responded to the claims on its Public Policy blog.

It is official! Facebook has now surpassed Yahoo and is now the second most-visited website in the United States. Number one of course still belongs to Google but if the trend continues, do not be surprised if Facebook suddenly overtakes Google too.

Facebook attracted nearly 134 million unique visitors in January alone. Yahoo’s traffic declined in January to 132 million unique visitors. Google had over 147 million unique visitors in January.

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It seems like eternity, but YouTube is actually only 5 years old. Can you imagine a world without YouTube? We sure as hell can’t! It was launched back in 2005 when online video was almost non-existent, and has since grown to one of the most visited sites in the world — and was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion.

Google has confirmed that it has acquired Aardvark, the question/answer site formed by ex-Google employees. The reported price is $50 million.

Aardvark was launched in 2007 under the name “Mechanical Zoo” and has raised a total of $6 million in funding. The site offers user to ask questions and get immediate answers from friends and related networks.

Google has announced that it plans on getting into the ISP business, at least in a limited sense. The search giant announced that they plan to test a new fiber optic connection to 50,000 homes, a test which could reach as many as 500,000 homes.

The new fiber optic connection will be vastly superior to the current ones available in the US, as Google reports speeds of 1 gigabit-per-second — 20 times faster than any fiber optic service today in the U.S. This seems like a logical move for Google, as they already own quite a lot of fiber which connects their data centers.

Google’s iPhone rival, the Nexus One, doesn’t appear much of a rival after all — at least not sales wise. The Nexus One has reportedly sold only 80,000 units during its first month, compared to the few million iPhones Apple sells each month.

When first launched, the iPhone sold about 600,000 and even the Droid, another Android device, sold around 500,000 units. However, both Apple and Motorola had adverting budgets north of $100 million when their devices sold, and Google has only spent a fraction of that.

Google kicked off another “Doodle for Google” kids contest, where kids will be able to draw, or rather, doodle the next Google logo. Google has announced this years’ theme as “If I Could Do Anything, I Would…”.

You can check out the official Doodle for Google page here, where schools can register to participate.

The top prize is of course that the winning Doodle will become Google’s logo for one day, and, on a more serious note, the winner and their school will receive money and scholarships from Google.