According to a recent disclosure from the Senate Office of Public Affairs, where all corporations must disclose how much they spent on lobbying in the town, search giant Google spent just over $4 million last year lobbying for such things as consumer privacy issues, cybersecurity, censorship, alongside other issues affecting the company (including energy). The disclosure also revealed that Google has spent $1.4 million in Q1 2010 on lobbying, which was mostly associated with its acquisition of AdMob.

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Google has announced record revenues of $6.77 billion during the first quarter of 2010, beating analyst expectations.

That’s $1.2 billion more than during the same period last year, while the Q1 2010 profits were just under $2 billion. Google also revealed that its cash reserves and war chest now amount to a stunning $26.5 billion.

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Facebook is one of the ultimate time-wasters people can indulge themselves in, whether that’s browsing your friends photos or playing some Farmville. Now new statistics indicate that Facebook is twice as popular as Google during work hours, which is no surprise, as there’s endless things to do on Facebook, while Google offers… search. And very fast search, as well.

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Many had suspected that Google was developing an Android based tablet to compete with the iPad, and now it’s been confirmed by none other than CEO Eric Schmidt, who said that the company was working with several hardware manufacturers on a new tablet device, which will of course run on Android.

No other details were revealed, but expect en unveiling at one of the Google events over the summer.

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Dell has followed the footsteps of giants Google and GoDaddy, pulling out from China and heading over to India. This means that over $25 billion of operations will now be relocated in what Dell Chairman Michael Dell terms as “a safer environment with climate conductive to enterprise”.

Dell thus becomes the third big company to move out of China which has been gaining negative publicity for its notorious sanctions and censoring.

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It looks like Google will be carrying on its fight against China on its own as web companies are seen to place themselves at distance from the ongoing issues between the two. For one, web companies are too concerned about losing business (dollars) should they get involved although they stand to benefit if Google ends up victorious.

How? If Google holds its posture and China ultimately evolves into a truly free society, then the citizens of China will pledge allegiance to Google and reject the other brands that effectively sold-out with self censorship. At least that is what Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard University thinks!

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After weeks of turmoil and threats, Google has shut down its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, and is now redirecting to the Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk. Google will still have Google Maps and Music search on China, and will still have a sales team there as well. Back in December, Google experienced an attack on its servers by Chinese officials, promoting them to announce plans of closing down the search engine in the country.

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Rumors are flying high once again and it has something to do with the Google-China row. While it has yet to be settled, it seems that Google will be departing China for good and the rumored date is on April 10.

Of course these are rumors but if Google does make an announcement on Monday, March 22, then you may as well count the weeks of Google’s stay in China. It looks like this conflict hasn’t been resolved and it may (or not) take time to heal the wounds between the two. The question is, who of the two (Google or China) will suffer more. Any guesses?

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