Like all big corporations, this motto will come into question from time to time. But, what people cannot argue is that Google is attempting to be a good corporate citizen or large scale Good Samaritan, if you will.

For instance, the Going Green at Google program invests millions of dollars in renewable, alternative energy companies. And Google doesn’t just talk the talk. One of the largest corporate solar panel installations anywhere exists at their home in Mountain View, California.

Now, Google has taken a step towards helping out in the current housing crisis. According to Forbes, “News came this week that Google was putting $86 million into helping fund 480 low-income housing units across the Midwest and West Coast.”

Some may say that Google needs to invest its $30 billion in cash somewhere. But the Mountain View company could invest this cash anywhere. They are choosing to help out low-income people and senior citizens with their housing needs.

Google Maps has been a hit for a while as you see TV news broadcasts right and left showing weather patterns or locations of certain events using the Maps service. The products from Google fill a market need and a human need.

Other companies would do themselves a favor in modeling themselves after Google’s corporate citizenship example.

To me, however, is the bullet point about a new product that is being offered called Google Tags. According to the Tags section of Google Places the new tags can be placed directly on the Maps. If a potential customer or lead scrolls over these yellow tags, they are given more information about the business.

Coupons, photos and other features of the business are just a mouse click away. It sounds like a simple change but it is one more inroad that Google is making into the Local marketplace.

In turn, Google has alluded to perhaps pulling out of China altogether. Google is pushing for more openness and less restrictions. On the other hand, unlike in the U. S., Google is the biggest or most used search engine in town.

Baidu is the largest and most used search engine in China. It is robust and even offers features that Google doesn’t. One such example is Baidu knows which combines message board features such as asking questions to other registered users and having them answer. Baidu has also been used in China since 2000 and Google.cn has only been around since 2006.

So, while Google doesn’t have the kind of leverage as the only game in town would in another country, it does has some leverage as the U. S. government is also trying to negotiate on Google’s behalf. But, not only would Baidu benefit from a Google pullout but Bing is waiting in the wings with a tiny portion of the Chinese search market that could expand rather quickly if there is indeed a hole to fill.

The cloud computing portion of Google’s presentation involves distributing the load of developers among different data centers on an on demand basis. Developers can use the vast Google infrastructure to run their applications on rather than using their own resources.

The client portion puts the power of development and the Web within the browser. Developers will have more power and control this way, which is a client-centered approach.

Connectivity is also an important aspect for developers especially in the mobile marketplace. The Google Android operating system will address some of the current connectivity issues.

Of course, there could be a few surprises at this year’s Google I/O conference. We’ll just have to wait and see what develops.

But, now the picture has become a bit clearer as Google has joined Clearwire and Sprint in a consortium aimed at building a nationwide WiMax network. The theory is that cell phone users, when given a choice will choose Google for search, video, maps and other applications.

And, of course, along with these Google apps, ads will also be served. While this WiMax network is expected to take two years to build, Google, of course isn’t waiting this long to get into the game.

The search giant has convinced Sprint to drop Microsoft as their default cell phone search provider this summer and make the switch to the Larry and Sergey show. Ads served on cell phones, according to Google, convert twice as well as other ads.

So, search engine marketers had better be ready to delve into this new medium for targeting their clients’ businesses. When it comes to cell phone advertisements, in a very short while, Google will be saying, “Can you hear me now?”

Other companies have been trying to crack the visual search code for years with varying results. Typically, what image search does is use the name of the photo or graphic plus the surrounding text to guess its theme and rank it accordingly.

What VisualRank does is use this data, plus recognize some of the visual data as well. Google is not yet saying which visual data is recognized but one can guess, color, shapes and perhaps even faces and some objects could be identified with VisualRank.

What this means is better results. How many times have you conducted an image search only to find several duplicate images within the top results pages? VisualRank is supposed to identify these matches, but only display the most relevant.

Now, both Google and others are saying that applying VisualRank to its entire database of images would be impractical since the process is processor intensive. But, imagine if VisualRank were applied just to the top 20 results for the most searched for images, how cleaner the user experience would be.

If VisualRank is rolled out on a limited basis such as this, it will greatly enhance image search for visitors, especially those looking for products on the Web. While other image search engines will have visitors seeing double, VisualRank will bring much clarity to an already cluttered field.

This makes sense because searchers don’t want the SERP’s cluttered with the same exact pages over and again. It seems only natural that one page would be at the top of the rankings and the other ones buried.

But, from the perspective of a webmaster, this may indeed be a penalty. Take for instance the webmaster who has the famous www versus non-www Google canonical issue on their website. The search engine may apply a penalty for both the www version of a web page and non-www version for having identical content. Both pages (meaning the entire website) may be buried in the rankings for up to 6 months after the fix is applied to force one version to resolve to the other.

This may technically not be a penalty according to the search engines, as it is the timeframe needed for a URL removal request. But, to any webmaster or online business owner, waiting out weeks or months with a website buried in the rankings will seem like a penalty even if technically none is at work. Functionally, it is indeed a penalty in position, rankings and money generated through the search engines.

Whether the ranking drop due to duplicate content is called a filter or a penalty matters little. Depending upon the type of duplicate content issue at work (duplicate content between separate websites, which could last only days once the offending material is removed or months for the www versus non-www issue) the consequences can be very detrimental to online business owners no matter what official terminology is used.

According to Phillips, “Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party.” This needed to be done as Google has stated many times in the past that they are not in the search marketing or optimization business.

What is interesting is that Google will be integrating the DoubleClick affiliate program into their existing advertising program. This means that there is future potential that Google AdWords may one day be based upon a pay-per-click (PPC) model and a cost-per-action (CPA) model similar to some hybrid programs that a few other online advertisers are trying out.

Just how this integration will occur is anyone’s guess right now. Also at stake is how much control both advertisers and publishers will have if this hybrid system comes to be. Stay tuned, though, as this may just up the ante on online advertising for the foreseeable future.

Inside of the tool, webmasters are offered the Action of allowing or blocking plus another pull-down menu gives the choices of All Robots, Googlebot, Google-bot Mobile, Googlebot-Image, Mediapartners-Google, Adsbot-Google or Other robot and you can input the name of this bot in the field.

There is next a field for files or directories to fill in so use the relative path. Once adding this you’ll see a the robots.txt file displayed in a window that will look like this:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /directory/file.html
Allow: /

Just upload this file to the website’s root directory and you’re done. It’s pretty simple and it gives webmasters a no-guess way to allow or block the bots at will.

Since this is April 1, hopefully the useful Google Robots.txt Generator tool is not an April Fool’s joke such as the Virgle Mars trip they are promoting today.

This issue impacted communication with the customer. At first, I thought it was a matter of the client and myself looking at results from two different data centers. Then I realized that the client was using capital letters in some words but not in others while searching and this impacted the results in Google.

For years, Google and the other search engines have stated that their searches are not case sensitive. But, now that seems not to be the case for some keyword phrases. You’ll have to note, however, that not all keyword phrases are impacted by the use or non-use of capital letters.

I’ve experimented somewhat with this and the results are mixed. Those who have weighed in on the message boards have also reported mixed results as well. There is a thread on the Digital Point forum that talks about this issue and the use of “Cool Time” versus “cool time” while searching Google.

Some people report seeing different results while others don’t. I can verify that I do see different results from these two searches. For me, when doing this search, the first two spots in the SERPs are the same, while the third spot on down are a bit different.

There are also threads over at Search Engine Watch and Webmaster World that are reporting the phenomenon but not the impact of the same issue. Now, the first question that pops to mind is “why?” What is the motivation for having a Google case sensitive search?

Right now, I can only speculate. Perhaps this is one attempt to thwart blog comment or message board spam? Or, perhaps this is an attempt to differentiate between a company’s official name or a product name and a generic word.

The impact of this Google case sensitive search could be large for some sites. Perhaps their company name is part of their primary homepage key phrase and they rank well when using capital letters for their company name. But, suppose most searchers type in lower case and the same website doesn’t rank as well in lower case.

This also brings to mind another question. Will link-builders now have to use anchor text with both upper and lower case letters in order to achieve optimal results in the Google SERPs? Do capital letters now affect the title and meta tag areas?

For many business owners case sensitive search will be a non-issue. But, for those that are affected knowing the answers to these questions may have a very large impact on their bottom lines.