If you weren’t a fan of Google’s privacy policy modifications, you might also be interested to hear about Screenwise. If you sign up for Screenwise, Google will track your browsing data non-anonymously. Why would you ever want let it do that? Cash money. Well, Amazon gift cards, which are basically cash money. If you sign up for Screenwise and install a Chrome browser extension designed for tracking, Google will give you a $5 Amazon gift card for joining up, with an additional $5 every three months you stick with it.

In light of Google’s new privacy policy changes, Microsoft has released a jab at Google in the form of a new Gmail Man video ironically, as I’m sure you’ll note, hosted on Google-owned YouTube. Whether you agree with the Microsoft ad –because it is an ad, after all– or not, it’s hard not to appreciate the that little girl’s expression when she finds out where ads come from. Personally, I think everyone is over-reacting anyways. I hardly ever say anything important over gmail anyways; I usually use GChat, or text from my Android phone. Whatever. Come over here Big Brother! Gimme a big hug!

Taking a cue from jaded high school students and most college students, it turns out the Gmail logo was designed the night before Gmail launched. According to a post on Quora, Google designer from 2003 to 2008 Kevin Fox said that Gmail logo designer Dennis Hwang was up designing the logo literally the night before the product launched.

A while back, Google+ developers mentioned that they’d be allowing pseudonyms at some point in the future, suggesting that it had been a planned feature all along, despite the banning of several pseudonymed users at the service’s start. Well now that option is finally being rolled out, but with a catch: You have to prove that your pseudonym is already has some pull somewhere. You can’t just give yourself a nickname and have it stick on Google+. You have to get people to call you by it first.

Google has announced a change to its privacy policy, and if you want to keep using their myriad services, you better get used to it because there’s no opting out. The change? Google now reserves the right to share the data it has on you between its various applications. Gmail used to be like Vegas; what you did there stayed there. Now, it’s more like a venereal disease you picked up in Vegas; it’s going to follow you around all over Google Maps.

The White House is on Google+, are you? If you aren’t, you might want to get involved if you want the chance to be part of a Google Hangout with the Prez himself. The White House joined Google+ two days ago, announcing its intention to make use of the Hangout feature. Now the — understandably complicated — details of exactly how it will work have come to light.

Along with a few other prominent sites, Wikipedia and reddit to name a couple, Google has come out in protest of SOPA. Though they didn’t take the blackout route like Wikipedia and reddit, which would’ve brought the Internet to something that would amount to a near-complete halt, Google displayed their feelings about SOPA with a tasteful Google Doodle, a simple black censor bar covering the iconic Google logo.

It should come as no surprise that SOPA has come back off its proverbial “shelf” but feel free to be surprised that it came back so fast. A mere 4 days after announcing he was dropping the DNS blocking provisions of the bill and putting it on the shelf until a “consensus” was reached, Representative Lamar Smith has brought SOPA back out to play, and just in time for the January 18th SOPA blackouts.

Apparently not content to just go after Facebook, Google has announced plans to bring the image macro to Google+. Rolling out over the coming days, the service will allow users to add text over the top of their images like a veritable meme factory.

It’s official, tomorrow’s anti-SOPA protest has reached its height: Google will be displaying an anti-SOPA message during the blackout. Google will not actually be blacking out, but instead will display a link to an anti-SOPA, anti-PIPA message on its homepage, presumably in the form of a Google Doodle, but they haven’t said explicitly.