by Vera H-C Chan For a month adorned with hearts, the fighting spirit was at the forefront in February, what with Olympian amateurs, underdog Saints, wannabe "Idols," and purebred pups. There was news news as well - Hill combatants heralded its never-really-on-again, off-again relationship on the televised health care summit - but the event that drew the world to a halt: Tiger Woods' mea culpa. And now, the friendly and not-so-friendly events that stirred up February buzz.

Another week has passed in the world of search engines, and there are no surprises: Google has again got most of the attention. It seems Europe has decided that Google has to be disciplined. Here are your headlines,

This week an Italian court sentenced three Google executives to six months in prison for allowing users to post a video on YouTube. The video, which was uploaded in 2006, showed kids bullying a child with Down's syndrome. Sickening video Let there be no doubt about our position on publishing such videos online. It sickens us, and it must be possible to bring such cases to court. But it is the one that uploaded the video that should be brought to justice.

Google has added a local search toll to its Search Option panel. The Nearby option only works for google.com searches in English. Here's what you do: Do a search in Google for let's say "Chinese restaurant". Normally you would have added your geographical location to the query: "Chinese restaurant Oslo". Instead click on the link to the Search Option panel. Then click on Nearby link found in the left hand column of the search results page.

There's encouraging news for Google in the Android vs. iPhone war. A company that's delivered more than one billion applications, games, ringtones, videos, and wallpapers to mobile users claims Android has topped the iPhone in terms of user concentration in eight states. As the map below shows, these eight states are Arizona, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Then another five states are considered swing states,

State of Search is a new blog covering the search engine scene, focusing on articles relevant to the industry, search engine marketing and social media. It is a well designed site with interesting news articles and comments. The man behind State of Search is Bas van den Beld, who used to write for the European search blog Searchcowboys. van den Beld has been running the Searchcowboys radio show over at Webmasterradio.fm. This is to be replaced by a State of Search podcast.

Twitter and nofollow is the topic of this week's Twitter column: While even Google who has introduced, along with other search engines, the nofollow attribute to combat spam a few years ago does not propagate the use of it anymore, Twitter went nofollow big time just recently. What does this mean? Twitter distrusts everything you say. Not only outgoing links get the so called link condom so that search engines ignore them. No,

Going online in many countries, including developed ones is far from universal according to a new report by the World Internet Project (WIP). The report was carried out by the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, it found only half of the 10 reporting countries had more than a majority of Internet users. Both developed and less-developed countries reported relatively low percentages of Internet users,

Earlier in the morning a major 8.8 earthquake hit Concepcion, Chile (a major university city) which has set off a Tsunami warning in the Pacific which reaches from California to Hawaii. According to MSNBC news, at 11 am EST, Hawaiians will wake up to an early morning Tsunami warning and evacuations of seaside areas. The major news networks are all covering the disaster in Chile, and Pacific reaction to the tsunami warnings,

Google Buzz has been a magnet for skepticism, controversy, and criticism since it launched earlier this month. The skepticism is a result of past Google social media efforts not having the greatest track record. Much of the controversy and criticism has been the result of privacy, and more recently copyright concerns from users. Google Buzz launched with auto-following, and among countless other complaints,