Roundup of some incredible news today: Google, TechCrunch, …and Engadget

Maybe it’s because of the date, but incredible news abound today. Let’s have a look at some of these breaking stories.

Google peeks into the future

There are reports of Google’s new feature: the gDay. Using artificial intelligence ( MATE™ Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation), Google can give you the results of stories one day in advance.

This is great news for sport fans (and bets), newsmakers and indeed for bloggers:

Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even predict the actual wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they’re written!

TechCrunch sues Facebook

TechCrunch owner Michael Arrington argues in his rather long post (complete with legal references):

So we’ve been increasingly concerned about developments at Facebook over the last few months that allow advertisers to post ads using my picture and name to endorse their products without my explicit permission.

Basically, the use of his name and picture in newsfeed items is seen as an outrageous use of his “personal brand”. As compensation for this damage, Arrington is asking:

At this point we’re prepared to settle the case for $25 million in Facebook stock (priced at the employee option price, not that ridiculous $15 billion Microsoft valuation)

This is where the “attention economy” is leading us to ! This is likely the first high profile legal action in a series to come, as users realize the value of their “personal brand”.

T-Mobile sues Engadget Mobile over the use of the color magenta

Engadget just received a letter from T-Mobile’s legal department (they point out their German legal department) requiring that they cease the use of the color purple in Engadget Mobile. This is very ironic since Engadget themselves underlined this whole color-trademark issue a while ago.

Engadget is already defending themselves by arguing that there can hardly be any confusion: they are not a mobile operator, they don’t have a problem with US 3G, they have more than 5 friends.

Wait… the one on Engadget is NOT an April’s fool.

Update : the Google gDay was first, because of Australia were early risers to April 1st. Using this gDay feature should have allowed us to foresee Google HQ announcement of their joint venture ‘Virgle‘ with Virgin and their plans for a trip to Mars (this has been picked up at many places, with the extra pinch of salt of TheNextWeb people having actually cyber-squatted the Virgle.com domain for some time). In less stellar news, there was also the Google wake-up kit, custom time and paper airplane. It looks like getting ready for April’s fool is a full-time job for several teams at Google.