Mountain View, California -- In a recent update to its Maps application for Android, and now the search engine titan Google had sneaked in a very pleasant surprise by spreading its wings across social media--first with Google+, and now with Leaderboard, a new feature allowing users to earn points for checking in to a location via Google Latitude.

It seems former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is wanting to end his term in Google, as he plans to sell up to 2.4 million shares of his stock currently worth nearly $US1.5 billion. This decision of Schmidt will affect Google's shares majorly in the Wall Street too. Currently, the base announcement has even bought a change in Google's share. Google shares fell $1.88 Friday to close at $604.64.

Google has been facing a number of problems of late, but here the problems have moved up a step. A Stanford University grad student disclosed that the search giant has been tracking the online activities of users of Apple's Safari web browser. Strangely, the web browser uses a browser mechanism to block such tracking by default. But Google managed its way into the browser. This has led to pushing the matter as several members of Congress displayed their anguish on this act of Google.

Japan -- If you often find yourself too busy to go globe trotting and explore to get a view of some really cool looking caves, tunnels and passage ways as lone adventurer. Thanks to Google's Street View service in Japan that took a new directions last week into the world's hidden nooks and crannies, not only lets you travel underground to an ancient Japanese silver mine, but also lets you virtually explore 360-degree views of many exotic (and run-of-the-mill) locations around the world, as if you were really there, right on your computer, as reported by Mashable.