Rumors abound that Google plans to launch a mobile phone, reportedly code-named "Switch," with the look and feel of a BlackBerry but with better Internet capabilities.

But in all the commentary from news agencies, blogs, gadget sites, analysts, investors, and reportedly Google's own operation's chief for Spain and Portugal, there haven't been many compelling reasons given as to why Google would enter the mobile phone market. It's a highly cutthroat business.

Just ask Taiwan's BenQ. The company tried to revitalize Siemens' mobile phone operations, but one year and $1 billion later it gave up. It's not hard to see why Nokia and Motorola gained market share against most of their rivals last year. But even their stock prices have suffered, because fierce price competition for handsets hurt their profitability.

Still, the idea of a Google phone is compelling, and great fun to read about. There are even pictures of the rumored device, including one at gadget site Gizmodo.com. The picture shows a flat-screen mobile phone, purportedly designed to work like a BlackBerry.

Another, altogether different design can be found at Engadget.com, but authors on the site cast doubts about whether the photo--or the phone--is real.

The Engadget picture comes from a forum member on Mobileburn.com, who goes by the online name of Madnezz and claims he filled out an online survey about a Google phone developed by Samsung Electronics.

If you click that link, note that beside Madnezz's name is a picture of his online persona, or avatar: a boy covering his mouth and laughing as if he's done something naughty. Could that be all this really is, some rumor and speculation, thrown together with a few tall tales to stoke the flames?

If nothing else it's excellent publicity for Google, especially if the company is coming out with some new mobile phone applications soon. Rumors of a Google phone have been around at least since last December, when it supposedly planned to team up with Taiwan's High Tech Computer to make the device.

But the commentaries have been mostly about rumors, and they lack a good motive for such a move. Google makes software, not hardware, and rumors that it was developing a PC a few years back turned out to be wrong--it was simply making software for PCs.

Some say Google wants to make something like Apple's iPhone, but called the gPhone instead. The easy answer to that theory is that almost everyone wants to make something like Apple's iPhone, so Google would be entering a crowded copycat business. That doesn't sound like Google. Sure, Apple jumped in the phone business, but it already made hardware, and it had to defend its music player business as those functions moved onto phones.

Even worse, if Google makes its own handset it will become a competitor to companies like Samsung, which are preloading Google software on their own phones. These companies have other choices for mobile search, including Yahoo and Microsoft, and Google would risk losing some valuable preloading partners.

Another theory says that Google wants to make a low-cost device to increase Internet usage around the world. But it is already part of one such group, the One Laptop Per Child Project. Besides, mobile phone makers are already slashing the cost of Internet-ready phones with developing markets in mind.

Google has said only that mobile applications are important to the company, and declined further comment on the speculation. The head of its operations in Spain and Portugal, Isabel Aguilera, told the Spanish news site Noticias.com last week that Google has been exploring the idea of a phone and that some of its engineers have spent time working on one. It's not exactly a smoking gun; Google is famous for encouraging its engineers to spend a portion of their time on experimental projects, many of which never see the light of day.

The company also posted a job advertisement recently, saying it was "experimenting with a few wireless communications systems." But in the end the evidence for a Google phone is thin at best. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that all the phone talk is misguided, and that Google is really developing new software for mobile phones, albeit more sophisticated than what it has developed before.

That behemoth, of course, is Viacom. Viacom took its gloves off in a digital-age boxing match that could go many more than 12 rounds as two technology champions duke it out on principle. In a statement it released in conjunction with filing its $1 billion federal copyright lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Viacom called YouTube a "significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google."

Whether those "fans" to which Viacom referred mind Google making money from the traffic they drive to the video-sharing site is not the issue. Whether the fans are liable in future copyright suits is. According to some legal experts, YouTube's uploading community could find itself in the line of fire.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed told a military panel, according to a Pentagon transcript released Thursday. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

In 2002, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi sentenced Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born militant, to death and gave three other men life in prison for involvement in Pearl's killing.

Rai Bashir a lawyer for Sheikh and the other three men said on Sunday that he will study the Pentagon documents on Mohammed's claim and file his confession as evidence to prove Sheikh's innocence.

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum is joining law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC and is expected to provide "strategic counseling" to clients, the firm said Monday.

Santorum, a three-term Republican senator from Penn Hills, was defeated in his bid for re-election by Bob Casey in November.

 
Santorum will work out of Eckert Seamans' Washington, D.C., office, the law firm said.

"We are extremely pleased that Rick is joining our firm and that our clients will have the benefit of his understanding of what it takes for businesses to succeed in today's global economy," Eckert Seamans CEO Tim Ryan said in a statement.

http://www.eckertseamans.com

The opinion by U.S. Department of Interior Solicitor David Bernhardt was posted with no formal announcement on the department's Web site on Friday.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, contacted in Washington, D.C., said the new policy would allow them to focus on protecting species in areas where they are in trouble, rather than having to list a species over its entire range.

But he acknowledges his political opponents will try to exploit recent news that a lawyer with his Houston law firm has been representing Citgo before the Texas legislature.

Citgo Petroleum is a U-S-based company bought in 1990 by Venezuela's national oil company. It employs thousands of people in the U-S.

Chavez has criticized President Bush and is close to Fidel Castro. So Citgo has become unpopular with some Americans.

Giuliani is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee say the Bush administration needs to be more straightforward about the White House's role in the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors.

"I've told the attorney general that I think this has been mishandled, that by giving inaccurate information ... at the outset, it's caused a real firestorm, and he better get the facts out fast," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the committee, pledged to get the public testimony of White House officials involved in the case whether they want to testify or not.

On Monday, the Justice Department planned to turn over to Congress documents that could provide more details of the role agency officials _ including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales _ and top White House officials played in planning the prosecutors' dismissals.

The White House was also expected to announce this week whether it will let political strategist Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and other officials testify or will seek to assert executive privilege in preventing their appearance.

Leahy delayed a vote on issuing subpoenas until Thursday as the president's counsel, Fred Fielding, sought to negotiate terms. But on Sunday, Leahy said he had not met Fielding nor was he particularly open to any compromises, such as a private briefing by the administration officials.