In more Google news today, Reuters reports that Google has hired the lead engineer for Firefox. This comes on the heels of their registration of the Gbrowser.com domain and hiring of several Internet Explorer engineers last year.

Google and Yahoo are expanding their search products to television. Google Labs released their beta of ‘Google Video’ today. This system allows a user to search closed captioning and see still frame grabs of the relevant video. Some PVRs and TV tuner cards for PCs have done this in the past – tuning to or alerting when certain keywords were matched. But these projects are on a much broader scale.

In a New York Times story this morning (free registration required), Google’s vp for product management says “The long-term business model is complicated and will evolve over time.” I’ll say – the rights to aggregating video from hundreds of local television broadcasts, not to mention networks like CNN, ABC, etc., are going to be complex. But given Google’s audience, it wil be interesting to see if broadcasters see value in placement here. The Times story digs briefly into the touchy issues of rights and network deals related to these types of technologies. A worthwhile read.

Technorati has announced the winners of their annual developers contest. PersonalDemocracy.com, where my friend Hart Hooton is general manager, gets a nod in this well-respected competition. Woo-hoo!

Here’s the description of why PD was selected:

The URL speaks for itself. This website let’s you stay on top of all things political. Specifically, it uses Technorati to show which politicians are rising and falling in the blogosphere-a phenomenon that has become increasingly relevant with politics and journalism.

More on this at BoingBoing and Technorati.

Ah, the internet is such a great source for these parodies. Here’s one ironic look at a mythical Florida voting machine.
Link to video here (Quicktime)