Sliding down the slippery slope. (via The Atlantic)

Somewhere up in the Great Beyond, Steve Jobs just crossed his arms and said, "I told you so." However, it's also worth pointing out that, by now, even your septuagenarian grandma knows what HP is, and she probably spends more time on Facebook than you do. Maybe this chart says more about Google than it does about the end of the personal computer.

Google+ Local (via screencap)

And so Google's acquisition of Zagat finally bears fruit: Your parents' favorite dining guide is now the backbone of Google+ Local, which is replacing Google Places. So SoMoLo.

Here's the deal: Users can still write reviews. The integration with Zagat means those reviews will now be factored into the familiar score ranging from 1 to 30. Plus, expect some actual professionally written material thrown into the mix. (Imagine that.) The integration with Google+ means you'll also see reviews written by anyone in your Circles. (The bad news is you'll get the phantom ding from any unclosed Gchat conversations, which drives us batty.) 

Presumably they'll soon integrate with Google Maps, since Google Places is destined for the dustbin of Internet history, but it doesn't look like they're made the transition just yet.

Marissa Mayer explained to the New York Times that Google ultimately hopes to offer “pages for all known places" and that "Getting local search right is important, and to do that you need great reviews." What, and providing a sounding board for all your neighborhood's crankiest cranks doesn't achieve that aim?

The company's motives are also pretty obvious: According to Ms. Meyer, 20 percent of Google searches are for local information. The number on mobile: 40 percent. Losing those folks to competitors would not be a great outcome for the Goliath of search.

But a little playing around suggests Google has a ways to go before achieving first-stop restaurant reviewer status. Zagat might make for a good backbone, but there are still plenty of results that're just user generated (and not as extensive as, let's say, Yelp.) For example, this reporter looked up a random burek restaurant in her neighborhood and found underwhelming user-generated reviews and no overall Zagat rating. Another new hotspot (the branch campus to LIC's Dominie's Hoek) appeared not to have a page at all.

Back to Yelp for us for now.

Ms. Falque-Pierrotin (cnil.fr)

Mere weeks after being slapped with a $25,000 fine from America's own F.C.C., Google is antagonizing yet another government body with its tight-lipped, unhelpful responses.

All Things D reports that France's C.N.I.L., the data protection organization investigating the company's privacy policies on behalf of the EU, is none too pleased with the company right now. Whatever answers Google does provide are often "incomplete or approximate," and that simply won't do.

The C.N.I.L. sent Google a questionaire back in March; the company returned the questionaire in April. Representatives from the two organizations have also met in person. And yet, the French still don't have the information they want. And so now C.N.I.L. head Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin has taken to the Internet with a chiding public letter for CEO Larry Page. She writes: 

"For a large number of questions, the elements provided do not give a precise, clear and comprehensive response to our questions. While in some cases the questions themselves may have been misunderstood or not clearly expressed, many answers merely provide illustrative examples without describing the exact [processes], procedures or systems Google actually operates.”

Oh, and she's not done yet:

"The fact that Google's position on personal data processings is still unclear on many points after an in-depth exchange with the CNIL raises additional concerns about Google's adequate information of its users."

Translation: The fact we still don't get how you handle user data leads us to suspect shadiness.