Digest of lastest news from Google machine

(Updated: Corrected PBWiki seed amount and added reference to Seraph investor)

Here’s the latest news on the Google bull in the Silicon Valley china shop:

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Google unveils a Gmail application via your mobile phone — Phone must be Java enabled. It lets you get Gmail directly, bypassing browser.

Socialtext launches second round of Wiki Wars — After Google buys the wiki company Jot, competitors in the wiki industry scrambled to respond. Chief among them is Socialtext, which took issue with our earlier statement that it is struggling. Socialtext’s chief executive Ross Mayfield has since offered users of JotSpot’s wiki sever product, the JotBox, free migration over to Socialtext for a year. Jot, for some reason, had discontinued the JotBox, which serves large companies. Mayfield wouldn’t comment on his revenue traction. He did say, though, that this is “round two of the Wiki Wars.” (For background, we wrote an article two years ago about the Wiki Wars, featuring heavily backed Jot against the more frugal Socialtext — that original story is now long gone behind Merc’s archive wall). Mayfield has launched a number of products and redesigns recently. He says there’s plenty of room for multiple players, citing Gartner prediction that 50 percent of large companies will be using wikis by 2008. He’s aggressively hiring in engineering and sales, he adds.

PBWiki is here too! — We also heard from the guys at PBWiki is in San Bruno. They’re just three guys in a single office and host 130,000 wikis, which they claim is the biggest wiki hosting service. David Weekly, Ramit Sethi and Nathan Schmidt are all Staford guys in their 20s. They’ve taken $350,000 from Seraph (an
angel group), Chris Yeh (Symphoniq) and Ron Conway (prolific angel investor).

The Google binge machine timeline — Here’s an Ajax chart of Google’s acquisitions through time. You’ll have to scroll down to the blue table, and then start dragging the map.

Google Base 2? — Google Blogoscoped has the scoop on the latest Google classifieds project.

Google co-founder buys a place in New York — Don’t know who, or why.

UTube sues Youtube — This news has been widely covered, but as usual, Techdirt has good perspective.

Speculative stuff about bribery on YouTube deal –Lots of people pointing entrepreneur Mark Cuban’s blog on dubious stuff that went down between Google, YouTube and the music labels right before the GooTube acquisition, and some are calling it bribery. We didn’t point to it initially, because even the original anonymous source says some of it was based on speculation (if that’s not a warning signal, don’t know what is). But it has appeared everywhere, so we point to it too.

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Google launches sponsored videos — You produce a video, Google gives you a cut of the revenue from ads appearing beside the video. Google kicks it off with the latest Diet Coke and Mentos video.

Google flexes political muscle, funds Republicans & everyone else — Details here.