It’s amazing how far the internet has come. For the longest the political parties have expressed displeasure with each other’s ideas. However, I think this is the first time it has been taken to such extremes.

In response to their failure to stop health care reform from passing last night, the Republicans have set their sights on a new goal: Nancy Pelosi’s job as Speaker of the House.

The GOP’s official Web site has been replaced by firenancypelosi.com, boasting a goal to knock the Democratic leader from her post by winning 40 seats in the House of Representatives in November’s elections.

The site initially aimed to raise $402,010 in 40 hours, but that amount increased as it passed that goal less than halfway through its fundraising efforts. As of this posting, the total had reached $981,724. Donators are invited to give as little as $40, but as much as $400.

As you will notice they are clearly using social media to spread the word, i.e.: twitter, facebook, email, widgets. This shows everyone the power social media can play in spreading the word and getting people involved. Whether you agree with the GOP’s tactics or not, this is clearly the beginning of using the web to continue the ongoing displeasure of each parties thoughts.

Over the last two months with Google threatening to leave China because of censorship and intrusions by Chinese hackers, it officially happened today. According to their blog they said they would close their China-based Web site and instead direct Chinese users to a Hong Kong-based uncensored version of its service, which may get blocked in mainland China.

What makes this move so stunning is that they are essentially turning their back on the world’s largest Internet market, with nearly 400 million Web users.

Google’s decision to scale back operations in China ends a nearly four-year bet by top executives, that even if censored, it would help bring more information to Chinese citizens and loosen the government’s controls on the Internet. Apparently that has backfired because Chinese authorities have actually tightened their grip on the Internet in recent years.

Despite its size and reputation for innovation, Google trails its main Chinese rival, Baidu.com, which was modeled on Google, with 33 percent market share to Baidu’s 63 percent.

The decision to shut down its China-based search engine won’t have a huge financial impact on Google. China accounted for a small fraction of Google’s $23.6 billion in global revenues last year. However, abandoning a direct search engine presence in the largest Internet market in the world could have long term implications in their global presence.

Did they make the right decision?

One way is to position Memphis at the cutting edge of technology. On Tuesday Wharton tweeted: “We’re going to need EVERYONE’s help to make our Google Fiber application a success. Details coming soon…”

Wharton is joining other municipal leaders from across the country in pursuing Google’s eagerly anticipated experimental fiber-optic network.

According to Google, they are planning to launch an experiment that they hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. They plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. According to them their networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections.

Imagine how this could help our community. Join the campaign to help get the Google Fiber in Memphis by:

On video: Make a 1-2 minute video with a laptop or phone camera about why Memphis is the best city for Google Fiber and e-mail the file to mcan901@gmail.com. (Videos will be uploaded to the city’s YouTube channel.)

Online: Go on Twitter and send a supportive tweet and hashtag it with #memphisgoogle.

Now as you know, SEO has no guide to follow where everyone could get the information needed to optimize their website for the search engines. There are literary millions of opinions on how to do SEO right.

Google has just released a SEO report card concentrating on Google Product Pages which shows insight into what Google looks for and even how they are performing. Even though this is for Google Product pages you can use this data to reference your own site and see exactly how you stack up.

The most interesting thing to take from this is that even Google themselves can stand to learn a lot and improve. If they start to learn more, how much more dominant will the world’s top search engine become?