Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Friday he is hoping the Internet powerhouse will find a way to operate in China without censoring Web search results.

"I'm optimistic," Brin said during an on-stage chat at the prestigious TED Conference in Long Beach, California. "I want to find a way to really work within the Chinese system and drive more information.

"A lot of people think I'm naive, and that may be true, but I wouldn't have started a search engine if I wasn't naive," he added smiling.

Google Buzz continues to make waves as the Gmail- and mobile device-based social networking platform reaches the masses this week.

Buzz takes one part Facebook, one part Twitter, one part YouTube and one part Flickr and blends it for a social networking platform lodged directly into Gmail. So far, Google Buzz has been receiving mixed praise. As with any new platform where people share information, however, privacy is a huge question. People post personal information, photos and other content to share with friends, not with the world. It's up to Google Buzz to keep that information to its intended recipients.

Early on, Google Buzz has come under scrutiny for lacking some fundamental privacy and security. Here are three areas Google Buzz needs to tighten up before users will be confident enough to make it their single social networking service:

1. Google Buzz automatically imports contacts and shows them as friends.

Reporting from San Francisco and Los Angeles - In the latest blow to what was once the jewel of News Corp.'s digital empire, MySpace Chief Executive Owen Van Natta unexpectedly exited Wednesday after less than 10 months on the job.

Van Natta's departure comes as the media conglomerate struggles to reshape MySpace, a former giant in social networking that has been overtaken by Facebook and confronts new challengers such as Twitter. MySpace's rapid decline also illustrates the perils of placing big bets on digital media, where websites can quickly rise and fall by the mouse clicks of fickle users.

Now Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. hopes to convert MySpace into a portal that guides users to content such as movies, music, TV shows and games, distancing itself from its origins in which people created Web pages to share details of their lives. It remains to be seen whether the site can convince its users to think of it in a fundamentally different way.

YouTube today introduced a new content filter that helps users screen out offensive content, such as news videos with graphic violence, or sexually suggestive clips that don't exceed the service's Community Guidelines. The optional filter, named Safety Mode, also hides all text comments by default.

Google's YouTube has long banned family-unfriendly content, including pornography and videos that show gratuitous violence, animal abuse, underage drinking, and the like. But Safety Mode adds another layer of protection to keep kids and sensitive adults away from more provocative material.

Last week, Microsoft said it was investigating issues in Windows 7 that affect batteries on certain notebooks after hundreds of users reported they thought the OS was to blame. Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, has posted a lengthy response on the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

"At this time we have no reason to believe there is any issue related to Windows 7 in this context," Sinofsky writes. Here's his explanation:

Google is reportedly planning to make Gmail more social by allowing users to exchange status updates with friends and share Web content links, features that moves Gmail into more direct competition with Facebook.

News of the plan was revealed on Monday by The Wall Street Journal.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, the company on Monday did invite journalists "to see some innovations in two of our most popular products" at a media event to be held Tuesday at the company's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters.

Blogging is becoming a thing of the past for teens and young adults, who are now far more likely to keep in touch with friends on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, according to a new study.

"Since 2006, blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults," states a Pew Internet & American Life Project report on social media and mobile Internet use among young people. "As the tools and technology embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging 'macro-blogging' for microblogging with status updates."

In 2006, 28% of teen Internet users were blogging, and now only 14% do so. Adult blog use is steadily increasing, with one in 10 online adults now maintaining a blog.

The popular social-networking site has tweaked its home page yet again. This time around, the redesign puts more of Facebook's core features and settings right on the home page. The goal is to spare users from having to jump from one page to another to access their favorite features.

The redesign was rolled out to the first group of users on Thursday, Facebook's 6th birthday. As of Thursday evening, 80 million out of Facebook's 400 million customers should have received the new home page, according to Inside Facebook.

The top menu of the Facebook home page now displays icons for requests, messages, and other notifications. The icons turn into red bubbles when you've got new requests waiting for your attention. Just click on one of the icons, and a drop-down menu appears showing you all the items in that list.