"We effed up," lyrics annotation supersite Rap Genius admitted this week after its SEO cheating was revealed. They sure did. And there's good reason to believe this isn't just a gaffe for the cartoonish startup posse: a Google eff up could haunt them forever—but no one search should have all that power.

Quantcast shows that the number of unique visitors to Rap Genius has dropped 60 percent since Google punished the startup for its questionable SEO scheme. Last year, unique visitors to Rap Genius only dropped about 15 percent from Christmas Eve to Christmas. Rap Genius has not responded to request for comment from Valleywag sent yesterday and today.

The cofounders of Rap Genius got lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings, courtesy of Google. Matt Cutts, Google's head of search, promised he was looking into the lyric site's SEO scheme. His punishment this morning was swift and brutal.

How has Rap Genius distinguished itself from all the other lyrics sites? With sweet, sweet old school spam techniques, or as Silicon Valley likes to call it "growth hacking." The tactic is so shady that Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, felt compelled to publicly state that his team is "aware and looking into it."

Tech corporations perks are finally growing up. AllThingsD's Jason Del Rey reports that Google has spoken with Lending Club about the possibility of using its cash holdings to offer low-interest loans to Google employees.

To the pronounced horror of some people who work at Google, a cadre of anti-tech-gentrification protestors today surrounded one of the company's private San Francisco shuttles, eventually smashing one of its windows.

A totally-not-dsytopian-at-all scene from Google's holiday party, where guests were immediately welcomed by three people wearing face computers.

As part of a week-long exploration of income inequality in the midst of an economic boom, NPR has matched some faces with abstract dots on a map, demonstrating that you can work for Google and still go hungry.

After an investigation by the inspector general, NASA says what we already knew: Google's top brass use tax-subsidized gas to go on pleasure trips around the world, saving millions of dollars it could easily afford.

It only took half a year for the un-beating heart of America's tech sector to show any unified opposition to NSA dragnet techniques: ReformGovernmentSurveillance.com is a lazy piece of PR dreck—and about as transparently self-serving as it gets.

Well, if you're going to be awful, at least be awfully honest. Or something. Or, maybe think twice before hopping off the Google Bus as it's surrounded by protestors and saying "Why don't you go to a city where you can afford it? This is a city for the right people." Update: This was probably staged.

[Demonstrators blocked a Google shuttle bus at 24th and Mission this morning with signs that said "Two-Tier System" and "Illegal Use of Public Infrastructure." Activists want tech companies to pay San Francisco $1 billion for "illegal" use of MUNI bus stops to fund affordable housing and help block evictions. One Google bus rider, upset about the delay in her commute, described the shuttle as hijacked and #undersiege. Image via Twitter]

Silicon Valley's anti-government fervor hasn't spread to the main-est of the mainstream so far: no calls for secession from Zuck or Dorsey. But that doesn't mean big tech money isn't reaching radical elements. The Washington Post reports that Google's given money to the people grinding federal politics to a halt.

The most absolutely awful thing about the story of Nick Starr is not that he exists, but that there are surely more people like him: the Seattle IT drone threw a Facebook fit when he was asked to take off his face-camera at a cafe. "I would love an explanation, apology, clarification...or her termination."

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman just went full hashtag on Twitter to celebrate the news that Google reached a $17 million multi-state settlement over tracking consumers online. But considering that Google made $14.9 billion just last quarter, it hardly seems like a victory for consumer privacy.

It looks like gossip is traveling at Hyperloop speed over Snapchat's hubris in turning down $3 billion in cash from Facebook. Om Malik just tweeted the latest: After Facebook, "Google offered $4B but @evanspiegel said no! Nice way to drive up valuation." Valleywag heard the same.

Google has officially perfected the shameless tearjerker advertisement. Corporate propaganda at its absolute loveliest.

Jawed Karim—the boring YouTube cofounder, not the one being sued by Kanye West—just left his first video comment in eight years. The one-liner takes a knock at Google, the company that earned Karim $64 million and the chance to literally live next door to Mark Zuckerberg.

Google finally offered a statement about its mystery barges, telling TechCrunch they are "‘an interactive space’ to teach people about its technology." People of Earth, head seaward to learn about your new leaders.

Early last month, Google wrote a seemingly innocuous, jargon-filled blog post about figuring out when a search ad on a consumer's smartphone leads to buying an item in real life—conveniently glossing over the fact that it's doing that by "tracking consumers’ smartphone locations all the time, wherever they go, even when they’re not using a Google app," reports Digiday.