You'll want and need to go to the john

Toyota Canada and CTV are hyping a new ''epic two-minute feature commercial'' during Sunday's Oscar hardware hoedown.

The super-sized spot, entitled “What You Want Is What You Need” will reveal to Canadians en masse, the new, restyled 2007 Toyota Camry ...

CTV confirmed the spot, produced for TCI by Saatchi & Saatchi Canada, will air in the first commercial break, immediately following the highly anticipated opening monologue delivered by Oscar host Jon Stewart. Following its premiere, the commercial will be re-versioned as one 60-second spot, and along with two new 30-second spots, will continue to air on CTV through May.

I've seen it. It's beautiful looking. But, trust me. It's dumb. By May, you will be driven mad by it.

Different strokes for different folks

Catching up with non-Election 2006 news:

You know all this drama about Google going bad and capitulating to the evil Chinese empire?

It took Google Inc. more than a year to make the decision that offering a censored version of its search services in China would be a lesser evil than boycotting business in the country altogether, according to Google Inc. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Eric Schmidt.

“We concluded that although we weren’t wild about the restrictions, it was even worse to not try to serve those users at all,” Schmidt said. “We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil,” he said, referring to the company’s famous “don’t be evil” creed.

Puh-leeze. Not-so-goody-goody Google sold out long ago, as this Wired story of 2003 spells out.

The Google strategy appeals to every engineer's sense of The Way It Should Be. Build the best entry in the science fair. Do not tart it up. Do not make it more clever than it needs to be.

But a funny thing is happening on the way to Internet adulthood - Google's awkward teen years. The company's growth spurt has spawned a host of daunting questions that no data-retrieval system can easily answer. Should Google play ball with repressive foreign governments? Refuse to link users to "hate" sites? Punish marketers who artificially inflate site rankings? Fight the Church of Scientology's attempts to silence critics? And what to do about the cache, Google's archive of previously indexed pages? In April, the German national railroad threatened legal action to remove an obsolete site containing sabotage instructions.

Anyway, if you want to see the censored Google in action, click here for a Google image search on ''Tiananmen'' for us in the free world and here for the same search in China.

One more reason why I buy NOTHING with a "Made in China'' label.

Now if only I can bypass Google ...

Hat tip to Tom Popyk!

Bombs Away

Further to this week's column (not yet online) about the National Post by Maclean's Steve Maich, who used to be at the Post until he quit 2004:

A few years back the Aspers decided that the only way to improve the Post was to diminish its resources. They figured readers and advertisers loved the paper so much, they'd pay even more to get less of it. Every penny is now stretched until it screams, but profit remains elusive.

Which inspired this retort about Maich - as well as founding Post editor-turned-Maclean's-editor-publisher Ken Whyte - to what I asked David Asper yesterday:

Question: What did you make of the Steve Maich piece in the newest Maclean's? Utter garbage written by bitter former employee and published by fired former publisher editor who has taken his high priced tea party to another employer who will eventually also get tired of the act and the losses.

Why do my spidey senses tell me this is going nuclear, and the big guns are about to come out?

Not So Frank

Fabrice Taylor, the former Star and Globe and Mail journalist turned financial analyst, has resurfaced in the media with a monthly investment column in the Report on Business magazine.

In his ''Editor's Desk" notes, Laas Turnbull, who is ''thrilled to announce'' the column, details Taylor's financial hits and misses of his old Globe "Vox" column:

With refreshing honesty - some might say bluntness - Fabrice looked beyond the gloss of annual reports and dug into the nitty gritty of public companies' accounting practices, making both a lot of friends and a lot of enemies in the process.

That's not quite full disclosure.

Turnbull forgets the biggie: In 2003, Taylor quit that "Vox'' gig and then lost a reported $400,000 buying and ultimately busting the Ottawa-based gossip rag, Frank Magazine.

Now I hear the mag will make a triumphant online return - not a moment too soon considering Gomery, Belinda and Peter, and political and media goings-on -- in mid-September, under the aegis of its former owner Michael Bate.

Watch for a web page to appear at the end of next month.

Bet one of the scandal sheet's first victims will be ... Taylor himself.

Crossharbour Shipping & Receiving

The Star's David Olive casts his jaundiced eye on fallen media mogul Conrad Black's performance art and delivers a most excellent column:

In what might be the first recorded instance of his Lordship using the servants' entrance of any building, Black, a trusted aide and his chauffeur liberated the boxes at the beginning of the Victoria Day long weekend - a smart move that delayed discovery of their activities until Tuesday.

Not so smart was that the mission was carried out just hours after the security system, in place for some time but never operational, was repaired.

Typically, Black was impeccably tailored.

Maybe it was an older suit?