• The latest battle in Google Wars '08: while Barack Obama is attempting (we think) to boost his own rumor debunking to the top of the search engine's results, a netroots-driven campaign to link John McCain to unpleasant press coverage enters its 19th day. Chris "Google Bomber" Bowers is claiming success for the "Searching for John McCain" effort, reporting that the nine targeted articles have been bumped into the top results for searches on variants of McCain's name.

• McCain's lagging behind his Democratic opponent when it comes to most objective online metrics, suggests Patrick Ruffini, can be attributed to the his campaign's top-down "establishment" culture that hasn't been convinced that Mac needs the Internet to win.

The Candidates on the Web

• Hillary Clinton's bow out of the Democratic race gave Obama's Facebook numbers a boost, and last night at about 10:15 EST his official Facebook profile hit the one million supporter mark -- becoming, says the campaign's (and Facebook co-founder) Chris Hughes, the most popular person/place/thing/event/cause on Facebook. TechPres's Michael Whitney has details, including a screen cap of the magical moment. McCain's Facebook group, Michael notes, boasts something in the neighborhood of 150,000 fans. (Does the campaign know who its one millionth supporter is? Does s/he get Facebooked a digital toaster?)

• Off The Bus's Listening Post has launched, giving the whole wide world a front row seat for the campaigns' daily press calls. Audio recordings of the conference calls are generally posted within an hour and a half after they wrap. (Here, a gift for your feed reader.)

TechCongress and Beyond

• We've been keeping a close eye on the brouhaha over the Associated Press's order to a blogger to cease and desist in quoting its work online. Here's the latest. The AP has posted a price scale for excerpts, and quotes as short as five words are subject to fees. Say, then, were I to quote an AP recap of the dust-up that says of the company's attempt to set guidelines: "even that idea triggered further protests." The charge for that? $12.50. The AP, say some bloggers, just doesn't understand that it doesn't get to define what "fair use" means when it comes to what online scribes can and can't do. A rep from the Media Bloggers Association is meeting with the AP tomorrow, but don't except all bloggers to abide by whatever gets worked out in the meeting. (Bonus: TechPresident's Liza Sabater has an interview with the MBA's Bob Cox.)

In Case You Missed It…

Man, has geekdom gone mainstream. Jonathan Zittrain joined Steven Colbert night to discuss the steps we need to take to preserve the Internet's happy chaos. Jonathan, you might recall, will be keynoting day two of the upcoming PdF '08 conference.

Hillary Clinton dropped far less coin on online advertising than Barack Obama has, reports Kate Kaye. To cite one metric, Clinton spent just under $300,000 for Google ads all of this year and the last, while Obama has spent more than $2 million on the same in '08 alone.

Tracy Russo argues that McCain's recent claims that he indeed groks the Internet are simply "not enough." In a comment on Tracy's post, Micah Sifry points to a New York Sun editorial that defends the candidate's self-professed computer illiteracy: "Without a computer, he has more time to spend with his family and friends, time that he might have squandered surfing the Internet." Indeed. It's like why I don't go in for electricity. When it gets dark, I go to bed. I find myself far more rested than my peers.

Associated Press | Barack Obama | Facebook | John McCain
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