We've written about well-known entrepreneurs like Aaron Patzer, Bret Taylor, Christophe Bisciglia, and Max Ventilla in past reports, so we're looking for fresh faces. Tell us your nominees by March 19. We'll publish a report based on the results in late April.

Searches done on ten “sensitive” keywords in the Mandarin language on Google.cn, the company’s Chinese search site, yielded 52% fewer results than searches for the same keywords on the uncensored, English-language site, the analysts said in a research report on March 5. That confirms the censors are still in effect. And there may actually be a higher level of filtering on Google.cn now than there was in January, when Piper Jaffray found 40% fewer search results on the censored search engine for the same ten keywords.

The likelihood that Google will shutter Google.cn has diminished to 50% from 70%, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes in a research note.

The results of this study are line with reports that the company’s executives are in talks with Chinese officials, and are waiting to lift censorship in the country until the parties reach some resolution. Google employs hundreds of people in its Beijing offices, and some analysts take recent actions – such as looking to hire new workers there and introducing new mobile products – as signals that it intends to keep operating in the country to some capacity.

Still, it’s unclear how Google and China could reach a compromise, as the search giant remains resolute in its ultimatum. Google deputy general counsel Nicole Wong t Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told the US Senate Judiciary Committee on March 3 that the company is "firm in our decision that we will not censor our search results in China and we are working towards that end."

By Guest Blogger Suzanne Robitaille

Ah, video and search. Frank Sinatra said it best: Try, try, try to separate them – it’s an illusion. Here’s proof of that: Speech Technology. This week, Google sealed the deal on video search capabilities for its YouTube portal, saying it would provide auto-captions for all of its uploaded videos using proprietary Google's Speech Technology.

Google’s initiative, piloted in November, began with a handful of partner channels including PBS, Stanford University and National Geographic. It has now expanded to all uploaded English-speaking videos, with more languages to be added later this year.

With this news, Google establishes itself as a frontrunner in the Internet programming space. As a company built on search, search, and more search, Google is now able to capitalize on its investment in speech-to-text technology to index videos, target advertising and create an actual profit margin for YouTube. In fact, video search is likely why Google acquired YouTube in the first place.

The bigger news is that auto-captions will have clear benefits for the deaf and hearing-impaired population, who now will be able to better understand dialogue on uploaded videos. Up to now, this group had to rely on the goodwill of YouTube users to manually add captions to their videos. A time-consuming process, most users didn’t bother to do so.

At a press conference on Thursday, YouTube says accessibility is a key goal for the years to come. Even as Google touts a serious business purpose for auto-captions – search -- it’s not hard to also believe in their commitment to making their products and services more usable for more of their customers.

Furthermore, Google is now removed from any ill will associated with Internet programming issues – such as the ones plaguing network and cable broadcasters. On March 17, the Federal Communications Commission will unveil a proposed broadband plan that is designed to ensure, or at least improve, equal access to Web TV and movie programming for people with disabilities, which could including requiring captions.

Meanwhile, a House congressional committee is mulling the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009 that would make captions for the deaf and audio descriptions for the blind into law for Internet broadcasters. The bill is backed by nearly 240 disability organizations known as the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology.

TV broadcasters – unlike Google – already have transcripts available to them – either on paper or in the form of regular TV closed captions, which have been required for almost all programming since 1990. And ABC has publicly committed to captioning all long-form content – so the heat is on everyone else.

While YouTube videos are technically outside of the FCC’s realm, consumers don’t see it that way – and they shouldn’t. That makes Google’s auto-captioning move financially savvy, and buys them consumer altruism at a time when broadcasters are facing down a potentially ugly battle over access issues.

This post was written by guest blogger Suzanne Robitaille. Robitaille is the founder and publisher of abledbody.com, a website covering assistive technology issues. She is the author of The Illustrated Guide to Assistive Technology.

If Stoppelman is worried, he sure doesn’t show it. In the days after the lawsuit was filed on Feb. 23, he wrote two self-assured blog posts (here and here) in which he confidently explained why he says Yelp is innocent. I wanted to take a deeper dive, to find out what it’s like for the CEO of a company that’s accused of wrongly besmirching corporate reputations to find himself on the hot seat. Stoppelman got on the phone with me on March 2. Here are edited highlights of our conversation.

BW: The class action suit has again focused attention on allegations that Yelp shakes down businesses to get them to advertise. How much is riding on Yelp’s ability to deal with the controversy?

Stoppelman: This [class action] is a reminder of the challenge we have ahead of us, and which we’ve had for the last year. What we’ve built is a system that works really well for consumers. When you read reviews on Yelp, you get a good sense of what’s going to happen when you walk in the door of that business. The challenge is that there are fifteen million businesses in the U.S., and its very hard to communicate with all of them about how Yelp works, and why it works the way it does. That’s an incredible challenge.

BW: There was a time when many people had their doubts about the integrity of search results--about whether search rankings were bought and paid for. A major reason for Google’s success was that it managed to establish consumers’ trust that its search rankings were legit. Do you see any parallels to what's happening with Yelp?

Stoppelman: I see many parallels. When AdSense was introduced, there was a lot of fear and even belief that Google’s rankings would be affected by whether a site was using [this ad-serving system]. There were many articles written about that, too. Now we all love and trust Google. But when they first began wielding significant power, people got spooked.

BW: Did you?

Stoppelman: When Yelp first took off, our rankings on Google would fluctuate wildly. I remember thinking “we’ve got this [potentially competing] product that is taking off; are they on to us?” There’s just a human tendency to want to explain things as if everyone is paying attention to you, when in reality it was just an algorithm.

BW: But the suspicions about Yelp have been around for more than a year now, and don’t seem to be easing. In fact, they seem to be intensifying. Why was Google able to win that trust more quickly?

Stoppelman: Google mines links (to determine rankings) and we mine reviews. The difference is that Google doesn’t have to show which links it is counting. It can be kept hidden from view. But reviews are written by people (who may notice if their review disappears, reappears or is moved up or down in the rankings).

BW: So how do you get out of the penalty box?

Stoppelman: The biggest thing is to create a product that consumers find useful. As more and more people like something, it becomes harder and harder to have a conspiracy theory about it.

There’s been resistance to every new technology that’s ever been introduced. When books came out hundreds of years ago, there were complaints that it would destroy the oral tradition. Some of those fears were justified, but it didn’t stop the rise of the written word. And books have proven to be incredibly useful.

BW: But there’s no question that consumers find Yelp very useful. The question is whether you are serving the needs of the businesses you need to advertise.

Stoppelman: Our business is about connecting consumers with great local businesses. The world of the past, where businesses could completely control their image, was nice. But overall, are there tremendous advantages for businesses by having power in the hands of consumers? Absolutely. The other day there was a story in the New York Times about a place called Ike’s Sandwich Shop. Yelp made his business; now he has to take reservations because the lines are so long.

BW: So is all the controversy hurting your business? It must make it a lot harder for salespeople to do their jobs.

Stoppelman: No, we’ve been through this before. This is the same press cycle we had a year ago—but now we’re better prepared.

BW: The plaintiff in the class action suit (Long Beach, CA-based veterinarian Cats & Dogs Hospital Inc) says that a Yelp salesman named Kevin repeatedly promised to make negative reviews go away if he would advertise on Yelp. Have you disciplined Kevin for breaking the company’s sales policies, and how many times have you had to discipline or fire salespeople for such transgressions?

Stoppelman: We’ve never had to discipline a salesperson about the issue that was laid out in the lawsuit.

BW: Yelp is well-known for throwing fun, alcohol-drenched parties for top reviewers. Should you be doing more outreach to businesses, too?

Stoppelman: They don’t involve alcohol, but we have hosted ten forums in five cities in recent months. I’ve attended three of them so far. We invite ten to twenty small businesses in the area—some advertisers, some not--to talk about how Yelp works and give feedback. They’ve been surprisingly positive. Business owners realize we’re an important and a low-cost driver of business—especially if they’re paying us nothing (because they don’t advertise).

BW: So far, we've discussed what Yelp needs to do to clear up misunderstandings and conspiracy theories. But some people say they understand the business, but don’t like a business model by which you take money from the companies that are reviewed.

Stoppelman: We survey every advertiser that signs up, and one of the things we ask is whether they realize that advertising is not connected to content and reviews. If they say no, they get a call from a salesperson to make sure.

BW: Danny Sullivan, a respected search industry analyst, thinks the only solution is for Yelp to let companies opt-out entirely. That way, only basic information on the company would appear, but no reviews. What not do this? It would go a long way towards proving to businesses that you’re not interested in extorting them.

Stoppelman: Why doesn’t BusinessWeek let me opt-out of having a story written about me? It’s a new generation of people out there (that want to communicate and share opinioins). Some of the content that appears on Yelp might have been created by a newspaper in the past---say, a review by a restaurant critic. It’s a clear question of free speech. If someone said a reviewer couldn’t write about a particular restaurant, there would be an outcry—how dare he be silenced!

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The networks unit, which on Feb. 11 was combined with a unit that makes radios and computers for corporate and government customers, wants to boost revenue generated from services, such as helping carriers design and make more efficient use of their new wireless networks. Services already account for more than one-third of the division’s $4 billion in annual sales. “There’s room to grow it by a few percentage points,” Brda says. The division, which employs thousands of people, is “highly profitable,” he says. The unit’s financial performance and exact employee numbers have not yet been reported separately. Brda’s business specializes in gear for next-generation mobile networks, based on technologies such as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMax.

The idea is to offer a broader array of services for carriers that may use Motorola’s – or other vendors’ – equipment in more markets, particularly in the Americas. While he wouldn’t provide any hiring projections, Brda expects to grow his services staff in the coming months.

Striking additional partnerships is also on the agenda. The unit already buys certain gear from partners such as Cisco. “We will partner as a way to expand the reach of our products and to gain [research and development] efficiency,” Brda says. “I believe we have all of the components carriers need in the next couple of years.” The division already sells LTE and WiMax gear to carriers like Verizon Wireless and Clearwire. In the coming months, Brda expects to win a large LTE contract with giant China Mobile. “We are confident we’ll get that,” he says. “We are winning as many [LTE] deals as everyone else.”

The February split from the home unit, which manufactures set-top boxes, shouldn’t affect the networks division’s ability to find customers and win business too much. “The decision Motorola had to weigh is what business has the most synergy [with the home business],” Brda says. Motorola envisions creating cell phones that act as remote controls for televisions and set-top boxes, among other functions. “My goals, my financial objectives haven’t changed whatsoever,” Brda told me this afternoon. “It’s just that I am now reporting to a different leader,” co-CEO Greg Brown. Co-CEO Sanjay Jha heads the second part of the business, which makes mobile phones and set-top boxes.

The Web site, formed with the help of startup lawyer Ted Wang, contains 30 pages of free documents entrepreneurs can fill out to apply for $300,000 to $1.5 million of initial funding. Typically, such documents run about 100 pages and have to be customized by lawyers. The 30-page term sheet would have to be customized as well, but it would dispense with some sections typically unnecessary for early-stage investments, such as those dealing with prior investors. The idea behind the effort is to “save start-ups time and money,” Wang tells Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “The negotiations process will also be shorter.”

Ten well-known venture firms have committed to accepting these so-called Series Seed Documents. They include Charles River Ventures, SV Angel, Polaris Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, which is an investor into Web-calling company Skype and social games maker Zynga. “We are committed to making deals on these terms,” says general partner Ben Horowitz.

The venture firms hope others will end up supporting this effort as well. “I think this will become a new standard, and people will be able to raise money more quickly,” Wang says. Bloomberg LP or one of its subsidiaries is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz. Bloomberg LP also owns BusinessWeek.com.

When Motorola splits in two next year, Jha said he may transplant the handset and set-top box units to Silicon Valley. "We'll go where that talent is, and right now, that looks like California," Jha said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

This makes a lot of sense: Software acts as the biggest differentiator for cell phones and other gadgets nowadays. And much of that developer talent resides in California. Nokia has established a research presence in Silicon Valley in recent years. So has smartphone software maker Symbian. Apple, Google and Palm are based in California. Last, but not least, Qualcomm, where Jha used to work before joining Motorola, is headquartered in San Diego.

But uprooting Motorola's existing engineering and marketing talent won't be easy. Motorola lost a lot of great employees over the past several years, as it struggled to turn the business around. And it could lose more staffers if Jha decides to go ahead with the move.