I suppose the "big news" this week centers around the recent flap between BMW and Google.

In case you didn't follow the story elsewhere, BMW AG's German site was recently blacklisted by Google for using doorway pages to guide search engines to drive traffic to the site in response to very general search terms like "new cars" or "used cars."  Google's claim was that these pages were designed simply to manipulate the system, rather than to provide functionality or useful content to end users.

BMW quickly responded to the charges, but apparently not in time to prevent administrative action from being taken against them -- at least temporarily.  The evidence seems to support Munich's claims that that infraction was not deliberate; nonetheless, the company was quick to remove the offending features from its web site.

The net result of all of this excitement is that it seems likely that BMW's German site listing is expected to be reinstated sooner, rather than later.  That said, the emergence of this story made for some interesting and most unexpected news this week in the automotive world.