Best of the blogs: A lesson lurks in Google’s $1 billion purchase of AOL, Matt Asay writes in Open Resource. “Never, ever trust a capitalist who pretends to be otherwise.” The problem, it seems, is that Google promised favored placement of AOL content as part of the deal, something it has never done before. Special report: The complete guide to hardware and software houses all 309 reviews that the InfoWorld Test Center conducted during the past 12 months. Standards: IBM, Microsoft and SAP abandon the UDDI Business Registry project, claiming that it is no longer necessary. The news beat: Venture capital investments this year could meet or surpass the total spent in 2002, and software-as-a-service and open source projects are atop the list. A new glitch is impacting beta versions of IE 7, causing links to come up blank, multiple windows to launch, or the browser to hang, a Microsoft official blogged. Bill Gates, his wife, and rock star Bono are on the cover of Time this week as the magazine’s persons of the year for charitable work. Technology Industry