Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, speaking publicly for the first time about the hacking attacks on Google in late 2009, said that the company still hoped to find a way to continue operating its Google.cn search service in China, which it has blamed for the attacks. “I want to find a way to work within the Chinese system to bring information to the people,” said Mr. Brin, who was interviewed on stage at the annual TED conference.
Google isn't wasting any time in responding to user criticism about Buzz and has rolled out another set of changes to further address Buzz's privacy issues. The biggest change involves the automatic follow system: it's now being switched to a suggestion model, where Google will present you with a list of friends it thinks you'd like to follow, but gives you a chance to deselect them before you start using the service.
Microsoft is expected to secure unconditional EU approval for its landmark search deal with Yahoo to challenge market leader Google, sources familiar with the situation said. U.S. software company Microsoft and Internet firm Yahoo signed a 10-year global Web search partnership last July, which must be approved by regulators to take effect.
In the view of both political analysts and technology experts in China and in the United States, China's attempts to tighten its grip on Internet use are driven in part by the conviction that the West -- and particularly the United States -- is wielding communications innovations from malware to Twitter to weaken it militarily and to stir dissent internally. State media have vented those concerns more vociferously since Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized China for censorship and called for an investigation of Google's claim that its databases had been the target of a sophisticated attack from China.
Google argued in a staunch and sometimes eloquent brief that an agreement reached with the Authors Guild to digitize millions of books was legal and a contribution to human knowledge. Google's ambitious plan has been praised for expanding access to books but the Justice Department criticized it on February 4 on a variety of grounds, saying it potentially violated antitrust and copyright laws.
Google announced some changes to Google Buzz that show it has belatedly recognized the backlash over privacy concerns with the new service. Early users of Google Buzz have found the settings very complicated, especially the ones that pertain to privacy.
Thirty Facebook pages have been taken down because British prisoners were using them to taunt their victims, Justice Secretary Jack Straw has said. Mr. Straw was speaking after a meeting with victim campaigners to discuss prisoners using social networking sites to taunt families.
Microsoft announced plans to improve efforts to combat piracy of its flagship desktop operating system. An update is coming soon to guard against activation exploits and defend Microsoft, and unwitting customers, against counterfeit copies of Windows 7.
The latest battle over Internet freedom in China is playing out in an online movie that pits an armored blue beast and his band of antiauthoritarian rogues against a sinister force called Harmony that seeks to clean up the Web. The video, called "War of Internet Addiction," is a send-up of government censorship starring videogame characters that has become one of the hottest things on the Chinese Internet, epitomizing the unruly spirit that thrives on the Web despite an intensifying crackdown on free expression in China.
A Paris tribunal found Ebay guilty of misleading consumers by using misspelt versions of luxury brand Louis Vuitton as search engine key words to redirect users to Ebay website links. The tribunal ordered Ebay to pay 200,000 euros ($275,800) in damages and 30,000 euros in legal costs incurred by Louis Vuitton, a leather bags maker owned by LVMH, the world's biggest luxury goods group.
Six music blogs hosted by Google's blogging services have been accused of violating the company's terms of service by allegedly posting unauthorized copyright material and have been booted from the sites. The blogs that were hosted by Google's Blogger or Blogspot services are: Living Ears, I Rock Cleveland, Pop Tarts, Masala,To Die By Your Side, and It's a Rap.
In recent years, VeriSign Inc. has shed over a dozen businesses, thinned its employee ranks and presented a more disciplined image to Wall Street. But the company's narrowed focus has also made it more dependent on a mainstay Internet domain name operation that is both entirely reliant upon a coveted government contract, and clouded by a stubborn legal challenge.
The Australian Parliament's Web site was hit by an apparent denial-of-service attack, two days after the hacking group Anonymous threatened attacks over the government's plan to filter Web content. Australian officials reported a massive denial-of-service attack that knocked the Parliament's site down for large parts of the day.
Iran's telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.'s e-mail services, saying a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out. It wasn't clear what effect the order had on Gmail services in Iran, or even if Iran had implemented its new policy.
An upstart Trojan horse program has decided to take on its much-larger rival by stealing data and then removing the malicious program from infected computers. Security researchers say that the relatively unknown Spy Eye toolkit added this functionality in a bid to displace its larger rival, known as Zeus.
Personal PayPal service is not likely to be restored in India for several months, though the company is taking steps to allow local bank withdrawals during the next few days. PayPal halted personal payments in India amid "questions" from business partners and other stakeholders, a move that also prevented merchants from withdrawing the funds in Rupees to local Indian banks.
YouTube has coming under fire from parents who think some of the content on the popular Web site is unsuitable for their kids. So, YouTube is adding parental controls, enabling parents to block kids from viewing many videos.
Google Inc has sent a cease and desist letter to the operators of a Chinese search website whose logo bears a close resemblance to its own. Goojje's home page is adorned with a Google-styled logo and the familiar paw print logo of China's top home-grown search engine, Baidu Inc.
YouTube has no way of knowing how often police tap into its videos to make arrests, company spokesman Scott Rubin said, but police across the country say they are increasingly using YouTube and other online social networks to root out criminals. "Technology has revolutionized law enforcement in many ways," said Jack Rinchich, president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
Prodded by the Federal Communications Commission, Google has lowered the fee it charges users who return its Nexus One before their contracts expire. The "equipment recovery fee" is now $150 instead of the initial fee of $350.
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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.