Microsoft has links, to varying degrees, with the three initial complainants that sparked the European antitrust investigation into Google. And Microsoft’s activity gained momentum as a new European government re-energized the investigation.
Apple Inc's cooperation with a court-appointed monitor has "sharply declined" as he reviews the iPad maker's antitrust compliance policies, the monitor wrote in a report to a judge. Michael Bromwich, who became Apple's monitor after it was found liable for conspiring to raise e-book prices, said in a report on Thursday that Apple objected to providing information and "inappropriately" attempted to limit his activities.
A Berlin court has upheld a ban on the U.S-based online taxi service Uber, which allows users to summon a ride with their smartphones, saying the company did not comply with German laws on the carriage of passengers. The ruling by the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Appeals Tribunal confirms a ban from last August that prohibited the service because it did not offer drivers and vehicles licensed to carry passengers or provide full insurance cover.
China suspended a policy that would have effectively pushed foreign technology companies out of the country’s banking sector, according to a note sent by Chinese regulators to banks. The rules, which were put into effect at the end of last year, called for companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over intellectual property and submit source code, amid other demands.
Instagram unveiled more-detailed standards for images, aimed at curbing pornography and harassment. The revised version is much longer and specifies that “serious threats of harm to public and personal safety aren’t allowed.
Trade groups representing nearly every corner of the tech industry are putting pressure on Congress to rein in government surveillance ahead of a new battle over U.S. spying. In a letter, a half-dozen major industry groups called for Congress to end some of the government’s most controversial spying programs, which they claim continue to erode global trust in American tech companies.
The antitrust case against Google filed by European Union regulators will inevitably draw comparisons to the long-running prosecution of Microsoft, in which regulators on both sides of the Atlantic pursued the software giant for anticompetitive behavior. But with more than a decade of hindsight, the theories supporting the case against Microsoft have all but fallen apart, and the pursuit of the company that makes Windows may suggest a reason for skepticism about this fight against Google: The tech marketplace is fluid and unpredictable.
The German government proposed new guidelines on data retention aimed at balancing privacy protection with the needs of law enforcement in setting strict time limits on how long telecommunications providers store data. Under the proposal by the German Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, telecommunications and Internet data has to be stored for up to 10 weeks and deleted thereafter, while data on location may be stored up to four weeks.
The European Union’s antitrust chief formally accused Google of abusing its dominance in web searches to the detriment of competitors and began official proceedings into whether its Android smartphone software forces phone makers to favor the company’s own services and applications. “If the investigation confirmed our concerns, Google would have to face the legal consequences and change the way it does business in Europe,” said Margrethe Vestager, the European Union competition commissioner.
Google Inc. and its critics are preparing for the European Union to make a decision on how to proceed with a four-year-old antitrust probe against the company as soon as this week, according to three people familiar with the case. European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is leading the probe, leaves on Wednesday for her first trip to the U.S. since assuming the post and an announcement would allow her to discuss the case, the people said on condition of anonymity because details of the probe aren’t public.
The European Union should regulate Internet platforms in a way that allows a new generation of European operators to overtake the dominant U.S. players, the bloc’s digital czar said, in an unusually blunt assessment of the risks that U.S. Web giants are viewed as posing to the continent’s industrial heartland. Speaking at a major industrial fair in Hannover, Germany, the EU’s digital commissioner, Günther Oettinger, said Europe’s online businesses were “dependent on a few non-EU players world-wide” because the region had “missed many opportunities” in the development of online platforms.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang urged U.S. officials to drop limits on high-technology exports or it would seek alternatives from Russia or other countries, said people with knowledge of the discussions, in a reminder of technology tensions between Washington and Beijing. Mr. Li raised the issue on with U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker during her visit to Beijing, these people said.
Internet users were denied access to Google Inc's Malaysia website, and were redirected to a hacked page saying "Google Malaysia Hacked by Tiger-Mate #Bangladeshi Hacker." The company has reached out to the organization that manages the domain name to resolve the issue, MYNIC, a Google Malaysia spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters.
A Miami artist whose work has been used in Coca-Cola, Disney and Mattel advertisements is suing Apple Inc. claiming the California-based technology giant copied his signature bold bright colors and cartoony figures in a recent marketing campaign. The lawsuit, filed on April 6 in the Southern District of Florida, claims Apple and its design firm mirrored Brazilian-born Romero Britto’s style in artwork used in Apple’s “Start Something New” campaign.
Fabulous people and well-known brands are buying up Internet addresses with controversial endings such as .porn, .adult and .sucks to make sure they don't end up in the hands of someone who could besmirch their names and reputations. The defensive moves come amid a major expansion of Internet addresses beyond the familiar .com, .org, .net and .edu endings.
Posting “revenge porn” images on the web will become a specific offence in the United Kingdom for the first time under new legislation coming into force. Under the new crime sharing “private, sexual images of someone without consent and with the intent to cause distress” will carry up to two years’ imprisonment.
Tough new net neutrality regulations were published in the Federal Register, triggering an effective date of June 12 and the first formal legal challenge to the controversial online traffic rules. US Telecom, a trade group whose members include AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to stop the rules.
Hackers, most likely from China, have been spying on governments and businesses in Southeast Asia and India uninterrupted for a decade, researchers at Internet security company FireEye Inc said. In a report, FireEye said the cyber espionage operations dated back to at least 2005 and "focused on targets -- government and commercial -- who hold key political, economic and military information about the region."
"The Great Cannon, researchers said in a report, allows China to intercept foreign web traffic as it flows to Chinese websites, inject malicious code and repurpose the traffic as Beijing sees fit. The system was used, they said, to intercept web and advertising traffic intended for Baidu — China’s biggest search engine company — and fire it at GitHub, a popular site for programmers, and GreatFire.org, a nonprofit that runs mirror images of sites that are blocked inside China.
A federal court in New York dealt a setback to the case of a woman who claims AMC Networks violated a federal privacy law by sharing with Facebook information about her visits to the cable network’s website. The case is the latest to consider how a VHS-era privacy statute intended to keep private the rental viewing habits of Americans should be applied to the Internet age.
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