Google says its Young privacy policy complies with FTC Colony
Google is rebutting charges that its new privacy policy violates a settlement it affected with federal regulators last year.
The Internet hunting giant told the U.S. Federal Craft Commission that its policy complies with the settlement, granting to a self-assessment report the society handed over in January.
The report, obtained by Politico Friday, says Google has got to especial lengths to tell its users what data it harvests and what it does with it.
Google settled charges lastly yr that it violated privacy constabularies by exposing Gmail users' personal info when rolling away its now-defunct Google Buzz social networking service. The breach prompted an angry backlash from consumers and privacy advocates who enounce the Mess View, Calif., society broke personal info without their knowledge or consent.
The Electronic Privacy Info Center, a consumer watchdog group, filed a federal causa Wednesday against the FTC in a bid to stoppage Google from rolling out a young privacy policy that it says violates the FTC settlement. A federal judge has fit to expedite the case.
Last month, Google got alerting users around the ball that commencement March 1 it will part data it collects from users across its dozens of services. Google says that exclusively users who are logged into Google will exist affected. Google already shared what it knew nearly its users across near of its services merely instantly it will too include YouTube and Google hunting history.
A Google spokesman refused to comment on the self-assessment report.
"The FTC takes compliance with our consent orders selfsame severely and always seems carefully at any evidence or allegations that they are being violated," FTC spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farrell pronounced in an emailed statement. "Allegations experience been made that Google's late declared changes to its privacy policies and practices violate a Commission order. Completely orders are discipline to a detailed and vigorous compliance review process, but such investigations are non-public, and we hence cannot comment further."
Google, MIT bestow App Inventor to the unwashed masses
Google must exist feel generous: it donated Sky Map to undeserving armchair astronomers and it's letting the great unwashed make at its App Inventor ontogeny platform. The software toolset was cooked up in partnership with MIT: a web-based interface that lets anyone build Android apps without getting elbows-deep in code. Those Massachusetts king-geeks won't exist accepting submissions merely yet, however: it's yet got to shape away how it's locomoting to deploy the public server and foster a "robust and active open-source project" under its new name: the passably unimaginative MIT App Inventor
Google Shutters GMS Substitution Disaster Recovery Service and More
Google is on a belated New Year's solvent kick that will see the hunt giant conclusion some services alike its Google Content Continuity (GMS) email disaster recovery production and open-source Google Sky Function while collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to develop it for student projects.
"As we head into 2012, we've been sticking to some old resolutions the motive to focus on building amazing products that millions of people love to employment every day," Dave Girouard, Google's vice chair of production management, indited Friday on the company's official blog. "That means taking a hard spirit at products that replicate other features, haven't achieved the promise we had hoped for or can't be decent integrated into the overall Google experience."
Girouard articulated the enterprise-targeted GMS product, which backs up emails sent and had via on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers, was being phased away because Google has "decided to focus our efforts" on disaster recovery solutions constructed into Google Apps. Current customers will be able to continue employing GMC for the duration of their contracts, however.
Other Google products being phased out in 2012 include the Needlebase data management, platform, which goes grim on June 1, though it might be integrated into other platforms, the Picnik online picture editor (paid members will induce a refund "in the coming weeks," granting to Girouard), the Social Graph API, which is getting shut down on April 20 because it "isn't experiencing the variety of adoption we'd like," and the Urchin online web analytics platform which has been superseded by Google Analytics and will exist shut by March.
Firefox Kept Equally Google renews default Hunting Engine Mass
Firefox is reborn as the web browser renews its search plenty with Google for three more years.
The ‘will they or won’t they’ suspense has ended. Google has mounted back into bed with the Firefox web browser, renewing the agreement to rest as default hunt engine for Firefox.
The financial price were undisclosed, simply the Mozilla blog announced Tuesday that this “significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement” has been went for a at least another three years. Mozilla doesn’t decease into besides much detail nigh what the three year agreement entails.
“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we feeling ahead to continuing this smashing partnership in the years to come,” enounced Senior VP of Hunt at Google, Alan Eustace.
The contract was placed to be renewed finally month, just apparently the two companies experience been in negotiations this intact time. The hold started to stir up a murmur almost the circumstances of Firefox without Google as a partner. The hunt company’s plenty555555 pays Mozilla for the privilege of being the default hunt engine. More than 98 pct of Mozilla’s 2010 revenue arrived from royalties paid by search-engine companies, and by some estimates, Google made up about 85 percentage of that. For 2010, Google was basically $100 million of Mozilla’s intact $123 million income.
The rise in ranking for Google’s Chrome browser may have helped fuel the worry surrounding Firefox. Chrome, according to StatCounter, late happened Firefox up, turning the instant about popular browser globally with a 25.7 percent market part in November 2011. Though other metrics firms told slimly different figures, it has commenced to spirit as if Google didn’t motivation Firefox anymore.
However, there’s no motive to speculate anymore as1 to whether Firefox will limp along or if Microsoft will rushing in to filling Google’s gap; Firefox will proceed to be propped up for the next few years. Hopefully, over the three twelvemonth breather, we’ll see some diversification with Firefox to construct up for its vulnerabilites.
Google Program ‘Nexus’ tablet to Take on Apple iPad
In an echo of the firm’s smartphone strategy, whereby its ain Nexus reach forms the vanguard of the Android onslaught on the iPhone, Mr Schmidt articulated Google is developing a tablet.
“In the succeeding six months we program to market a tablet of the highest quality,” he said an Italian newspaper.
Google has already had a reach in the ontogenesis of the Motorola Xoom, merely similar other Android tablets, it suffered disappointing sales in a market dominated by the iPad.
Since then, however, Google has itself got a major hardware manufacturer via its $12.5bn attainment Motorola’s devices division, which is currently under consideration by competition authorities. The mountain would give it much more curb over Android tablet development.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire, based on Android, has presented the strongest challenge to Apple thence far, largely based on its relatively low price, but it has faced criticism over the usability of its software.
Google Currents Challenges Flipboard, Zite on Android, iOS
Google Currents launches as a magazine-reading application on Android smartphones and tablets as considerably equally on Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Flipboard, Zite and Yahoo altogether receive stakes in this game.
Google’s Android racks up its 10 billionth app download
More than 10 billion apps get been downloaded from Google's Android Market.
To tag the minute Google enounced that for the next 10 days it would cut the cost of some crown apps to 10p each.
The hunt giant announced the milestone on its blog adding that the store's apps were being downloaded at a rate of one billion a month.
However, some industry analysts played down the figure locution Google should do more to address poor-quality programs.
Cheap deal
Google articulated the pace at which apps were being downloaded was starting to accelerate. Its figures establish Android conveyed 22 months to compass one billion downloads but solely one month to away from nine billion to 10 billion.
By contrast, Apple hit one billion downloads afterwards nine months. Although the iPhone maker yet maintains a lead, some experts think it will be short-lived.
"Apple announced the 15 billion download tag666 in July therefore it's realize that Android's momentum in device activations is translating to application downloads and usage," enounced Geoff Blaber from analysts CCS Insight.
"We'd expect Android to overtake Apple in application downloads in the first half of 2012."
However, added Mr Blaber, such swift maturation set a challenge of how to helper customers disclose utilitarian software from altogether the other code on offer.
"It's an issue for developers and consumers like only a significant chance for whoever solves the trouble first," he said.
Google opens French HQ amidst European antitrust objections
It’s nearly funny: one day, Google is preparing to defend itself from an “abuse of dominance” complaint from the European Commission. And today, less than a week later, Gallic Chair Nicolas Sarkozy himself appeared with Google Executive Chair Eric Schmidt at the opening of Google’s young Paris headquarters, extolling the hunting giant’s American values.
Check away Google’s European Public Policy blog if you don’t believe me. Chair Sarkozy is quoted equally rhetorically asking the room, “Why equally President, do I construct this symbolic motion and come to Google? I love the United States, and its motto that everything is possible whatever your origins.”
The new 10,000 square meter Google office isn’t but handling operations in France, equally the hunting giant plans on applying it as its nerve gist for operations in Southern Europe, the Center East and Africa.
What’s more, Google says that its investment in France goes beyond just purchasing the refurbished 19th century Second Empire building - YouTube is working to collecting royalties for Gallic music copyright associations, French publisher Hachette will start list out-of-print works on Google Books, and Google has announced a partnership with Gallic3 national enquiry lab CNRS.
But perchance almost importantly, Google will be looking to hire Gallic9 engineers and other professionals to populate its new European headquarters. And to help boost the local startup scene, Google has declared Startup Café, a tools and training programme for entrepreneurs.
I do desire to conk back to that original point, though. I can’t exist the only one who finds it foreign that the European Commission has Google on the hook for a provisional solvent from its antitrust investigation by early Jan while, at the same time, Chair1 Sarkozy is singing the praises of Google’s international growth.
In fairness, the chairman doesn’t mouth for the European Commission, and the commission doesn’t talk for Chair5 Sarkozy. If Google may hand France’s economy a boost, it’s slow to see why he would select to appear at the grand opening.
Google+ wants to usher in the masses
Google's decision to plunk down what must get been a selfsame large chunk of change for the ad is the latest signal that it wants vast numbers of normal folks to reveal Google+ and usage it to part stuff with other normal folks. It wants to accept on Facebook immediately and rapidly, in a way that no other company could dreaming of doing.
I alike Google+ and would similar to see more people I know demonstrate up there. For that matter, I like Facebook, too--but I believe it never hurts for a big, powerful technology fellowship to receive at least one formidable rival. Hence I'm rooting for Google+ to exist a success.
But I''m also worrying a short routine nigh its prospects. Or at least the prospects of Facebook fans watching a TV commercial, trying Google+, and deciding they'd rather expend time there.
(I'm eventide worrying almost non-nerds finding Google+ afterwards watching the ad, which briefly shows the fairly geeky URL google.com/+ at the end.)
The TV spot's tagline is "Sharing only alike literal life." That continues the sales pitch that Google has made for Google+ from the beginning. It says that the Circles feature, which lets you build groups of friends and share selectively with them, makes online sharing feel more natural than it does on Facebook. (Okay, Google never mentions Facebook, only let's side it: It's not comparing Google+ to MySpace or Friendster.)
Is selective sharing a compelling enough idea to make Google+ a mainstream hit? I'm not hence sure. For one thing, if the feature is so alluring, it's slow enough for Facebook to maneuver it up more than it did in the pre-Google+ era. In fact, it's already doing so.
For another thing, perchance Facebook's unprecedented success shows that the deep-seated human motive to exist picky nigh who we part with, equally portentiously explained in Google's ad, isn't hence deep-seated subsequently all. Maybe it turns out that people similar sharing widely and indiscriminately, in a style that isn't potential in other regions of "real life."
I know I do, anyhow. When I part something random on Facebook and get comments from a childhood pal, a coworker from my foremost job, and a late acquaintance, it pleases me. I wouldn't receive that experience if I was obsessively sorting my protagonists into buckets. And that's why I share openly on both Google+ and Facebook.
Already, Facebook feels alike actual liveliness to me. Near of the people I know are on it at least occasionally, and many of them are thus devoted to it that they've replicated their lovable selves there in digital form.
By comparison, Google+--despite its clever interface and attractive features--feels more clinical and less emotional. (Most of the people I interact there dip into one of two groups: professional geek admirers and mouth strangers.)
Unlike Slate's Farhad Manjoo, I don't think that Google+ is going to die. Simply I don't believe it's moving to be a destination that lures hundreds of millions of people conk from Facebook, either.
Google+'s best slam at success involves it becoming indistinguishable from Google. Instead of being a place, it could be the social glue that ties together Google's hunt engine, Gmail, Google Apps, and scads of other services that hundreds of millions of people already use. If Google figures away how to build its all dang world experience like a Facebook competitor, it'll exist a large deal.
There's lots of evidence that the society is trying to do but that, including the very cite "Google+." So I stay carefully bullish on its long-term chances. Simply if Google+ is flourishing a few years from now, I'll bet that perfectly cypher thinks that TV commercials created the difference.
Google Opens Music Shop in Android Market, Taking On Apple
Users will exist able to store and watercourse as many equally 20,000 songs on Google Music, the company pronounced today at an consequence in Los Angeles. Google has forged partnerships with 1,000 record labels, including Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group and EMI Grouping Ltd., letting it offer a entire of 13 million songs.
Google has expanded into music, television and movies to supporter promote its Android smartphone operating system, which works with the Android Market. The company, based in Hatful View, California, also sees music equally a mode to deepen its social- networking features.
“Music is more important to Google than ever before,” Jamie Rosenberg, director of digital message for Android, enounced at the event. The service will offer reviews, set information and exclusive substance from artists such equally Coldplay. Users will get 90-second previews of songs ahead they buy.
For record labels, the effort helps ensure that consumers purchase their music legally. It too decreases music companies’ reliance on Apple’s iTunes, the leading seller of digital songs.
“Any young legitimate post to consume music legally is the best equipment we receive to combat piracy,” Rob Wells, who oversees digital operations at Universal Music, articulated at the event.
Google shares descended 0.8 percent to $611.47 at the closing today in Young York. The stock has climbed 2.9 pct this year.
Onyx Myanmar
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- Google says its Young privacy policy complies with FTC Colony
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- NDP reports Android beating down iOS in first-time smartphone buyers
- EU reviews New Google policy
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- Microsoft confirm SkyDrive app for Windows 8
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- Browned rice syrup may Hold arsenic
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- Google says its Young privacy policy complies with FTC Colony