The European Commission has made a preliminary determination that Google's Motorola Mobility unit "abused its dominant position" under EU antitrust rules in seeking to obtain and enforce an injunction against Apple in Germany. At the center of the dispute is Motorola's claimed misuse of  "standards essential patents" in mobile patent litigation against Apple. Google's antitrust settlement with the FTC in the US requires the company not to use standards-essential patents to block rival mobile products. The European Commission says that's what Motorola was trying to do in this case. Howe [...]

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APR reports Google has been approved in a 10 - 1 vote by the San Jose City Council to lease a private airport terminal for $82 million on the west side of Mineta San Jose International Airport. The agreement is with Signature Flight Services. The only person who voted no was Pierluigi Oliverio who said this would disturb citizens with more flights and is not the best way to raise money for the airport. This will not only make air travel much more convenient for Google, it will bring in $3 million a year in rent for the airport and more airport jobs. Not everyone is happy about thi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: International

Google (and Motorola Mobility) have counter-sued the UK's BT Group (British Telecom) for patent infringement in the US and UK. This follows a 2011 patent lawsuit filing by BT against Google. Google has probably asserted its patents in an effort to provide some negotiating leverage against BT in any future settlement discussions. The patents at issue concern IP telephony, data management, networking and mobile technology. BT claims that several of Google's services infringe its patents, including aspects of Android. By contrast Google says that BT has infringed its patents with the latter's [...]

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Is it a symbol of the excesses of Silicon Valley wealth or a welcome source of new jobs and economic development? I suppose it depends on your perspective. However, the city of San Jose and its airport clearly see it as a welcome development and are prepared to approve a proposed $82 million, 29-acre private airport terminal for Google executives and their jets at Mineta San Jose International Airport. The terminal would be operated by Signature Flight Support, which provides corporate aviation services, and be constructed in partnership with Blue City Holdings, a company formed by Go [...]

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Back from his trip to North Korea, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has posted a few thoughts on his visit. But far more interesting and revealing was the travelogue from his daughter Sophie, who accompanied him on the trip. Eric Speaks Of Isolation Schmidt posted about his visit on his Google+ page, saying North Korean technology is limited, the internet is supervised and that North Korea will find it increasingly difficult to stay isolated, concluding: As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affec [...]

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Summarizing a report issued by the French government last week the New York Times says that France is considering a range of creative taxation schemes on US based Internet companies -- Google and Facebook in particular. France is trying to generate new revenues amid a challenging economic climate in Europe. Google and Facebook are seen by many European governments as "deep pockets." There's also a punitive quality to the various taxation proposals as well. France (among others) has been frustrated by what it sees as domestic tax avoidance by large Internet companies. It is seeking to c [...]

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According to the Guardian UK, Google has purchased a 2.4 acre property in the King's Cross and St Pancras station area of London. The company plans to build two buildings to consolidate its London operations into a single complex. Google currently has two London offices. The deal is reportedly worth £1 billion or roughly $1.6 billion. This follows similar moves in New York and Dublin, Ireland in the past few years. The King's Cross area has been revitalized over the past five years since the Eurostar train terminal opened at the St Pancras station in 2007. The area is now home to a [...]

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Google may be endearing itself to New Yorkers by providing free wi-fi in Chelsea, but the company's contribution -- or lack thereof -- to Internet infrastructure in France is reportedly making it enemies. That's why ISP Free earlier this year put in an ad blocker to strip out ads from Google sites and any sites accessed via Google, according to a reports in Ad Age and The Economist. The blocker was turned off after a week, and it only worked for a fraction of Free's users -- those who were using the latest version of the Freebox ISP hardware and software. But it highlighted the challenges t [...]

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While the motivations behind Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's recently completed trip to North Korea remain unclear, he clearly upstaged his host, former New Mexico Governor and UN Ambassador Bill Richardson. Richardson was ostensibly there to help win or accelerate the release of a Korean-American, Kenneth Bae, being held in captivity. But Schmidt was the focus of much of the attention and coverage. Richardson said Schmidt was greeted like a "rock star" by the North Koreans. And while it was billed as a "private humanitarian mission," Richardson sounded like a US diplomat on an offici [...]

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Accompanying a delegation led by former New Mexico Gov. and UN Ambassador Bill Richardson, Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt arrived earlier this morning  in Pyongyang, North Korea. They were there on what was described by Richardson as "a private humanitarian mission." Richardson posted the following comment about the trip on his website: Governor Bill Richardson will travel to North Korea next week on a private humanitarian mission. The delegation will consist of former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Dr. KA Namkung; Jared Cohen, Dire [...]

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Reuters reports that French authorities are talking to Google about paying substantial "back taxes." The wire service says that the French Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac had "convincing proof" that Google owed France money. France is one of several European countries that believe Google should be paying more in taxes. Cahuzac said that if the parties failed to come to some agreement France would take the issue to the courts. All this seems to confirm what was reported earlier this month by satirical French publication Le Canard Enchaine that Google was to be hit with a billion Euro tax b [...]

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The incident informally known as "Safarigate" or "Cookiegate" is now behind Google. On Friday, a court approved Google's $22.5 million settlement with the FTC. Some Google critics decried the settlement as having little impact on Google. The episode began in February of this year, when the Wall Street Journal discovered that Google (and others such as Gannett’s PointRoll) were circumventing mobile Safari’s default “no third party cookies” settings in order to track user behaviors. Google contended it was simply trying to make its "+1 buttons" work on iOS. The company argued nothi [...]

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Google, Facebook, Twitter and even Starbucks are being criticized and investigated for what several European governments consider to be tax avoidance. In the UK and France in particular Google is under scrutiny. And earlier this week a French newspaper (albeit like the satirical Onion) reported that French authorities had served a whopping EUR 1 billion tax bill on Google. Google has denied that it has received such a bill. Google's practice of billing advertisers and running profits through its Irish subsidiary, which is legal, allows the company to minimize taxes. According to a Reuter [...]

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A UK journalist claims that he's replicated US writer Nathan Newman's informal "experiment" suggesting that Google conducts "racial profiling" in the AdWords it shows to Gmail users. The UK journalist says his investigation reproduced "similarly disturbing results" comparable to the US test. Newman's earlier test, conducted roughly a year ago, involved the use of nine different names, which were stand-ins for race and ethnicity. The different names were paired with the same subject lines to produce different ad units in many instances. For example the subject line "education" produced the f [...]

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Ever since Chinese government surrogates unsuccessfully hacked into Gmail in early 2010, Google has struggled with its "China policy." It threatened to withdraw from China and then reversed itself. Mountain View has been unable to resist the lure of the world's largest internet and mobile market. Google's PC search share in China is a very distant second to Baidu. However it is apparently and somewhat unexpectedly dominant in another Chinese market segment: mobile in-app display advertising. Bloomberg reports that Google's AdMob has staked out a leadership position and a big lead among a [...]

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Apple has been waging a proxy war with Google and Android through its global litigation with Samsung. Now the companies will be directly battling it out in a new action filed by Google subsidiary Motorola before the US International Trade Commission (ITC). Motorola filed and partly won a patent case before the ITC, prior to the Google acquisition. But this is the first case filed under Google ownership. The earlier Motorola ITC patent victory was based on a single claim related to wireless 3G standards. Motorola seeks an import ban on iPhones in that case. A final decision from the administ [...]

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According to Reuters the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has opened a formal antitrust investigation against Google. The article reports that CCI received a complaint that Google had "contravened" an Indian "competition rule." However that rule and the substance of the complaint aren't identified. Google told Reuters that it was cooperating with the CCI and was confident that it hadn't violated any Indian regulations. This is merely the latest legal headache for Google in India. The country has also sought to impose aggressive censorship rules on Google that require Google to block [...]

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Governments that had previously closed the book on Street View privacy investigations appear to be considering "round two," in the wake of the FCC report that asserted that the personal data collected was not inadvertent but intentional. Privacy regulators in both the UK and Australia are now considering reopening Street View privacy cases that were previously closed. Several other European nations had concluded similar investigations with either no penalties or relatively minor fines assessed against Google. Those generally favorable outcomes for Google were largely based on earlier sta [...]

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Google is under antitrust investigations in the US, Europe, Argentina and South Korea. Now India has said it will investigate AdWords for anti-competitive behavior, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The  Competition Commission of India said that although it's initially focused on AdWords the scope of the investigation could expand over time. The WSJ cites data showing that "less than 10% of India's population of 1.2 billion is online" but that Google now controls a "50 percent share of the overall Indian digital ad market." The WSJ described one of the several complaints recei [...]

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In a court ruling that both sides are calling a partial victory, a German court has ruled that YouTube must improve its copyright protection in Germany, but stopped short of telling the site to go back and remove all copyrighted material currently on the site. Hamburg's state court has told YouTube Germany that it must prevent users from uploading some music videos whose copyrights belong to the German royalties agency, GEMA. The court wants Google to use software to monitor and stop users from uploading alternate versions (i.e., live recordings) of songs that have already been flagged for [...]

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