Microsoft and Google are involved in a battle over the YouTube app for Windows Phones, and Microsoft has followed a cease-and-desist letter from Google by questioning Google's commitment to interoperability and working together. As The Verge reported today, Google sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Microsoft remove the YouTube app from its Windows Phone Store because Microsoft's version of the app doesn't include Google's ads. Microsoft has responded today in a statement shared with Marketing Land that says Google hasn't given Microsoft access to the necessary APIs t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google | Google: Business Issues | Google: YouTube | Legal: General | Microsoft | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Windows Phone | Top News

Business Insider has an interesting and in-depth article about the ongoing legal cases that could land eBay's two biggest affiliates in jail soon on charges of wire fraud. If you've been in the online marketing industry for a while, you may recognize the names Shawn Hogan and Brian Dunning. They're the two affiliates that eBay and the FBI started pursuing in 2006 after suspecting that they were earning millions while violating eBay's affiliate terms of service. According to court documents, Hogan made an astounding $28 million in affiliate commissions from eBay, and Dunning made $7 milli [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Channel: Content Marketing | Internet Marketing Industry | Legal | Legal: General

(screenshot via CNN) Twitter is warning media outlets to be "extra vigilant" in light of today's incident involving a fake tweet sent out by hackers that had gained access to the Associated Press' Twitter account, @AP. It's also good advice for brands and marketers -- and for all Twitter users, actually. Shortly after 1:00 pm EST today, the AP's account sent out a (fake) tweet saying that President Obama was injured after "two explosions in the White House." The Dow Jones stock market index momentarily tanked almost 150 points. The AP disabled its Twitter accounts, at least temporari [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal: General | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Accounts & Profiles | Twitter: Business Issues | Twitter: Legal

According to a recent Ars Technica article, two CMA Communications customers have reported banner ads being injected directly into webpages on popular websites, and they are blaming the ISP. Earlier this year, Robert Silvie and Zachary Henkel noticed banner ads running along the bottom of pages belonging to companies like Apple, Walmart, Target, Bing and eBay. Both Silvie and Henkel were using Internet service provider CMA Communications when they spotted the suspicious banner ads. Knowing that Bing didn't run commodity banner ads at the bottom of its home page, Silvie first thought it w [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Domaining | Legal: General | Legal: Privacy

Under the banner of preventing "fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices," the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has updated its online advertising disclosure guidelines and requirements. A previous version of these guidelines was issued in 2000. The rise of mobile devices and social media marketing, in particular, were cited as reasons the guidelines were updated: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising, takes into account the expanding use of smartphones with small screens and the rise of social media marketing . . . Like the original, the updated guidan [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: General | Mobile Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising

Facebook is the latest major Internet company to admit that it's been victimized by hackers, but says it's found no evidence that user information was compromised. In a blog post this afternoon, Facebook says it discovered the hack last month after "a handful of employees" had visited a compromised website. The website hosted an exploit that installed malware on its employees' computers. "We have found no evidence that Facebook user data was compromised," the post says in bold lettering. Facebook says the episode was the result of a "sophisticated attack," one that involved a zero-day [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Business Issues | Legal | Legal: General | Top News

Twitter says a group of "extremely sophisticated" hackers may have recently accessed limited user information for about 250,000 users accounts, prompting the company to reset the passwords associated with those accounts and remind all of its users to create a stronger password. The investigation is still going on, but Twitter says the hackers might've accessed some users' personal information: This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process mom [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal: General | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Accounts & Profiles | Twitter: Business Issues

In February 2012 the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a study of privacy and mobile apps for kids. The study concluded that parents weren't given enough information in the app stores to properly evaluate privacy practices. At the time the FTC issued some recommendations for app developers, as well as Apple and Google: All members of the "kids app ecosystem" – the stores, developers and third parties providing services – should play an active role in providing key information to parents. App developers should provide data practices information in simple and short disclosu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: General | Legal: Privacy

The plaintiff that recently won a $2.7 billion judgment against Yahoo in a Mexican lawsuit is willing to settle the case for less money. Carlos Bazan-Canabal tells Reuters that Ideas Interactivas and its holding company, Worldwide Directories, are willing to listen if Yahoo wants to settle the case. "If we can reach a settlement with an interesting number, we would go for it." The lawsuit came to light last week when Yahoo announced its plan to appeal what would be a significant financial hit. The Reuters article also sheds more light on the issues that initially led to the breach [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: General | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo is planning to appeal a $2.7 billion judgment against it in a lawsuit over a yellow pages listings service in Mexico. The company announced the judgment and its plan to appeal in a short news release this afternoon. Details about the case are vague. Yahoo's statement says that a company called Worldwide Directories S.A. de C.V. and Ideas Interactivas, S.A. de C.V. sued Yahoo and Yahoo Mexico for breach of contract, breach of promise and lost profits related to contracts for a yellow pages listing service. Some reports say that Worldwide Directories is the parent company of Ideas I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: General | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues

PeopleBrowsr, the social analytics platform that derives substantially all its data (including its Kred scoring) from access to Twitter's feed, has fallen victim to Twitter's recent ambitions to rein in and exercise more control over its ecosystem. The company, which once promised an open platform and developer access to its data "firehose," has more recently tightened the rules surrounding use of its API. PeopleBrowsr's business is fundamentally threatened by these changes. And so it sought (and obtained) a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing Twitter from cutting off its direct ac [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal: Antitrust | Legal: General | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Business Issues

For the third consecutive year, websites selling counterfeit products online have been seized on Cyber Monday, the day generally thought to be the busiest online shopping day of the year. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced today that 132 domain names have been seized this year in two campaigns known as "Project Cyber Monday 3" and "Project Transatlantic." The latter project refers to the fact that law enforcement agencies in several European countries also took part. The US-based effort nabbed 101 domains, while the European project claimed another 31. The ICE s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Domaining | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Legal: General | Top News

Fighting deceptive advertising on the web is probably akin to playing a game of Whac-A-Mole, but the FTC has scored a hit against affiliate marketers that allegedly used deceptive ads to sell acai berry weight-loss products and colon cleansers. The FTC recently announced a $2 million settlement with the Clickbooth affiliate network over charges that Clickbooth's affiliate marketers deceived consumers with "bogus weight loss claims on fake news sites." According to the complaint, the affiliates used websites that looked like real news sites and used domains such as online6health.com, cha [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Channel: Content Marketing | Legal: General | Top News

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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: International | Google: Legal | Legal: Antitrust | Legal: General | Legal: Privacy | Top News

Google announced that the number of content removal requests submitted by governments have spiked in the first half of the year. From January through June 2012, there were there were 1,791 requests from government officials around the world to remove 17,746 pieces of content, almost double the previous six-month period. Here is the chart showing the recent spike in content removal requests: From January to June 2012, the following countries made the most requests to remove content: Turkey (501) United States (273) Germany (247) Brazil (191) United Kingdom (97) Gover [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Legal: Censorship | Legal: General | Legal: Privacy | Top News

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 [...]

Related Topics: Amazon | Channel: Retail | Facebook: Business Issues | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: International | Google: Legal | Legal: General | Top News | Twitter: Business Issues

Reuters is confirming that the civil penalty Google will pay to settle the "Cookiegate" episode, in which it bypassed the default Safari privacy settings on the iPhone, is $22.5 million. This figure was previously reported and represents a fine of $16,000 per violation per day. In February the Wall Street Journal first reported that Google and other ad networks (i.e., Gannett’s PointRoll) were discovered circumventing mobile Safari’s default “no third party cookies” settings. Google said it was simply trying to make its +1 buttons work on iOS and nothing sinister was intended. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: General | Legal: Privacy

What could be worse than a web site apparently using your content without permission? How about getting a legal threat from that same site demanding a $20,000 payment? Faced with this type of crazy situation, Matthew Inman, aka The Oatmeal, responded with the type of humor and out-of-the-box thinking he's known for. He decided to raise money for a charity instead. After only a few days, Inman's raised nearly $150,000 and generated plenty of chuckles across the web with his approach. The Oatmeal Vs. FunnyJunk, Round 1 Inman makes funny web comics, quizzes and products that wholeheartedly e [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Legal: General | Top News

According to reports just coming out, the jury in the Oracle-Google trial has found that Google did not infringe any of Oracle's patents with Android. Thus there are no damages that Google must pay to Oracle. This is near total victory for Google. In an earlier phase of the trial Google was found by the jury to have violated Oracle's copyright in using some Java code in Android APIs. However, the jury deadlocked on the question of Google's defense of "fair use." The status of that portion of the trial is still unresolved. Final determinations about the copyright issues will be mad [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Legal | Google: Mobile | Legal: General | Legal: Patents

As we reported back in December, a Sponsored Stories lawsuit was allowed to proceed against the social media giant as Facebook failed to have it thrown out.  Today, the lawsuit was settled "in principle"at a federal court in San Jose, CA. Originally five Facebook members sued Facebook with claims that their privacy was infringed upon as their likeness was used in ads without their permission or ability to opt-out.  Sponsored stories match users who have liked or commented on a page/post with ads for Facebook pages. More information on the specific ads can be found in the video below: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Facebook | Facebook: Legal | Legal: General | Legal: Privacy