While Google's PC search market share may be hovering below 5 percent, Android is the overwhelmingly dominant smartphone operating system in the world's largest mobile market. As a result China may be preparing to take some sort of regulatory action against it. According to a Reuters report the Chinese government released a white paper, through its state-controlled China Academy of Telecommunication Research, that expresses concern about Android's domestic market share. According to figures cited by Reuters Android is on about 90 percent of Chinese smartphones, while iOS has less than 5 [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Critics | Google: Mobile | Legal: Antitrust | Mobile Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Top News

There were several reports from late last week indicating that Google is negotiating with major labels in anticipation of the launch of Spotify-like music streaming service. As part of these negotiations, according to the LA Times, "Google is proposing a premium subscription service" on YouTube that would encompass music videos and perhaps audio-only songs. The suggested launch window is fall 2013. A well-executed streaming capability would potentially threaten smaller services such as Spotify or MOG. Apple is also rumored to be preparing a streaming Internet radio competitor to Pand [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Partnerships | Google: YouTube | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Top News

When it comes to the issue of privacy, it seems that Google and Europe are on opposite sides of an ocean, metaphorically speaking. Reuters reports this morning that frustrated European authorities "plan to take action" against Google for its failure to satisfy them regarding its consolidated privacy policy. Google has maintained that its privacy policy conforms to all European laws and regulations. Privacy regulators from France and across Europe have heavily criticized the "consolidated" Google privacy policy and say it overreaches. However, they've stopped short of declaring it "illegal." [...]

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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 [...]

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The AP is reporting that a German court has invalidated a decision of the German privacy regulator, which opposes Facebook's real names/identities policy. Privacy regulators oppose the Facebook policy on the grounds that German and European privacy and free-speech rules prohibit a ban on fake names. However the court's decision is not based on German law. According to the AP report, "The administrative court in northern German Schleswig argued in its ruling Thursday that German privacy laws weren't applicable because Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland - which has less far-rea [...]

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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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Google: International | Google: Legal | Google: Mobile | Legal: Patents

It's been a week since Microsoft went on the attack against Gmail, launching its "Scroogled" campaign portraying Gmail as a privacy monster that reads your emails for ad targeting purposes. How's that been working out? To date, the Microsoft-backed petition against Gmail's practices has gained about over 6,000 signatures -- equal to about 0.002% of Gmail's user base. The Petition To Nowhere At the Scroogled site, Microsoft invites people to sign an online petition. In the week it has been up, it's gathered about 5,600 signatures: That's hardly an overwhelming response, especially consider [...]

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Oracle has filed an appeal in its unsuccessful copyright and patent case against Google involving the Java programming language (specifically Java APIs). Oracle acquired Java when it bought Sun Microsystems several years ago. At trial, Oracle was basically shut out on all its claims. It appears that Oracle is only appealing the copyright portion of the case. The jury originally did find copyright infringement by Google, but also found that Google's selective use of Java in the Android OS constituted "fair use." Fair use is a defense against infringement. The judge in the case, William Al [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Legal: Patents

Facebook and AddThis, the social sharing platform company, are named as defendants in a lawsuit that claims two violations of patent infringement law. Rembrandt Social Media, a patent-holding company, filed the suit last week in Virginia, saying that Facebook infringed on two of its patents and AddThis on one. As Ars Technica reported, Rembrandt is working with the family of Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer, a Dutch programmer described in the lawsuit as "a pioneer in the development of user-friendly Web-based technologies," who died in 2004. Van Der Meer, who once owned the surfb [...]

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A bug at Flickr caused some people to have their private photos opened to public view over the past three weeks. Flickr said the bug only impacted a small number of users and only photos uploaded from April to December 2012. Flickr Quietly Tells Users Flickr made no post about this on its blog. Instead, yesterday, as one of the impacted users, Flickr sent me an email to politely let me know that hundreds of my private photos were opened to the public for a 20-day period recently. The email said Flickr had: Identified a software bug that may have changed the view setting on some of your phot [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Legal: Privacy | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr

If at first you don't succeed, get negative once again, seems to be the game plan at Microsoft. Having attacked Google Shopping with a "Scroogled" campaign last November, Microsoft is back again. This time it goes after Gmail as an evil service that invades your email privacy, armed with polling data showing consumer concern -- and perhaps one valid point about an easier opt-out. The Microsoft Survey & Consumer Disapproval Microsoft commissioned a survey of over 1,006 adults in the US from Feb. 1-4, asking about email services that target ads based on the content of your email. You kno [...]

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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 [...]

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Following its earlier report on privacy and mobile apps for kids, the FTC has released a sweeping report on mobile privacy in general. It's based on the Commission's work for several years, as well as a compilation of third party and stakeholder recommendations and proposed policies developed through FTC workshops. The report includes a host of detailed recommendations for each sector of the mobile ecosystem, including developers, ad networks and platform providers. The recommendations are framed as suggestions and aren't 'mandatory. However, the agency strongly implies that some of these [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy | Mobile Marketing

For a time, it looked like Apple's $1 billion patent infringement verdict against Samsung would would rock the smartphone world. However, in the months since the landmark decision was handed down, it has proven to be little more than a symbolic victory. Courts and the US International Trade Commission have been loath to ban the import of Android devices regardless of infringement findings. Apple is thus left with its damages and the dubious, symbolic argument that its claims were vindicated by the courts. None of that means anything to the smartphone buying public. By duplicating the "tr [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Legal: Patents | Samsung

Even as US lawmakers propose new digital privacy protections for consumers, the US looks like a libertarian fantasyland and regulation-free zone compared with Europe in the minds of tech companies. European regulators and governments are seeking to enact sweeping privacy rules that would place enormous compliance burdens on US-based Internet companies. As a result, the US government is standing beside Internet companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and eBay, lobbying European regulators to dilute or weaken the proposed rules. The New York Times sums up what could be required of Interne [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy

Coinciding with Data Privacy Day, Twitter has produced its second Twitter Transparency Report, and this version has expanded information about the various legal requests that come from the U.S. Twitter is also giving the report a new home at transparency.twitter.com. The statistics in this report are fairly consistent with Twitter's first transparency report last summer. The U.S. is still the biggest source of government information requests with 81 percent of all requests in the second half of 2012. (That figure was 80 percent for the first half of the year.) Overall, requests in the se [...]

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

Too bad Twitter didn't originally register "Twitter.org" as well. It would have saved the company from the headache of trying to gain control of the domain, which is now being used to conduct scam surveys of people who unwittingly arrive thinking they're at Twitter.com. The Twitter.org site is set up to intentionally create confusion and make it appear that the actual Twitter is conducting a survey and giving away prizes. The look and feel of the landing page replicates Twitter's earlier design and branding. Fusible.com first reported this story. Twitter has filed a complaint with the Wo [...]

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According to Reuters yesterday Apple has agreed to drop patent infringement claims against the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini. Despite its availability online in several places, including Amazon, Samsung represented to the court that it's not "making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the Galaxy S III Mini in the United States." On that basis Apple has withdrawn its complaint. Indeed, a search on the Samsung US website doesn't shows only the Galaxy S3 in response to a search for "Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini." However the phone can be purchased on the US version of Amazon's website as [...]

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Which ad networks are -- deliberately or inadvertently -- contributing to piracy of movies, TV shows and music by running ads on the sites that enable the illegal distribution of this copyrighted material? Answering that question was the aim of a USC Annenberg Innovation Lab study released today that found that Google, Yahoo and Quantcast are among the top ten networks placing ads on well-known pirate sites. The researchers used Google's transparency report related to copyright violation sites to identify pirate sites, then crawled them to determine what ad networks were serving ads on tho [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Google: Display Advertising | Legal: Copyright & Trademark

Two months after Microsoft introduced the same type privacy policy changes that Google did, and was attacked by the European Union over, the EU is finally getting around to questioning the Microsoft move. Microsoft's change happened on October 19. It was announced with little notice to consumers. Despite allowing for cross-platform sharing in the way privacy changes at Google allowed earlier this year, it attracted virtually no press attention nor that of regulators. In contrast, Google's change drew heavy attention the day it was announced and which continued on. Ten days after the anno [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features & Analysis | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Privacy | Top News