Facebook is gearing up to face off with the government again—this time over privacy concerns in two different venues: the California courts and a Canadian commission.
Twitter Hires Prominent Lawer Amidst Legal Concerns
It wouldn’t be the Internet if there wasn’t just as much talk of legal action as there is of innovation. Google knows this better than anyone as they fend off lawsuits on a regular basis that are related (at least loosely in some cases) to their offerings and the apparent lines that are crossed by the search giant. Twitter has gotten a taste of that with the Tony LaRussa impersonation account issue.
eCommerce Concerns Regarding Blended Search
The SEO industry has only seen one constant — change. The well known proverb, "change is the only constant" should be stenciled somewhere near all our desks. Sometimes the change is wanted, and sometimes not.
A specific aspect of SEO that has seen a lot of change is blended search. Jill Kocher of Practical-eCommerce wrote about her concern regarding blended search and e-commerce…
Alleviating Google Latitude Privacy Concerns
Google’s recently announced Latitude service has sparked a bit of concern among privacy advocates and the generally paranoid. I spoke with a Google Spokesperson about this.
Google Latitude is a feature in Google Maps for mobile and iGoogle that allows you to share your location with your family and friends in real time.
Google Alleviates Privacy Concerns About Flu Tracker
Yesterday Google announced its Flu Trends tool, which tracks outbreaks of the Flu. Of course like with just about everything Google does, there are critics, and very often the concerns of these critics stem from privacy issues. This case is no different. So before the speculation and criticism spirals too far out of control, Google decided to nip it in the bud, and address these things right away. A post at the Official Google Blog says:
Apple Leader’s Health, Earnings, Raise Concerns
The leadership of Steve Jobs helped Apple become more than an iconic computer maker, by shifting it to a hugely profitable electronics business.
Facebook Loses Advertisers As Concerns Deepen
Things just keep looking worse for Facebook’s Beacon: Coca-Cola and other advertisers are opting out of the program; there may be legal troubles ahead; and some investigative security work shows that Beacon sends information about user activity even when logged out of Facebook.
Google Street View Privacy Concerns Commence
Google saw someone’s cat – and so it begins. Earlier this week, the search engine giant released Street View, a Google Maps feature that allows users to see things from the perspective of a person driving down a public road. Now privacy concerns are beginning to mount.
Google Privacy Concerns
On Friday I mentioned that privacy advocates are becoming even more concerned with how much information Google knows and will know about us. Two recent events are causing the uproar. First is Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, which would come with a large amounts of user data the ad company has collected over the years. Second is the slightly more recent expansion of search history to web history within Google’s personalized search. Both will give Google more information about our surfing and searching habits than any company has ever had.
Microsoft Responds to RSS Patent Concerns
Last week, the U.S. Patent Office lifted the 18-month window of secrecy on two patent filings from Microsoft that analysts viewed as attempts by the company aimed at achieving exclusive rights to RSS aggregation technology.