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Right to Be Forgotten? Europe’s Orwellian Internet Time Warp

May 28, 2014March 3, 2016

By David Kirkpatrick When the European Court of Justice—the rough equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court—ruled that individuals have the “Right to Be Forgotten,” it took a dangerous step backward. Among many potential negative consequences, it could contribute to slowing global economic growth. The court endorsed a profoundly a historical, anti-technological argument about the supposed rights of individuals. The plaintiff, Mario Costeja Gonzalez, is a Spanish citizen who was joined by a Spanish government agency in arguing that Google ought not link to a 1998 newspaper mention of a real estate…

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Email exchanges between NSA and Google executives reveal far cozier relationship

May 7, 2014March 3, 2016

Email exchanges between National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt suggest a far cozier working relationship between some tech firms and the U.S. government than was implied by Silicon Valley brass after last year’s revelations about NSA spying. Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency’s vast capability for spying on Americans’ electronic communications prompted a number of tech executives whose firms cooperated with the government to insist they had done so only when compelled by a court of law.…

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Microsoft Just Lost A Huge Customer To Google: The City Of Boston

January 7, 2014 Staff Writer

The City of Boston has decided to rip out its Microsoft email technology and move 76,000 people to Google Apps. These email accounts were previously mostly using Microsoft Exchange, according to a blog post by Boston CIO Bill Oates. This is one of the largest customers that Google has swiped from Microsoft to date and is significant for a few reasons. For one, it’s another feather in Google’s increasingly impressive cap. According to Google, Boston would be among the biggest contracts it has won for Apps. Other huge ones: Roche (90,000…

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Google’s ‘Zeitgeist’ Top Searches For 2013 Revealed

December 18, 2013December 18, 2013 Staff Writer

Google has revealed its annual look at the top searches for 2013, and as ever it’s revealing, interesting, and mildly disturbing. This year Google split the list into the top “trending” searches – IE those with the most intense periods of interest – and “most searched” terms overall. Among the highlights were the fact that Paul Walker was the top trending search of the year, after his untimely death following a car crash in November, followed by ‘iPhone 5S’ and ‘royal baby’. The top “What Is?” search was led by…

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Google removes record-breaking 200m piracy links so far in 2013

November 14, 2013 Staff Writer

BPI and RIAA filed more than 74m takedown notices combined this year, with FilesTube topping list of removals Google has been forced to remove over 200m “pirate” links from its search listings by rights holders in 2013 a four-fold increase over 2012. Data released as part of Google’s transparency reports, compiled by TorrentFreak, show that at the current rate removal of alleged piracy links, Google will have been forced to delete over 250m by the end of 2013. The UK and US recording industry trade bodies BPI and RIAA lead…

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Google talks African strategy

November 11, 2013 Staff Writer

Trying to use a single e-commerce strategy across various regions is bad business. This was the word from Luke McKend, country head for Google SA, who was speaking at the World Retail Congress Africa, held in Sandton this week. McKend said this statement is particularly relevant in an African context. People are increasingly using the Internet to look for an instantaneous response that is related to where they are, according to McKend. “Fully a third of all Google searches have some kind of implicit location information,” he said, adding that…

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Facebook & Google Move Up On Social Network Creep Index

October 31, 2013 Staff Writer

Google and Facebook gave the anti-social networking crowd new ammunition as they made moves that kicked them up a notch on the social media creep index. Let’s put it this way: If you were looking for an excuse to give up on these companies, these recent announcements certainly don’t give you good reasons to reconsider staying. As I define it, the creep index is like the Defcon Warning System of social media. Instead of defining how close we are to nuclear war, it measures just how intrusive and creepy our…

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book fair targets Internet giants Amazon, Apple and Google

October 11, 2013 Staff Writer

Organisers of the world’s biggest book fair warned on Tuesday against the domination of Internet giants as the publishing world grapples to blend old and new forms of reading. American giants Amazon, Apple and Google — whose entry into the world of online sales and digital books is threatening the traditional publishing industry — are “logistics magicians but are not publishers”, said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair. “There’s no passion there,” he told reporters as the giant German book fair prepared to open Wednesday. Boos warned it…

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Now That It’s in the Broadband Game, Google Flip-Flops on Network Neutrality

July 31, 2013July 31, 2013 Staff Writer

In a dramatic about-face on a key internet issue yesterday, Google told the FCC that the network neutrality rules Google once championed don’t give citizens the right to run servers on their home broadband connections, and that the Google Fiber network is perfectly within its rights to prohibit customers from attaching the legal devices of their choice to its network. At issue is Google Fiber’s Terms of Service, which contains a broad prohibition against customers attaching “servers” to its ultrafast 1 Gbps network in Kansas City. Google wants to ban…

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