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WSJ: Google Hit With Antitrust Lawsuit In Europe

April 15, 2015February 16, 2016 Staff Writer

“European Union regulators formally accused Google Inc. of violating the bloc’s antitrust laws by abusing its dominance of online search, escalating a long-running case that had stalled for years despite three separate attempts at a settlement. Wednesday’s move is the first time that any regulator has filed formal antitrust charges against the California search giant, putting the EU in the vanguard of a global debate over the regulation of giant Internet platforms.” Adapted from WSJ

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Google’s Domain Name Land Grab: Consumer Convenience Or Coercive Control Point?

March 6, 2015February 16, 2016

Internet naming decisions are the sort of Internet plumbing inside baseball that only interests policy wonks and marketing mavens. That is until an 800 pound gorilla like Google GOOGL +0.54% decides to pay $25 million for a single generic top-level domain name (gTLD). Buying “.app” for almost four-times the previous record for a gTLD not only raised eyebrows, but questions about the strategy behind Google’s expansive and expensive domain name land grab. Although the most costly, .app is merely one of over 100 gTLDs, Google had already spent nearly $20…

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Google US search share drops to 74.8% as Yahoo usage on Firefox almost triples since November

February 3, 2015February 16, 2016 Staff Writer

Yahoo gains further US search share in January Google falls below 75% for first time US Yahoo-on-Firefox usage almost triples since November San Francisco, CA & Dublin, Ireland; Monday 2nd February 2015: January saw Yahoo further increase the gain it made in US search share last month, according to the latest data from independent website analytics provider, StatCounter. Google fell below 75% in the US for the first time since StatCounter Global Stats began recording data*. StatCounter Global Stats reports that in January, Google took 74.8% of US search referrals…

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WSJ: U.S. Technology Companies Worry About the Backlash They Face in Europe

January 23, 2015February 17, 2016 Staff Writer

By Stephen Fidler: Europe Pulls Welcome Mat for U.S. Tech Companies One message so far from the corridors around the World Economic Forum in Davos: U.S. technology companies are very worried about the backlash they are now facing in Europe. From their standpoint, Europe risks shooting itself in the foot by rejecting the cutting-edge technologies they have brought to the continent. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? Look at it from the European point of view. Europe once led the world in mobile technology: The Global System for Mobile…

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Facebook, Apple, And Microsoft Are Ganging Up On Google — And It Couldn’t Happen At A Worse Time

January 2, 2015February 17, 2016

Back in the old days, the big bad company in tech that all the other companies teamed-up against was Microsoft. Microsoft was the evil empire. So, Apple and Google worked together to squash Microsoft. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to mentor Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google CEO Eric Schmidt used to sit on the Apple board. This is no longer the case. These days, the common enemy is Google. In recent years, there have been a number of explicit and implicit partnerships between the three biggest…

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Google Shuts Spanish Google News Service, Spanish Government Says It Has no Plans to Modify Law That Prompted Google’s Move

December 11, 2014February 17, 2016 Staff Writer

BBC News: Madrid Online search giant Google is shutting down its Google News service in Spain before a new intellectual property law is introduced. Google will shut the service on 16 December before the law comes into effect in January, the firm said. The law allows Spanish publications to charge services like Google News if their content is shown on the site. But Google has argued against the ruling, saying that it makes no money from its search-based service. “It’s with real sadness that on 16 December we’ll remove Spanish…

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WSJ: U.S. technology companies are in a pitched battle with Europe’s sovereign states

December 10, 2014February 17, 2016 Staff Writer

Discontent on Continent Highlights Battle Over Economics, Culture, Internet Control BRUSSELS—From Berlin to Madrid, from London to Paris, U.S. technology companies are in a pitched battle with Europe’s sovereign states. It is a clash that pits governments against the new tech titans, established industries against upstart challengers, and freewheeling American business culture against a more regulated European framework. And it poses one of the greatest threats to U.S. technology giants since their emergence from garages and college campuses over the past four decades. First and foremost, the battle is about…

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WashingtonPost: Why Obama’s plan to save the Internet could actually ruin it

November 24, 2014February 17, 2016

On Monday, President Obama joined the chorus of those urging FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to inject federal and state regulators directly into the heart of the Internet, “reclassifying” wired and mobile broadband ISPs as public utilities under a 1934 law written to control the former Bell telephone monopoly. While Obama has long supported the notoriously slippery idea of “net neutrality,” this is the first time the White House has explicitly asked the FCC to take specific action, let alone to embrace the most radical and legally uncertain approach being considered…

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Apple users raise privacy concerns after hard-drive files uploaded to iCloud

November 4, 2014February 17, 2016 Staff Writer

Line between devices and cloud services fades as online storage allows users to switch without losing data by Craig Timberg for the Washington Post

After security researcher Jeffrey Paul upgraded the operating system on his MacBook Pro last week, he discovered that several of his personal files had found a new home – on the cloud. The computer had saved the files

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