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

Google

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

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

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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Top Google searches of 2014: Robin Williams, World Cup, Ebola

Google has released its annual round-up of the year’s top global searches. Apple, Facebook and other companies also do these recaps, but those only show what we bought or posted publicly on social media. Our search history is a more honest, sometimes embarrassing, peek into what we really care about. In 2014, the entire world was sad about the passing of Robin Williams, excited to watch the World Cup and worried about Ebola. Those three topics top the list of global trending searches, which also includes missing Malaysian Airlines Flight…

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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

Privacy

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

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

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

Line between devices and cloud services fades as online storage allows users to switch without losing data by 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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The creators of Google Inbox explain why it’s the future of Gmail

Google’s on a mission to reinvent email. Its weapon: Inbox, a standalone app that launched last week. Inbox aims to make email more useful with several new tools. It surfaces relevant content (photos, for example) and information from within individual messages so you don’t have to open anything to get at what you really want. Bundles sort your messages for you, letting you find important messages faster. Plus you can add your own reminders that work with Google Now. But there’s something important that Inbox isn’t: Gmail. Although the whole…

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Our biggest search competitor is Amazon says Google Boss Eric Schmidt

Privacy

BERLIN: Google boss Eric Schmidt said on Monday his company’s biggest competition as a search engine came from e-commerce giant Amazon, not from its traditional rivals. In remarks prepared for delivery in Berlin, Schmidt hit back at accusations that Google as the world’s biggest search engine enjoyed unchallenged market dominance, saying that the sector was targeting the company on several fronts. “Many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo. But, really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon,” he said. “People don’t think of Amazon as search, but if…

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