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EPIC Pushes FTC to Get in the Ring With Google February 09, 2012 
The fallout from changes Google plans to make to its privacy policies and terms of service continues, with consumer advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center suing the Federal Trade Commission over the issue. EPIC is seeking injunctive and other relief to force the FTC to enforce a consent order it issued in October against Google.
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Wolfram Alpha to Get Brainier February 07, 2012 
How much does a civil engineer in New Orleans make? What is the average temperature there? What are the differences in the trigonometric functions of sin, cos and tan? What is the exchange rate between the U.S. and the UK right now? Throw one of these questions at Siri, the voice assistant in iPhone 4S, and she will speedily reply. Fueling Siri is Wolfram Alpha, a computational knowledge search engine.
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Content Intent, Part 2 February 03, 2012 
It can be a little tricky talking about how and why media outlets allow, and indeed encourage, the diffusion of their content throughout the Web. For starters, people tend to be tightlipped about this strategy. No one from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or Viacom agreed to speak on the record for this article. They are, apparently, much less eager to discuss sharing content than they are to actually share it.
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Apple Does the Money Dance January 28, 2012 
pple's first fiscal quarter is usually a big one. The way its financial calendar works out, what it considers Q1 ends on Dec. 31, meaning it covers the entire holiday period, as well as maybe a little back-to-school action. But the numbers Apple posted about its most recent Q1 were in an entirely different class than the usual money bender it wakes up from this time of year.
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Privacy Advocates Fiercely Furrow Brows at Google January 25, 2012 
Google will consolidate about 60 of its privacy policies across its products in March, creating one overarching policy and leaving only about another 10 unchanged for legal and other reasons. The company is also changing its terms of service. It may combine information on Google account holders across all the company's services the account holder uses.
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Rival Social Nets Scold Google With 'Don't Be Evil' Bookmarklet January 24, 2012 
Engineers from Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have released a bookmarklet called "Don't Be Evil" for the Google Chrome browser. A bookmarklet is a bit of code that runs in a Web browser and temporarily enables added functionality. This one adds more social search results to Google's new Search Plus Your World feature.
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Google's Armor Shows Some Chinks January 20, 2012 
Google's investments in mobile advertising and dark clouds over Europe contributed to weak quarterly sales and earnings. Share prices fell 10 percent on the news that Google's fourth quarter sales of $8.13 billion fell short of analyst estimates of $8.41 billion. Profit before certain costs was $9.50 per share, which was a dollar shy of the $10.50 estimate on the street.
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Google's Nettlesome Search Gambit January 14, 2012 
Google has tuned up its search engine once again, but this time instead of shaving a couple of precious microseconds off its response time, it's decided to adjust some back-end systems in a way that changes the kinds of results people get, depending on who they are.
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EPIC to FTC: Did You See What Google Did There? January 12, 2012 
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has written to the Federal Trade Commission to look into new features in Google's search engine. The FTC is already looking into whether Google is breaching antitrust regulations by overly favoring its own products in Google searches. In December, Google signed a consent order with the FTC to settle the Commission's investigation of Google Buzz, a social network it rolled out in 2010.
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Google Makes Search Really, Really Personal January 10, 2012 
Google has expanded its search engine to include personal results, profiles and Google+ pages related to a given search. The new search capability, called "Search Plus Your World," was announced Tuesday. A search can now turn up relevant Google+ posts and photos from the searcher's friends as well as the searcher's own private photos.
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Google Red-Faced Over Chrome Advertising Goof January 03, 2012 
Google has become the subject of a series of withering articles calling it out for violating its own advertising policies. The company reportedly has run sponsored marketing ads for its Chrome browser using techniques that last year's Panda algorithm change was designed to prohibit. The paid sponsorships apparently resulted from a misunderstanding between Google and its marketing company, Unruly Media.
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Google's Zeitgeist: Don't Dig Too Deep for Meaning December 19, 2011 
If Google's Zeitgeist 2011 -- the company's 11th annual list of the most popular and fastest-rising Internet searches -- truly reflects the spirit of the times, then we must be living in a world of whiffle heads. The top search term was "Rebecca Black." The Web celeb was the No. 1 fastest-rising query globally.
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Siri's Mysterious Brain Fog December 02, 2011 
The performance of Apple's iPhone voice-activated "personal assistant" when asked for information about abortion information has created a tempest of controversy for the Cupertino, Calif. company, though the problem is likely a technological one, rather than part of some hidden political agenda. However, the gaffe could create potential trust problems for Apple in the future.
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Google Dabbles in Dream Tech in Hush-Hush X Lab November 14, 2011
Google scientists are laboring away on futuristic projects in a top-secret lab somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, The New York Times claims. This lab, which is apparently so hush-hush that few Googlers even knew it existed prior to the report, is allegedly called "Google X." More than 100 futuristic projects are said to be under way there.
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Apture Acquisition Could Give Chrome Extra Shine November 11, 2011 
Google has acquired a startup called Apture that provides a new type of search functionality beneficial to publishers -- or anyone, that is, who hates to see Web users leave a page's content to search out related information. Apture has developed technology that displays links to related information in the content, without forcing the reader to navigate away from the original page.
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Yap Buy Could Give Amazon More Than Just a Siri Rival November 10, 2011 
Amazon has purchased Yap, a voice recognition startup, according to an SEC filing. The move added to speculation that Amazon is preparing a voice-command service similar to Apple's Siri or Google Android's Voice Actions. The transaction was apparently completed in September, but a public statement has not been made by either company.
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