As reported last week, Google has formally settled the so-called "WiSpy" case with 30 US state Attorneys General for $7 million. The agreement also contains some other non-monetary provisions that are, frankly, more meaningful. The investigation began in 2010 concerning unauthorized collection of private emails and other "payload" data by Google Street View vehicles. The US Federal Communications Commission concluded its own investigation of the affair with no finding of liability against Google. As mentioned, the $7 million settlement is insignificant for Google. However, the press rel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: SpyView | Google: Street View | Legal: Privacy

[caption id="attachment_65488" align="alignright" width="300"] Image courtesy Shutterstock.com[/caption] Google has won a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin woman, Beverly Stayart, over Google Instant suggestions leading to a search result set that had ads. Beverly Stayart claimed Google suggested a search query phrase for the term [Bev Stayart levitra]. When you landed on that page of search results, Google would show search ads for Levitra and other treatments for erectile dysfunction. Beverly Stayart sued Google for using her name to make money without her approval. The U.S. Seventh Circui [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Legal | Legal: Privacy

According to AllThingsD, Google is about to settle the so-called "WiSpy" investigation with 30 US state Attorneys Generals. Google will admit no wrongdoing and pay $7 million according to the report. The article says the settlement will be announced next week. In early 2012, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concluded its own WiSpy investigation with no finding of liability against Google, but fined the company $25,000 for not cooperating with its investigation -- a claim that Google aggressively disputed. The WiSpy scandal was global in scope. If you've forgotten, it i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: I/O | Google: Legal | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: SpyView | Google: Street View | Legal: Privacy | Top News

Google Maps may be banned in Germany as the result of a patent infringement lawsuit underway at a regional court in Germany. As FOSS Patents reports, Judge Matthias Zigann told Google today that he's inclined to hold the company liable for infringing a Microsoft patent that describes a "computer system for identifying local resources and method therefor." The judge reportedly called the patent, which describes how map data and local search results can be combined, a "big idea." Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents explains the possible ramifications if the judge sides with Microsoft, as expec [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Legal | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Outside US | Legal: Patents | Top News

In August of last year, a number of German lawmakers were pressing proposed "ancillary copyright" legislation that would have required Google and others that indexed or aggregated news to pay for links or excerpts from those news items. The proposed law was championed by German magazine and newspaper publishers who, like their counterparts in the US, are seeing declining readership and ad sales. The law did pass in the German parliament, but Bloomberg reports that a compromise reached earlier this week stayed in. That compromise will allow Google (and others) "to display 'single word [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: News | Google: Outside US | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Crawling & Indexing | Top News

The good news for search engines like Google is a proposed German copyright law won't require them to pay to show short summaries of news content. However, uncertainty remains about how much might be "too much" and require a license. The new law is expected to pass on Friday. NOTE: See our follow-up story from today: Google Avoids Link Tax But Ambiguous New “Ancillary Copyright” Law Sets Up Legal Battle To Come Der Spiegel explains more about the change: "Google will still be permitted to use "snippets" of content from publisher's web sites in its search results.... "What the ne [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: News | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Crawling & Indexing

Although slightly different than the Spanish case discussed yesterday, the "right to be forgotten" has reared its head again -- this time in the UK." UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve has threatened legal action against anyone posting pictures of convicted killer Jon Venables online. TechDirt offers a short summary of the underlying facts of the Vendables case: Jon Venables, [ ] at the age of 10, murdered 2-year old James Bulger, in a rather horrifying story. Venables was released from jail in 2001, at the age of 19 (though he has since gone back to prison). Photos of Venables, now 30 yea [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Privacy | Twitter: Business Issues

In a test case that could have significant implications for Google throughout Europe the company faced off against the Spanish data protection authority in the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. One could frame the case as "privacy vs. censorship." From the Spanish government's point of view its data protection authority is simply vindicating the recently articulated right (of individuals) "to be forgotten" -- to have content or data about them removed from the search index upon request. From Google's perspective, if the court agrees with Spain, the outcome would be tanta [...]

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Google's antitrust case in the US concluded in January, much to the dismay of companies that had been agitating for tough action by the FTC. It was seen as a near total victory for Google. Rivals quickly turned their attention to Europe in the hope that, unencumbered by some of the legal issues that inhibited US regulators, it would be willing to impose "meaningful" restraints on Google. There were some signals from EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia that Europe was going to take a firm stand on the vertical search or "search bias" issue. Google's alleged "search bias" towar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Antitrust | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Regulation

[caption id="attachment_65488" align="alignright" width="240"] Image courtesy Shutterstock.com.[/caption] A Wisconsin appeals court this week affirmed a circuit court's ruling that it's OK to use trademarks as keywords to trigger the display of paid search ads. The court's conclusions are in line with search engines' policies with regard to trademark bidding and with a Federal case decided last year in California. The Wisconsin case, which involved two personal injury law firms, centered around what it means to "use" a name for advertising purposes. In the 2009 lawsuit, the owners of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Trademarks | Microsoft: Bing Ads

Yesterday, Australia's highest judicial body, called The High Court of Australia, overturned a lower court decision that held Google responsible for paid-search ads deemed deceptive by  Australia's antitrust regulator, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC). According to Bloomberg, roughly six years ago the ACCC sued Google claiming that certain travel-related ads appearing in search results were misleading or deceptive. The Commission sought to hold Google responsible for the content of those ads, relying on a pre-Internet decision finding a TV broadcaster responsible [...]

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Google has avoided getting hit with a "link tax" in France by agreeing to create a €60 million "Digital Publishing Innovation Fund" to essentially help French media adapt to the online age. The settlement, announced today in France by President Francois Hollande and Google's Eric Schmidt -- and announced on Google's blog -- ends several months of debate over France's plan to charge Google for linking to French news content. When the French law was first proposed, Google threatened to just stop linking to French newspaper websites, saying that the country's publishers would miss out on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: News | Google: Outside US | Legal: Regulation | Top News

Yesterday, right under the deadline, Google delivered its proposal to the European Commission (EC) in an effort to settle potential antitrust claims against the company and head off a formal enforcement action. The proposal was required to concretely address four "areas of concern" identified by the EC. Briefly, those involve "search bias" and "diversion of traffic," improper use of third party content and reviews by Google, third party publisher exclusivity agreements and portability of ad campaigns to other search platforms. Google essentially addressed three of the four areas in its sett [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Antitrust | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Regulation

[caption id="attachment_65488" align="alignright" width="240"] Image courtesy Shutterstock.com[/caption] New York-based Vringo has sued Microsoft over two patents that pertain to the ranking and placement of ads in search results. The patents were originally issued in the early '90s and owned for a long time by Lycos, which later sold them. The patents in question are 6,314,420 and 6,775,664, referred to in the complaint (below) as the "420" and "664" patents. They wound up at Vringo, a company that sells video ringtones for mobile phones. The company's real business however is pat [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Legal: Patents | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Microsoft: Business Issues | Top News

Yesterday, the Judiciary Committee of the German Bundestag -- Germany's national parliament -- held an expert hearing on a proposed "Leistungsschutzrecht" law for news publishers. The law, known as "ancillary copyright" in English, would require search engines and others -- perhaps even Facebook, Twitter and individual bloggers -- to pay news publishers if they link to or even briefly summarize news content. The hearing didn't result in a vote. It was the next step in a process that may lead to Leistungsschutzrecht becoming law or not. Below, some background on what happened at the hearing, [...]

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That didn't take long, did it? Tom Scott, one of the current users of Facebook Graph Search, has started a Tumblr blog to document its potential privacy train wrecks. "I just got Graph Search and it's actually so creepy that I've started this Tumblr to document it," Scott wrote on Facebook yesterday. His blog offers examples of searches that are a mix of comedy and creepiness, in my opinion. He has things like "Single women who live nearby and who are interested in men and like Getting Drunk," "Mothers of Jews who like Bacon" and this one below, "Married people who like Prostitutes ... t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Facebook: Facebook Search | Legal: Privacy | Top News

The post-mortem analysis of Google's antitrust settlement happened very quickly yesterday and this morning with some journalists and analysts concluding that factors other than the law were responsible behind the scenes. For example, Politico asserts it was largely "a calculated and expensive charm offensive" (lobbying) that drove the outcome yesterday. An even more absurd analysis argues that Google is essential to US foreign policy and thus the FTC let the company off the hook. While Google lobbying may have had an impact, in reality the the facts and the law weren't on the FTC's sid [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features: Analysis | Google: Antitrust | Google: Critics | Google: Web Search | Legal: Regulation | Top News

After 19 months of investigation, political maneuvering, lobbying and intense speculation the FTC has closed its antitrust investigation of Google. The outcome is almost exactly as we reported yesterday and it's probably legally correct. Google comes away largely unscathed from the process. Once can hear the celebrations getting started in Mountain View. The settlement has three components. Henceforth there will be no involuntary scraping of third party content for inclusion in "specialized" (vertical) Google search results (the Yelp case). Google will also enable easier exporting of AdW [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Antitrust | Google: Legal | Google: Web Search | Legal: Regulation | Top News

Much is already known about the contours of the likely antitrust settlement between Google and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The terms of the settlement were previously "leaked" (intentionally or otherwise) a couple of weeks ago and critics quickly berated the FTC as having "rolled over." Broadly speaking, the rumors were that Google would make certain "voluntary changes" and avoid a consent decree (mostly) or any formal finding of antitrust violations. The settlement was supposedly to be announced in mid-to-late December but was delayed amid harsh criticism the FTC received follow [...]

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Confirming a report from the New York Post last week, the Wall Street Journal and Politico both published articles that said Google would emerge basically unscathed from the FTC's antitrust investigation. Google will apparently agree to make voluntary changes to various practices and will thus avoid having to sign a consent degree. The voluntary actions, according to the articles, would involve limiting use of third party content in some of Google's services (e.g., restaurant reviews) and to make it easier for AdWords campaigns to be transferred to competing platforms (i.e., adCenter). G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Antitrust | Google: Legal | Legal: Regulation