After China and the US, India is the third largest internet market in the world. But India has philosophically aligned itself more with China in pursuing a policy of censorship toward publication of content deemed “offensive” or “objectionable” by individuals, groups or the government. A recently enacted law seeks to remove all such content from the internet in India. Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were sued under the law and had been arguing in Indian court that it was all but impossible for them to comply as a practical matter. The law makes online publishers potentially li [...]

Related Topics: Facebook | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Censorship | Microsoft: Outside US | Yahoo: Legal | Yahoo: Outside US

Bing is reportedly now out of betaphase in Deutschland. According to Microsoft, Bing has 10 million users or 20 percent of active internet users in Germany: Mittlerweile benutzen fast 10 Millionen Nutzer in Deutschland regelmäßig Bing, das sind 20 Prozent der aktiven Internetnutzer hierzulande. According to several third-party sources, Bing's market share is smaller than the 20 percent figure cited above. For example, the following is StatCounter's search engine data for Germany: Source: StatCounter NetMarketshare generally agrees, showing Bing's PC search share at just ove [...]

Related Topics: Google: Outside US | Microsoft: adCenter | Microsoft: Outside US | Microsoft: Partnerships | Stats: Popularity | Stats: Size | Yahoo: Outside US | Yahoo: Partnerships | Yahoo: Search Ads

Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will be remembered mainly as a cost cutter who outsourced numerous functions to third parties. A partial list of those includes outsourcing Search to Microsoft, Shopping to PriceGrabber, Real Estate to Zillow and Maps to Nokia/Navteq. And now, the new Nokia-powered Yahoo Maps (NokiHoo) have just gone live in the US and Canada: maps.yahoo.com; espanol.maps.yahoo.com; ca.maps.yahoo.com and qc.maps.yahoo.com. NokiHoo maps are also available in other places around the world, such as Europe, but Yahoo doesn't have the data or has incomplete data outside of the ar [...]

Related Topics: Top News | Yahoo: Maps & Local | Yahoo: Outside US | Yahoo: Partnerships

As the privacy screws tighten in the US and Europe, Yahoo is doing something surprising: extending the time it holds on to personal search records. In 2008 Yahoo decided to retain search records for only three months. Yahoo thus became the most "progressive" of the major search sites with its compressed data-retention policy. Now Yahoo is reversing itself. The Europeans had been demanding search/IP data retention of less than six months. And last January Microsoft agreed to comply with that standard. Google, however, refused to retain search records for less than 18 months. The company c [...]

Related Topics: Yahoo: Legal | Yahoo: Outside US | Yahoo: Search

Earlier this year the Italian Communications Authority decided that YouTube was effectively a TV broadcaster and imposed the same rules and restrictions that apply to TV in Italy -- and potential penalties for their violation -- on Google. It said that Google is now legally responsible for any content appearing on YouTube. Now an Italian court has done something potentially much more sweeping with broad implications for search in Italy. Yahoo Guilty for Linking to Infringer Yahoo (in its capacity as a search engine) has been found liable for helping facilitate copyright infringement by index [...]

Related Topics: Google: Outside US | Google: Web Search | Legal: Copyright | Microsoft: Bing | Yahoo: Legal | Yahoo: Outside US | Yahoo: Partnerships