SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 22, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Topic: Internet privacy
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, & Other Search Engines Must Comply With EU Privacy Rules
EU: Search Engines Under EU Rules from the Associated Press reports that European data privacy regulators said search engines outside the EU have to comply with the EU’s privacy regulations.
Google Objects To Microsoft & Yahoo Wedding; Microsoft Responds — Irony All Around
Not surprisingly, Google’s not happy about Microsoft’s overture to buy Yahoo. The company has blogged an official statement suggesting that the move will hurt what it calls the underlying principles of the internet: "openness and innovation." Microsoft responds to say it is open and that only the shotgun marriage it proposes to Yahoo will make […]
Once Again, A Google Murder Case
In the UK, a woman has been convicted of trying to murder her husband after researching methods on Google. It’s one of several cases like this that have come up in past years. Google poisoner tried to murder husband describes the method this woman used to try to kill her husband of seven years. She […]
Today Is “Data Privacy Day;” Bush Admin Launches Internet Monitoring Initiative
For most people, today is Monday, January 28. However, today has been designated “Data Privacy Day” in North America and in 27 European countries in conjunction with the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Google’s privacy counsel, Jane Horvath, says the company is joining in an international privacy conference being held at Duke University in Durham, […]
FTC Complaint Filed Over AskEraser: “Unfair & Deceptive”
Photo adapted from one by Hans Engel Some felt Ask.com won the privacy oneupmanship that went on last year when it rolled out Ask Eraser, a tool promising to stop recording any information about someone doing a search. But questions quickly came up, including whether the tool helped at all, considering that query data was […]
OpenID Gaining Critical Mass, Yahoo Announces Support
OpenID is a single sign-in infrastructure that potentially alleviates the need to create new passwords and user names for every new site one joins or visits. There’s been lots of discussion about OpenID and who’s in, who’s almost in, and so on. Today, Yahoo formally joined (and fully legitimized) the effort. Microsoft Passport was originally […]
Facebook’s Zuckerberg In the Hot Seat In Upcoming “60 Minutes” Interview
This Sunday night, one of the “60 Minutes” segments on CBS will feature an interview with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. There’s a snippet of the interview on the CBS website together with an article that previews the segment. In the video excerpt of the interview Zuckerberg looks uncomfortable as Lesley Stahl asks him […]
The New Yorker On Google: Avoiding Regulation, Arrogance
Just before New Year’s, I published a fictional look at what might happen to Google if it was forced to breakup due to government regulation. In The Search Party this week from The New Yorker, there’s a nice long look by author Ken Auletta on how such efforts to regulate Google might be developing in […]
Search Wikia: Not Even A Remote Threat To Google
Search Wikia, the open source search engine from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales’ Wikia, Inc. organization, launched today in an alpha version. Widely hyped, typically portrayed as a heroic David vs. Goliath struggle, it’s really just yet another crappy search service that may, potentially, if all goes well, eventually turn into something useful. For now, though, […]
December 2007: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from December 2007:
SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 27, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Keeping It Private On Google Reader
Almost two weeks ago, I wrote my Google Reader Gets Social With Friends Shared Items post detailing how disturbing it was that Google Reader was now sharing items with people it considered my friends, on an opt-out basis. Privacy concerns over this finally exploded this week, with Google Reader itself now reacting mainly to highlight […]
Scoop: Google Responds To Rep. Joe Barton’s 24 Privacy Questions
As we covered earlier, US Representative Joe Barton sent Google a letter with 24 questions relating to privacy — along with a week to answer them. I was annoyed that some seemed basic and already answered in a way that one of his interns could easily uncover. But Google’s now replied to the letter with […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 20, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
FTC’s Xmas Gift To Google: Approval Of DoubleClick Acquisition
The US Federal Trade Commission has granted its approval for Google to purchase DoubleClick. Google has a press release up with the news (and see also here), and the FTC announcement is here. The many parties have raised privacy issues with the deal, and the FTC noted this was not germane to its approval:
Privacy Group Finds Flaws In AskEraser’s Privacy Tool
Group says Ask’s privacy feature is flawed from News.com reports that the Electronic Privacy Information Center has found a few flaws in AskEraser, Ask.com’s new privacy searching feature. The three problems are: AskEraser uses an opt-out cookie instead of an opt-in cookie. Ask stores the time that the user enables AskEraser, which can potentially be […]
New Google Privacy Videos Offer Advice On Product Settings
If US Congressman Joe Barton never got an answer to his many questions about Google Privacy (which I thought wasted time asking for stuff an intern could locate), perhaps he’ll be happy watching some of Google’s latest videos released that cover some very specific privacy issues on a product-by-product basis. They join some other video […]
Privacy Emerges As Major US, EU Issue In DoubleClick Acquistion Review
Despite the fact that regulators are supposed to scrutinize the potential anti-competitive dimensions of the pending acquisition of DoubleClick by Google, privacy has sneaked into the debate as a major issue on both sides of the Atlantic. It almost threatens to overshadow the antitrust considerations, which are the heart and purpose of the regulatory review […]
PEW Survey Finds Most People Don’t Google Themselves That Often, After All
Marge Simpson Googling Herself "All this time I thought ‘googling’ yourself meant the other thing." A PEW/Internet Survey out this week found that 47% of internet users have done ego searches, up from 22% five years ago. That nearly half of internet users are searching for themselves seems excessive, but only 3% say they check […]
Google And DoubleClick: The Saga Continues
The relevant issues swirling around the pending acquisition of DoubleClick by Google are little understood by the public, pundits, and even, it would seem, by Congress and the regulators charged with approving or disapproving the deal. Danny has written at length about the competitive implications of the deal. But privacy concerns have gotten mixed up […]
Google Street View Continues March, Introduces Embedded Version
According to Boston.com, Google’s Street View images are rolling out to more US cities today, including Boston, Providence, Dallas, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Paul. Google Operating System counts the total number of US cities with StreetView now as 23. StreetView is also actively in development in Canada, Europe, and Australia.
Ask.com Launches AskEraser Giving Searches Ability To Search Anonymously
Ask.com has launched AskEraser, giving searchers the ability to search anonymously. Ask.com told us about this tool back in July, and six months later, it’s now live for all searchers to use. When a searcher activates AskEraser, Ask will stop recording the searcher’s search queries and cookie information. This information includes IP address, User ID, […]
Google Considers “Anonymizing” StreetView In US
Google’s StreetView program has been shadowed by privacy concerns arising from the capture of license plate numbers, people’s faces, and other potentially embarrassing images. To address these issues, Google set up a system where users could request images be removed. However arguably the embarrassment or damage has already been done by that point. Now, as […]
The Facebook Privacy Fallout Continues
For those just joining us, Facebook was overly aggressive with its Beacon tracking program, one of several new ad programs launched in early November. Beacon required users to opt-out or have their activity and transactions on Facebook partner sites broadcast to their networks back on Facebook. Discovering this, many people were frustrated and upset by […]
Facebook Modifies “Beacon” To Mollify Privacy Critics
As we wrote yesterday, Facebook faced a furor from critics who argued its Beacon program went too far in tracking its users’ actions on non-Facebook sites and broadcasting those back through Facebook newsfeeds. As of last night the company had decided to make changes in the advertising program to appease critics who have brought much […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 29, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Facebook To Potentially Change Beacon After Privacy Furor
Facebook has faced a steady stream of complaints, negative PR, and other criticism after rolling out the “Beacon” component of its new suite of advertiser tools and programs. For those who aren’t up on it, Beacon captures actions and transactions Facebook users conduct on third-party sites and essentially broadcasts those through newsfeeds to their networks. […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 27, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google Israel Forced To Hand Over Blogger’s IP Address To Court
Philipp Lenssen reports via Ben Ari’s blog that an Israeli court has compelled Google to hand over the IP address of a Blogger account. The conditions of this require that the blogger, who allegedly committed slander, not reply to an anonymous email to reply to the motion. Since this blogger did not reply to the […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 21, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Privacy Group To Attack Facebook’s Beacon Ads
Facebook’s Tracking of User Activity Riles Privacy Advocates, Members from the Wall Street Journal reports privacy group MoveOn.org is attacking Facebook over their Beacon Ads product. MoveOn.org has an online petition that asks:
Open Letter To Senators Hatch & Kohl About Google-DoubleClick
Today, US senators Herb Kohl and Orrin Hatch published a letter (PDF) urging the US Federal Trade Commission to carefully consider the proposed Google-DoubleClick deal. Sure, who doesn’t agree with a careful review? But sadly, the letter gets a lot of things wrong, which is alarming coming out of the US Senate. Or perhaps predictable. […]
Facebook Ads System Launched: Facebook Pages, Social Ads, & Beacon
Facebook has launched a new Facebook Ads program offering three major products for advertisers: Facebook Pages, a way for businesses to build branded pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; Facebook Social Ads, an ad system allowing Facebook users to be targeted by demographic interest, and “friend activities,” and Facebook Beacons, allowing activities at […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 1, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google Sends Speakers To FTC Town Hall Meeting On Behavioral Advertising
Google is attending and sending high-profile representatives to speak at the US FTC’s “town hall” meeting, which starts today, on “behavioral advertising.” The broad phenomenon of behavioral targeting will be under scrutiny as privacy and consumer advocates presumably point out the risks of the practice. On the rewards side will be Google and other Internet […]
Want To Opt Out Of Behavioral Ads? AOL Says It Is Your Choice
AOL Will Let Consumers Opt Out of Targeted Ads from the Wall Street Journal reports that AOL will announce today a new tool that will enable AOL users to opt out of targeted or personalized ads. (NOTE: The AOL announcement is now live). AOL has behavioral ad technology that stores consumer’s preferences and then tailors […]
Congress May Penalize Tech Companies That Cooperate With ‘Internet Restricting’ Governments
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are all doing business in China. There’s been bad PR and even congressional hearings for Yahoo about its cooperation with the Chinese government in the country’s effort to censor the Internet and crack down on dissent. Turkey and Thailand have blocked YouTube, and so on. Now this article from Forbes describes […]
Facebook Opens Application Pages to Indexing By Search Engines
Last month Facebook made user profiles available to everyone — including anyone not logged in to Facebook and search engines. Today it announced it was opening up the application directory and application “about” pages. In terms of privacy, this means that if you comment on an application anyone can see that comment, although anyone not […]
Top Countries To Search On Sex, Hitler, Viagra, Jihad & Hangover
Sex, Nazi, burrito and Viagra: Who Googles what? from Reuters reports on keywords released by Google by country. Reuters ordered the list by country that is most likely to search on certain words. Here is a brief rundown: