Steve Bryant

London-based watchdog group Privacy International castigated Google for the company’s inattention to privacy concerns, and the blog world — led by Googler Matt Cutts — lept to Google’s defense. As well they should. The report is shoddy. PI isn’t concerned with soberly analyzing actual privacy transgressions — they seem to be more concerned with promoting […]

Google released its universal search update a few weeks ago, and now Bill Tancer at Hitwise says the upgrade is driving a lot of traffic to Google Maps and YouTube. Well of course the YouTube bump makes sense. Like I said three weeks ago, you don’t have to sell ads in videos, you can make […]

A Tennesee-based music publishing company that owns the copyrights to 14 No. 1 hit singles, including songs by Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and other country artists, filed a class action lawsuit against YouTube on June 7, eWEEK has learned. The company, Cal IV Entertainment, alleged that YouTube hosts more than 60 of the companys copyrighted […]

A Tennesee-based music publishing company that owns the copyrights to 14 No. 1 hit singles, including songs by Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and other country artists, filed a class action lawsuit against YouTube on Thursday, Google Watch has learned. The company, Cal IV Entertainment, alleged that YouTube hosts more than 60 of tha company’s copyrighted […]

Fourth place search engine Ask.com unveiled on June 5 a dramatically redesigned interface aimed at distinguishing both its appearance and results from competitors Google, Yahoo and Live.com. The new interface, dubbed Ask3D, presents query answers in a three-panel screen that includes standard links to content as well as lists of related results from blogs, video, […]

Google announced May 31 that it has acquired Spain-based Panoramio, a Web site that links photographs to the exact geographical location where they were taken. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Panoramio is a community-driven site that lets users store and organize their photos and display the photos location in Google Earth. Read […]

eBay announced May 31 that it has completed its purchase of social search Engine StumbleUpon for a total price of $75 million. StumbleUpon, an early stage company that boasts about 2.3 million users, is a social recommendation search engine that offers new content based upon users preferences and how theyve rated pages theyve previously seen […]

Yahoo Inc.s chief technology officer, Farzad Nazem, is stepping down. Nazem, who has been with the company since 1996 and who served as chief technology officer for the past decade, is resigning just as Yahoo stabilized its management team; the company had recently named Blake Jorgensen as chief financial officer, with Susan Decker moving to […]

Google has quietly acquired GreenBorder Technologies, which makes an anti-malware desktop app that prevents Web downloads from associating themselves with the internal components of a PC. GreenBorder launched in 2001 with “Desktop DMZ,” software for Windows that prevents viruses, Trojans or spyware from being installed during any browser session. The acquisition is Google’s latest foray […]

The Federal Trade Commission has opened a preliminary investigation into Google’s proposed $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick, according to The New York Times. The FTC will decide in the next few days whether to escalate its investigation with a “second request” for information. Several privacy and consumer advocacy groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the […]