google

There's been a surprising amount of buzz about a one-word change to Google's home page: 'privacy'. The company has added a link from the front page of the site to the various privacy policies for the first time. It ends a prolonged debate about ... whether or not Google was breaching state laws. The controversy arose in May when the New York Times pointed out that a 2003 California law requires commercial websites based in the state to clearly display a link to its privacy policies from its home page. At the time, Google argued that it had taken care of this with a link to 'About Google'; however ... (view more)

The 'Security vs Privacy' debate is raging again after a court recently ordered Google to hand its entire YouTube records over to Viacom. The order, from the US District Court in Southern New York, comes as part of an ongoing billion dollar lawsuit ... that the media giant (which owns MTV and Nickelodeon among others) filed over copyrighted material on the video site. The suit claims that Viacom has lost revenue thanks to the infringement, while Google has boosted its advertising take. The heart of the case is Google's position that it doesn't -- and practically couldn't -- vet clips that users ... (view more)

The Microsoft-Yahoo saga continues and some old players have returned to the table. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Microsoft held talks with both Time Warner Inc. and News Corp. about a possible alliance to pick apart Yahoo. Under ... the proposed deal, Microsoft would take over Yahoo's search business and the remainder of the company could be merged with other content companies such as AOL or MySpace. (Source: wsj.com ) When the news broke on July 2, Yahoo's shares climbed the highest they had in recent months, closing the afternoon at $20.88 after surging as high as $21.84 ... (view more)

Google has unveiled a system that will make it easier for online advertisers to find websites that can help reach their target audience. 'Ad Planner' is currently in testing and only available to selected customers, but the plan is to eventually ... make it available to everyone free of charge. Google's new stud should be remarkably simple to use, as advertisers simply type in details of their target demographic and some examples of websites they already know appeal to that audience. The system then returns a list of the best matches, along with details of the overall audience for each site and ... (view more)

Today's fresh software picks were provided courtesy of Bob Helmer at Shell Extension City. Please note that the below software descriptions are provided solely from the developer and are absent from any guarantee or warranty. You are encouraged to ... review the Shell Extension Software Policy for more details. Lucid Link Wi-Fi Security can be hard. There are many options, many settings, and a lot of techno-babble in many WiFi clients that make it difficult for non-technical users to understand. The LucidLink WiFi Client eliminates all of the clutter and only presents what you need to connect to ... (view more)

A new Google tool to track the comparative popularity of websites has a notable hitch: it doesn't measure Google itself. The service also doesn't cover sites owned by Google, such as YouTube or Blogger. Google Trends for Websites is an extension of ... the existing service which measures the phrases people are looking for most often and how popularity changes over time. The new service tracks websites, making it a competitor to established trackers such as Alexa.com. Any user can get a graph showing traffic over time, while registered users can get further details such as estimated numbers and a ... (view more)

Today's fresh software picks were provided courtesy of Bob Helmer at Shell Extension City. Please note that the below software descriptions are provided solely from the developer and are absent from any guarantee or warranty. You are encouraged to ... review the Shell Extension Software Policy for more details. Google As Spam Filter Here at Shell City we use Google as a spam filter by redirecting our other mail through our Google mail accounts. It works great. We've gone from 500 spams a day to 20! http://winhlp.com Mundaneum Incredible story! According to the New York Times (NYT), "In 1934, Paul ... (view more)

In a recent interview, CEO of Google Eric Schmidt recently admitted the firm still hasn't figured out a way to make money from YouTube. He's also discussed the company's supposed web domination and its moral positioning. Speaking to a New Yorker ... journalist at a Syracuse University event, he said Google should be able to make "significant amounts of money" from the video sharing site considering it has such a huge audience. He also pointed out that Google is fortunate enough to have the time and money to invest in the site without an immediate return. With 129 million viewers a month, an ... (view more)

Well, it was going to happen eventually, but it seems that space tourism isn't really that far away after all. News agencies are reporting that Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently put a down payment on one such trip with an outfit called Space ... Adventures. BBC news reports that Brin paid a $5 million down payment to reserve his seat on a flight that will take him and one other passenger to the International Space Station in 2011. Said Brin, "I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space ... (view more)

Google has found a new testing panel for its in-development software: the entire Gmail user base. The company already has a dedicated 'Labs' website for the public to test new software and give feedback. Now they are building a Labs option directly ... into the Gmail website, meaning every user will see the features that are being developed. Sensibly enough, the option only includes features designed for Gmail itself, rather than general Google software. Users can read a description of each feature and turn it on or off (they are turned off by default). There's also a web address which users can ... (view more)