28084648
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Microsoft's Bing search engine has overtaken Yahoo for the first time. While both Bing, Yahoo and a bunch of meta-search engines like the privacy-oriented DuckDuckGo use Bing's back-end, it clearly shows Yahoo's declining market share. comScore has also released its search data for 2011 — overally, Bing gained 3.1% of market share while Yahoo lost 1.5% and Google lost 0.7%. Yahoo's new CEO Scott Thompson has lots to work with.
28043794
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Google is today launching a remarkable update to their search engine. This update is intended to bring you personalized search results based on your Google+ friends, sharing, pictures and likes. They're calling it "Search plus Your World", and the update is going to automatically personalize all search results to a greater degree than before. These personalized matches will appear along your normal search results. For example, if you are searching for images of babies, Google will now personalize your search results and give high preferance to baby photos from your Google+ circles. Google is saying that over time they will also start adding search results from all the other Google services, including Google Docs, Gmail, Contacts, Music, Voice, wallet and so on. Today's launch also uses Google+ data for another purpose: helping you search for information about people on Google+. For example, if you are searching Google for "music", Google will now display relevant people and pages from Google+, like Britney Spears, Alicia Keys and Snoop Dogg.
28005316
submission
SharkLaser writes:
A video game developer working Kuma Reality Games has admitted that the company has been receiving money from CIA to design and distribute for free special movies and games with the aim of manipulating public opinion in the Middle East. Amir Mizra Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, moved to work for Kuma after working for DARPA and has said the goal of the company was to convince people that whatever U.S. does in other countries is a good measure. Kuma officials have declined to comment while Hekmati himself is locked in Iran. The United States government has demanded the release of Hekmati, but Iran has sentenced him to death for spying, which he confessed to.
27883988
submission
SharkLaser writes:
In a leaked letter sent to Spain's outgoing President, the US ambassador warned that if Spain didn't pass SOPA-like file-sharing site blocking law, Spain would risk being put into United States trade blocklist. United States government interference in Spain's intellectual property laws have been suspected for a long time, and now the recent leaks of diplomatic cables confirm this. Apart from the cables leaked earlier, now another cable dated December 12th says U.S. expresses "deep concern" over the failure to implement SOPA-style censorship law in the country. "The government has unfortunately failed to finish the job for political reasons, to the detriment of the reputation and economy of Spain," read the letter. Racing against the clock in the final days of the government, Solomont had one last push. "I encourage the Government of Spain to implement the Sinde Law immediately to safeguard the reputation of Spain as an innovative country that does what it says it will, and as a country that breeds confidence," he wrote.
27844366
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Microsoft, and the whole tech world, is celebrating the fact that use of Internet Explorer 6 has dropped below one percent in the US. "Time to pop open the champagne because, based on the latest data from Net Applications, IE6 usage in the US has now officially dropped below 1 per cent!," said Roger Capriotti, director of Internet Explorer marketing. "IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we've been as eager as anyone to see it go away".
27776658
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Google's search engine has always looked pretty much the same since it was introduced in 1998. However, Google is now testing a revamped look that is the largest change the search engine has ever done to its website. The new look strips the black bar running horizontally at top and places it as an openable menu on the left side. The move is said to promote Google's other services without making the search engine too cluttered. The new side menu is also more similar to Chrome OS and allows Chromebook and Google's website to have the same look and feel. Another consequence of the move is that it now takes users two clicks to enter other services such as Images and News, which is said to improve the amount of ad clicks and visitors advertisers get. Considering that European Commission is examining claims of Google downgrading rival websites and U.S. senators are calling FTC to inspect Google for unfair practices, the move comes at a surprising time.
27648640
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Open APIs might be the way to get rich in 2012. At the same time it can also be what ultimately hinders open source development. Wide range of companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter, are building open APIs for other developers to use and build upon. Open APIs can be used by companies to grow their user base and introduce new interesting features on top of their platform. At the same time independant developers can utilize established services and their users to grow their own business. Perfect example of open APIs is Facebook Apps, which lets individuals and companies develop applications and games on top of Facebook platform. Developers gain access to Facebook's established user base and Facebook gains new features and fun stuff to do on their site. Instead of open sourcing their platforms, companies like Google and Facebook are providing Open APIs and data access to outside developers. The actual source code for the services sits safely inside the company's network and never needs to be disclosed to outside parties, thus hindering open source development.
27624830
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Fake antivirus scams have plagued Windows and Mac OSX during the last couple of years. Now it seems like such scams have spread to Android. Fake antivirus scams on Android work the same as they do on PC's — an user with Android phone downloads an application or visits a website that suddenly tells that the user's device is infected with malware. It will then show a fake scan of the system and return hard-coded "positives" and gives the option the option to buy antivirus software that will "remove" the malware on the affected system. Android, which is based on Linux, has been plagued with malware earlier too. According to McAfee, almost all new mobile malware now targets Android. Android app stores, including the official one from Google, has also been hosting hundreds of trojan applications that send premium rate SMS's on behalf of unsuspecting users.
27612322
submission
SharkLaser writes:
It turns out that Google has started to remove Google+ pictures that have persons giving the middle finger in it. "Our policy page states, 'Your Profile Picture cannot include mature or offensive content.' Your profile photo was taken down as a violation of this policy". Google+ is supposed to be universal social network, "identity service" and allow sharing like in real life and be a public venue for free expressions. Since the middle finger is so culturally-specific issue, will Google+ also start to remove things like showing the palms of your hands to people (considered insult in Greece), showing soles of your shoes (insult in Middle East), patting someones head (insult in Buddhist countries)? A good number of Google+ users have started to change their profile picture to include the middle finger to show support to MG Siegler, who got his profile picture removed by Google.
27589146
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Last week it was announced that Google has renewed their search deal with Mozilla. The amount of which Google paid to Mozilla was surprising: $300 million per year, despite the sligtly falling market share of Firefox. Many took this as charity and for the purpose of advancing web. Now sources in the bidding process have revealed that Google's main rival in the bid was Microsoft's Bing, along with Yahoo. This bidding war was costly to Google, which is now paying 300% of what they used to, just to be Firefox's default search provider. Mozilla veteran Asa Dotzler is also giving insight to the deal between Google and Mozilla. "Google started out as a search company. But that's not what they are today. Google's primary business is advertising. Google brought in $9.7B in revenues in Q3'11. 96% of that revenue was from ad sales. Not all traffic to Google ads is 'organic' though. To help drive ad sales, Google pays for traffic to their ads. They paid out $2.21 billion, or 24% of their ad revenues in 'Traffic Acquisition Costs'. That money goes to revenue shares with their AdSense partners and to 'distribution partners' — presumably browser makers, PC OEMs, and mobile OEMs and operators.". Google also pays shareware and freeware distributors to bundle Chrome and Google toolbar with their programs and games.
27307856
submission
SharkLaser writes:
The security of Android devices has come under scrunity in recent months. Android market place has been plagued with countless amount of trojaned apps and researchers have identified various root exploits and permissions leaks that can be exploited to, for example, send premium rate SMS's. Now researcher Thomas Cannon of ViaForensics is demonstrating a method for setting up remote shell on an Android device without using any exploits or vulnerabilities. The security hole is not new, and it has been pointed out for a number of years, but Google has still to fix it. The method works on various versions of Android, up to and including the newest Ice Cream Sandwich.
27307358
submission
SharkLaser writes:
US Senators have written to the US Federal Trade Commissions about their concerns on Google's internet monopoly. Google executives did themselves no favours when the Senators looked at Google's business practices in September. When asked if Google has monopoly in online search, Google chairman Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying "I would agree, Senator, that we are in that area". Another worrying quote is from Marissa Meyer, Google's VP of location services, who said that it was "only fair" that Google put its own sites on higher placements than competitors. The Senators are also warning that Google is only facing one real competitor, Microsoft's Bing. Almost all other metasearch engines use either Google or Bing technology to deliver search results, including DuckDuckGo which uses Bing. In Europe Google is currently under investigation of monopoly abuse and the EU has also delayed Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility.
27002418
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Adblock developers have made a radical change to their addon. From the newest version forward, Adblock will only filter the most irritating advertisements. This includes advertisement with sounds, flashy pictures or animations. This means, for example, that Adblock is no longer filtering Google's text ads and any other advertisements that isn't irritating to most users. The developers are saying that this change should push website owners to change to less irritating ads, for example Google's AdSense.
26713262
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Mozilla's future looks uncertain. Last week Chrome overtook Firefox's position as the second most popular browser, the new versioning scheme has aliened most Firefox users and now advertising deal between Mozilla and Google, the one that almost fully funds Mozilla's operations, is coming to an end. One of Firefox's key managers, Mike Shaver, also left the company in September. "In 2010, 84% of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue came directly from Google. That’s roughly $100 million in funds that will vanish or be drastically cut if the deal is either not renewed or is renegotiated on terms that are less favorable to Mozilla. When the original three-year partnership deal was signed in 2008, Chrome was still on the drawing boards. Today, it is Google’s most prominent software product, and it is rapidly replacing Firefox as the alternative browser on every platform.". Recently Mozilla has been trying to get closer with Microsoft by making a Firefox version that defaults to Bing. If Google is indeed cutting funding from Mozilla or tries to negotiate less favorable terms, it could mean Mozilla's future funding coming from Microsoft and Bing.
26676978
submission
SharkLaser writes:
Homeland Security’s ICE unit has just started another phase of Operation In Our Sites. Last week the seized sites were selling counterfeit goods, but this time the list consists solely of movie download sites. ICE has now seized the domains of 11 Korean movie download portals. This is first time Operation In Our Sites has been expanded to include sites targeting non-US nationals and non-english sites. ICE has since added a message in Korean to the seized sites. Interestingly, while the sites were in Korean, the domain names are all connected to a Seattle-based company World Multimedia Group, Inc.
