March 13, 2010 12:45 pm
Financial Times, “Google to shut China search engine”
by Richard Waters and Kathrin Hille
Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.
In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also on Friday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, with a warning that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship to stop Google leaving.
The signs that Google was on the brink of closing Google.cn, its local search service in China, came two months after it promised to stop bowing to censorship there. But while a decision could be made very soon, the company is likely to take some time to follow through with the plan as it seeks an orderly closure and takes steps to protect local employees from retaliation by the authorities, the person familiar with its position said.
Financial Times article continues here.
March 13, 2010 12:45 pm
PCWorld Business Center, “FCC’s National Broadband Plan: What’s in It?”
by Grant Gross
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to release a national broadband plan next week that will lay out an ambitious set of goals for broadband deployment and adoption.
The official version of the plan will be released at a commission meeting Tuesday, but FCC followers have seen the agency unveil several major thrusts of the plan in a series of speeches and briefings in recent weeks. In a mid-February speech, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski kicked off the announcements by saying it was the agency’s goal to bring 100M bps (bits per second) broadband service to 100 million U.S. homes by about 2020.
Many members of the U.S. tech community have called for a national broadband policy for years, and Congress, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in early 2009, required the FCC to develop the plan.
PCWorld Business Center article continues here.
March 12, 2010 1:03 am
The Hill, “Google: We will pull out of China before accepting country’s censorship laws”
by Kim Hart
Google said it is fully prepared to shut down its China operation if that is the only way to end the country’s censorship of its networks.
“Google is firm in its decision to stop censoring in China,” said Nicole Wong, Google’s deputy general counsel, in a hearing today before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “We do not underestimate the seriousness or sensitivity of the decision is made…We are not going to change our decision.”
“If the option is that we shutter our .cn operation and leave the country, we are prepared to do that,” she said.
The Hill article continues here.
February 25, 2010 10:24 pm
Yahoo! News (Reuters), “China’s military warns Washington, denies hacking”
China’s military warned the United States on Thursday to “speak and act cautiously” to avoid reigniting tensions between the two powers, denying the People’s Liberation Army played a part in Internet hacking.
Huang Xueping, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Defense, said his government would not reverse its decision to suspend “bilateral military plans” with Washington after it said in late January that it would sell $6.4 billion of arms to Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.
In January, the giant Internet search company Google Inc threatened to pull back from China after complaining of censorship and hacking attacks on it and other companies.
Yahoo! News (Reuters) article continues here.
February 24, 2010 9:25 pm
Fox News (AP), “Italy Convicts 3 Google Execs in Abuse Video Case”
An Italian court convicted three Google executives of privacy violations Wednesday because they did not act quickly enough to pull down a video that showed bullies abusing an autistic boy.
The case was being closely watched around the world due to its implications for Internet freedom.
In the first such criminal trial of its kind, Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant, charged only with defamation, was acquitted.
Google called the decision “astonishing” and said it would appeal.
Fox News (AP) article continues here.
February 23, 2010 1:49 pm
February 23, 2010 1:48 pm
The Hill, “Beijing blasts Google claims as ‘groundless’”
by Tony Romm
China fired back at Google on Tuesday, describing assertions that the country was involved in a massive cyberattack as “groundless.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang stressed his country remained “opposed” to Google’s conclusions about last month’s attack, which targeted U.S. businesses’ trade secrets, human-rights workers in China and the search-engine giant itself.
“Reports that these attacks came from Chinese schools are totally groundless and the accusation of Chinese government involvement is also irresponsible and driven by ulterior motives,” the Chinese spokesman said.
“China administers its Internet according to law, and this position will not change. China prohibits hacking and will crack down on hacking according to law,” Qin said.
The Hill article continues here.
February 17, 2010 10:56 am
Times Online, “Google forced into Buzz revamp over privacy row”
by Murad Ahmed
Google has been forced into a hasty revamp of its social networking service Buzz after the new feature was met with a storm of criticism because of gaping privacy flaws.
The company today announced it will introduce a prominent “kill button” that will allow people to turn off Buzz altogether.
Central to the row is a feature that automatically enrolled Gmail users to the service but also revealed the identities of the people they e-mailed most frequently. The blunder was met with a torrent of complaints, including one woman who said that an abusive ex-husband could now follow her every move.
Google has now apologised, announcing it will fix Buzz so that Gmail users can now choose who they want as their “friends” under the system. Sources at the company said today that the new changes will be implemented in “the next couple of days”.
Times Online article continues here.
February 16, 2010 11:22 pm
Reuters, “FCC to propose faster broadband speeds”
by John Poirier
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan on Tuesday that would require Internet providers to offer minimum home connection speeds by 2020, a proposal that some telecommunications companies panned as unrealistic.
The FCC wants service providers to offer home Internet data transmission speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to 100 million homes by a decade from now, Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said.
Industry estimates generally put average U.S. Internet speeds at below 4 Mbps.
The proposal is part of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, due next month. It comes a week after Google Inc rattled Internet service providers with its plan to build a super-fast Internet network.
Reuters article continues here.
February 11, 2010 11:59 am
The Wall Street Journal, “Iran to Suspend Google’s Email”
by Chip Cummins and Jessica E. Vascellaro
Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s email services, saying a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out.
It wasn’t clear late Wednesday what effect the order had on Gmail services in Iran, or even if Iran had implemented its new policy. Iranian officials have claimed technological advances in the past that they haven’t been able to execute.
A Google spokesman said in a statement, “We have heard from users in Iran that they are having trouble accessing Gmail. We can confirm a sharp drop in traffic, and we have looked at our own networks and found that they are working properly. Whenever we encounter blocks in our services we try to resolve them as quickly as possibly because we strongly believe that people everywhere should have the ability to communicate freely online.”
An Iranian official said the move was meant to boost local development of Internet technology and to build trust between people and the government.
The Wall Street Journal article continues here.
February 9, 2010 9:25 pm
Financial Times, “Google prepares Facebook assault”
by Richard Waters
Google is set to make a fresh attempt to gain a stronger foothold in the booming social networking business on Tuesday as it seeks to counter the growing threat that Facebook poses to some of its core services.
The search company is preparing to announce new features for Gmail that would extend the capabilities of the internet-based e-mail service to mirror some aspects of the fast-growing social networking site, according to a person familiar with its plans.
However, earlier Google efforts to establish a presence in social networking have failed to gain much traction and analysts said that the company was still likely to find it difficult to turn the tables on Facebook with its latest plan.
Financial Times article continues here.
February 4, 2010 1:01 pm
The Washignton Post, “Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks”
by Ellen Nakashima
The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.
Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.
Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.
The Washignton Post article continues here.
January 27, 2010 10:36 pm
January 17, 2010 5:30 pm
FOX News, “U.N.’s World Health Organization Eyeing Global Tax on Banking, Internet Activity”
by George Russell
The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a plan to ask governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.
Such a scheme could raise “tens of billions of dollars” on behalf of the United Nations’ public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world.
The multibillion-dollar “indirect consumer tax” is only one of a “suite of proposals” for financing the rapid transformation of the global medical industry that will go before WHO’s 34-member supervisory Executive Board at its biannual meeting in Geneva.
FOX News article continues here.
January 17, 2010 5:30 pm
The Washington Post, “FCC looks at ways to assert authority over Web access”
by Cecilia Kang
The Federal Communications Commission is considering aggressive moves to stake out its authority to oversee consumer access to the Internet, as a recent court hearing and industry opposition have cast doubt on its power over Web service providers.
The FCC, which regulates public access to telephone and television services, has been working to claim the same role for the Internet. The stakes are high, as the Obama administration pushes an agenda of open broadband access for all and big corporations work to protect their enormous investments in a new and powerful medium.
“This is a pivotal moment,” said Ben Scott, director of policy at the public interest group Free Press. The government wants to treat broadband Internet as a national infrastructure, he said, like phone lines or the broadcast spectrum. But federal regulators are grappling with older policies that do not clearly protect consumers’ access to the Web, their privacy or prices of service.
The Washington Post article continues here.
