Google China Hackers Stole Source Code - Researcher

A Chinese national flag sways in front of Google China's headquarters
in Beijing in this January 14, 2010 file photo.

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

The hackers behind the attacks on Google Inc and dozens of other companies operating in China stole valuable computer source code by breaking into the personal computers of employees with privileged access, a security firm said on Wednesday.

The hackers targeted a small number of employees who controlled source code management systems, which handle the myriad changes that developers make as they write software, said George Kurtz, chief technology officer at anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc .

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Google’s China Exit Strategy: Watch This Space

From Wired:

A top Google lawyer told Congress Tuesday that the company still has no idea when or if it will make good on its public ultimatum in January to pull out of China unless it is allowed to stop censoring search results.

“We are still weighing our options,” Google Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong told the Senate Judiciary committee in a hearing on internet freedom.

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Microsoft Urges Antitrust Complaints About Google

Image from Onecomics

From Times Online:

Microsoft has encouraged other companies to complain about Google to antitrust regulators in its most outspoken attack on its rival.

The software group, which for years has been the prime target of competition regulators in the US and Europe over the way it handled its near-monopoly of computer operating systems, wants to turn the spotlight on to Google's position as the world's biggest internet search and advertising company.

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Italian Court Convicts Google Execs Over Video

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

In a case that could have broad implications for Internet use around the world, an Italian court convicted three Google Inc. executives Wednesday of criminal charges for failing to quickly remove an uploaded video.

Officials at the Mountain View company pledged to appeal, saying if the verdict is allowed to stand, "the Web as we know it will cease to exist."

Legal experts agreed the case raises troubling questions for all U.S. Internet companies that do business globally.

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Chinese Scientists Would Feel "Blind" If Google Pulled Out

From Popular Science:

Scientists don't want to see Google go bai bai.

Most Chinese citizens may still rely on homegrown Baidu for their Internet search needs, but Google's threatened pullout apparently worries the vast majority of Chinese scientists surveyed by the journal Nature. "If I lose Google, it will [be] just like a man without his eyes," one respondent said.

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Google Hit With Antitrust Complaints In Europe

Photo: The European Union Commission is located in Brussels, Belgium. Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

From Epicenter:

The European Commission has acknowledged receipt of three antitrust complaints against Google. It did not identify the companies and said it had not started a formal investigation.

“The Commission can confirm that it has received three complaints against Google which it is examining. The Commission has not opened a formal investigation for the time being,” an unidentified E.U. executive said in a statement on Wednesday.

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Larger Threat Is Seen In Google Case

Bill Echikson, a spokesman for Google, called a judge's ruling against executives “astonishing.” Paolo Bona/Reuters

From The New York Times:

ROME — Three Google executives were convicted of violating Italian privacy laws on Wednesday, the first case to hold the company’s executives criminally responsible for the content posted on its system.

The verdict, though subject to appeal, could have sweeping implications worldwide for Internet freedom: It suggests that Google is not simply a tool for its users, as it contends, but is effectively no different from any other media company, like newspapers or television, that provides content and could be regulated.

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EU Launches Antitrust Inquiry Into Google 'Dominance'

The internet search engine has dismissed the complaints. (Reuters/Robert Galbraith)

From Times Online:

The European Commission has launched a preliminary antitrust inquiry into Google after three companies complained that the US giant's dominant search engine penalises potential competitors and keeps advertising prices artificially high.

The European Commission has written to Google to find out how its search functions work, following allegations from the UK price comparison site Foundem, an online French guide to legal services, ejustice.fr and the Germany-based shopping portal Ciao, owned by Microsoft.

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Why Google Wants A Faster Internet

Scott Barbour / Getty Images

From Time Magazine:

There was no lack of, well, buzz about Google's new Buzz social-media platform last week, but more important were a series of moves that suggest the search giant is ready to take a tentative step toward fixing one of its longest-held gripes: the speed of Internet connections in the U.S.

In a blog post on Feb. 10, Google product managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly laid out the company's plan to provide as many as 500,000 people in a small number of locales with fiber-optic Internet connections capable of one gigabit per second (Gbps), more than 100 times faster than the typical U.S. broadband connection speed today. It would be a blazing-fast upgrade, capable of downloading a full-length HD movie in under 90 seconds.

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Google Shuts Down Music Blogs Without Warning

Music blog Gorilla Vs Bear was concerned by Google's actions

From The Guardian:

Bloggers told they have violated terms without further explanation, as years of archives are wiped off the internet.

In what critics are calling "musicblogocide 2010", Google has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google's Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet.

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It's Google's World, We Just Live In It

From Salon:

It's fun to trash the search-monster's Buzz, but there's a method to its social networking smart-phone madness.

Is this what world domination looks like? On Wednesday, Google announced it was building an ultrafast, one-gigabit-per-second broadband network designed to showcase "innovative" Internet applications. On Tuesday, Google launched Google Buzz, integrating social networking functions into Gmail. Last month, Google debuted its Nexus One smart phone.

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Google Takes On The Telecoms

From The Wall Street Journal:

Google's decision to build a gigabit-a-second broadband network serving between 50,000 and 500,000 people predictably won plaudits from the Federal Communications Commission and public interest groups. But if Google truly wants to help speed the development of universal high-speed Internet access, as it says, it will need to do much more.

After all, there isn't a huge technical challenge building a fast network. Verizon Communications already is operating one that runs at 2.5 gigabits a second, offering television, Internet and phone. The maximum Internet speed it offers is 50 megabytes per second, but it easily can turn that up. It is spending $23 billion over several years to roll out the network to pass 18 million homes in largely suburban and urban areas.

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Google Subsidizing Ultrafast Broadband Test

From CNET:

Google, never satisfied with the pace of change, plans a test that will provide 50,000 to 500,000 people with fiber-optic broadband Internet access with a network speed of a gigabit per second starting as soon as this year.

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Google Links Up With US Spy-Master To thwart Threats To Cyberspace

Google has threatened to pull out of the Chinese market
unless Beijing can guarantee uncensored searches.

From Times Online:

Google is teaming up with the US National Security Agency to battle cyber-attacks from China in a move that is causing disquiet on the internet.

The alliance of the world’s largest internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance agency has provoked concern among privacy advocates. The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Centre filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking more details yesterday hours after the deal was disclosed by The Washington Post.

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Wired Chinese Not Worried About Google

From THOnline:

Nation's Web users seem indifferent to the online giant's threat to pull out over censorship.

BEIJING -- A world without Google? They can imagine it just fine in China. After all, it's not like losing "World of Warcraft."

The online giant's threat to pull out of China over censorship has drawn little reaction among the country's 384 million Internet users. No flood of complaints to China's consumer rights agency, like the tens of thousands received in one day when the online fantasy game "World of Warcraft" was yanked last year because of a bureaucratic turf battle. Nor has there been the type of fury that saw 32,000 indignant gamers participate in an online chat session on the "World of Warcraft."

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Google To Air Ad During Super Bowl?

From CNET:

Perhaps Google CEO Eric Scmidt's tweet said it all.

"Can't wait to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said 'Hell has indeed frozen over')," he wrote Saturday.

This tweet appears to be a response to speculation by John Battelle, founder of Federated Media Publishing, that one of the world's most ad-diffident companies would be running a brand ad during the Big Game's third quarter. (Kickoff is just after 3:20 p.m. PST Sunday on CBS, publisher of CNET.)

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Google Contributes Massive Amounts of Computing Power To Engineer Antibodies

Finding Antibodies Medical hide and seek could get a boost from Google Tolerx, Inc

From Popular Science:

Google has quietly put millions of dollars' worth of resources into a biotech startup that creates targeted antibody drugs that single out diseased targets among healthy cells. The Internet search giant ultimately hopes that computer models alone could identify the best antibody for particular targets for testing in human clinical trials. That would speed up or even replace the usual "wet lab" work and years spent on drug safety testing in animals and humans that costs hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Xconomy.

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McAfee: China Attacks A 'Watershed Moment'

From CNET:

The China-based cyber attacks on Google and other companies were "a watershed moment in cybersecurity," according to an executive at computer security company McAfee.

"I believe this is the largest and most sophisticated cyberattack we have seen in years targeted at specific corporations," McAfee Chief Technology Officer George Kurtz wrote on his blog Sunday. "While the malware was sophisticated, we see lots of attacks that use complex malware combined with zero day exploits."

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Google, Yahoo, Adobe And Who?

Photograph: Phillipe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Google says at least 20 other large companies have been targeted in cyber attacks, but none of them has come forward.

Yahoo and Adobe appear to be among the companies that suffered the sort of cyberattack that led Google to threaten to withdraw from China. In its original announcement, Google said that "at least 20 other large companies from a wide range of businesses – including the internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors – have been similarly targeted".

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Google Lifts The Veil On Tiananmen Massacre Images In China As Censorship Row Continues

Tank Man: One of the most iconic images of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that of a man standing alone and defenceless in a face off against four tanks, now appears on Google.cn

From The Daily Mail:

Google has stopped censoring images of the Tiananmen Square massacre on its Chinese website.

Users on Google.cn's image search can now see the iconic picture of Tank Man, among other images from the massacre in the Beijing square in 1989 - just as users on Google's other country portals, such as Google.co.uk, can.

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