(KAREN BLEIER - AFP/GETTY IMAGES) European regulators on Wednesday pressed Google for more information about its new privacy policy, saying the Web giant’s response to questions so far has been “often incomplete or approximate.” France’s Commission Nationale de L’Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, sent additional questions to the Silicon Valley search giant as it investigates the company’s privacy policy changes for potential harm to consumers. Google was asked to respond to the questions by June 8. “CNIL considers it impossible to know Google’s processings of personal data, as well as the links between collected data, purposes and recipients, and that the obligation of information of the data subjects is not respected,” the officials said in a statement. On March 1, Google began to combine ... Continue reading →
Due To The Apple / Google Deathgrip, Former CEO John Lilly Says For Mozilla, “Mobile Is A Little Scarier” Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... → Learn More iOS and Android aren’t leaving much room for Firefox to burrow into mobile. “We knew there was going to be a transition from desktop being primary to mobile and tablet being primary” said Mozilla’s former CEO and current board member John Lilly today at ... Continue reading →
Gero Breloer/DPA A Google Street View car taking photographs in Berlin. German regulators sought information on data Google collected. Secrets spilled across the computer screen. After months of negotiation, Johannes Caspar, a German data protection official, forced Google to show him exactly what its Street View cars had been collecting from potentially millions of his fellow citizens. Snippets of e-mails, photographs, passwords, chat messages, postings on Web sites and social networks — all sorts of private Internet communications — were casually scooped up as the specially equipped cars photographed the world’s streets. “It was one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen,” Mr. Caspar recently recalled about that long-sought viewing in late 2010. “We were very angry.” Google might ... Continue reading →
By David BenoitFacebook�s continued fall has put the social network on pace to be one the worst large IPO starts in the past five years. Bloomberg The social network�s much ballyhooed offering was in the midst of its second-straight day of declines, dropping as low as $30.98 today. That would have been an 18.5% drop from its IPO of $38. The stock has recovered somewhat, recently down 3% to $33. That also marks a 13% decline from its IPO price, equal to the worst three-day start for an IPO that raised over $1 billion since 2007, according to Dealogic. There have been 23 IPOs over that size since 2007.� Through the first three sessions, only asset-manager Och-Ziff Capital performed as poorly, losing 13% as well, ... Continue reading →
Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it. Given its vast cash reserves and the glacial pace of business reckonings, that will sound hyperbolic. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 900 million users, valuation of around $100 billion, and the bulk of its business in traditional display advertising, is now at the heart of the heart of the fallacy. The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the ... Continue reading →
Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it. Given its vast cash reserves and the glacial pace of business reckonings, that will sound hyperbolic. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 900 million users, valuation of around $100 billion, and the bulk of its business in traditional display advertising, is now at the heart of the heart of the fallacy. The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the ... Continue reading →
Kleiner Perkins Sued By Partner Ellen Pao For Alleged Sexual Harassment, Gender Discrimination Colleen Taylor is based in San Francisco where she is a reporter for TechCrunch TV. Previously she worked for GigaOM, where she reported on startups and Silicon Valley. Earlier, Colleen reported for Mergermarket, an online newswire and subsidiary of the Financial Times focused on M&A. Before that, she was a contributing editor for Electronic News, the semiconductor industry trade newsletter. Colleen... → Learn More Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, one of the most storied and well-respected venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, has been sued by Ellen Pao, an investment partner with the firm. In the complaint filed May 10 in San Francisco Superior Court (which is embedded below), Pao claims that ... Continue reading →
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday that he supports tiered broadband Internet plans, a growing trend that has drawn criticism from Netflix. Julius Genachowski said during a cable industry trade show in Boston that “usage-based pricing could be healthy and beneficial” for broadband and high-tech industries. Cable service providers and wireless carriers have changed billing practices to charge users by how much data they use. They say they are moving away from unlimited data plans as users — particularly on wireless networks — congest networks with their heavy use of Internet services. The issue was brought up by Michael Powell, a former FCC chairman and current chief executive of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. Powell said cable providers want to be ... Continue reading →
