European regulators have approved Google's plan to buy online advertising giant DoubleClick. The acquisition, which has been in the works for the better part of a year will solidify Google's dominance in the advertising field. Right now Google makes most of its money through its lucrative contextual advertising system. The DoubleClick acquisition will help Google move into display ads, an area where the company is currently not as strong.
Google competitors including Microsoft, Yahoo! had filed anti-trust complaints, claiming that the deal would give Google an unfair advantage in the online advertising marketplace. But EU regulators basically gave Google a pass and said the deal could go forward as is. Of course, if Microsoft manages to buy Yahoo!, (a company that has been playing hard to get), that might give Microsoft the tools to level the playing field. You know, assuming EU or US regulators don't nix the deal.
After ruling that Microsoft has failed to comply with a 2004 antitrust order, the European Union has added $1.3 billion to the fines already owed by Microsoft. That brings the total to about $2.5 billion, or just slightly more than pocket change to Bill Gates.
A few years back, EU regulators had decided that Microsoft was abusing its position as the number one operating system provider by bundling software with Windows that would decrease competition. Wednesday the EU ruled that Microsoft hasn't done enough to remedy the situation
Microsoft released a statement pointing out that in October of 2007, the EU found that the company was "in full compliance with the 2004 decision," meaning that the fine relates to past misdeeds. This could explain why Microsoft made such a big show of launching an open standards initiative last week.
The European Union has faith in BitTorrent. So much so that it's donating $22 Million to help us be able to steal share files. The BBC is one of the biggest investors, figuring that since people download TV shows now anyway, they should probably try to get in on it. Which makes sense. Nobody watches TV on TV's anymore; it's like listening to music on CDs. And when you see someone walking around with a Discman, you judge them. Don't pretend that you don't.
One of the main goals of this project, which they're calling P2P-Next, is to create an open source, BitTorrent-compatible client that can be used for live streaming. Which could be great for getting decent quality streaming TV. None of this watching poor quality out of sync episodes with strange asian subtitles. The team developing the core technology is the folks behind the BitTorrent client Tribler. With a cool $22 Million from the EU, along with another $6 Million from other partners, this project seems to have the backing it needs to succeed. They are hoping to create an environment that encourages sharing, but removing share ratio sanctions and letting the users moderate the content. All of this is great news. Since anything that will let us pirate share files quicker and easier is downright exciting.
The statement was directed to a panel of judges mulling over the legality of a Spanish file-sharing case, and could be a harbinger of things to come in the EU. Kokott's declaration essentially asserts that although ISPs can be required to turn over identities in criminal matters, file-sharing is a civil issue and therefor doesn't enjoy the same legal privileges.
The European Union's data protection advisory group sent a letter to Google this month asking why the company keeps records of user searches for up to two years.
The underlying issue here is whether Google and other search engines are violating users' privacy rights by maintaining search records, even if those records are used to improve the user experience by offering personalized search options. European Union investigators are also looking at the way Yahoo! and Microsoft store data.
Google is well aware that there are privacy concerns associated with its retention of search data, and is taking steps to anonymize data that is kept for more than 18 to 24 months. In other words, for about two years, the company will be able to track a particular user's search results. After that, the data will still be available, but there will be no way to associate it with a specific user.
It's taken two years for this to happen, but ODF has finally been approved as
a standard format by the International Organization for Standardization. The OpenDocument Format is now poised to
be readily adopted throughout Europe, as the EU recognizes the formats recognized by the ISO. BetaNews has the story,
plus a great quote from ODF Alliance executive Director Mario Marcich, "We believe access to public records and
essential services should never be restricted to users of a particular brand of software or computer platform."
Word to that.
In his 2006 New Year's address, French President Jacques Chirac apparently focused on Quaero, a new
search engine being built by "some of the top tech labs in France and
Germany." The project is ambitious, to say the least, reportedly providing
"an array of multimedia tools for identifying and indexing images, sound and text," including "a
powerful translating tool which will be able to 'understand' audio as well as text," and available on mobile
devices and digital TVs. Beyond that, the article is tantalizingly vague, and includes this less-than-promising
passage: "The ambitious project will probably not be available anytime in the
near future. Quaero is still in the earliest stages of development, so early that none of the major players have yet
ventured a guess as to how much the project might cost. When Quaero does launch, it
will have a great deal of catching up to do." Good luck with that, Chirac.
European regulators have approved Google's plan to buy online advertising giant DoubleClick. The acquisition, which has been in the works for the better part of a year will solidify Google's dominance in the advertising field. Right now Google makes most of its money through its lucrative contextual advertising system. The DoubleClick acquisition will help Google move into display ads, an area where the company is currently not as strong.
It's taken two years for this to happen, but 
