Posts tagged face
Reports: Google to Face Broad Antitrust Investigation from U.S. Government
Jun 23rd
Google cannot escape the federal government. Every large acquisition that the company makes is scrutinized for months by feds and now the very nature of Google itself looks like it will go on trial. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Trade Commission will begin serving Google with subpoenas in the start of a broad antitrust investigation into the company’s Web and search dominance.
Google’s business practices will be put under the microscope, especially the core search product that makes up nearly 66% of search traffic in the United States. One of the key issues, according to The Wall Street Journal, will be if Google “unfairly channels users to its growing network of services at the expense of rivals.” Microsoft once went down the antitrust road, and the results were damaging for the software giant. How will Google fare under the federal microscope?
Sponsor
Bloomberg reports that a letter was sent by the Democratic and Republican chairs of the Senate antitrust committee requesting that either CEO Larry Page or Chairman Eric Schmidt be made available to the committee. According to the report, Google is dragging its feet in making either of its top executives available, instead offering to make its top lawyer, David Drummond, available for a hearing.
Google was sent the letter on June 10 and asked for a response from Mountain View by June 15. If subpoenas are necessary they would have to be approvd by the full Senate Judiciary Committee.
According to Bloomberg, a Google spokesperson said that the company will “send them the executive who can answer their questions.” That would be Drummond, who is also Google’s senior vice president for corporate development and “oversees Google’s legal affairs, government relations, corporate development and new business development teams.”
Google has not seen such a broad investigation into its practices from the federal government before. Within recent years it has run into trouble concerning its acquisitions of AdMob, DoubleClick and ITA, all of which are directly tied to Google search and advertising. Within the last week, Google’s $400 million acquisition of AdMeld, a company that focused on return-of-investment optimization of online ad buying, is being investigated by the Department of Justice for antitrust concerns.
The European Union and the state of Texas have launched independent investigations against Google concerning its search and online advertising dominance.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Carter Maslan, The Face Of Google Places, Leaving The Company
Jun 22nd
Carter Maslan has been the patient and good-natured face of Google Maps and Places at innumerable conferences and events over the past several years. He’s endured a regular onslaught of questions about missing features and local SEO frustrations surrounding Google’s increasingly…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
DecorMyEyes Owner Vitaly Borker Pleads Guilty, Could Face 6+ Years In Jail
May 13th
Vitaly Borker, the New York business owner who became notorious last year when he claimed that outrageous behavior toward customers was helping his website rank higher in Google, faces up to six-and-a-half years in jail after pleading guilty Thursday to several counts against him. According to the…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Weekly Wrap-up: What Tech Obstacles Do Kids Face? Twitter Brand Pages, An iPhone User’s First Days on Android and More…
Apr 9th
Our top story this week was Audrey Watters’ report on a survey that asked students how they use technology in the classroom. Almost 300,000 students from kindergarden through 12th grade – along with 43,000 parents, 35,000 teachers, 2,000 librarians, 3,500 administrators – took part in the study.
The results show that parents and teachers’ desire to either provide or improve access to digital tools in the classroom is strong. And teachers and administrators are confident they’re doing a good job using technology to enhance how students learn. But fewer than half the kids agreed. And it’s no wonder: The majority of administrators surveyed have no interest in incorporating one of the most common computing devices in the world – the cell phone – into their schools this year.
After the jump you’ll find more of this week’s top news stories on some of the key trends that are shaping the Web – mobile, location, Internet of Things – plus highlights from our six channels. Read on for more.
Sponsor
Top Stories of the Week
- What Do Kids Say Is The Biggest Obstacle To Technology At School?
- LinkedIn’s Answer to Facebook’s Open Graph
- Twitter to Offer Brand Pages Like Facebook’s, Report Says
- An iPhone User’s First Days on Android: Where Are the Apps and Why is My Phone Frozen?
- Thanks to Kinect, Google’s Gmail Motion Joke Becomes Reality
More coverage and analysis from ReadWriteWeb
Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App
As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we’ve made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook using the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes.
Location
- Google Brings Hotpot Recommendations to Places, Almost Reinvents Yelp
- Facebook Pushes Location: Adds Event Check-Ins, Places Maps
Mobile
Internet of Things
More Internet of Things coverage
ReadWriteEnterprise
ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to enterprise 2.0 and using social software inside organizations.
- 5 Apps That Bring SharePoint to the iPad
- Watch Google I/O from the Comfort of Your Own Home
- Linux Celebrates its 20th Anniversary and the Story of its Roots [Infographic]
ReadWriteStart
ReadWriteStart is a resource for startups and entrepreneurs.
- 5 Tools to Improve Your Idea Before You Write a Line of Code
- FounderLY: An Open Platform for Sharing Startup Stories
- LevelUp Your Startup with a New Offer from SCVNGR
ReadWriteCloud
ReadWriteCloud is dedicated to virtualization and cloud computing.
- Data Defined [Infographic]
- Facebook’s Open Compute Project Means Infrastructure is Now a Commodity
- The NewSQL Movement
ReadWriteBiz
ReadWriteBiz is a resource and guide for small to medium businesses.
- What Google +1 Means for Small Businesses and Site Owners
- Hands-On with Google Docs for iPad and iPhone
- Should Companies Restrict Web Access For Employees? Maybe a Little
ReadWriteHack
ReadWriteHack is a resource and guide for developers.
- 6 Free E-Books and Tutorials for Learning and Mastering Node.js
- The Guardian is Migrating Its Website from Java to Scala
- Video: Node.js Tutorials
ReadWriteMobile
ReadWriteMobile is dedicated to helping its community understand the strategic business and technical implications of developing mobile applications.
- List of Android Phones Getting Gingerbread
- Mono for Android Ships, Now .NET Developers Can Build Android Apps
- Mobile-Patterns: New Resource for Mobile App Makers from Foursquare’s Lead Designer
Enjoy your weekend everyone!
Subscribe to the Weekly Wrap-up
You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrap-up by RSS or by email below.
RWW Weekly Wrap-up Email Subscription form:
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Google Like To Face US Antitrust Case Later This Year
Apr 5th
Bloomberg provides more evidence of a coming antitrust investigation of Google by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or Justice Department. We’ve now been hearing these kinds of statements and suggestions — from various “unnamed sources” and “people with knowledge…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Google Not Planning To Release Mobile Face Recognition: Update
Mar 31st
Contrary to what I reported earlier based on a seemingly very credible CNN report, Google is not planning to release a version of its mobile app Goggles with face recognition technology. Google has had the capability for several years but so far refrained from putting it out in the world other than…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
He Said/She Said Between Google & CNN On Face Recognition Story
Mar 31st
This morning I read the CNN story that said Google was finally going to incorporate facial recognition technology into its Goggles app or another mobile application. I then wrote an opinion piece that argued Google was courting a major privacy backlash, despite seeming to have privacy controls…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Google Goggles for People? Google Says No Plans for Face Recognition App [Updated]
Mar 31st
Facial recognition meets Search. We knew this was coming, right?
CNN reports that Google is working on a mobile app that will use facial recognition technology to turn mobile phone photos into a means to identify people. The app would serve as a form of visual “search,” displaying results including name and email address.
Updated: Google says it is not working on a mobile app of this nature and would not introduce any facial recognition technology into any of its apps “unless there was a strong privacy model in place.”
While privacy advocates will be quick to identify all the dangers and implications of such a thing, Google is making it clear ahead of time that the service will be “opt in.” Users will have to agree to let their faces and data be retrievable by the app.
Sponsor
“We recognize that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues,” Harmut Neven, Google’s engineering director for image-recognition development, told CNN. Indeed, the FTC found earlier this week that Google had engaged in “deceptive privacy practices” with its roll-out of Buzz, exposing people’s information without their consent. In the future, the FTC has stipulated, users will have to opt-in rather than opt-out when Google makes a major privacy change.
No doubt, adding facial recognition technology to the way you’re “Google-able” would be seen as a major privacy change.
But the technology to do this already largely exists, says Neven, whose company Neven Vision was acquired by Google in 2006. Indeed, Facebook has been working on facial recognition technology too so that photos uploaded to the site can be automatically tagged with users’ names. However, while the technology at Facebook just uses data within, well, Facebook, the Google app would likely crawl the Web, including sites like Flickr and Picasa in order to link photos to someone’s identity.
It’s a similar process to Google Goggles, its image-recognition search engine for objects.
Google won’t say what the production timeline is for the app or when it plans to release the product, (Edited to add: actually Google says there’re no plans for the app at all) but it’s clear that the company is already thinking about its strategy around the privacy – and the publicity – implications when this happens.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
