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03 FEB 2012 07:51:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/17797?ns=guardian&pageName=Google+fined+*400%2C000+in+France+for+making+its+Maps+service+free%3AArticle%3A1698794&ch=Technology&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Google+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CInternet%2CMapping+technologies&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Charles+Arthur&c7=12-Feb-03&c8=1698794&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FGoogle" width="1" height="1" /></div>French court find Google guilty of abusing its dominant position after mapping company lodges unfair competition complaintA French commercial court has found Google guilty of abusing its dominant position through its Google Maps application, and ordered it to pay a fine and damages to a French mapping company.In a ruling this week, the Paris court upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company, Google Inc, for providing free web mapping services to some businesses.The court ordered Google to pay â‚¬500,000 (Â£415,000) in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a â‚¬15,000 fine.A Google spokesman said the company would appeal against the decision."We remain convinced that a free high-quality mapping tool is beneficial for both internet users and websites," he said. There remains competition in this sector for us, both in France and internationally."We have reviewed the French court's decision and have decided to appeal. We're confident that a free, high-quality map product is a great for websites and consumers and we continue to face strong competition in this field."The French company provides the same services as Google Maps for a fee, and claimed that Google's strategy aimed to undercut competitors by temporarily swallowing the full cost until it gains control of the market."This is the end of a two-year battle, a decision without precedent," said the lawyer for Bottin Cartographes, Jean-David Scemmama."We proved the illegality of [Google's] strategy to remove its competitors ... the court recognised the unfair and abusive character of the methods used and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed."This is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application."Google has a dominant position in search in Europe, with more than 90% of search traffic. That means that it can fall foul of national laws over the use of that dominance if it is seen to exploit it in other areas.Google Maps are not free for unlimited use. Earlier this year, Google <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/oct/27/google-maps-api-charging" title="">announced that it would introduce charging for heavy use of the service</a>. That in turn has led a number of sites to seek out alternatives such as the free OpenStreetMap, which has <a href="http://switch2osm.org/" title="">begun a campaign to encourage switching</a>.Google has previously faced other difficulties in France. Last March, the country's data privacy regulator imposed a record fine of â‚¬100,000 on it for collecting private information while compiling its Street View service.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/mapping-technologies">Mapping technologies</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlesarthur">Charles Arthur</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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02 FEB 2012 08:00:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/70906?ns=guardian&pageName=Google+Science+Fair+2012%3A+Everyone+has+a+question.+What%27s+yours%3F+%5Bvideo%5D%3AArticle%3A1698201&ch=Science&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Cern+%28Science%29%2CScience%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CScience+%28Education+subject%29%2CSchools%2CEducation&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CHigher+Education%2CCorporate+IT%2CSchools+Education&c6=GrrlScientist+%28Contributor%29&c7=12-Feb-02&c8=1698201&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Science&c13=&c25=GrrlScientist&c30=content&h2=GU%2FScience%2FCern" width="1" height="1" /></div>Because instead of talking about what they know, some people talk about the questions that they ponder<img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7152/6805445213_f497a1491a_z.jpg" width="460" height="253" />Remember last year's online Google Science Fair? Well, hold on to your hats because they're doing it again this year! In partnership with CERN, Lego, National Geographic and Scientific American, Google has announced their second online science fair. This is the largest global online science competition and it celebrates the curiosity and investigations of young scientists everywhere! If you're 13 to 18 years old, you can enter by submitting your entry by 1 April 2012 for your chance to win fantastic prizes. This video tells you a little more:Visit <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleScienceFair">GoogleScienceFair</a>'s YouTube channel [<a href="http://youtu.be/LWiuUC9RDhY">video link</a>]. Here's a video detailing some of the competition rules: Visit <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleScienceFair">GoogleScienceFair</a>'s YouTube channel [<a href="http://youtu.be/sElBwQkK4mE">video link</a>]. Everyone has a question. What's yours?.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. <a href="http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/">Learn more about the Google Science Fair</a>. Here's some information from last year's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/jan/11/1">Google Science Fair</a> competition, and a story where I interviewed one of last year's semi-finalists, a young British scientist, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/may/11/2">Georgia Bondy</a>, about her Google Science Fair project. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. twitter: @<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/GrrlScientist">GrrlScientist</a> facebook: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/grrlscientist">grrlscientist</a> evil google+: <a href="http://gplus.to/grrlscientist">grrlscientist</a> email: <a href="mailto:grrlscientist@gmail.com">grrlscientist@gmail.com</a><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/cern">Cern</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/science">Science</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/schools">Schools</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/grrlscientist">GrrlScientist</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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02 FEB 2012 01:01:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/89471?ns=guardian&pageName=Facebook%27s+IPO+announcement+*+live%3AArticle%3A1697571&ch=Technology&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Facebook%2CTechnology%2CInternet%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CMark+Zuckerberg+%28Technology%29%2CSocial+media%2CSocial+networking%2CMedia%2CStock+markets%2CIPOs&c5=Unclassified%2CDigital+Media%2CBusiness+Markets%2CMedia+Weekly%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT%2CFamily+and+Relationships&c6=Dan+Sabbagh%2CDavid+Batty&c7=12-Feb-02&c8=1697571&c9=Article&c10=News%2CBlogpost%2CMinute+by+minute&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=Technology+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FFacebook" width="1" height="1" /></div>Full coverage as the social network launches the biggest-ever stock market listing for a technology company <a href="www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/02/facebook-100bn-stock-market-flotation">Can Zuckerberg rise to $100bn of expectations?</a>9.06pm: Facebook's listing promises to be the float of the century. Well, other than Google back in 2004. Facebook has announced it plans to go public, filing its intentions with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. We'll gut the document and follow initital reaction here to a process that will be keenly scrutinised by anybody with the slightest interest in the future of the internet. Can Facebook meet the inflated expectations? Can it prosper as a public company when every quarter's progress will be monitored? And will the notoriously stage shy Mark Zuckerberg become more comfortable with the even higher public profile?The loose talk pre-announcement is that Facebook will be valued at anywhere between $75bn and $100bn. Revenues in 2011 have been estimated at just short of $4bn, with further growth expected in 2012. <a href="http://gawker.com/5866291/source-reveals-facebook-is-gushing-cash#numbers">Gawker last December</a>, said that it had a leak of Facebook's financials for the first nine months of 2011, which showed that the company was sitting on a cash pile of $3.5bn. Revenues for the period were $2.5bn, with operating profit of $1.2bn and net income of $714m. Let's see if any of those figures are correct.We are also expecting a clear fix as to who owns the shares â€“ pre-flotation. Here's the best breakdown circulating before the float. We'll see if that's accurate too.Employees 30% Mark Zuckerberg 24% (founder and CEO) Digital Sky Technologies 10% (Russian VC) Accel Partners 8% (Silicon Valley VC) Dustin Moskowitz 6% (actual co-founder) Eduardo Saverin 5% (sort of co-founder) Sean Parker 4% (Justin Timberlake in the film) Goldman Sachs clients 3% Microsoft 1.3%9.52pm: Facebook has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $5bn in an initial public offering of stock in the US.On Comment is Free, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/01/facebook-ipo-billion-user-ambition">Michael Wolff considers how the phenomenally successful enterprise now faces hard business facts</a>.<blockquote>I don't think that Facebook, with its messianic ambitions and squirrelly zeal, is actually ready for the harsh light of public company life. Even though it comes to market with the weight and hegemonic feel of the biggest brands, it has grown up in such a bubble of cultishness and doctrine, that primetime scrutiny could shortly become very uncomfortable.This is the $100bn-and-climbing vision, which now, in the public glare, will have to walk past cagey regulators, grumpy media, issue-hungry politicians, impatient shareholders and irritated customers.It's a speculative dream and breathtaking power grab, which, in the end, I don't think they'll get away with. Granted, so far they have.</blockquote>9.57pm: Facebook's revenue in 2011 was $3.1bn, with net profit of $1bn.10.03pm: Facebook revenues a bit lower than the widely rumoured $3.8bn, but the net profit at $1bn is higher than the numbers leaked.10.04pm: Pre-tax income shows just how high Facebook's profit margin already is. Pre-tax for 2011 is $1.695bn, a margin of 45.6% of sales10.05pm: Facebook revenues over the last five years. Impressive growth by any measure.2008 - $153m 2009 - $272m 2010 - $777m 2010 - $1,974m 2011 - $3,711m10.08pm: Net income for the past five years - you can see the rapid movement into profit.2007 - $ -138m 2008 - $ -56m 2009 - $ 229m 2010 - $ 606m 2011 - $ 1,000m10.09pm: Facebook has $3.9bn of cash on its balance sheet. Handy amount of money to make since it was set up from a Harvard dorm in 2004.10.11pm: Compared to 2010, Revenue in 2011 increased $1,737 million, or 88% compared to 2010. The increase was due primarily to a 69% increase in advertising revenue to $3,154 million - advertising the major component of Facebook revenue.10.12pm: Very interesting: 12% of all Facebook revenue in 2011 came from Farmville games company Zynga. No wonder FB is so hot on media partnerships.10.13pm: Facebook, 2011 quarterly revenue growth. No shortage of momentum.Q1 2011 - $731m Q2 2011 - $895m Q3 2011 - $954m Q4 2011 - $1,131m10.16pm: Here's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/01/facebook-letter-mark-zuckerberg-text">the full text of Facebook's statement of intent</a> â€“ it's described as a letter from Mark Zuckerberg.Here's some of the highlights of his letter:<blockquote class="quoted"> Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission â€” to make the world more open and connected.Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries.People sharing more â€” even if just with their close friends or families â€” creates a more open culture and leads to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others. We believe that this creates a greater number of stronger relationships between people, and that it helps people get exposed to a greater number of diverse perspectives.By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world's information infrastructure should resemble the social graph â€” a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate.</blockquote> Zuckerberg goes on to set out how Facebook hopes "to improve how people connect to businesses and the economy."<blockquote class="quoted"> We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.As people share more, they have access to more opinions from the people they trust about the products and services they use. This makes it easier to discover the best products and improve the quality and efficiency of their lives.One result of making it easier to find better products is that businesses will be rewarded for building better products â€” ones that are personalized and designed around people. We have found that products that are "social by design" tend to be more engaging than their traditional counterparts, and we look forward to seeing more of the world's products move in this direction.In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically. More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.</blockquote>He also sets out how Facebook hopes "to change how people relate to their governments and social institutions."<blockquote class="quoted"> By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.Through this process, we believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people, including the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them.</blockquote>And here's a link to <a href=" http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/g287954zuckerberg_sig.jpg">Zuckerberg's crappy signature</a>.10.20pm: You just got all of Zuckerberg's IPO letter, but what stands out on first reading is his emphasis on the "The Hacker Way" as his company philosophy. He says that "hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done". He describes hackers as "idealistic" and says this approach is how Facebook can develop so fast.Here's more:<blockquote class="quoted">The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it â€” often in the face of people who say it's impossible or are content with the status quo.Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words "Done is better than perfect" painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.</blockquote>10.23pm: Facebook has 845 million active users as of December 31, 2011, an increase of 39% as compared to 608 million as of December 31, 2010. Still growing.10.24pm: Here's a nod to British culture. "Examples of popular Pages on Facebook include Lady Gaga, Disney, and Manchester United, each of which has more than 20 million Likes."10.25pm: Mark Zuckerberg salary is $500,000 (check that Stephen Hester). His bonus for the first half of 2011 was $220,500. But of course his shareholding is huge.10.26pm: This just in from Josh Halliday, who has been reading the Facebook filing.<blockquote>Beyond the headline numbers, two figures really stood out for me. Where does Facebook generate revenue? Last year 85% of its $3.7bn revenue from advertising. More interestingly, 12% of the social network's turnover came through Zynga, the maker of hugely popular games such as Farmville, Cityville and Mafia Wars. The social game maker Zynga, itself moving towards an IPO, began to make its first moves away from Facebook towards the end of last year.</blockquote>10.27pm: Mark Zuck also received perks worth $692,679 for costs related to personal use of aircraft chartered in connection and $90,850 for costs related to estate and financial planning during 2011.So his total pay and perks were $1,487,362 in 2011.10.34pm: It's the kind of structure that was used by media companies, such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, to entrench the control of founders. It is also used by old British media companies, such as the company that owns the Daily Mail. The theory was that it was becoming unfashionable, but Facebook (and Google) has brought it back.10.36pm: Here's an alternative link to the SEC data: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80165730/Facebook-IPO-Registration-Statement-on-Form-S-110.36pm: Reuters has been crunching the numbers alongside us. <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/anthony-derosa/2012/02/01/the-most-interesting-data-points-in-facebooks-ipo/">Check out their analysis here</a>.10.38pm: Eduardo Saverin â€“ the press-shy founder of Facebook, famously ousted from the company in its early days, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/saverin/posts/341920455828047">has posted about the IPO on Facebook</a>: "Here it is, what a ride! Site first launched February 4, 2004."10.38pm: OK. Share ownership time.Mark Zuckerberg owns 28.2% of the pre IPO share capital. Slightly more than we thought.10.42pm: Other share owners who hold more than 5% of the supervoting Class B shares are listed as follows.Accel Partners, US venture capital - 11.4% DST Global, Russian venture capital - 5.5% Dustin Moskovitz - 7.6%10.46pm: You will no doubt be asking - how much is Facebook worth then. We don't know yet. The company hasn't yet put a price on its shares, because that only happens after a negotiation between the Wall Street banks floating the business and prospective buyers. The document that has been released today is the basis of that negotiation.So - $75bn to $100bn is all we have to go on still. Which makes Mark Zuckerberg's 28% stake worth...well you can do it...potentially $28bn.Here's the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/01/facebook-files-5bn-ipo">Guardian's story on the filing of the IPO</a>.10.48pm: More from Josh Halliday:<blockquote class="quoted">'It may surprise some that China is mentioned more often than Twitter in Facebook's S-1. Zuckerberg makes a couple of fleeting references to the microblogging site as a competitor, but Facebook has not ruled out a controversial expansion into China. "We continue to evaluate entering China," the Facebook S-1 says. It adds later: "There are more than two billion global Internet users[â€¦] and we aim to connect all of them"</blockquote>10.49pm: Banks leading the float are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan. Their fee is typically 7% of the amount of money raised, seeing as you asked. Assisting them are Banc of America - Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital [hurrah for Britain], and Allen and Company10.54pm: Bloomberg <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-01/zuckerberg-facebook-stake-worth-28-4-billion-at-valuation-s-highest-range.html">looks at who are set to be the biggest winners from the IPO</a>. It repeats the point, Mark Zuckerberg could be worth $28.4bn.Bloomberg also makes a comparison with Google:<blockquote class="quoted">Assuming the California-based company is valued at the top end of the range, Zuckerberg will own stock worth $28.4 billion. By comparison, Google Inc. co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are each worth more than $15 billion based on their ownership of that company's shares.Larry Ellison owns stock worth about $31 billion in Oracle Corp., the software company he founded in 1977.</blockquote>10.55pm: Facebook is only selling the class A shares that have one vote per share in the flotation. The company has so little need for cash that Facebook will not generate any money in the flotation.10.57pm: US technology and media commentator Jeff Jarvis has written a piece on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/02/mark-zuckerberg-sharing-economy">Zuckerberg's masterplan for the 'sharing economy'</a>.Here's an extract from his piece:<blockquote class="quoted">Mark Zuckerberg believes he is not changing human nature but enabling it. If you buy thatâ€”and I doâ€”then I'd suggest buying his stock, for he has created the platform for the sharing economy.Zuckerberg sees Facebook as an evolutionary step beyond Google and other net services. "They crawl the web," he told me in an interview for my book, Public Parts. "But there's nothing you can crawl to get information about people. It's all in our minds. So in order to have that service, you need to build the tools that let people share."The two giants of the net are at war now over what I call signal generation: the ability to get us to generate data about ourselvesâ€”who we are, where we are, what we like, whom we like, what we buy, what we want, what we know, what we want to knowâ€”so they can serve us more relevant and valuable content, services, and advertising.Facebook's IPO filing says it is bringing in $3.7 billion in annual revenue, most from advertising. Last year, Google brought in ten times that. But Facebook has 845 million members, more than half of whom use it dailyâ€”an engagement number every newspaper and media organization should shoot for and would die for.</blockquote>11.00pm: Mark Zuckerberg will be selling some of his shares, but only so he can satisfy taxes that he will incur upon the exercise of an outstanding stock option to purchase 120m shares of the supervoting Class B common stock. That means - although this conclusion is tentative - that Zuckerberg won't be netting any cash directly from the float. But then he won't need to. That day will come soon enough - and Wall Street doesn't like to see a selling founder at this point in the company life cycle.11.02pm: Viewers of The Social Network will wonder where Eduardo Saverin is. Saverin was Zuckerberg's best friend at Harvard. He is not listed as a shareholder, but Facebook is only listing people and institutions with more than 5%. So he holds less than that, but we don't know how much less.11.11pm: This is David Batty, I'm taking over the live blog for the rest of the evening. You can follow me on Twitter @David_Batty.My colleague Charles Arthur has been examining the details of the IPO on his <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/charlesarthur">Twitter account</a>:<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/charlesarthur/status/164840770774380545">Zuckerberg will have majority vote of stock - A shares 1 vote, B shares 10 votes. He gets lots of B shares.</a><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/charlesarthur/status/164842728025362432">138m Class B stock with employees issued since 2005 at $0.83. That's going to be some millionaires there when those flip.</a><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/charlesarthur/status/164843100030767105">FB revenue growth 2007-2011: 153m, 272m, 777m, 1974m, 3711m.</a><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/charlesarthur/status/164843305052549120">FB net income 2007-2011: -138m, -56m, 229m, 606m, 1000m (all in $). 2009 was the magic year.</a>11.19pm: Facebook's claim to be in the same "peer group" as Google is examined by the Wall Street Journal's <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-google-still-giant-but-facebook-is-gaining/?mod=e2tw">Deal Journal blog</a>:<blockquote>Facebook lists Google as a "significant competitor" in its S1 filing and as a member of its "peer group." But looking at the numbers, Google is still a giant compared to the infant Facebook, bringing in more than 10 times the revenue. But the internet search giant better look out, because Facebook's growing more than twice as fast.</blockquote>11.25pm: Tech analyst Benedict Evans has been looking at what Facebook's IPO says about its business model on his <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/BenedictEvans">Twitter account</a>:<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/BenedictEvans/status/164830523917742081">At the end of December, 50% of Facebook's users were mobile and 38% were using smartphone apps.</a><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/BenedictEvans/status/164836836815028224">Very clear from FB's filing that the lack of ads on their mobile products is hitting revenue, both indirectly andw through substitution.</a>He then notes: <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/BenedictEvans/status/164839041383137280">"We may have potential future monetization opportunities such as the inclusion of sponsored stories in users' mobile News Feeds."</a><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/BenedictEvans/status/164838210478944256">Of 845m monthly users, 360m used FB 6 out of 7 days in December. SO, FB is regular and 'essential' for about 30% of the base.</a>11.40pm: Blogger Philip Bump says he is "perplexed" by Facebook's decision to go public, and questions whether the move is down to <a href="http://pbump.net/h21-5">worries about their reliance on advertising revenue</a>.<blockquote class="quoted">Here's what Facebook articulates as the toplines for its strategy for growth - the reasons, in other words, for people to invest:â€¢ Expand Our Global User Community. â€¢ Build Great Social Products to Increase Engagement. â€¢ Provide Users with the Most Compelling Experience. â€¢ Build Engaging Mobile Experiences. â€¢ Enable Developers to Build Great Social Products Using the Facebook Platform. â€¢ Improve Ad Products for Advertisers and Users.The first one is first for a reason. International growth, as I mentioned above, is key. ... But the others? Most appear to be about refinement.I have a lot of confidence in Facebook's ability to innovate in the social space. ... It's not clear to me, though, that this infrastructure syncs nicely with a revenue model predicated mostly on advertising. Isn't the traditional value in going public to generate capital for planned expansion? If so - why does Facebook need this infusion of money? ... Over 40% of the company's profit can be accounted for by a partnership with the game manufacturer Zynga. That's a very tenuous position to be in. Their reliance on advertising exceeds traditional media outlets handily.I'd ask then - is this IPO a necessary hedge, rather than a golden opportunity?</blockquote>12.17am: This article from Dan Randall of Reuters explores <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/us-howtoplay-facebook-idUSTRE8102QU20120201">the options for investors who want a stake in Facebook on the first day of trading</a>.<blockquote class="quoted">Investors won't get the full benefit unless they are among the few privileged clients of underwriters, Morgan Stanley the lead among them, who can buy at the offer price.Still, investors who want a stake in the dominant social media company will have options. It is easier to buy funds that own stakes in Facebook than to hope an order for individual shares will be filled early on the IPO day.</blockquote>12.22am: The Associated Press notes how the IPO filing casts a spotlight on some of Facebook's inner workings for the first time. Interestingly, it also raises questions as to where the company sees its growth coming from.<blockquote>The documents show, as expected, that Facebook is thriving. The company earned $668 million on revenue of $3.7 billion last year, according to the filing. Both figures nearly doubled from 2010."The company is a lot more profitable than we thought," said Kathleen Smith, principal of IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital.Although she considered Facebook's numbers "very impressive," she said Facebook needs to talk more about where it sees its growth coming from."What new areas of business is it expecting to pursue beyond display ads?"</blockquote>12.38am: <a href="http://www.wired.com">Wired</a> questions whether <a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/facebook-ipo-2/">Facebook's IPO will perform as well as Google's or be a disappointment like Groupon's</a>.This could mean Facebook's IPO will meet a fate similar to that of this year's other high-profile tech IPOs. Both Zynga and Groupon actually sank below their IPO share price â€” right out of the gate â€” a sign of failure on Wall Street. "The tech class of 2011 has underperformed," said Paul Kedrosky, a prominent financial blogger and senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, in an interview. "Because of secondary markets, that post-IPO balance happened pre-IPO. My expectation is, Facebook will see a very similar phenomenon."<a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/facebook-privacy/">Facebook will have to reveal its privacy investigations</a> now it is going public, Wired also notes: <blockquote>When it comes to information privacy concerns, Facebook already has a bullseye on its back. That won't change now that Facebook is going public in its highly anticipated Initial Public Offering (IPO). But disclosure rules affecting publicly traded companies may force Facebook to reveal privacy-related investigations that it otherwise might have kept secret.Facebook won't face any new regulations or government oversight specifically related to privacy, according to the experts who spoke to Ars. But in the cases of inquiries from the Federal Trade Commission or attorneys general, investigations that might otherwise remain private would become public because Facebook will be forced to disclose events that could have a material impact on earnings.</blockquote>12.50am: Reuters' social media editor Anthony De Rosa has noticed another interesting fact in the IPO filing:<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/AntDeRosa/status/164870506326130688">IPO filing states that "Facebook has been or is currently restricted in whole or in part in China, Iran, North Korea, and Syria".</a>12.52am: We're wrapping up this live blog now but we'll have more coverage, reaction and analysis to Facebook's IPO tomorrow.In the meantime, here's a recap of the main points:â€¢ Facebook has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $5bn in an initial public offering of stock in the US.â€¢ Its revenue in 2011 was $3.1bn, with net profit of $1bn.â€¢ Last year 85% of its $3.7bn revenue from advertising. 12% came through Zynga, the maker of hugely popular games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars.â€¢ Facebook has $3.9bn of cash on its balance sheet. â€¢ Mark Zuckerberg salary is $500,000. His bonus for the first half of 2011 was $220,500. â€¢ But if Facebook is valued at $100bn as anticipated, Zuckerberg will own stock worth $28.4bnThanks for reading and for your comments below.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/facebook">Facebook</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/mark-zuckerberg">Mark Zuckerberg</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/social-media">Social media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/socialnetworking">Social networking</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/stock-markets">Stock markets</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/ipos">IPOs</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/dan-sabbagh">Dan Sabbagh</a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/davidbatty">David Batty</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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31 JAN 2012 18:05:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/81351?ns=guardian&pageName=Facebook%27s+market+listing+is+imminent+*+but+does+it+have+Google%27s+potent%3AArticle%3A1697361&ch=Technology&c3=Guardian&c4=Facebook%2CTechnology%2CMedia%2CInternet%2CSocial+networking%2CStock+markets%2CBusiness%2CIPOs%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CGoogle%2B%2CSocial+media%2CDigital+media&c5=Unclassified%2CDigital+Media%2CBusiness+Markets%2CMedia+Weekly%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT%2CFamily+and+Relationships&c6=Juliette+Garside&c7=12-Feb-01&c8=1697361&c9=Article&c10=Feature%2CNews&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FFacebook" width="1" height="1" /></div>The world's leading social site is expected to sell off a 10% stake for up to $10bn â€“ implying an overall value of $100bnBankers, bloggers, stock market traders and internet entrepreneurs from Singapore to Silicon Valley are holding their collective breath. Facebook's record-breaking stock market listing, the largest ever for a technology company, is imminent.Papers must be filed soon if Facebook wishes to press ahead with plans for a May public offering. The world's leading social site, with 800 million members worldwide, is expected to sell off a 10% stake for between $7.5bn (Â£4.8bn) and $10bn, implying an overall value of $75bn to $100bn.The multiples are on a par with those achieved by Google when it joined the Nasdaq in 2004. By then, Google's superior engineering had allowed it to secure an unassailable position in search, a utility without which the web would be impossible to navigate. Seven years on, and Google is making more than $10bn a quarter with a market capitalisation of $188bn. Does Facebook have the same potential?The bulk of Facebook's income will be from advertisers. WPP, the world's biggest marketing services group, already spends $200m a year with Facebook, an eighth of the $1.6bn it pays to Google. A vote of confidence, but WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell has "fundamental doubts" about the extent to which social platforms can be monetised."The point is that Facebook is a social medium, not an advertising one, like search or display," he told the Guardian. "It certainly is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful branding medium. It is, however, a word of mouth or PR medium. You interrupt social conversations with commercial messages at your peril."Mark Zuckerberg was initially cautious about foisting advertising on his followers, to the extent that it led to a parting of ways with his co-founder and Harvard friend Eduardo Saverin. The commercial coyness is long gone, and moves to monetise the audience with new forms of advertising have often provoked backlashes.Facebook's Beacon ad system, which monitored members' activity on partner websites and then publicised these movements on their Facebook news feeds, so outraged users it led to a class action lawsuit. Beacon was shut down in 2009.Another legal claim was given the go-ahead in California in December, from users unhappy that if they clicked the 'like' button on a company's page, Facebook could use that member's image and name in an advert endorsing the same company.The experience of Myspace, Britain's Bebo and Friends Reunited would suggest these forums can be passing fads, whose users are quickly drawn to other novelties. The social network founded eight years ago in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room has soared in membership while rivals melted away, but Google is biting at its heels.The search giant recently pegged staff bonuses to the success of its own social offering, Google+, and the effect has been dramatic. Its membership ramped up to 90m users in January, having doubled in three months.There are signs that Facebook's membership is reaching saturation point in its biggest markets. The number of UK monthly visitors fell 2.2% to 32m from November to December, while US visitors declined 2.1% to 166m, says web measurement firm ComScore. Its worldwide audience is still growing, however, adding 1.4m visitors from November to December, boosted by rapid growth in Brazil and India.The deep level of penetration in small or remote nations like the Falkland Islands (75% of inhabitants are users according to research site Socialbakers) and Iceland (68%) suggests that in some communities Facebook has become not just a pastime but a social service, integrated into the fabric of everyday life."For some users Facebook is the internet," says ComScore European managing director Mike Read. He identifies two trends that point to success for Zuckerberg. "Facebook's user base is growing and the amount of time people are spending online individually is growing. Not only is the audience maturing, the way in which people use Facebook in a commercial sense is maturing."Once membership stops growing in mature markets, increasing the amount of time each user spends on Facebook will become a crucial measure of its success. In October 2010, the average user idled away 4.5 hours a month on Facebook. This rose to 6.5 hours in December 2011.If Facebook can imitate Google by becoming a landing page from which users access games, video, music or online shops, the advertising money should follow. It is already the largest internet display â€“ as opposed to search â€“ medium in the UK, with 18bn ads seen on the site in December compared to 4bn for its next largest rival, Yahoo. But online display is still embryonic compared with the millions once poured into newspaper and magazine advertising.Facebook has not shared its numbers for 2011, but the most recent leak suggests earnings of $1.5bn on revenues of $3.8bn. A $100bn valuation would equal 66 times earnings and 26 times revenues. In 2004, Google was valued at $23bn, around 67 times its 2003 earnings and 24 times its revenues.After disappointing performances from games group Zynga and coupon network Groupon, Facebook may prefer to avoid a fall in the weeks after it goes public by pricing at the lower end of expectations. Trades in the firm's privately held equity, through services like SharesPost, imply a $83.5bn valuation. Guessing is a dangerous game."Perhaps it is worth $100bn, who knows," says Sorrell. "I thought $15bn was too much. More fool me."Facebook's roster of celebrity backers, which ranges from Bono and Microsoft to Russian billionaire Yuri Milner would suggest something of a bubble, but its ability to attract investors has continually defied expectations.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/facebook">Facebook</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/socialnetworking">Social networking</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/stock-markets">Stock markets</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/ipos">IPOs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google-plus">Google+</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/social-media">Social media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media">Digital media</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/juliette-garside">Juliette Garside</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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31 JAN 2012 08:33:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/25056?ns=guardian&pageName=Google%2C+Facebook+and+others+join+forces+for+anti-phishing+scheme%3AArticle%3A1696871&ch=Technology&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Data+and+computer+security+%28safeguarding+computers+and+data+from+criminals%29%2CEmail+%28Technology%29%2CComputing+%28Technology%29%2CInternet%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CFacebook%2CTechnology&c5=Digital+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Charles+Arthur&c7=12-Jan-31&c8=1696871&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FData+and+computer+security" width="1" height="1" /></div>Fifteen major tech firms jointly design system to combat emails seeking to hijack passwords and other personal detailsGoogle, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and 11 other big tech companies are jointly designing a system for combating phishing email scams that try to trick people into giving up passwords and other personal details.The scams, for which hundreds of millions of emails are sent every year, make emails look as if they come from legitimate businesses, and direct users to fake sites â€“ often on compromised computers â€“ copied from the original bank or company. But when the victims enter details such as their username, password or date of birth, they are captured by the "phishers".Fifteen major technology and financial companies have formed an organisation to design a system, called <a href="http://dmarc.org" title="">DMARC</a> â€“ short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance â€“ to authenticate emails from legitimate senders and weed out fakes.The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) said more than 300 brands are hijacked by phishers every month.DMARC builds upon existing techniques used to combat spam, such as the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) system that has been evolving over the past 10 years. Those techniques are designed to verify that an email actually came from the sender in question. The problem is there are multiple approaches for doing that, and no standard way of dealing with emails believed to be fake or whose origin cannot be verified but which might be authentic.<a href="http://www.returnpath.net/blog/intheknow/2012/01/return-path-joins-with-gmail-aol-yahoo-and-microsoft-to-found-dmarc-org-to-help-safeguard-consumers-brands-and-isps-from-phishing/" title="">The new system</a> addresses the issue by asking email senders and the companies that provide email services to share information about the email messages they send and receive.In addition to authenticating their legitimate emails using the existing systems, companies can receive alerts from email providers every time their domain name is used in a fake message. They can then ask the email providers to move such messages to the spam folder or block them outright.According to Google, about 15% of non-spam messages in Gmail come from domains that are protected by DMARC. This means Gmail users "don't need to worry about spoofed messages from these senders," Adam Dawes, a product manager at Google, said in a blog post."With DMARC, large email senders can ensure that the email they send is being recognised by mail providers like Gmail as legitimate, as well as set policies so that mail providers can reject messages that try to spoof the senders' addresses," Dawes wrote.Work on DMARC started about 18 months ago. From this week, other companies can sign up with the organisation, whether they send emails or provide email services. For email users, the group hopes DMARC will mean fewer fraudulent messages and scams reaching their inbox.The APWG said in <a href="http://www.antiphishing.org/reports/APWG_GlobalPhishingSurvey_1H2011.pdf" title="">its report on the first half of 2011</a>, published last November, there were more than 112,000 unique phishing attacks worldwide in the period â€“ though that was lower than in 2009, when phishing peaked due to the use of botnets to send out emails and host fake sites. Part of the rise was by China-based phishers, whose targets lay inside and outside the country. A total of 520 institutions were targeted in the six months, including banks, e-commerce sites, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, lotteries, government tax bureaux and stockholding securities companies.The group's founders are email providers Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Google; financial service providers Bank of America, Fidelity Investments and PayPal; online service companies Facebook, LinkedIn and American Greetings, and the security companies Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path and the Trusted Domain Project.Google uses it already, both in its email sender and email provider capacities. The weight of the companies that have already signed on to the project certainly helps, and its founders are hoping it will be more broadly adopted to become an industry standard.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/data-computer-security">Data and computer security</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/email">Email</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/computing">Computing</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/facebook">Facebook</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlesarthur">Charles Arthur</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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31 JAN 2012 02:16:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/59754?ns=guardian&pageName=Obama+says+he+will+help+unemployed+engineer+find+job+during+video+%27hango%3AArticle%3A1696862&ch=World+news&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=US+politics%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CInternet%2CGoogle%2B%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CYouTube+%28Technology%29&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CUS+Elections%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Chris+McGreal&c7=12-Jan-31&c8=1696862&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FUS+politics" width="1" height="1" /></div>Obama told Jennifer Weddel to send her husband's resumÃ©, saying as an engineer he should have been able to find work Barack Obama has promised to help an unemployed engineer find a job during an online video "hangout" answering questions posted on YouTube and by text.The president responded to some of more than 133,000 questions submitted ranging from a number about the economy to foreign aid, drone strikes and the case of a British man the US is attempting to extradite over alleged breach of copyright law. Five people were selected to ask their questions live and put "Obama in the hot seat" in the forum arranged by Google Plus.Obama was pressed repeatedly on the economy, including questions by Jennifer Weddel, a mother from Texas, who wanted to know why the government continued to issue work visas for foreigners when her husband, an engineer, can't find a job. He has been out of work for three years.The president said visas were only issued to people with skills needed in the US."There's a huge demand around the country for engineers," said Obama. "Where you're seeing a lot of specialised demand is in engineering that is related to the hi-tech industries."The president inquired as to what kind of engineer Jennifer's husband is. A semi-conductor engineer, came the reply. Obama appeared baffled. "If you send me your husband's resume I'd be interested in finding out exactly what's happening right there because the word we're getting is that somebody in that kind of hi-tech field, that kind of engineer, should be able to find something right away," he said.Weddel replied: "I'll have to take you up on that."Christine Wolf of Illinois wanted to know how to help children to look optimistically beyond the economic crisis. Obama said he tries to explain the crisis to his own daughters at the dinner table. His solution was to tell them that others have had it worse."One of the most important things I can do as president is to remind this generation that previous generations have had tougher times, whether it's my grandparents going through the great depression or some of the touch recessions we went through in the 80s," he said. "I think it's very important for all of us to remember that whatever the challenges that are out there, we can work through this."A homeless military veteran in Boston wanted to know why the US was sending foreign aid to Pakistan and other countries that "give money to terrorism"."We only spend about 1% of our budget on foreign aid but it pays off in a lot of ways because if we are contributing to improving an economy in a country, if we're giving people more opportunity, if we're preventing a famine that results in huge numbers of refugees, that potentially saves us from having to deal with some military crisis somewhere down the road that could be even more expensive," said Obama. "So aside from it being the right thing to do, as a very wealthy country, us trying to help develop other countries, it's also important to make sure that this is part of our overall security strategy."Obama recognised Pakistan was not always as co-operative in dealing with extremists as the US would like."I do agree that a country like Pakistan is one where our relations have gotten more strained because there are a lot of extremists inside that country and either for a lack of capacity or political will they haven't taken them all on," he said.But, the president said, giving Pakistan aid helped to win greater co-operation. Pakistan also featured in a question about the sharp increase in the use of drone attacks since Obama became president. How do they help, the questioner asked, when they cause civilian casualties?"Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. For the most part, they have been very precise, precision strikes against al-Qaida and their affiliates. We are very careful in terms of how it's been applied. I think there's this perception that we're just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy nilly. This is a targeted focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists," he said. "This thing is kept on a very tight leash". Obama said the advantage of drone strikes is that they were "less intrusive than the alternatives".The moderator said the most popular question among Google Plus users asked to vote was about the case of Richard O'Dwyer, a 23 year-old British student whom the US justice department has spent nearly a year trying to extradite to stand trial for alleged breaches of copyright by providing links on his website, TVShack.net. Earlier this month a judge in the UK ruled O'Dwyer can be extradited. A questioner asked why extradition laws written to combat terrorism were being used in the case. Obama said that separation of powers meant he played no role in the case but that more broadly defending intellectual copyright protects US jobs. However, the president repeated concerns about the two bills aimed at cracking down on online piracy that have stalled in the US Congress in the face of widespread objections. Obama said the need was to balance protection of intellectual property without undermining the openness and transparency of the internet. The president was also asked a series of less serious questions. One was by a comedian doing an Obama impression who wanted to know if comedy influenced the outcome of elections. The question came in the wake of Stephen Colbert's failed attempts to influence the South Carolina Republican primary.Obama dodged the question but said it "makes our country stronger that you can make fun of the president".<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-politics">US politics</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google-plus">Google+</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/youtube">YouTube</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/chrismcgreal">Chris McGreal</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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30 JAN 2012 22:22:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/11881?ns=guardian&pageName=Google+cuts+head+of+Kenyan+operation+after+scraping+Mocality+database%3AArticle%3A1696848&ch=Technology&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Google+%28Technology%29%2CData+and+computer+security+%28safeguarding+computers+and+data+from+criminals%29%2CInternet%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CKenya+%28News%29%2CDigital+media%2CTechnology&c5=Unclassified%2CDigital+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Charles+Arthur&c7=12-Jan-30&c8=1696848&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FGoogle" width="1" height="1" /></div>In the wake of accusations and apologies from the search giant, it has reportedly parted company with the head of its organisation in Kenya - but is keeping details under wrapsGoogle has reportedly fired the head of its Kenyan operations following the discovery that people working for it had been <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/13/google-kenyan-rival-mocality-database">pulling data without permission from the Mocality database</a> and misrepresenting themselves to local clients.The company is also understood to be tightening internal procedures about the use of contractors for projects involving contacts with outside businesses.While the search giant has posted no more than a bare-bones response after an internal investigation, <a href="http://nairobitech.blogspot.com/2012/01/olga-arara-out-in-google-mocality-saga.html">Nairobitech reported</a> that the Kenya country lead for Google, Olga Arara-Kimani, formerly of the telecoms company Safaricomm, had left the company. The site reported that a member of Google's technical team in Zurich has also left the company following the investigation, which was triggered when an elaborate sting operation by Mocality demonstrated that staff working for Google were accessing its database without permission.Nelson Mattos, vice-president for product and engineering in Europe and emerging markets, said in a <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/115264064268941645500/posts/T43MtzPV7Xh">brief statement</a> that "We've concluded our investigation into the serious allegations about our use of data from Mocality's website in Kenya. We're very sorry this happened. We've taken appropriate action with the people involved and made changes in our operations to ensure this doesn't occur again."However he did not elucidate on what action had been taken. Google declined to comment further on the matter. It apologised to Mocality after its initial investigation discovered that allegations by Stefan Magdalinski, <a href="http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/">first aired on the Mocality blog on 13 January</a>, were correct. Asked by the Guardian whether he was satisfied with Google's actions, and whether Google had made any reparations, Magdalinski responded "We're still talking".In his initial blogpost, Magdalinski said that Google had a number of questions to answer, of which his top three were: â€¢ "If Google wanted to work with our data, why didn't they just ask?" â€¢ Who authorised this? â€¢ Who knew, and who SHOULD have known, even if they didn't know?Google declined to respond to the Guardian's request for more information beyond its statement. The Nairobitech blog has <a href="http://nairobitech.blogspot.com/2012/01/google-minus-mocality-sees-evil-in-kbo.html">suggested</a> that by failing to explain what went wrong, Google's Kenya operation is failing both its clients and potential customers.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/data-computer-security">Data and computer security</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa">Africa</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/kenya">Kenya</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media">Digital media</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlesarthur">Charles Arthur</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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30 JAN 2012 21:45:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/63721?ns=guardian&pageName=New+voices+of+social+media+*+same+old+corporate+speak%3AArticle%3A1696845&ch=Politics&c3=Guardian&c4=Privacy+and+the+media%2CMedia%2CPrivacy+%28News%29%2CMedia+law%2CMax+Mosley+%28Media%29%2CMax+Clifford+%28Media%29%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CNews+of+the+World%2CPress+and+publishing%2CNational+newspapers+UK+%28media%29%2CNewspapers%2CPress+freedom+%28Media%29%2CPress+intrusion+%28Media%29%2CHouse+of+Commons%2CUK+news&c5=Press+Media%2CUnclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Simon+Hoggart&c7=12-Jan-30&c8=1696845&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Politics&c13=Simon+Hoggart%27s+sketch&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FPrivacy+%26+the+media" width="1" height="1" /></div>Jargon ruled the day as the committee of MPs investigating privacy spoke to a famous PR man and a Google executiveFour people from the new, state of the art, social media faced MPs and peers on Monday. They were three middle-aged men in suits plus one slightly younger woman in a suit. Hip and happening they were not. Instead they had learned all the jargon and corporate-speak you'd expect from a banker or a car-maker.The committee was investigating privacy, and it soon became clear that this was of scant importance to the social media. The parliamentarians kept asking if their boards ever discussed ethical issues. If they do, they certainly don't make a song and dance about it.Daphne Keller of Google was over from her home in the US. She pointed out how amazing were the safeguards used by many sites. Why, she had been banned from looking at pictures of her own children, downloaded by her husband, for fear that they might be looked on by paedophiles!She was asked why Google couldn't just take down anything â€“ such as the clandestine tapes of Max Mosley's S&M "party" â€“ that had been decreed illegal. She also managed to avoid answering that. Lord Mawhinney gave her a blast of British, or at least Ulster, irony. "Ms Keller, you have got ducking and diving down to a fine art. I hope you will take that as a compliment."I don't think it was meant as one. It might be flattering to a cheating footballer in the penalty area but not to an international executive.Next they heard from two PR men, the famous Max Clifford and Phil Hall, who used to edit the News of the World. Mr Clifford was ruing the present situation by which newspapers were too frightened to print anything that might reflect badly on the rich and powerful. "In the present climate, you wouldn't have heard about MPs fiddling their expenses!" There was a certain uneasy stirring around the table.He went on to ladle abuse on the Press Complaints Commission. "It might as well not exist! I've never known them help anyone. Take the McCanns. The PCC had nothing to do with them, they didn't want to know!"Warming to this theme, he got on to the topic of Robert Murat, the man who was once wrongly suspected of being involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. "That man had his life destroyed by the media. I got involved â€“ I got apologies from all the papers plus several hundred thousand pounds, but the PCC was nowhere to be seen, and I could give you 500 examples. They are not independent, they are paid by the media, end of story!"Mr Clifford's plan would be to have a truly independent body that would decree if a story was in the public interest â€“ not merely interesting to the public. This would work for ordinary people."The rich and famous get more than enough protection â€“ I know, I'm part of it! Superinjunctions don't exist for most members of the public â€“ the law is for the rich and powerful, and in a democracy that is wrong!"At this point Mr Clifford heard a sound which may have been unfamiliar to him: MPs and peers murmuring in agreement.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/privacy">Privacy & the media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/privacy">Privacy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/medialaw">Media law</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mosley">Max Mosley</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/max-clifford">Max Clifford</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newsoftheworld">News of the World</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing">Newspapers & magazines</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/national-newspapers">National newspapers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newspapers">Newspapers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/press-freedom">Press freedom</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/press-intrusion">Press intrusion</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/houseofcommons">House of Commons</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/simonhoggart">Simon Hoggart</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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30 JAN 2012 18:17:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/39567?ns=guardian&pageName=Google+executives+grilled+by+MPs+over+privacy%3AArticle%3A1696773&ch=Media&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Privacy+and+the+media%2CMedia%2CDigital+media%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CInternet%2CMax+Mosley+%28Media%29%2CMedia+law%2CLaw%2CNews+of+the+World%2CPress+and+publishing%2CNational+newspapers+UK+%28media%29%2CNewspapers&c5=Press+Media%2CDigital+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=John+Plunkett&c7=12-Jan-30&c8=1696773&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Media&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMedia%2FPrivacy+%26+the+media" width="1" height="1" /></div>Search giant's staff criticised by committee for not doing enough to take down images taken from Max Mosley orgy videoIt was the latest stage in a long-running inquiry into privacy but the appearance of two senior Google executives before a joint parliamentary committee turned into an occasionally ill-tempered debate about whether the search giant was being economical with the truth.The vice-president of Global Communications and Public Affairs for Google, David-John Collins, and the legal director and associate general counsel for Google, Daphne Keller, found themselves under fire from <a href="http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=10001&wfs=true" title="">MPs and peers</a> on the joint committee on privacy and injunctions on Monday.The Google pair defended their track record on privacy following criticism from Max Mosley â€“ <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/dec/05/hugh-grant-steve-coogan-max-mosley?INTCMP=SRCH" title="">who gave evidence to the committee in December</a> â€“ that it had failed to take down images from an orgy video published online by the News of the World.But they were repeatedly criticised by members of the committee including the Labour MP and former culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw, who branded their answers "totally unconvincing".Mosley told the committee in December that pictures taken from the News of the World video could still be found on Google, and said search engines should be obliged to take down news items and images that were found to be in breach of privacy.Keller told the committee that it had removed the URLs of hundreds of third-party web pages featuring content from the Mosley video which no longer show up in its search results.But she said it was not currently possible or desirable to "throw a switch" and filter out every single URL that had similar content."We don't have a mechanism that can find duplicates of pictures or duplicates of text and make them disappear from our web search," she said. "And as a policy matter I don't think that would be a good idea."She added that the site relied on people bringing offending web content to its attention, which would then be removed from its search.Keller added: "Ultimately the determination of which web pages violate the law is something for a court, for a person to make, rather than for an algorithm to make potentially erroneous conclusions about what should come down."The committee member and former Conservative party chairman, Lord Mawhinney, told Keller: "I hope you will take it as a compliment when I say you are extremely hard to pin down. You have ducking and diving down to a fine art. I congratulate you."Challenged by Mawhinney whether it was a matter of policy or technology why the search engine had not done more to protect Mosley's privacy, Keller said: "My point is not that it is technically unfeasible to do this."I don't dispute that someone could build such a thing. My policy point is I think doing so is a bad idea."Keller told the committee Google had been able to take more stringent action against child pornography sites because of concerted international action and bodies such as the Internet Watch Foundation.Bradshaw said: "Your answers are totally unconvincing. You could do it if you want to, you choose not to."Keller said it would be "dangerous" for search results to be removed on the basis of an algorithm."When a court order applies to particular URLs we do remove them, we remove them very quickly. It doesn't cost money [for people to bring them to our attention]. We are working very hard to comply with the laws."Both Keller and Collins also <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/26/leveson-inquiry-facebook-google-popbitch-live?INTCMP=SRCH" title="">gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry last week</a>, where they also spoke about the issue of Mosley and invasion of privacy.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/privacy">Privacy & the media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media">Digital media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mosley">Max Mosley</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/medialaw">Media law</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newsoftheworld">News of the World</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing">Newspapers & magazines</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/national-newspapers">National newspapers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newspapers">Newspapers</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnplunkett">John Plunkett</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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29 JAN 2012 18:47:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/672?ns=guardian&pageName=Interview%3A+David+Karp%2C+founder+of+Tumblr%2C+on+realising+his+dream%3AArticle%3A1695870&ch=Media&c3=Guardian&c4=Tumblr%2CDigital+media%2CBlogging+%28Media%29%2CMedia%2CTechnology%2CPress+and+publishing%2CInternet%2CYouTube+%28Technology%29%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29&c5=Press+Media%2CUnclassified%2CDigital+Media%2CMedia+Weekly%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Josh+Halliday&c7=12-Jan-29&c8=1695870&c9=Article&c10=Interview%2CFeature&c11=Media&c13=Media+interview+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMedia%2FTumblr" width="1" height="1" /></div>The chief executive of one of the fastest-growing startups on the internet says he lied about his age and experience to woo clientsDavid Karp, the founder of the blogging platform <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/" title="">Tumblr</a>, was 17 when he decided to cut the apron strings and move to Tokyo. With a smattering of Japanese and a sharp eye for computer code, the impatient Manhattan teenager embarked on a period of self-discovery. "I was holed up in the middle of this world where it was just me on the internet," Karp recalls. Within weeks, he had fine-tuned his computer skills and cooled on the idea of building robots. He wanted to be an entrepreneur. But there was one small problem: his voice."I was so silly â€“ I tried to be very formal and put on a deep voice to clients over the phone so I didn't have to meet them and give away how young I was," he says. "I lied about my age. I lied about the size of my team. I lied about my experience. I was so terribly embarassed about it for so long. I should have just owned up."Karp returned to the US with a fistful of contracts (drawn up by his father) and a list of executives' ears to bend. Keeping up appearances, he set up a consultancy company â€“ dubbed Davidville â€“ and managed to convince Viacom and others to hire him.Now 25, Karp is at the helm of one of the internet's fastest growing startups. He founded Tumblr in 2007, aged 21, from the bedroom of his mother's apartment in New York. Often described as Twitter meets YouTube and WordPress, Tumblr lets its users curate pictures, videos and text in one place online. The site gained 75,000 users in the first fortnight, and now hosts more than 42m blogs, ranging from politics to music and pictures of "<a href="http://accidentalchinesehipsters.tumblr.com/" title="">Accidental Chinese hipsters</a>".Wearing a red check shirt under a grey zip-up hoodie, the shaggy-haired Karp has all the attributes of a web wunderkind. And now his $800m-valued startup boasts investors including Virgin group chairman Sir Richard Branson. But the early days of Tumblr were not all plain sailing."I thought I could totally beat the system and have this cool product that I would never need to raise money for, I would never need to sell out, because [Tumblr] would bring all the attention to this [consultancy] business where people would ask us to build them a website," he says. And it worked â€“ for a few months. Karp kept up his consultancy gig until Tumblr began doubling its number of users every few weeks. "Our clients eventually got more and more pissed off because I wasn't returning their calls and at that point I was just totally fucking it up. Clearly they could see Tumblr was my one and only and they were getting shafted."It was time for Karp and Tumblr to grow up. Investors were circling, but Karp's youthful defiance prevented the internet firm being shipped across to the startup factory of Silicon Valley. Karp did sell 25% of his one-year-old company as part of a $4.5m funding round from Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital in late 2008. But he repeatedly turned down offers to move the company to the "hyper-competitive" West Coast, where he says entrepreneurs spend their time worrying whether Apple, Google or Facebook are going to steal their most talented engineers. New York is a more supportive city for startups, Karp argues, even if it does not have the obvious allure of Silicon Valley.Tumblr is worth a fraction of Facebook's $100bn price tag, but Karp is relaxed about its growth. Only last year, he says, he could see the computer screen of every Tumblr employee in its New York office. Now the company operates on two floors and is nearing 100 staff. "The real threshold was last year," he says. "For a long time I did not want to be [employing] more than a dozen people."The key driver of Tumblr is its meritocratic network of bloggers. Big names such as Lady Gaga and Barack Obama give the site some celebrity lustre, but the creativity is found in its most dedicated users. Photographers, designers and musicians can be followed, liked and "reblogged" â€“ and 85% of Tumblr users post more than 20 times a month on average.In conversation, Karp could evangelise on the force of creativity for hours. At times he will suddenly pause, before retracing his steps and continuing with animated zeal. Karp says he loves Twitter, is lukewarm on Google+ ("I don't see any tools for creativity in there") and is not the biggest fan of Facebook "as a product". And YouTube? "The only real tools for expression these days are YouTube, which turns my stomach," he says. "They take your creative works â€“ your film that you poured hours and hours of energy into â€“ and they put ads on top of it. They make it as gross an experience to watch your film as possible. I'm sure it will contribute to Google's bottom line; I'm not sure it will inspire any creators."No doubt Google would disagree, arguing that a significant chunk of the 60 hours of video uploaded to the site each minute â€“ an increase of 30% in the last three months â€“ contains or inspires some form of originality.But Karp is unconvinced. YouTube, he says, "was the opportunity to tell every aspiring filmmaker that if they worked really hard and really went for quality they could create great stuff. The stuff YouTube is incentivising is: build a huge subscriber base, put out a lot of videos, do the math and get as big a cheque as possible."Google recently did the math and found that YouTube pulls in about 4bn views a day â€“ and has now <a href="http://www.youtube.com/creators/partner.html" title="">boosted promotion of its "Partner" programme in a bid to increase the quality of videos</a>. "YouTube offers the opportunity but they sacrifice the tools in such a major way now," Karp continues. "YouTube is one of the most amazing creative tools in the world and I think it's gotten a lot worse for creators." No doubt the point is that Tumblr can close the gap.Like many of the hottest internet firms, Tumblr has no proven business model. The company's "lack of revenue" prevented some major Silicon Valley venture capital firms from participating in its latest $85m funding round in September last year, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204831304576594524134179668.html" title="">according to the Wall Street Journal</a>. John Maloney, the president of Tumblr, who is the business foil to Karp's user-led brain, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204831304576594524134179668.html" title="">indicated in a recent interview</a> that the company needs to attract "hundreds of millions" more subscribers on its route to profitability.For his part, Karp describes technology journalism's obsession with funding as "turpitudal" and insists his company is not in a financial arms race with Facebook, Twitter or other internet sites.Nor is Tumblr about to be acquired by a multinational media firm, he says. In 2008, when Karp became $750,000 richer by virtue of selling a 25% stake in the firm, the fresh-faced founder laid his intentions bare. "We would really rather not be gobbled up by a big media company," he spat, in an interview with the New York Observer.Unlike most other hot internet companies, Tumblr has not been plagued by buyout rumours â€“ but that does not mean there have been no offers. Four years on, is Karp still adamant? "We were constantly tested along the way," he admits. "Particularly in the first three years, there were a lot of [mergers and acquisitions] people who would pull you aside and you'd think 'Well, shit, I could be a pretty rich 23-year-old with very little effort'". But he held firm. "We stuck it out. I won't say I really knew why."Sat in the half-lit bar of a hotel in London's West End, Karp becomes introspective. "There are a lot of rich people in the world. There are very few people who have the privilege of getting to invent things that billions of people use," he says, adding: "The joke now is what's the first tech company that we acquire. I hear AOL's going pretty cheap."<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/tumblr">Tumblr</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media">Digital media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blogging">Blogging</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing">Newspapers & magazines</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/youtube">YouTube</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/josh-halliday">Josh Halliday</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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29 JAN 2012 17:39:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/94182?ns=guardian&pageName=Will+Google+have+to+start+a+patent+war+to+get+%249bn+of+value+from+Motorol%3AArticle%3A1696253&ch=Technology&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Google+%28Technology%29%2CAndroid+%28technology%29%2CSmartphones%2CMobile+phones+%28Technology%29%2CIntellectual+property+%28Law%29%2CApple+%28Technology%29%2CiPhone%2CMicrosoft+%28Technology%29&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Charles+Arthur&c7=12-Jan-29&c8=1696253&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost%2CComment&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=Technology+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FGoogle" width="1" height="1" /></div>The financial performance of handset, tablet and set-top box maker Motorola suggests that it won't add $12bn (including $3bn of cash) in value to Google's business. But how can Google possibly earn its money back from patents?Google intends to buy Motorola Mobility (MMI) for $12.5bn. Is it a good deal? Following the announcement of <a href="http://investors.motorola.com/results.cfm">Motorola's financial results</a> for the fourth quarter, we can take a view. From the purely financial viewpoint, the simple answer is: no. Judging by the numbers, owning MMI will be a significant drag on Google's profits - by about 10 percentage points, making its earnings per share around one third smaller. In profitability terms, the merged company won't actually make any more profit than before. It might even make less. Nor will being owned by Google necessarily help Motorola's profitability - unless perhaps it rebrands its phones as "Google". But even that might not help. For example, after it introduced the Motorola Droid, the first big-name Android phone in the US, in October 2009, it make a whacking loss in the mobile division of nearly $200m in each of the next quarters.And <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20111019/google-will-operate-motorola-at-arms-length/">Google has repeatedly said that it will run Motorola at "arms' length"</a>, rather than trying to absorb it into the Googleplex. Sure, we know the arguments: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/15/google-buys-motorola-mobility">Google is buying Motorola for its patent portfolio</a> (which is considerable) as some sort of protection for Android from legal assaults by Apple and Microsoft, among others.In fact in October Andy Rubin, who heads the Android division, <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20111019/andy-rubin-asiad/">said</a> "Part of [the Motorola purchase] is clearly about patents. I'm focused on delighting a lot of consumers, but there are other folks focused on putting me out of business."It's an intriguing claim, since only Apple and Microsoft could be said to be attacking Android in any focussed way. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/24/battle-of-the-smartphones">Microsoft, however, seems content to get handset makers to pay it per-handset licence fees</a>, and that doesn't seem to have put any of them off making Android devices - unless there's a threat that it might come back and raise the fee. As for Apple, although it has pursued HTC, Samsung, and Motorola, and does seem intent on preventing them selling devices with Android as presently configured, it's only been successful in briefly preventing sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab in Australia and some European countries. Despite the ITC finding against it, HTC is still selling phones in the US; the ITC will make a final decision later this year. Samsung is still selling Android phones - lots and lots of them. It might not even be that hard for them to reconfigure Android phones where the software is found to be infringing.So what use are the Motorola patents? One possibility is that Google might warn Apple off - in effect, quite literally sue for peace - by exerting patents owned by Motorola, which include the basic IEEE 802.11 standard (for Wi-Fi) and that for AVC/H.264, which is used for the overwhelming majority of video encoding. Including by Apple, of course. Read independent patent blogger Florian MÃ¼ller for <a href="http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012/01/will-google-break-or-save-internet.html">more on Motorola's ownership of those patents</a>. Motorola, he notes, is aggressive - to the extent that it is being sued by, guess who, Apple and Motorola in the US claiming that it is breaching its obligations for Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory - FRAND - licensing of essential patents.Furthermore, buying Motorola for the patents might even give Google back some of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/jan/19/google-android-fragmentation-effect">control it has lost of Android</a>. With Motorola's patents, Google might provide a blanket patent licence to future official Android licensees, which would give them at least initial protection against lawsuits. This is similar to what Microsoft does with Windows Phone (and before that Windows Mobile) licensees: it covers them against intellectual property lawsuits as part of the deal.At the same time, "unofficial" Android versions might not get the same licensing. It might be the same underlying code, but Google could only license the patents to "approved" handset makers, leaving others - Amazon? - in the lurch and on the hook.But what about just selling Android phones - which was meant to be the resurrection of Motorola? If we set aside the patent question, is MMI a good investment? It's hard to think so. The company made an operating and net loss in every quarter of 2011 (and has made an operating loss for six of the past nine quarters, and a net loss for seven of them) . The worst part of that was its mobile phone business (which makes both featurephones and smartphones), which lost $285m over the year.Google, by contrast, hasn't made a quarterly loss since the middle of 2001. In fact, if MMI had been part of Google during 2011, the search giant's net profit would have gone down, and its overall profitability reduced from nearly 27% of revenues to below 20%. Still not bad, but that sort of fall is the sort of thing that Wall Street punishes. And Google has already seen its stock fall after its own fourth-quarter results fell short of expectations, despite having a $10bn quarter. Search advertising growth slowed, and <a href="http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-20/research/30645878_1_mobile-search-core-search-business-google">mobile advertising doesn't seem to pay as well</a> as desktop. Owning MMI will - if everything works out - see the combined company's revenues rise by just under a third, but the mobile phone and set-top box maker looks more like an anchor than a balloon. Even when you factor in the $3bn of cash MMI holds, that still means that MMI will cost Google $9bn. How is it going to make a return - even just break even - on that?Not from the phone business. MMI's smartphone business has grown consistently, from 2m shipped in Q4 2009 to 4.9m in Q4 2010 (far better than the market, which grew from 172m to 297m). But growth slipped. In 2010 it shipped 13.7m; in 2011 it shipped 18.6m (36% growth), most of them in North America. Its year-on-year smartphones sales growth has been slipping through the year (from 76% in the first quarter to 8% in fourth). The market is growing faster than MMI's smartphone business. And half of the phones it ships are still featurephones, a business which is being hollowed out by cheaper Chinese handset makers.The tablet business with the Xoom hasn't set the world on fire. Over the year it shipped just under 1m, including 200,000 in the fourth quarter, which - if you accept the estimate by Strategy Analytics of 10.5m Android tablets sold in the fourth quarter, of which about 6m were "Google-approved" - so in that quarter Motorola had about 3% of the "Google-approved" Android tablet market. Or 2% of the overall tablet market. Or 0.7% of the entire market.The really profitable bit of the business is the "Home" division, which makes set-top boxes, but has been bumping along at around $900m revenues for the past year. It actually makes money - only around $60m per quarter, but at least it's profit, compared to the consistent losses in the mobile business, which has only made a profit in two of the past nine quarters. Even so, it would take 75 years for the Home business's profit to make back the money Google paid for the business.In other words, in purely financial terms, MMI is a dog.Faced with all that, it looks increasingly likely that Google will instead use Motorola's patents aggressively - as MÃ¼ller suggests in the provocatively-titled <a href="http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012/01/will-google-break-or-save-internet.html">Will Google break or save the internet?</a>He thinks that Google might use the heft of those essential patents to force companies which are forking Android - such as Amazon - to fall into line and use its "approved" service, (such as YouTube rather than the Amazon video service): <blockquote class="quoted">"With standards-essential patents, Google could wield another big stick to force non-compliant device makers, such as Amazon, to take a commercial Android license from Google rather than use the Android code under open source licenses."</blockquote>That's a possibility. (One wonders whether all the Chinese companies building Android handsets but with different default services would also be subject to the same pursuit, or if it would just be the developed world companies.) Less likely is the suggestion from Farhad Manjoo that <a href="http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/28/how-google-can-save-android-close-it-license-it-swim-in-the-profits/">Google should close Android and wallow in the profit</a> by licensing it per-handset. That's really not going to happen, because Google's business model - everywhere - is to disrupt by driving the cost of services down to zero, and monetising them by selling ads against them. Even if it goes after all sorts of companies aggressively with those Motorola patents, I can't see it charging per-handset for Android.So what should we expect once Google owns Motorola? If the handset business is run at arm's length, it's going to keep sinking in the Android ocean. If its devices get Google branding, that might annoy other Android makers (such as HTC, which has its own struggles at present). Most likely is that it will start using its patent portfolio - perhaps aggressively, even very aggressively. If there's really $9bn of value out there in Android that needs to be protected, we might expect Google to start showing just how it is going to do that quite quickly.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/android">Android</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/smartphones">Smartphones</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/mobilephones">Mobile phones</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/intellectual-property">Intellectual property</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/apple">Apple</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/iphone">iPhone</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/microsoft/">Microsoft</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlesarthur">Charles Arthur</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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27 JAN 2012 20:55:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/47780?ns=guardian&pageName=Twitter+users+threaten+boycott+over+censorship+accusation%3AArticle%3A1695984&ch=Technology&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Twitter+%28Technology%29%2CMedia%2CInternet%2CBlogging+%28Media%29%2CTechnology%2CArab+and+Middle+East+unrest+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CCensorship+%28News%29%2CMiddle+East+and+North+Africa+%28News%29+MENA%2CSaudi+Arabia+%28News%29%2CEgypt+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CUS+news&c5=Unclassified%2CDigital+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Julian+Borger%2CCharles+Arthur&c7=12-Jan-27&c8=1695984&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FTwitter" width="1" height="1" /></div>Tweets don't always flow freely â€“ voice of Arab spring accused of imposing gagging system in some countries"The Tweets must flow", Twitter declared a year ago, and quickly became an instrument of fast-moving revolution across the Arab world, coordinating mass protests in Egypt and sidestepping the state censorship in Syria. But, the microblogging site conceded that the tweets would not flow evenly in every country.The company was accused of censorship by many users and threatened with a one-day boycott on Saturday after<a href="http://blog.twitter.com/2012/01/tweets-still-must-flow.html" title=""> announcing</a> that it could remove tweets in certain countries which have "different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression".Twitter insisted that it would not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as it happens when governments or organisations complain about individual tweets. But the reassurances were not enough to prevent a torrent of outrage from twitter users and freedom of speech campaigners.Jeff Jarvis, the media commentator, said the move set the microblogging site onto the "slippery slope of censorship". "I understand why Twitter is doing this â€“ they want to be able to enter more countries and deal with the local laws," he said. "But, as Google learned in China, when you become the agent of the censor, there are problems there."Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and dissident, put it more simply, posting: "If Twitter starts censoring, I'll stop tweeting".In a blog on its website, Twitter argued that the change marked an improvement as previously "the only way we could take account of those countries' limits was to remove content globally"."Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country â€“ while keeping it available in the rest of the world," the blogpost said, citing the prohibition of pro-Nazi content in France and Germany. The company also said that any user whose tweets were withheld would be notified, and stressed that Twitter's transparency would be maintained by flagging any withheld tweets on an independent website, <a href="http://chillingeffects.org/twitter" title="">Chillings Effects</a>, maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a group of universities.The announcement came a day after the first anniversary of the Tahrir Square protests in Egypt, in which Twitter played a prominent role drawing particular criticism from Middle Eastern users. More than half the posts marked with the hashtag #TwitterCensored were in Arabic.One tweeter from a Gulf Arab state, @abatmeem, parodied the Twitter logo by showing a dead blue bird on its back with feet in the air. "Twitter punctured the silence with its beak, and now it has provoked the tyrants to take revenge," @abatmeem tweeted. "Sorry Twitter bird, you are no longer that bird that could sing all tunes. You have become a parrot that repeats only what is required of it."Other critical tweets showed the blue bird with a red cross or black strip over its beak. Another Arabic tweeter, @alanoud45 demanded: "How much did they pay you, Twitter?"Twitter insists that the system will only formalise a method it already uses, where tweets are blocked or deleted after full judicial process. Being able to limit tweets to particular countries, rather than blocking them altogether, expands its ability to "let tweets flow".In theory the system could have been used last year in the UK to block tweets exposing details hidden by superinjunctions about celebrities, or in 2010 when Trafigura used a superinjunction to block the Guardian and BBC from revealing details about a report on activities in Africa. A number of superinjunctions have been abandoned after details leaked on Twitter, to the displeasure of some judges.Google, Yahoo, eBay and Facebook use similar systems to control what content is shown in which countries.In China, Google indicates when a search result has been censored. In the same way, blocked tweets will say: "This tweet from [username] is withheld." The blocking can work at the individual tweet or account level.The US civil liberties website, Demand Progress, opened a petition declaring: "Twitter's importance as an open platform has been demonstrated time and again this year. We need you to keep fighting for and enabling freedom of expression â€“ not rationalize away totalitarianism as a legitimate 'different idea'."Some bloggers speculated the announcement could have been linked to a $300m (Â£191m) )investment in Twitter made in December by Saudi prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal, but that <a href="http://boingboing.net/2012/01/26/twitter-caves-to-global-censor.html" title="">was denied by Twitter's counsel, Alex Macgillivray</a>.Jillian York, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, <a href="http://jilliancyork.com/2012/01/26/thoughts-on-twitters-latest-move/" title="">argued that</a> the change was inevitable, given Twitter's global presence. "This is censorship. There's no way around that. But alas, Twitter is not above the law," she wrote."Just about every company hosting user-generated content has, at one point or another, gotten an order or government request to take down content," York argued. "Google lays out its orders in its transparency report. Other companies are less forthright. In any case, Twitter has two options in the event of a request: Fail to comply, and risk being blocked by the government in question, or comply [read: censor] And if they have 'boots on the ground', so to speak, in the country in question? No choice."<h2>More from Twitter itself: </h2>It will give users the option to define their country as "worldwide", and that "will show all public tweets" (which would include banned ones).Twitter spokesperson Jodi Olson said: "We want to reach every person on the planet, and to make Twitter available to people everywhere. The distinction is there are countries which Twitter will not operate in as a business."Twitter's funding model is to sell adverts against users' tweets, and also to let businesses buy "sponsored" tweets and "trends". By setting up businesses in specific countries, it can sell adverts in those countries for local users. But the service still operates in countries where it does not have its own local operation.<h2>Off message</h2>Twitter is not the first internet giant to control the transmission of content in certain countries.Yahoo Was sued in 2000 by French civil liberties groups over the sale of Nazi memorabilia via its auction facility. Yahoo had blocked the sale but argued that as it is based in California, Yahoo.com was governed by American law. But US courts ruled they had no jurisdiction in France; the French courts could enforce decisions about Yahoo in their territory.Twitter Until this week, the entire service could be blocked (as happens in China) or tweets and accounts had to be deleted wholesale, across the world. Now the microblogging service Has a system where tweets and accounts can be blocked in particular countries. It will post them on the Chilling Effects website (which records takedown requests). But observers note that it is giving users clues about who and what has been banned â€“ which could make the original discoverable.Google Is able to ban content by country: in China it would note when a set of search results had been censored (at the government's order). In Germany and France, searches are filtered.Facebook Can restrict access to content based on who is viewing it: if it's legal in one country but not in another, Facebook can prevent its viewing in the latter.eBay In 2000 the auction site changed its policy after public pressure so that Nazi goods and memorabilia cannot not be traded.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/twitter">Twitter</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blogging">Blogging</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/arab-and-middle-east-protests">Arab and Middle East unrest</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/censorship">Censorship</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast">Middle East and North Africa</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/saudiarabia">Saudi Arabia</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/egypt">Egypt</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa">Africa</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/julianborger">Julian Borger</a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlesarthur">Charles Arthur</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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26 JAN 2012 16:13:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/97704?ns=guardian&pageName=Leveson+inquiry%3A+Facebook%2C+Google%2C+Popbitch+-+live%3AArticle%3A1694829&ch=Media&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Leveson+inquiry%2CPrivacy+and+the+media%2CDigital+media%2CNational+newspapers+UK+%28media%29%2CNewspapers%2CPress+and+publishing%2CMedia%2CFacebook%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CLibel+reform%2CLaw%2CUK+news&c5=Press+Media%2CUnclassified%2CDigital+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Josh+Halliday%2CDugald+Baird%2CLisa+O%27Carroll&c7=12-Jan-26&c8=1694829&c9=Article&c10=News%2CBlogpost%2CMinute+by+minute&c11=Media&c13=Leveson+inquiry+live+%28LIVEBLOG+ONLY%29&c25=News+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMedia%2FLeveson+inquiry" width="1" height="1" /></div>Full coverage as executives from the social network, search giant and gossip website appear at the media standards inquiry4.09pm: Wright has completed her evidence and the inquiry has concluded for today.For more coverage, see our <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/leveson-inquiry">Leveson inquiry page</a> and the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media">MediaGuardian website</a>.4.08pm: Ben Fenton of the Financial Times <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/benfenton/status/162566593526759425">has just tweeted</a>:<blockquote>Wright does not exactly bite #leveson's hand off at idea of signing up to a common set of media standards/regulation.</blockquote>3.58pm: Leveson says he is not sure there is "so much of a difference" between what Popbitch does and what newspapers do. He suggests the site has grown far from its roots as a small-circulation newsletter.The judge asks whether it would useful to have an external ombudsman â€“ or an arbitral system â€“ who Popbitch could ask for advice about stories.A common set of standards across newspapers and websites might also help, he adds.Wright says it is "very interesting" and could be useful. However, she says that being an internet product it would be easy to be published in the US to get around a UK regulator.3.54pm: Wright says that Popbitch tries to comply with local law in all the jurisdictions that it is available in.3.52pm: Guido Fawkes <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/GuidoFawkes/status/162562913750614018">has just tweeted</a>:<blockquote>#Leveson @Popbitch admits being used as a conduit by broadsheet and tabloid hacks. ** Whistles nonchalantly **</blockquote>3.49pm: Patry Hoskins cites Wright's witness statement, which says that some newspapers use Popbitch to post stories so that they can then say they are out on the internet. Wright says this has only happened a few times, but stories now often get out through social media.She says the site does not often face privacy injunctions because it does not generally publish "kiss and tell" stories.3.46pm: The Popbitch messageboard is not formally regulated, Wright says, but a group of long-term users help keep the comments on topic.She says the website has made five to six apologies since it was founded, "so one ever two years".3.44pm: Wright says celebrities "can't choose when you're public and choose when you're private".The inquiry is testing definitions of public interest with Wright. Wright says she would write a story about JK Rowling if the author bought a kitchen and was rude to the staff in the shop â€“ but not if she had just bought the kitchen.3.41pm: Wright says "it's a moving line" when asked where Popbitch draws the line on stories about celebrities' private lives.She suggests that if celebrities live boring lives, then Popbitch will tend not to write about them, otherwise they will.3.35pm: Wright claims that the definition of the public interest is not broad enough and "is not fit for purpose in the world we live in now".She says that the public has much more power to influence others these days, and it is not just down to big media groups and politics.3.33pm: Wright is asked about the circumstances behind Popbitch publishing the news that Victoria Beckham was pregnant some years ago before major news organisations."Since then I would be much more careful about making sure a pregnancy was beyond 12 weeks â€“ it was in this case," she says.3.31pm: "We are trying to do no more than poke fun at people in the world of celebrity," says Wright. She adds that Popbitch will not publish stories about celebrities' health or children because they are not entertaining.3.29pm: Wright is asked how contentious the Popbitch newsletter is. She explains it as: "'Saw a celebrity in a bar last night, they bought a gin & tonic.' That level of contentiousness."3.24pm: Wright says Popbitch gets its stories from a network of contributors around the world.Some stories come from external tipsters, but these are often published without the name of the celebrity attached and readers are asked to help verify them.3.24pm: A cursory visit to the Popbitch messageboard shows that <a href="http://www.popbitch.com/newboard/37/78/64/5//Leveson-Lurker-Thursday.html">users are debating the Leveson inquiry with some fervour</a>.3.20pm: Patry asks about a story in the Popbitch newsletter about the ex-husband of Kim Kardashian.Wright says the story was sourced from a friend who was at the event and it was published in an attempt to point out that there is a darker side to celebrity culture.3.15pm: Wright suggests that Popbitch acts as a foil to the "very PR-driven" entertainment industry. She mentions evidence given to the inquiry last week by the editors of Heat, Hello! and OK! magazines, when they admitted that the majority of stories in those magazines are placed there by PR figures.3.10pm: Popbitch has two main elements: a weekly email newsletter and a message board.Wright describes the weekly newsletter as "10 minutes of light entertainment in a working week"; it now has 350,000 subscribers. Wright says a decision was taken early on to make the newsletter text-based and not to feature paparazzi pictures.3.09pm: Camilla Wright, founder of celebrity news site Popbitch, has taken the stand.Carine Patry Hoskins, junior counsel to the inquiry, is doing the questioning.3.03pm: Allan has now completed his evidence.2.58pm: Lord Justice Leveson tells Allan that one of the issues the inquiry is grappling with is how traditional media are impacted by social media.He refers to information â€“ such as injunctions and other court orders â€“ that newspapers and broadcasters are not allowed to publish "spins around" social networks.Allan says that Facebook "is becoming one of the main distribution channels for editorial content", mentioning the Guardian Facebook app'd 5 million users.2.58pm: Barr asks about concerns over how Facebook material relating to the Dublane massacre was misused in the media.Allan says Facebook can do little once the material has moved off the site and into another medium.2.52pm: Allan says that Facebook users are content with their information being shared among friends on that site, but object to it being republished by newspapers.Barr asks about how this would play with a new UK media regulator."It would be important to distinguish editorialised published content from what you might call chatter on the internet," Allan says.2.50pm: Allan is asked about Facebook's view of domestic regulators.He says he has not come across PCC decisions being used to support takedown requests.2.46pm: Allan says ongoing debates about copyright and use of material online are analogues of some of the internet issues faced by the inquiry.Facebook asks users to pass an "educational checkpoint" if they have infringed the site's terms of service, Allan says.2.43pm: Allan says that there is a button next to each image on Facebook allowing users to complain about it if necessary. He concedes that if an offending photograph is posted 1m times on the site users must make 1m complaints, but says this is true of the internet in general.2.40pm: Allan says that Facebook aims to act on complaints about privacy and defamation in 24 to 48 hours.2.38pm: Allan says that most of the complaints to Facebook about content on the site are resolved by reference to the social network's terms of service.Facebook technically can restrict access to a piece of content based on who is viewing it, Allan says, if it is legal in one country but not another.2.32pm: Problematic content on Facebook is rare, Allan says. He tells Leveson this is because people are using real-life identities and socialise in front of their real-life friends and family.Facebook has a security team, but Allan says its community provides the biggest protection. "We have an 800 million-strong strong neighbourhood watch," he adds.2.29pm: Allan says that the "real identity culture" is at the core of what Facebook does. He says this is one of the chief reasons behind the social network's success.If users don't present themselves as their real identity then they "won't have a meaningful experience", Allan says, adding that Facebook has a security system looking for users operating false identities.2.24pm: Allan is asked about the FTC ruling on Facebook privacy in the US.He says the company will report back to the FTC on its privacy policies, any changes, and undertake other agreements."Facebook is under an enormous amount of scrutiny," Allan says. "That huge user base means people are very willing to come forward if they have concerns about the platform â€¦ and we're very willing to meet and address those concerns."2.21pm: Barr reads from a January 2010 Guardian article titled "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy">Privacy no longer a social norm, says Facebook founder</a>".It begins:<blockquote>The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm"."People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," he said. "That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."</blockquote>Allan says that Facebook's express purpose is to allow people to connect and share information with one each other."It's very much about what you wish to share with a group with which you wish to share it," he adds.2.17pm: Facebook has 30 million UK users who have returned to the site in the past 30 days, according to Allan's witness statement. More than half of Britons over the age of 13 are on Facebook.2.11pm: The inquiry has resumed and Facebook's director of public policy for Europe and Middle East, Richard Allan, is giving evidence.David Barr, junior counsel to the inquiry, is giving evidence.1.38pm: Here is a lunchtime summary of today's evidence so far:â€¢ The information commissioner, Christopher Graham, said it would be a "phenomenal undertaking" to contact each of the targets in private investigator Steve Whittamore's notebooks.â€¢ Graham defended the decision not to launch a fresh investigation into the use of private investigators by newspapers.â€¢ Google has removed hundreds of URLs relating to the News of the World's Max Mosley sting, according to search giant's legal chief.1.09pm: The Google duo have finished giving evidence and the inquiry has broken for lunch.1.05pm: Collins says the internet is already well regulated, particularly around data, citing the e-Commerce Directive and EU online privacy laws. He adds that Google works closely with bodies such as the IWF and ASA.He says there also needs to be a certain amount of self-regulation, especially in areas where technology develops faster than legislation can cover it.1.03pm: Barr asks whether Google would be prepared to be part of a new UK regulatory model relating to its Blogger.com platform.Collins says Google is the technical intermediary and is not itself publishing the content. He stresses that publishers and hosting platforms such as Blogger.com should be treated differently by any regulator.12.58pm: Financial Times digital media correspondent Tim Bradshaw <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/tim/status/162519368029310977">has just tweeted</a> this quote from Lord Justice Leveson:<blockquote>#Leveson: Blogger has "half a trillion words and 250k words added every minute... One would understand why you can't read it all." lols</blockquote>12.54pm: Barr asks about Google-owned service Blogger.com.Keller says the same notice and takedown process applies as with the search site, but Google hosts the site's servers so it takes down offending content itself.12.49pm: Barr asks about Google News. Collins explains how it works, stressing that the search giant is not producing the stories itself.Barr asks if Google accepts payments from news organisations to promote search results. Collins stresses that it does not.He says the main criterion is relevance, not any other preferences.12.48pm: Keller warns about "over-breadth" of regulation on internet searching that can arise out of good intentions.12.43pm: The pair are asked about Google Images.Keller says images are handled with the same takedown process as for general search.12.42pm: Keller says she cannot recall a time when a request from a media regulator has formed the basis of removals.12.36pm: Collins stresses Keller's point that "Google is not the internet" and adds that there are multiple entry points to the internet.Leveson takes this point on board and says takedown requests may need "somewhat more authoritative backing" in order to succeed.He asks if in future the executives will give a provisional response to his provisional thinking on the issue.The judge says he hopes such a system would be fair, fully compliant with the right to be heard, and comported to rules bounded in privacy, freedom of expression and so on.Cooper says he is reluctant to comment on a new regulator until it is fully developed.12.35pm: Barr asks the Google duo what weight the internet firm would attach to a new media regulator in the UK that regulated newspapers' online content and could ask for material to be removed.Collins says he does not want to get into speculating over regulation, but would look for the same "robustness" as from court orders."I would want to have a very serious think about that," he says.12.30pm: Google sends copies of all takedown requests to the third-party Chilling Effects website, with sender information removed.12.25pm: Keller says Google has been getting faster at removing privacy and defamatory material from search listings.She adds that material will usually be taken down within days.12.22pm: Barr asks about the video from the News of the World sting on Max Mosley, which he is attempting to remove from the internet through search engines.Keller says that Google has removed hundreds of URLs from its search in the Mosley case. However, that will not mean the videos disappear from the internet.12.21pm: Barr points out that if defamatory material is removed from Google.co.uk search results, it may remain available for UK users to view via Google.com.Keller says that is correct, assuming the material does not violate US law.12.17pm: Leveson takes his inquiry down a side route, asking the duo about the risks of contempt of court.He asks if there is anything that can be done to stop jurors searching online.Keller says she has not heard a proposal more tailored than to "disappear" content from search results in order to protect jurors from violating a sworn obligation.She agrees there is currently no tecnical solution and says she hopes the legal punishment will be sufficient to stop active jurors from searching Google.12.14pm: Keller says that it is helpful to Google when complainants submit a court order where a judge has ruled that the information online is defamatory and should be removed from Google's search results.Leveson points out that this method requires that the complainant submits individual URLs â€“ or web addresses â€“ that contain defamatory material.Keller agrees, adding that it would be impractical for Google to search out potentially defamatory material itself.12.12pm: Keller is explaining Google's takedown process.She says Google has a "cache removal rool" and that it is important for the search engine to adhere to requests by webmasters to not index their websites.Google has its "ears open everywhere to pick up complaints," Keller says.12.05pm: Barr points out that Google has different domains â€“ such as google.co.uk and google.com â€“ and they under different jurisdictions.He attempts to explain how Google's search works, saying that the search giant crawls other websites for relevant pages."I'm not sure about the word 'crawling', given the speed at which it operates," quips Leveson.12.02pm: Collins talks about Google's contentious new privacy policy, unveiled earlier this week.He says that user feedback told Google they wanted a more simple policy â€“ it had 70 separate policies covering different products.12.00pm: Collins says that Google has a "regular dialogue" with privacy groups and data protection controllers because it wants the benefit of their wisdom.Barr asks about the Google Street View incident when the internet giant mistakenly collected private Wi-Fi data.Collins says that the company regrets the incident and has since made significant internal changes, including setting up an internal privacy policy group headed by a director.11.53am: Keller and Collins are being asked by David Barr, junior counsel to the inquiry, about <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/">a 2009 article on the Register website</a> that quoted Google's former chief executive, Eric Schmidt, of saying: "only miscreants worry about net privacy".Collins says that the headline is not representative of Google's privacy principles, which it takes "extremely seriously".He says that Google offers transparency, choice and control over privacy.11.47am: David-John Collins, head of corporate communications and public affairs for Google UK, and Daphne Keller, legal director and associate general counsel for Google, have taken the stand.11.43am: Graham has now completed his evidence.11.40am: Asked by Davies whether it would be legal for a journalist to obtain an ex-directory number if it was on a legally-held database, such as that operated by GB Services, Graham confirms that it would.Davies then goes on to ask about obtaining the same number by other means if it was to contact a source in the public interest. There is some debate about different examples. Graham says journalists would have an "arguable case" if they had a reasonable belief they were acting in the public interest. Leveson reassures Davies that journalists will not be locked up if they make the wroong case about the public interest.11.38am: Rhodri Davies QC, counsel for News International, is questioning Graham.Graham apologises to Leveson for getting "heated" when asked by Davies whether it is not right that journalists should be exempted from imprisonment under the Data Protection Act."How much of a good deal do you guys want?" Graham says. "You fought everyone to a standstill in 2006 â€¦ You've got so many privileges and exemptions."11.35am: Graham says he is not advocating statutory regulation of the press, but says there are tough times ahead for self-regulation.He says the press should not be allowed to "continue drinking in the last-chance saloon.""I'm not in favour of statutory regulation of the press â€¦ but press regulation will only survive if it's credible," he tells Leveson.11.31am: Graham is asked his views on the future of press regulation.He says that for self-regulation to be credible it has to have the confidence of the public and be structured.He contrasts existing press regulation with regulation in the advertising world, pointing out that the investigative arm of the Advertising Standards Authority is separate from the code-writing arm.He says it is a "huge mistake" to have serving editors on the panel, but that it should be a "demonstrably independent" model. Serving editors could play a part in writing the code, he says.11.25am: Graham says it would be a "phenomenal undertaking" for the Information Commissioner's Office to examine and contact the targets of Steve Whittamore.He says that many of the names are "deeply obscure", but leaves the door open for Hacked Off to make "subject access requests" through lawyers if they want information about one of their clients.11.18am: Robert Jay QC, counsel for the inquiry, says in 2009 the information commissioner offered news organisations the opportunity to examine the evidence behind the What Price Privacy? reports.Graham says that Guardian News & Media took up the offer in February 2011 and other news organisations did so on the announcement of the inquiry.11.13am: The inquiry has now resumed.11.02am: The inquiry is taking a short break while core participants read Graham's second supplementary statement.Leveson says it deals with evidence from Associated Newspapers lawyer Liz Hartley's testimony on access to the What Price Privacy? report.11.00am: Graham refers to the Hacked Off letter (below). He says it is not "practicable" for the ICO to notify the thousands of people revealed by the Met police's Operation Motorman to have been targeted by Steve Whittamore in the first half of the last decade.<blockquote class="quoted">Part of the answer to that is I would have to take on a veritable army of people. I'm not going to say it isn't necessary but all regulators need to prioritise resources.</blockquote>10.59am: The regulatory powers of the ICO must be focused on investigations where there is evidence of wrongdoing, Graham tells Leveson, before reeling off a list of ongoing inquiries by the office.Lord Justice Leveson intervenes to reassure Graham that he understands the position of his office having, essentially, lots to do with little resource.10.50am: Graham is asked about the principles behind section 43 of the Data Protection Act (DPA), which covers information notices.Jay says these principles mean that the Information Commissioner's Office can justifiably seek information from private investigators on whether they are in breach of the DPA.Graham suggests Jay is talking about hypothetical situations."We're not talking hypothetical because Express Newspapers were using J&J Services in 2010 â€¦ and other newspapers are using search agencies systematically," Jay replies.Graham accepts there is power for the Information Commissioner's Office to undertake "spot checks" on private investigation firms.10.41am: Graham suggests there has been "so much feverish activity" on the subject of illicit behaviour of newspapers that to turn up evidence from 2003 to 2009 "doesn't amount to much".10.37am: Jay asks why the information commissioner does not investigate more recent use of private investigators.Graham says that he is puzzled by the suggestion that the information commissioner should go and investigate something "in the absence of evidence of wrongdoing".Leveson tells Graham that absence of evidence does not mean something underhand is not going on. "We do not know what we do not know," he adds.Graham says we are now in a "Alice Wonderland meets Catch 22" world because he is being asked to investigate something that may not be there.10.33am: Graham is asked about his evidence to the Commons culture, media and sport select committee in 2009.He says he has re-read the 2006 What Price Privacy? report â€“ on which he gave evidence at the Commons â€“ and "it is about much more than the behaviour of the press"."I haven't got evidence beyond what we published in 2006," he adds. "That evidence itself was historic. I was surprised to hear the evidence from the Express and the Express saying we had no reason to believe the supplier was going to behave in a reprehensible way."He adds: "If we're talking monkeys, it's 'see no evil, hear no evil'. But, I have to say, I see no evidence. So I can't comment."10.31am: The counsel for News Group Newspapers has intervened to say that a reference by Robert Jay to Graham's second statement comes as a surprise to them, which he says they have not seen.The inquiry resumes while counsel look into why News Group might not have seen the statement.10.25am: Graham is pressed about investigating private investigators by both Robert Jay, counsel to the inquiry, and Lord Justice Leveson.Leveson asks how consumers will know if their personal information is being "bandied about".Graham says that the information commissioner has got "quite enough work" in investigating prima facie breaches, so cannot "take a scattergun approach" looking into speculative breaches."I do have to pick my targets. So I am inclined to wait until I have more evidence of current abuse than I do at the moment," he tells Leveson.10.23am: Graham says that if he is presented with evidence of ongoing wrongdoing by private investigators then he will investigate.However, he says there is currently "no smoke" and it is not in his remit to "set off on fishing expeditions".10.20am: Graham says he does not know anything about Steve Whittamore's business except what has been revealed to the inquiry by newspapers.10.18am: The campaign group Hacked Off <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/news/hacked-off-letter-to-information-commissioner/">has written to the Information Commissioner's Office</a> asking it to inform the targets of private investigator Steve Whittamore. Read the full letter below:10.17am: Graham is asked about search agencies, and whether the ICO is aware of them.He says some newspapers use agencies to obtain ex-directory numbers, but it may not be unlawful to hold such information on databases.10.17am: Graham says he was not aware that Express Newspapers was still using Steve Whittamore's private eye firm, J&J Services, as recently as 2010 until it was admitted to the inquiry.10.14am: Graham says there are ongoing investigations into private investigators, but declines to give more information.10.13am: Graham says that he has seen no evidence of data protection breaches by the press since 2006.10.11am: Graham is asked about the handover from Richard Thomas, the former information commissioner whose time in office saw the publication of What Price Privacy? and What Price Privacy Now?He says the illegal trade of data by newspapers uncovered by those reports was not a priority when he took office."I can't say it was top of the list. I can't say it was a priority," he tells the inquiry, adding that the Freedom of Information Act demanded more attention.10.05am: Christopher Graham, the acting information commissioner, has taken the stand.10.03am: Associated Newspapers will not appeal against the high court's rejection of its application for a judicial review over Leveson's decision to allow anonymous evidence from journalists, counsel for the publisher tells the inquiry.10.01am: The inquiry has now begun and Lord Justice Leveson is addressing newspaper coverage of applications for core participant status.9.41am: The <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/clare-short-i-didnt-get-rid-of-page-3--can-leveson-6294455.html">former Labour MP Clare Short has told</a> how she was the victim of years of harassment from the press after she called for the end to Page 3.Writing in the Independent, Short says a newspaper sent "half-naked women" to her home in Birmingham as recently as 2006 â€“ almost two decades after her first call to abolish the red-top tradition.<blockquote>There was little publicity for the speech but enough to produce a torrent of moving letters from women saying yes, please do it. And so I went ahead and introduced my tightly-drawn Bill, and the floodgates opened. The Sun went to war with me. "Twenty things you need to know about killjoy Clare"; "Fat, jealous Clare brands Page 3 porn". It went on and on, and the News of the World joined in, even colluding with the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad in an attempt to smear me.Nearly 20 years later, after I had left government, I was asked by a female journalist whether I still objected to Page 3, and I said I did. The bullying and intimidation started again. Half-naked women calling at my home in Birmingham and startling my elderly mother, and a double decker full of them outside my London home for hours. Again, there were snide comments about me and my body, not noticing that by then I was a grandmother approaching pensionable age.</blockquote>She ends by asking Lord Justice Leveson to consider her proposals.9.39am: Good morning and welcome to the Leveson inquiry live blog.Today the inquiry will hear from the acting information commissioner, Christopher Graham. Graham is likely to be asked about the aftermath of the What Price Privacy and What Price Privacy Now? reports on illegal trade of data by newspapers in 2006. He is also expected to be asked whether the information commissioner's office will begin to inform the targets of private investigator Steve Whittamore, following a reported request from the campaign group Hacked Off.Lord Justice Leveson will take evidence from the first internet giants of the inquiry, Google and Facebook. David-John Collins, head of corporate communications and public affairs for Google UK, and Daphne Keller, associate general counsel for Google, will appear. Richard Allan, head of Europe and Middle East policy, will give evidence for Facebook. Camilla Wright, founder of the celebrity gossip website Popbitch, will also appear.Follow the inquiry live from 10am.Please note that comments have been switched off for legal reasons. <div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/leveson-inquiry">Leveson inquiry</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/privacy">Privacy & the media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media">Digital media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/national-newspapers">National newspapers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newspapers">Newspapers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing">Newspapers & magazines</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/facebook">Facebook</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/libel-reform">Libel reform</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/josh-halliday">Josh Halliday</a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/dugaldbaird">Dugald Baird</a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/lisaocarroll">Lisa O'Carroll</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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26 JAN 2012 15:55:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/16961?ns=guardian&pageName=Google+and+Bing+accused+of+directing+users+to+illegal+copies+of+music%3AArticle%3A1695189&ch=Technology&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Filesharing%2CDigital+media%2CMedia%2CBing+%28Technology%29%2CInternet%2CSearch+engines%2CMicrosoft+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CComputing+%28Technology%29&c5=Digital+Media%2CMedia+Weekly%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT%2CConsumer+Electronics&c6=Josh+Halliday&c7=12-Jan-26&c8=1695189&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FFilesharing" width="1" height="1" /></div>Major rights holders claim search engines make it 'difficult' for people to find legal music and films online <a href="http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/79470034?access_key=key-1eryuhu9764a57da26y5" title="">The major rights holders' document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act</a>Google and other search engines "overwhelmingly" direct music fans to illegal copies of copyrighted tracks online, a coalition of entertainment industry groups has told the government.In a <a href="http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/79470034?access_key=key-1eryuhu9764a57da26y5" title="">confidential document</a> obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, lobbying groups for the major rights holders claimed Google and Microsoft's Bing are making it "much more difficult" for people to find legal music and films online.The private document, obtained by the free speech campaigners <a href="http://www.openrightsgroup.org/" title="">Open Rights Group</a> and shared with the Guardian, urges the government to introduce a voluntary body that would remove rogue websites from internet search results.The proposals were made to the culture minister Ed Vaizey as part of a series of consultations on internet piracy between rights holders, search giants and the government in November last year. The nine-page document was submitted on behalf of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK body for the music majors, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Premier League, the Publishers Association and the Pact, the film and TV independent producers' trade body.Privately, rights holders said there is a "spirit of optimism" between the entertainment groups and search engines as they attempt to usher in more legal media sites, including <a href="https://music.google.com/music/unsupportedcountry" title="">Google's own fledgling music service</a>.Google has in the past year stepped up efforts to remove copyright-infringing content, launching <a href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/09/making-copyright-work-better-online.html" title="">a fast-track removal requests form</a> and filtering terms "associated with infringement". However, the rights holders claim in the document that "as time goes on, the situation is getting worse rather than better"."Consumers rely on search engines to find and access entertainment content and they play a vital role in the UK digital economy," the rights holders state."At present, consumer searching for digital copies of copyright entertainment content are directed overwhelmingly to illegal sites and services."The entertainment groups want Google to "continuously review key search words" and "effectively screen" mobile apps on Android smartphones in an effort to combat illicit sharing.The document claims that 16 of the first 20 Google search results for chart singles link to "known illegal sites", according to searches by the BPI in September. In an attempt to persuade the government to clamp down on search engines, the groups claim that 41% of Google's first-page results for bestselling books in April last year were "non-legal links" to websites."Much of the illegal activity in the digital economy is facilitated and encouraged by money-making rogue sites," the document claimed."Intermediaries, unwittingly or by wilfully turning a blind eye (or in some cases, by encouraging such activity), play a key role in enabling content theft and often even profit from it. Only a comprehensive approach can address this issue."The entertainment bodies call for search engines to:â€¢ Assign lower rankings to sites that "repeatedly" make available copyright-infringing materialâ€¢ Prioritise sites that "obtain certification as a licensed site" for music and film downloadingâ€¢ Stop indexing sites that are subject to court ordersâ€¢ Stop indexing "substantially infringing websites"â€¢ Improve "notice and takedown" systemâ€¢ Ensure that users are not directed to illicit filesharing sites through suggested searchâ€¢ Ensure search engines do not advertise around unlawful sites or sell keywords associated with piracy or sell mobile apps "which facilitate infringement"The chief executive of BPI, Geoff Taylor, said on Thursday: "The vast majority of consumers want search engines to direct them to legal sources of entertainment rather than the online black market."As search engines roll out high-quality content services, like Google Music, we want to build a constructive partnership that supports a legal online economy. We hope that Google and other search engines will respond positively."A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association added: "If you look for film or music via a search engine you usually find websites providing access to pirated films or music at the top of the list of results."This is confusing for consumers, damages the legal market and legitimises copyright theft. We are in dialogue with search engines, ISPs [internet service providers], advertising networks and payment processors about a code to deal with the escalating problem of online copyright theft which threatens the growth of the entire creative industries sector. This paper is a result of that dialogue and we appreciate government's continuing efforts to help bring about a more responsible internet".A spokesman for Google said: "Google takes the fight against online piracy very seriously. Last year, we removed over five million infringing items from Google Search. We have made industry-leading efforts in this field, investing over $50m (Â£32m) in fighting bad advertisements and over $30m on Content ID software, giving rights holders control over their YouTube content."We continue to work in close partnership with rights holders to help them combat piracy and protect their property."Peter Bradwell, campaigner for the Open Rights Group, said the proposal contained "some dangerous ideas". He said: "It's another plan to take on far too much power over what we're allowed to look at and do online."<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/file-sharing">Filesharing</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media">Digital media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/bing">Bing</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/searchengines">Search engines</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/microsoft/">Microsoft</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/computing">Computing</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/josh-halliday">Josh Halliday</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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26 JAN 2012 15:52:
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/45143?ns=guardian&pageName=Android+takes+chunk+of+tablet+market%2C+but+Apple%27s+iPad+still+dominates%3AArticle%3A1695113&ch=Technology&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Tablet+computers%2CiPad%2CApple+%28Technology%29%2CAndroid+%28technology%29%2CGoogle+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CSoftware+%28Technology%29%2CInternet%2CComputing+%28Technology%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Charles+Arthur&c7=12-Jan-26&c8=1695113&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Technology&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTechnology%2FTablet+computers" width="1" height="1" /></div>While Apple still rules the global tablet market, with its iPad owning 58% in the fourth quarter of 2011, Android still managed to take 39%Android tablets took 39% of the world tablet market in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to new research from Strategy Analytics â€“ though as many as half of those were not running Google-approved versions of the operating system, it said.Apple dominated the rest of the market on its own, taking 58% of the market during the period as it sold 15m iPads, more than double the number of the same period in 2011.That was down from a 68% share a year ago â€“ but the key reason for the fall was the entry of Amazon's Kindle Fire, which uses a "forked" version of Android which does not use the Android market, though it does default to Google search.<a href="http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=pressreleaseviewer&a0=5167">Strategy Analytics says</a> that the total tablet market grew from 10.7m in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 26.8m in the same period of 2011 â€“ equivalent to more than a quarter of the total PC market for the quarter, which hit 92.7m acording to research company IDC.Other companies such as RIM with its PlayBook managed around 500,000 sales, according to the report. Microsoft Windows 7 tablets achieved about 400,000 sales.Peter King, for Strategy Analytics, said that he estimated that Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which offers the Nook tablet, had together sold about 4.6m tablets â€“ which would mean that they took 40% of the total Android tablet market, and solely in the US. Total Android sales tripled to 10.5m worldwide, the company said.Yet speaking earlier this week, Apple chief executive Tim Cook insisted that he had not seen any slowdown in iPad sales after the launch of the Kindle Fire in October.The numbers were disputed publicly on Twitter by Benedict Evans, an analyst <del>a researcher</del> for Enders Analysis, who remarked that: "Sometimes the convention that you don't publicly criticise other analysts is a pain."He suggested the figures for Android sales were "batshit insane", and said that it's a challenge to estimate Android tablet sales "when Samsung says nothing and Google is actively misleading". Google does not offer clear breakdowns of how many devices have been activated by type â€“ although any which uses the approved Google software will contact its activation servers and provide device information. Instead, it offers the <a href="http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html">"Platform versions" pages</a> which indicate the proportion of devices using a particular version of Android that have contacted the Android Market over a two-week period.It also collects <a href="http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.html">screen size information</a> â€“ but that has fallen out of step with the platform version data, having last been updated on 1 December. Nor is there any indication of how often old or new devices contact the Market.The lack of clarity is frustrating for analysts seeking to advise clients on which platforms to target for future planning. While Apple does not provide data about the software versions running on devices, it does provide quarterly updates on sales of each class of device such as the iPhone and iPad. Samsung, reckoned to be the the biggest seller of Android phones and tablets worldwide, has ceased providing that data. "Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes," Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, noted. "Android is so far proving relatively popular with tablet manufacturers despite nagging concerns about fragmentation of Android's operating system, user-interface and app store ecosystem."It is unclear how successful Android tablets are with consumers. <a href="http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html">Google's own platform data</a>, presently updated to 3 January, suggests that 3.3% of devices accessing the official Google Android market in the last two weeks of December were running version 3.x of Android, which is exclusive to tablets.In his quarterly earnings call last week, Google chief executive Larry Page said there had now been 250m Android device activations â€“ which might suggest that there are a total of 8.25m Honeycomb tablets in use, if all devices contact the Market proportionally. But without clearer information from Google that cannot be known.<div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/tablet-computer">Tablet computers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ipad">iPad</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/apple">Apple</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/android">Android</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google">Google</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/software">Software</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet">Internet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/computing">Computing</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlesarthur">Charles Arthur</a></div> <div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div>
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