Private data sharing between US and Europe

The United States and European Union are close to an agreement to share private data of their citizens, including credit card information, travel history and internet browsing information, The New York Times said Saturday.

Negotiations that begun in February 2007 however have to yet address whether Europeans can sue the US government for mishandling information, according to an internal report on the potential agreement obtained by the daily.

The negotiations are being conducted by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Justice and State departments, and their European counterparts, the daily said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson did not have an immediate response on the report when contacted Saturday by AFP.

One of the unresolved issues is the EU's privacy rights claims that would allow its citizens to sue the US government for any mishandling of their information, under the US Privacy Act of 1974.

The administration of President George W. Bush opposes such a move, the Times reported, because the Privacy Act gives US nationals -- but not foreigners -- the right to sue so the Act would have to be sent back to the Democratic-controlled Congress to be amended.

Officials consulted by the Times said Bush would like to sign the agreement before he leaves office in January and while EU members nations can still approve it individually, before they hand ratification power over to the European Parliament.

Source: YahooNews

iGoogle social features are being tested

Google Inc. has quietly begun limited testing of several new social features created for its iGoogle personalized start page. The updates include chat, activity streaming and a new interface for the gadgets offered on the start page.

Google plans to expand the rollout of the updated start page next month.

The new expanded iGoogle interface, called Canvas, holds the various iGoogle gadgets for users. In May 2007, Google renamed its personalized start page iGoogle and added support for a variety of gadgets that users can tap to customize the pages.

Developers can take advantage of the Canvas interface to display more information and make their gadgets more interactive, noted Ionut Alex Chitu, a blogger at Google Operating System, a blog site that follows Google activities.

"The new iGoogle places the tabs on the left-hand side of the page, and you can expand the tabs to see the list of gadgets and status information, like the number of unread Gmail messages," Chitu noted. "There's a new chat feature borrowed from Gmail that lets you chat with your contacts while visiting iGoogle. That means iGoogle gets a sense of presence because you'll know when your contacts are online. Since the chat feature will be enabled by default, it's obvious that Google will be able to add options for sharing items and discussing posts with the contacts that are online."

Now that the site has added the new features, Google has gone further down the path of transforming iGoogle into a social site, Chitu added. Once Google provides support for the open standard OpenSocial in iGoogle -- later this summer, according to the company -- the transformation to a social site "will be complete," the blogger noted.

OpenSocial is a set of APIs spawned by Google and partner MySpace Inc. to allow developers to write applications that can be easily run across different social networking sites with limited customization.

Mashable blogger Kristen Nicole noted that up until now, Gmail was the closest thing the Google suite has to a "functional portal" where users could manage all Google applications.

"But the upcoming iGoogle start page is really going to be a very social portal that makes sharing easy, by way of Google Reader items, chat, and activity streams that keep you connected across the board," she noted. "Creating a hub for OpenSocial apps that reach across a number of social networking platforms will also be an interesting aspect of the new iGoogle start page that most application creators will want to take advantage of for outreach and broadcasting purposes."

Source: ComputerWorld

Microsoft fights against Google/Yahoo Deal

Threatened by Google's growing power, Microsoft goes after Google's new ad pact with Yahoo.

Microsoft is pushing hard to stop Google from teaming up with Yahoo now that the software giant has given up on acquiring the tarnished Internet portal. But antitrust lawyers and technology analysts outside the case don't think Ballmer & Co. has much of a prayer at stopping the deal from going through.

Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) intends to put up a strong fight nonetheless. The company is on a mission to derail or delay Google's deal to outsource a portion of its ads on Yahoo. The company says it's still interested in buying just Yahoo's search business. Microsoft has deployed its lawyers and Washington staff to meet with lawmakers to discuss how Google will monopolize search advertising and drive up prices through its new Yahoo partnership.

Antitrust experts disagree with Microsoft's argument that Google's search ad pact with Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) will make Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) too big and too powerful. "I see them exercising political jargon here. It's surprising. Every antitrust lawyer would agree big isn't bad. Bad is bad," says Glenn Manishin, an antitrust and technology policy litigator at Duane Morris who isn't representing any of the three companies.

Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo in February for $44.6 billion. When Yahoo held out for more than the software giant was willing to pay, Microsoft withdrew an increased bid of $47.5 billion in early May and proposed buying Yahoo's search business for $9 billion a month later.

Instead, Yahoo cut a deal with Google in mid-June to run some of Google's search ads on its Web properties, and says it expects to generate an additional $250 million to $450 million in cash flow. Yahoo says it plans to use the extra money to invest in its own search engine. Google, meanwhile, hopes to keep Yahoo out of the arms of Microsoft, its main adversary. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has stated that the company does not want to inherit the regulatory problems and potential lawsuits that would come with buying a Google-supported Yahoo.

With or without Yahoo, Microsoft is continuing efforts to chip away at Google's dominance. The company last month introduced a "cashback" program to pay users money whenever they buy products like the Wii or digital cameras on Microsoft's Live Search engine.

What's next?
Google and Yahoo could conceivably start the business agreement today since only mergers above $50 million need federal approval beforehand. Manishin, who represented a coalition of software companies in the Microsoft antitrust case, says it's not uncommon, however, for deals of this size to receive federal scrutiny.

The Department of Justice opened an investigation one day after Google and Yahoo announced plans to form an ad pact. Both Google and Yahoo are working with the DOJ to address any anticompetitive issues and have said they will not start the partnership while under scrutiny.

The DOJ commands political clout that Google will be reluctant to ignore. "Google is getting more and more powerful, and can't afford to publicly hurt how their brand is perceived," says Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

If the DOJ decides to fight the deal, it can request a court order to prevent Google and Yahoo from moving forward. Experts say that's highly unlikely, however, given that the Bush Administration appointees that make decisions on antitrust cases tend to favor big deals.

Google remains confident that the deal will get clearance. "We obviously believe that the transaction is a straightforward non-exclusive commercial deal that is both pro-competitive and doesn't raise the issues that a merger would," wrote Google's chief counsel Kent Walker in an e-mail to Fortune.

Microsoft is banking on a DOJ snub to kill the deal. The software giant says Google will have a hard time convincing the agency that the deal won't lead to a monopoly by Google. "When you have a situation of the No. 1 and No. 2 competitors in a market, the burden falls on them to convince regulators the partnership's not going to be a problem," says a source familiar with Microsoft's argument.

Some antitrust lawyers say that argument is unlikely to fly with the DOJ for a non-merger case. "What the Justice Department is really worried about is if Google raises prices on online advertising. If this were a merger where Google was buying Yahoo and Google did raise prices on its customers, you'd have to worry about this because Yahoo would cease to exist and you can't go back and undo the damage. But that's not what is happening here," says Gary Reback, an antitrust lawyer who defended PeopleSoft against an Oracle takeover. "It's tempting to the Justice Dept. to monitor this and see what happens."

Google says that the agency has never denied a nonexclusive business arrangement. Google's legal team, which includes Dana Walker, a former DOJ attorney, argues that if Toyota is allowed to sell its hybrid technology to General Motors, then Google should be allowed to sell its superior search technology to Yahoo, which will decide how often to run the outsourced ads.

Microsoft says the deal is really a friendly takeover of Yahoo and a danger to advertisers, who fear that Google will have too much control of the online advertising market. "This deal will essentially strengthen Google and make Yahoo more dependent on Google. No matter how they cut it, Yahoo is transferring search traffic to Google," says the Microsoft source.

Several antitrust lawyers say that the DOJ will likely favor the deal going through as a way to help Yahoo stay independent. "Let's suppose this case doesn't get clearance. It's likely that Yahoo will get even weaker and go away as a separate company. We'd like Yahoo to exist to provide competition for Google. Yahoo is closer to restraining Google's power than Microsoft is," says Reback, a litigator who is not representing any of the interested companies.

"The Justice Dept. will want to see Yahoo take the money and do something productive with it. If, say, six months later Yahoo doesn't do anything, becomes too addicted to Google, and prices for advertisers go up, then the Justice Dept. can shut it down," Reback adds.

Still, the high-profile deal has many politicians in Washington worried. In addition to worries about how the pact will affect competition, many fear what Google can do with access to so much online data. Together, Google, with a 61.8% share and Yahoo, with 20.6%, own 82.4% of the U.S. search market, according to comScore's latest monthly report. CEO Jerry Yang has already made the rounds on Capitol Hill last week to assure members of both the House and Senate that the deal, which applies only to ads shown in the U.S. and Canada, won't prevent competition and that Yahoo will protect its own data.

A decision by the DOJ is expected by Oct.1. Congressional lawmakers have promised to hold hearings on the broad implications of the deal, but tech regulatory analysts say that this will not affect the DOJ's decision. "In my experience, the DOJ isn't particularly susceptible to congressional hearings," says Rebecca Arbogast, a D.C.-based regulatory analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.

Microsoft admits Capitol Hill has little influence over the DOJ. But as long as the DOJ investigates the deal, Microsoft's camp will continue to fuel the antitrust debate. Says the Microsoft source, "If Google endures a little bit of scrutiny, people will see how they're trying to weaken Yahoo in order to cement their dominant position. Google can do without Yahoo. Google has nothing to lose." That's a position Microsoft wishes it had.

Source: CNNMoney.com

Employers checking MySpace legally liable

If a potential employer uses a social networking site to check out a job candidate and then rejects that person based on what they see, he or she could be charged with discrimination.

According to Workforce.com, a site that helps HR reps stay current with all matters HR, employers who use the data available on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to make hiring decisions could be subject to charges of employment discrimination and litigation.

Employers could be accused of using the data on such sites to cull minorities, homosexuals, and other applicants who are members of protected class. It is even illegal in some states to make a job decision based on applicants’ political activities, a factor that would be easy to find out on a social networking site.

From the site:

A survey of about 350 employers in October 2007 by New York-based Vault.com, a media company focused on careers, found that 44% of employers use social networking sites to examine the profiles of job candidates, and 39% have looked up the profile of a current employee.

Although “failure to hire” lawsuits are rarer than other kinds of employment litigation, their numbers are expected to increase due to the growing use of social networking sites. There’s always a time lapse between problems that arise because of technology and legal precedents that address them.

Source: TechRepublic

Yahoo and Google Advertising Deal

NEW YORK, June 12 (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and arch rival Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Thursday they had entered a non-exclusive partnership on search advertising expected to add as much as $800 million in annual revenue.

Under the agreement, Yahoo can run ads supplied by Google alongside its own search results and on some of its websites in the United States and Canada. Yahoo will decide where the Google ads will run and which search terms it can use, Yahoo said in a statement.

The deal initially spans four years, with options to renew it up to a period of 10 years.

Yahoo said earlier on Thursday that it had failed to reach a deal with software maker Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), largely because it did not accept a proposal by Microsoft to buy only its search business.

Yahoo said it expects the Google deal to generate an additional $250 million to $450 million operating cash flow within its first year. (Reporting by Michele Gershberg)

Source: Reuters