Google wins landmark advertising case in Australia

 
 
Google Inc won a landmark court case on Wednesday when Australia's High Court ruled that it had not engaged in misleading behaviour with its sponsored links and that it was not responsible for messages conveyed by paid advertisers.

The ruling helps Internet providers and search engines argue that they are not publishers, but simply carriers of information provided by third parties.

While the judgment applies only in Australia, the ruling will be closely watched around the world and could be cited as a precedent in the event of similar cases arising in the rapidly evolving area of law.

"Others will definitely be looking at this ruling. Google is a worldwide business. This is something of a first, and it does add some clarity for the industry," the head of Australia's Internet Industry Association, Peter Lee, told Reuters.

The finding ends a six-year legal battle between Google and Australia's consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which accused Google of engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct over paid advertisements.

The ACCC based its case on search results in 2006 and 2007, where a search for Honda Australia would show a paid advertisement for a Honda competitor, CarSales. The ACCC said the ads were deceptive, as they suggested CarSales was linked to Honda Motor Co Ltd .

Google argued that it was not responsible for the advertisements, as it was only the conduit for the advertiser.

In a unanimous finding, five judges of Australia's High Court ruled in favour of Google, overturning a ruling from the Federal Court. The lower court had ordered Google to set up a compliance programme to make sure paid advertisements on its search engine were not misleading.

The five High Court judges said Google did not create the sponsored links and the company was not responsible for messages in the links.

"Ordinary and reasonable users of the Google search engine would have understood that the representations conveyed by the sponsored links were those of the advertisers, and would not have concluded that Google adopted or endorsed the representations," the court said.

Google issued a brief statement saying it welcomed the decision, while the ACCC said it would review the judgment to see if it had wider ramifications for Australian consumer law.
"The ACCC took these proceedings to clarify the law relating to advertising practices in the internet age," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.
The legal victory comes after Google and language software maker Rosetta Stone Inc last year settled a trademark infringement dispute in the United States over Google advertising practices.
Rosetta had argued people searching for its products on Google were being directed to competitors and software counterfeiters.

Google has since changed the way it displays its sponsored links in Australia, now clearly labelling them as advertisements on top of search results.

A Google search for Honda Australia on Wednesday displayed paid ads for Honda Australia's website. (Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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Google search results show 'significant racial discrimination': Report

Google search results contain "significant discrimination" according to the perceived race of the people whose names are typed in, a study has revealed.

According to Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney, names typically associated with black people were more likely to produce ads related to criminal activity.

In her paper, Prof Sweeney suggested that Google searches might expose "racial bias in society".

According to the BBC, the study analysed the type of advertisements that appeared on Google when certain names were searched for.

The investigation suggested that names linked with black people, as defined by a previous study into racial discrimination in the workplace, were 25 percent more likely to have results that prompted the searcher to click on a link to search criminal record history.

According to the report, Prof Sweeney noted that one possible cause for such search results might be Google's "smart" algorithms, technology which automatically adapts advertising placement based on mass, user habits. (ANI)

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Yahoo! enetrs in online ad alliance with Google

Yahoo! on Wednesday announced an advertising alliance with Google, the company that dethroned the pioneering Internet firm in the world of Internet search.

Google will use its online ad targeting skills at some Yahoo! properties, stepping in to put relevant marketing messages in available spaces, according to Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo!.

Yahoo! gave the example of someone online shopping for boots being shown an ad for something completely unrelated because no advertisements for footwear were available in inventory.

"If you see an ad for boots, that's instantly going to pique your attention more than an ad for, say, a car battery," Yahoo! said.

"That's better for users. This is why contextual advertising is such a powerful tool."

The large stocks of ads at Google AdSense and Admob increase opportunities to present Yahoo! website users with marketing messages they will click on, generating revenue.

"By adding Google to our list of world-class contextual ads partners, we'll be able to expand our network, which means we can serve users with ads that are even more meaningful," Yahoo! said.

"For our users, there won't be a noticeable difference in how or where ads appear."

The move comes amid turn-around efforts by Yahoo! chief executive Marissa Mayer, who was a high-level Google executive before taking the Yahoo! helm in July.

It also raised the possibility of Yahoo! turning to Google to power Internet searches at its website, once freed from its current deal to use Microsoft's Bing service.

Yahoo! has been trying to reinvent itself since the once-flowering Internet search service found itself withering in Google's shadow.

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iTunes hits 25-billion mark; German student wins 10K euros for Monkey Drums download

Apple's iTunes music store hit its 25 billionth download - equal to selling more than three songs for every person on Earth - and on Wednesday gave the German student who bought the track a gift card worth 10,000 euro ($13,500).

Economics student Phillip Luepke, 22, of Hanover, Germany, downloaded the techno song Monkey Drums (Goksel Vancin Remix) by British DJ Chase Buch, hitting the number a decade after the online music store debuted. "I was very surprised to hear the news," Luepke said on phone from his Germany home.
"I woke up this morning and had an email from Apple saying I had the 25 billionth download," he said. "In fact, I didn't quite believe it at first. It's a new feeling for me."

Luepke, who is currently studying for exams, said he came across the song at a disco last Saturday night. He used the song-identification smartphone application Shazam to look up its name, after which he downloaded Monkey Drums the following evening.

Luepke, who will celebrate over a few beers with friends, said he is not sure how he will spend the gift certificate, but he is confident that his music and movie collection will grow. Cupertino, Califoria-based Apple launched the iTunes store in April 2003 and has averaged about 15,000 songs downloaded each minute. The store has a catalog of more than 26 million songs in 119 countries.

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Your phone is all you'll need in a BlackBerry 10 future

A lot of buzz is billowing around BlackBerry these days, as analysts, consumers and the media keep a rabid eye on the renamed company's every move and so far non-specific sales numbers. Though all eyes are on BlackBerry 10 and sales of the Z10 (the Q10 isn't available yet), CEO Thorsten Heins is already looking to the future, Reuters reported Tuesday. It's apparently a future where the only device you'll need is a BlackBerry.
Heins wants BlackBerry to come to represent "true mobile computing," though he said it's not going to happen in the next quarter; the current game plan will play out over the next two to four years.
Heins said it's not just about tablets and smartphones, either. The architecture behind BlackBerry 10 is "not a downgraded PC operating system," he said. "It is a whole new innovation build from scratch. It's built for mobile."

The sky's the limit

So if the BlackBerry 10 architecture won't be limited to just phones and tablets, what exactly is Heins envisioning?
BlackBerry's Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben told Reuters that starting this year, "you will be able to plug the [Z10] device into a docking station at the office and then all you need is a keyboard, a mouse and a screen."
"Combined with cloud services, this would mean you don't need a laptop or a desktop," he added.
As Reuters pointed out, BlackBerry owns the QNX operating system behind BB10, which also powers everything from cars to nuclear reactors. Who knows where the company could go with it?
"What we need to decide is where do we play? It could be a software play, a licensing play, an end-to-end horizontal play, we'll figure that out," Heins said. "In five years, yes we might still be in hardware, but we may not be in hardware ... I'm not ruling anything out."

Remaining focused

But BlackBerry is going to remain focused on consumers and BB10 for now.
"Over the short term, yes, we have to be successful with the [BlackBerry 10] devices," he said, admitting that BlackBerry has to win back enterprises and consumers who were lost to Apple and Android.
In the U.K. and Canada, BlackBerry 10 devices are breaking records for the company. As of Tuesday, stock was up more than 24 percent from Friday's close.
That's surely a good sign, though the new OS's presence in the U.S. has yet to be reestablished - BB devices had plummeted to just one percent of mobile traffic in the U.S. by last summer, and BlackBerry 10 won't launch stateside until March.
The BlackBerry Q10 could launch in the U.S. as late as June.
In addition, Heins told Reuters that BlackBerry remains committed to tablets. After the minimal impact of the BlackBerry PlayBooks, though, he needs to make sure the next BlackBerry tablet - which is currently in the works - is profitable.

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Thirty Software Companies Separated From NASSCOM, Formed a New Association

 

Thirty Indian software product companies joined hands to form their own new association, marking a break-up with the IT industry body NASSCOM. Thirty founder members who were led by Bharat Goenka, co-founder of Tally Solutions, Vishnu Dusad, founder of Nucleus Software, Sharad Sharma, former head of Yahoo India R&D, startup mentor and founder of Brand Sigma and Naveen Tewari, founder of InMobi, will meet on 4 February 2013 to formalize this newly formed association and also for developing further action plans. The new association is called Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt.

Vision of Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt

The vision of Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt is to transform India in terms of IT and also deliver the invaluable IT solutions at the international level. The objective of iSpirt is to share experiences and expertise of these industries in order to create the awareness in government as well as society about the importance of IT. These 30 Indian software product companies that formed their new association believed that it was not possible for them to grow under larger umbrella of NASSCOM.

No conflict with NASSCOM

One of the founder members of the new association, Bharat Goenka made it clear that there were negotiations about new association formation since past six months. NASSCOM had in return promised support and that there were no conflicts with the IT body. Also, it was explained that the new association would work with everyone including NASSCOM.

Organisational structure of iSpirt

A founder member Sharad Sharma described that the new association iSpirt will not have a president or similar nomenclature. Instead, there will be a governing council that will consist of these four founding members- Sharma, Goenka, Tewari and Dusad. There will be a flat structure of the association. Volunteer model will be adopted.

About NASSCOM

•NASSCOM is expanded as National Association of Software and Services Companies. It is a trade association of the BPO and IT industry. It was established in 1988 and is a non-profit organisation.
•It is a global trade organisation with more than 1200 members out of which there are 250 global companies as well from China, Japan, Europe, UK and US.
•The member companies of NASSCOM have businesses such as software services, software development, BPO, IT and e-commerce.
•NASSCOM was established to facilitate trade and business in services and software in order to encourage advanced research in the software technology. It is registered under Indian Societies Act, 1860.
•At present, the headquarters of NASSCOM is in New Delhi.    

iSPIRT MISSION: WHAT DO WE DO?

We are a think tank with a difference. We will be doing three things:

We convert ideas into policy proposals to take to government stakeholders. Initially, we will engage with government policy makers and other policy bodies to explain, educate and inform audiences why a vibrant software product industry is vital to India’s future. Later, we will pursue policy positions related to software patents, taxation for software products (including SaaS), preferential buying mandates, and so on. We plan to have a symbiotic relationship with trade organizations, including NASSCOM, and see them leading the charge of converting our policy prescriptions into reality.

We convert conversations into playbooks for product entrepreneurs. Product companies need a different mindset than IT services businesses. They need to anticipate customer needs rather than just react to them. They need to brand themselves in very different ways and create IP that will disrupt the marketplace. They need deep technologists rather than fungible engineers. And so on. ProductNation.in will be the platform for enabling crucial conversations around these issues amongst practitioners. It will use an evidence based methodology to shine light on successful playbooks.

We convert actions of self-help communities into market catalysts for product industry. Many intractable ecosystem problems can’t be solved at the firm level. However they can be solved by a self-help community of individuals or companies. In the last 4-5 years, a number of such self-help communities have succeeded in the product industry. They have created successful events like the NASSCOM Product Conclave or programs like the CIO Connect. Now many more such initiatives are happening. These include programs like iSMB and M&A Connect. They are all inspired by the open source model and are self-organizing in nature. They seek to create “public goods” that benefit everybody within the product industry. We plan to support this self-help community model to build market catalysts for the industry.

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Facebook's 9th birthday: Milestones in the history of the social networking king

Facebook, the world's most popular social networking site, has turned nine today. With over one billion active users, the social networking giant still continues to grow, since its launch on February 4, 2004.


Some key developments in nine years since Facebook's creation:
February 2004: Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook as a sophomore at Harvard University.
 March 2004: Facebook begins expansion to other colleges and universities.
June 2004: Facebook moves headquarters to Palo Alto, California.
September 2004: Facebook introduces the Wall, which allows people to write personal musings and other tidbits on profile pages. Lawsuit filed against Facebook claiming that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from a company co-founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a third person at Harvard.
September 2005: Facebook expands to include high schools.
May 2006: Facebook introduces work networks, allowing people with a corporate email address to join.
September 2006: Facebook begins letting anyone over 13 join. It also introduces News Feed, which collects friends' Wall posts in one place. Although that led to complaints about privacy, News Feed became one of Facebook's most popular features.
May 2007: Facebook launches Platform, a system for letting outside programmers develop tools for sharing photos, taking quizzes and playing games. The system creates a Facebook economy and allows companies such as game maker Zynga Inc. to thrive.
October 2007: Facebook agrees to sell a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft for $240 million and forges advertising partnership.
November 2007: Facebook unveils its Beacon program, a feature that broadcasts people's activities on dozens of outside sites. Yet another privacy backlash led Facebook to give people more control over Beacon, before Facebook ultimately scrapped it as part of a legal settlement.
March 2008: Facebook hires Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer, snatching the savvy, high-profile executive from Google Inc.
April 2008: Facebook Chat introduced.
February 2009: Facebook introduces "Like," allowing people to endorse other people's posts.
June 2009: Facebook surpasses News Corp.'s Myspace as the leading online social network in the US.
August 2010: Facebook launches location feature, allowing people to share where they are with their friends and strangers.
October 2010: Release of "The Social Network," a movie about Zuckerberg and the legal battles over Facebook's founding. It gets eight Academy Awards nominations and wins three.
June 2011: Google launches rival social network called Plus. The Winklevoss twins end their legal battle over the idea behind Facebook. They had settled with Facebook for $65 million in 2008, but later sought more money.
September 2011: Facebook introduces Timeline, a new version of the profile page. It shows highlights from a person's entire Facebook life rather than recent posts.
November 2011: Facebook agrees to settle federal charges that it violated users' privacy by getting people to share more information than they agreed to when they signed up to the site. As part of a settlement, Facebook will allow independent auditors to review its privacy practices for two years. It also agrees to get approval from users before changing how the company handles their data.
December 2011: Facebook completes its move to Menlo Park, California Its address is 1 Hacker Way.
January 2012: Facebook begins making Timeline mandatory.
February 2012: Facebook files for an initial public offering of stock.
January 2013: Facebook announced the launch of Graph Search that allows users to search anything their Facebook friends have shared, including photos and posts.

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