So much for those Gmail-reliability improvements Google promised us earlier this month. The service, which was felled by a major outage just three weeks ago, is once again suffering from accessibility issues. It’s not yet clear what, exactly, is amiss. Some users say they can’t access contacts and chat. Others can’t get into the service at all.
Looks like the Google Books Settlement won’t be hitting the shelves until later this year–at the earliest. Days after the U.S. Justice Department criticized the deal and the forward-looking business arrangements it seeks to create as cause for “significant legal concern,” Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers requested a delay in a judge’s final “fairness hearing” scheduled for Oct. 7 so that they can amend it.
Responding to the publication of Google’s unredacted answers to the Federal Communications Commission, Apple insists that it did not reject Google Voice. “We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told me. “Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google.”
Well this is uncomfortable: Asked by the Federal Communications Commission in August if it had rejected Google’s Voice app from its iTunes App Store, Apple claimed it had not and that the app was still under review. But according to a newly unredacted document from Google, Apple did reject the app.
No doubt about it, more consumers are Googling with Bing. According to the latest stats from research firm Nielsen, Microsoft’s new search engine is growing faster than its arch rival’s–much faster.
Add another name to the list of opponents of the Google Book Search Settlement: Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights. In testimony before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Thursday, Peters tarred the deal as “fundamentally at odds with the law” and villainized Google, saying the company is making a “mockery” of the copyright protections in the U.S. Constitution.
Kai-Fu Lee’s uneventful departure from Google to start a Beijing incubator really belies the spectacle that attended the beginning of his tenure at the search giant. Lee’s train-hopping from Microsoft to Google back in 2005 touched off a five-month pitched battle marked by all manner of inanities and expletive-laden outbursts.
Google claims that its Book Search settlement will “bring back to life millions of lost books in a way that serves the interest of all.” And if that truly is its goal, the company is going to have to put its own Brobdingnagian self interests second to those of others–if only for a little while. To wit, Google’s announcement Monday of a number of concessions to the European Union, which seems a bit dubious of the whole thing.
Get this: Microsoft has been holding secret “Screw Google” meetings in Washington at which the company schemes to undermine Google and prevent it from subsuming the businesses that took it decades to build. Those ruthless, conniving bastards. Strategizing to thwart a rival.
When Motorola announces its new Android handsets at a scheduled Sept. 10 event in San Francisco, AT&T isn’t likely to be among their carriers. Sources close to the company tell MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen that AT&T balked at Motorola’s Sawgrass and Heron handsets, allegedly because of their dated display technology.
The Open Book Alliance–or “Sour Grapes Alliance,” as Google likes to call it–formally launched Wednesday afternoon, debuting a new Web site, as well as the manifesto with which it is challenging Google’s settlement with authors and publishers.
Looks like Motorola is poised to make good on co-CEO Sanjay Jha’s promise to bring some Android devices to market by the holidays. The company just distributed invitations to an Android-related event in San Francisco.
Yahoo’s search advertising partnership with Microsoft and its embrace of Bing don’t mean the company has given up on its search business. During a presentation at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., Monday, Yahoo unveiled a number of new features in its search product that show it’s intent on competing with its new partner in the only way it can–by mimicking the features of Microsoft’s new Bing search engine, and Google’s search engine as well.
“Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.” So begins Apple’s response to the FCC’s inquiry into its rejection of the app and of its App Store approval process. Seems Google Voice was withheld from the App Store not because of any ill feeling toward Google or a nefarious request from AT&T, but because it too closely mimics the iPhone OS.
As the Google Book Search Settlement nears a Sept. 4 deadline for rights-holders to opt out of the deal, some powerful interests are rallying to oppose it. Rallied by the Internet Archive and veteran Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are forming a coalition called the Open Book Alliance. Its purpose: To make the case to an already concerned Justice Department that the $125 million settlement is anticompetitive.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best use of the Beeker “meee” ever.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
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