Google Plans Store for Online Business Software

The Wall Street Journal

Google Inc. is preparing to launch a store selling online business software that integrates with its Web services, according to people briefed by the company, enlisting software developers in its battle against Microsoft Corp.

These people said the store will sell business software designed by outside developers to integrate and add capabilities to Google Apps, such as enhanced security features or the ability to import contacts. Google Apps provides Web-based email, word-processing and spreadsheet functions. Google could announce the new store—a revamped version of its Solutions Marketplace site that features third-party programs—as soon as March, they said.

Google eventually plans to allow customers to purchase its partners' software through the site, taking a cut for itself and sharing some revenue with the developers, these people said. Google will allow users to quickly access their purchased applications through the menu at the top of their screens within Gmail or Google Docs, they said.

A Google spokesman said the company is "constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time."

Google's goal is to jump-start the growth of its online-software businesses, which it hopes will be a future sales engine for the company as its advertising business matures. The new store represents its latest attempt to get customers to switch to its online offerings and away from Microsoft programs.

The approach has its risks. Third-party software could be less reliable than Google's, leading to customer-service complaints. And how much time and effort developers will invest in new services remains unclear.

Google sells a suite of services such as task management software to businesses for $50 a user per year. While it has landed some high-profile customers such as Motorola Inc. and Genentech Inc., many large corporations have been reluctant to migrate from Microsoft for reasons ranging from concerns about storing data online to complaints of missing features.

Google says more than two million businesses are using the paid or free version of Google Apps. There are around 500 million users of Microsoft Office, according to Microsoft.

Google is turning to developers to help fill the holes and develop features its online software lacks, such as specialized editing software or tools to access online files offline.

The new store borrows a page from other technology companies including Apple Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc., which have tried to broaden the appeal of devices and software by opening up to outside developers. Salesforce operates AppExchange, which links to software that extends the functionality of its customer relationship management software.

Google Working With NSA to Investigate Cyber Attack

The Wall Street Journal

Officials at the National Security Agency have been working with Google Inc. to investigate the cyber attacks that Google announced publicly last month, according to people familiar with the investigation.

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment. NSA didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The partnership began weeks ago, as the Internet company shared details about the attack – which it said it believed originated in China and affected more than 20 companies – with various government agencies.

In response, Google said it would stop censoring its search results in China – a move it has yet to take as it continues discussions with Chinese officials about how it can continue to operate in the country. In recent weeks, Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt has said the Internet company doesn't want to back out of China but wants to be there on "different terms."

Companies have been more reluctant to work with the NSA in the wake of the debate over domestic surveillance in Washington because they fear being seen as aiding intelligence agencies in a way that would undermine the trust of customers. Addressing this private-sector anxiety is one of the largest challenges facing the White House's new cyber chief Howard Schmidt.

NSA officials had only heard rumors about the Google attack until the company announced it publicly, said one person familiar with the investigation.

While the Federal Bureau of Investigation could begin immediately on its criminal investigation, the NSA had to draft a legal agreement to begin sharing share information with Google.

The NSA's general counsel began drafting what's known as a cooperative research and development agreement the day Google announced the breach, according to a people familiar with the investigation. The agreement was finalized within 24 hours, but the flow of information was still limited, according to a person familiar with the investigation. It allowed the NSA to examine some of the data related to the intrusion into Google's systems.

Both the FBI and NSA dispatched officials to work directly with Google. Most of the information shared with NSA officials has been about the nature of the data that was stolen from Google, a person familiar with the investigation said.

As a result, some intelligence officers attempting to get a better understanding of the nature and scope of the attack resorted to tapping their own backchannel contacts and twisting arms to get information, said a person familiar with the investigation.

Yahoo, AP Reach Licensing Deal

The Wall Street Journal

The Associated Press and Yahoo Inc. have reached a new licensing agreement that will allow the Web portal to continue to host AP articles, the two parties said Monday.

The agreement could help define a core issue facing news organizations: How to deal with the Internet portals that help distribute their material but that some publishers say unfairly profit from their work.

The pact now shifts the focus to Google Inc., which has been the primary target of publishers unhappy with the way search engines use their material. Google's contract with the AP was set to expire last week. Google earlier had stopped hosting new AP articles on its news site, in case no new deal was reached.

Both Yahoo and AP declined to comment on the terms of the new deal. A Yahoo spokeswoman said Yahoo "will continue to enforce the strictest standards for AP's licensed content." AP said in a statement, "AP looks forward to deepening its partnership with Yahoo! as we and our members explore new opportunities and new ways to engage with audiences."

AP has been negotiating with Yahoo, Google and Microsoft Corp. to extend agreements under new terms that address some of news organizations' chief concerns. For example, AP has been developing a system to track how and where its articles, and its members' articles, are republished online, and it wants its Web partners to support that tracking system, according to people familiar with the talks.

AP also is seeking better financial terms from its Web partners, particularly as revenue from its member newspapers has shrunk, with more people seeking out news on the Internet and newspaper advertising down sharply.

People familiar with the talks said Yahoo had agreed to abide by certain guidelines for protecting content.

With some 1,500 U.S. newspapers as members, AP has considerable organizing powers in a fragmented industry. It is leading the effort to control how and where its members' material appears on the Internet, both on the portals' own news sites and in search results that send readers to AP articles on its members' Web sites.

AP has said it is trying to correct earlier agreements that gave Web portals access to a wide range of its online articles in a relatively inexpensive package. Those deals helped make the material ubiquitous, but AP executives say they also diluted the value of the offerings.

Apple’s Steve Jobs: Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy
Wired

After a big public announcement of the sort Apple had this week for the iPad CEO Steve Jobs often takes time in the day or two afterwards to have a Town Hall at One Infinite Loop, making himself available for questions from employees bold enough to stand up and take one right between the eyes.

This time, the big topics included Google and Adobe — no surprises there. Google recently unveiled its own Android-powered handset, the Nexus One, whose release Jan. 5 prompted Jobs to perhaps over-react by announcing on the same day that the iTunes store had served up three billion apps and that “… we see no signs of the competition catching up any time soon.” Apple’s billionth iPhone app download was greeted with great fanfare, but the two billionth not so much, so it felt a tad like Jobs was feeling some heat.

And the absence of Adobe Flash support on the iPhone for three years and counting, and now on the iPad, is either celebrated by users as a poke in the eye of one of the web’s most dextrous tools, or the most over-rated and overused crutch for decent design.

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

The world, of course, includes Google, which last week in a somewhat more modest development bypassed Apple’s iPhone app blockade by unveiling an html5 version of Google Voice, which takes full advantage of mobile Safari on the iPhone. Wired.com found it to be an impressive variation of the app Apple has neither approved nor officially rejected.

And it is, of course, in keeping with Google’s stated view (Android app marketplace notwithstanding) that the future is really in web-based applications and not in mobile apps at all. Web-based applications of the sort html5 makes much more viable.

So, great work rallying the troops, Steve — but be careful what you wish for.

In a post on macrumors.com Arnold Kim adds some more details from the Town Hall, including tough talk from Jobs about a blistering pace of iPhone updates, the LaLa acquisition, the next iPhone and (ahem) another candid assessment, of Blu-Ray.)

Another member of the audience, who also requires anonymity because this person is also not authorized to speak to the media, disputes the “bullshit” quote and says Jobs actually said: “Don’t be evil is a load of crap,” as first reported by Daring Fireball. This source also asserts that Jobs had nice things to say about how Adobe, or at least how the company used to be, as John Gruber’s “little birdie” also told him first.)

Many Wired Chinese Unfazed by Possible Google Exit

AP

 

BEIJING (AP) - A world without Google? They can imagine it just fine in China. After all, it's not like losing "World of Warcraft."

The online giant's threat to pull out of China over censorship has drawn little reaction among the country's 384 million Internet users. No flood of complaints to China's consumer rights agency, like the tens of thousands received in one day when the online fantasy game "World of Warcraft" was yanked last year because of a bureaucratic turf battle. Nor has there been the type of fury that saw 32,000 indignant gamers participate in an online chat session on the "World of Warcraft."

"If Google leaves China, we'll lose one search engine. But we still have other choices," said 28-year-old Deng Zhiluo, who works in marketing in Beijing. He said while Google's search results are more "international," most of what he wants can be found on Chinese competitor Baidu. "For locals, Baidu is enough."

The indifference of many Chinese points to a telling challenge for Google in the world's most populous Internet market. The Chinese Internet world is youthful, with people under 30 making up 61.5 percent of the online population, and Google's cause isn't generating popular support among China's wired teens and 20-somethings.

"It's like in the U.S. saying, 'You can't use Yahoo search anymore'," said T.R. Harrington, CEO of Shanghai-based Darwin Marketing, which specializes in China's search engines. "What would people say? 'So what? I'll use Google more, and I'll try Bing and I might try a few other ones ... I don't care.'"

Google threatened three weeks ago to shut down its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, citing cyberattacks emanating from China plus attempts to snoop on dissidents.

Some Chinese admire the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's stand and its "don't be evil" image: A few dozen laid flowers outside Google's Beijing headquarters, and a few hundred joined a "Don't Go Google" Web site before it was shut down for unknown reasons.

The trouble Google is having generating support among Chinese underscores how successfully the communist government controls information. While authorities have set up an extensive network of Internet filters, blockades and monitoring - dubbed the "Great Firewall of China" - that's only part of the picture. China's permissible Internet universe is flooded with choice, with 3.2 million registered Web sites offering politically acceptable news coverage and loads of diversions from shopping to music downloads.

The generation of Chinese currently in their teens and 20s are known for their love of consumerism and disdain for politics. Most aren't interested in scaling the "Great Firewall" by using proxy servers or other technical subterfuges, according to Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based technology analyst. Their favorite online activities: listening to music, chatting with friends and playing video games.

For many sites blocked by the government - including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter - there are readily available, government-approved Chinese substitutes: Youku and Tudou for videos, Kaixinwang and Renren for social networking. Sina.com, the largest Internet portal, runs a Twitter-like microblogging site.

"Baidu does the same things as Google," said 30-year-old IT salesman Zheng Hongyi. "And if it leaves there will be more companies coming up to fill this need."

Beijing may be interested in seeking an accommodation. Google is an innovator whose presence could spur innovation by Chinese competitors. Blocking Google sites could encourage more Chinese to seek ways of getting around Internet controls. That's what happened last year when two government agencies prohibited Chinese sites from offering "World of Warcraft" while they battled over the right to regulate the lucrative online game. Local stores started selling access cards that allowed Chinese fans to play the game on Taiwanese servers.

Google's message is resonating with some Chinese. Wen Yunchao, a popular blogger who writes about social issues and the Internet, said the publicity Google touched off has raised awareness about censorship and Internet access, especially in less worldly cities.

"A lot of people might not normally feel the existence of censorship. This lets more people know, understand and like Google. I've heard in some second and third-tier cities, Google's usage is increasing dramatically," Wen said.

Outside big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, Google's brand recognition is low, said Tangos Chan of Internet and technology blog China Web Radar. When visiting his rural hometown in southeastern Fujian province a year or so ago, Chan found that some of his childhood friends "didn't really know what it was ... they just use Baidu."

While Google is generally seen in China as the go-to site for searching overseas Web sites, Baidu is known for being better at finding Web sites in Chinese, both in China and abroad. The Nasdaq-listed company also runs a popular message board, online encyclopedia and vast digital music library.

Baidu has about 60 percent of China's search engine market, compared with Google's 35 percent, according to Analysys International, a Beijing research firm.

"Baidu has more products that make it a destination for the average user in China," said Harrington, the marketing specialist.

Also hurting Google is the Chinese government's control of the country's news media. State-run media have glossed over the company's allegations about China-based hacking attacks and instead portrayed the affair as a business decision by Google. Many young Chinese believe that Google wants to leave because it's being drubbed by Baidu.

State media recently hardened their stance, accusing the U.S. government of being behind the dispute, particularly after a speech by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Jan. 21 when she called on China to investigate the attacks that led to Google's threat to pull out.

"Right now, a lot of netizens feel the American government was involved. Google's image is becoming more and more negative," said Rao Jin, an online entrepreneur who recently launched google-liar.com. "If Google leaves, we will be losing an Internet tool but we must be aware of national security threats."

Rao has been successful in tapping popular sentiment in China. He is the founder of anti-cnn.com, launched during ethnic rioting in Tibet in March 2008 and aimed at exposing alleged bias in Western media reports. It still receives 1 million page views a day.

The 25-year-old has such influence that he was among bloggers and other Chinese Internet personalities invited to round-table discussions at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing before President Barack Obama's visit in November and after Clinton's speech, in an effort by the State Department to sway Chinese public opinion.

Ironically, some of the anti-Google articles Rao posted on google-liar.com were found with the help of Google. The Internet entrepreneur and his friends even use the company's Gmail e-mail service.

Rao said he's backing up his Gmail account and preparing to switch to a Chinese e-mail provider. He said you can always find a ready Chinese substitute.

Cybersecurity Chief Confronts Google Attack, Cloud Security
Information Week

New to the job, Howard Schmidt's priorities include developing an organized response to attacks on American systems, private-public partnerships, and R&D.

The nation's new cybersecurity coordinator, Howard Schmidt, says the task of overseeing government-wide computer security has been "non-stop" in his first two weeks on the job.

Following the December announcement of his appointment by President Obama, Schmidt immediately had a cybersecurity crisis on his hands: Google's disclosure of a cyber attack on its system from within China. "I think everybody in the world who's in the security business is thinking about or working on that issue right now," Schmidt said in a brief interview at the Congressional Internet Caucus' annual State of the Net conference, where he gave his first public speech since taking office.

Since meeting with President Obama a few weeks ago, Schmidt has been working with federal CTO Aneesh Chopra and federal CIO Vivek Kundra on the requirement for secure cloud computing architectures and other issues.

Schmidt didn't offer a timeframe for when the White House would introduce a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, but he hinted at where he might be looking to affect change. Schmidt pointed to supply chain management and education as weak links in cybersecurity. His priorities include developing an organized, unified response to attacks on American systems, fostering private-public partnerships, and addressing R&D needs.

One of the main concerns expressed about Schmidt's position before he took office was that it carried no real budget authority, but Schmidt waves that aside. "I don't believe that if you don't have the budget authority, you can't affect change," he said, noting a recent groundswell of support from policy-makers for cybersecurity efforts.

Another question has been whether Schmidt has the President's ear and the authority to make policy. He reports to both the National Economic Council and the National Security Staff, rather than to the President.

"I was particularly pleased and it made me feel good that there is a direct link to the National Security Staff as well as the National Economic Council," he said in his speech. "By being dual-hatted, it gives us a much broader perspective and helps us to have balance. It's important to understand we have a foot in both camps and utilize both camps."

Schmidt said privacy would be a key component of any cybersecurity plans he helps to develop. "Privacy and security are two sides of the same coin," he said. "As I was coming into this position, I was always sure that we had the discussion about privacy."

Schmidt took over for Chris Painter, who was acting in an interim capacity. Painter kept things going forward, Schmidt said, adding that he hopes to keep him at the White House "as long as I can keep him." Schmidt has a staff of about 10 working on issues from privacy to intelligence.

Search Keywords Mean Business

Information Week

Companies spend a fortune protecting their brands. But in the context of local search advertising, keywords may matter more than trademarks.

Google claims that more people (82%) use online search engines like Google than any other medium to find local information. The number of mobile searches with a local focus is estimated to be almost 30%, according to The Kelsey Group.

And local search is only becoming more important, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and the tech industry's focus on location-oriented data and services.

Small businesses that focus on their own brand, says Bret Fitzgerald, VP of business development for marketing services company Clearlink, are losing out on a significant amount of online traffic if they ignore generic keywords.

The reason is that far more people conduct local searches for generic terms like "pizza" or "coffee" than bother with a branded search like "Round Table Pizza" or "Peet's Coffee."

"Generally speaking, you see more searches around categorical terms than branded ones," said Kelly Hansen, local search director of operations at Clearlink.

For example, Clearlink, which manages local and map search listings for small businesses, tracked some 2,400 searches for "pizza phoenix" in the Phoenix, Arizona, area last month, but only 1,600 searches for "pizza hut phoenix" and 320 searches for "dominoes pizza phoenix."

In Austin, Texas, the preference for generic terms was even more pronounced. Clearlink saw 3,600 searches for "pizza austin," 91 searches for "pizza hut austin," and 170 searches for "dominoes pizza austin."

Fitzgerald says that it's imperative for businesses to understand that they can bring in customers if their local listings are managed properly in terms of Google SEO, so that they show up for the appropriate generic queries in Google Maps, for example.

Google Chrome Gets Extensions, APIs
Information Week

With support for user-installed extensions, Google Chrome presents stronger competition to the more established Web browsers.

Only days after Mozilla introduced Firefox 3.6, Google has rolled out a new stable release of Google Chrome for Windows.

Google maintains three separate tracks for its Chrome Web browser: developer, beta, and stable.

The updated stable release bring support for Chrome Extensions, a feature that users of Chrome's developer

and beta releases have had since late last year. Extensibility has been one of the major factors in the success of Firefox.

And as with Firefox, some of the most popular extensions for Chrome block ads.

"Google Chrome extensions use the same multiprocess technology that makes the browser fast and more secure, so that extensions won't crash or slow down your browser," said Google product manager Ian Fette in a blog post.

Google has enabled extensions in the Google Chrome for Linux beta and it plans to do the same shortly for Chrome on the Mac.

The updated version of Chrome for Windows also adds support for several new HTML and JavaScript APIs. These include the Web SQL Database API, which allows local storage of structured data; the local storage portion of the Web Storage API, a simpler local storage mechanism; WebSockets, a way to send data back and forth over a persistent communication channel; and a Windows-only notification API, for passing non-disruptive updates to a panel in the user's status-bar area.

In a separate blog post, Fette also said that Google is working to implement a service called Application Cache, which allows the serving of HTML and JavaScript that references Web SQL data. Its engineers are also working on the SessionStorage part of the Web Storage API.

While Firefox use continues to grow, Google's ongoing efforts to polish Chrome appear to be prompting some Firefox fans to reconsider their browser choice. A thread on Reddit about Chrome use suggests that Google's focus on browser basics like speed, stability, and security resonates with users.

Running Mozilla's Dromaeo JavaScript test on Windows XP, Chrome 4.0.302.3 beat Firefox 3.6 in three out of four of the speed trials, with a final score of 139.19 to 83.90.

At the end of this year, Google plans to release Chrome OS, an operating system based on its Web browser and taking full advantage of the preeminence of Google SEO.

Google Social Search Obtains Beta Status

Information Week

Google on Wednesday moved its Social Search experiment from Google Labs to beta status, meaning that it's now a mainstream search option for anyone who believes that the fetishes and fascinations of friends will make Google search results more relevant.

The beta label will remain for a while, the company said, because there's still work to do. The re-branded Social Search will be available in English, though perhaps not immediately everywhere -- Google said it could take a few days to roll out.

Google introduced Social Search last October after several years of dipping its toes in the social waters through various forms of search personalization.

Its public commitment to Social Search occurred at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, an event at which Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg declared, "There is a very fundamental shift going on from the information Web to the social Web."

Social Search on Google requires a Google Account and a Google Profile. Users who fill out their Profiles with contact information or add links in their Profiles to other social Internet services, such as Blogger, Twitter, and the like, have the option of seeing what their online associates have posted when it relates to a given search.

Google has extended Social Search to include Google Images, a move that simplifies finding photos shared by friends through services like Flickr and Picasa Web Albums.

The company has added two new Social Search links, labeled "My social circle" and "My social content," that make it easier to see how one's friends fit into Social Search and to see how one's own public pages may appear to friends using Google SEO.

Evidently oblivious to the lack of privacy implied by Social Search, Google on Thursday said it was celebrating Data Privacy Day by publishing the privacy principles under which it has been operating.

Nebraska Man to Plead Guilty in Scientology Site Hack 
USA Today

Federal prosecutors in California say a Nebraska man will plead guilty to participating in a cyber attack on Church of Scientology websites in January 2008.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, says Brian Thomas Mettenbrink agreed to plead guilty Monday to the misdemeanor charge of unauthorized access of a protected computer. He faces a year in federal prison.

Court records say Mettenbrink attacked Scientology websites as part of Anonymous, an underground group that protests the Church of Scientology, accusing it of Internet censorship.

Prosecutors say hackers conducted a "denial of service" attack, in which computers flood a target website with malicious Internet traffic, making it unavailable to legitimate users.

Prosecutors say Mettenbrink, of Grand Island, Nebraska, is expected to enter his plea next week in Los Angeles, where the Church of Scientology is based.

Yahoo's 4Q Progress Brightens 2010 Outlook

AP

After a painful descent, things may finally be looking up for long-suffering Yahoo Inc.

Coming off its best quarterly performance since hiring Carol Bartz as its chief executive a year ago, Yahoo promised late Tuesday to deliver even more meaningful progress this year.

For starters, the Internet company expects its revenue for the three months ending in March to rise 3 percent to $1.63 billion. Modest as that sounds, it's a breakthrough for Yahoo after five consecutive quarters of declining revenue while Google Inc. vacuumed up even more Internet advertising.

Even if the company hits management's target, Yahoo's first-quarter revenue will still be nearly $200 million below where it stood two years ago.

Bartz has been vowing since her arrival to engineer a turnaround that eluded her two predecessors, but her efforts through most of 2009 were hampered by the worst U.S. recession since World War II.

Yahoo's fourth-quarter results released Tuesday provided the latest evidence the Internet ad market is regaining its legs as the economy stabilizes. Google, the Internet's dominant advertising vehicle, closed out 2009 with its most robust growth of the year.

"Things seem to be returning to a more normal state in the online advertising business," Bartz told analysts in a Tuesday conference call.

Yahoo earned $153 million, or 11 cents per share, during the final three months of 2009, rebounding from a loss of $303 million, or 22 cents per share, in the prior year.

If not for charges for internal reshuffling and a proposed search partnership with Microsoft Corp., Yahoo said it would have made 15 cents per share in the quarter. That topped the average estimate of 11 cents per share among analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Yahoo shares climbed 60 cents, or 3.8 percent, in Tuesday's extended trading. Before the results came out, the stock finished the regular session at $15.99, up 13 cents.

Revenue slipped 4 percent to $1.73 billion. In contrast, Google's fourth-quarter revenue surged 17 percent. Yahoo still did better than the first nine months of 2009, when the company's revenue dropped 12 percent.

In a sign of Yahoo's growing confidence, the company added 700 workers to its payroll in the fourth quarter to end December with 13,900 employees. That's still down from Yahoo's recent peak employment of 15,200 workers in September 2008.

Yahoo also intends to buy other companies this year, Bartz said, setting her sights mostly on small deals that improve the company's technology and bring in more compelling content to its Web site.

"We are done looking inward," Bartz told analysts. "We are looking outward at the incredible opportunities ahead."

For all of 2009, Yahoo earned $598 million, or 42 cents per share, on revenue of $6.46 billion. That compared with income of $419 million, or 29 cents per share, on revenue of $7.21 billion in 2008.

Even before the recession's onset in December 2007, Yahoo SEO was on the ropes, as Google widened its lead in the Internet's lucrative search market and online hangouts such as Facebook emerged as new hot spots for socializing and advertising.

Bartz has been trying to spur more advertising by re-establishing Yahoo as the center of people's online lives. The makeover has included a redesigned front page that makes it easier to connect to Facebook and other Web sites. The front page sold all its available advertising in the fourth quarter, Bartz said.

Yahoo was especially pleased with renewed spending on its bread-and-butter - the online billboards known as display advertising. Sales in that category were flat from the same time last year, but climbed 26 percent from the third quarter. That was Yahoo's largest sequential gain in display advertising in three years.

Social Media Security Flaws Haunting The Internet
Scandals, Probes, Hacks
Social Sites Creating Huge Headaches Worldwide
Canada Privacy Office Launches New Facebook Probe
AP

Canada's privacy commissioner is once again probing Facebook over the online social network's privacy policies.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada said Wednesday it is investigating a complaint from a Facebook user over changes the company introduced in December.

The announcement came just five months after Facebook agreed to give users more control over the information they share with outside applications such as games and quizzes in response to concerns raised by Canadian privacy officials.

The latest complaints stem from changes Facebook made to give users more granular controls over what information is shared with others, while pushing users to be more open.

The complaint alleges that Facebook's new, "default" settings made more information exposed than the user had previously intended. Facebook insists those settings were merely recommendations.

Elizabeth Denham, the assistant privacy commissioner, said some Facebook users have been disappointed at changes that were supposed to improve protection of their personal information.

Facebook, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., said it has not seen the complaint but it is confident that its process last month was "consistent with user expectations, and within the law."

In the U.S., the Electronic Privacy Information Center and nine other organizations have also filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over last month's changes.

Google Co-Founders To Sell Off Combined 5.5Billion in Stock

AP

Google Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are relinquishing some of their control over the Internet search leader with the sale of 10 million shares worth $5.5 billion at current prices.

Under a plan disclosed Friday, the longtime business partners will each sell 5 million Google shares during a five-year period that will commence with the first trade.

The sales will occur periodically to lessen the chances of hurting Google's stock price.

Page and Brin, both 36, will remain Google's most influential shareholders, although they will be losing some of their clout.

The two iconoclasts own a special class of Google stock that gives them combined voting power of about 59 percent - enough to override the wishes of all other shareholders if they wanted. The duo secured this veto power to ensure Google remained true to their values, which are summed up in the company motto, "Don't Be Evil."

After the sales, the founders' holdings will be whittled to a combined 47.7 million shares with 48 percent voting power.

Falling below the 50 percent threshold might not matter because they run Google as a ruling triumvirate with the company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, whose shares hold 10 percent voting power.

Although the trio acknowledge occasional disagreements, they insist they always work things out amicably. What's more, Schmidt, Page and Brin have agreed to remain at Google at least through 2024.

Executives and founders of companies commonly enter into predetermined stock trading plans to raise cash and diversify their investments.

Page and Brin each currently have about $16 billion of their fortunes tied up in Google stock. By their own choice, their annual salary at Google is just $1.

"They are both as committed as ever to Google and are integrally involved in our day-to-day management and product strategy," Google spokeswoman Jane Penner said. "The majority of their net worth remains with Google."

This marks the second time Page and Brin have sold big chunks of stock since Google went public in August 2004.

Three months after the company's initial public offering, Page and Brin filed an 18-month plan that divested 7.2 million shares apiece.

Back then, Google shares were trading around $169.40. The stock is worth three times as much now, closing at $550.01 Friday after falling $32.97, or 5.7 percent.