Consumer Watchdog has opposed the $22.5 million settlement between Google and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the search giant’s user privacy violations on Apple’s Safari web browser.
The consumer advocacy group filed a motion for the right to oppose the FTC agreement with Google in US District Court.
Consumer Watchdog thinks the unsatisfactory deal allows Google to dispute that it breached a past privacy consent

As the Apple and Samsung trial in San Jose, California draws to a close, Apple is arguing in a separate court that the Galaxy Nexus is a product of Samsung copying the iPhone to take market share away from them.
Apple has argued in an appeals court in Washington that the Galaxy Nexus smartphone is copying its Siri voice-controlled personal assistant, Bloomberg reports.
“This was the beat-Apple strategy. This was the top of the line, Cadillac phone they trotted out to compete with the …

Google has revealed that users of social networking service will have the ability to add a custom URL to Google+.
The catch? You must at least be a prominent personality or brand name since the search giant will make it an exclusive feature for popular brands and celebrities with verified Google+ accounts. All the same, the new feature will shortly roll out to all Google+ users and allow them to customize and shorten URLs on the social network.
The new feature will show usernames with …

Google intends to cut one-fifth (20 percent) of Motorola Mobility workers and shut down 94 offices of the American phone manufacturer worldwide, the New York Times reports.
The layoffs and closures will probably come most difficult to US employees of Motorola Mobility, as the search giant and new owner drops 4,000 from the phone maker’s workforce, with a third coming from American workers. The company’s management will also be hit, as Google prepares to shake off 40 percent of Motorola’s …

Google has agreed to pay a hefty $22.5 million fine for going around user privacy settings in Apple’s Safari web browser.
The Mountain View-based online ads leader received a court order to pay off almost $23 million, the largest obligatory fine in the history of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as penalty for using special code to avoid the built-in user privacy controls in Safari.
The circumvention gave Google the ability to monitor online activities of users who accessed the …

Google and Oracle have to submit a list bloggers and journalists, whom they allegedly paid over the course of their Java copyrights and patents lawsuit, as ordered by a US District Court judge.
Judge William Alsup told both companies to release the names by Friday next week (August 17), which means the federal court believes one party paid writers to comment and publish articles related to the case’s proceedings.
The order reads,
The Court is concerned that the parties and/or counsel herein …

Google has just pulled itself into a mosh pit against Australian authorities when it failed to remove all private data collected from Wi-Fi networks in the country through Google Street View cars two years ago.
After Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim started conducting a probe in March last year, Google claimed to have permanently deleted all data.
Last month, however, the search giant confessed in a letter addressed to Pilgrim that there remains a portion of data collected from …

Arielle Zuckerberg is now part of the Google family after the search giant acquired Wildfire, the company where the sister of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg works. That means there are now more Zuckerbergs working at Google than at the social networking giant.
Randi Zuckerberg, the older sister of Mark and former Facebook marketing director, broke the news on her Twitter account in a congratulatory message that likely brought some awkwardness to her siblings’ work …

Google has acquired ad company Wildfire to help businesses handle their social media strategies.
Jason Miller, product management director at Google, said in a blog post on Tuesday that Wildfire will help the search giant’s users “manage their social efforts across their pages, apps, tweets, videos, sponsorships, ads and promotions, all in one place”.
Google said Wildfire co-founders, Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard, and the team will assist through its advertising and analytics …

Google plans to replace its Gmail video chat function with a Hangouts style video feature similar to Google+.
According to Google product manager Fred Brewin in a blog post Monday on the company’s website, “Unlike the old video chat, which was based on peer-to-peer technology, Hangouts utilize the power of Google’s network to deliver higher reliability and enhanced quality.”
The Hangouts style video feature replacement will allow users to reach and communicate with the same …