Mobile

Less than a week after admitting it had inadvertently spied on some Wi-Fi users, Google is the target in several investigations in Europe and at least one lawsuit in the U.S.

On Tuesday, Pacific Northwest residents Vicki Van Valin and Neil Mertz filed a class action lawsuit against Google alleging their privacy was violated when Google's Street View vehicles drove by their homes, detecting and storing data from their open Wi-Fi Internet connections used in their homes. The news of the lawsuit was first reported by TechEye.net.

The case was filed in an Oregon district court. It … Read more

Better performance topped the feature list for Android 2.2, aka Froyo, the next version of Google's mobile-phone operating system detailed Thursday.

Froyo's Dalvik virtual machine, the foundation that actually runs Android applications, includes new technology that runs software two to five times faster for heavy-duty applications, said Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering, at the company's Google I/O conference.

Speed is a big issue for the small, power-sensitive processors in mobile phones, especially as the smartphone duties expand to include tasks such as videoconferencing and games. Also faster is the Android browser, which … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Google co-founder Sergey Brin didn't mince words in addressing one of the worst privacy-related gaffes his company has ever committed.

"In short, let me just say it: we screwed up," Brin said in response to a question on Wednesday here at the Google I/O conference about the company's disclosure last week that it had been collecting personal Internet usage data through its Google Street View program. "I'm not going to make any excuses about it."

Google is facing a litany of complaints and possible government actions against its Street View program, … Read more

Two of Google's chief congressional critics on Wednesday called on federal regulators to investigate whether the search company's inadvertent collection of Street View Wi-Fi data violates the law.

In a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, they prod the agency to evaluate whether accidental capture of brief snippets of Wi-Fi traffic is an "unfair or deceptive act" that has harmed consumers.

On Friday, Google acknowledged that its Street View cars had unintentionally intercepted fragments of data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks for periods of 200 milliseconds at a time. Google's blog post said it … Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Lawrence Spiwak's bio below.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is about to reverse a 25-year bipartisan tradition of removing heavy-handed public-utility-type regulations over new technologies and services.

Although Genachowski maintains that such regulatory interventions will be "modest," Genachowski's proposed approach is entirely disingenuous. Instead, for those of us who study this industry closely, it is readily apparent that the FCC now wants to regulate almost all aspects of the Internet.

In the past, the FCC, under both Democrats and Republicans, recognized … Read more

Mobile phone and smartphone sales are on a roll, according to figures released Wednesday by market researcher Gartner.

In the first quarter, customers worldwide bought 314.7 million mobile phones, a 17 percent increase year over year. Smartphones sales specifically jumped 48.7 percent from the year-ago quarter, as 54.3 million units flew off the shelves.

Demand within mature markets and lower prices are part of the reason for the double-digit gains, Gartner said.

For the quarter, the usual mobile phone makers topped the ranks, with Nokia in first place with a 35 percent market share, followed by Samsung, … Read more

Known for its online video search engine, Blinkx is now trying to wend its way into the mobile market.

The video search provider announced Wednesday a beta of a new Web site designed to let people find and play videos through their mobile devices. The new mobile site is geared toward any phone that has a Web browser and can play MP4 files, such as the Apple iPhone, Palm Pre, and Google Nexus One, among several others.

Differing from its standard Web site, Blinkx's new site is optimized to display on a smaller device, the company said. A video … Read more

Facebook's new mobile site, dubbed 0.facebook.com, is promising quick and data-charge-free access, though it's only accessible through certain mobile carriers.

The popular social-networking site already offers a mobile site designed to display on smartphones and other portable gadgets. But the new 0.facebook.com is being targeted toward mobile users in specific countries who normally face data charges from their carriers when they hop online. Thanks to special deals with more than 50 mobile carriers across 45 different countries and regions, accessing 0.facebook.com won't rack up any data charges.

The new site is … Read more

For the next two days, Google geekdom will gather at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, bringing with them an opportunity for publishers to spread their products' influence by getting developers on board--and maybe line their own corporate pockets in the process.

Take PayPal, for instance. At the conference opening on Wednesday, the online payment giant announced a developer tool for Android called the Mobile Payments Library, which allows application-authors to add PayPal-powered checkout to apps that sell goods or services, or collect donations.

The tool offers to track and secure customers' financial details, which could help … Read more