Google

Google donates $30,000 to CC

Google has donated $30,000 to Creative Commons, the open licensing organization.

The charitable corporation has essentially created a new method for the licensing and sharing of intellectual property.

Creative Commons (CC) empowers creators of original content with licensing alternatives that allow them to retain copyright protection while permitting free use of their content under certain circumstances. In this way, artists, scientists and others are able to gain visibility in the wider world while protecting their content.

CC has developed licensing support for audio and video this year, in addition to its licensing support for images and text, according to … Read more

Fake airline boarding pass creator is Google intern

The college student who created a Web site that allows people to make a fake airline boarding pass is a security specialist who is working at Google as a summer intern, according to his resume. Christopher Soghoian is getting a doctorate in cybersecurity at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

While working at Google this summer, Soghoian invented a new anti-phishing tool, designed a new model for mobile phone-based account verification and studied click-fraud, the resume says. While serving as a security intern at Apple last summer he discovered a significant network-exploitable vulnerability in the Mac OS and developed tools to … Read more

YouTube.com sued by UTube.com

YouTube's popularity is proving to be a headache for a company with a similar Web address. Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment is suing the viral video site recently acquired by Google, according to a news report on WTOL-TV in Toledo, Ohio.

The lawsuit alleges that YouTube is confusingly similar to Universal Tube's UTube.com, which sells tube, pipe and rollforming machinery. Universal Tube said its Web site traffic jumped from 1,500 users a month to more than 2 million, paralyzing the site.

"This is an enormous expense and distraction for us. Contact with our customers has … Read more

Google denies report on Belgian fines

A Google spokesman on Wednesday denied a report that says the search giant faces fines of 34 million euros ($43 million) in a copyright case in Belgium.

Google's fines for not removing links in Google News to Belgian news sources reached 34 million euros ($43 million) before Copiepresse, which represents French- and German-language Belgian publishers, agreed to temporarily suspend the daily fine counter last week, according to an article on Poynter Online, which cited an item on Planet Multimedia that is in Dutch. That report said Google was having difficulty determining which domains should be blocked and asked Copiepresse … Read more

Google goals: more ads, less spam, go green

Google Blogoscoped blogger Philipp Lenssen has gotten ahold of an internal Google document that details the company's goals for 2006. Among them are: to sell $1 billion of new ad inventory, which is the number of page views a site has available for advertising; to focus on getting rid of spam in the top 20 user languages; to increase the accuracy of information collected; to push communities and content; and to "increase the scale of innovation," according to Blogoscoped.

The search giant "also wants to build 10 megawatts of green power to be on track to … Read more

Google serves up searchable scary stories

No, I'm not talking about Cub Scout sleepover stories, although that awful "I am the viper, I vish to vipe your vindows" yarn could probably be spun into something hilarious about Windows Vista. Rather, Google Book Search has launched a Halloween-appropriate feature to give Googlers easy access to a few pieces of classic spooky literature like Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." You can find them all here.

Cool, yes. A good way to … Read more

Google Video on mobile devices--but not from Google

There's a Google Video for mobile devices, but not from Google. Independent developer Scott Robbin has created the unofficial version of Google Video for mobile phones. It lets people search, download and view content off Google Video directly from their mobile phones. All you need is a phone that has an XHTML-compliant browser and enough storage to hold large video files. It helps if the Internet connection is fast and if the phone has an application capable of playing AVI or MP4 files.

Robbin has also posted a video demonstration on YouTube. "I've got it running on … Read more

Googler in chief, George W. Bush

Searching for answers? Google. No matter how big your staff, no matter how large your army, Google helps.

President George W. Bush admits to Googling. The Wall Street Journal's blog on politics has a transcript of a TV interview where the president talked about Googling.

To quote the chief Googler: "One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps. It's very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can--like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, … Read more

Google earnings, revenue up from year ago

Google posted third-quarter results on Thursday that show strong growth from a year ago on continued flourishing sales of search-related advertising.

Total revenue for the third quarter rose 70 percent to $2.69 billion, up from year-ago revenue of $1.58 billion. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, or commissions paid to content partners, revenue was $1.87 billion. Net income was $733 million, or $2.36 a share. Net income a year earlier was $381.2 million, or $1.32 a share.

Click-fraud rate on Google, Yahoo down, report says

According to a new report on the scope of fraudulent clicks on search-related ads, the click-fraud rate among top-tier search sites like Google and Yahoo is dropping. It fell to 11.9 percent in the third quarter, compared with 12.8 percent in the previous quarter.

But at second-tier search providers, it rose to 23.2 percent from 20.3 percent. The overall industry rate inched down to 13.8 percent from 14.1 percent, according to figures released on Wednesday from Click Forensics, which operates the Click Fraud Index. The index compiles data from more than 2,500 online … Read more