google u.k

Google sued by iPhone users in U.K. over Safari tracking

Riding on the heels of the recent U.S. lawsuit against Google for Safari tracking, Apple users in the U.K. have now launched their own similar case against the Web giant.

Peeved that their online privacy was violated, roughly a dozen people are suing Google in a class action suit, according to The Guardian. The case alleges that Google secretly tracked their Internet habits via cookies in the Safari Web browser. The lawsuit revolves around the way Google may have sidestepped Apple's security settings on the iPhone, iPad, and desktop versions of Safari.

"This is the first … Read more

Google to invest $1B in new U.K. headquarters -- Reuters

Google is ready to drop a significant sum of cash into a London plot of land that will one day be home to its U.K. headquarters, according to a Reuters report.

Google is investing 650 million pounds (about $1 billion) in a 2.4-acre plot at the Kings Cross Central development in London, Reuters reported yesterday, citing developers involved in the purchase. The company plans to build a one-million-square-foot building on the plot that will become its U.K. headquarters when it's finished in 2016.

Google currently operates U.K. offices in the Victoria and Holborn districts. Those … Read more

Google's U.K. search share dips below 90 percent

Google has dipped in the U.K. search engine market share beneath the 90 percent mark for the first time in five years, losing a modest 1.7 percentage points in the past year in the face of competitors.

According to Experian Hitwise statistics, Google now holds 89.3 percent of all U.K. Internet searches but faces competition from its rival search engines and portals. All of Google's main rivals -- Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo, and Ask -- have each increased a bit year over year.

Bing now carries nearly 5 percent of all search traffic, up from … Read more

Google denies 'pre-preparing' data in U.K. probe of Street View

Google denied that Street View data presented to a British regulator was "pre-prepared" and said it was "surprised" that the agency had reopened its investigation into the Web giant's data collection practices.

The denial was in response to an Information Commissioner's Office letter sent last week that included additional questions to its 2010 investigation, saying it was motivated to reopen its probe after information provided in an earlier U.K. investigation appeared to have been contradicted by the Federal Communications Commission.

Google's Street View cars, which were supposed to collect the locations of … Read more

Google exec: It's parents' job to protect kids from porn

It is always stimulating when an executive from Google tells us something about, you know, life.

Recently, we've had Sergey Brin explaining that it is surely better to trust Google than governments. Or, um, Facebook and Apple.

Yesterday, it was the turn of Naomi Gummer, who is a public policy analyst at Google in the United Kingdom. Her declaration was a simple one: It isn't Google's responsibility to ensure that kids aren't confronted by online porn. That falls to the parents.

The way the Telegraph speaks of her speech to a conference of child welfare experts, … Read more

Watchdog group flunks Google on privacy practices

In what looks to be brewing into a mutual smear campaign, London-based Privacy International has ranked Google among the worst top Internet sites for privacy protection, and Google is reportedly taking the watchdog group to task.

Privacy International isn't scheduled to officially release its report ranking privacy performance of the top sites until 7 p.m. EDT Saturday. But the Associated Press and other media outlets, who apparently got sneak previews, are reporting that Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade, a category reserved for companies with "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." (NOTE: … Read more