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The Federal Trade Commission has asked Google to provide more information about its pending acquisition of AdMob before giving that deal final approval.

Google disclosed the "second request" in a blog post Wednesday afternoon, saying "while this means we won't be closing right away, we're confident that the FTC will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile advertising space will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. And we'll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review."

When Google first disclosed plans in early November to acquire AdMob, a leading provider of mobile advertising services, for $750 million, it said that it expected the federal government to take a closer look at the deal. Google even prepared a special Web page for the media and regulators explaining why it believed the deal did not pose any competitive threats, which is becoming standard practice at Google as it deals with increasing scrutiny from the government.

However, the second request could push back Google's initial expectation that the deal could close "in the next several months," although that's a statement with an awful lot of wiggle room. Google is also facing a delay with its proposed acquisition of On2 Technologies, which seems to be having trouble gaining the necessary number of shareholder votes in favor of the deal.

Privacy advocates opposed to new privacy regulations at Facebook are attempting to get the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to a complaint filed Thursday on behalf of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and several allied groups.

"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," the complaint says of Facebook's new regulations, which push more content public, and make even more data available to third-party applications and advertisers. EPIC's goal is to force Facebook to restore the old settings and add additional controls for members.

"We've had productive discussions with dozens of organizations around the world about the recent changes, and we're disappointed that EPIC has chosen to share their concerns with the FTC while refusing to talk to us about them," a retaliatory statement from Facebook read. "We're pleased that so many users have already gone through the process of reviewing and updating their privacy settings, and are impressed that so many have chosen to customize their settings, demonstrating the effectiveness of Facebook's user empowerment and transparency efforts. Of course, the new tools offer users the opportunity to decide on privacy with every photo, link, or status update they wish to post, so the process of personalizing privacy on Facebook will continue."

It's one thing when Facebook users start complaining about new features that they deem excessively creepy--just look at the outrage that surrounded the News Feed, now a mainstay of the site, when it launched in 2006.

It's a bigger fish entirely when government regulatory bodies get involved, particularly the FTC, which has major sway over the advertising and marketing industries. It was only when privacy groups flagged concerns about Facebook's Beacon advertising program two years ago that participating advertisers started to pull out amid bad publicity. A class action settlement over the Beacon program was resolved recently.

Since then, Facebook hasn't had a privacy-related debacle on the same scale. Much of the philosophy behind Beacon was baked into its Facebook Connect universal log-in tool, which shares information from third-party sites on Facebook profiles and lets users log into other sites with their Facebook credentials. But with the public-relations pitch geared toward making the entire online experience easier for users (fewer passwords to remember, no more registration headaches) rather than helping advertisers exploit social-networking channels, the debut of Facebook Connect wasn't subject to the same scrutiny.

The controversial new privacy standards at Facebook have been a long time coming, considering the fact that the social network started to publicly set the groundwork nearly six months ago with a series of announcements about modified privacy controls. It's clear that the company was trying to avoid the sort of press bloodbath that came after the debut of Beacon.

That didn't happen. Facebook has already backtracked on one component of its new privacy regulations, one which made users' friends lists publicly available. It's unclear as to how much EPIC's coalition, not to mention the FTC, will prioritize this most recent controversy.

Behind Facebook's traditional willingness to make tweaks and modifications to new features and products, if they spark some kind of concern among government regulatory bodies or marketers, is a fight that the company will not give up easily. What it all comes down to is that Facebook's once-watertight log-in wall--remember the time that representatives mulled banning a blogger who'd posted Facebook-hosted photos publicly?--is getting in the way of the social network's potentially central role in one of the digital world's crazes du jour, searchable real-time information.

Search companies have been announcing big deals to pull Facebook status messages and Twitter tweets into results, and the media business has gone nuts over the potential to harness the "real-time Web."

Facebook, dependent on advertising revenues and still looking to expand its base of more than 350 million users, obviously wants in on this. But if it doesn't have enough status messages, shared links, and other information pulled into search results, it stands a chance at losing ground to the much-smaller Twitter--already the top name, in terms of a massive, searchable clearinghouse for up-to-the-minute information.

Plus, there are marketers and advertisers for Facebook to consider: more search results equals more page views and more ad revenue, and more public information on users' profiles means more ways for the advertising industry to reach them. But if those same marketers and advertisers are the ones pressuring Facebook to change course, in terms of user privacy, it could cause some friction between the social network and the businesses that have finally begun to accept it as a choice destination for their ad dollars.

Now EPIC is alleging to the FTC that Facebook's new regulations can be outright dangerous: "Dozens of American Facebook users, who posted political messages critical of Iran, have reported that Iranian authorities subsequently questioned and detained their relatives," an item in the complaint reads. "Under the revised privacy settings, Facebook makes such users' friends lists publicly available."

That's not good PR for Facebook, which has repeatedly pitched itself as a destination for open dialogue and grassroots organization across zones of political and ethnic conflict.

Yahoo has sold 1 percent of its stake in the Chinese-based business-to-business trading site Alibaba.com, the company said on Monday. Reuters first reported on the story.

In November 2007, Yahoo invested approximately $100 million in Alibaba.com when it went public on the Hong Kong Exchange. Writing in an e-mail, a company representative said that Yahoo's "sale of its shares in Alibaba.com is expected to generate pre-tax proceeds of approximately $150 million."

Although Yahoo has sold its entire direct stake in Alibaba.com, it still indirectly maintains ownership in the company.

According to Yahoo, it maintains approximately 40 percent interest in the Alibaba Group. "Alibaba Group owns approximately 70 percent of Alibaba.com," Yahoo wrote in the e-mail, "and as such, Yahoo continues to own an approximately 28 percent indirect interest in Alibaba.com."

Although its major holding is Alibaba.com, the Alibaba Group "also owns (Chinese Web sites) Taobao, Alipay, China Yahoo, and Koubei," the company wrote.

Yahoo's ownership interest in the Alibaba Group is, according to Yahoo, "an important long-term way to participate in the China market." It believes that through the Alibaba Group, it can solidify its position as a major investing partner with Chinese firms.

But that doesn't mean Yahoo will necessarily hold on to sites for too long. The company also wrote that it decided to sell Alibaba.com stock because its "1 percent direct IPO investment" increased so substantially that it felt compelled to sell it. Yahoo said that it "regularly evaluates its financial investments." If one of those investments seems profitable, Yahoo plans on selling the investment to yield that positive cash flow.

Google has released additional details about the privacy policy it plans to use if its settlement over Google Book Search is approved.

(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Google has released a more detailed privacy policy for its Google Books product, a move demanded in recent weeks by several critics of its settlement with publishers and authors.

The company announced the new policy in a blog post late Thursday afternoon, saying it developed the policy following conversations with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Google had previously said it was unable to release a detailed policy because the Google Books product was incomplete due to the fact that the settlement allowing its Book Search project to display certain types of books has yet to be formally approved.

However, criticism of Google's lack of detailed information on the subject appears to have forced its hand. "To provide all users with a clear understanding of our practices, and in response to helpful comments about needing to be clearer about the Books product from the FTC and others, we wanted to highlight key provisions of the main Google Privacy Policy in the context of the Google Books service, as well as to describe privacy practices specific to the Google Books service," wrote Jane Horvath, general privacy counsel for Google, in a blog post.

A few highlights of the new policy, the full text of which can be found here:

• Google will not require book searchers to create a Google account if they are viewing pages of books online, browsing books through a university's institution subscription to the book service, or accessing the book service from a public terminal at a library.

• If you want to actually buy a book you'll need to have a Google account, but Google will let users remove records of books they have purchased from their accounts and said it will not pass along information about specific books that were purchased to credit card companies.

• Google plans to release a more detailed privacy policy containing specific language about the various services that will be available when, and if, the settlement is approved giving it the right to offer the service.

It's not clear whether these provisions will be enough to quiet those criticizing the settlement on privacy grounds, but it's a step in that direction. The proposed settlement will be debated at a court hearing in New York in October.

Umoo is a virtual stock-trading platform that is, admittedly, a little late to the market. There are several virtual stock-trading games, including a prominent app from Marketwatch called the Virtual Stock Exchange. Realizing that, I wasn't sure if there was any more room for a game like Umoo.

I'm still not entirely sure.

Umoo (pronounced You-Moo) was originally started in Israel, but it has quickly made its way to the United States. In fact, the game originally only allowed gamers to trade on U.S. markets. But after building a small following, the company realized that it wasn't maximizing its monetization potential, so it opened it up to global markets to attract English-speaking gamers around the world. And that's where it finds itself today.

The premise
Umoo is a virtual stock-trading game. But it does it a little differently than most of its competitors. Rather than ask you to invest in a handful of companies and see how you did after the market closes, Umoo tries to replicate a real stock-trading environment by providing real-time trades. So, if your portfolio includes Best Buy and its share price is tanking for some reason, you can dump the stock and buy something new. It makes Umoo more realistic.

Winning some cash
Although you're given 100,000 virtual points to trade with in free games, Umoo's real appeal is in its cash games. Those games, which are created by Umoo employees, require all players to pay an entry fee before they can join the game. After investing the cash, each player is given the same amount of money to invest with during the timed game. The players with the highest returns on investment win cash prizes. Paid games run "24/5", since global markets aren't open on weekends.

Pick your game in Umoo.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

I was a little disappointed with Umoo's profit-sharing plan. Games can be played for as little as $1, but some go up to $100. In either case, Umoo is taking the lion's share of the cash. For example, one $5 game that's currently available in the app, awards the winner $11.96 for achieving the highest return on their investment. Umoo has, so far, collected $65. An Umoo representative told me that the percentages it takes from each game decline as the cash pool increases, but I noticed a sizable discrepancy in every game between the amount of cash available and what the person actually wins. If the company wants to attract more users, it needs to pay more cash.

During my meeting with Umoo, the company was also quick to remind me that it is legal to play. Even though cash does exchange hands, the company said Umoo is a game of skill, rather than chance, making it legal across the globe.

Facebook employees and investors can now sell some of their stock to Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment firm that infused $200 million into the social network this spring.

Part of the deal at the time of the investment would be that Digital Sky Technologies would buy back up to $100 million in common stock from shareholders whose shares have vested.

Now, Digital Sky Technologies is purchasing stock at $14.77 per share, which assumes a valuation of about $6.5 billion for Facebook, according to Brad Stone of The New York Times, who first reported the news. That's lower than the $10 billion valuation at which DST originally invested, as well as the $15 billion at which Microsoft invested $240 million in the fall of 2007. But those two figures are considered to be preferred-stock valuations, not paper valuations.

But $6.5 billion is still a higher valuation than a few months ago. Before DST's investment brought some order to Facebook's internal stock trading, an employee at a firm that brokers privately-traded stock told CNET News that some Facebook employees, frustrated that they had not yet had a chance to cash out stock through an acquisition or an initial public offering, were looking to unload stock at a valuation well under $3 billion.

That sort of trading was difficult for Facebook to control. With the DST investment, employee stock sales became more official and easily regulated.

"While individuals must make their own decisions about participating in this program, I'm pleased that the price DST is offering is much greater than the price originally considered last fall," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. "This is recognition of Facebook's growth and progress towards making the world more open and connected."

On the flip side, the relatively low valuation may mean that Facebook employees will be more reluctant to sell to DST. Some may prefer to hold out for the possibility of an acquisition at a higher valuation, or wait until Facebook goes public--something that always seems to be just off the horizon.

Facebook's valuation has been one of the most talked-about numbers in Silicon Valley, especially as the company (reportedly) toys with the idea of an IPO. There were rumors that Zuckerberg had rejected funding that would value the company at $4 billion, shortly after legal documents from the ConnectU vs. Facebook trial revealed that the company then valued itself at $3.7 billion.

And Facebook can look forward to be even more front-and-center in the gossip industry's crosshairs: the alleged tell-all about the social network's origins, Ben Mezrich's "The Accidental Billionaires," hits stores on Tuesday.

The Federal Trade Commission is planning to crack down on bloggers who review or promote products while earning freebies or payments, the Associated Press reported Sunday.

This would, for the first time, bring bloggers under FTC guidelines that ban deceptive or unfair business practices.

"New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers--as well as the companies that compensate them--for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest," the article explained.

The rules could be quite strict, even extending to the practice of affiliate links--for example, a music blogger who links to a song on Amazon MP3 or iTunes that earns an affiliate commission in the process.

The practice of free products for bloggers, most of whom are not bound by ethical guidelines that journalists have historically followed, has been making headlines for some time now. Microsoft, for example, created a wave of bad press a few years ago when it gave free Acer laptops preloaded with Windows Vista to several dozen bloggers.

Some companies have sprung up around the whole notion of blogger compensation and giveaways. The AP article mentions some of the marketing companies that have made a business out of offering bloggers incentives--free trips, products, gift certificates, or outright payments--for coverage. One of them, Izea, has been generating controversy in the tech press since it started PayPerPost.

Izea says that it requires bloggers to disclose what they've gotten paid for or what they've received for free. But with the proposed FTC guidelines, if a blogger fails to disclose a freebie or payment, both Izea and the blogger could be held responsible. The FTC could also take issue with the fact that for at least one promotion, Izea has said it avoided including bloggers who would be likely to give the company negative press.

Izea CEO Ted Murphy wrote in a blog post Monday that the company supports stricter FTC regulations for bloggers.

"The companies that should be worried about these changes are those that have no standards and no way to enforce disclosure," Murphy wrote. "We have invested millions of dollars creating systems that allow us to automate transactions and verify standardized disclosure."

But some bloggers, the AP article mentioned, are concerned that the FTC's efforts could go too far, possibly generating probes into posts that were written without any compensation, and possibly leading bloggers to post with more restraint. And some believe it would be better if bloggers created their own standards based on niche and industry.

Then there's this: does the FTC realize just how many small-time bloggers are out there? Championing business ethics is a worthy goal, but, um, good luck getting much done when there are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there and new ones popping up more or less daily. Ever heard of the expression "herding cats?"

This post was updated at 11:37 a.m. PT with comment from Izea.

Thursday's launch of a games trade-in program by Amazon.com has already begun to make waves in the games resale business. Shortly after the program was announced, competitor GameStop's stock took a dive, dropping nearly 14 percent by end of day Thursday.

As a follow-up to the announcement, GameStop's CEO Don Matteo went on the record telling Edge Online he had no faith in Amazon's model based on his company's earlier attempt at a similar program. Matteo was, of course referring to sister site TradeStop. Back in 2005 the site featured a similar offering, where users could get cash for games which the company would then turn around and re-sell on GameStop.com. The service also let people send in DVD movies and music CDs. GameStop discontinued the program at the end of 2005.

Strengths
Amazon is bringing something to the table that brick-and-mortar game resellers cannot easily match: Gamers who send in their used titles can spend their Amazon credit on things that aren't video games. For people who are selling games for a system they no longer have or use this is a clean break. It's also a chance for Amazon to make some extra cash when a user buys something that costs more than the credit they earned.

Another thing users may flock to is transparency. Amazon is showing users exactly what it will pay and has made this list able to be searched. Both GameStop and Game Crazy, two of the largest game resellers, offer no such feature on either of their sites. Instead you're limited to a list of hot games or promotional trade-in values, or you have to go into the store to find out the game values. Both companies will mail larger trade-in value lists, but the lack of an online system has led to users creating wikis to chronicle the ever-updating prices that can fluctuate by supply, demand, and retail price drops.

There's no special membership program. Both GameStop and Game Crazy have special memberships that its customers can join to get special discounts or receive a higher trade-in value for their games. Amazon doesn't offer this, which some may find appealing. Amazon pays everyone the same price in return for them logging-in with their Amazon.com account credentials. There's no annual fee, and the cost of shipping your games in is free.

There are no up-sells or pushy salespeople. You never have to talk to a human being in the entire exchange, which can be seen as a step up. Games retailers typically push paid membership programs, game pre-orders, and certain titles based on sales deals or events. For someone trying to offload their games and buy something new Amazon is letting you skip this.

On Thursday, Amazon announced a new program for customers to trade in used video game titles in return for credit at Amazon.com. The program is launching with around 1,500 titles, all of which can be filtered and searched by platform. Once users have picked out the games they own and would like to exchange for credit, Amazon provides a pre-paid label that covers the cost of shipping. Then, after Amazon confirms that the right games were sent (and not scratched to oblivion), it credits the user's account.

As part of its introduction, Amazon is offering those who trade in their games for credit a 10 percent markdown on games or video game accessories in the next two weeks.

What's a really big game-changer here (no pun intended) is that Amazon is, for the most part, offering higher trade-in prices than companies that have been in this business for more than a decade. And, instead of using that cash as in-store credit to buy more games, Amazon's credit can be used on anything else it sells.

Here are some examples of Amazon's pricing on popular titles from various game consoles compared to two of the largest video game retailers (highest trade-in price is highlighted in bold):

These are just a few of the titles I could find prices for across all three companies, but you can see the trend. One thing worth noting is that Game Crazy has a $9.99-a-year "MVP" program that boosts up its prices ever so slightly, and in some cases a little closer to Amazon's offering. However, for comparison's sake, the prices above were taken from non-MVP trade-in rates. Also, Toys R' Us, which has begun a limited rollout of its own games trade-in service, was not included since it's not yet a national program.

Between this and the casual games download service Amazon launched in early February, it's clear the company is trying to get its foot a little deeper into an industry that appears to be recession-proof. Last year, GameStop pulled in close to $2 billion in sales during Q2, which is due in large part to its trade-in business. With people looking to liquidate assets to pay off debt, or come up with spare cash, it could one of this year's big growth industries.

One thing still missing, however, is a storefront for selling used games back to buyers. Presumably Amazon will either be re-selling these to other used retailers, or building in its own stock of used games into its used items sale option.

Update: Corrected mix-up in sales and profits in regard to numbers from GameStop's Q2 earnings last year