What Google wants, it largely gets. Need some proof of that? Fret not, as we've got plenty right here. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) just granted the internet behemoth authority to "buy and sell electricity in bulk like any other utility." As of now, it doesn't look like Google is jonesing to take on your local power provider, but rather to open up more avenues for acquiring power for its own good. Company spokeswoman Niki Fenwick noted that this filing was made so Google could have "more flexibility in procuring power for Google's own operations, including our data centers." That quote lines up with what we heard when this initiative was proposed just over a month ago, but considering that it's dabbling in the ISP business (and pretty much anything else it wants to), we wouldn't put it past 'em.Google gains clearance to buy and sell energy, continue taking over the world originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Switched  |  FERC [PDF]  | Email this | Comments

It's not every day somebody gives you a call and hands over millions.That is unless you're Nigel Page and Justine Laycock, the Gloucestershire couple who won £56m on the lottery last weekend... or Jimmy Wales.The Wikimedia Foundation - the organisation that runs Wikipedia- scored its own unexpected windfall yesterday, when it officially announced that Google was giving it a $2m grant.This is the Wikimedia Foundation's first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical infrastructure to support rapidly-increasing global traffic and capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more accessible."Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online."For the website, the donation comes as the icing on the cake. Over the last few months, Wikipedia's been on a rather relentless fundraising drive that ended up bringing in $8m of cash to keep it going.And it shouldn't be a complete surprise that Google is dipping into its pocket - after all, the internet goliath is not above supporting projects that help its users in some way. In the past it has pumped money into projects like Mozilla's Firefox and various university research projects.But why Wikipedia? Well, in general Google focuses on giving money to causes that will help make life better or easier for its users. That might be opening up a database that improves search results, offering a browser that is faster or more flexible than others, or finding new ways to collect and disseminate information.Seen in that light, the Wikipedia grant is simple: the site's vast database of articles and search-engine friendly approach means it gets featured heavily in Google's results pages. Studies have shown how much traffic is sent from Google to Wikipedia, and on any number of queries, a Wikipedia result will be one of the first thing that a Google user sees.What is good for Wikipedia - making the site faster, more reliable and more accessible - helps Google's users get what they want, and is therefore good for the company itself. It's not a grant, it's an investment in making sure it can keep dominating search. Still, though, it doesn't hurt to be wary of Google's long-term motivations. After all, it was the company's support of a popular open source browser like Firefox that begat (in part) its development of Chrome. However, there may be one reason that Wikipedia isn't worried: it's already seen off one attempt by Google to encroach on its territory that came a couple of years ago in the shape of Knol - remember that?The system - touted at launch as Googlepedia, and called "an attack on the media industry in general" here on this very blog by Jack - Knol has become yet another one of Google's projects that fell by the wayside.In the official announcement, Jimmy Wales skipped past all that kerfuffle."We are very pleased and grateful. This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia," he said. "Both organisations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone."Let's see where this leads.WikipediaGoogleMergers, acquisitions and fundingInternetBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

It's not every day somebody gives you a call and hands over millions.That is unless you're Nigel Page and Justine Laycock, the Gloucestershire couple who won £56m on the lottery last weekend... or Jimmy Wales.The Wikimedia Foundation - the organisation that runs Wikipedia- scored its own unexpected windfall yesterday, when it officially announced that Google was giving it a $2m grant.This is the Wikimedia Foundation's first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical infrastructure to support rapidly-increasing global traffic and capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more accessible."Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online."For the website, the donation comes as the icing on the cake. Over the last few months, Wikipedia's been on a rather relentless fundraising drive that ended up bringing in $8m of cash to keep it going.And it shouldn't be a complete surprise that Google is dipping into its pocket - after all, the internet goliath is not above supporting projects that help its users in some way. In the past it has pumped money into projects like Mozilla's Firefox and various university research projects.But why Wikipedia? Well, in general Google focuses on giving money to causes that will help make life better or easier for its users. That might be opening up a database that improves search results, offering a browser that is faster or more flexible than others, or finding new ways to collect and disseminate information.Seen in that light, the Wikipedia grant is simple: the site's vast database of articles and search-engine friendly approach means it gets featured heavily in Google's results pages. Studies have shown how much traffic is sent from Google to Wikipedia, and on any number of queries, a Wikipedia result will be one of the first thing that a Google user sees.What is good for Wikipedia - making the site faster, more reliable and more accessible - helps Google's users get what they want, and is therefore good for the company itself. It's not a grant, it's an investment in making sure it can keep dominating search. Still, though, it doesn't hurt to be wary of Google's long-term motivations. After all, it was the company's support of a popular open source browser like Firefox that begat (in part) its development of Chrome. However, there may be one reason that Wikipedia isn't worried: it's already seen off one attempt by Google to encroach on its territory that came a couple of years ago in the shape of Knol - remember that?The system - touted at launch as , and called "an attack on the media industry in general" here on this very blog by Jack - Knol has become yet another one of Google's projects that fell by the wayside.In the official announcement, Jimmy Wales skipped past all that kerfuffle."We are very pleased and grateful. This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia," he said. "Both organisations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone."Let's see where this leads.WikipediaGoogleMergers, acquisitions and fundingInternetBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

• The seemingly unstoppable Facebook has hit a new milestone, surpassing Yahoo to become America's second most popular website (after Google). That's partially the result of counting methods used by Compete.com (which mean that services such as Flickr don't count towards Yahoo's total) but even so, it's clear what direction the two companies are headed in. I'm not sure whether this marks a high point for The Church of Zuckerberg or a low for Yahoo - which, despite the heavy criticism over the years, has remained one of the biggest web properties around.• Thursday could see the end of the saga surrounding the Google book settlement, the never-ending, highly controversial plan to pay $125m to authors and publishers for the right to scan in-copyright books and make them available online. I've previewed the announcement here, but right now it's anyone's guess as to which direction Denny Chin - the judge who's examining the case - will go.• Perhaps one of the most surprising things about Windows Phone 7 series announcement earlier this week was that it looked nice - well-designed and visually appealing, two things that are very important to making an intuitive touch interface on a small screen. But if you want to get a better idea of how WP7 stacks up against the iPhone, you can run through this really nice side-by-side comparison of the two. We've still got to see how WP7 manages across lots of different hardware, but the basic feel - similar to the Zune HD - manages to make Windows Mobile feel modern again.You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.FacebookYahooGoogleBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Google appears to be getting a tad paranoid about its own privacy policies on the heels of the whole Google Buzz debacle. The company apparently sent out an e-mail to some Latitude users this morning, warning them that the service might be giving away their location – which is kind of the whole point of the app – and asking them to check their settings. Update: commenters tell us Google started sending out said e-mails a while ago, not today. As a reminder, Google Latitude is a location-aware application that was specifically designed to let mobile phone users broadcast their location to certain people. This is the e-mail, forwarded to us by Andrés Catalán: ———- Forwarded message ———- From: Date: Feb 18, 2010 3:22 AM Subject: You are using Google Latitude and reporting your location To: Hi, To protect your privacy we would like you to know that Google Latitude is running on your Android-powered device and reporting your location. If you didn’t enable this or want to stop reporting your location please open the Maps app on your device. Go to ‘Menu’ > ‘Latitude’ > ‘Privacy’ and change your privacy settings. Thanks, Google Latitude Team (c) 2009 Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Terms of Service | Privacy Policy CrunchBase InformationGoogle LatitudeInformation provided by CrunchBase

It's not every day somebody gives you a call and hands over millions.That is unless you're Nigel Page and Justine Laycock, the Gloucestershire couple who won £56m on the lottery last weekend... or Jimmy Wales.The Wikimedia Foundation - the organisation that runs Wikipedia- scored its own unexpected windfall yesterday, when it officially announced that Google was giving it a $2m grant.This is the Wikimedia Foundation's first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical infrastructure to support rapidly-increasing global traffic and capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more accessible."Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online."For the website, the donation comes as the icing on the cake. Over the last few months, Wikipedia's been on a rather relentless fundraising drive that ended up bringing in $8m of cash to keep it going.And it shouldn't be a complete surprise that Google is dipping into its pocket - after all, the internet goliath is not above supporting projects that help its users in some way. In the past it has pumped money into projects like Mozilla's Firefox and various university research projects.But why Wikipedia? Well, in general Google focuses on giving money to causes that will help make life better or easier for its users. That might be opening up a database that improves search results, offering a browser that is faster or more flexible than others, or finding new ways to collect and disseminate information.Seen in that light, the Wikipedia grant is simple: the site's vast database of articles and search-engine friendly approach means it gets featured heavily in Google's results pages. Studies have shown how much traffic is sent from Google to Wikipedia, and on any number of queries, a Wikipedia result will be one of the first thing that a Google userWhat is good for Wikipedia - making the site faster, more reliable and more accessible - helps Google's users get what they want, and is therefore good for the company itself. It's not a grant, it's an investment in making sure it can keep dominating search. Still, though, it doesn't hurt to be wary of Google's long-term motivations. After all, it was the company's support of a popular open source browser like Firefox that begat (in part) its development of Chrome. However, there may be one reason that Wikipedia isn't worried: it's already seen off one attempt by Google to encroach on its territory that came a couple of years ago in the shape of Knol - remember that?The system - touted at launch as , and called "an attack on the media industry in general" here on this very blog by Jack - Knol has become yet another one of Google's projects that fell by the wayside.In the official announcement, Jimmy Wales skipped past all that kerfuffle."We are very pleased and grateful. This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia," he said. "Both organisations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone."Let's see where this leads.WikipediaGoogleMergers, acquisitions and fundingInternetBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Google Calendar may not be the sexiest product Google offers, but, as with Gmail, there are plenty of people who use it to manage their business and personal lives (and wind up staring at it for hours each week as a result). Today, we’ve gotten our hands on a screenshot showing what appears to be an internal build of Google Calendar, giving us an idea of what a forthcoming UI refresh might look like. We’ve included photos of both the internal version and the current version below for comparison’s sake (be sure to click on the photo for a larger version). As far as we can tell, the changes are all aesthetic and fairly minor but they add up to make a difference — the new version looks more modern, and it also looks more like Google’s other Apps. The new version replaces many of the text-based navigation links with the sleeker silver buttons, which are also found throughout Gmail and Google Docs. The calendar has been spruced up a bit, and the entire interface is now surrounded by a colored border (in the current version, some text and links and hover above the calendar, which looks a little less polished). You’ll also notice a worldwide clock in the screenshots of the new UI. These aren’t part of the default Google Calendar site now, but you can activate it through Google Calendar Labs, which launched last summer. New

Old

CrunchBase InformationGoogle CalendarInformation provided by CrunchBase

If you are still wondering why Google is pushing so hard with its new product Buzz, it is because it wants in on social traffic. For many sites on the Web, social traffic coming through Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is beginning to rival, and in some cases overtake, search traffic as the single biggest source of traffic. This traffic comes from shared links, photos, and videos. By its own numbers, 5 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook every week. What isn’t easily appreciated is the extent to which such social sharing is tied to different identity and authentication platforms across the Web. If you can log into a site easily using your Facebook or Twitter account, it is easier to broadcast links from that site to your friends. To get a sense of which services on the Web drive the most sharing, I asked Gigya for some stats. Gigya powers sharing widgets on more than 5,000 content sites, including ABC.com. NBA.com, PGA.com, Answers.com, and Reuters. Consumers can click a share button on these sites and send an article link, photo, or video via a menu of different services including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and AOL. Over the past 30 days, people have shared almost a million items over the Gigya network. Facebook and Twitter dominate with about three quarters of all shared items between them. Here is how the services break down (note that these are relative numbers) : Distribution of shared items Facebook: 44% Twitter: 29% Yahoo:18% MySpace:9% It makes sense, people prefer to broadcast links rather than share them one at a time via email. Although Yahoo makes a strong third-place showing. When it comes to authentication, simply using your existing username and password to log into another site, Facebook is still the most popular via Facebook Connect, but only just barely. Google via Gmail and Yahoo are almost equally popular, at least on certain types of sites where people are just reading for themselves like news sites. On entertainment sites where people are more likely to share content, Facebook Connect makes up the majority of logins. Here are the stats: Share of Authentication By Platform: News sites: Facebook: 31% Google: 30% Yahoo: 25% Twitter: 11% AOL: 3% Entertainment sites: Facebook: 52% Google: 17% Yahoo: 12% Twitter: 11% MySpace: 7% AOL: 1% Facebook Chat is also a strong option, making up more than half of all live event chats measured by Gigya. Live Event Chat: Facebook: 56% Twitter: 28% Yahoo: 9% MySpace: 7% Update: A broader view of sharing on the Web comes from Gigya competitor AddThis, which has its sharing buttons on more than 600,000 Websites. (Gigya tends to be on larger content sites). AddThis also shows Facebook on top when it comes to sharing on the Web, but with a smaller 33 percent share. Twitter is at 9 percent, but it gets beat by email and printing out content as options provided by AddThis. Even with these broader numbers, more than 40 percent of sharing is through Facebook and Twitter. Top 10 Services, Overall Facebook: 33% Email: 13% Print:9% Twitter: 9% Favorites: 8% Google: 6% MySpace: 6% Digg: 3% Live: 3% Delicious: 3% CrunchBase InformationFacebookTwitterGigyaInformation provided by CrunchBase

It's hard to believe that YouTube, which now streams more than 1bn videos a day, only registered its domain name five years agoPeople who want to see the latest viral videos, very old TV commercials and pop videos, great sporting moments or almost anything else that can be delivered in a brief video, will usually turn to YouTube, which now serves up more than 1bn streams a day. YouTube has become so engrained in everyday life online that we now take it for granted, but it didn't even exist five years ago. The startup registered its internet domain name, youtube.com, on 14 February 2005, as co-founder and chief executive Chad Hurley recalled on the company blog yesterday. However, it was still some way from providing a service, and YouTube wasn't officially launched until December. No doubt there will be more fifth birthday celebrations then.Although there were other online video services around at the time, YouTube took off. It made it easy to upload and view videos, and also to embed them on blogs and other web sites, so you didn't have to go to YouTube to watch them: it was "like Flickr for videos". Google bought the company for $1.65bn in 2006, less than a year after its launch, but is still working on ways to make money out of it. YouTube has upset some movie studios, TV stations, music companies and other content providers because users often upload clips that they may regard as violations of their copyrights, rather than as free publicity. However, it has also helped lots of ordinary people to reach a vast audience, and achieve some species of fame.YouTube's most-watched video at the moment is "Charlie bit my finger", which has been viewed 160m times. Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance is now trailing in second place with 137m views, ahead of Miley Cyrus's music video for 7 Things (110m). Seen them all before? Let us know your favourite YouTube videos below.YouTube's top five videos1. Charlie bit my finger - again ! (160,150,052 views to date)2. Evolution of Dance (137,007,826 views)3. Miley Cyrus - 7 Things - Official Music Video (HQ) (110,524,702 views)4. Hahaha - Small daring boy (107,357,309 views)5. Jeff Dunham - Achmed the Dead Terrorist (106,529,954 views)YouTubeGoogleInternetDigital mediaJack Schofieldguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

It's hard to believe that YouTube, which now streams more than 1bn videos a day, only registered its domain name five years agoPeople who want to see the latest viral videos, very old TV commercials and pop videos, great sporting moments or almost anything else that can be delivered in a brief video, will usually turn to YouTube, which now serves up more than 1bn streams a day. YouTube has become so engrained in everyday life online that we now take it for granted, but it didn't even exist five years ago. The startup registered its internet domain name, youtube.com, on 14 February 2005, as co-founder and chief executive Chad Hurley recalled on the company blog yesterday. However, it was still some way from providing a service, and YouTube wasn't officially launched until December. No doubt there will be more fifth birthday celebrations then.Although there were other online video services around at the time, YouTube took off. It made it easy to upload and view videos, and also to embed them on blogs and other web sites, so you didn't have to go to YouTube to watch them: it was "like Flickr for videos". Google bought the company for $1.65bn in 2006, less than a year after its launch, but is still working on ways to make money out of it. YouTube has upset some movie studios, TV stations, music companies and other content providers because users often upload clips that they may regard as violations of their copyrights, rather than as free publicity. However, it has also helped lots of ordinary people to reach a vast audience, and achieve some species of fame.YouTube's most-watched video at the moment is "Charlie bit my finger", which has been viewed 160m times. Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance is now trailing in second place with 137m views, ahead of Miley Cyrus's music video for 7 Things (110m). Seen them all before? Let us know your favourite YouTube videos below.YouTube's top five videos1. Charlie bit my finger - again ! (160,150,052 views to date)2. Evolution of Dance (137,007,826 views)3. Miley Cyrus - 7 Things - Official Music Video (HQ) (110,524,702 views)4. Jeff Dunham - Achmed the Dead Terrorist (106,529,954 views)5. Hahaha - Small daring boy (107,357,309 views)YouTubeGoogleInternetDigital mediaJack Schofieldguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

As we noted this morning, Google isn’t wasting any time in responding to user criticism about Buzz.  Now they’ve rolled out another set of changes to further address Buzz’s privacy issues. The biggest change involves the automatic follow system: it’s now being switched to a suggestion model, where Google will present you with a list of friends it thinks you’d like to follow, but gives you a chance to deselect them before you start using the service. That’s a pretty big change — when Buzz launched four days ago, one of its selling points was that it took no work on the user’s part to get started, because Buzz would automatically follow the people you interact with most on Gmail. Of course, that isn’t always a good thing — there are plenty of cases when you wouldn’t want people to know who you’d been communicating with. After an initial backlash Google made it easier to hide which users you were following, but now they’re ditching the auto-follow model entirely. Fortunately it only takes a minute to go through the suggestions, so it’s not much of a hurdle.

New users will see a screen like the one above, and Google’s post says that existing Buzz users will be shown a version of this friend selection screen in the next few weeks to confirm that they’re comfortable with everyone they’re following. The service is also going to stop automatically connecting Google Reader and Picasa albums to Buzz accounts, though those options will still be available. Finally, Google is adding a Buzz section to Gmail’s Settings. Why this wasn’t there from the start is beyond me — before now, if you wanted to adjust your Buzz settings you had to go to your Google account page, which made very little sense because most people use Buzz from Gmail.

Earlier today, Google made yet another change to Buzz’s privacy settings by fixing a bug that could cause users to inadvertently expose their friends’ private settings. All of these are good changes for Buzz, and I’m optimistic about its future, but I can’t help but wonder how they all made it through months of internal testing. CrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase

Yesterday we broke the news that Aardvark, the social search engine, was being acquired by Google for $50 million. Aardvark confirmed the acquisition to us yesterday (though they didn’t comment on the amount), and now Google and Aardvark have publicly announced the deal with posts to their official blogs, along with some more details about how Aardvark will be integrated with Google. Unlike some of Google’s past startup acquisitions that  resulted in services shutting down or restricting new user signups, Aardvark is going to continue running at full steam.  New users can still sign up, and it’s already featured as part of Google Labs (though it hasn’t been integrated with Google search at all — it’s just a link to Vark.com). As far as changes to the service, a Q&A on the Aardvark blog says that they’ll be able to move faster as Google puts its support behind it (some Googlers will be joining the Aardvark team).

CrunchBase Information

Aardvark Google Information provided by CrunchBase

The danger in creating an instant social network around email contacts, as Google Buzz does with Gmail, is that the boundaries between what is private and what is public are not always clear. One issue raised earlier today is that the people you follow and who follow you are made public by default on your profile page, but are based on people who you email the most in private. You can make these lists invisible, but it remains an opt-out process instead of an opt-in one. It turns out there is another privacy flaw in Google Buzz that can expose private email addresses to everyone who follows you. Google Buzz borrows the @reply convention from Twitter so that if you want to reply to someone or direct a comment to them you simply put the @ sign in front of their name. Google autosuggests names from your contact list as you start typing. Normally, this doesn’t cause any problems if you select the Gmail account or chat name associated with that person’s public profile. It ends up posting their name, and not their email address. But if you select a name or account that is not public, Buzz will fill in with their private email. For example, I wanted to direct a comment at TechCrunch writer MG Siegler, so I typed in “@mg” and up came three of his different emails. I picked his TechCrunch email, not realizing that his public profile is linked to a different Gmail account. What this means is that the 231 people following me on Buzz can all see MG’s private email address in my comment even if they had no direct connection to him before.  They can now send him unsolicited emails and spam galore.  Now multiply that type of potential exposure by the millions of people already using Buzz, and you can see why it is a hole that should be patched up quickly. I asked Google to explain how all of this works, and here is their response: Generally typing someone’s email address autocompletes with that person’s name and therefore their address is not visible to anyone. Only in cases when you don’t have access to a person’s name and there is no name to connect to that email address, the system will show that person’s address instead of their name. This is very rare, and only happens when:

the person who’s address you’re typing doesn’t have a public profile OR they are not Following you and you are not connected via Chat.

The moment you post, it will be very obvious that the email address is publicly visible, and you can always edit and/ or delete that post. Except that it is not rare.  Many of my contacts, including the ones using Buzz, have multiple email addresses.  When I type their name in Buzz to reply to them, the autosuggest box shows me all the different email addresses I have for them in Gmail, and doesn’t specify which of those are public or private.   When I typed in MG’s name, for instance, I chose the TechCrunch email because that is the one I use the most.  I had no idea that his Gmail address is the one linked to his public profile, and thus the one I should have used to protect his privacy. In my eyes that is a design flaw.  Google actually expects us to pick up on these things and protect each other’s privacy, rather than the other way around.  What happens when you inadvertently type in someone’s email address?  According to Google: In this case, a person attempts to type an @reply using a contact’s email address, types out the email address, and then after posting sees the email address plainly displayed in the post. It is expected that after this, most people would understand that the email address will be visible to the viewers of the post. The user can edit or delete the post. Sorry, but that is expecting too much from the average user, who probably wouldn’t even notice such a tiny detail.  It’s really up to Google to warn users or to make sure that only public names come up in the autocomplete.  How hard can that be? Instead, Google is telling us that it is our problem and we should be more vigilant using their product. In the overall scheme of things, this is a small and fixable flaw for a feature that 80 percent of people may never even use.  But it is an example of what can go wrong when you inject private contacts into a public stream.  Google needs to be extra careful with details like this one. CrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase

This year’s TED conference is in full swing, bringing with it the usual complaints from people who aren’t going and the often thinly veiled boasts from those who are. And it looks like the 1,500 fortunate people in attendance are getting a nice bonus on top of their days mingling with some of the world’s brightest minds: Google is giving all of them a free unlocked Nexus One. Of course, many of the people in attendance are well off and don’t need Google to give them a phone. But it’s a pretty brilliant idea: many of them are also very influential, and there are plenty of various company executives in attendance. This isn’t Google’s first Oprah Moment — last year it handed out HTC Magic phones to everyone attending its I/O developer conference. Here’s a good pair of tweets by Wil Shipley describing the announcement:

The rumor that Apple is building its own search engine "isn't credible," according to a source familiar with Apple's operations.Our source tells us "there's too many options" for search on the market, so there's no reason for Apple to build its own search engine. Another reason Apple might not want to build its own search engine: It's getting over $100 million a year from Google in its revenue share deal, according to our source. For Apple, that's not a lot of money. But, it's enough that it doesn't make sense for Apple to put considerable resources towards building its own Internet search engine. And, if Apple wanted more money or options, there's Microsoft — with Bing and a big checkbook. While Apple isn't going to stomp into search, Apple's deals with Google have become more contentious lately, as the companies are increasingly competing with each other. Our source tells us when Apple first introduced the iPhone, it hammered out its deal for Google Maps in two weeks. When Apple prepared to launch the iPhone 3G with GPS a year later, it was a six-month process "full of acrimony" to get the maps deal finished. Google wanted access to all sorts of data from the maps, but Apple didn't want to give it up, according to this person.

When it came to Facebook and Twitter, it took brands a while to figure out how to take advantage of the social networks. With Foursquare, they have been much faster. But now with Google Buzz, they’re beating plenty of early adopters to it. Samsung has already set up a Google Buzz account this morning and is already cranking out buzzes. Not only that, but they’re apparently trying to start their own trends on the service, as they have today tagged a bunch of their “favorite buzzers” and tagged the buzz with “#BUZZwednesday.” Of course, the problem here is that Google Buzz doesn’t support the “#” symbol the same way Twitter does (at least not yet). Still, you can search Buzz (right from within Gmail) for the term “#BUZZwednesday” and Samsung’s buzz will appear. Of course, what’s annoying about the Buzz tagging mechanism is that it automatically sends these message to your Gmail inbox if you’re mentioned in one. Hope everyone is ready for an onslaught of brands on the service! Need I remind you that Google Buzz just launched yesterday? Update: And Samsung responds:

For the record, I think it’s smart for brands to hop on these services early — it’s just Samsung doing it’s job. But I think we can all see how this will get annoying quickly. Update 2: And Samsung adds: “We agree that messages going to Inbox is not ideal. We need an @reply and DM section. Maybe even a comments, likes, and favorite sections.” A good idea, I think.

CrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase

It’s great to see Google doing this, and if scaled, could be seriously impressive: Their own fibre network! Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind: Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine. New deployment techniques: We’ll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we’ll share key lessons learned with the world. Openness and choice: We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.

We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. Ok, the US, but how about in the Uk. I’ve completely given up on the Government realising how important it is for the country to have a NGN, so Google should do the same here. What do you think? It is SO depressing to think, that with a little vision and focus, the Uk could be in the same position as Japan, Korea, and the Scandinavian countries, which have all had a super-fast fibre network for years.

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Google Buzz? It's as popular as a thing that's not very popular, it seems, at least going by the early reactions. A rapid roundup from the web...Dave Winer, of scripting.com and Userland (which made hooking up to RSS easy to do) isn't a fan: "It violates the prime directive of new software. It starts turned on, and the way to turn it off is all-but invisible. And it invades a space that heretofore Google helped to protect. One of the big values of Gmail is its spam filter. Now all of a sudden it's as if the exhaust was reversed, and it was spraying dirt into my message stream, instead of filtering it out."New software should be easy to try out, and there should be no penalty for doing so. Here, they didn't even give us an option, I was automatically signed up, and the way out was hidden. The first bit, which is fun -- create a new post -- is followed by a flood of new messages in a semi-sacred private place, my email inbox."Meanwhile Lifehacker channels Steve Rubel to explain how to remove Buzz updates from your Gmail inbox: "Any Buzz notification automatically matches the Gmail query label:buzz, so all you've got to do is set up a quick filter to keep those Buzz notifications out of your inbox."Pity - my email inbox is such a lonely, empty place, like yours, I'm sure.Kevin Rose (of Digg etc fame) has a list of feature requests/complaints, ending up with the slightly hopeful "Not sure where Buzz fits in my arsenal of social media tools, how often I'll use it, or if it will eventually feel too much like unread email — but I'm happy to see Google taking social media seriously. It's early days, let the attention/follower wars begin."Next, Robert Scoble, who never saw a social media service he didn't like, though whether the feeling is mutual is an open question. But it seems this is one that, while he doesn't not like it, he isn't exactly showering hosannahs on it either. His reasons (cut down - see the post for the full list): "1. Facebook has a defensible position in identity. 2. Google isn't trusted socially. 3. Google doesn't have Mark Zuckerberg. "Mark gets how to hook people in through social tricks that very few people understand. FriendFeed, for instance, didn't get it. Neither does Twitter." 4. Google has big company disease that Twitter never had. 5. Google doesn't have developers that Facebook has. 6. Google isn't willing to piss its users off to get to the next level."Mashable is REALLY EXCITED about it, but then Mashable seems to get really excited about everything. Just my impression?Of course Yahoo is unimpressed (it's had a Buzz for a year - who knew?) and Microsoft disdainful. The consensus that seems to be gathering is that it requires considerable computing resource - you can use it if you're mobile on the iPhone or Android 4.0, but otherwise you're out of luck - which perhaps once again shows the tunnel vision of people who live in Silicon Valley. (It also geotags everything, so it's only going to be for the spiffiest of smartphones.)The thing that's fantastic about text messaging, and hence Twitter's ability to squeeze itself into text messages, is that it's applicable all over the world right now. Google Buzz may be just what people want five years from now, but that gives Twitter - and of course Google's newest, most dangerous threat, Facebook - a five-year head start. That might not be so clever.Still, we'll just go back now and continue doing our work on Google Wave. Oh, hang on - we never did. Does anyone (still) use Wave? If so, what for?GoogleCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Some people are suggesting that Google CEO Eric Schmidt may have just created a Facebook profile for himself, after signing up for Twitter in early December 2009 and right on the heels of Microsoft founder Bill Gates setting up an account on the wildly popular social networking service. Evidently, we can’t be 100% sure that this is his real account at this point – unlike Twitter, there’s no ‘verified account’ stamp for Facebook profiles and the man has yet to confirm our friendship (I forgive him, since it’s the middle of the night in the United States). The information that is viewable is mostly restricted to his Facebook friends, as it shows only a profile picture, his sex (Male!), a website (Google.com!) and his location (Mountain View, CA!). Nevertheless, my esteemed colleague MG Siegler says the mutual friends they have on the social network are all Googlers, so it is likely Schmidt (unless of course the Google employees were tricked into befriending a faker). Update: further proof that it is him – the person who created the profile linked the email address EricSchmidt1@yahoo.com to the account, and that happens to be Schmidt’s personal email address too. (thanks, Stephen!) Update 2: yes, that email address is publicized openly on Schmidt’s website, and no, I don’t know why he uses a Yahoo account (although I assume it’s an old account and I’m quite certain he also uses Gmail). One thing is for sure: unlike on Twitter, Schmidt did not obtain a nice vanity URL for himself (facebook.com/ericschmidt has already been taken by someone else) and his profile picture paints a picture of a soft-spoken man in casual clothing rather than that of a bad-ass. So do you think this is legit or not? And more importantly, are you going to try and befriend him so you can poke him all day? (Thanks to @RomilPatel for the tip) CrunchBase InformationEric SchmidtFacebookInformation provided by CrunchBase

“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.” – Microsoft statement on Google Buzz. When one of the big guys launches a new product, competitors generally just sit it out and let the press do its thing. But Microsoft made a point of reaching out today with the quote above, criticizing Google Buzz as “another social network” and noting that Hotmail has aggregated Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and other services since 2008. Of course Microsoft also owns a chunk of, and has a search deal with, Facebook. So they’re being threatened on a number of fronts. Still, just the fact that Microsoft is speaking on the record about Buzz shows that the guys in Redmond are a little worried. And they are not the only ones. CrunchBase InformationMicrosoftGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase