Healthy Blog Reviews

Google appears to be in hot water over allegations that it’s deliberately penalizing rival search engines in its search results. The European Commission, Europe’s highest antitrust authority [led by Joaquin Almunia], is currently looking into “some allegations of anticompetitive conduct in relation to search,” Almunia said in his speech in London. Although the work is at an early stage, “I am looking at the allegations very carefully,” given the importance of online search to the marketplace, Almunia added. The commission began investigating Google in late February, spurred on by complaints from three competitors. Two of the competitors are British search engine Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr. Which will likely give Google a strong foundation in any official action. After all, I don’t recall Google complaining that Yahoo and Alta Vista were too dominant and didn’t rank “Google.com” high enough in their search results. You’re either popular or you’re not. What world do we live in where your biggest rival has to help you try and beat it?

Tags: allegations, Europe, european, french, Joaquin Almunia, legal, marketplace, Search, search-engines, speech, the-marketplace, work
Posted July 7, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

While the headline may not entirely tell the story it does tell most of it. In a world that wants everything right now it sure is interesting how some people like to slap the hands of those that provide that kind of service and do it better than anyone else. The French competition authority is claiming that Google is being discriminatory in how they allow or disallow Adwords customers to use the syatem. The Wall Street Journal reports France’s competition authority Wednesday said that Google Inc.’s online ad service discriminated against a client, a decision that comes amid the country’s growing concern over Google’s dominance of the lucrative French search market. In a preliminary ruling, the Authorité de la Concurrence said that Google’s Adwords system, which prompts ads to appear alongside search results, lacked transparency and “resulted in discriminatory treatment.” The ruling followed a complaint by Navx, a French company that provides data on the location of road traffic speed cameras and petrol prices, as well as other services and content for GPS devices. Navx said its ads were removed without warning from AdWords in 2009, and accused Google of anti-competitive practices. Google’s take is that they had put a policy in place in 2009 to disallow ads that identify the location of speed cameras and thus avoid fines. That does sound awful sporting of them, I suppose, but the French government doesn’t see it that way. The gist of this entire situation can be summed up by a quote from Navx’s lawyer “The competition authority is saying that Google has a dominant position,” said Ron Soffer, Navx’s lawyer. “When you have that position you can’t just do what you want.” This kind of ‘reasoning’ is just mind boggling to me. Just because Google is better at search and the vast majority of people in France have CHOSEN to use the service (it’s not the only game in town) then it can’t do business as it sees fit. That’s rich. Google and France are developing a rather acrimonious relationship with the French authorities going after Google on their book scanning efforts and their street view screw-ups. Those seem to have some merit as compared to this case that primarily is saying that when you become too successful you are then going to be a ‘ward of the state’ and behave as the government dictates. That’s ridiculous. No doubt, it’s important to keep tabs on powerful companies so they don’t abuse their earned privilege. This duty, however, has to be carried out with considerable tact so as not to restrict how business is done. It’s a fine line, tight-rope like balancing act for sure. However, to pander to the whim of every company who has been convinced by an Internet ambulance chasing lawyer that there is a case against Google is just plain stupid. Of course, lawyers are going to bring more and more of these cases to the courts because they are looking to hit the lottery. These types of rulings will only encourage this kind of practice. So here’s the lesson for business if you are working in France. Don’t do what you do too well so that many of the French people use your service to their benefit. If you are too good and too successful the French competition authority will have to reign in your success because, well, you are too good and successful! Sounds like the French World Cup team isn’t the only thing that has lost its mind these days. What’s your take here? Is this something that should be expected and accepted or is this truly a sign of government getting too much in the way of the free market? I know what Google would say but they are too big for me to listen . What’s on your mind?

Tags: authorit, book, country, France, french, government, internet, kind, legal, location, mind, Search, street, street-journal
Posted July 1, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

It’s been over a year since Google decided to open up a can of worms, with a change to its stance on trademark use on AdWords. Well, it appears the search engine is not only willing to open the can of worms, but it’s also willing to throw them about the place and see what kind of a stink it can create. Exhibit A? Google is actively testing a new AdWords experiment that shows related AdWords ads, even if the ad is a direct trademarked competitor. Take a look at this screenshot from Search Engine Rountable : OK, hands up if your first reaction was WTF? That’s “what the fudge?” around here! The ads are already being dubbed “evil ads” because they’re shown even if the advertiser didn’t intentionally target another’s trademark. This is seriously going to open up a flood of new lawsuits–legitimate or not–if Google decides this should be more than just an experiment. What do you think of the ads?

Tags: already-being, google-related, legal, screenshot, Search, search-engine, seriously-going, shows-related, the-advertiser, trademark-use
Posted June 28, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

With all of the mess that surrounds Facebook and data security etc., it seems at times that other web properties are doing it well. That’s a dangerous assumption. Yesterday Twitter was thrown into the data security spotlight when it took some medicine from the Federal Trade Commission regarding data / security breaches in the past. The LA Times reports Twitter has agreed to settle allegations by federal regulators that it put the privacy of its users at risk by failing to protect them from data security lapses last year that let hackers access their accounts. The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that the settlement bars Twitter from misleading consumers about its security and privacy practices and requires the start-up to establish a comprehensive information security program. No monetary damages were assessed. By now, most people agree that there is no such thing as real and complete Internet security. While that is becoming more and more apparent every day it doesn’t give companies the green light to operate as if it’s not a responsibility that they have to take seriously. The events that triggered this attention from the FTC were from January and April of 2009. The FTC complaint said the breaches allowed hackers to gain administrative control over the online service, which lets users send brief messages called tweets to each other. According to the FTC, hackers were able to view e-mail addresses and other private user information, gain access to user messages, reset user passwords and send phony tweets from user accounts. Hackers do what hackers do. That’s a fact of Internet life. It’s when the following word, in this case the “d” word, is used in relation to your company’s efforts that it’s time to stand up and do something. The agency claims the incidents deceived users because Twitter’s privacy policy pledged to “employ administrative, physical and electronic measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access.” “When a company promises consumers that their personal information is secure, it must live up to that promise,” David Vladeck, head of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. Ouch. Deceived is pretty strong language because it implies intent. Did Twitter truly intend to not live up to its privacy policy? Let’s hope not. Twitter’s response from their legal team via their blog (where’s Biz on this one?) Within hours of the January breach, we closed the security hole and notified affected account holders. We posted a blog post about it on the same day. In the April incident, within less than 18 minutes of the hack we removed administrative access to the hacker and we quickly notified affected users. We also posted this blog item about the incident within a few days of first learning about it. Why are we bringing up these incidents from 18 and 14 months ago that we already told people about? Because the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an inquiry into our security practices related to these attacks and today announced that we’ve reached an agreement that resolves their concerns. Even before the agreement, we’d implemented many of the FTC’s suggestions and the agreement formalizes our commitment to those security practices. In this day and age no one likes to be associated with an FTC “look see” and eventual condemnation of privacy policies. While there has been little said to truly draw Twitter into the fray like Facebook has (of course Facebook doesn’t seem to act like morons about privacy like Facebook either) it still is a reminder that the Internet is a fun but potentially dark place. Tweet at your own risk. Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tags: consumer, facebook, federal, FTC, green, internet, legal, marketing, online, personal, security, Social, Twitter
Posted June 25, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Just minutes after Twitter announced a feature to see which of your Facebook friends are on Twitter, Facebook blocked it ! Now, thanks to Techdirt , we can see that this is not just some harmless mistake. Facebook does not want you having access to the data you’ve worked hard to compile. In other words, if you try to access any of your Facebook data via a 3rd-party app then the social network won’t just block you, it may sue you! We’ve been following the rather bizarre and dangerous lawsuit filed by Facebook  against Power.com , an online service that tries to let users aggregate various social networking activity into a single service. All Power.com does is let a willing user have Power.com’s tools log into Facebook and reuse/reformat the data within its own framework. From a user’s perspective, this could be quite useful. From Facebook’s perspective this is both a  violation of copyright law and a violation of  computer hacking laws . Why? Because Facebook says so. That is, it says so in its terms of service, and it’s arguing that in ignoring the terms of service, Power.com is criminally hacking. And, that is exactly what Twitter just attempted to do with its new feature! Two questions are now raised? 1. Will Facebook sue Twitter? Doubtful, but if the company allows Twitter to have this kind of access, does it weaken its case against Power.com? 2. Did you know that you can’t use another service to access what’s really your own data anyway?

Tags: been-following, copyright-law, data, does-it-weaken, facebook, legal, online-service, power-com, Social, social-network, social-networking, then-the-social, Twitter, words
Posted June 24, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media