Did Google Get Off Easy With $7 Million ‘Wi-Spy’ Settlement?
Seven million dollars. That’s how much Internet giant Google will pay to settle a multi-year investigation into its controversial “Wi-Spy” data collection practices. The furor erupted in 2010 when Google disclosed that it had collected Wi-Fi data from unsecured wireless networks as its “Street View” vehicles crawled major cities worldwide, photographing buildings for a ground-level view on Google Maps. On Tuesday, Google agreed to pay $7 million to 38 states and the District of Columbia to settle the matter. To put that in perspective, Google generated revenue of about $50 billion last year, or nearly $6 million per hour. Big Internet companies like Google and Facebook frequently push the boundaries of user privacy. But the “Wi-Spy” case was particularly alarming to consumer advocates, because it raised the specter of Google’s “Street View” cars — which had already raised privacy concerns — roaming around major cities vacuuming up personal data, including snippets ...
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Free Federal Wireless Broadband For All Americans? Fuggedaboutit!
The United States government is not going to be providing free WiFi Internet access to consumers anytime soon. That news may surprise anyone who read a startling Washington Post story on Sunday that seemed to confuse a fairly esoteric telecom policy proposal about the use of so-called “white space” wireless spectrum with some sort of free national wireless Internet access plan. The “free WiFi for all” story, which was passed around uncritically by Internet blogs and news sites, set off a furor because the notion cuts to the heart of ongoing battles over access to the Internet, the “digital divide,” and federal policy decisions that could have major implications for the telecom, cable, and technology industries. But the story was wrong, as Ars Technica pointed out. On Tuesday, outlets that repeated the bunk story began walking their reports back, in some cases apologizing for giving bad information to the public. The episode, which provoked a strong pushback from tech ...
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Advertising’s Next Big Thing: Walking Product Placements
Social media purists have spent years worrying about the rise of advertising on Twitter and Facebook. But most of the kvetching has focused on the conduct of Facebook and Twitter, which have been blasted for prioritizing sponsored content by tinkering with the algorithms that position content on your newsfeed. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that companies are way past that kind of advertising on social media. Yes, advertisers are buying ads to bump up their promotions on your newsfeed. And yes, bloggers are feeling forced to buy digital ads from Facebook and Twitter to keep their stuff at the top of the pile on social media. But did you know that companies are also going directly to bloggers and paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars to write about their products and promote them on their blogs? It’s the next big thing in digital marketing, but you may not have noticed it because the promotions are weaved seamlessly into the daily fodder of popular bloggers, especially ...
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FTC Cracks Down on Social Media Ads
They may only be 140 characters, but according to a Federal Trade Commission report, Twitter posts, and advertisements on Facebook and other social media, must conform to the same standards as newspapers, television and online advertisers. “One can log on to the Internet day or...
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The Best Age for a Start-Up Founder
What is the ideal age at which to start a business? Submitted by TIME.com commenter aplotkowski3 There’s no question that starting a business is easier when you’re younger. The fewer nonwork responsibilities you have, the more likely you are to pour your blood, sweat and tears into a new venture. But that doesn’t mean you should leave school or your job to start a company just because you’re young. Venture capitalists often favor fresh meat. Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s biggest VC firms, has gushed about how entrepreneurs in their mid- to late 20s “see no boundaries, see no limits, see no obstacle that they can’t hurdle.” Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, launched a $100,000 fellowship in 2010 for entrepreneurs under 20—that is, teenagers—to encourage “promising young people not to wait on their ideas.” The average age of the entrepreneurs funded by Y Combinator, an elite business accelerator, is ...
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