March 3 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc., the owner of the most popular search engine, may not map Europe again with photos for its Street View service if European Union data-protection regulators reduce the images’ storage time from 12 months to 6.
“I think we would consider whether we want to drive through Europe again, because it would make the expense so draining,” Michael Jones, Google’s chief technology advocate and founder of Google Earth, said in an interview at the Cebit Technology Fair in Hanover.
Google has negotiated with EU authorities, agreeing to one- year storage from the day the images are published on Street View, according to Jones. Shorter periods won’t be possible as Google can’t reprocess its data quicker because of software restraints, he said.
Tag: Google
Google’s real-search algorithm
More on the Chinese Google saga…
Users on Google.cn’s image search can now see the iconic picture of Tank Man, among other images from the massacre in the Beijing square in 1989 – just as users on Google’s other country portals, such as Google.co.uk, can. Read more at MailOnline.
Google refuses to censor content in China
Suddenly, Google has decided to stop censoring search results in China. Apparently Google’s patience ran at an all time low following allegations that Chinese hackers spied on human rights avocates over Google’s network. Read more at ars technica.
So how will this effect China’s search capabilities? Well not much was claimed on the Swedish radio today. There are other search engines used in China, although I didn’t catch the name of the most popular. So for China it is probably no big thing on a technical level, however it does send a very strong message on the political landscape.
Check out Google’s new privacy controls!
Looks as though Google is taking a significant initiative in enabling transparency in what they are collecting on you and how it is used. Check out this for the full article.
“It has created a window into part of its database, so users can see that Google has deduced that they are interested in “Anime & Manga” comics, or “Alternative-Punk-Metal” music or travel to Afghanistan. (Yes, those are on its list of 600 interest categories.)
It also built technology to allow your browser to remember that you don’t want Google (or its DoubleClick unit) to remember anything about you. It is more robust than the opt-out system used by many companies that rely on cookies in browsers. These are technical feats that other ad companies said would be too hard.”
mobile phone tracking services
As Loopt and Google are moving forward in the realm of geosocial or mobile social networking, companies such as NearbyNow and Placecast are exploring ways that advertisers could potentially exploit growing databases of location-specific information (imagine, for instance, getting a coupon for pizza on your mobile phone after walking by a pizzeria). Read more..