Delhi court asks Home ministry to serve summons to Google, Facebook

The Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) was asked by a Delhi court to get its summonses served to various foreign-based social networking websites, including Facebook and Google, accused of promoting class enmity and undermining the national integrity. 

The court asked MHA that the summonses issued against the websites should be returnable by September 22. 

"Let the accused (social networking websites) be summoned through the assistance of the MHA, Government of India. The summonses shall be returnable on September 22," Metropolitan Magistrate Jay Thareja said. 

These websites named in the complaint filed by Vinay Rai includes -- Facebook, Orkut,YouTube, Yahoo, Blogspot, Google and Microsoft. 

Besides this, the court discharged two accused websites, Shyni Blog and Exbii after the complainant's counsel S P M Tripathi told the court that they do not want to proceed with the complaint against the two websites as their addresses have not been found despite all efforts. 

"In view of the statement made by the advocate for the complainant, the complaint is dismissed against accused Exbii and Shyni Blog," the magistrate said. 

The court, on the last date of hearing, had told Rai to come out with the modalities of serving the summonses to the foreign-based websites. 

As the day's proceedings began, advocate Tripathi said they could send the summonses served to the websites through courier service.
Source:TOI

Facebook, Microsoft looking for office space in Manhattan

Facebook and Microsoft are shopping for more office space in Manhattan, sources say, underscoring New York's stature as a must-have location for top tech companies who need to be "book-ended" on both the west and east coasts. 

Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, has browsed several locations in the city including the former New York Times Building at 229 West 43rd Street, two people familiar with the search said. 

The social-networking company's New York staff is primarily in sales, although there are also some marketing and engineering personnel in the city. Last year, Facebook said it planned to hire more engineers in New York. 

Facebook, which currently occupies about 40,000 square feet of office space at 335 Madison Avenue near Grand Central Station, is shopping for 100,000 square feet to 150,000 square feet of office space, one source familiar with the matter said. 

Microsoft, also has looked at the former Times building and at a new building at 51 Astor Place, two sources said. Microsoft is looking for about 200,000 square feet, the source said. It currently occupies 174,000 square feet at 1290 Avenue of the Americas near 52nd Street, another source said. Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, based in Redmond, Washington, declined to comment, as did Facebook. 

It is unclear how far along either company is to committing to a new location and they could opt to stay at their current New York offices.

Facebook is still sending out requests for proposals. It signed a 15-year lease at 335 Madison in December 2010.

Microsoft's lease expires in 2014, two sources said. New York, chiefly Manhattan, is a growing incubator for technology. In the fourth quarter of 2011 it ranked No. 2 behind California as the top destination for technology venture capital funding, according to CB Insights data.

In the last five years, information technology jobs in the city have increased nearly 29 per cent to 52,900, according to a report issued last month by the Center for an Urban Future. The report identified 486 digital startups created in New York since 2007 that have received angel, VC or other outside funding.

Many of those companies are located south of 34th Street in Manhattan's Midtown South office market, the New York home of internet search and advertising powerhouse Google.

Source:TOI

Apple-Google patent trial pushed

A federal judge canceled a scheduled June 11 trial between Apple and Google's Motorola Mobility unit over patents related to mobile phones and tablet computers, and expects to dismiss the case because neither can prove damages. 

In a "tentative" order, US Circuit Judge Richard Posner in Chicago on Thursday said each company's case should be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought up again. 

He said neither Apple nor Motorola Mobility had enough admissible evidence of damages to withstand dismissal. 

Posner also said to grant injunctions against infringements "would impose costs disproportionate to the harm to the patentee and the benefit of the alleged infringement to the alleged infringer and would be contrary to the public interest." 

The judge said he expects to more fully explain his reasoning in a written opinion within one week. Posner normally handles appeals, rather than cases in trial court. 

"We are pleased by the Illinois trial court's tentative ruling today dismissing Apple's patent claims and look forward to receiving the full decision," Google said in a statement. Apple declined to comment. 

The trial, which would have been before a jury, would have been the first between the companies since Google last month bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.

It is one of many lawsuits worldwide pitting Apple, whose iPhone is the world's most popular smartphone, against Motorola Mobility, whose parent produces the Android operating system.

In 2012, the iPhone is expected to capture more than 20 per cent of the global smartphone market, while 61 per cent of smartphones will use the Android system, International Data Corp said on Wednesday.

Apple had sued Motorola Mobility for alleged infringements of four patents, but a May 22 ruling by Posner scuttled its damages claims on two of those patents. Motorola Mobility had sued over one patent.

Apple is based in Cupertino, California, and Google is based in Mountain View, California.

The case is Apple et al vs Motorola et al, US District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No. 11-08540.

Source:TOI

Apple may block Samsung Galaxy SIII sales in US

An Apple lawyer said the iPhone and iPad maker may seek a legal order stopping the launch of Samsung Electronics's Galaxy S III phone in the United States later this month. 

At a hearing on Thursday in a San Jose,California federal court, Apple attorney Josh Krevitt said the company could file for a temporary restraining order against Samsung as early as Friday. 

"Once sales are made, the harm is irreparable," Krevitt said. 

However, US District Judge Lucy Koh said she has many other cases. If Apple decides to seek a restraining order, it would likely delay a July trial date over different Samsung phones, as well as the Galaxy Tab 10.1. 

"I cannot be an Apple v. Samsung judge," Koh said. 

Apple sued Samsung for patent infringement last year, accusing the South Korean electronics maker of "slavishly" copying the iPhone and iPad. Samsung denies the claims and countersued. 

Apple's comments on Thursday came a day after Samsung Electronics, the world's largestsmartphone vendor, expanded its CEO's role to include oversight of corporate strategy across the entire Samsung Group - a conglomerate of more than 80 companies. 

Choi Gee-sung, 61, spearheaded Samsung's ascension to smartphone and TV leadership and his elevation signals that the storied South Korean conglomerate is grooming its next leader. Apple filed papers this week seeking to ban Samsung's new Galaxy S III, along with the Galaxy Nexus. Samsung has already booked over 9 million preorders of the Galaxy S III, which is set to be sold by carriers in the United States on June 21, Apple said in its court filing. 

Samsung, however, argued that Apple should not be allowed to seek such a fast injunction against the Galaxy S III. 

Samsung attorney William Price also said the technology covered by Apple's patents - such as auto-correcting typed text - are not responsible for sales of Galaxy phones. 

"There is no advertising or marketing on these features at all" by Apple, Price said. 

Samsung's Galaxy products run on the Android operating system, developed by Google. In addition to Samsung's legal team, several Google attorneys attended the hearing before Koh on Thursday. 

Apple has also accused Google's Motorola Mobility unit of infringing its iPhone patents. However, a Chicago-based federal judge on Thursday tentatively scrapped a trial between those two that had been scheduled to begin next week. 

"Neither party can establish a right to relief," Judge Richard Posner wrote. 

In California, Koh did not rule from the bench on Thursday on Apple's request for an injunction on the Nexus. 

The Samsung case in US District Court, Northern District of California is Apple vs Samsung Electronics et al, 12-cv-630.

Source:TOI

Google warns users of 'state-sponsored attacks'

Google has begun to warn its users if their accounts may be compromised by state-sponsored cyber attacks, to help people protect personal data. 

"We are constantly on the lookout for malicious activity on our systems, in particular attempts by third parties to log into users' accounts unauthorized," Google engineering security vice-president Eric Grosse said in a blog post on Tuesday. 

"When we have specific intelligence -- either directly from users or from our own monitoring efforts -- we show clear warning signs and put in place extra roadblocks to thwart these bad actors." 

Grosse said the new step includes a specific warning -- with a pink message bar and blue letters -- to be issued in cases where users might be targeted. 

"You might ask how we know this activity is state-sponsored," he said. "We can't go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors, but our detailed analysis -- as well as victim reports -- strongly suggest the involvement of states or groups that are state-sponsored." 

The warnings do not necessarily mean that the account has been hijacked, but indicates that it may be a target, of phishing or malware. The move comes amid growing concerns about malware from the so-called Flame virus which has been spreading in the Middle East, and indications of cyber warfare involving the United States and other countries. 

Google said users who receive the warning should create "a unique password that has a good mix of capital and lowercase letters, as well punctuation marks and numbers" and take other measures including two-step verification as additional security. 

"Attackers often send links to fake sign-in pages to try to steal your password, so be careful about where you sign in to Google," he said. 

"We believe it is our duty to be proactive in notifying users about attacks or potential attacks so that they can take action to protect their information," Grosse said. "And we will continue to update these notifications based on the latest information." 

Source:TOI

Google buys startup Meebo

Google is buying Silicon Valley startup Meebo to help expand its social networking service. 

The acquisition announced will bring more tools to Google+, an alternative to Facebook's popular online hangout. Meebo started as a system for connecting people by instant message but has since built other communication features used by an audience of about 100 million web people in the US. 

Both companies are based in Mountain View, Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed. 

"We are always looking for better ways to help users share content and connect with others across the Web, just as they do in real life," Google said in a statement. "With the Meebo team's expertise in social publisher tools, we believe they will be a great fit with the Google+ team." 

Since its debut nearly a year ago, Google+ has attracted more than 170 million users. Despite that impressive growth, Google so far has had trouble persuading people to visit its social networking website as regularly as Facebook's more than 900 million users frequent its website. 

Meebo works with publishers and advertisers to help them connect with web surfers for longer periods. 

"Together with Google, we're super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike," Meebo wrote in a Monday blog post. 

Meebo has raised $70 million in venture capital since it was founded in 2005 by Seth Sternberg, Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen. Sternberg, who formerly helped IBM identify acquisition targets, served as Meebo's CEO. Google has spent more than $16 billion buying 140 companies since the end of 2009. That includes the biggest deal in Google's 14-year history, a just-completed $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings. 

Google shares fell 59 cents after hours to $578. They ended regular trading up $7.61 at $578.59 before the deal was announced.

Source:TOI

Nokia: Android phones have major patent issues

Nokia struck back at Google over its accusation that the cellphone maker was colluding with Microsoft to make money out of their patents. 

"Though we have not yet seen the complaint, Google's suggestion that Nokia and Microsoft are colluding on intellectual property rights is wrong," Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant said on Friday. 

"Both companies have their own intellectual property rights portfolios and strategies and operate independently." 

He also said that some Android devices had "significant (intellectual property) infringement issues" relating to Nokia's patents. 

Google, in a formal complaint to the European Commission, said Microsoft and Nokia had transferred 1,200 patents to MOSAID, a so-called "patent troll" which makes money by taking legal action over patent infringements. 

Nokia and Microsoft cooperate on smartphones that compete with Google's Android devices. The Finnish phone maker shifted from its own Symbian software in favor of Microsoft Windows in February 2011. 

Google's accusations highlight current cut-throat competition in the mobile phone business where companies, including Nokia, are fighting to assert intellectual property rights over wireless technologies. 

Nokia's patents have become valuable and stable assets for the company, particularly at a time when falling handset sales and a loss of market share threaten its future. Nokia has already sued Android device makers HTC and ViewSonic for infringing its patents and is expected to go after others. 

Nokia already earns 500 million euros ($618.22 million) a year from its patent royalties in key areas of mobile telephony and some analysts have said a more determined application of its patent rights could boost its income by hundreds more millions of euros a year. 

Microsoft said earlier that Google's complaint about antitrust in the smartphone industry was a "desperate tactic" from a company that controls more than 95 per cent of mobile search and advertising.

Source: TOI.IT

Google to 'warn' users on search in China

Google has fired a new salvo in a censorship battle with Beijing by adding a feature that warns users in China who enter search keywords that might produce blocked results and suggests they try other terms.

Google's announcement describes the change as a technical improvement and made no mention of Beijing's extensive Internet controls. But it comes after filters were tightened so severely in recent weeks that searches fail for some restaurants, universities or tourist information. Authorities were trying to stamp out talk about an embarrassing scandal over the fall of a rising Communist Party star.

Google Inc closed its China-based search engine in 2010 to avoid cooperating with government censorship. Mainland users can see its Chinese-language site in Hong Kong but the connection breaks if they search for sensitive terms.The new feature will alert users if they enter a search term that "may temporarily break your connection to Google," said a blog post by a Google senior vice president, Alan Eustace. He said it will suggest they "try other search terms."

"By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China," Eustace wrote.

Google cited as an example the Chinese character "jiang," or river, without mentioning it is the name of former President Jiang Zemin, the possible reason results are blocked. It says the site will recommend removing the character.Google could anger Beijing by pointing out individual terms that might produce blocked results. Chinese regulators do not disclose which terms are banned. They try to hide censorship by returning the same error message as for a technical failure, possibly to avoid drawing attention to unwanted topics.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on whether the company was concerned about Chinese government retaliation.

Google was allowed to keep a network of advertising sales offices in China that might be vulnerable if the communist government tries to punish the company.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, had 16.6 percent of China's search market in the first quarter based on use of its global and Hong Kong sites, according to Analysys 

International, a Beijing research firm. It was in second place behind local rival Baidu Inc, which 78.5 percent, but ahead of other Chinese competitors.

Google is also promoting its Android mobile phone operating system for use by Chinese manufacturers. Beijing approved Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a wireless device maker, last month on condition Android remains available to Chinese companies and others at no cost for five years.

Tensions over censorship highlight Beijing's complicated relations with global technology companies. The communist government wants to boost incomes by promoting high-tech industry but insists on controlling access to information.

Beijing promotes Internet use for education and business and has the world's biggest population of Internet users, with 513 million people online as of December, but tries to block politically sensitive material.

The latest tightening of controls was prompted by a flurry of rumors online about the downfall of Bo Xilai, a prominent politician who was party secretary of the major city of Chongqing in the southwest.

In addition to Bo's name, blocked terms include Chongqing and Yangtze River, which flows past the city. That means searches for universities, hotels, restaurants or other businesses that use those names also fail.

China's two most popular microblog services stopped allowing new postings for three days in early April to erase what they said were illegal or harmful postings.

Google's engineers reviewed the 350,000 most popular search queries in China in an effort to find "disruptive queries," the company said.

Google gave no indication when development of the latest feature started but said it received reports of unreliable searches "over the past couple of years."

Source:TOI.IT

Google Chromebook gets an upgrade

Google will try to win more converts to a computer operating system revolving around its popular Chrome Web browser with a new wave of lightweight laptops built by Samsung Electronics. 

Tuesday's release of the next-generation Chromebooks will give Google and Samsung another opportunity to persuade consumers and businesses to buy an unconventional computer instead of machines running on familiar software by industry pioneers Microsoft and Apple. 

Unlike most computers, Google's Chromebooks don't have a hard drive. They function like terminals dependent on an internet connection. The laptops come with 16 gigabytes of flash memory - the kind found in smartphones, tablet computers and some iPods. Two USB ports allow external hard drives and other devices to be plugged into the machines. 

Chromebooks haven't made much of a dent in the market since their debut a year ago. In that time, more people have been embracing Apple's iPad and other tablet computers - a factor that has contributed to a slowdown in sales of personal computers. 

The cool reception to Chromebooks has raised questions about whether Google misjudged the demand for computers designed to quickly connect to its dominant internet search engine and ever-expanding stable of other online services, ranging from email to a recently introduced file-storage system called Drive. "The Chromebooks have had less to offer than tablets, so they haven't been that interesting to consumers," said Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa. 

Google says it always intended to take things slowly with the Chromebooks to give its engineers time to understand the shortcomings of the machines and make the necessary improvements. 

"This release is a big step in the journey to bringing (Chromebooks) to the mainstream," said Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of Chrome and apps. 

The upgraded laptop, called "Series 5 550," is supposed to run two-and-half times faster than the original machines, and boasts higher-definition video. Google also added features that will enable users to edit documents offline, read more content created in widely used Microsoft applications such as Word and Excel, and retrieve material from another computer at home or an office. More emphasis is being placed on Chrome's Web store, which features more than 50,000 applications. 

The price: $449 for models that only connect to the internet through Wi-Fi and $549 for a machine that connects on a 3G network. Samsung's original Chromebooks started out with prices ranging from $429 to $499. Like the original Chromebooks, the next-generation machines feature a 12.1-inch screen display and run on an Intel processor. 

Google and Samsung also are introducing a "Chromebox" that can be plugged into a display monitor to create the equivalent of desktop computer. The box will sell for $329. 

The latest Chromebook and new Chromebox will be available online only, beginning in the US on Tuesday, followed by a Wednesday release in the United Kingdom. The products will go on sale in brick-and-mortar stores for the first time in still-to-be-determined Best Buy locations next month. 

The expansion beyond Internet-only sales signals Google's determination to attract a mass audience to its Chromebooks, just as it's done with smartphones running on its Android software. More than 300 million mobile devices have been activated on Android since the software's 2008 release. 

Without providing specifics, Pichai said several other computer manufacturers will release Chromebooks later this year. Google plans to back the expanded line of Chromebooks with a marketing blitz during the holiday shopping season in November and December. 

One reason Google is confident Chromebooks will eventually catch on is because the Chrome Web browser has attracted so many fans in less than four years on the market. The company says more than 200 million people worldwide currently are using the Chrome browser. 

Like other laptop and desktop computers, the Chromebooks will have to contend with the accelerating shift to the iPad and other tablets. The iPad 2, an older version of Apple's tablet line, sells for as little as $399, undercutting the new Chromebook. Other low-cost tablets are expected to hit the market later this year. One of them might even be made by Motorola Mobility, a device maker that Google bought for $12.5 billion earlier this month. Google so far hasn't commented on Motorola's future plans for the tablet market. 

The new Chromebooks also are hitting the market at a time when some prospective computer buyers may be delaying purchases until they can check out machines running on Windows 8, a makeover of Microsoft's operating system that is expected to be released in September or October. Microsoft designed Windows 8 so it can be controlled through touch as well as keyboards. That versatility is expected to inspire the creation of hybrid machines that are part laptop, part tablet. 

Google shares added $2.81 Tuesday to close at $594.34.

Source: TOI.IT

Google warns Internet users to shutdown on July 9

Search giant Google has issued a warring to its millions of users that they could lose the ability to connect to the internet in July due to a computer virus. 

The problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. 

In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users, but that system will be shut down on July 9, killing connections for those people 

The FBI has run a campaign for months, encouraging people to visit a website that will inform them whether they are infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won't be able to connect to the internet. 

According to Fox News, Google has now planned to throw its weight into the awareness campaign. The site will be rolling out alerts to users via a special message that will appear at the top of the Google search results page for users with affected computers, CNET reported. 

"We believe directly messaging affected users on a trusted site and in their preferred language will produce the best possible results," wrote Google security engineer Damian Menscher in a post on the firm's blog 

"If more devices are cleaned and steps are taken to better secure the machines against further abuse, the notification effort will be well worth it," he added According to the report, the challenge, and the reason for the awareness campaigns is the fact that most victims don't even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their anti-virus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.
Source:TOI.IT

Instagram web traffic surges 78%

Photo-sharing social network Instagram has seen a 78 per cent uptick in unique visitors after it launched its Android app, and was acquired by Facebook. 

The dramatic gain in traffic placed Instagram at the top of the web for growth in April, according to ComScore Inc. 

According to The Los Angles Times, Instagram brought in nearly 14.6 million different individuals to its service in April, making the app the 106th-most visited property on the Internet. 

By comparison, the app grew by just 19 per cent in March with 8.2 million uniques, leaving it No. 204 on the most visited list. 

According to the paper, Instagram's uptick was undoubtedly tied to the start-up's expansion onto Google's platform of Android phones. 

The Android Instagram app arrived in early April, and at that time Instagram had about 30 million users. 

According to Venture Beat, after April's growth, Instagram is now believed to have over 50 million users.
Source:TOI.IT

Facebook may buy Opera to launch own browser:

 Social networking giant is planning to buy a Norwegian software firm in a bid to launch its own browser, according to a report.Tech blog Pocket-lint, cited unnamed 'trusted sources,' as saying that Facebook is looking at Opera Software, the company behind Opera Web browser, to expand into the browser space.

According to CBS News, the move would place Facebook in competition with other tech companies in the browser game such as Yahoo, which recently launched Axis, and Google.

The tech blog said that a Facebook browser 'would allow you keep up to date with your social life from in-built plug-ins and features on the menu bar.'

The Next Web's sources revealed that Opera is in a hiring freeze and talking to potential buyers.

The company reports about 200 million users across all of its platforms.

Meanwhile, Facebook has declined to comment on the matter.

How Google gets all your private data

Secrets spilled across the computer screen. After months of negotiation, Johannes Caspar, a German data protection official, forced Google to show him exactly what its Street View cars had been collecting from potentially millions of his fellow citizens. 

Snippets of e-mails, photographs, passwords, chat messages, postings on websites and social networks - all sorts of private internet communication - were casually scooped up as the specially-equipped cars photographed the world's streets. 

"It was one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen," Caspar recently recalled about that long-sought viewing in late 2010. "We were very angry." Google might be one of the coolest and smartest companies of this or any era, but it also upsets a lot of people - competitors who argue it wields its tremendous weight unfairly, officials like Caspar who says it ignores local laws, privacy advocates who think it takes too much from its users. 

Just this week, European anti-trust regulators gave the company an ultimatum to change its search business or face legal consequences. American regulators may not be far behind. The high-stakes anti-trust assault, which will play out this summer behind closed doors in Brussels, might be the beginning of a tough time for Google. 

But never count Google out. It is superb at getting out of trouble. Just ask Caspar or any of his counterparts around the world who tried to hold Google accountable for what one of them, the Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy, called "probably the single greatest breach in the history of privacy". 

The secret Street View data collection led to inquiries in at least a dozen countries, including four in the US alone. But Google is yet to give an explanation of why the data was collected and who at the company knew about it. No regulator in the US has ever seen the information that Google's cars gathered from the citizens. 

The tale of how Google escaped a full accounting for Street View illustrates not only how technology companies have outstripped the regulators, but also their complicated relationship with their adoring customers. 

Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple supply new ways of communication, learning, entertainment and high-tech wizardry for the masses. They have custody of the raw material of hundreds of millions of lives - the intimate e-mails, the revealing photographs, searches for help or love or escape. People willingly, at times eagerly, surrender this information.

But there is a price: the loss of control, or even knowledge, of where that personal information is going and how it is being reshaped into an online identity that may resemble the real you or may not. Privacy laws and wiretapping statutes are of little guidance, because they have not kept pace with the lightning speed of technological progress.

©2011 The New York Times News Service

Microsoft's social network So.cl now open to all

Microsoft has opened up its So.cl social networking service to the general public, which lets users share and comment on interesting search results and connect with "like-minded" people. 

It is targeted at students and had earlier been restricted to invitees at universities and schools in the US. The service integrates with Facebook and is being pitched as an "experiment" rather than a rival to other networks. 

Microsoft revealed that the product was developed by its Fuse Labs unit as a "research project... focused on the future of social experiences and learning." Members are invited to create "collages of content" using the firm's Bing search engine technology and external links, which they can, then share with others. 

Users can then identify people who are interested in the same topics, monitor their associates' feeds and take part in "video parties" during which members watch online videos together, commenting on them via chat function. Members can sign in using their Facebook login details, however, their So.cl activities do not show up on Facebook's pages unless the option is activated. 

The move to open up the service to the general public was taken over the weekend with little fanfare, prompting some analysts to speculate that Microsoft only had limited ambitions for the project. "The fact that So.cl is targeted at students echoes Facebook's beginnings and has made many assume it is a Facebook clone," the BBC quoted Eden Zoller, principal analyst at technology consultants Ovum, as saying. 

"But So.cl is, as Microsoft stresses, an experiment designed to be a layer on existing social networks. "Microsoft is being sensible in positioning So.cl in this way - the opposite approach of Google, which entered social networking all guns blazing with a full on service, and is having modest success," Zoller said. 

Zoller added that the project could also help Microsoft further improve Bing's search capabilities. A study by Comscore suggested that Microsoft had a 15.4 percent share of the US search market in April compared with Google's 66.5 percent lead. Earlier surveys have suggested that the gap is even wider in the UK and parts of Europe.

Source:TOI.IT

Facebook IPO: How much employees have lost

 Facebook's outside investors aren't the only ones feeling cheated, as an average employee of the firm has lost over $844,000 since the company's flotation, it has emerged.Since Facebook sold shares to the public at $38 a pop last Friday, the average employee has lost an estimated $844,000, based on yesterday's closing price of $32. Shares rose 3.2 percent yesterday, which was their first daily gain.


"It's obviously disappointing for Facebook's employees who still need to work there, engineering the site and selling ads," the New York Post quoted Sam Hamadeh, the head of research firm PrivCo, as saying. In contrast to Facebook's troubled times, Google and Apple have seen their shares soar, rewarding employees who stuck with them.

"At Google, you count on that money every year because the stock has been relatively stable and growing. At Apple, you count on that money. At Facebook, we don't know yet," said Robert Greene, the head of GreeneSearch, a tech recruiting firm.Recruiters have estimated that Facebook's cool-company status is in jeopardy if the stock-price erosion continued, absolving the super-sized growth that attracted workers in the first place.

Employees are currently left with no option but have resorted to a wait-and-see approach until their lockup ends and they can sell their shares. The first lockup for insiders expires after 91 days.

Source:TOI.IT

Robert Bob Moog's 78th birthday: Google pays tribute with an interactive doodle

The search engine giant Google has come out with another captivating doodle on its home page today. The doodle is designed to celebrate Robert Arthur "Bob" Moog's 78th birthday, an American music enthusiastic and founder of Moog Music.

The interactive doodle pays tribute to the pioneer of electronic music, widely known for his invention of Moog synthesizer. Visitors to the Google homepage can play the virtual synthesizer by simply moving the cursor on the keys. Not just this, they can create their own music, as Google allows visitors to record, play back and even share their composition on the social networking site Google+ by simply clicking on the g+ button. There's also a virtual synthesizer that visitors can use for adjusting volume and other controls like mixer, oscillator and filter.

His invention 'Moog synthesizer' is regarded as a milestone in the development of electronic musical instruments. The innovation inspired many and lay the foundation of for the making of several synthesizers in the following years.Moog earned his bachelor's degree in Physics from from Queens College, New York (1957) and also did PhD in engineering physics from Cornell University.

For his exceptional work he was conferred with several awards including an honorary doctorate. In 1970, he received the Grammy Trustees Award.In 2005, he was diagnosed with a Glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor and eventually died at the age of 71 in Asheville, North Carolina.

Source:TOI.IT