Google tried to buy GroupOn. It offered the deals service $6bn and GroupOn said no. Looks like that was a silly move as Google’s own deals plans have been revealed with Google Offers in its testing phase.
Google Offers was revealed in a cache of leaked documents but has been confirmed by Google. The service will send one local deal-of-the-day via email to users and those deals will be time limited and require a certain number of users to snap them up before they’re activated.
Those Google Buzz privacy concerns were a pretty big deal when Google first rolled out the Twitter-esque social layer for Gmail. Inevitably, litigious Americans got together to launch a class action lawsuit in the hope of chipping off a big of cash from Google’s iceberg of money. And, you know, what: they’ve kind of succeeded. Google has just paid out $8.5m to settle the Google Buzz privacy class action lawsuit. However, that money is headed for privacy organisations and not the users with their hands outstretched for cash…
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Right now, Google Me is effectively a mythical service. Just 14 words in a tweet from Digg founder, Kevin Rose, kicked off thousands speculating about a Facebook-fighting social network from the search giant. Meanwhile Facebook has hit 500m users and Mark Zuckerberg is confidently predicting that number will reach 1 billion. So why would Google even bother to try and battle Facebook and why would anyone predict that it could win?
Google privacy issues have been highlighted in an open letter to Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. The letter signed by privacy officials from 10 nations including UK Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, flags up Google Streetview privacy issues and looks back at all those Google Buzz teething problems.
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The Google Maps Blackberry app has had a ginormous update adding support for Google Buzz, voice search and desktop synching. The Google Maps Blackberry app update finally puts it on a similar footing to Google Maps on iPhone and Android.
Facebook has added new settings to allow user to assign new access levels for third party applications and websites. Does this mean your privacy is more protected?
