Google loses legal battle in India
In a battle over slanderous blog posts a prominent doctor in India sued Google and won. Apparently the good doctor had some questionable dealings and thus offended some people who promptly went to blogger and posted some disparaging remarks. The doctor decided suing Google India was the way to go. Google India is attempting to distance themselves from the Blogger service based in the U.S. We’ll have to see if this strategy works. Other than that placing the censorship responsibility on the service provider is a tall order. Do you think any other social network has this kind of duties placed upon it?
Which goes back to what I’ve been saying: blogging in foreign countries can be dangerous. Certainly in countries like China, Iran, and now you can add India to that growing list. I foresee a blogging future where traditional journalism rules are placed upon all blogs to be quickly followed by guerrilla blog sites housing controversial opinions. Get ready for big brother to watch what you type and the content you produce.
Yahoo storing your data less now
Back in the day Google started with the 18 months of data retention. Privacy advocates voiced their concerns over this issue when it first came up. Yahoo now has decided to only keep your web surfing data for 3 months. Possibly for 6 months depending on how security conscious they are feeling that day. Google keeps data for 9 months and Microsoft 6 months. There’s no ‘industry standard’ so each company is free to set whatever limits they deem fit. Will this affect how “related” those flash/java advertisements are? Hopefully I’ll stop getting those damn LavaLife and Match ads on the side bars when I’m surfing my favorite wholesome sites.


