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Google Calls Justice Department Second Request on Motorola Deal “Pretty Routine” (If Four Percent Is Routine)

Kara Swisher in News on September 29, 2011 at 4:31 am PT

The acquisitive search giant plays the odds again in Washington, D.C., with handset purchase.

Will Secretary of State Clinton's "Internet Freedom Agenda" Finally Get Traction?

Kara Swisher in News on February 16, 2011 at 7:09 am PT

Yesterday, in a major policy speech in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jumped on the Internet bandwagon again, unveiling a $25 million government investment for entrepreneurs to allow dissidents to thwart “thugs, hackers and censors.” Since that’s about the amount a third-string social photo-sharing site gets while walking down University Avenue in Palo Alto, Calif., from venture capitalists with bags of money to spend, let me just say the money is, well, underwhelming. Clinton’s speech, thankfully, was much better.

Microsoft and Some Big Thinking Heads at Farsight 2011: "Beyond the Search Box"

Kara Swisher in News on February 1, 2011 at 8:15 am PT

Oh dear, BoomTown is still jetlagged from a recent trip to China and now Microsoft Bing is offering up a head-requiring event later this morning in San Francisco to explore the future of search. There better be donuts. A lot and with sprinkles, since speakers include the lugubrious investor and hedge fund philosophizer Peter Thiel and skunk-at-a-Web-garden-party author Malcolm Gladwell.

Facebook Steps Up Security After Tunisian Hacks

Liz Gannes in Social on January 26, 2011 at 10:30 am PT

Facebook is rolling out to all its users the security features it added to stop the Tunisian government from accessing citizens’ passwords.

Microsoft's Browser Boss Dean Hachamovitch Touts Privacy Features at D@CES

Peter Kafka in Media on January 7, 2011 at 3:28 pm PT

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser is still the world’s most popular, but its dominance is being steadily eroded by competition from Mozilla, Google and Apple. Can a new, aggressive approach to privacy change that?

Google Says Search Partially Blocked in China

John Paczkowski in News on June 30, 2010 at 12:12 pm PT

Another escalation in tensions between Google and China: Beijing appears to have implemented a partial block of the company’s search service. The company confirms that search queries produced by Google Suggest are not going through for mainland users.

Voices

Trick or Tweet!

Nitrozac and Snaggy in News on October 28, 2009 at 1:20 pm PT

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)

Lawmakers Ask FCC to Probe Google Voice

John Paczkowski in News on October 8, 2009 at 2:59 pm PT

Should Google be able to offer voice services unfettered by regulations that apply to broadband carriers simply because Google Voice is a free Internet application? AT&T certainly doesn’t think so, and it seems at least a few Congressional representatives agree.