A piddling amount considering that sales of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and Motorola’s (MOT) Droid topped out at one million and 1.05 million after their first 74 days of availability. In other words, sales of those two devices have surpassed those of the Nexus One by a factor of eight (see chart below; click to enlarge).

If Flurry’s estimate is correct, the Nexus One is proving an enormous disappointment. And it’s not as if it has suffered from lack of promotion. After all, Google promoted it from the front pages of two of its most highly trafficked properties: Google.com and YouTube.

Perhaps consumers are finding Google’s (GOOG) new direct-to-consumer sales model off-putting (although I really don’t see why). Perhaps the company’s choice of T-Mobile as an initial carrier has narrowed the available market a bit too much and demand will spike when the device finally arrives at Verizon (VZ). But such poor sales performance is certainly a blow to Google’s plan to upend the consumer-carrier relationship.

As Flurry notes in a blog post detailing its data: “As Google and Apple continue to battle for the mobile marketplace, Google Nexus One may go down as a grand, failed experiment or one that ultimately helped Google learn something that will prove important in years to come. Apple’s more vertically integrated strategy vs. Google’s more open Android platform approach offer strengths and weaknesses that remind us of PC vs. Mac from the 1980’s.”

Amplifying the comparison, the report continues: “A key difference this time around is that Apple is enjoying much more 3rd party developer support, whose innovative applications push the limits of what the hardware can do. Ultimately, however, developers support hardware with the largest installed base first. For Android to make progress faster, from a sales perspective, it needs more Droids and fewer Nexus Ones going forward.”

And so, beginning on Feb. 22, Windows users in the U.K., France and Belgium will be presented with a ballot screen offering them an opportunity to swap out Internet Explorer for one of 11 other browsers from rivals like Mozilla, Apple (AAPL), Opera and Google (GOOG).

“The browser choice screen software update will be offered as an automatic download through Windows Update for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7,” Microsoft (MSFT) Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner explained in a blog post announcing the move. “The software update will be installed automatically, or will prompt you to download or install it, depending on which operating system you are running and your settings for Windows Update.”

Once that’s done, users will be shown a ballot screen offering the option of installing one of the listed browsers, learning more about them or postponing the browser choice to a later time. Simple enough–assuming that automatic updates is enabled and that they actually care about browser choice.

If that’s the case, many probably dumped IE for an alternative long ago, right?

Anyway, as I said, a limited ballot screen rollout begins next week with full-scale deployment across the rest of Europe a week later, potentially reaching some 170 million PCs. It will be interesting to see how many of them end up switching to a new default browser.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Microsoft Announces Windows 7 Neelie Kroes Edition
• Brussels Palace of Justice Apparently Has Only Single Courtroom
• Great Move, EC. Now We Have to Download IE Ourselves…
• If Windows Didn’t Ship With IE, How Would You Download Firefox?
• Microsoft’s Browser Move to Make Windows Even More Annoying
• European Commission Announces Microsoft Antitrust Fine Ultimate Edition™

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

A dramatic announcement given that the Chinese government’s policy requires the company to remove certain sensitive information from its search results in order to have a presence in the country. Yet nearly a month after it was made, Google (GOOG) continues to censor search results in China, and it has said nothing about its efforts to reach a compromise with Beijing.

What’s taking so long?

Drummond’s statement–“We are no longer willing to continue censoring our results…”–was about as definitive as they come. But is Google following through or not?

Asked for an update on its discussions with the Chinese government and the future of its operations in the country, a Google spokesman told me the company doesn’t have any new information to provide.

“Our blog post announcing the matter remains our current statement of record on the issue,” he told me.

Yes, but since publication of that post, Google seems to have adopted a more amicable stance on the matter. During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings conference in January, CEO Eric Schmidt said Google was committed to retaining its presence in China.

“We wish to remain in China,” Schmidt said. “We like the Chinese people, we like our Chinese employees, we like the business opportunities there. We’d like to do that on somewhat different terms than we have, but we remain quite committed to being there.”

Of course Google is.

China is the world’s largest Internet market. But in order to operate in China, foreign businesses must abide by laws restricting Internet content, and Google has said publicly that it will no longer do so.

Again, Drummond’s words: “We are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn…”

If that’s truly the case and Drummond’s blog post remains Google’s current statement of record on China, why are censored results still appearing on Google.cn? Is the moral high ground the company claimed a month ago proving just a bit too high?

Given Google’s mission–to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful–and the telecom costs and peering fees associated with this goal, it was inevitable that the company would look to secure additional network capacity.

But evidently, Google (GOOG) had other ambitions here as well–like deploying its own 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home Internet service.

“We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States,” Google product managers Minny Ingersoll and James Kelly wrote in a company blog post. “We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”

Google insists that the purpose of this project is to “experiment and learn” in hope of making Internet access better and faster for everyone. That’s an altruistic goal, but a selfishly altruistic one. By providing Internet speeds of 1Gbps, Google will drive further usage of its various services and the contextual ads it peppers them with. At the same time, the company will humiliate the telcos into improving their own networks and, given Google’s stated focus on “openness and choice,” perhaps even change market dynamics.

But is this plan setting the stage for Google to become a full-fledged network operator? That seems unlikely. Telecom is a low-margin, capital-intensive business. I can’t imagine that it is very attractive to Google, which can’t even be bothered to build out a viable support system for its new Nexus One smartphone business.

YouTube, which announced the move in a blog post, also plans to allow people to begin renting videos in the health, education and fitness categories in the coming weeks.

A company spokesman said that content partners get to set the price they want to charge consumers and that customers must pay through Google’s payment service, Google Checkout.

Google and the content partner will split the revenue, with the partner getting the majority, he said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

While Facebook users in the U.S. were primarily white and Asian in the beginning of 2006, blacks and Latinos are increasingly joining the site, and now comprise 11 percent and 9 percent of Facebook users, respectively. And 6 percent of U.S. Facebook users are Asians, down from about 8 percent four years ago.

Facebook data team researchers Lars Backstrom, Jonathan Chang, Cameron Marlow and Itamar Rosenn wrote that they were interested in finding out more about the composition of race and ethnicity among Facebook users.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

“Here’s what we know at this point. Our MSN China joint venture contracted with an independent vendor to create a feature called MSN Juku that allowed MSN users to find friends via microblogging and online games. This MSN Juku feature was made available to MSN China users in November and is still in beta.

Because questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service, MSN China will be suspending access to the Juku beta feature temporarily while we investigate the matter fully.”

– Microsoft’s statement on the Plurk-Juku debacle

If Microsoft didn’t know what a Plurk was before, it knows now.

The software giant has suspended MSN Juku, its Chinese microblog site, following accusations that it copied the design and code of Plurk, a Twitter rival popular in Taiwan and Indonesia.

In a blog post earlier this week, Plurk alleged that Juku bore an uncanny resemblance to its service, right down to the code base and data structures.

“From the filter tabs, emoticons, qualifier/verb placement, Karma scoring system, media support, new user walkthroughs to pretty much everything else that gives Plurk its trademark appeal, Microsoft China’s offering ripped off our service,” the company claimed in a blistering blog post.

“We’re still in shock asking why Microsoft would even stoop to this level of wilfully plagiarising a young and innovative upstart’s work rather than reach out to us or innovate on their own terms,” the post continued. “Of course, it just hits that much closer to home when all your years of hard work and effort to create something unique are stolen so brazenly. All the more ironic considering Microsoft has often been leading the charge on fighting for stronger IP laws and combating software piracy in China.”

Indeed. If this is a theft, it’s a serious and embarrassing infraction for Microsoft (MSFT)–even if, as the company claims, Juku’s code was provided by a third-party vendor hired by its MSN China joint venture. Microsoft should have vetted the vendor more thoroughly, particularly since the software giant just suffered a similar embarrassment with its Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, which borrowed a bit too heavily from the GPLv2-licensed ImageMaster project.

UPDATE: Microsoft has determined that the company that developed MSN Juku did indeed copy Plurk’s code. “The vendor has now acknowledged that a portion of the code they provided was indeed copied,” Microsoft said in a statement. “This was in clear violation of the vendor’s contract with the MSN China joint venture, and equally inconsistent with Microsoft’s policies respecting intellectual property.”

Microsoft said it is now suspending access to Juku “indefinitely. We are obviously very disappointed, but we assume responsibility for this situation. We apologize to Plurk and we will be reaching out to them directly to explain what happened and the steps we have taken to resolve the situation.”

Here’s Microsoft’s full statement about the incident:

On Monday, December 14, questions arose over a beta application called Juku developed by a Chinese vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We immediately worked with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.

The vendor has now acknowledged that a portion of the code they provided was indeed copied. This was in clear violation of the vendor’s contract with the MSN China joint venture, and equally inconsistent with Microsoft’s policies respecting intellectual property.

When we hire an outside company to do development work, our practice is to include strong language in our contract that clearly states the company must provide work that does not infringe the intellectual property rights of others. We are a company that respects intellectual property and it was never our intent to have a site that was not respectful of the work that others in the industry have done.

We will be suspending access to the Juku beta indefinitely.
We are obviously very disappointed, but we assume responsibility for this situation. We apologize to Plurk and we will be reaching out to them directly to explain what happened and the steps we have taken to resolve the situation.

In the wake of this incident, Microsoft and our MSN China joint venture will be taking a look at our practices around applications code provided by third-party vendors.

Want to watch YouTube on your TV? There are plenty of devices and services that let you do that, with more on the way.

But starting next month, at least one gadget is getting its YouTube feed shut down. Syabas Technology, which makes a line of set-top boxes called “Popcorn Hour,” says Google’s (GOOG) video site has told it to remove YouTube content beginning December 2.

This one is a straight he said/he said: Syabas, via a blog post from COO Alex Limberis, says it has an agreement to use YouTube’s clips, but that YouTube had changed the terms of the agreement recently. YouTube won’t address that claim directly, but offered this statement:

Since July of 2008, YouTube’s Terms of Service has restricted implementations for televisions based on our APIs. YouTube has been in active discussions with various developers on how best to implement YouTube on set top boxes and TVs. There are several companies, however, that have deployed solutions, like video scraping technology, to circumvent the rules and violate YouTube’s Terms of Service.  Companies that have negotiated agreements to use our APIs, like TiVo, Sony, Panasonic and PS3 are not impacted.

The first-gut reaction here is to draw a parallel between this move and Hulu’s attempt to prevent video software start-up Boxee from using its stuff.

But in that case, at least, Hulu was trying to restrict access to a data stream it was making freely available to the rest of the world. Here, both sides agree that YouTube requires a contract before it will release its API to commercial partners.

So, the real question is: Did the two companies have an agreement, and what if, anything, has changed recently.

Gentlemen?

[T-shirt image courtesy of Zazzle.com.]

“As of today, Facebook now serves 300 million people across the world,” founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in one of his typically somnolent blog posts. “It’s a large number, but the way we think about this is that we’re just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone. We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.”

This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.

Interesting remark. It would seem then that Facebook has no interest whatsoever in selling itself off to Google (GOOG) or anyone else. It would much rather go public.

UPDATE: A couple of quick points courtesy Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: Growth is apparently widespread, and while it’s true that 70 percent of Facebook’s user base is now outside the U.S., growth in the U.S. is not slowing.

[Image credit: San Francisco skyline by m.john16/Flickr]

“As of today, Facebook now serves 300 million people across the world,” founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in one of his typically somnolent blog posts. “It’s a large number, but the way we think about this is that we’re just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone. We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.”

This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.

Interesting remark. It would seem then that Facebook has no interest whatsoever in selling itself off to Google (GOOG) or anyone else. It would much rather go public.

UPDATE: A couple of quick points courtesy Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: Growth is apparently widespread, and while it’s true that 70 percent of Facebook’s user base is now outside the U.S., growth in the U.S. is not slowing.

[Image credit: San Francisco skyline by m.john16/Flickr]

But if you’re part of the large group of people who think that nothing is really private on the Web and that everyone should see everything you do online, then you’re really going to like Facebook’s new privacy policy. It’s designed to get Facebook users to share as much as they can with as many people as they can–including people who aren’t on Facebook.

Facebook tries to explain the policy changes in a lengthy blog post here, and you can find a slideshow that accompanied a press conference the company just held here.

But that will make your eyes glaze over. Here’s the short version:

• Facebook is simplifying the privacy setting controls it offers users. So if you want your pals to see your keg stand from Saturday night, but don’t want your parents to be privy, you should be able to do that more effectively. The company is experimenting with different ways to present the controls.
• Facebook also wants to encourage people to use the “everyone” setting, which right now just means “every Facebook user.” But the company is going to eventually change that setting to mean “everyone on the Web”–meaning that Google (GOOG) users, marketers, whoever, will be able to find that stuff, too.
• Facebook wants to expand the amount of data its users share with the world because the company thinks that the more exposure data get, the more valuable the data become. But it is doing its best to tamp down complaints from users who accidentally end up exposing kid photos or bachelor party snapshots or whatever. Hence the new, improved privacy controls, which are being rolled out before “everyone” really means “everyone.”

I know, I know. That short version wasn’t that short. But you’re going to hear plenty more about this in the coming weeks. Consider this a first chapter.