News Byte

Twitter Enables “Do Not Track” Feature Across Supporting Browsers

Twitter users on supported browsers can now opt out of being tracked by third-party sites and cookies by enabling the “Do Not Track” feature, Twitter announced on Thursday. Federal Trade Commission CTO Ed Felton championed the feature at a conference in New York on Thursday morning. Since Mozilla first introduced the feature for its Firefox browser last year, the company claims nearly 10 percent desktop-user adoption of DNT, and almost 20 percent on Firefox for mobile.

News Byte

Average Facebook Mobile Use Beats Desktop Access

Facebook users spent an average of nearly 7.5 hours accessing the site from mobile phones in March, according to a recent comScore report, surpassing the average time spent accessing the site via desktop by nearly an hour. The trend is consistent with the shift of users relying more heavily on mobile devices to access the site, as the company itself has noted; more than half-a-billion people accessed Facebook via mobile device in March.

Internet Explorer on the Upswing

Could IE’s slump finally be over?
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Microsoft: Google Bypasses Privacy Settings in Internet Explorer, Too

A few days after a Wall Street Journal report said Google was bypassing privacy settings in Safari to track users, Microsoft is alleging that the search giant is doing the same thing with Internet Explorer.
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News Byte

After Chrome Ads Flap, Google Puts Itself in the Penalty Box

Google, which says it had no idea it was paying bloggers to promote its Chrome browser, is punishing itself for doing so. The search giant tells Danny Sullivan it will penalize the “pagerank” of www.google.com/chrome for “at least 60 days.” Google has blamed the pay-per-post campaign on ad network Unruly Media, but says “Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site.”

Google’s Ad Company (Which Isn’t Google) Explains What’s Up With Those Chrome Ads

No big deal, says Unruly Media CEO Scott Button — we do this stuff all the time.
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Google Will Pay Mozilla Almost $300M Per Year in Search Deal, Besting Microsoft and Yahoo

The search giant will pony up close to $1 billion to hipcheck Microsoft’s Bing from the pole position on the Firefox browser.
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Google Renews Firefox Search Royalty Deal

Mozilla is about to announce that it has signed a new three-year agreement for Google to be the default search option in its Firefox browser.
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Mozilla Says Google Relationship in “Active Negotiations”

Mozilla today responded to public scrutiny of renewal of its key revenue deal with Google by replying that it is “in active negotiations” with its major partner and competitor.
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Circling the TV Ads: Google+ Hawks Itself (Video)

Sharing via incessantly sorting all your relationships is apparently now a marketing plus.
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Google's Great TV Ad