That brings the company’s highest valuation to just above $100 billion.

In all, Facebook will offer upward of 388 million shares — which includes an additional 50.6 million shares added Tuesday — raising $14.7 billion in the IPO.

Facebook also notes that while the company expected its recent acquisition of Instagram to close by the end of the second quarter, it now hopes to close the deal by the end of 2012. As reported last week by the Financial Times, the FTC launched a routine investigation looking into the acquisition, which would most likely delay the deal until well after Facebook’s initial estimated time frame.

Expect the official pricing to occur this Thursday, according to our sources, with $FB to debut on the Nasdaq exchange this Friday.

The settlement, which comes amid social-networking heavyweight Facebook Inc.’s plans to go public, requires Myspace to implement a comprehensive privacy program, calls for regular and independent privacy assessments for the next 20 years, and bars the company from future privacy misrepresentations.

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The commission hasn’t decided whether to file a lawsuit against the Internet giant, but the hiring of Beth Wilkinson — a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and former Justice Department prosecutor — sends a signal that the commission is prepared to take its case to court, if necessary. A Google spokesman declined to comment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

credit: Win McNamee, Getty Images News

For context, the conversation started with me asking about opt-in versus opt-out product releases — which means, do you first ask your customers whether they want to use something new, or do you give it to them and let them decide if it’s useful or not. Opt-out has been the preferred choice of many companies, perhaps most notably Facebook, because it cuts out the friction of requiring additional permission.

Liz Gannes: What do you anticipate being the FTC stance around opt-in going forward? Is it reasonable to interpret the framework as pushing the industry towards opt-in policies?

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz: We’ve laid out some areas where we think opt-in is more appropriate. With financial information, in healthcare, when dealing with vulnerable populations like children. And if cable or phone companies want to do something analogous to deep-packet inspection, there should be opt-in.

I think we’re pretty balanced. You want to have better privacy notices, give consumers more choice, and give opt-out on tracking. When you’re talking about more sensitive populations, you might want to flip that and make it an opt-in.

We also think when you engage in best practices, what we hear from companies is consumers trust the Internet more, and they want to do more commerce.

How do you expect newer companies, for instance growing social media players like Tumblr or Pinterest, to interface with the FTC? How can they proactively avoid investigations and settlements like what you had with Google and Facebook?

We think our report strikes the right balance between privacy and innovation. I think if you’re a new company, make sure you’ve seen our cases. A large number are about making privacy commitments and not honoring them. So if you commit to something, follow through.

Leibowitz, by the way, will be appearing at our D10 conference in May.

This framework (PDF) has been in the works for years, and in the meantime there has been considerable progress on many of its final recommendations, both proactively by businesses themselves and through privacy investigations and settlements the FTC had with companies like Google and Facebook.

Screengrab from the FTC's diagram of the personal data ecosystem

The FTC calls for “privacy by design,” simplified choices and greater transparency.

The report includes indications that the FTC is concerned about comprehensive tracking — the sort of stuff that companies like Google and Facebook are moving toward — though that’s one of the less-developed recommendations. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz had previously called Google’s new unified privacy policy “a fairly binary and somewhat brutal choice” for consumers to make.

The FTC passed the report 3-1, with Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch dissenting for a few reasons, one of which was concern that the FTC is effectively mandating that Internet services will become “opt in” by design, even when that’s impractical or unnecessary. Again, that’s an important one for Google, Facebook and other Internet companies that seek to evolve along with the personal data they collect.

There are five main action items in the framework:

• Do Not Track: This is probably the furthest along. Browser vendors are now offering do-not-track options for consumers to limit data collection, the Digital Advertising Alliance is committed to respecting them, and standards bodies are working to standardize.
• Mobile: The FTC wants to make mobile privacy protections “short, effective and accessible to consumers on small screens.”
• Data Brokers: This is a bigger one. The FTC wants a centralized Web site where data brokers identify themselves and disclose how they collect data. It also supports Congress’s efforts to give consumers access to data about them held by brokers.
• Comprehensive Tracking: The FTC is concerned about ISPs, operating systems, browsers and social networks comprehensively tracking users’ online activities, but it won’t address this until a public workshop in the second half of this year.
• Enforcing Self-Regulatory Codes: The FTC said it will help enforce industry-specific codes of conduct.

People familiar with the FTC’s antitrust probe of Google independently confirmed the agency’s subpoena of Apple to AllThingsD, adding that it has sent subpoenas to other device manufacturers, as well.

News that the FTC has subpoenaed Apple for the details of its mobile-search deal with Google isn’t at all surprising. But it does indicate the breadth of the agency’s probe, and perhaps its quickening as well.

Apple declined comment on the matter.

And in 2012 — which also happens to be the 10th anniversary of the confab of tech and media titans — it’s already shaping up to be another fantastic event in terms of programming, with a lineup of onstage appearances that is sure to make some news.

There are many more very big names to come, but Walt Mossberg and I are pleased to introduce the first group of interviewees, which will give you a glimpse into the firepower we expect at D10 in late May. It is again being held in Rancho Palos Verdes, just south of Los Angeles.

The initial speakers we have confirmed so far include: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; serial entrepreneur Sean Parker, who will appear with Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek; Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus; Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz; LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman, who will appear with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner; and Skype CEO Tony Bates.

It’s hard to imagine someone we have wanted to have onstage more than Michael Bloomberg, a man of many talents and interests. He’s known worldwide as the 108th Mayor of the City of New York. First elected in November 2001 (and again in 2005 and 2009), he is also one of the most compelling politicians in the U.S. today.

But Bloomberg is also a pioneer in terms of the business of digital news and information technology, having built a huge and groundbreaking media company and information service. Bloomberg (the company) has 310,000 subscribers to its financial news and information service, and more than 15,000 employees worldwide.

There will be a lot to talk about with him, from the upcoming presidential election to the state of our government to the future of innovation, news and technology.

Also sure to be voluble is Sean Parker, the legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has been on the cutting edge of innumerable important digital trends of the recent decade. In 1999, Parker co-founded Napster, the controversial and industry-changing music service, at the age of 19.

He followed up with early contact information service Plaxo, and then shifted over to his critical involvement as founding president of Facebook in its early days as a start-up, an experience which was dramatized in the movie “The Social Network.” Parker continued to found and also invest in companies, from Causes to Spotify to his most recent, Airtime, a social video company that he is doing with his Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning.

Parker will be appearing onstage with Daniel Ek, another serial entrepreneur and technologist, who started his first company in 1997 at the age of 14. The Swedish native later co-founded online music phenom Spotify in 2006, with Martin Lorentzon.

The former CTO of Stardoll and founder of Advertigo leads a company that is changing the way music is delivered and consumed by fans, against a backdrop of intense change in the industry, succeeding even as a plethora of other services have stumbled.

Also a groundbreaker is Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus, yet another serial entrepreneur, whose latest effort in the online gaming arena has finally resulted in his biggest success. It recently went public, and now has a nearly $10 billion market cap.

Before founding Zynga in 2007, Pincus had already started three other companies: Push start-up Freeloader in 1995; automated tech-support company Support.com after that; and early social networking site Tribe.net in 2003.

(I met Pincus when he was at Freeloader in Washington, D.C., while writing a profile of him for the Washington Post, so I have enjoyed tracking his progress since then.)

Pincus is also an avid angel investor, with early stakes in Napster, Brightmail, Twitter and Facebook.

Reid Hoffman was another early investor in Facebook, along with many of Web 2.0’s most successful ventures. Well-known in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and VC, and recently dubbed the “start-up whisperer” by the New York Times (although I am not sure exactly what that means), he’s also chairman of LinkedIn, the business-networking service that also recently went public (at a $10 billion valuation, too).

He’ll appear with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who started out life in Hollywood, but soon made his way to Silicon Valley as a top exec at Yahoo. After running its media division, Weiner spent a short time at venture firms before going operational again at LinkedIn.

What it takes to build and maintain momentum as tech companies move into more mature stages, as well as how the social networking space evolves, are among the many topics on tap for the pair.

The evolution of a start-up phenom — in this case, Internet telephony service Skype — will be among the topics covered by Tony Bates, who is now a president at Microsoft, which bought it last year.

As such, he is responsible, says the software giant in its description of his job, “for overseeing the company’s direction, strategy and overall mission to become a global communications service that will eventually reach billions of users.”

That’s a tall order for Bates, who came to Skype from a top job at Cisco. Bates has deep roots (or maybe, routing?) in the guts of the Internet, having done backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI. The U.K. native also holds nine patents.

Lastly, given all the activity we expect will happen between government regulatory agencies and tech companies over the next few years, we felt it was key to bring in FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. He has been at the FTC as a commissioner since 2004, but was given the top job by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Among his priorities, according to his bio, is “promoting competition and innovation in the technology sector through law enforcement and policy initiatives; and protecting consumers’ privacy — especially while they are using the Internet.”

Uh-oh!

Leibowitz knows from regulation, having served as the Democratic chief counsel and staff director for the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee from 1997 to 2000, where he focused on competition policy and telecommunications matters, as well as a similar stint at the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism and Technology before that.

There will be a lot more speakers to come, of course. But, so far, we think D10 is off and running fast.

LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja has resigned.

The move comes as the company is facing major challenges in its effort to build a wholesale 4G cellular network. The FCC and the NTIA, a federal agency that oversees government and military spectrum use, recently ruled that LightSquared’s network would interfere with GPS and other devices.

Shortly afterward, investors sued Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners for allegedly squandering billions of dollars in its “all-in” investment in LightSquared.

Meanwhile, wireless rival Clearwire is seeing an opportunity with LightSquared faltering. Not only does the company have valuable holdings in spectrum, it is now working to build its own LTE network, with hopes of having 5,000 sites by the middle of next year, AllThingsD’s Ina Fried reports from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

In a blog post written by Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Internet Explorer, the software giant alleges that Google is using similar methods — though the actual bypass mechanism is different — to get around default privacy protections in Internet Explorer and track IE users with cookies.

By default, Microsoft says, Internet Explorer blocks third-party cookies, unless the site presents a “P3P Compact Policy Statement” indicating how the site will use the cookie and that ultimately the site won’t track the users.

“Technically, Google utilizes a nuance in the P3P specification that has the effect of bypassing user preferences about cookies … By sending this text, Google bypasses the cookie protection and enables its third-party cookies to be allowed rather than blocked,” the post reads.

Microsoft said it has contacted Google and asked them to commit to Microsoft’s standard privacy settings for browser users.

In the post, Microsoft also offered a Tracking Protection List that Internet Explorer 9 users can add as a protection, “in the event that Google continues this practice.”

Google has responded by saying that Microsoft has omitted important information in its blog post.

“Microsoft uses a ‘self-declaration’ protocol (P3P) dating from 2002 under which Microsoft asks websites to represent their privacy practices in machine-readable form,” Google’s statement reads. “It is well known — including by Microsoft — that it is impractical to comply with Microsoft’s request while providing modern web functionality. We have been open about our approach, as have many other websites.”

Google went on to point out that in 2010, a research report from Carnegie Mellon University found that more than 11,000 of 33,139 Web sites were not issuing valid P3P policies as requested by Microsoft.

“Today the Microsoft policy is widely non-operational,” Google said.

The Wall Street Journal reported Google’s bypass of Safari’s privacy settings late last week, and after being contacted by the Journal, Google disabled the code that had allowed it to track Safari users. Three U.S. lawmakers have since called on the FTC to investigate the search giant over the privacy gaffe.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/Si1very)

You might be surprised that what Ireland has to say about regulating Facebook privacy is terribly important — but it actually is. Because Facebook’s international headquarters are in Dublin, this local commission oversees Facebook’s compliance in all regions other than the U.S. and Canada.

Facebook agreed to make changes in time for a follow-up Irish Data Protection Commission audit in July 2012. As presented in a Facebook Europe blog post, they include:

• Creating additional notifications explaining photo tagging using facial recognition (which has been a particularly contentious feature in Europe)
• Reducing data retention and logging for people who are not logged into Facebook (so-called “logged-out cookies” and alleged “shadow profiles” of non-members have been another reason for recent outcry)
• Telling users more about how to control when their information is given to Facebook platform applications

As compared to Facebook’s recent settlement with the American Federal Trade Commission, the Irish audit seems to be about more up-to-date privacy issues (much of the FTC stuff dated back to 2009). The FTC settlement is also a longer-term arrangement, with Facebook agreeing to 20 years of privacy audits. And Mark Zuckerberg didn’t give Ireland a formal apology, admitting to making “a bunch of mistakes.”

(Image copyright Peter Gerken and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons license)

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Nothing is final — all that’s been decided is that the class action lawsuit can continue — but the judge did not seem friendly to Facebook’s advertising strategy.

A spokesman for Facebook said, “We are reviewing the decision and continue to believe that the case is without merit.”

Facebook’s business proposition is that ads are better when they are social, because we care about the products our friends endorse. The lawsuit is over a key type of social ad called a “Sponsored Story,” which is generated after a Facebook user clicks the “Like” button on a brand’s page and is shown to that user’s friends.

The plaintiffs in the case said that they clicked on “Like” buttons in order to “receive discounts on products, support social causes, or to see a humorous image.” They weren’t necessarily saying they endorsed a product or consented to be put in an ad.

In legal terms, Facebook allegedly violated their “right of publicity.”

(For background, using the “Like” button as an access gate may not have been the original intent of the feature, which was a replacement for users becoming a fan of a brand’s page. However, lots of brands now do it so they can do things like raise their “Like” count, maintain ongoing relationships with users, and spread Sponsored Stories. This is something Facebook presumably could crack down on.)

Facebook replied to the court that its users have consented to this kind of thing by agreeing to its Terms of Use. But Judge Lucy H. Koh agreed with the plaintiffs that Sponsored Stories didn’t exist when many of the users agreed to the Terms of Use, and Facebook didn’t ask them to review or renew when it added the opt-out feature.

(It’s possible that in the aftermath of the Facebook-FTC settlement, Facebook would have to be more careful about explaining and rolling out this kind of feature in the future.)

The plaintiffs want to be paid for their endorsements, citing public statements by Facebook execs about how effective the social ads are. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has said Sponsored Stories are twice as likely to be remembered as an ordinary ad, and three times as likely to inspire a user to buy something.

In her ruling, Koh denied 10 different ways Facebook tried to get the case dismissed. The only place Koh agreed with Facebook is that the plaintiffs can’t claim “unjust enrichment” as a cause of action — but that’s basically a technicality, because recent California case law says that’s no longer something you can claim.

FacebookFraley

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

That’s Carrier IQ’s claim, anyway.

Responding to a Washington Post report claiming that the company is the subject of an official FTC investigation, Carrier IQ said this is not the case. While it is meeting with federal regulators, the company says it is doing so proactively. It wasn’t summoned to Washington as part of a formal inquiry.

“This week CarrierIQ sought meetings with the FTC and FCC to educate the two agencies about the functionality of its software and answer any and all questions,” the company said in a statement given to AllThingsD. “Although Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-Chairman of the Bi-Partisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the practices of Carrier IQ, we are not aware of an official investigation into Carrier IQ at this time.”

In other words, there could be an official inquiry — the company just doesn’t know about it yet. And that may yet prove to be the case. The Washington Post says anonymous federal officials have confirmed the investigation, and the Post doesn’t often make such claims unless they’re bulletproof. So expect to hear more about this in the days ahead.

Related Posts on Carrier IQ:

• Exclusive Interview: Carrier IQ Gets Transparent About Its Mobile Monitoring
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• Carrier IQ Speaks: Our Software Monitors Service Messages, Ignores Other Data
• Apple: We Stopped Supporting Carrier IQ With iOS 5
• RIM, HTC, Google on Carrier IQ: Blame the Carriers
• Carrier IQ Improves My Wireless Service by Logging My Keystrokes? Please Explain.

Full Carrier IQ Coverage »

Way back in September, Facebook told the world it was launching two major changes to its service: A revision of user profiles, called Timeline, that would make them more substantive and beautiful records of people’s lives; and “Open Graph” tools for developers to automatically share activity by logged-in Facebook users to their Timelines and friends.

Facebook didn’t give a firm date for the new launches, though it indicated they would be ready soon. “We’re going to roll [Timeline] out widely over the next few weeks as we polish all the edges,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told developers and press attendees in his keynote at f8 on Sept. 22.

But we’re already in December, and those tools have yet to arrive. Why the delay?

“We wanted to let developers build on the platform and to give users more time to get used to the idea of change coming,” a Facebook spokeswoman told AllThingsD, noting that Facebook has been criticized in the past for rolling out products in a hurry. Would she offer a launch date, or even an estimate? Nope.

Developers told AllThingsD that they are eager and ready to launch their Open Graph tools, but that Facebook keeps pushing its dates back. In recent developer communications, Facebook’s promises to launch “before the end of the year” have segued to January, the developers said.

Developers also said they’re worried that Facebook has told them it will likely run a staged rollout, where all users might not receive access at the same time, and where users would have seven days to review their Timeline before publishing it.

Those various states of deployment could be a chafe for app makers to support simultaneously, and could potentially confuse users.

At f8 in September, Zuckerberg had promised that Facebook would soon be filled with a cornucopia of verbs — like “watch,” “listen,” “read,” “cook,” “run,” “throw sheep,” etc. — building on the more static “people,” “places,” “things” and other nouns the site had supported in the past.

He said users could look forward to automatically sharing and collecting records of their culinary and athletic adventures through social cooking and social running apps, for example. Facebook also named a list of developers who had already agreed to create Open Graph applications, including Blockbuster, Flipboard and Mashable.

But only a chosen few — including Spotify, Rdio, the Guardian, the Washington Post and Netflix (though the social version of Netflix is not available in the U.S. yet) — got to launch in September; to my knowledge, no other partners or any other developers have since been allowed to release their “frictionless sharing” apps to the masses.

Meanwhile, more than a million Facebook users are already trying Timeline through a preview version for developers.

Months later, it seems rather odd that some users have an entirely different Facebook aesthetic. Personally, as a user with many connections in the tech industry who have activated their Timelines, when I happen on an older-style profile, with no glossy cover photo, the layout feels dated.

Here are some of the reasons Facebook, developers and conspiracy theorists gave for the delays:

• From the Facebook camp, we hear of efforts to rewrite Timeline to make it faster, to sync up mobile versions, and to fully ensure the product is ready. There’s also some chatter of internal conflict over the Timeline concept.
• Based on my own observations, early response to beta versions of the new features has been mixed. The new real-time Ticker, built to show Open Graph activity and every other action taken on Facebook as a sidebar on the site’s main page, was initially unpopular with many users. Anecdotally, I’ve seen very few Timeline beta users scan in their baby photos to tell the backstory of their lives. And new automated sharing features — like Spotify and especially the social news reader apps — can be annoying.
• There are also some external factors. A small company called Timelines, with trademarks on its brand, sued Facebook right after f8. A judge denied Timelines a temporary restraining order against Facebook, but said he would reconsider if Facebook opens Timeline to a larger audience. As of Oct. 8, 1.3 million people were using the Timeline beta, and tens of thousands were signing up per day, according to court documents. Also, Facebook recently agreed to settle with the FTC over privacy complaints. While the settlement specifically prohibits Facebook from retroactively changing any user privacy settings, it’s not as explicit about how Facebook must introduce privacy features for new products. Given that Facebook is likely to go public soon, people at the company are probably especially interested in surviving a major launch with as little privacy backlash as possible.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Of the 25 posts Zuckerberg has published on Facebook’s corporate blog in the past five years — including today’s acknowledging a long-term privacy settlement with the FTC — I count 10 that were written to address complaints. (The rest are his personal celebrations of milestones and new products.)

Here’s a trip down memory lane, looking back at Zuckerberg’s apologies for upsetting users — usually about privacy.

There are some common themes. Zuckerberg almost always tells users that change is hard, often referring back to the early days of Facebook when it had barely any of the features people know and love today. He says sharing and a more open and connected world are good, and often he says he appreciates all the feedback.

Most of all, Zuckerberg seems to take pride in offering an explicit, earnest apology, but doesn’t actually admit he was wrong, just that he’s sorry for how things were rolled out or perceived.

First up, this is a real gem. On August 29, 2006, Zuckerberg made his first Facebook company blog post. It was a pre-apology, warning users of upcoming changes they might not like — I think he was referring to the news feed and opening the site to the general public.

When we’ve made changes in the past, a lot of people have gotten upset and emailed in asking us to change the site back. Change can be disorienting, but we do it because we’re sure it makes the site better.

The next week, users did in fact go bonkers over the introduction of Facebook’s news feed. Zuckerberg famously wrote, “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.”

We didn’t take away any privacy options. [Your privacy options remain the same.] The privacy rules haven’t changed. None of your information is visible to anyone who couldn’t see it before the changes.

Later, Zuckerberg dropped the condescension and admitted “we really messed this one up,” both in messaging and controls for the news feed feature.

Then a year went by without a Zuckerberg blog post. Until…

“Thoughts on Beacon.” This was the infamous feature that automatically shared users’ activities on other Web sites back on Facebook. (The concept has made a return in Facebook’s new frictionless sharing, which is to be rolled out more fully soon.) Zuckerberg wrote:

We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

After that, Facebook started experimenting with how it rolled out new products. In some cases it picks a group of users to try something first, in others it allows any user to opt in to try something new. Some products go out to every user within the course of a day. There doesn’t really seem to be a standard approach.

People kept complaining — as in the case of the 2008 redesign that made the Facebook news feed a chronological list like Twitter. This wasn’t a privacy uproar but instead an interface change many users didn’t like. Zuckerberg replied it would be difficult for Facebook to support both recent and relevant versions of the news feed (something the site later introduced, then took away, and recently brought back again, by the way).

Then, in early 2009, controversy erupted over changes to Facebook’s terms of use and who owned users’ information. The ensuing discussion merited three Zuckerberg posts.

At the end of that year Facebook made some major revisions to its privacy settings that set off widespread criticism. By this time Facebook privacy was a major mainstream media story.

Facebook eventually responded in May 2010 with a privacy setting overhaul. This time, Zuckerberg went to the Washington Post op-ed page to justify the changes in addition to his usual blog post. He wrote:

Facebook has been growing quickly. It has become a community of more than 400 million people in just a few years. It’s a challenge to keep that many people satisfied over time, so we move quickly to serve that community with new ways to connect with the social Web and each other. Sometimes we move too fast — and after listening to recent concerns, we’re responding.

“Sometimes we move too fast” seemed more of a brushoff than a real apology. “It’s a comment on the execution of a policy, not on the policy itself,” John Paczkowski wrote.

That brings us to the present day, where we have what turns out to be a textbook Zuckerberg apology acknowledging the FTC privacy settlement. This time, Zuckerberg tries to argue that Facebook has done more good than harm on privacy throughout its existence.

“I founded Facebook on the idea that people want to share and connect with people in their lives, but to do this everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times,” he starts. “Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information. That said, I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

The settlement, which is not particularly punitive and comes years after some of the incidents in question, shames Facebook for promising users that their information was kept private while it was in fact shared with advertisers and outside applications that the users or their friends installed. The decision is not yet final but has already been unanimously passed into a public comment period by the commission.

Facebook’s punishment is in line with what its competitors Twitter and Google have already agreed to: Clearer privacy policies that are audited every two years for the next 20 years.

Facebook is required to get users’ consent before it makes privacy changes and to do specific things like make content from deleted users’ profiles unavailable after 30 days. If it messes any of that up, it will be fined $16,000 per violation per day.

The settlement could mark a shift in the way Facebook releases new products, as it often require users to actively opt out of new offerings if they don’t want to be included.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a long blog post today admitting to “a bunch of mistakes” but also asserting that Facebook has been a leader on online privacy.

“Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information,” he said.

Zuckerberg said he’d also appointed two new Chief Privacy Officers — Erin Egan for policy and Michael Richter for products — to demonstrate a higher commitment to privacy going forward.

Many of the FTC’s complaints date back to changes Facebook had made over the past two years and subsequently addressed after public criticism. Zuckerberg contended that in the meantime Facebook has also proactively improved user privacy with tools like item-by-item privacy controls.

But it has also released new features and tools that have ruffled privacy feathers (and perhaps worse), like the new “frictionless” sharing, and users have discovered other issues such as cookies that, for a time, tracked people even after they logged out of Facebook.

The FTC settlement isn’t a judgment over whether Facebook broke the law. It also doesn’t contend that Facebook knew that it was providing advertisers with user data or that advertisers did anything nefarious with Facebook user data.

Here are the complaints:

• In December 2009, Facebook changed its website so certain information that users may have designated as private – such as their Friends List – was made public. They didn’t warn users that this change was coming, or get their approval in advance.
• Facebook represented that third-party apps that users’ installed would have access only to user information that they needed to operate. In fact, the apps could access nearly all of users’ personal data – data the apps didn’t need.
• Facebook told users they could restrict sharing of data to limited audiences – for example with “Friends Only.” In fact, selecting “Friends Only” did not prevent their information from being shared with third-party applications their friends used.
• Facebook had a “Verified Apps” program & claimed it certified the security of participating apps. It didn’t.
• Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers. It did.
• Facebook claimed that when users deactivated or deleted their accounts, their photos and videos would be inaccessible. But Facebook allowed access to the content, even after users had deactivated or deleted their accounts.
• Facebook claimed that it complied with the U.S.- EU Safe Harbor Framework that governs data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union. It didn’t.

And here are the remedies:

Specifically, under the proposed settlement, Facebook is:

• barred from making misrepresentations about the privacy or security of consumers’ personal information;
• required to obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before enacting changes that override their privacy preferences;
• required to prevent anyone from accessing a user’s material no more than 30 days after the user has deleted his or her account;
• required to establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program designed to address privacy risks associated with the development and management of new and existing products and services, and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of consumers’ information; and
• required, within 180 days, and every two years after that for the next 20 years, to obtain independent, third-party audits certifying that it has a privacy program in place that meets or exceeds the requirements of the FTC order, and to ensure that the privacy of consumers’ information is protected.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

The proposed settlement — which is awaiting final approval from the agency commissioners — would require Facebook to obtain “express affirmative consent” if Facebook makes “material retroactive changes,” some of the people said.

The agreement would require Facebook to submit to independent privacy audits for 20 years, the people said. Google Inc. agreed to similar audits in March, when it settled FTC charges of falsely representing how it would use personal information.

A spokeswoman for the FTC declined to comment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Think about the federal government’s blocking of the $39 billion AT&T and T-Mobile merger and you might want to reread Google’s blog today, penned in reaction to the news that the Justice Department is making a second request for information about its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

“This is pretty routine,” wrote Google’s Motorola integration exec Dennis Woodside. “We’ve gotten these kind of requests before.”

Maybe Google has (and it has with other purchases) — but in actuality, only four percent of transactions got such a follow-up request from regulators.

To be fair, it is much more common in high-profile, big-money deals like this one, but it means a longer closing period and more uncertainty around the Android mobile ecosystem until it’s done.

Still, Google has good reason to be patient. Despite tough criticism and brutal lobbying, it won approval from Justice for its $700 million deal to buy flight data service ITA Software in April, after nine months of scrutiny and a number of conditions imposed.

And the search giant waited out an intense six-month Federal Trade Commission approval process last year for its $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising start-up AdMob. It had an even harder time with the FTC’s nod of its 2007 DoubleClick purchase for $3.1 billion.

One that it lost — an obvious bridge too far that I dubbed Yahoogle — was Google’s 2008 effort to meld a troubling partnership with Yahoo in search advertising.

So, we’ll see soon enough which way D.C. — which just had Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt up to the Senate for an antitrust hearing chit-chat — will go.

Until then, here’s Woodside’s whole blog:

An update on our Motorola acquisition

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 5:30 PM ET

Posted by Dennis Woodside, SVP Google

Since we announced our plans to acquire Motorola Mobility, we’ve been excited about the positive reaction to the proposed deal — particularly from our partners who have told us that they’re enthusiastic about our defense of the Android ecosystem.

And as David Drummond said when we announced our plans in August, we’re confident that this deal will be approved. We believe very strongly this is a pro-competitive transaction that is good for Motorola Mobility, good for consumers, and good for our partners.

That said, we know that close scrutiny is part of the process and we’ve been talking to the U.S. Department of Justice over the past few weeks. Today we received what is called a “second request,” which means that the DOJ is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal. (This is pretty routine; we’ve gotten these kind of requests before.)

While this means we won’t be closing right away, we’re confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

The FTC is proposing changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that include requiring parental consent for websites to collect a broader range of information about children under age 13, including location. They also would require parental permission for a website to use tracking software, known as cookies, to build a profile about a child and monitor children’s online activities for purposes such as targeting ads.

The move marks a major action by federal regulators to bolster privacy protections for Internet users.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

To say that Google is going to face some opposition to its proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility is what you might call a bit of an understatement.

First of all, the deal will give a lot of fresh meat to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which is already investigating several aspects of Google’s business, including its Android mobile operating system business. As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, investigators from the FTC and from the offices of several state attorneys general have been exploring whether or not Google prevents phone manufacturers who become Android partners from using the smartphone operating systems of other companies.

If such were the case, the party most likely to suffer would be Microsoft, whose Windows Mobile operating system is, like Android, widely offered to smartphone manufacturers. The other one that comes to mind is Hewlett-Packard, which is in talks with several companies about licensing its webOS software, which came from Palm, the handheld-making company it acquired last year.

The FTC’s investigation, said to have begun in June, is still in its early stages and may not result in a lawsuit. But you can bet that this proposed acquisition will only quicken the FTC’s pace.

The offices of several state attorneys general will also want to weigh in. The AGs in New York, California, Ohio and Texas have all ramped up inquiries into Google’s dominance of the search business.

Also in the mix is the European Commission. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Google faces no fewer than nine separate antitrust complaints in Europe. Most of those complaints have to do with Google’s search business, but at least one of them came from Microsoft, which complained in March that Google blocks competition in the Web search business.

Google is clearly sharpening its arguments for the coming fight. In the company’s official blog post announcing the deal, CEO Larry Page said Google will continue to work with other hardware companies on Android. The company says it works with 39 different manufacturers that build Android devices. But he also renewed a recent Google complaint that other companies are banding together to hurt Android by accumulating a pool of patents owned by Novell. That complaint touched off a war of words between Google and Microsoft.

In the blog post, Page insists that owning Motorola will not only give Android a kick, but will “enhance competition” and offer consumers “greater choice.” It will, of course, be interesting to see how that argument shapes up. The biggest question will focus on whether or not a Google-owned Motorola will get preferential access to new versions of Android before other manufacturers. Whatever happens, it’s going to take Google some time to get this deal done, and if it does get approved, you can expect some significant regulatory concessions.

Related posts

• Google: We’re Spending $12.5 Billion on Motorola to ‘Protect’ Android
• Motoogle: BOOM! The Mobile Business Just Got Completely Blown Up
• Google’s Motorola Deal Will Spur Antitrust Regulators to Action
• Watch Google Android Kingpin — and Motorola Acquirer — Andy Rubin Unplugged (Video)
• Defense Spending: Google Arms Itself With Moto Patents
• Is Google’s Motorola Deal the Break That Windows Phone Needed?
• Should Google Keep Motorola’s Patents and Sell Off the Hardware Business?
• Motorola Could Get Google Closer to Your Living Room — If the Cable Guys Play Along
• U.S. Carriers Silent on Motoroogle, but France Telecom Gives It a Thumbs Up
• Google-Motorola Deal Includes $2.5 Billion Reverse Termination Fee
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The company confirmed in a regulatory filing that it has indeed received a subpoena from the Federal Trade Commission. In a blog post, Google laid out how it sees things.

“At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first,” the company said in the post, written by Amit Singhal, one of the key creators of Google’s search business. “We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible — and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away.”

Singhal notes that Google is aware that its success would lead to greater scrutiny, but argues that everything it has done has been for the benefit of users, rather than to reduce competition. Singhal promises the company will aid in the inquiry.

“It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand,” he said. “Since the beginning, we have been guided by the idea that, if we focus on the user, all else will follow.”

It’s worth a read, as I suspect this is a topic we are going to be hearing a ton about in the coming months.

Here’s the full blog post:

At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first. We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible — and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. Still, we recognize that our success has led to greater scrutiny. Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business. We respect the FTC’s process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services.

It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand. Since the beginning, we have been guided by the idea that, if we focus on the user, all else will follow. No matter what you’re looking for — buying a movie ticket, finding the best burger nearby, or watching a royal wedding — we want to get you the information you want as quickly as possible. Sometimes the best result is a link to another website. Other times it’s a news article, sports score, stock quote, a video or a map.

Instant answers. New sources of knowledge. Powerful tools — all for free. In just 13 years we’ve built a model that has changed the way people find answers and helped businesses both large and small create jobs and connect with new customers.

Search helps you go anywhere and discover anything, on an open Internet. Using Google is a choice — and there are lots of other choices available to you for getting information: other general-interest search engines, specialized search engines, direct navigation to websites, mobile applications, social networks, and more.

Because of the many choices available to you, we work constantly on making search better, and will continue to follow the principles that have guided us from the beginning:

• Do what’s best for the user. We make hundreds of changes to our algorithms every year to improve your search experience. Not every website can come out at the top of the page, or even appear on the first page of our search results.

• Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. Today, when you type “weather in Chicago” or “how many feet in a mile” into our search box, you get the answers directly — often before you hit “enter.” And we’re always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions just as clearly and quickly. Advertisements offer useful information, too, which is why we also work hard to ensure that our ads are relevant to you.
• Label advertisements clearly. Google always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and new types of content, we will continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn’t.
• Be transparent. We share more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine, through our Webmaster Central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube. We also give advertisers detailed information about the ad auction and tips to improve their ad quality scores. We’ve recently introduced even more transparency tools, announcing a major change to our algorithm, providing more notice when a website is demoted due to spam violations, and giving advertisers new information about ads that break our rules.
• Loyalty, not lock-in. We firmly believe you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you. We want you to stay with us because we’re innovating and making our products better — not because you’re locked in.

These are the principles that guide us, and we know they’ll stand up to scrutiny. We’re committed to giving you choices, ensuring that businesses can grow and create jobs, and, ultimately, fostering an Internet that benefits us all.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

We got a reminder of that today, when Google settled Federal Trade Commission privacy violation charges in connection with the service, which tried to build a social network out of users’ Gmail contacts. The problem — lots of people have no interest in making their e-mail social.

The settlement doesn’t seem to involve much more than a statement of public contrition on Google’s part, and a promise not screw up again, backed up by a commitment to two decades of privacy audits.

Still, it’s something — or, if you ask the FTC, a lot: “This is a tough settlement that ensures that Google will honor its commitments to consumers and build strong privacy protections into all of its operations,” says FTC chair Jon Leibowitz.

Google’s apology, meanwhile, is bit more muted. “We don’t always get everything right,” the search giant announced on its blog. “The launch of Google Buzz fell short of our usual standards for transparency and user control—letting our users and Google down…We’d like to apologize again for the mistakes we made with Buzz. While today’s announcement thankfully put this incident behind us, we are 100 percent focused on ensuring that our new privacy procedures effectively protect the interests of all our users going forward.”