Google

Google kills Latitude

> Google Latitude will be retired on August 9th, 2013. Products being retired include Google Latitude in Google Maps for Android, Latitude for iPhone, the Latitude API, the public badge, the iGoogle Gadget, and the Latitude website at maps.google.com/latitude.

What Gmail knows about you

> When Google hands over e-mail records to the government, it includes basic envelope information, or metadata, that reveals the names and e-mail addresses of senders and recipients in your account. The feds can then mine that information for patterns that might be useful in a law-enforcement investigation.

There is no such thing as privacy on the Internet.

States criticize Google for selling ads for illegal products

> In a letter sent to Google, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt complained about Google’s practice of placing before some YouTube videos advertisements for pharmacies willing to sell percocet and oxycontin without a prescription.

I imagine illegal products pay a high price for Google ads. It should be interesting to see how Google squirms out of this one.

Google’s PRISM denial

> First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

Given the way Google lies, this could be seen as confirmation of PRISM.

Google lies? Say it ain’t so

Apple lawyer Orin Snyder questioning Thomas Turvey, Google’s director of strategic partnerships in the e-book trial:

> Things went downhill from there. Under Snyder’s questioning, Turvey acknowledged that he couldn’t remember a single name of any of the publishing executives who had told him Apple was the reason the publishers were switching their business model. He conceded that the publisher’s move to the agency system was important to Google’s own business, yet Turvey couldn’t remember any details about the conversations with publishers. By the end of the interview Turvey had gone from saying the publishers had told him directly, to saying they had merely told people on his team, to finally saying the publishers had “likely” told someone on his team.

Oh Google.