Sony fined in UK over PlayStation cyber-attack

British regulators fined Sony 250,000 pounds ($396,100) on Thursday for having insufficient security measures to prevent a cyber-attack on its PlayStation Network.
The attack in April 2011 targeted credit card information through Sony's PlayStation Network and put millions of users' personal information - including names, addresses, birth dates and account passwords at risk.
Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said Thursday that security measures in place at the time "were simply not good enough." It said the attack could have been prevented if software had been up to date, while passwords were also not secure.
David Smith, deputy commissioner and director of data protection, acknowledged that the fine for a "serious breach of the Data Protection Act" was "clearly substantial" but said that the office makes "no apologies" for that.
"There's no disguising that this is a business that should have known better," he said in a statement. "It is a company that trades on its technical expertise, and there's no doubt in my mind that they had access to both the technical knowledge and the resources to keep this information safe."
Smith called the case "one of the most serious ever reported" to the data regulator.

Google to roll out revamped Image Search

Google has redesigned its image search, Google Images, to offer a better and more streamlined search experience.
The search giant informed through a blog post that the new interface, which is being gradually rolled out to all users, will display image search results within an inline panel, and users will be able to flip through images displayed on the results page by using their keyboard.
In contrast to the current version, where users are taken to a separate page to preview the image with an iframe on the side that displays the name of the site, information about the size and resolution and type, the revamped image search listing will display detailed information about the image, including metadata, right underneath its preview on the results page.
Details such as the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it originates from, and the image size will be displayed prominently next to the image, as per Google. Users will be able to browse other search listings by scrolling down and selecting another image.
It appears that the new version, which is a bit similar to Google's Image search on tablets, might have been designed keeping in consideration touchscreen laptops, desktops and hybrid devices.
Google has also made changes through which it claims that sites hosting the images will see an increase in average click-through rates. The new search interface will allow users to click on the domain name (unlike the current interface), and the listing will also feature a clickable button to visit the page hosting the image, and another button to view the image.
Google says that the changes will speed up the experience for users, reduce the load on the source website's servers, and improve accuracy of metrics like pageviews for websites.

Governments world over fishing for more user data from Google

Google is being pulled into an increasing number of police and government investigations around the world as authorities seek to learn more about the people who use its Internet search engine, email and other services.
The latest snapshot of law enforcement agencies' efforts to extract personal information from Google emerged in a Wednesday report from the company.
Governments presented Google with 21,389 requests for information on 33,634 of its users during the last six months of 2012. The number of requests was up 17 percent from a year earlier.
Authorities in the U.S. delivered nearly 8,438 of the requests, representing nearly 40 percent of the worldwide total. The U.S. volume was one-third higher than in the same period the previous year.
Subpoenas accounted for 68 percent of U.S. requests, followed by search warrants at 22 percent. A mix of court orders and other legal demands made up the remaining U.S. requests for user information from Google.
India generated the second highest number of user requests during the final half of last year at 2,431, a 10 percent increase from the previous year.
Since 2010, Google Inc. has been disclosing the total number of subpoenas, search warrants and other legal requests that it receives.
The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., said it plans to release a report within the next few months on the number of government demands it receives to remove videos, blog entries and other content from its services. That data also will cover the July-December period.

Symantec CEO plans layoffs, no asset sales

Symantec Corp, which completed a strategic review in January, plans to lay off a significant number of managers and reorganize internally into 10 main business areas, but has decided not to sell off major assets for now.
Chief Executive Officer Steve Bennett told Reuters in an exclusive interview that Janice Chaffin, consumer business president, will leave the company as part of the restructuring, which will usher in 10 product-focused divisions including security, cloud and backup software.
Bennett, brought onboard last year with a mandate to turn around the faltering security software specialist, also said the company will pay out its first-ever dividend starting next quarter, targeting a 2.5 percent yield based on its January 22 closing price of $20.86.
"We looked at five different scenarios and modeled them all and talked about them all," Bennett said in an exclusive interview. They included divesting specific units among Symantec's portfolio such as a highly profitable consumer anti-virus business and a sluggish storage management and backup software unit.
"We can create a lot more value by running the company," Bennett told Reuters in the interview ahead of a meeting with analysts on Wednesday afternoon.
The former head of Intuit Inc and a General Electric veteran would not say how many managers would be laid off, but managers at his company on average have fewer than five people reporting to them among the comany's 20,000 employees. That is about half as many as managers at a typical company, he noted.
Symantec expects $275 million in severance payments as a result of the layoffs, which will be conducted through June.
Bennett replaced Enrique Salem as CEO in July and vowed to turn around Symantec, saying he would apply lessons he learned from the GE corporate playbook during the more than two decades he managed a variety of the industrial conglomerate's businesses.
Details of the company's restructuring came the same day Symantec reported quarterly earnings that beat expectations and said it was splitting the chief executive and chairman jobs.
The company's shares were holding steady at $21.66 in after-hours trade, from a close of $21.46 on the Nasdaq.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

EU says Google must change search results presentation - report

Google will be forced to change the way its search results are presented in Europe or face antitrust charges for "diverting traffic" to its own services, The Financial Times reported the European Union's antitrust chief as saying.
The EU's competition commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, told the newspaper in an interview published on Friday that he intends to prevent Google from allegedly distorting choices for consumers and taking business from rivals.
"We are still investigating, but my conviction is are diverting traffic," the newspaper quoted him as saying, referring to Google's preferential treatment of its own vertical search services.
"They are monetizing this kind of business, the strong position they have in the general search market and this is not only a dominant position, I think I fear there is an abuse of this dominant position," he said.
The EU issued Google an ultimatum on December 18, giving it a month to come up with detailed proposals to resolved a two-year investigation into complaints that it used its power to block rivals such as Microsoft.
Google has been the center of a two-year investigation by the EU based on complaints that Google unfairly favored its services over its rivals in search results and that it may have copied material from travel and restaurant websites without permission.
Almunia told the newspaper that his concern was "the way they present their own services" and that he was "not discussing the algorithm" the top-secret formula behind Google's search engine.
The FT said this suggested one facet of the solution would be labeling when Google's in-house services such as shopping comparison information - are artificially given higher billing than rivals, although other changes would likely apply to how Google services are displayed within general search engines.
He also said that while Google showed a more constructive approach at a meeting in December, he warned that he would be "obliged" to issue formal charges if its proposal was unsatisfactory.
Google spokesman Al Verney said: "We continue to work cooperatively with the commission."
Divergence from US
Almunia's spokesman confirmed the quotes in the FT but said they did not add a new position on behalf of the European Commission.
"He was highlighting that we think the preferential treatment may lead to diversion of traffic, which we consider anticompetitive. That's a basic concern we have as we explained last May," the spokesman, Antoine Colombani, told Reuters.
The EU's stance on Google marks a sharply different approach to that of U.S regulators, who last week ended their investigation into the company and concluded that it had not manipulated its Web search results to hurt rivals, a verdict which disappointed its rivals.
Almunia told the FT that the EU's rare divergence with the U.S. was due to the differing legal standards for abuse of dominance, as well as Google's stronger position in Europe where it handles more than 90 percent of searches.
He also dismissed the idea that an intervention would cause a rift with the US and trigger outrage at a European meddling with a US corporate giant.
He said, "I have never received a single message coming from the other side of the Atlantic saying, 'hey, what are you doing?' Everyone knows this is global."
Almunia said a separate a less advanced probe into Google's Android's operating system will remain open and outside the settlement.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google Earth helps put North Korea gulag system on map

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's visit to North Korea this week has been met with sharp criticism and low expectations, but the global Internet search giant indirectly is helping to make history by revealing one of the reclusive country's darkest secrets, say human rights activists.
Google Earth, the company's popular satellite imagery product, might be the last thing Schmidt will want to showcase for his hosts, because it presents a bird's eye view of many things that secretive North Korea wants to keep hidden.
Human rights activists and bloggers have taken a Google program used mostly for recreation, education and marketing and applied it to map a vast system of dozens of prison camps that span North Korea, a country slightly smaller in area than Greece and home to 23 million people.
As many as 250,000 political prisoners and their families toil on starvation rations in the mostly remote mountain camps, according to estimates by international human rights groups.
Schmidt's trip to Pyongyang with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has been criticized by the U.S. State Department as ill-timed - coming weeks after North Korea conducted a rocket launch in violation of U.N. Security Council sanctions.
Rights activists are skeptical that celebrity visits to Pyongyang can produce meaningful results, but they are inclined to give Google credit for living up to its informal motto of "Don't Be Evil" when it comes to how Google Earth sheds light on North Korea.
"What Eric Schmidt does or does not do in Pyongyang will probably be forgotten in a few weeks," said Joshua Stanton, a Washington lawyer who devotes his spare time to blogging and activism on North Korea human rights.
"The good that Google has done, however inadvertently, by helping people tell the truth about North Korea, will probably be reflected in the history of the country one day," he said.
Google has characterized Schmidt's trip as "personal" travel, and Schmidt did not respond to requests for comment before leaving for Pyongyang. The company declined to comment on the use of Google Earth in monitoring North Korea.
Richardson said last week he hoped to win the release of Kenneth Bae, a U.S. tour guide detained in the North since November.
Hidden gulag no longer so hidden
Stanton's blog http://freekorea.us/ carries satellite images from Google Earth and analysis of the features of six political prisoner camps - three of which he is credited with playing a role in confirming or identifying.
The blogger identifies images of gates and guard houses, and in some cases coal mines and crude burial grounds - corroborated through the work of experts and interviews with defectors from North Korea who lived or worked in the camps.
"The largest of the camps, if you don't know what you're looking at, look like towns or villages, and I suspect they are designed that way to fit into the countryside," said Stanton, whose readers trade tips on the camps and their landmarks.
Stanton, who became interested in North Korea while serving in the U.S. military in South Korea at the height of a deadly late-1990s famine in the North, built on the pioneering work of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a U.S. non-governmental organization which unveiled the camps in a 2003 book, "The Hidden Gulag."
When a second edition of "The Hidden Gulag" came out in 2012, Google Earth received prominent acknowledgement.
"The dramatically improved, higher resolution satellite imagery now available through Google Earth allows the former prisoners to identify their former barracks and houses, their former execution grounds, and other landmarks in the camps," said the study.
"Hidden Gulag" also credited Stanton and a second blogger, Curtis Melvin, whose blog http://www.nkeconwatch.com/ has been at the forefront of using Google Earth to catalog not only prison camps but also ordinary facilities like schools, factories and train stations.
"It opens up areas of North Korea that no foreigners are allowed to see at all," said Melvin, who downloads the free program available to the general public.
Imagery makes denials implausible
Melvin, an economist with an unfinished doctoral dissertation on North Korea's monetary system, verifies landmarks he finds on Google Earth by studying maps and documents and by sitting down in front of his computer in Virginia with North Koreans.
"I've also been watching North Korean television literally every day for about three years, so I have a list of thousands of names (of places) I can ask them specific questions about," he said of his interviews with defectors from North Korea.
North Korean defector Kim Sung Min, who escaped the country in 1997 by jumping off a train that was taking him to be executed, "told me the name of the train station where he jumped, and I pulled it up immediately and we were able to trace his actual escape path out of North Korea," said Melvin.
Some of Google Earth's satellite imagery comes from DigitalGlobe, a 20-year-old Colorado firm that, under its previous name, EarthWatch Incorporated, was the first outfit to get a U.S. government license to gather and sell satellite imagery commercially.
The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea receives imagery and analysis pro bono in a project with DigitalGlobe Inc, which has a record of supporting humanitarian causes, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the committee.
According to satellite technicians, the imagery available directly from DigitalGlobe is of finer resolution and is updated more frequently than the versions carried for free on Google Earth.
"Satellite imagery readily available through Google Earth has certainly enabled human rights experts to decisively confirm that these facilities do exist, despite the fact that the North Korean regime denies their existence," Scarlatoiu said.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Chinese man found guilty of selling pirated software worth $100 million

Xiang Li was proud of his growing business, his lawyer said.
From his home in central China, he prowled the Internet for sophisticated stolen American industrial software - products retailing for an average of $181,000 - and resold them to black market buyers in 61 countries from 2008 to 2011.
But in 2010 when employees of a Pennsylvania company discovered counterfeit copies of their six-figure Satellite Tool Kit software offered on Li's website for a fraction of the retail price, they alerted U.S. Homeland Security agents, who launched an undercover investigation.
Agents combed through 25,000 of Li's emails and found that he was selling defense, space, environmental and engineering software stolen from 200 U.S. companies. According to the agents' calculations, the retail value of the stolen software Li sold exceeded $100 million.
The sting climaxed in June 2011 with Li's arrest on the Pacific island of Saipan, an American territory near Guam, and on Tuesday senior U.S. officials said that the case represents one of their most significant criminal copyright investigations.
"This was big-time crime, $100 million in loss revenue," said John Morton, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said at a news conference on Tuesday.
"This is organized crime pure and simple."
Morton said U.S. businesses cannot be expected to invest millions of dollars to develop new major software and defense programs, if criminals are able to easily circumvent the protections.
"American jobs, innovations and technology are lost in the process," Morton said. There is no evidence that the Chinese government played any role in Li's operation, Morton added.
Originally charged with 46 counts, Li struck an agreement with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty Monday to single counts of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright violations and wire fraud.
"What I did was wrong and illegal and I want to say I'm sorry," Li, 36 of Chengdu, told the judge during Monday's hearing at the federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. The Chinese citizen spoke through an interpreter.
U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark set sentencing for May 3. The primary issue at that hearing is likely to be the losses encountered by the victim companies. While prosecutors put that value at $100 million, Li intends to argue that it was considerably less. The judge will use the loss value to help calculate the sentence, which is likely to fall between two and ten years.
LEE lured to US territory
At one point, Li's websites, including www.Crack99.com, contained more than 2,000 pirated software titles, prosecutors said. Victims in the case included Microsoft, Oracle, Rockwell Automation, Agilent Technolgoies, Siemens, Delcam, Altera Corp and SAP. Li was neither a hacker nor a cracker, but hackers and crackers were essential to his enterprise. A hacker steals a computer software program; a cracker circumvents the passwords that protect the program from access to anyone who hasn't paid the retail price for the product.
Li trolled black market Internet forums in search of hacked software, and then found people with the know-how to crack the passwords, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Hall said. He then simply advertised them for sale on his websites. Li transferred the pirated programs to customers by sending compressed files via Gmail, or sent them hyperlinks to download servers.
Li also followed-up with customers by email, helping them resolve password access issues. "He even helped the undercover agents with trouble-shooting," Hall said.
"He was pretty proud of himself," his lawyer, Mingli Chen, said after the court hearing. "He did not realize it was such a big crime."
The Li case involves sophisticated business software, not entertainment software, and thus small quantities of high-priced products. He sold just 550 illicit programs in three years, but - using the government's calculations - the average retail value of each product sold was $181,000.
The retail value ranged from several hundred dollars to more than $1 million, officials said. Li sold them online for as little as $20 to $1,200, according to government court filings.
"Li had contacts around the world, but perhaps most distressingly many in the United States," said U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly III. "You can do a lot of damage selling some of these materials."
Two Americans have pleaded guilty to buying stolen software products were Li's largest U.S. customers, Oberly said. Cosburn Wedderburn, who was a NASA engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland., bought 12 cracked software program.
The undercover operation against Li was carried out over 18 months by agents from Homeland Security, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and NASA's Inspector General's office.
For several thousand dollars, the U.S. agents made at least five purchases from Li of software worth $150,000 at retail.
These included pirated versions of the Satellite Tool Kit by Analytical Graphics Inc. of Exton, Pennsylvania, a product prosecutors said is "designed to assist the military, aerospace and intelligence industries through scenario-based modules that simulate real-world situations, such as missile launches, warfare simulations and flight trajectories."
Agents lured Li from China to the U.S. territory of Saipan under the premise of discussing a joint illicit business venture. At an island hotel, Li delivered counterfeit packaging and, prosecutors said, "20 gigabytes of propriety data obtained unlawfully from an American software company." Officials did not identify the company in court documents.
At one point during the meeting undercover agents, including a Chinese-American linguist, asked Li what he did when U.S. companies sent him threatening emails demanding that he stop selling their products.
That's easy, he said. He simply deleted them.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google, Amazon rivalry set to escalate in 2013

Google, Amazon rivalry set to escalate in 2013

When Amazon.com Inc CEO Jeff Bezos got word of a project at Google Inc to scan and digitize product catalogs a decade ago, the seeds of a burgeoning rivalry were planted.
The news was a "wake-up" call to Bezos, an early investor in Google. He saw it as a warning that the Web search engine could encroach upon his online retail empire, according to a former Amazon executive.
"He realized that scanning catalogs was interesting for Google, but the real win for Google would be to get all the books scanned and digitized" and then sell electronic editions, the former executive said.
Thus began a rivalry that will escalate in 2013 as the two companies' areas of rivalry grow, spanning online advertising and retail to mobile gadgets and cloud computing.
It could upend the last remaining areas of cooperation between the two companies. For instance, Amazon's decision to use a stripped down version of Google's Android system in its new Kindle Fire tablet, coupled with Google's ambitious plans for its Motorola mobile devices unit, will only add to tensions.
The confrontation marks the latest front in a tech industry war in which many combatants are crowding onto each others' turf. Lurking in the shadows for both Google and Amazon is Facebook with its own search and advertising ambitions.
"Amazon wants to be the one place where you buy everything. Google wants to be the one place where you find everything, of which buying things is a subset," said Chi-Hua Chien, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "So when you marry those facts I think you're going to see a natural collision."
Both companies have a lot at stake. Google's market capitalization of $235 billion is about double Amazon's, largely because Google makes massive net earnings, expected by analysts to be $13.2 billion this year, based on a huge 32 percent net profit margin, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. By contrast, Amazon is seen reporting a small loss this year.
Amazon shareholders have been patient as the company has invested for growth but it will have to start producing strong earnings at some stage - more likely if it grows in higher margin areas such as advertising. Google's share price, on the other hand, is vulnerable to signs of slowing margin growth.
Ad clash
Not long after Bezos learned of Google's catalog plans, Amazon began scanning books and providing searchable digital excerpts. Its Kindle e-reader, launched a few years later, owes much of its inspiration to the catalog news, the executive said.
Now, Amazon is pushing its online ad efforts, threatening to siphon revenue and users from Google's main search website.
Amazon's fledgling ad business is still a fraction of Google's, with Robert W. Baird & Co. estimating Amazon is on track to generate about $500 million in annual advertising revenue - tiny, given it recorded $48 billion of overall revenue in 2011. By contrast, 96 percent of Google's $38 billion in 2011 sales came from advertising.
But Amazon's newly developed "DSP" technology, which taps into the company's vast store of consumer purchase history to help marketers target ads at specific groups of people on Amazon.com and on other websites, could change all that.
"From a client's perspective, the data that Amazon owns is actually better than what Google has," said Mark Grether, the chief operating officer of Xaxis, an audience buying company that works with major advertisers. "They know what you just bought, and they also know what you are right now trying to buy."
Amazon is discussing a partnership with Xaxis in which the company would help Amazon sell ads for the service, Grether noted.
Amazon did not respond to an email seeking a comment.
Starting point
Amazon can bring in higher-margin revenue by selling advertising than it can from its retail operations. By showing ads for products that it may not actually sell on its own website, Amazon establishes itself as a starting point for consumers looking to buy something on the Web.
Research firm Forrester reported that 30 percent of U.S. online shoppers in the third quarter began researching their purchase on Amazon.com, compared with 13 percent who started on a search engine such as Google - a reversal from two years earlier when search engines were more popular starting points.
Amazon now sells ads that show up to the side of product search results on its website. There were 6.7 billion display ad impressions on Amazon.com in the third quarter, more than triple the number in the same period of 2011, according to comScore.
That early success is a "huge concern" for Google, whose business relies heavily on product searches and product search ads, said Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter.
Partly in response, Google recently revamped its product search service, Google Shopping, by charging retailers and other online sellers a fee to be listed in results.
Founded four years apart in the late 1990s, Bezos has long worried about Amazon's reliance on Google for traffic, according to people close to the company, while also being dubious about Google's high market valuation.
"He'd say: 'This is the first time in the history of the world where the map maker is worth more than the territory that it's mapping,'" recalled the former Amazon executive of Bezos' comments about Google's popular online mapping service.
Tensions build
Google's Android system is thriving but still has not cracked the nut of how to make money from mobile search ads and sales of digital goods like games, apps, music and video.
"If they can figure out mobile ads, that would truly be Google's second act," said Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.
But Amazon launched a broadside against Google in 2011 with the creation of its own version of Android for its Kindle Fire tablets that replaces key Google money-making services, such as a digital music and application storefront, with its own.
Not unlike Apple, "Amazon wants to control the experience on their devices," said Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer science professor. "That doesn't make Google happy."
The two are also clashing in cloud computing software.
Amazon started its cloud business more than six years ago, providing data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations. Google only launched its cloud computing business this year, but the market is growing so quickly there is still room to grab share, Etzioni said.
"I would not write Google off," he added. "Amazon has the early lead but it's very early."
Transact or die?
Still, mobile gadgets and cloud computing are currently tiny businesses compared with the multibillion-dollar opportunity presented by advertising and online commerce.
Google recently acquired BufferBox, a company with a network of lockers that shoppers can use to receive packages. It is also testing same-day delivery in San Francisco, hinting at growing interest in a larger role in online retail.
It is not talking about its full plans for retail, but some analysts think features such as same-day delivery or "pick-up" lockers, are valuable features it can use to enhance its existing online ad business. An ad for shoes, for example, might also make the shoes available for pick-up in a locker nearby, said Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.
If Google can own the search and the delivery, it will be able to provide the same experience as Amazon, with no inventory - "a higher margin, more efficient model," Chien said.
Earlier this year, Google launched a new certification service highlighting merchants that ship quickly and reliably and backing it with up to $1,000 in "purchase protection."
Google could create a database of products and send shoppers to a page that has a way to buy quickly through the company's payments service Google Wallet, Forrester's Mulpuru said.
Google could then send that transaction to the retailer who would ship the product to the consumer. That ability is critical, according to Schachter, who said if consumers lack the ability to purchase items through Google it will lag Amazon and eBay Inc.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Amazon's influence felt far and offline

Amazon's influence felt far and offline

Bricks and mortar retailers like Nordstrom Inc and Walgreens have found a way to deal with growing pressure from Amazon, by joining forces with small e-commerce companies.
Through acquisitions, investments and partnerships with smaller, emerging start-ups, large retailers are breaking into new markets and tapping into the social media and marketing expertise of the firm's often tech-savvy founders.
And as consumers keep hitting the mousepad instead of the mall, the trend is likely to keep growing in 2013 and beyond.
U.S. retail e-commerce during the third quarter grew 17.3 percent from the year-ago period to $57 billion, or 5 percent of total retail sales, according to the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce. Total retail sales rose just 4.6 percent during the same period.
"It's a market-share shift," said Kristen Green, a venture capitalist at Forerunner Ventures who backs online companies such as men's retailer Bonobos and cosmetics company Birchbox.
It is also a change for retailers who have woken up to the threat from Amazon fairly recently.
"When I was meeting with brick and mortar retailers 24 months ago they weren't thinking about online," said Carlo Bronzini Vender, a senior partner at New York-based investment bank Sonenshine Partners who helped advise the sale of Drugstore.com to Walgreens. "Now people are being more proactive about it."
Looking for online smarts
The deals are frequently small, driven by retailers' attempts to master online, rather than to immediately boost sales. Women's clothing site GoJane, which Aeropostale Inc acquired in November, generated just $19 million in sales last year. Aeropostale net sales were $2.3 billion last year.
"They're buying learning, people and energy," said Bruce Cohen, a strategist at retail consulting firm Kurt Salmon. "They're buying labs to test and learn to see what works."
Other recent deals within the last year include Nordstrom's acquisition of flash sales site HauteLook and investment in men's clothing company Bonobos; Walgreens' acquisition of Drugstore.com and PPR SA's partnership with e-commerce site Yoox.
Fast growing e-commerce start-ups pegged by bankers as potential acquisition candidates by large retailers include vintage-inspired clothing site ModCloth, customized-jewelry site Gemvara and eyeglass company Warby Parker.
Missing out on digital expansion can sting. Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke said at a conference last week his biggest regret was not moving more quickly into e-commerce.
In fact, some prizes may have grown up too fast to be acquired.
Several online retailers have raised large funding rounds at such high valuations that venture capitalists say initial public offerings are likely the only way that investors can make back their money.
Among the list this year are One Kings Lane, a furnishings company that raised $50 million earlier this month; Zulily, a children's clothing company that raised $85 million last month; and Fab.com, a flash-sales site that raised $105 million earlier this year.
Web companies also see real-world benefits to offline partners.
Bonobos, which received a $16.4 million investment led by Nordstrom in April, now has access to the Seattle-based retailer's distribution network. Bonobos' fitted chinos, non-iron trousers and other staples are now available on Nordstrom's website and in their department stores.
"We realized there was a big portion of the available target market that we weren't reaching through online," said Jeremy Liew, a partner with Lightspeed Ventures and a Bonobos investor.
Since then, the company has opened five "offline showrooms" across the country in which men can try on clothing that they can then order from the Bonobos website.
Be Amazon or be different
Some venture capitalists view the rush to invest in online retail with a skeptical eye. Bessemer Venture Partners' Jeremy Levine, who backs companies including online diapers company Quidsi, sold two years ago to Amazon for $500 million, thinks investors need to be on guard.
"Online retail is a natural monopoly business and people aren't seeing it," he says. "These companies are going to start to feel serious pain from Amazon."
While it is relatively easy for smaller sites to generate meaningful sales in the short term, Levine says, the long-term outlook is cloudier. "As soon as Amazon decides it doesn't want you," he says, "they will just crush you."
Amazon's March acquisition of order-fulfillment company Kiva Systems will further widen the gap between the e-commerce giant, brick and mortar retailers and upstarts struggling to keep up, bankers and analysts say.
That is why Fab.com CEO Adam Goldberg says the company focuses on crafting personality for its site so browsing is fun. He also aims to triple the percentage of unique products to 15 percent of merchandise in 2013 from 5 percent this year.
"Nobody is going to beat Amazon selling the products Amazon already sells," says Goldberg.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

New top-level domains could roll out early next year

New top-level domains could roll out early next year

The Vatican has come out in first place in a long-awaited draw to expand the Internet address system with new domain names that go beyond the usual .com, .org or .net endings.
ICANN, the corporation that oversees the Internet address system, announced this week the domain name .catholic written in Chinese characters will be the first bid it considers in a drive to expand and reorganise sites on the World Wide Web.
The same extension in Arabic letters ranked 25th in the random draw and the Vatican's application for a version in Cyrillic for Russian and other Slavic languages came in 96th.
Ranking high means the applicant could get approval early next year to operate the new domain and approve addresses using it. In the Vatican's case, Rome could then ensure only genuine Roman Catholic institutions get to use that domain name.
"This is a way to give a coherence and authentication to our presence in the digital arena," said Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
"Anyone looking online will recognise the site belongs to an institution that belongs to the Catholic Church," he said, adding the new, so-called top level domain names (|TLDs) could also help speed online searches.
.Bible and .Islam
For online retailers such as Amazon, whose application for .store in Japanese came in second, early approval could mean a competitive advantage and prompt a quick introduction of the new name.
But the Vatican did not enter the draw for commercial reasons and would not rush to launch its TLDs, Tighe said. In addition, the main TLD it seeks - .catholic in Latin letters - ended up in 1,366th place and may take months before it is approved.
Website owners are now restricted to a few dozen TLDs such as .com and country code domains such as .co.uk or .fr. Many of the 1,930 applications for new TLDs came from companies, including Internet giants such as Amazon and Google.
Several other faith-based groups applied for other TLDs such as .bible or .islam. The extension .mormon was the next-highest religious application drawn, coming in at 118th place.
ICANN (www.icann.org), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has stressed that assigning a certain TLD does not imply any endorsement of the religious group seeking it, just recognition it is the best suited to use the name.
Tighe said the ICANN draw handled applications for TLDs in non-Latin alphabets first, which explained why the Vatican's Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic extensions came out far ahead of its main TLD in Latin letters.
Internet imprimatur
ICANN invited comments on applications earlier this year. The Vatican's application for exclusive use of .catholic drew criticism from members of several Protestant churches that also use the term, which comes from the Greek for "universal".
"This request is a move by a powerful group to squelch the voices and rights of other Christians," Dave Daubert, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Elgin, Illinois, wrote on the ICANN webpage for comments on the applications.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, apparently saw no hope of a consensus on religious TLDs and opposed them all.
Some religions seem to have kept out of the fray entirely. There were no applications for .buddhist, .hindu or .jewish.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

RBI asks payment operators to move to IPv6

RBI asks payment operators to move to IPv6

The Reserve Bank on Thursday asked all payment system operators to take necessary actions for migrating to the latest version of Internet Protocol IPv6 as per the directives of DoT.
"The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) has undertaken the initiative of migration from IPv4 to IPv6. They have expressed that the migration of all payment gateways, banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, etc, including their websites should be completed at the earliest," RBI said in a notification.
Since migration to IPv6 is an eventuality that has to be accepted and manage proactively, government wants it to be done in a planned manner, it added.
"We advise you to initiate necessary action by constituting a special team to complete the migration at the earliest and keep us informed of the progress made by March 30, 2013," RBI said in a notification.
Since the current version of Internet Protocol (IPv4) has almost run out of addresses, the broadband revolution will ride on next generation Internet Protocol (IPv6), RBI added.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the latest IP, the primary communications protocol upon which the entire Internet is built. It is intended to replace the older IPv4, which is still employed for the vast majority of Internet traffic as of 2012.
The RBI has already asked banks and non-banking financial companies to migrate to the latest version of the Internet Protocol by December, 2012.

Oracle buys web firm Eloqua to boost cloud presence

Oracle buys web firm Eloqua to boost cloud presence

Oracle Corp agreed to buy Eloqua Inc, a maker of web-based marketing automation software that listed in August, for about $810 million as it seeks to expand its cloud-computing services.
Eloqua makes software to help businesses predict and grow revenue by monitoring marketing and sales initiatives. Its customers include AON Plc, Dow Jones, Automatic Data Processing Inc, Polycom Inc and National Instruments Corp.
Oracle, which came late to cloud computing, is trying to be a one-stop shop for operating systems, databases, computer programs and infrastructure over the Web.
"The acquisition of Eloqua will add a leading market automation solution to Oracle's strong salesforce automation products and the recently acquired RightNow call center automation solution," Nomura Equity Research analysts said in a research note.
Oracle bought RightNow Technologies last year for $1.5 billion, sparking several more acquisitions in the cloud-computing market including IBM Inc's acquisition of Kenexa and SAP AG's purchase of SuccessFactors.
Oracle, which has traditionally offered installed software products, then bought Taleo, a cloud-based HR software firm.
"We would expect Oracle to continue to make acquisitions in this space, to bolster its Fusion Applications suite and respond to competitive pressure in the applications market from SAP and Salesforce.co," Nomura said.
Oracle priced the deal at $871 million, net of Eloqua's cash. Based on the 34.5 million Eloqua shares outstanding as of October 31, the equity portion of the deal came to $810 million.
Cloud computing, a broad term referring to the delivery of services via the Internet from remote data centers, is a favorite with corporate technology buyers because it is faster to implement and has lower upfront costs than traditional software.
Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison mocked cloud computing in 2008 as "complete gibberish". He described it as a fad, comparing the computer industry to the fashion world.
But Oracle has since introduced its own web products and acquired several firms selling internet-based software as its corporate customers embraced web services offered by Salesforce.com Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc.
"Although Oracle already had strong marketing functionality, this gives it a cloud offering to deliver and an additional base of midmarket customers providing a recurring license maintenance stream," Nucleus Research analyst Rebecca Wettemann said.
The company's $23.50 per share offer for Eloqua represents a 31 percent premium to Eloqua's Nasdaq close on Wednesday.
Eloqua shares jumped to match the offer price while Oracle's shares were flat at $34.05 on the Nasdaq.
"Eloqua's leading marketing automation cloud will become the centerpiece of the Oracle Marketing Cloud," said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President of Oracle Development.
Eloqua's board has unanimously approved the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2013.
Oracle said on Tuesday that software sales growth will stay strong into the new year despite fears that there could be big tax hikes and U.S. government spending cuts that could cause a slump in spending by customers.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Internet to contribute $100 billion to India's GDP by 2015

Internet services and devices industry has potential to increase its contribution to up to USD 100 billion (about Rs. 5.5 lakh crore) to India's GDP and generate about 2.2 crore jobs by 2015, a report by McKinsey & Company said on Wednesday.
Internet related technology industry includes personal computers and smartphone sales, e-commerce, broadband subscription, and investment in technologies like cloud and websites.
According to the report titled 'Online and Upcoming: The Internet's Impact on India', Internet generated 1.6 percent of the GDP or about USD 30 billion in 2011.
"The Internet currently contributes a modest 1.6 percent to India's GDP. This could grow to 2.8 to 3.3 percent by 2015, if India achieves its potential for growth in the number of Internet users and Internet technology-related consumption and investment," McKinsey & Company Partner Chandra Gnasambandam told reporters New Delhi.
This would increase Internet's contribution to GDP from USD 30 billion now to nearly USD 100 billion in 2015, he said.
"And while it facilitates about six million direct and indirect jobs at present, this could grow to 22 million by 2015, if India follows an inclusive path of Internet expansion." Gnasambandam said.
India with a user base of 120 million is the world's third largest Internet market and is poised to garner up to 370 million users in 2015, the report said.
China has the world's largest Internet user base with 480 million users, followed by US (245 million) in 2011.
By 2015, China is expected to have 583 million users, while the US is expected to have 279 million users.
The global Internet user base is expected to grow from 2,300 million users in 2011 to 2,662 million by 2015, the report said.
"Given current downward trends in the cost of Internet access and mobile devices, India is on the verge of an Internet boom. India is likely to have the second largest user base in the world and largest in terms of incremental growth," McKinsey & Company Global Institute Senior Fellow Anu Madgavkar said.
At present, India's information and communication technology (ICT) exports are the most significant component of the Internet's impact on GDP, but private consumption and investment from private and public sector have great potential to grow in the future, she added.
Madgavkar, however, added that the impact of Internet in India is constrained by the current infrastructure.

EU seeks Google accord to address anti-trust concerns

The European Union will seek an accord with US Internet search giant Google as progress has been made in resolving EU anti-trust concerns, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said Tuesday.
Almunia said he made the decision after meeting Google head Eric Schmidt in Brussels as "we have substantially reduced our differences regarding possible ways to address" EU competition concerns since talks began in July.
"On the basis of the progress made, I now expect Google to come forward with a detailed commitment text in January 2013," he said in a statement.
This text will used as the basis to firm up the measures Google should take which will "then be market-tested, leading to a possible decision with binding commitments."
The EU listed four areas of concern regarding Google, chief among them how it can highlight links with its own search services in specific areas such as travel or restaurants.
It also has concerns over how Google may use and display third party content on its search services; the possible use of exclusivity agreements by the company and restrictions on allowing advertisers who would want to move their advertising from the company's AdWords service.
The Commission launched an anti-trust investigation into allegations that Google had abused its dominant market position in November 2010.
Tuesday's EU announcement came after reports that US regulators were also likely to conclude a lengthy anti-trust probe into Google's dominance of Internet searches with a voluntary settlement.
The Wall Street Journal said Monday that Google was likely to agree to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that calls for unspecified changes in how it handles search queries but would stop short of signing a consent decree that could be enforced by a court.
The Washington Post also reported that a settlement was likely this week, saying it would fall well short of what Google's rivals had sought.
The online news site Politico reported that the FTC did not have the votes to bring an enforcement action against Google but that the settlement would include new practices on the use of "snippets" of user reviews from companies such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, companies which have said Google uses such content without permission.
Politico said Google will also pledge to make it easier for advertisers to buy ad space on its search engine and to move their ad campaigns to competing sites.
Critics say Google controls some 70 percent of the Internet search market and the advertising that goes along with it and may exert even more power in the mobile sector by controlling the Android operating system used on two-thirds of smartphones.
Google has been accused of "scraping" content from other services like travel and restaurant reviews while keeping consumers on its own sites.
It is also under fire for allegedly promoting its own services including travel, restaurant reviews and YouTube videos in its search results.

YouTube marks 2012 with 'Gangnam Style' mash up

YouTube has marked a year of viral video sensations with a "Gangnam Style" mash up of its top two songs of 2012, starring South Korean performer Psy and a horde of the video-sharing site's stars.
"Rewind YouTube Style 2012" approached 16 million views one day after its Tuesday release, paying homage to "Gangnam Style" and Canadian pop star Carly Rae Jepsen's smash "Call Me Maybe".
A tiny Psy next to the YouTube icon linked to the video that opens with the five members of Canadian band Walk off the Earth performing on a guitar, which Psy then smashes before introducing the parody of his own hit.
"Gangnam Style" is closing in on one billion hits after becoming the most viewed YouTube video of all time.
The four-minute video features dozens of cameos and visual gags, testing the limit of the viewer's awareness of YouTube culture and ability to understand all the references.
The Internet's own viral stars make an appearance include the "Sh-t Girls Say" actor Graydon Sheppard and YouTube personality Jenna Marbles.
Real news landmarks of 2012 play a prominent part, such as Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall from the edge of space and NASA's Mars Curiosity landing.
People watch more than four billion hours of video monthly at YouTube, according to the Google-owned service.
The "Gangnam Style" phenomenon refuses to lose any steam, with South Korean social networks awash with conspiracies that tie Psy's horse-riding dance with 16th century French seer Nostradamus and the December 21 apocalypse prophesied by the Mayans.

sam4sammy :: India getting more utilitarian, but education, entertainment still most searched on Google

Indian Internet users are now searching more for utilitarian services like banking, shopping and travel compared to entertainment in previous years, Google India on Tuesday said.
While unveiling its annual Zeitgeist list this year, Google India Vice-President and Managing Director (Sales and Operations) Rajan Anandan said, "utilitarian services drove search volumes".

"Google's 2012 Zeitgeist reflects data from 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages globally. With 137 million users, India is the world's third largest Internet market and is a good barometer of trends in Indian society as a whole," Anandan told reporters New Delhi.

While results in 2011 reflected the emphasis on people and event related searches, Internet users in India are now starting to use the web for their personal needs - shopping, booking tickets and making informed decisions for their offline purchases, he added.

According to the Zeitgeist, IBPS (Institute of Banking Personnel Selection) led the top trending search list, followed by GATE Exams, Sunny Leone, 'Ek Tha Tiger' and 'Rowdy Rathore'.

An analysis of the top searched travel websites showed that while railways, airline tickets, and hotel booking sites were an obvious trend.

A bus booking portal redbus.in featured at number three in the list, marking a new trend in how Indians prefer to travel, Anandan said, adding that a huge chunk of search volumes were coming from mobile phones.

"With growing smartphone adoption, mobile searches continued to grow with over 70 million mobile Internet users.

We expect India's next 150-180 million Internet users will access the Internet through their mobile devices," he added.

This means that the information that these users will look for will need to be more local, he said.

The most searched terms on mobile phones in 2012 included songs, YouTube, ATMs, Cricinfo and IRCTC.

Another trend seen in the Zeitgeist is the shift in the user perception on purchasing gadgets, books, accessories and more online with Flipkart, Homeshop18 and Snapdeal topping the top searched shopping websites list.

Sensex topped the most searched event this year, followed by Vilasrao Deshmukh's death and Hurricane Sandy in the US.

In a separate list by YouTube, Google's video sharing portal, the most searched video was 'Brown Rang' by YoYo Honey Singh beating international topper PSY's Gangnam Style.

UK government told to rethink mobile, Internet surveillance plan

British lawmakers are demanding the government water down plans to keep track of phone calls, email and Internet activity a bill critics dub a "snooper's charter."
The Communications Data Bill would force telecoms companies to retain for a year records of all phone and email traffic and website visits, though not the content of calls and messages.
Home Secretary Theresa May has called the proposals "sensible and limited" measures to prevent crime and terrorism.
But an all-party committee scrutinizing the legislation said Tuesday that the draft bill was "overkill and much wider than the specific needs identified by the law enforcement agencies."
The proposals have split Britain's coalition government. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, leader of junior partner the Liberal Democrats, said the law required a "fundamental rethink."

Google shows panoramic photos of disaster-hit buildings

Internet search engine provider Google Inc on Thursday released on the Internet panoramic photographs of 34 facilities that were hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami last year to preserve images of damage caused by the devastating disaster.
Utilising its "Street View" technology which provides panoramic photos of streets via the Internet, Google's website "Memories for the Future" displays photos of remains such as schools and a fish market, including the exteriors and interiors of the buildings.

"We have taken photos of inside and outside of buildings with a 360-degree view," said Kei Kawai, Google's group product manager who led the project.

Visitors to the website "can feel as if they are inside the buildings," he told a news conference in Tokyo.

The facilities include the former city office of Rikuzentakata, a coastal city in Iwate Prefecture, as well as an elementary school in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, where the entry of people is restricted due to the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Google already shows photos taken from public streets in the disaster-hit areas.

The company cooperated with local governments to take pictures of facilities in Ofunato, Kamaishi, Rikuzentakata in Iwate and Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, before they are scrapped, the company said.

The photos can also be accessed from the company's "Google Maps" web mapping service, it said.

"We are making efforts through trial and error on how to preserve what happened using modern technology," Kawai said.

"We would like people in Japan and the world to see the present state of the disaster-hit areas and Japan," he said.

Google said it plans to add more pictures of facilities in the disaster-hit areas, while it aims to follow up on reconstruction efforts.

The website's URL is http://www.miraikioku.com.

Tumblr blogs hacked, defacing popular pages

A software "worm" evidently unleashed by hackers burrowed through Tumblr on Monday, defacing pages at the popular blogging platform with a vitriolic, expletive-laden message.
A hacker group going by the acronym "GNAA" claimed responsibility for the diatribe, which dismissed most of what bloggers shared online as worthless.
"We are aware that there is a viral post circulating on Tumblr," the US-based company said in a terse message posted at Twitter."We are working to resolve the issue as swiftly as possible."
Tumblr reports that it is home to 83.2 million blogs that jointly attract about 18.2 billion page views monthly. High-profile Tumblr blogs defaced by the worm were said to include those of CNET and The Verge.

Adobe releases cloud-based game development tools

Adobe late Monday release a free tool kit to make it easier for developers to create Flash-based games to ride the growing wave of playing on smartphones, tablets, and in Internet browsers.
Game Developers Tools made available were the first tied to the Adobe's "Creative Cloud," providing computing muscle from Adobe's online datacenters.

"For anybody who wants to develop a game that targets the Flash player it will be a lot easier," said Diana Helander, group product marketing manager for Gaming Solutions at Adobe.

"For people who want to try their hand at being a game developer, this allows you to play around and target a bunch of different marketplaces," she continued. "That really opens the door for revenue and for discovery, even if you just have a free little game you want to put out there."

Flash-based games can be found in among the top titles at social network Facebook as well as those popular for play using personal computer browsers.

Adobe said it tools enable games to be crafted more efficiently to work across the sometimes challenging array of device screen sizes and operating systems.

Flash software can enable a desktop computer version of the game be shifted to suit smartphones or tablets which are becoming increasing popular devices for play.

"Gaming companies are becoming more like media companies," Helander said. "Gaming as a whole is definitely increasing in popularity."

Adobe envisioned the free tools boosting the number of rich, immersive games available including many based on characters or franchises that have been hits on videogame consoles.

Japan-based Square Enix and France-based Ubisoft are among videogame industry titans working with Flash tools, according to Helander.