Top Items:
Rebecca Mackinnon / Wall Street Journal:
Google Gets On the Right Side of History — The Chinese people will learn who their real friends are. — One night in the mid-1990s when I was working as a journalist in Beijing, I went out to dinner with some Chinese friends. I had just finished reading a book called “The File” by the British historian Timothy Garton-Ash.
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Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
A Heated Debate at the Top — Co-Founder Brin Pushed for Backing Out of China, While CEO Schmidt Made Moral Argument to Stay — Google Inc.'s startling threat to withdraw from China was an intensely personal decision, drawing its celebrated founders and other top executives into a debate …
Robert McMillan / Computerworld:
Google attack part of widespread spying effort — IDG News Service - Google's decision Tuesday to risk walking away from the world's largest Internet market may have come as a shock, but security experts see it as the most public admission of a top IT problem for U.S. companies: ongoing corporate espionage originating from China.
Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
Sergey Brin Is Force Behind Google's Showdown with China, Ken Auletta — Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the son of persecuted Russian Jews, has been the driving force in the the company's showdown with China, says Ken Auletta, New Yorker media columnist and author of the best selling book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”
New York Times:
Google's Threat Echoed Everywhere, Except China — BEIJING — Google's declaration that it would stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country ricocheted around the world Wednesday. But in China itself, the news was heavily censored.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Silicon Valley Watcher, Tom Foremski: IMHO, pluGGd.in, Shooting at Bubbles, EE Times, Shanghaiist, Network World, Mashable!, Wall Street Journal, Internet Evolution, eSarcasm, Washington Post, E-Commerce Times, Technology Review, Memex 1.1, Notebooks.com and AdExchanger.com, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Baidu Soars As Google Threatens To Leave China — Hardly surprising, but also worth noting is that Google's (GOOG) threat to shutdown Google.cn and leave the China market is sparking a mammoth rally in shares of Baidu (BIDU), the leading China-based search engine.
Rebecca MacKinnon / Guardian:
Will Google stand up to France and Italy, too? — The stand against China will rightly be lauded. But western states also imperil internet freedom — Google's stand against Chinese censorship and surveillance - triggered by suspicions that China had been trying to hack activists' accounts …
Will / Imagethief:Google detonates the China corporate communications script
Discussion:
TechCrunch, CNET News, Guardian, TaoSecurity, Foreign Policy, BuzzMachine, Globe and Mail, GeekSmack, Shanghaiist, Global Neighbourhoods, Epicenter, Ars Technica, BBC and Andrew Lark
Danny / Electronic Frontier Foundation:Uncensoring China: Bravo Google
Discussion:
The New Republic, PC World, Rough Type, Search Engine Land, Gawker, Financial Times, InformationWeek, Between the Lines, Ubergizmo, Redmond Pie, CHINAdaily and Linux.com
Elliott Ng / CNReviews:Google China photos: because I'm without words
Discussion:
Global Voices Online
Boy Genius Report:
Apple's tablet is an “iPhone on steroids” — One of our close Apple connects who hasn't steered us wrong dropped a little bit of information on us. Here's what we know: — The tablet's multi-touch gestures are “out of control.” — It's powered by an incredibly fast ARM CPU
Bloomberg:
Apple IPhone With Better Camera May Be Out By June, Goldman's Chen Says — Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc.'s latest iPhone will probably be available as early as June, include a more advanced camera, and may feature a touch-sensitive casing, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Robert Chen …
Gabriel Snyder / valleywag - Gawker:
Announcing Valleywag's Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt: Win Up to $100,000! — We've had enough of trying to follow all the speculation around Apple's impending tablet — how it'll work, its size, the name, the software and whether it will save magazines. We want answers, dammit! And we're willing to pay.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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Peter Farago / blog.flurry.com:
Flurry Special Report: Google Nexus One Launch Week Sales — Flurry Estimates 20,000 First Week Nexus One Sales: — Not an Apples to “Apple” Comparison — The Google Nexus One launch has become the most controversial and confusing Android handset launch to date.
Discussion:
Gadget Lab, mocoNews, MediaPost, Mobile Entertainment, Mashable!, Google Watch, BusinessWeek, Computerworld, Maximum PC, Thoughts from the Sidelines, BetaNews, Android Phone Fans, eWeek, The Next Web, The Register, Phone Arena, TmoNews, InformationWeek, New York Times, Silicon Alley Insider, Tech Beat, GMSV, 901am, The Toybox, Google Android News …, MobHappy, Neowin.net, Digital Daily, IntoMobile, Gearlog and Tech Trader Daily
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
RealNetworks Founder And CEO Rob Glaser Finally Quits (RNWK) — RealNetworks founder and CEO Rob Glaser is quitting. It's about time. — The question is, did Rob just get bored? Or was he pushed out? — Sounds like both. — A source familiar with the situation says that while Rob …
Discussion:
Computerworld, The Seattle Times, internetnews.com, The Register, CNET News, Digital Daily, mocoNews, Xconomy, paidContent, Between the Lines and Electronista
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Rafat Ali / paidContent:RealNetworks' Management Change: Memos From Rob Glaser And Robert Kimball
Discussion:
The Seattle Times
24/7 Wall St.:
Apple App Store Has Lost $450 Million To Piracy — Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and the companies that sell software for the iPhone and iPod touch at the App Store have lost over $450 million to piracy since the store opened in July 2008 according to an analysis by 24/7 Wall St. There have been over …
Discussion:
GigaOM, AppleInsider, Mashable!, Techdirt, MacRumors, TUAW, Mobile Marketing Watch, jkOnTheRun, Tech Trader Daily, TheAppleBlog and Macsimum News
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
Shutting Down Rupert Murdoch's Social Experiments Lab — We hear News Corporation is winding down MySpace spinoff Slingshot Labs, a vestige of the media conglomerate's efforts to retain MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe. But the labs are hatching one last diabolical plot, on behalf of the Wall Street Journal.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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Scott M. Fulton, III / BetaNews:
On second thought, maybe the RIAA did conspire to fix prices, appeals court finds — Did the United States' major record labels, as early as 2001, conspire to establish a system for the distribution and sale of digital music that would have seen subscribers paying up to $240 per year …
Discussion:
Ars Technica
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Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Intel promo confirms Apple's plans for Core i5 MacBook Pros [u] — An e-mail sent to members of Intel's Retail Edge promotional program highlight a forthcoming MacBook Pro from Apple sporting a new Core i5 processor, AppleInsider can confirm. — The promotion was included in an e-mail sent …
Discussion:
internetnews.com, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, CNET News, TG Daily, Gadget Lab, 9 to 5 Mac, TechSpot, I4U News, MacRumors, TUAW, Electronista and techeblog.com
Peter Eckersley / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Gmail takes the lead on email security — Last night, Google announced that Gmail sessions will now be fully encrypted with HTTPS by default. This is excellent news — EFF congratulates Google for taking this significant step to safeguard their users' privacy and security.
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MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
iPhone Doubles Up Android On Mobile Ad Click Rates; Both Destroyed By Symbian — When you think about mobile advertising, you might think the iPhone or Android are the hot platforms (thanks to ads like this). But you'd be wrong. — Some new December data from the mobile advertising …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Daily Mail:
Recaptured: The convict who taunted police on Facebook during FOUR months on the run — An escaped convict who relentlessly taunted police on Facebook has finally been arrested after nearly four months on the run, it was announced today. — Craig ‘Lazie’ Lynch, 28, was nearing the end …
Don Reisinger / CNET News:
Google rules search in December, Bing drops — Google continued to dominate the search market in December, trailed by Yahoo and Microsoft, according to media research firm Nielsen. — According to Nielsen's December U.S. Search Rankings, released on Wednesday, Web users queried search engines more than 9.9 billion times in December.
Simon Sage / IntoMobile:
Samsung Announces First 32 GB MicroSD Memory Cards — The upper-end of the microSDHC category has been reached! Samsung has announced that they're working on 32 GB memory cards, which will be good news to media hogs who have long capped out 16 GB cards on their mobile phones.
Discussion:
Business Wire, PC World, Engadget, eWeek, Digital Trends, Boy Genius Report and Obsessable
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Apple ‘experts’ to debut in retail stores within weeks — Apple's retail “experts” — a new position that will serve as a roaming counterpart to existing “geniuses” at brick-and-mortar locations — are expected to debut in stores in a matter of weeks, people familiar with the matter have told AppleInsider.
