Top Items:


Google And The Monopoly Paradox — We've been over this. A lot. And this story is going to continue for some time to come. It sure looks like Google is almost asking for an inquiry into potentially anti-competitive practices (and it's coming). Which is insane. So the next logical question is why?
Discussion:
Daily Dot, Marketing Pilgrim, iCrossing, parislemon and Daring Fireball
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Google likely to face FTC complaint over ‘Search Plus Your World’ — A privacy watchdog group probably will complain to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that a new Google search feature raises privacy and antitrust concerns. — Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy …
Discussion:
eWeek, PC Magazine, Digits, Technology Liberation Front, The Register, Washington Post, ITProPortal, Computerworld, Fast Company, Techland, WebProNews, Beyond Search, Gizmodo, Scripting News, SiliconFilter, PC World, CNET, Interactive Marketing, ZDNet, Andy Beard, paidContent, TechCrunch, TechFlash, Marketing Land and Between the Lines Blog


Real-Life Examples Of How Google's “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy
Discussion:
Slate, Xconomy, @amac, Datamation.com, parislemon, InfoWorld, Pulse2, Marketing Land, Gawker, Washington Post, WebProNews, BetaNews, ReelSEO Online Video … and @dannysullivan

Compete To Death, or Cooperate to Compete?
Discussion:
Business Insider, Softpedia News, Mashable!, Search Engine Land, WebProNews, Ben Parr's Entrepreneurial … and TechCrunch

Google+ Search = A Way To Call The Feds In On IPO-Bound Facebook (?)
Discussion:
CNET, the Econsultancy blog, Daring Fireball and The Huffington Post

If SOPA's Main Target Is The Pirate Bay, It's Worth Pointing Out That ThePirateBay.org Is Immune From SOPA — In looking over Eric Goldman's excellent “linkwrap” of a bunch of recent SOPA/PIPA stories, it pointed me to a News.com article from last month, about how SOPA was really about going after one single site: The Pirate Bay.
Discussion:
ExtremeTech, WatchingTV Online, PC Magazine, The Register and DSLreports
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Time Is Running Out For SOPA Opponents Congressmen Warn At CES 2012
Discussion:
Techdirt, AllThingsD, Fox Business, The Register and NBC Bay Area

LG signs Android, Chrome OS patent deal with Microsoft — Summary: LG Electronics is the latest Android vendor to license Microsoft patents in order to head off potential legal issues. — It's been a couple of months since Microsoft has touted any new Android/Chrome OS vendors agreeing to license its patents.
Discussion:
GigaOM, TechCrunch, BGR, eWeek, Ars Technica, paidContent, CNET, Engadget, 9to5Google, LiveSide.net, TechCrunch, AllThingsD, FOSS Patents, Business Insider, The Tech Trade, @fxshaw, Xconomy, MobileSyrup.com, PhoneArena, WMPoweruser, Microsoft, @tim_stevens, The Next Web, SlashGear, Softpedia News, WebProNews and Techie Buzz
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LG in talks on phone partnerships: executive
Discussion:
Bloomberg, Appolicious Advisor, PhoneArena, paidContent and Mobilized


Apple's Foreign Cash Hoard — Apple (AAPL) is piling up boatloads of cash: just not here. — Those boatloads are increasing becoming docked in Apple's foreign subsidiaries and cannot be repatriated without incurring additional hefty U.S. taxes. A whopping $54 billion of Apple's $82 billion cash …
Discussion:
Techie Buzz, TUAW and PhoneArena


Steve Ballmer Reboots — Cooler tech, more energy, higher profit—the Microsoft CEO is out to prove Steve Jobs wrong and make Redmond relevant again — They had his dining room waiting. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive and one of the richest men in the world …
Discussion:
Computerworld and AllThingsD
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The Year of Microsoft — How the former tech giant can reclaim its throne in 2012.
Discussion:
Guardian and Nokia Conversations


Google's Data Center Engineer Shares Secrets of ‘Warehouse’ Computing — Luiz André Barroso doesn't see Google's data centers as data centers. He sees them as computers the size of warehouses. Barroso is a distinguished engineer at Google and a former researcher at the once …


Microsoft: Windows Phone will not battle Android on specs, will instead fight for ‘quality’ — In an interview today at CES, Microsoft's Joe Belfiore told The Verge that Windows Phone will not fight the Android ecosystem of handsets on a specification by specification basis.
Discussion:
WMPoweruser and The Verge
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Nokia Could Sell 37 Million Windows Phones This Year
Discussion:
PC World, Gadget Lab, The Appside, The Verge, SlashGear, NBC Bay Area, Pulse2, BGR, CNET, Communities Dominate Brands, My Nokia Blog, PhoneArena, IntoMobile, BetaNews, www.pocketgamer.biz, Neowin.net, WMPoweruser and PalmAddicts


Working In Word, Excel, PowerPoint On an iPad — Although Apple's popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn't a big hit with folks who'd like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents. — [ See post to watch video ]


EMI Sues Irish State For Not Implementing Piracy Blocking Provisions — The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide — EMI Sues Irish State For Not Implementing Piracy Blocking Provisions — After failing last year in its attempt to force a local Internet service provider …
Discussion:
Inquirer, PC Magazine and TechEye


First numbers: How successful are Spotify's apps? — Are Spotify's new apps the missing piece to the social music puzzle, or merely gimmicks that are ignored by the majority of the company's users? It's been a month this week since Spotify rolled out its app platform to all of its users …


Google Renews Push in China — Two Years After Censorship Clash, Company Renews Push to Expand in World's Biggest Internet Market — Google Inc., which pulled its Web-search engine out of mainland China two years ago after a confrontation with Chinese authorities over censorship …
Discussion:
CNET, Business Insider, Computerworld, TechEye, The Next Web, WebProNews, Hillicon Valley, Forbes and Media Decoder, more at Mediagazer »


Why Samsung Is The Next Apple — For most of the ten years I've been coming to CES, every presentation, every booth, has had one goal: to create an ecosystem in order to encourage consumer to lock in. Year after year, presentation after presentation, someone has come out to show how the phone …
Discussion:
Macgasm and MacStories


The MacBook Air Samsung SSD is about to get twice as fast — I had a chance to meet with Samsung Storage solutions at CES 2012 this week and got the low down on its new OEM SSDs that Apple tends to buy in large numbers. Samsung and Toshiba are the OEMs that provide the SSDs in MacBook Airs.
Discussion:
SlashGear


Facebook to Hit a Billion Users in the Summer — Last summer we took a look at Facebook usage around the world, and with Facebook recently announcing that they're currently at over 800 million active users we thought it would be interesting to extrapolate their current grown rate and estimate …
Discussion:
The Next Web, Mashable!, FT Tech Hub, memeburn, Friending Facebook Blog and The Sociable


Amazon Web Services Now Available Without That Messy ‘Web’ Part — Data doesn't have to travel over the messy, dangerous public Internet to use Amazon's cloud. — Amazon today expanded its AWS “direct connect” service to Northern California and three other global locations.
Discussion:
Computerworld


Grab Your Cash and Warm Up the Wagon — ICANN Domain Rush Kicks Off Tomorrow — The domain name landgrab begins tomorrow. — That's when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — the organization charged with managing the Internet's domain name system …
Discussion:
CNET, CircleID, Guardian, Inquirer, ICANN, Reuters, Softpedia News, The Domains, Bloomberg and The Kernel


Target Confirms Plans to Bring Dedicated Apple Shops to 25 Stores — Reuters reports that Target has confirmed its plans to launch “store-within-a-store” concepts for Apple products in 25 of its stores around the United States. The announcement comes alongside a broader effort called …
Discussion:
GigaOM, Reuters, AllThingsD, 9to5Mac and New York Times


Boxee's Live TV joins the Facebook Open Graph party — Boxee has announced a new level of Facebook integration to its service, using the Open Graph auto-sharing feature to post what you're watching in Live TV dongle direct to your Timeline. The integration runs a little deeper than this …
Discussion:
Betabeat, Boxee Blog and ReadWriteWeb


MPAA attacks Ars for “challenging efforts to curb content theft” — The Motion Picture Association of America doesn't like us. According to the MPAA blog on Tuesday, “Arts Technica” is a “tech blog with a long history of challenging efforts to curb content theft.”
Discussion:
MPAA Blog