Yahoo!Tech writes that “[t]here are plenty of reasons to hate spammers. Add this to the list: They're environmentally unfriendly. A report [released today] by security company McAfee Inc. finds that spammers are a scourge to your inbox and the environment, generating an astounding 62 trillion junk e-mails in 2008 that wasted enough electricity to power 2.4 million U.S. homes for a year. The ‘Carbon Footprint of E-mail Spam Report’ estimated the computational power needed to process spam — from criminals tapping their armies of infected PCs to send it, Internet providers transmitting it, and end users viewing and deleting it. The report concluded that the electricity needed to process a single spam message results in 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere — the equivalent of driving 3 feet in a car.”
According to the Register, “[t]he [UK] Government has said that new electronic waste disposal demands from Brussels may be too difficult for businesses to meet. It has asked for industry's view ahead of summer negotiations on electronic waste. The European Commission is revising its Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive and plans a hike to the recycling requirements placed on industry in EU countries.”
CNetNews.com reveals that, according to a new ComScore report, “Facebook has become the top social network in a majority of European countries for the first time. […] That's most dramatically reflected in Spain, where Facebook's reach has grown tenfold over the course of only a year and is now in the No. 1 spot. In fact, ComScore said Wednesday, the only countries where Facebook isn't the No. 1 or No. 2 social network are Germany, where it ranks fourth; Russia, where it's seventh; and Portugal, where it's third. Facebook's biggest stronghold in Europe is still the U.K., where it has 22.7 million active users, followed by France with 13.7 million.”
BusinessWeek has an interesting article about “Google’s trademark tussle,” which stems from “a practice by Google that lets advertisers use a competing brand name in efforts to attract customers.”
SFGate.com reports that “[m]ore changes are coming to eBay Inc. The online marketplace operator said Tuesday that sellers will have new ways of listing items on the site. EBay, which had 86.3 million active users at the end of 2008, said the tweaks are to become effective in mid-June. Among the changes: Sellers will be able to charge various prices for similar products that are sold under one listing – such as different-size shirts. And now June 15 is the deadline for sellers to add a return policy and handling time to their listings. That rule was originally supposed to take effect last month.”