The Wall Street Journal reports that “
According to the New York Times, “Network Solutions is standing by its controversial policy of automatically registering some domain names that are the subject of searches on the company’s Web site. After testing the concept in December, the domain name registration company quietly began doing this over the past weekend. Potential customers who used the company’s ‘Find a domain’ search engine would suddenly find the domain names they had been searching for were registered to Network Solutions itself, making them temporarily unable to purchase the domain from another provider. Industry watchers were quick to blast the new policy, saying that it either forced searchers to become Network Solutions customers, or exposed their ideas to scammers, who would be able to snatch up the domains the second they were released. […] Ironically, [Network Solutions CEO Champ] Mitchell said that Network Solutions came up with the search registration process in an effort to cut down on the scamming that has plagued the industry over the past two years. ‘We are not trying to make a bunch of money off of this,’ he said.”
On Matusow’s blog, Jason Matusow points out that “[o]ne of the interesting pieces of FUD floating around out there about Open XML is that there are IP issues with it and that is why countries should reconsider yes votes etc. etc. This is a factually wrong line of logic, and one that has been perpetuated throughout the process because most people a) don’t have a law degree and b) don’t want to take the time to think about – so it is easier to assume the worst.” Matusow then quotes helpful excerpts from a piece that was pulled together to help people understand these issues.
Dowloadsquad writes that “[i]f you’re one of those people worried that one day Google will own all of your personal data, you’d better sit down. Google has launched a new service called Google Checkout Trends that shows what people are buying from merchants using Google Checkout. Now, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Google is anonymizing the data before releasing it. So there’s no way you can use this tool to find out what Steve from the office bought his wife for their anniversary. Not yet anyway. But you can get a picture of what items are popular over time, and how two items compare with one another. For example, you can search for ‘ipod, zune’ to see which item sold better last month.”
The San Jose Mercury News reports that “[t]he New York attorney general launched a formal investigation of Intel on Thursday, alleging ‘potential anti-competitive conduct’ and adding to antitrust pressures facing the world’s biggest chip maker. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said that after a preliminary review, he subpoenaed the company to determine whether it coerced customers to exclude rival Advanced Micro Devices from the computer chip market.”