Smells like Microsoft spirit.
Google, being the gigantic company that it is, has become the target of legal action and regulatory concern. Just this week, we learned that Italy found Google execs guilty in the case of a controversial video. There’s the Google Books lawsuit and in the past Google faced scrutiny for an ad deal with Yahoo! (which they pre-emptively canceled) and its relations with Apple (Eric Schmidt later quit the board).
The state of video sharing in Italy is now in jeopardy.
When Italy decided to accuse Google execs of privacy and defamation violations following the appearance of an offensive video on Google Video, it seemed to be an annoying legal situation that would likely work itself out.
It has not.
An Italian judge has found 3 of the 4 Google execs guilty on privacy code violations. The defamation charges came back not guilty.
The video in question involves the absolutely disgusting ridicule of an autistic child. It was filmed by teenagers. The Google execs, of course, did not film or upload the video, which was removed from Google Video hours after getting word from Italian police.
Many in the West reacted negatively when Google kowtowed to the Chinese government’s demands to censor its Chinese search engine Google.cn. At the time Google said that it would monitor conditions in the country and make adjustments in policy as necessary.
Looks like that time has come.
Agents who may have been working on behalf of the the Chinese government have apparently attempted a coordinated hacking attack against Google and over a dozen other major corporations. In Google’s case it seems like the purpose was to access email accounts of suspected anti-government activists.
Google thought it had a right to own Groovle.com, so it took it’s case to the National Arbitration Forum (NAF). (The NAF is an international arbitration service accredited by ICANN.)
But the NAF didn’t agree with Google that Groovle could be confused for the search giant. Groovle does use Google’s custom search. It also provides a service where you can skin your Google homepage with a photograph (similar to Bing without the hotspots).
Still, Groovle just didn’t sound or act enough like Google to warrant the domain being handled over to the folks at Mountain View.
