Google

Earlier today, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA) which, depending on who you ask, is either a means to stop piracy and copyright infringement on so-called “rogue” websites, or the most serious threat of internet censorship that we’ve seen in some time. In the latter camp are some of the biggest internet companies around, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Zynga and AOL (full disclosure: Engadget’s parent company), who today made their stance clear by taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times.

The ad itself is a letter sent by the nine companies to Congress, which states that while they support the stated goals of the bill and the related Protect IP Act, they believe that, as written, the bills “would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites.” The companies further went on to say that they believe the measures also “pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity.” While they didn’t all sign onto the letter, those companies also also joined by a host of others who have spoken out against the legislation, including Foursquare and Tumblr. The sole witness against the proposed measures at today’s hearing, however, was Google’s copyright policy counsel, Katherine Oyama — you can find her testimony on Google’s Public Policy Blog linked below.

Full Story and associated articles here:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/16/google-facebook-twitter-and-others-speak-out-against-the-stop/

OpenDNS, Google, and a few others have built a new technology into their Internet operations that’s designed to speed up the delivery of data around the globe.

The technology augments the Domain Name System that provides the numeric Internet Protocol (IP) address needed to get data to an Internet domain such as news.com. Those that developed it include OpenDNS, Google, and VeriSign. Called edns-client-subnet in technical circles, or more ambitiously the “Global Internet Speedup,” it uses geographic information associated with IP addresses to help computers fetching data get it from the closest–and therefore fastest–server.

“Anybody using OpenDNS or Google Public DNS will immediately get the benefits of this technology,” said OpenDNS Chief Executive David Ulevitch in an interview. Using it, “the worst-case scenario is that things remain they way they are today,” and the best-case scenario is that network delays are as low as they can be, he said.

Google proposed the technology last year, though Ulevitch said it’s been under discussion for longer than that. Google has a powerful interest in making the Web faster, including through the use of its own Google Public DNS service, and its Internet operations are big enough that it can use the technology both when requesting data from other servers and when others request data from its own servers.

Google endorsed the work, too. “Google is committed to making the Internet faster–not just for our users, but for everyone,” said Google Distinguished Engineer Dave Presotto in a statement. “We will do that any way we can, by improving protocols, browsers, client software, and networks.”

The tried and true analogy for DNS is that it acts like a phone book (tried and true, at least, if you remember what phone books were): you look up a person’s name and the book provides the phone number. Ulevitch likens the new technique to a phone book that gives a bit more information based on part of your own phone number.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20098994-264/google-opendns-add-geo-speed-boost-to-net/#ixzz1WWJWKt6z

NEW YORK — Google and four bank and telecommunications partners on Thursday unveiled “Google Wallet,” taking U.S. shoppers a step closer to paying by waving their mobile phones at the checkout counter.

Full Story Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43182990/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/

Chalk another one up for Apple.

Apple is the world’s most valuable brand with a value of $153.3 billion, according to Millard Brown Optimor’s annual “BrandZ: Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands” study released today. In just one year, Apple’s brand value has increased by 84 percent, the study said.