Microsoft and Yahoo! trumpet their own anti-Google privacy policies
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Just like Ask.com Unable to keep up with Google's market share, the other big search engines are determined to top its privacy policies. Last week, Ask.com announced new software that keeps web searches completely anonymous - a first among major search engines - and now Microsoft and Yahoo! have unveiled their own brand-spanking-new privacy principles.â¦
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People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and Web searching have a new privacy risk to worry about: Google&#39;s free tool that indexes a PC&#39;s contents for quickly locating data.
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Web search leader Google Inc.&#39;s   commitment to consumer privacy came under fire from  Privacy International, a British activist group that has  previously singled out Google for criticism.
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'The end of anonymous blogging' Microsoft and Yahoo! have signed a pact with the Chinese government that "encourages" the big name web players to record the identities of bloggers and censor content. So says Reporters Without Borders, an organization that fights for journalistic rights across the globe.â¦
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By James Coates, Chicago Tribune  Feb. 25--On Thursday, the Googlers launched their long-awaited attack on the Microsofties' 800-pound-gorilla dominance of the business software gold mine. You know, the software behind that monitor sitting on your desk at work.
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Following the example set last week by Ask.com's AskEraser announcement, Microsoft has jouned the push toward greater user privacy protections for search-engine queries. The company will introduce an anonymous-surfing option and a new data-retention policy that will purge identifiable info after 18 months.
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Google is being taken to task by a UK-based privacy group over its apparent lack of a commitment to the privacy of its users. However, the company is doing what it can do discredit the report.
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Googleâs management team has an obsession with Microsoft, and that oversensitivity may well cloud their reaction to the prospect of Microsoft buying Yahoo.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has complained to federal antitrust officials that the search tool in Microsoft'sÂ Windows VistaÂ Â discourages customers from using its own search utility, the company confirmed Sunday. Stories posted to the Web sites of The New York Times (registration required)Â and theÂ Seattle Post-IntelligencerÂ SaturdayÂ first revealedÂ that Google's complaint centered on Vista's built-in desktop search software, dubbed Instant Search. According to both newspapers, Google accused Microsoft of designing Vista to discourage users from running its indexing and search software. On Sunday, Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes confirmed the charge. "Microsoft's current approach with Vista desktop search violates its agreement with the government and hurts consumers." he said in an e-mail to Computerworld. "The search boxes built throughout Vista are hard-wired to Microsoft's own desktop search product, with no way for users to choose an alternate provider from these visible search access points. Likewise, Vista makes it impractical to turn off Microsoft's search index." According to postings on Microsoft's support forums, the only way to completely disable Vista's search is to stop the Windows Search service in the Microsoft Management Console. Microsoft disputed Google's charges. "We've been working with state and federal antitrust officials for the past two years to ensure that there are no problems with any of the features in Windows Vista," said company spokesman Jack Evans. "These desktop search issues were reviewed at length with regulators prior to the release of Windows Vista and resulted in more than a dozen changes at their request." Even so, Microsoft will consider more changes to Vista, Evans added. "While we donât believe there are any compliance concerns with desktop search, we are committed to going the extra mile to resolve this issue, so long as the changes Google is requesting do nothing to undermine the privacy and security of computer users." During aÂ March 2007 hearingÂ conducted by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the 2002 Microsoft consent decree, the government's status report noted that a complaint had been filed, but did not identify the company. "At the last status conference, plaintiffs reported that they had just received a middleware-related complaint," theÂ status reportÂ read. "Since then, plaintiffs have been investigating this complaint, including obtaining significant additional information from Microsoft and the complainant." Google had previously raised concerns about search in Microsoft'sÂ Internet Explorer 7Â browser with federal officials. In May 2006, however,Â federal officials rebuffed Google, saying that IE 7 users could easily switch search providers and that computer makers could set the default search engine in IE 7 before shipping systems. Google has also filed similar complaints over search in both IE 7 and Vista with the European Union's antitrust commission. Those complaints have not been settled. According to The New York Times, the U.S. Department of Justice refused to pursue the Google complaint, andÂ Thomas Barnett,Â the assistant U.S. attorney general for antitrust, sent a memo to numerous state attorneys general in May asking them to also reject the complaint. Prosecutors in several of those states, however, have reportedly decided to investigate the Google concerns whether the federal government goes along or not, a decision that has Barnett reconsidering the agency's position. E-mails and phone calls asking several of the states involved with the 2004 Microsoft settlement to comment were not returned Sunday. Barnett's division will present its next report on Microsoft's progress in meeting the 2002 settlement to Kollar-Kotelly in a hearing scheduled for June 26. Â
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As part of its ongoing battle with Google (GOOG:Nasdaq - news - research) for the loyalty of Internet users, Yahoo! said it had implemented new antispam technology for its Web-based email service.
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After Google announced their search software utility and Yahoo! told the world they are working on a similar program. MSN is now beta testing their software.
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Yahoo! makes alliances to fend off Google.
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Privacy International wants Google to acknowledge and apologize for 'hostility' to customer privacy.
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Would Yahoo! give Microsoft an unfair advantage over Google?
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With the announcement of its new search engine, Microsoft is all geared to spoil the search engine party of Google and Yahoo. The software giant today released a beta version of its new MSN search service, claiming
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Google posts new videos on YouTube explaining its privacy settings in products as part of a privacy offensive.
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Google Inc, the world&#39;s largest  Internet company, will propose at a meeting of international  policymakers in France on Friday that national regulators agree  on a basic set of global privacy protections.