Google’s search results in Europe could soon look a bit different if a number of new reports about the company’s settlement with the European Union’s competition commission are correct. After a three-year investigation into its potentially anti-competitive practices, Google submitted its proposal for an agreement with the EU last week, but the details remained under wraps. → Read More
With hacking and malware on the rise, Europe is cracking down on cybersecurity: today the European Commission, working with the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is launching a new cybersecurity strategy along with a proposed directive on how to implement it (both embedded below). Among other things, the directive calls for each member state of the EU to set… → Read More
Up to now, the European Commission has kept a relatively light position on where it stands with cloud services — putting more effort into the wider issues like broadband and mobile regulation and ensuring that users all get a fair deal as these services continue to grow. Today that changed, as the EC unveiled a high-level cloud services strategy, with the aim of adding €160 billion ($206… → Read More
Some development in the e-book price war being played out in Europe — and an indirect victory for Amazon and any other retailer not called Apple in the process: the European Commission has announced that Apple and the four big publishers Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have offered to drop their agency pricing agreement for e-books sold in Europe — although the five… → Read More
Carriers are fiercely competitive, but swallowing their territorial tendencies, several around Europe have started teaming up to share mobile spectrum and other resources in the ongoing race to serve hungry mobile consumers with data for their apps, video chats and film streams — expected soon to top 1 trillion megabytes of data per month. Today the EU took a step towards formalizing that, with… → Read More
The European Union has opened an antitrust investigation into Google to look into claims made by three European-based Internet companies. Not surprisingly, this key part of the investigation is said to be about search, which is dominated by Google is most of the EU markets. The Telegraph and WSJ have more details.
It’s important to note that this probe is just a preliminary one, and nothing may… → Read More
It’s official: the European Commission has granted regulatory approval for Oracle to acquire Sun Microsystems for approximately $7.4 billion, without further conditions. In a statement released moments ago, Oracle says it expects unconditional approval from China and Russia as well and intends to close the transaction shortly.
Oracle will host an all-day live event for customers, partners, press… → Read More
Few things are are captivating as the various machinations of European politics, what with the countless measures, motions, proposals and whatnot. The latest one to interest us: the passage of a report that rejects the use of so-called “three strike” anti-piracy schemes, like the one currently being considered by France. The report, which passed the European Parliament (which sounds a lot more… → Read More
Ha! The green-crazy European Union is looking to ban energy inefficient TVs, including large plasmas, in the interest of saving Mother Earth. Nope, not joking. → Read More
Oh, Europe. It seems the European Commission is still trying to figure out if it wants to impose a customs duty of up to 14 percent (a tax, essentially) on imported multifunction devices, most notably cellphones. While such a move may be beneficial to European Taxmen, it’s not exactly something that consumers, or non-European manufacturers, want to hear. Reason being, obviously, that… → Read More
The executive branch of the European Union is investigating whether wireless carriers there are illegally blocking VoIP calls from being carried over their networks. You know you can’t use Skype-like applications over 3G using your iPhone? If the Commission gets its way, that practice would end, one would assume. It’s like this: the European Commission doesn’t like it when… → Read More
A new set of EU Directives could force Apple to re-design its iPod and iPhone in Europe. And if it did that, it might as well re-design them for every market, right? The Directives would force manufacturers to design their products so that batteries are easily replaces—unscrew one or two screws, flip a tab, etc. Seems the EU wants to make it easier for people to dispose of their old… → Read More
Flickr’d A European Union official has warned Google to play nice with EU privacy laws if and when it launches a European version of Google Maps Street View. The service, which provides street-level photos of certain areas, has generated concern among privacy advocates and home owners. In response, Google will now automatically blur faces of people present in Street View photos. As it… → Read More
[photopress:bbcbt.jpg,full,center] BitTorrent is getting more legitimate with each passing day. There’s word today that the European Union will put up $22 million, or €15 million, for the development of an open source BitTorrent client—P2P-Net—that supports live streaming. (Wow that sounds like a lot of money to spend for what amount to some kid’s summertime Google Code… → Read More
Google bowed to privacy “activists” today by announcing that it will decrease the amount of time that it keeps track of Web searches. It used to keep a log for two years, but now that’s been shortened to 18 months. The move is in response to European Union-lead concerns that the it was unnecessarily hoarding customer information. Apparently, people don’t like the idea of… → Read More
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Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
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