Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
It was interesting to read John Dvorak's take on the recent successful lawsuit by a relatively insignificant group of newspapers in a Belgian court against Google. Dvorak believes that the ridiculous ruling is part of an EU plot to squeeze Google out of Europe. Well is it?
It's an undeniable fact that Europe seems to be
increasingly hostile territory for a number of high profile US
technology companies. Prior to the latest Google episode, Microsoft's
brushes with the European Commission over Windows software bundling and
Apple falling afoul of the Norwegian Government over the iPod and
iTunes connection are two prime examples.
Then of course there was the US$17.5 million Agence France Presse
lawsuit against Google for using its headlines to link to the site
of...Agence France Presse!
So three or four cases against dominant US technology giants doesn't mean there is an EU conspiracy. Or does it?
This latest case does have some pecularities. For instance, one of the
key complaints of these obscure predominantly French language
newspapers was that Google News enables readers to access cached
archived content that the newspapers would otherwise sell. However, it
should be obvious to even the simple minded that Google News, as
distinct for the wider search engine, does not cache news stories but
links directly to sites. Therefore this charge should have been
dismissed out of hand.
Then of course there is the fact that unknown Belgian newspapers should
have little cause for complaint when a highly trafficked global website
draws attention to their stories and shunts readers their way. After
all, they're not wire services like AFP.
Finally, this all happened in Belgium, where the EU Government sits in
Brussels. Is that at all significant? Or are we non-Europeans just
being paranoid?
In any case, Google intends to fight this ridiculous decision because
it is an affront to the freedom of the flow of information across the
Internet.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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