A list of hacked private data belonging to 537 customers, posted anonymously on the internet on Friday led Dutch telecoms company KPN to shut down email access for two million clients for two days while it reinforced security, writes Matt Steinglass in Amsterdam.
Is Google dipping its toe into retail?
The small detail in a planning application has led to speculation that Google might be opening its first retail store, at its European headquarters in Dublin.
Google is revamping the Montevetro office block on Dublin’s Barrow Street, and the plans submitted to Dublin City Council include a provision f0r some retail space in a snazzy new, attention-grabbing mezzanine development. Could this be an experiment by Google to see if a physical store – where they could demonstrate the workings of Chromebooks, or display Android phones – would work for them?
Kaspersky rules out IPO – should the others?
Kaspersky Labs is one of a group of European IT security companies that has been talking about floating since at least 2007. But Eugene Kaspersky, the company’s founder and majority shareholder, has now announced the company is planning to stay private after all.
He is buying back the 20 per cent stake General Atlantic bought in the company a year ago, and preserving all the freedom and flexibility that unlisted status affords.
This week, Facebook’s much-anticipated IPO filing gave a glimpse into the company’s financials and the thinking of its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.
For many commentators, the filing raised questions about whether Facebook can continue this pace of accelerated growth.
Facebook filing flags privacy risks
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One thing Facebook’s IPO filing documents make clear is that the company is taking privacy risks seriously. Privacy is mentioned 35 times, mainly as a risk factor.
The company acknowledges that media coverage of privacy lapses, for example, could affect profits.
There could hardly be a better moment for Google to change its spots.
With Facebook’s initial public offering looming large, all eyes are on the newest internet darling. Google, for once, finds itself in the shade, even though its revenues and profits still dwarf its social networking rival.
French court fines Google over mapping
There was more bad news in France for Google on Wednesday as a Paris court decided that the internet company had abused its dominant position in online mapping tools.
The decision comes as we await the bigger decision by the European Commission over whether Google has behaved anti-competitively in the search market.
Microsoft turns to advertising to poke Google
Microsoft, which often lobbies intensively behind the scenes against Google, has for the first time taken its campaign into print. It began a three-day series of adverts in US newspapers on Wednesday taking aim at Google’s latest moves to integrate its services and standardise its privacy policies.
The message: You can no longer trust Google to put its users first.
WikiLeaks could set servers afloat, Fox News reports
Tech news from around the web:
WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, is investigating the possibility of taking its hosting infrastructure offshore to avoid the long arm of the law, reports Fox News. The suggestion is that this would be more than just an island out of the reach of the taxman – WikiLeaks has explored floating its infrastructure on a barge in international waters, Fox claims. Julian Assange is in London’s supreme court this week fighting his extradition to Sweden, while a new legal challenge has also emerged from FSI, his former lawyers, who accuse the WikiLeaks founder of failing to pay his legal fees.
Internet companies dominate EU fundraising in January
Online shopping and renting out spare capacity in flats and cars appeared to be the investment themes in Europe in January, with consumer-facing internet companies once again getting the majority of the money and attention.
Berlin was the fundraising hot-spot with at least four start-ups raising money, from $50m for SoundCloud to a more modest $1.4m for Gidsy.
This is the first of a series of monthly updates on the early-stage technology companies raising money in Europe.
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