Facebook filing flags privacy risks
Getty Images
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.
Technology companies are fast taking up some of the slack in the London property market created by the downsizing of the financial services sector.
IT, telecoms and internet start-up companies doubled their uptake of office space in central London during 2011. In total, the industry took up 1.3m square feet of office space in 2011, compared with 640,000 square feet in 2010, according to data from Knight Frank.
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.
Gov.uk launches one UK government website to rule them all
The first major product of sweeping changes to how the government handles its internal IT systems and public-facing websites is to be unveiled on Wednesday, as a new unified website for online public services goes live for testing.
A new single government domain, at www.gov.uk, will replace Directgov, the portal which launched in 2004, before extending across Whitehall departments’ sites in the coming weeks.
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.
New Apple store chief is Dixons CEO
Apple has finally named a successor to Ron Johnson as head of its retail store operation, choosing John Browett, chief executive of the British electronics retailer Dixons.
Mr Browett (pictured left) will join in April as senior vice president of Retail, reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Mr Johnson was named last June as the new chief executive of JC Penney, the US department store chain.
Google clashes with British MPs over takedown policy
Google was dragged over the coals by a British parliamentary committee on Monday afternoon, as the technology company’s approach to removing illegal content from its search results again came under scrutiny.
European VC investments hit 11-year low
Venture capital investors appear to be growing increasingly wary of European companies. In 2011, they put just E4.4bn into 1,012 start-ups in the region, a 14 per cent drop from the previous year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.
This was the lowest annual deal count since Dow Jones began tracking investments in Europe in 2000.
Spotify hits 3m subscribers to improve conversion rate
No wonder the record labels are sounding much more positive about music subscription services. Spotify is starting to reap the benefits of its oft-doubted “freemium” business model.
After hitting 2.5m subscribers in November, the Anglo-Swedish digital music service has now reached 3m, with more than 20 per cent of its active user base paying every month to banish advertisements or listen on smartphones.
Google faces Norwegian public sector ban
Norwegian public sector organisations will be banned from using Google Apps after the Norwegian data protection authorities ruled that the service could put citizens’ personal data at risk.
The data protection authority said Google Apps did not comply with Norwegian privacy laws because there was insufficient information about where data was being kept. The decision came from a test case in Narvik, where the local council had chosen to use Google Apps for their email.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Older entries
