It has been a week of regulatory decisions on internet privacy issues.

The UK’s Office of the Information Commissioner has given the go-ahead for Phorm, the targeted advertising company to start trials with BT. While the ICO statement of this is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the service, it doesn’t raise any insurmountable concerns. Phorm is still under close scrutiny, but for now, allowed to go ahead.

At the same time, the Article 29 Working Party has finally published its opinion on data protection issues related to search engines, going much further than some observers expected. Search engines are to be required to delete search logs after only six months compared with 18 currently for Google and 13 for Microsoft and Yahoo.

There is still much puzzling over the exact interpretation of the dense document, but under some of the strictest readings it suggests that even the search terms you type into a search engine are personal information and should not be used without your permission for other purposes. In other words, they shouldn’t be used to send you targeted ads, an interpretation that would entirely undermine Google’s business model.

It seems unlikely that the rules will be taken to this extreme, but it is clear there is a clash coming between Google and the European regulators on the recommendations. Google maintains it needs server logs for 18 months – some European regulators say even 6 months are too much. After a year and a half of talking, neither side has convinced the other. It doesn’t bode well for finding a compromise from here.

The Phorm and Google cases show that regulators have fallen out of sync with public opinion on these matters. For internet users, Phorm is the easier to hate, because noone really likes advertising. Google, on the other hand, provides a useful service and is forgiven for much.

The regulators, however, appear to see Google as the more problematic of the two. It is OK to target people with ads as long as it is done anonymously, without identifying people. What is not OK is having a lot of personal details sitting on company servers, however unobtrusively they may have been collected and used.

Any company hoping to launch targeted advertising services should be watching the fate of UK start-up Phorm with great interest. In particular, they should take note of what this says about the public’s double standards on privacy.

Phorm is trying to build a new ad platform, serving ads targeted around users’ internet habits and interests. It is hoping to make this acceptable to the general public with reassurances that no personally identifiable information is kept or stored as part of the process.

According to Phorm, the system will know it is serving an ad to a 30-35 year old male looking for a new car insurance deal. It will not know who you are, however.  You are just a random number. It will not even keep your IP address.

Phorm has consulted with every possible stakeholder to assure people the system is privacy-friendly - like the UK Home Office and the UK Information Commissioner - and it has had its privacy system audited by Ernst & Young and 80/20 Thinking, a privacy consultancy. It is inviting anyone with an interest to do their own inspection.

But none of this has really helped with public perception. There has been a blogosphere furore, and Phorm has been branded a spyware company in the press. A UK think tank this week sent an open letter to the Information Commissioner’s office, asserting that Phorm was possibly illegal.

As was seen in Facebook’s Beacon experiment, people are strongly against the idea of targeted advertising. Given any choice in the matter, it seems, they will campaign hard against it.

The attitude is, however, inconsistent with our tolerance for all kinds of other, less overt data collection and targeting. Where people are not explicitly told about targeting they are generally too lazy to protest.

Every Google search is stored for 18 months, complete with IP address and cookie information from a personal computer. There is much more of a profile kept on Google’s servers than on Phorm, yet, even after the issue was raised a year and a half ago by European privacy regulators as a problem, users have not abandoned the search engine in droves. It appears to be too convenient to boycott.

Millions of us carry store loyalty cards that allow supermarkets to closely profile our shopping habits. This is linked to our name and address – but that doesn’t bother any more than a handful of people.

In fact, we hand over our personal information constantly to any number of companies, from signing end-user licensing agreements to use software, to filling in forms to extend warranties on our household goods.

The companies to which we give this data use it for their own targeting – and are notoriously bad at protecting it. Several recent studies have shown that only a minority of companies have adequate data safeguards. Many don’t even know what data they have in their files and couldn’t say if any of it had leaked or been hacked. Big data losses such as the TJX incident are just the tip of the iceberg.

This is not causing major uproar.  However, if a company declares its intention to target us, albeit in as secure a way as possible, we feel outrage. Phorm is in danger of becoming a scapegoat for a general frustration about an information society we no longer feel in control of.

It is a shame, because the company was at least trying to move privacy technology forward to some extent. It may not have gone far enough, but it is a start. Stamping the business out before it has even started will not stop attempts to target advertising, but may simply drive it underground. The lesson from all this seems to be:  if you want to target, just don’t tell anyone you are doing it. They probably won’t notice.

The dusty world of technical standards setting is full of excitement and intrigue again as 120 delegates from 37 countries convene in Geneva to discuss whether to accept Microsoft’s new Open Office XML software as an international open standard under the International Standards Organisation.

Standard-setting does not normally arouse much interest. It’s usually a group of five or six engineers in a small room voting on an incremental modification to a piece of code few people are even aware exists. But this time the stakes are high – especially for Microsoft, which could stand to lose out on a great deal of business if it does not get the ISO seal of approval.

Many governments, particularly in Europe, are starting to mandate their departments use open standard. Without ISO certification, Microsoft may find it harder to get its software on the procurement list.

Its hard to say exactly how much they might stand to lose. Some governments may not mind lack of ISO approval. Denmark, for example, said this week that its public sector purchasing would not be affected by the result. However, the Danish government may face a legal challenge over this. Certainly, it is fair to say lack of the ISO rubber stamp will make life harder.

Discussions in Geneva, have therefore been tense. Microsoft failed to get enough votes in the previous ballot September.

It has now had a week in Geneva to try to resolve 1100 issues raised about the OOXML standard. It needs to get around 5 countries that are part of the ISO voting process to change their minds to get the standard through. The final vote is at the end of March.

Its impossible to call the result. Ironically enough, this discussion on open standards is happening entirely behind closed doors. The delegates have been instructed not to reveal anything about the proceedings. If they take photographs of anyone in the meetings, they could be sued. This appears an attempt to prevent a reprise of the frantic scenes around the September vote, when both Microsoft and the ODF-camp, representing a rival open standard, hurled accusations of vote-rigging at each other.

Bits and pieces are trickling out on blogs, however, such as one from one of the Malaysian delegates. By the sounds of things, things are as tense as in September, with Microsoft representatives posted in Geneva hotel lobbies to schmooze delegates. Microsoft officially says they are there to provide technical assistance.

The other side has also brought its luminaries, with Vint Cerf, early internt pioneer and now Google employee, and Bob Sutor, IBM’s champion for the ODF format, in town to expound the virtues of open source software. Google has been unable to resist taking a swipe at Microsoft on its official blog.

Clearly a huge amount of energy is being expended on all of this. The battle may be taking place under the auspices of a rather bureaucratic standard setting body, but make no mistake – this is war.

These days, no big industry conference is complete without a good deal of public posturing over global warming, and the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week is no exception. Nokia, the world’s largest mobile handset maker, and China Mobile, the world’s largest operator, have both jumped on the eco-bandwagon.

Wang Jianzhou, the chief executive of China Mobile, told delegates that companies had to take responsibility for climate change. China Mobile itself is taking action by collecting old mobile handsets, building mobile base stations that run on solar and wind power, and buying low-energy equipment from suppliers. They clearly want to be seen to be doing their bit ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Meanwhile Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia, displayed a prototype phone made entirely from recycled materials such as tin cans, plastic bottles and old tyres. There is no hint of when, if ever, such a phone might be brought to market. But its an indication of what is possible, Mr Kallasvuo said.

Its very fashionable for companies to talk up the environment at the moment- without necessarily doing much. But these two mobile behemoths are of such a size that even first steps like these will have some impact.

The way to achieve a certain mystique for a mobile product is to not attend trade shows like the Mobile World Congress. Last year Apple stayed away, but the iPhone was the word on everyone’s lips. This year Android is the new, much discussed, threat to the establishment and Google’s presence is minimal - especially as Andy Rubin, head of the Android project, had to suddenly race back to the US, cancelling planned demos of the software. Was it really an emergency calling him back - or is it just the new style of brandbuillding?

Bill Gates faced a fairly benign crowd at the Institute of Directors in  London on Wednesday morning where he made  his last UK speech  before his retirement.

But it was not without a few moments of controversy.

When the 1000-strong  audience was given a chance to question Mr Gates, one IT manager of a law firm accused Microsoft of being overly dominant in corporate software and complained of the arrogance of the company’s sales force. With other suppliers, he said, he could fire and re-engage them if their terms and conditions changed, but not so with Microsoft’s Office package.

Mr Gates was immediately on the defensive, saying there was plenty of competition in corporate software.

“I’d like to see the terms and conditions you have with IBM and we can immediately match them,” he said, sounding more like a keen-as-mustard sales rep than an executive less than six months away from slipping the corporate leash.

Oracle and many other companies also provided competition, he said. The problem was competition in corporate software just wasn’t covered as much in the media.

Mr Gates went on to stress how innovative the software sector was.

“People should wish that other commercial sectors were as competitive and innovative as the software space. Just think what food would cost and the advantages you would have experienced.”

The competition issue was clearly still a very sore point with him. Earlier, when questioned about his most stressful moments at Microsoft he had sighed “Trying not to be sued by your own government. Especially when it is unjust.”

Perhaps it is not surprising given the recent US decision to extend its close anti-trust scrutiny of Microsoft by another two years, and the new competition case opened in the EU earlier this month.

Mr Gates was visibly happier when talking about his future plans at his charitable foundation, tackling the world’s health problems and giving away most of his fortune. Then, the shoe will be on the other foot, as he gets to chivvy governments for not being generous enough and demand large sums of money from them.

There is an old kids’ riddle which goes:

Q. When is a door not a door?
A. When it’s ajar.

And in a similar vein we can ask:

Q. When is a portal not a portal?
A. When it’s Nokia’s Ovi (door).

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chief executive of Nokia was reluctant to use the word "portal" yesterday at the launch of the Ovi service.

"I prefer to call it a gateway," in an FT interview following Wednesday’s gala news event.

Ovi means door in Finnish, and of course, "portal", "gateway" and "door" are all pretty much the same thing, semantically speaking.

But there are many reasons Nokia wants to steer clear of the "portal" word.

For one thing, mobile operators have portals and Nokia wants to minimise the sense that Ovi will be a competitor to these services. Although, of course, it will be. Ovi is designed to be a sort of jumping off point to access the mobile internet, a home page through which you can access music downloads, games and other services. A lot like what Vodafone Live or Orange World might offer.

Secondly, "portal" has mutated from its original Latin meaning of gateway and in today’s internet world has come to signify something closed, a walled garden where mobile operators steer you towards their own branded services and only reluctantly allow you to see the wider world. Nokia wants to stress openness. The Ovi can connect you to the wider internet, to Google or Yahoo or eBay as easily as it connects you to Nokia’s online music store.

By fostering a sense of openness, Nokia wants to make the mobile internet more enticing. It’s all about perception - the doors of perception in this case. 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern.”

William Blake, the Marriage of Heaven and Hell

It is obvious that Google is taking very seriously the concerns that arose earlier this year over its privacy policies.

Google is between a rock and a hard place on this one. On the one hand, with the internet at more than 15bn pages, it is essential to make searches more personalised and tailored, otherwise we may drown in too much information.

On the other hand, privacy activists and consumers dislike the idea that someone is compiling and keeping detailed profiles on them.

So, each time Google now announces a new step in personalising internet searches, there is a softly-softly approach to reassure that rights are not being trampled.

The latest example was Google’s announcement on Wednesday that it was launching international versions of its “web history” service, which tracks all the web pages a user has ever visited and allows them to search and go back to them. The idea is that that funny video or recipe you half remember looking at will be easier to revisit.

The service has already been in use in the US, but will now be operational in 26 languages, from Chinese and Hebrew to Norwegian and Portuguese.

To make sure the Norwegian authorities – for example - didn’t have an apoplectic fit over the announcement, the press call was handled not only by Sep Kamvar, the head personalisation engineer, but also Peter Fleischer, Google’s head of privacy. He spoke for almost as long as Mr Kamvar.

In fact, it is very simple. The service is optional, and opt-in services have never been a problem for privacy activists. Getting people to “opt-in” is a handy way for Google to push forward personalisation developments and stay within international laws.

What Google doesn’t reveal, however, is how many people are opting in to personalisation. This is a shame, as it would be a useful gauge for privacy regulators – if most Google users are opting to personalise their searches at the risk of less privacy, perhaps search history privacy is not an issue to worry about. If personalisation is not proving popular, however, it may be Google that needs a re-think.

The games console and phone are increasingly blending into one, and convergence is happening from all angles. Nokia has for a long time been talking about putting its N-Gage gaming platform onto a series of smartphones. Now Sony has done a deal with BT to put voice and video call capabilities on the PlayStation Portable.

Of course, given that the PSP can connect to the internet via a wi-fi connection, you can already make internet calls on the device, if you can be bothered to set up Skype or something similar. However, from around September this year, BT are planning to make calls from the device a much easier, one-click operation.

There are advantages on both sides from the deal. BT are keen to get more wi-fi devices and paying users for its expensive network of 2000 wi-fi hotspots and 13 wireless cities around the UK.

Sony, on the other hand, is keen to add features to increase the appeal of the PSP, which saw sales fall by 5.7m units last year.

The pricing model is still shrouded in some secrecy – Sony is due to make announcements on this at the Leipzig Games Convention in August. And there is a the slight drawback that – at least initially – you will be able to call only other PSPs and BT internet phones.

However BT and Sony have taken one lesson from Nokia’s ill-fated N-Gage console, whose failure was partly attributed to its large “taco” shape. You can make calls on the PSP through a headset or loudspeaker function – no one will have to hold the hulking console to their ear.

Software vendors beware. The UK’s small to medium-sized businesses appear to have the most lax attitudes in Europe to using illegal software. According to a new study by the Business Software Alliance, 41 per cent of UK SMEs believe there is no risk from using pirated software. “No risk” in this case, means they fear no risk of either prosecution or computer problems that pirate programs might cause.

The rest of Europe appears to be more law-abiding. Only 7 per cent of French SMEs believe illegal software is risk-free. This rises to 10 per cent in the Netherlands, 18 per cent in Germany, 21 per cent in Italy and 26 per cent in Spain.

Even in Russia, commonly seen as a Mecca of software piracy, only 9 per cent of companies believed there was no risk. Russian companies most commonly felt there was a great risk of legal prosecution or criminal charges from using pirate software.

Actual piracy rates tell a slightly different story. The latest research from the BSA shows that in 2005, 27 per cent of UK software was pirated. This is lower than the global average of 35 per cent, and far below Russia, where 83 per cent of software is illegal. 

In other words, Russians may use illegal software, but know its wrong, while in the UK ignorance is bliss.

The BSA couldn’t explain the UK’s freebooting attitude, but said that clearly a lot more work needed to be done to educate companies and tighten up software ownership laws. Perhaps a few more software-related prosecutions coming up?