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Google Whacked by Justice Department for Facilitating Sales of Illegal Canadian Pharmacy Drugs in U.S.

The United States Justice Department has announced today a settlement in which Google will forfeit $500 million for leading users to Canadian pharmacies which illegally sell and send prescription drugs to consumers in the United States, without requiring proof of a prescription.

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Does the Ability to Mine Facebook Email Notification Data in Gmail Give Google+ an Unfair Advantage Over Facebook?

With all the hoopla over Google+ – what with some calling it the Facebook killer, and all – it is interesting to us to note that nobody has yet stopped to question what sort of advantage Google has over Facebook by being able to data-mine all of that email that flows from Facebook to its users, via…Gmail.

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With Launch of Social Network G+, Google Puts Squeeze on Users: No More Private Google Profiles

We’re betting that some in the Google inner circle are ruing the day that someone at Google HQ first uttered “Don’t be evil.” Like Bush’s “Read my lips, no new taxes”, it has become the iconic soundbite with which they are most associated. How that gels with the news that Google is now forcing anyone with a Google Profile to make that profile public or lose it, well, we’re sure we don’t know. But there it is: where users used to be able to keep their Google Profile private, Google has made clear that private profiles will no longer be permitted. Either take your Google Profile public, or lose it when they do a mass deletion of all private Google profiles on July 31st.

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All About Google Plus: What Google+ is and Why You Want It

Google + or, as it is known more fully, the Google+ Project, is Google’s foray into creating a true social network. So what is Google+? As the awesome comic XKCD puts it, it’s like Facebook, but it’s not Facebook, making it a win-win, according to some.

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Massive Android Security Hole Affects up to 99% of All Android Users

Three researchers in Germany at the University of Ulm have discovered a massive security hole in Android – so big, in fact, that it affects at least 97%, and as many as 99%, of all Android users. The researchers, Bastian Könings, Jens Nickels, and Florian Schaub, have discovered that the security flaw allows anyone who is sniffing around your connection on an unsecured wireless network to acquire your Google authorization credentials from a specific token (the authToken), giving them access to your contacts, your calendar and, well – really any application that authenticates you by using your Google authorization credentials contained within that authToken.

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Google Face Recognition Software Will Reveal Your Personal Information When Your Picture is Taken

Google has announced a controversial face recognition software to run on mobile phones. The Google face detection application will access your personal information – including your personal contact information – when someone takes your picture using the Google face recognition app.

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Spurned Sprint Rebounds, Hooks Up with Google Voice

As any jilted lover would, Sprint has rebounded, and has gotten into bed with Google voice. And, frankly, we think they make a better couple anyways. The sweet sound made by a direct connection between your Google Voice account and your cel phone is music to the ears. As mentioned earlier today, Sprint and T-Mobile USA’s courting didn’t stand a chance once AT&T cut in and swept T-Mobile off the dance floor. But Sprint had a friend with benefits up their sleeve, and it was announced today that Sprint has integrated Google Voice into their offerings.

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How to Edit, Influence and Even Control What Ads Google Shows You

At this point in your Internet life, it should hopefully come as no great shock that Google watches just about everything you do on the Internet, and one way that they do that is with the cookies that they’ve planted in your browser (in fact if you use both Google and Facebook, it’s a good bet that very little that you do online isn’t being tracked by one or the other, if not both). This includes a tracking cookie that Google has ‘helpfully’ given you for Google ads (that advertising by Google that is known as Adsense to website visitors and publishers, and Adwords to the advertisers who advertise in those ads by Google). based on what they perceive to be your preferences. Interestingly, Google also gives you a way to modify the information in that cookie, so that Google can show you more advertising that you ‘want’ (for some value of want).

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Bug in Android Update Ignores Your Gmail Default “From” Address

If you’ve noticed that your email seems to be acting funky lately, such as that replies from people to whom you have sent email aren’t showing up where they should, or that people aren’t getting email that you send from your Android phone, the culprit could well be that your Android phone is no longer using your default “From” address (your “send mail as” address) that you have set in Gmail. Thanks to an issue with the latest Android update, Android phones are not longer honoring your selection of default From address, and are instead defaulting to using your Gmail account email address.

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Microsoft Spying on Internet Explorer Users Google Searches in Order to Enhance Bing Search Engine

Has Microsoft been spying on the Google searches of Internet Explorer users in order to use the data to enhance their own Microsoft Bing search engine, to make it more competitive with Google? According to Google, who claims to have caught MS watching their own IE users, tapping their Google searches and using the information gleaned from those searches to make their Bing searches more accurate.

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Google Goggles App – Now with Sudoku Solver – and Still Free!

The Google Goggles application, available for both Android and iPhone, now solves Sudoku puzzles! All you have to do is snap a picture of the Sudoku puzzle with your phone, and Google Goggles will solve it! (Although we are forced to ask, where’s the fun in that?) Here are screen shots of it in action.

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Google Buzz Lawsuit Reaches Settlement, Google Emails Everyone

Earlier this year, Google was sued over its Google Buzz service. The Google Buzz lawsuit alleged that, among other things, with the rollout of Google Buzz, Google was in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Part of the issue was that when Google flipped the switch on Google Buzz, they had automatically created a social network for each of their Gmail users, assigning ‘followers’ to their Gmail users. The followers could see the users’ activities in other Google properties such as Picasa and Google Reader. In at least one known instance, that had the effect of suddenly allowing a woman’s abusive ex-husband to follow her Google Reader conversations with her new boyfriend.

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Google Sues U.S. Government for Favoring Microsoft

In an interesting turn of events – especially considering all of the antitrust hot water in which Microsoft has found itself in the past with the Federal government – Google is suing the Federal government for requiring that any vendor proposals in response to a Request for Quotation (RFQ – similar to an RFP, or Request for Proposal) by the Feds to create a new, unified online messaging system, must include the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite.

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Who’s Watching the Watchers? Google Engineer Spies on Google Users Private Data

More information is coming to light about the situation with Google and David Barksdale, a Google engineer who used his access to the massive stores of data that Google has gathered about its own users to spy on the private lives (and data) of several Google users, who also happened to be minors. That’s right – Google employee David Barksdale was spying on children, even cyberbullying them, using the access that his position with Google afforded him to look at the private information of children. What’s more, it was going on for months.

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Today’s Children Will Have to Change Their Names to Escape Their Digital Past, Says Google CEO

Will today’s children have to change their names to escape their digital past? In a nutshell, this disturbing possibility is what Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, suggested could happen in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, as reported by the Daily Telegraph.