Google proposed settling lawsuits related to its book-scanning and indexing project, and word also seeped out through The Wall Street Journal that the company's search advertising deal with Yahoo could be scrapped because of regulatory issues. Meanwhile, Microsoft unveiled its Azure cloud-computing services strategy.
1. Google settles copyright lawsuits with publishers, authors and Google agreement with publishers prompts a partial Harvard pullout: Google settled lawsuits filed by major publishers and authors contending that the company's scanning and indexing of copyright books without permission was tantamount to violating copyright on a massive scale. Google had claimed it was protected by the principle of fair use because only snippets of text for such books were displayed to match search queries. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers strongly disputed that argument. The settlement came after two years of negotiations, and its terms involve Google paying US$125 million in exchange for the right to display more of in-copyright books. Harvard University responded to the settlement by saying it is partially withdrawing from its book-scanning deal with Google while it evaluates the settlement terms.
2. WSJ: Google and Yahoo may call the whole thing off: Google and Yahoo might back out of a proposed search advertising pact that the U.S. Department of Justice has not yet approved, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The companies signed the deal in June, agreeing that Yahoo would run Google's search ads and they would split the revenue. The DOJ has been reviewing the proposal for antitrust issues, and the companies voluntarily agreed to delay implementing the plan while that review is conducted. But the DOJ wants the companies to sign a consent decree and allow judicial oversight of the ad deal, according to the Journal.
3. Microsoft steams into services era with Azure: Microsoft unveiled its Azure Service Platform, marking its entry into cloud computing, with Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie saying that the platform will form the core of the company's services platform and be an online delivery option for all current Microsoft software. The company has been revealing bits of the strategy over the past three years and this week at its Professional Developers Conference set forth more details of how those parts fit within the Azure concept.
4. HP, Dell, Toshiba recall Sony laptop batteries again: Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba have recalled 100,000 Sony laptop batteries that were made between October 2004 and June 2005 after reports of about 40 incidents of them overheating. The reasons for the recall are the same as a recall a couple of years ago, but the number of batteries involved is much smaller than the 9.6 million recalled then.
5. Are design issues to blame for vote 'flipping' in touch-screen machines?: E-voting machine vendors defend how their hardware is designed and emphasize that voters who find that touch-screen machines are "flipping" their votes -- changing them to a candidate they say they didn't vote for -- or who experience other glitches should immediately contact poll workers to let them know of the miscue. The issue of vote flipping has arisen during early voting in some states and has left some voting watchdog organizations concerned that such technical difficulties combined with expected high turnouts could cause big problems on Election Day next Tuesday.
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