The next clash: Who gets to regulate net neutrality?
In yesterday's highly anticipated policy speech from newly appointed FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the FCC under the Obama Administration has officially appointed itself the federal regulatory body overseeing "net neutrality." Since the term was coined by Congress in 2006, the phrase has morphed radically to mean many things. Originally conceived as a principle preventing an ISP from offering certain content providers premium bandwidth unavailable to, or unaffordable by, others, it came to mean a principle preventing an ISP from limiting users' access to certain content or applications.
But the concept has morphed so many times now that even the reader discussion of yesterday's Genachowski speech centered around an argument over what it meant. Yesterday, local TV news reports about the speech defined the principle as preventing Apple from denying access or placement of applications on its mobile App Store.
The EC's charges: Did Intel really threaten Dell if it shifted toward AMD?
If the European Commission's antitrust case against Intel seemed completely clear and convincing up to now, this morning's publication of its formal provisional explanation of its charges (PDF available here) -- actually delivered last May 13 but only made public today -- muddies the waters somewhat. For while there is indeed some smoke, and certain excerpts would imply the existence of a gun from which the smoke emanated, the presence of far more smoke from various other sources not only un-resolves some questions, but adds some new ones to the mix.
Most surprising of all is the EC's explanation of rebates Intel allegedly provided to Dell Computer in exchange for limited exclusivity, the existence of which has actually not been denied. A thorough read of the evidence explained by the Commission reveals that the rebate program was apparently conceived by Dell, not Intel. And although e-mails between redacted Dell executives did warn of possible retributions by Intel had their deal not been kept as promised, those same e-mails indicate Dell had other reasons of their own to pursue exclusivity.
Justice Dept.: What right does Google have to e-book exclusivity?
In a court filing that seriously jeopardizes a proposed settlement of the e-book publishing dispute between Google and members of the Authors Guild and other publishing groups, the US Dept. of Justice has raised serious allegations that the settlement as it stands now may violate the country's antitrust law. The keyword here is "may," as that final determination "may" be up to a judge.
The main problem is this: Google would like to be able to electronically publish a wide variety of titles, including out-of-print works whose publishers or former rights holders may not even exist anymore. The keyword here is still "may." The settlement as proposed is clearly between those publishers that do exist and Google; but can Google necessarily claim the right to unilaterally assume that all those who didn't respond, aren't necessarily present?
All-new test results: What browser will you use to run Web apps?
Three laptop computers, all of them cool-looking, all with well-respected brands, all have the features you want, all sell for the same price. This isn't going to be a toy for you; it will be, for at least the next few years, the engine for your work and your livelihood. How do you make a purchasing decision? You check online to see which one is the better performer, and which one other customers prefer.
Five Web browsers, all of them cool-looking, all with well-respected brands, all have the features you want, all of them...are free. But this isn't going to be a newspaper reader or a Twitter feed carrier for you; it will be, for at least the next few weeks, the engine for your work and your productivity. Sure, you'll install all of them. But which one will you install as your default, and which one will you trust with your everyday applications?
The Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index: How it works and why
After several months of intense research, helped along by literally hundreds of reader suggestions, Betanews has revised and updated its testing suite for Windows-based Web browser performance. The result is the Comprehensive Relative Performance Index (CRPI). If it's "creepy" to you, that's fine.
We've kept one very important element of our testing from the very beginning: We take a slow Web browser that you might not be using much anymore, and we pick on its sorry self as our test subject. We base our index on the assessed speed of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista SP2 -- the slowest browser still in common use. For every test in the suite, we give IE7 a 1.0 score. Then we combine the test scores to derive a CRPI index number that, in our estimate, best represents the relative performance of each browser compared to IE7. So for example, if a browser gets a score of 6.5, we believe that once you take every important factor into account, that browser provides 650% the performance of IE7.
Free Office Web Apps: Brilliant ploy or desperate move?
The problem with sleeping giants in recent years is that "terrible resolve" hasn't necessarily gotten them very far. Of course, this applies outside the information technology industry as well. But not even the Internet -- the biggest revolutionary IT technology since the personal computer -- is creditable to any one major player or allied force. Historians will note that almost every company or group to attain success through the Internet did so either 1) completely by accident, and/or 2) without any substantive plan as to what to do with that success once it attained it.
But the last great "sleeping giant" episode in the history of the IT industry was one of absolute, intentional, and steadfast resolve. The landscape of our lives and work has been shaped by this chain of events. It was triggered by WordPerfect, and the terrible resolve was manifest in Microsoft Office. I watched from very close range as, within a span of mere months, the axis powers that commanded respect and even awe -- WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, dBASE, and Harvard Graphics -- deflated to mere also-ran status. Their manufacturers, in an often comical display of poor timing and miscommunication, self-destructed.
As a result today, when you ask businesses worldwide why they use Microsoft Office, the majority of responses you'll get say it's because it's the productivity suite for Windows. And when you ask those same businesses why they use Windows, the answer is because it's the operating system that runs Office.
Office Web Apps to be offered free to all Windows Live users
This afternoon, a Microsoft spokesperson told Betanews that the company is now beginning the process of notifying selected participants that they have been accepted for inclusion in the company's Technical Preview program for Office Web Apps. But in another huge example of burying the lead, a blog post that went live minutes ago from Windows Live General Manager Brian Hall states that the complete Web Apps suite, once officially released, will be "available" to all Windows Live users.
As the spokesperson confirmed to Betanews, Hall's implication is accurate: Everyday users of Windows Live services (which are already free) and who have SkyDrive storage on those services (the first 25 GB of which are free) will have the entire suite available for use from any modern Web browser. A video released today showed Excel Web App (that's the formal name for it now) running on a Mozilla Firefox 3.5 browser, and on a Windows 7 platform. We're still awaiting word on non-Windows browsers.
Speed tests: Google curbed Chrome 3 speed prior to stable release
Two days ago, Google signed off on a stable version of series 3 of its Chrome Web browsers; and since that time, users everywhere are noticing two not-so-subtle changes: First, the New Tab panel has a different (and, we feel, better) layout. Second, it's noticeably faster.
Google promised speed increases of about 30% (often quoted as "one-third") for users who'll find themselves bumped up to Chrome 3 (Google's browser diligently updates itself). Last month, Betanews tested that claim, and projected speed increases of more like 24.5% -- still in Google's ballpark, just along the edge. But since that time, we noticed the company had made dramatic strides, with both beta and dev channel (Chrome 4) builds posting record speed numbers in our tests, for gains that could possibly break the 40% barrier.
Will Omniture do for Adobe what analytics failed to do for Microsoft, Yahoo?
Two years ago, as Betanews reported at the time, a security engineer testing Adobe's CS3 Web content creation suite for Mac discovered to his surprise that the code it was generating sent data over a network back to a very odd address. It was masked to look like a local network address, with the usual "192.168" prefix, but it used a capital "O" instead of a zero. As it turned out, the address 192.168.112.2O7.net was registered to Omniture, a Web analytics company with which Adobe was apparently doing some interesting business.
Only after the engineer publicly discussed his discovery did Adobe come clean about the fact that yes, CS3 and Flex-based applications were transmitting data back to an analytics company. "Omniture is a client-based analytics platform that uses information stored in both JavaScript variables and the user's cookie to track a user's progress through a site, giving business insight into how to create better user experiences," the company's admission read.
Dell settles its fraud case with New York, will pay $4 million
It's a chapter from the dark side of Dell's history that you'd think it would have worked to put behind it sooner: Last year, a New York state court found Dell guilty of deceptive business conduct and misleading advertising. Specifically, Dell had offered "no interest" financing for customers, and then not only found ways to charge "non-qualifying" customers interest, but to use collection services to hassle customers who didn't think they owed it.
It's taken nearly 16 months for Dell to come to any decision about how much restitution New York customers were owed. This morning, the state's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that amount would be $4 million, which either suggests that fewer customers were "baited-and-switched" than was previously thought, or that Dell is getting off easy.
Fast Flip: A peek into the future of Google News
Today's launch by Google of a beta service of something it's calling Fast Flip fits the profile for what could become the company's bid to republish and redistribute most of the world's online news content, in a manner which claims to benefit the publisher. My partner Tim Conneally took a look at the mobile version of Fast Flip earlier today.
At a book festival last April, Google CEO Eric Schmidt let loose another interesting fact about its business plans: He told Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman of The Wrap that his company was working on a new and advanced news search algorithm, that would automatically serve users the topics and news providers they're interested in, based on its assessment of what the reader has pulled up in the past -- "to determine what the reader is looking for without knowing they're looking for it," Waxman wrote.
What is a Windows 7 upgrade, really?
In a blog post earlier this month that didn't raise any eyebrows at the time it was released, Microsoft Windows Deployment team leader Chris Hernandez posted the results of an internal company study gauging the amount of time required by different profiles of Windows Vista-based computers for an upgrade to Windows 7. According to Hernandez' numbers -- which did not surprise me in the least; in fact, at the time, I didn't think they were significant enough to highlight here in Betanews -- Hernandez' team estimated it could take as much as 20 and one-half hours to complete a Windows 7 upgrade, for an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600-based system with 4 GB of DRAM, and a 1 TB Western Digital hard drive full of 650 GB of data, including 40 pre-installed applications. (For the record, that hardware profile is very much like the system I use for testing Web browsers.)
Hernandez' objective was to demonstrate that it takes less time to upgrade to Windows 7 than it did to upgrade from XP to Vista, usually on the order of 5%.
Intel argues EU didn't make the case for 'exclusionary' anti-competitive conduct
In the first public record of the contents of private European Commission hearings last July 22, only now being published (PDF available here), Intel defended itself against the EC's charge that it engaged in exclusionary conduct within the EU's boundaries. According to the official record, Intel argued that the EC failed to meet its own burden of proof -- specifically, the company said the Commission could not prove that Intel's alleged conduct actually did result in reduced competition.
If Intel is only guilty of intent to be anti-competitive, then the formula the EC used to compute its fines against the company of €1.06 billion, may not be applicable.
DMCA protected video site Veoh from infringement, court rules
When a Web site takes reasonable measures to prevent the distribution of unauthorized videos, it's protected from infringement of copyright. That's the finding once again in another case against another of the "other" video sites, Veoh, which has been taken to court before and which has prevailed before.
This time, Universal Music Group alleged that Veoh did not do all that it could to prevent the spread of music videos uploaded by individuals, containing music belonging to UMG's portfolio. In a ruling in US District Court for Central California today, Judge A. Howard Matz upheld a lower court's finding, and sided with findings in other cases against Veoh. In a summary judgment requested by Veoh, the court ruled that it's protected by the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Not exactly Bing 2.0: Latest 'Visual Search' feature fails to impress
Last week, in what was probably an intentional promotional ploy, Microsoft showed off to some of its 40,000 employees and close colleagues, during an employee rally at Seattle's Safeco Field, some features of what it was touting as "Bing 2.0," with a warning that users everywhere could start to see these features go live as soon as today. While there is no official word of a "Bing 2.0" launch, one new feature has gone live today, and not quietly -- its curtain was officially raised during a ceremony at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco today.
Visual Search is being described as a way to search for items by sight instead of by text. Shoppers will be able to locate digital cameras, for example, says Microsoft, by way of "an engaging visual experience without having to sort through page after page of links."
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