Apple had two major announcements yesterday: Its Web browser Safari would soon be available for Windows, and Apple would be releasing a software development kit for the forthcoming iPhone. The latter was dubbed "a letdown to rival the final episode of "The Sopranos." Part of the reason the iPhone announcement was so disappointing is the fact that it had so much potential to be cool. Alas, developers would only be able to write Web applications for the iPhone using the devices on the Safari browser. Apple is up to its old tricks. "We're a little disappointed," said Daniel …

Given the spate of legal problems surrounding Google these days, you'd be forgiven for thinking the ubiquitous Web giant's stock ought to suffer a little bit. Rather, it's soaring ($511 per share), even though Google just failed a privacy report issued by a high-profile industry watchdog, YouTube is sued right and left for copyright infringement, Google Maps and Google Street View have come under fire for revealing too much, and there are cries of monopoly in the industry over Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. Don't be evil, indeed. Some wonder if Google is creeping the industry -- …

In a rare moment of total compliance, Google agreed to cut the time for which it retains users' personal search information from 18-24 months to 18 months, a concession to the European Union's request for improved user data protection. An EU committee, the Article 29 working company, last month asked the search giant to justify its current policy. That data includes the search term, the address of the Web server and information collected from user tags or "cookies." The EU worries that search data alone is enough to identify a person, and could be used to create …

Timing is everything: on the same day media executives accused Google of stalling on a YouTube copyright fingerprinting technology, the Web giant says it will have a new system operational in about a month. Frankly, we've heard that before, but this time, YouTube has test partners to back up its claims. These include Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co., which, among others, have been anxiously awaiting a fingerprinting technology to help further partnership negotiations with YouTube. YouTube Partner Development Director Chris Maxcy says the company is building an in-house video-fingerprinting technology because existing offerings from providers like Audible …

The online rights group Privacy International has labeled Google as "hostile" to privacy in a new report about how Web firms handle personal data. It said Google is leading a "race to the bottom" among Web firms in terms of how they protect their users. The PI report is the result of six months of research, which scrutinized the personal information practices of 20 big Web firms. Yahoo and AOL were also given a big thumbs down, described as being "substantial threats" to user privacy, while Google was last. Microsoft did somewhat better, only having "serious lapses" in …

It's ambition is enviable, but just where does eBay think its heading? The online auction and e-commerce giant is branching out, having spent some $6 billion on new media acquisitions in the last five years. From online payment service PayPal (which proved to be a smart, synergistic decision) to the $2.6 billion Internet telephony giant Skype (eBay overpaid and the jury's still out), to classified sites around the world, including a 25% interest in Craigslist and Kurant, which sets up online "storefronts" separate from eBay, to ticket reseller StubHub (its newest acquisition), eBay thinks it can be everywhere in the …

The agitation is mounting among Hollywood executives with respect to YouTube's perennially "still-coming" content filtering system. It's now been two months since Google CEO Eric Schmidt quelled Hollywood fears over the forthcoming program, which he said the company is close to enacting. But CNET says it's not just the "hold on, it's coming" thing that has media executives angry, it's the "no-shows at meetings and canceled test programs" that lead them to believe Google might be stalling. Either it's awaiting a decisive ruling in the Viacom copyright infringement case, or maybe the search giant thinks it can strike …

In the last 10 years, the celebrity-news sector has exploded like no other category in the publishing industry. And while other print pubs have seen ad revenues eroded by the surging use of the Web for gathering news, this sector has remained relatively unaffected. But that may change. Yahoo on Monday took the curtain off a new celebrity-oriented Web portal called-get ready-omg!, or "oh my God", a 24/7 celebrity news site set to compete with Time Warner's TMZ.com and celebrity blogs like Perez Hilton and Jossip. Launched in conjunction with the gossip show "Access Hollywood," omg! represents …

Parents are more reticent about revealing personal information on the Web, but teenagers and 20somethings seem to have no problem growing up in public. A report claims that nearly one-quarter of human-resources decision makers had rejected job candidates because of personal information found online. One of the most important background checks an employer can do these days is to Google prospective job candidates, and then scour the social-networking universe for their personal profiles. The conventional wisdom is that as those who grew up with the Net get older, they'll pay the price for their youthful indiscretions that can never …

It may be premature, but technology and business journals are already calling it the "Summer of Apple." Insofar as media hype is a big factor in a product's success (and it is), Apple's iPhone is well on its way to being a success. We're about three weeks away from the multimedia cell phone's much-awaited launch, which has fast become something of a widely anticipated global event. As industry analyst Stephen Baker says, "Apple isn't just a hardware company, and they aren't just a software company. I think that's what's enabled them to be more successful in endeavors that …