According to ReadWriteWeb, watchdog site Cryptome was recently "removed from the Web" for refusing to take down a copy of a certain Microsoft document. Named the Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook -- or "spy guide" -- the document apparently gives details on how law enforcement can grab user data from a wide range of Microsoft services, from Windows Live ID to Xbox Live to Hotmail. "Microsoft holds and can reveal a huge amount of data on individuals through their social networking and file-sharing services," notes ReadWriteWeb. "These data include IP addresses, credit cards, chat logs …

Ensuring an increasingly open and transparent social universe for us all, status updates from Facebook Pages -- those platforms for marketing rather than personal content -- will now show up in Google's real-time search results. The agreement marks the first time the search giant has indexed content from Facebook in its real-time results, and follows on the heels of similar deals with Twitter and MySpace. Still, "The key thing to remember, however, is that Google has much more limited access to Facebook's real-time data than its competitor, Bing," notes Digital Beat. "Microsoft has deeper ties to …

Despite a serious backlash, Google's Buzz is driving traffic for the search giant. Over the past month, Buzz -- which is part of Gmail but shares links to article and blog posts through Google Reader -- has driven sharing through Google Reader up 35%, according to AddThis. This number only measures sharing through the AddThis button, which is on some 600,000 Web sites, and gives users the option to share content online. Even with the boost, Google Reader barely registers compared to Twitter and Facebook, which account for 31% and 8% of all sharing via AddThis, respectively. …

New research may explain why so many consumers don't "get" Twitter, and its microblogging ways. It turns out only about half of the tweets posted on the service are in English, according to Paris-based firm Semiocas, which helps brands understand and interact with real-time Web services, which performed a semantic and quantitative study of Twitter based on an analysis of 2.8 million tweets. Curiously, that number is down a full 25% from last year, even though the company is based in the U.S. and has more users and momentum in English-speaking countries than anywhere else on the …

Marking the end of an era, YouTube has gone and removed the original "Rickrolling" video from its site due to a terms-of-use violation. Though it likely won't be difficult to find Rick Astley belting out "Never Gonna Give You Up" online in the future, the original -- which racked up more than 30 million views -- is no more. "Rickrolling" started in early 2007 on the 4chan imageboard, and would later achieve national notoriety. The use of "Never Gonna Give You Up" apparently stemmed from a 4chan prank called "duckrolling," in which people were sent to an …

Popular lifestyle newsletter DailyCandy has hired Janet Ozzard as its new editor in chief. Most recently, Ozzard ran New York Magazine's Strategist shopping and fashion guide. Eve Epstein, who's edited DailyCandy for the past three years, will now serve as creative director of Swirl, the company's recently launched online sample-sale site. In the summer of 2008, Bob Pittman's Pilot Group sold DailyCandy to Comcast for $125 million. More recently, last May, CEO Pete Sheinbaum departed, and was eventually replaced by Hearst Digital's Beth Ellard last August. In December, meanwhile the company began paring back some of its local …

There's something rotten with the state of display advertising, according to Samir Balwani, an online marketing adviser and strategist at SEO specialist and interactive agency Morpheus Media. The problem with the process of building and executing a display campaign happens when site owners allow advertisers to create custom ad units, full-page takeovers, and other sponsorship ideas. "If you can think of it, and are willing to pay for it, site owners will do it," which creates what Balwani calls an "interesting predicament." The issue is that site owners are flooding the market with an infinite supply of display …

Perhaps more than any multinational corporation, Google has a singular knack for crossing paths with and rising the ire of foreign governments and bodies. In the latest example -- and one that's particularly threatening to Google's global operations -- the European Commission has launched an anti-trust investigation against the search giant after three online companies alleged that its search functions were penalizing their businesses. In particular, "The inquiry, disclosed late Tuesday, appears to focus largely on complaints that Google unfairly ranks the sites of [its] Internet competitors, in effect lowering their rank in …

Media pundit, NYU journalism professor and author Jeff Jarvis argues that "new spheres of discovery" are changing the fundamental economics of media, and, with the raise of "factory-famed content," flipping it. "We, the people formerly known as the audience, initiate the sequence of a media transaction, writes Jarvis. What this means for Jarvis, is that the people want a story before it is written, and that it is delivered to them, a la Demand Media, instead of the other way around. And, Chris Anderson will appreciate this, "Media doesn't come just from media anymore," writes Jarvis. "Retailers, …

"Eric Schmidt might advocate for making information 'even more open and accessible,' but not when it comes to his mistresses," writes Valleywag. The Google CEO's lawyers reportedly threatened his ex-girlfriend Kate Bohner, a former jounralist for CNNBC and Forbes, after it came to light that her blog chronicling her recovery from addiction merely mentioned Schmidt (in three separate places). Bohner took the blog down from Blogger, but Valleywag, after taking the stuffing out of Schmidt for his hypocrisy (the Google chief has suggested that those with priavacy concerns simply not have dirty laundry), helpfully points readers …