Threatened by mounting privacy concerns -- from both outside and inside the company -- Facebook has committed to releasing more "simplistic" privacy options. "We've heard from our users that we have gotten a little bit complex," Tim Sparapani, head of public policy at Facebook, said in a radio interview Tuesday. "We are going to be providing options for users who want simplistic bands of privacy that they can choose from and I think we will see that in the next couple of weeks." "Currently, new users are set to very public defaults, including having …

Claiming broad patent infringement, Microsoft just filed a federal lawsuit against online software company Salesforce.com. "The lawsuit ... seeks both monetary damages as well as temporary and permanent injunctions," according to CNet's Beyond Binary blog. "Specifically, the company seeks a jury trial and also asks that the damages be tripled and that Salesforce be ordered to pay legal fees and other costs, arguing that the company's patent infringement is willful." The patents -- nine in all -- reportedly cover a variety of back-end and user interface features, ranging from one covering a "system and method for providing …

Google's Android has now surpassed Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system -- and moved into fourth place with a 9.6% of share of the smartphone market -- reports Gartner. That moves Microsoft down to fifth place with a 6.8% market share. Bigger picture, Nokia's Symbian still rules the worldwide smartphone market with a 44.3% market share, while RIM comes in second at 19.4%, and Apple's iPhone OS follows in third with 15.4%. Still, year-on-year, Nokia's share dropped 4.5%, and RIM's went down 1.2%, while Apple's went up 4.9%, and Android increasing an impressive 8%. Windows Mobile's share, meanwhile, …

Facebook and Zynga have reportedly reached a five-year deal to keep Zynga games on Facebook, and expand the use of Facebook Credits in Zynga's games, Business Insider reports. "A couple weeks back, it looked like Zynga might leave Facebook and host its games on ZyngaLive.com instead," the media outlet writes. "Zynga was upset because Facebook required it to use Facebook Credits and pay 30% of every transaction -- far more than the 3.5% payments providers charge on the Internet, but about the same Apple charges iPhone App developers." There was also the issue Facebook limiting the ways in which Zynga …

Google will soon launch a new version of its Feed API -- a simple tool for displaying recent headlines from a syndicated feed on any web page -- which will accept real-time PubSubHubbub feeds, and will publish new headlines to a site visitor's browser within seconds of their being published to the feed. "This new version turns the Feed API from cool to super-cool," writes ReadWriteWeb. "It's a good example of the way much of the web is likely to go in the near-term future ... No more refreshing pages to see when new content is available -- the real-time …

What's Google up to now, and who or what could be affected? Well, the search giant has offered to pay $68.2 million for VoIP technology provider Global IP Solutions. Along with Google itself, Global IP's existing customers include "Yahoo, which licenses the technology to power voice chat on Yahoo Messenger, as well as Nortel, Samsung and AOL," Moco News reports. What exactly does Google have in store for the publicly-held company? It's not saying explicitly, but according to Moco News: "Last month, Global IP Solutions said it was introducing new technology …

Contrary to a report in last month's Los Angeles Times, there's no way Hulu is going to release a subscription-based service this month, "people familiar with the company" tell Media Memo. The story in the LA Times said to expect a subscription service from Hulu "as soon as May 24." Yet, "There's no way a Hulu Plus (as the service is being called) will be up and running by then," sources tell Media Memo's Peter Kafka. For his part, Kafka writes: "I'm still not entirely convinced that the joint venture ... has completely settled on terms of …

Back in April, Facebook quietly crossed the 500-million-visitor mark for the first time ever, comScore is now reporting. According to comScore, Facebook saw 519 million visitors world-wide -- in fourth place among all Web properties. Google had 921 million users, followed by Microsoft with 728 million, and Yahoo with 588 million. The data includes non-registered users who visit Facebook through public profile listings, "and thus can run a little bit ahead of Facebook's own numbers," notes The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog. Facebook announced in February that it had 400 million active users. Meanwhile, All Facebook reported …

Taking it to the incessantly innovating Gmail and reigning market leader Yahoo Mail, Microsoft's Hotmail is undergoing its first major overhaul in some time. Expected to debut by mid- to late-summer, Microsoft's strategy is "not about aiming for feature parity with Gmail," according to PCWorld. Rather, the basics of Hotmail's look and feel will remain largely unchanged. "Judged on its own terms ... this new Hotmail is appealing -- and most of what's new really is new, with no precise equivalent in Gmail," PCWorld writes. New features will include the ability to select messages in one's inbox, …

Industry-wide privacy concerns and calls for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's head are having virtually no impact on the social net's sharp growth trajectory, according to Fortune. On the contrary, Facebook has had a net gain of 10 million active users since it announced a series of new features at its f8 conference in late April. "A few high profile tech bloggers may have quit the site, but not many other people have," Fortune reports. "The number of deactivations, according to a Facebook spokesperson, is about the same as it's been all along." What's more, web publishers are …