It’s been a while since anybody thought of Google as merely an advertising company. The company has spent years, not to mention millions of dollars, cultivating the image of Google as a multi-service ideas factory, where anything’s possible, from stopping global warming and flu outbreaks to exploring space. However, even they didn’t see themselves as crime fighters, until today that is.

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Google has waded even further into the net neutrality debate by announcing that it will be offering users tools to expose breaches of this principal, such as ISPs making life hard for bit torrent sites or other sites that they might not like.
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Whilst most businesses struggle against the biggest economic crisis since the great depression, a few are making a killing. One of those companies is movies-by-mail provider Netflix. The booming company gave most of the credit for its success to their new streaming video service, which provides near instant entertainment to anyone with an Internet connection, an Xbox 360 or a net-enabled Blu Ray player, TV or set-top box.
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You may remember a little while ago we reported that Apple had hired IBM chip expert Mark Papermaster, much to big blue’s annoyance. IBM it seems were so put out by this that they filed a lawsuit against Papermaster, citing a non-compete agreement he signed while with the company that they claimed precluded him from working for a direct competitor.

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It’s nice to know that our own government isn’t the only one capable of losing important, top secret documents. New Zealander, Chris Ogle got a huge surprise when he inspected the contents of an MP3 player he’d bought in an Oklahoma second-hand shop.

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We reported recently that Microsoft had been charged with breaking competition laws by the European Commission and were liable for an extremely hefty fine as a result. Well, it would seem that the EC isn’t done with the tech industry – IBM may be next.

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Chip maker, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) plans to add a new processor to its line this year. Nothing particularly newsworthy there, I know, except that the new chip will be ultra low-power. The reason that’s useful is that it minimises problems with heating and cooling, so that the chip can be installed in large servers that get a lot of use. However, so far, the company is declining to say just how much power usage they have managed to cut with their new Opteron processor.

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Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO is instigating a companywide cost-cutting regime in response to the continued economic strife. “We’re certainly in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime set of economic conditions,” said Ballmer during a conference call to analysts this week. The major costs being cut are, as usual, staff. Microsoft will axe 5000 jobs in a process Ballmer is describing as “putting the brakes on.”
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Security software provider, Intego, have this week claimed to have discovered Trojan software for Mac OS X. The Trojan was found on a pirated copy of iWork 09, it installs itself along with iWork and connects to a remote server potentially allowing the malware creator to steal information and/or control the computer remotely. According to Intego around 20,000 people have downloaded the Trojan so far.
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Well, not just Google, search engines in general actually. That’s according to a survey from FastHosts aimed at determining our level of knowledge when it comes to search engines. The survey was given to around 1600 British adults and uncovered some amazing misconceptions.
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The four major US phone networks dealt with massive surges of activity on their wireless networks yesterday without major problems. The massive surge in activity was down to, guess who? Barack Obama.
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It seems that no one is immune to the recession, even the giants of hardware manufacture. Intel, the biggest Chip maker in the world has cut its prices and when I say cut, I mean cut. The cost cutting bonanza at Intel has seen some of their products’ prices drop by as much as 48 percent!
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As you may remember, last week we reported on the hiring of Carol Bartz as the new Yahoo CEO. Well, the industry has had time to absorb the news and feedback from the press and analysts is mixed.

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For those who don’t know, Burger King recently designed a Facebook app that offered users a free Whopper if they deleted ten of their friends. The idea was that everyone has several Facebook friends that they never see or barely even know who could be sacrificed for a burger quite easily. Once the ‘friends’ had been dropped they were sent a fairly mean message informing them that their erstwhile friend prefers one tenth of a burger to them. It’s all part of Burger King’s new angry image to fit in with their new range of burgers.

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