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A federal appeals court has ruled that law enforcement authorities in the United States must get a warrant before hiding a global positioning system (GPS) tracker on a suspect's car. The ruling clarifies an issue left unanswered by a previous ... Supreme Court verdict. The legal confusion followed a high-profile case involving a suspected drug dealer who was tried and convicted after police tracked his movements using a GPS device attached to his Jeep. The man took the case to the Supreme Court, which overturned his conviction because it found that much of the evidence was inadmissible. The ... (view more)

Google appears ready to show its rivals' logos on search results pages. It's the latest development in a game of brinksmanship being played between Google and European regulators. The European Commission, which administers laws that apply across the ... continent, has been investigating claims that Google unfairly exploits its dominance of the search market. Some of the claims relate to the way Google sells advertising on its sites and the way it "scrapes" content, such as review extracts from other sites. The biggest issue, though, is the suggestion that Google has intentionally promoted its own ... (view more)

Google has announced it will begin highlighting the search results that best answer a user's query. It represents a whole new approach for the ubiquitous search firm. In recent years, Google has focused on trying to answer a user's query quickly ... rather than providing them with the website that best answers their question. (That was partly a response to Microsoft's launching of Bing, which that firm promoted as a "decision engine" rather than a search tool.) The best example of Google's focus on speed over quality: Google Knowledge Graph, the box that appears on the right of the results page ... (view more)

Simple Custom Search 2.0 Which search engine is the most effective? It really doesn't matter if you use Simple Custom Search, which allows you to execute a search using all of the major search engines with just a single click. This program is both ... small and easy to use. http://blogspot.ca Classic Shell 3.6.8 Classic Shell brings some of the most popular (but long dead) Windows features back to Microsoft's Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems. Those features include the Start button, customizable Start menu, and status bars. http://www.classicshell.net This freeware software program is ... (view more)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning two dozen leading search engines -- including Bing, Google, and Yahoo -- that they must do more to show the difference between paid advertising and "natural" search results. The FTC warned that blurring ... the lines between the two could be classed as an unlawful and deceptive practice. The warning comes in a formal letter detailing updates to guidelines first published in 2002. The letter says that since that time, search engines are doing a worse job of distinguishing paid ads and that there has been "a decline in compliance with the letter's ... (view more)

Google has been accused of not doing enough to stop a) illegal pharmacy sales, and b) Internet piracy. Mississippi's attorney general says he plans to demand Google hand over confidential documents to see if the firm has breached any laws. The ... complaints come from Ken Cuccinellli, Jim Hood and David Louie, the attorneys general of Virginia, Mississippi, and Hawaii. Together, they're alleging that Google is guilty of "assisting in the sale of prescription drugs without a prescription and intentionally ignoring reports of rogue pirate sites selling stolen music, movies, software and video games ... (view more)

It appears the European Union feels Google's suggestions for settling complaints it engaged in anti-competitive behavior don't go far enough. The search giant had promised to change the way it orders search results, but this wasn't enough for the ... groups that brought up the complaints. The EU recently carried out a lengthy investigation into complaints that Google exploited its dominance of the search market to increase advertising revenue. It's a claim Google denies. Google was accused of deliberately favoring sites it owned when determining search rankings. In the United States, Google was ... (view more)

Google has agreed to make significant changes to the way it displays search results. The move is designed to ward off sanctions from European officials. For some time the European Commission has been carrying out an investigation of Google's ... operations. The goal of that investigation has been to determine whether or not Google's dominance of the search market harms competition. The commission says it identified four main ways in which Google's behavior might breach regulations. The most important involves claims that Google intentionally lists sites and services that it owns higher up in the ... (view more)

Not sure which Internet search engine to use? Maybe this will affect your decision: according to a new report, Bing search results produce five times more malware-ridden sites than Google search results. The findings come from German antivirus firm ... AV-Test, which says it recently evaluated several search engines, including Google, Bing, Yandex, Blekko, Faroo, Ask Jeeves' Teoma, and Baidu. The security company carried out its tests over a year-and-a-half period and wrapped things up this past February. Popular Twitter, News Topics Used As Search Terms AV-Test used topics found on Twitter, ... (view more)

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade organization which represents the interests of U.S. recording industry distributors, says that Google isn't doing enough to prevent copyright infringement and piracy. In a recent report, ... the RIAA claims that Google has done very little to prevent people from pirating music -- despite the fact that the search giant promised to focus significant attention on discouraging piracy roughly six months ago. RIAA: Promises Remain Unfulfilled And while RIAA lawyer Steven M. Marks says that the RIAA does "recognize and appreciate that Google ... (view more)