It has been made official that recent rumours of an acquisition by eBay of social media website StumbleUpon are correct. eBay have purchased StumbleUpon for $75 million, giving eBay access to all 2.4 million users of the StumbleUpon toolbar.
It is currently not clear exactly how eBay will use StumbleUpon, although it is a safe assumption however they use StumbleUpon will cause ripples across the internet community. Further information will be posted as it is released.
Google have made updates to the Google Maps service to now include ‘Street View’. Currently only available for major US cities, Street View enable users of Google Maps to view a 360 degree street level panoramic image.
By moving an icon of a person the point of view can be altered, enabling users to get a feel for the layout of a mapped area and see street signs, shops, restaurants and landmarks. This new feature when rolled out across all worldwide major cities will provide a great deal of information and functionality that a conventional map book could never provide.
After a photographer had her photos that she had posted on Flickr stolen and sold on by a third party, she duly complained on the Flickr website only to have her complaint removed.
The comment was supported by 450 other Flickr users before Flickr owned by Yahoo! deleted the comments, sparking numerous allegations of censorship.
Yahoo! have since apologised for their actions, admitting they “screwed up”
Google has announced it will ban all adverts within their AdWords system that promote “academic paper writing services”. This announcement comes after continued complaints from academic institutes.
The essay writing service joins a number of other services not allowed by Google including gaming, firearms and drugs. The ban could not have come sooner as far as academic institutions are concerned however those that offer these services have stated Google are threatening legitimate businesses.
It was revealed in the Wall Street Journal recently that the search engine giant Google and Customer Relation Management (CRM) software house Salesforce.com have been discussing a partnership to stand them in a position to rival Microsoft.
Why the partnership? Together they would bring together all of the Google services, which include email, instant chat, word processing and spreadsheet programs with the CRM software from Salesforce.com. The integration of each other’s products is however likely to take a long time and a huge financial investment.
