Posted by Dave Heiner
Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft

The FTC took steps today to address some of Google’s improper business practices. We find it troubling that the agency did not adhere to its own standard procedures that call for the agency to obtain industry input on proposed relief and secure it through an enforceable consent decree. The FTC’s overall resolution of this matter is weak and—frankly—unusual. We are concerned that the FTC may not have obtained adequate relief even on the few subjects that Google has agreed to address.

Data Portability

For years Google has publicly championed the virtues of “data portability”—the idea that customers ought to be able to use their own data in products from various companies. But in practice, Google effectively prohibited its primary paying customers (advertisers) from using data about their own advertising campaigns on any ad platform other than Google’s. That made it much more difficult and costly for advertisers (especially small advertisers) to run their ad campaigns on Bing and other ad platforms.

[Read more...]

...

Posted by Horacio Gutierrez Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel In early August, David Kappos was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office...

UPDATE: April 1, 2009 - 10:30 a.m. Pacific Posted by Brad Smith General Counsel As I mentioned in my post Monday, today begins the period for U.S. employers to apply for H-1B visas for high-skilled foreign workers. Given the economic downturn...

Posted by Akhtar Badshah Senior Director, Global Community Affairs The earthquake in Haiti is an absolute tragedy. I clearly remember the precise moment when the Tsunami struck Indonesia in 2004 and how that set in motion a chain of events that...

Posted by Brendon Lynch
Chief Privacy Officer, Microsoft

Today, Microsoft announced Windows 8 has reached Release Preview and Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8 will have “Do Not Track” (DNT) on by default. This post includes additional thoughts about this important milestone in our effort to advance trust and consumer privacy online. Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 will be the first browser to have DNT on by default. Consumers can change this setting, but the default will be to send the DNT signal to websites that consumers visit.

[Read more...]

...