Regulatory issues Archives
Privacy Poll: Tough Times Ahead for Marketers
Several recent developments have created a kind of perfect storm for privacy in 2011. Last month’s FTC privacy report, the Obama Administration’s plans for a Privacy Czar, do not track browser tools from Microsoft and Mozilla and now anti-tracking consumer survey data will make for tough times for marketers in the year ahead. Here’s what [...]
Privacy Regulation Is Really Really Here
According to the Wall Street Journal the Obama administration is going to establish a committee or czar to oversee implementation of Internet privacy rules that are coming down in a Commerce Department report: The Obama administration is preparing a stepped-up approach to policing Internet privacy that calls for new laws and the creation of a [...]
Regulation Is Here, Internet Professionals
I’ve been saying it for well over a year and Facebook may have been the final straw. The concern over privacy and user control raised in the wake of the Facebook “Open Graph” and Social Plugins initiative, as well as ongoing questions over behavioral targeting and online data mining, have created a kind of perfect [...]
Google Books: DOJ Likes Concept, Not Terms
The US Department of Justice filed its statement and reaction to the Google Books Search Settlement and came down somewhere in the middle. The US supports the concepts behind the settlement but raises a bunch of concerns and issues surrounding the specifics (emphasis added): The United States strongly supports a vibrant marketplace for the electronic [...]
FTC-Sears Deal Points toward BT Regulation
The US FTC has approved a settlement with Sears regarding online tracking that requires it to destroy data collected from consumers, who were paid $10 to download software that monitored their online behavior. According to MediaPost, the Sears program sent “pop-up ads to 15 of every 100 visitors that asked for their email addresses. Respondents [...]
In Brief: Google, YouTube, Marchex, FTC Regs
Here are some things going on this morning/today that I don’t have time to give more attention to: Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigns from the Apple board because he has too many conflicts of interest given that the companies compete across a number of areas now. Here’s Apple’s official statement; it’s clean: “Unfortunately, as Google [...]
IAC Q2 Results: the Local Part
IAC reported Q2 results, which are very mixed but improved from Q1. Here are excerpts that pertain to local: Citysearch [part of Media & Advertising] launched its new technology platform and announced the addition of Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com to its Citygrid partner network. IAC now has approximately 5.5 million local smartphone apps downloaded in total. [...]
Micro-Hoo: Thoughts Part 2
The deal’s big winner is Microsoft, which makes no upfront cash payment and gets Yahoo!’s reach now for its advertisers. Yahoo! wasn’t compelled to do this deal but perhaps the board and the market pressure was too much. Yahoo! gets some revenue guarantees, access to search data (for BT on other properties) and doesn’t have [...]
About Greg
Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence (SMI), a consulting and research firm focused on the Internet's influence on offline consumer purchase behavior.
