Google faces legal action in the UK over Safari cookies

A group of Internet users in the U.K. are seeking damages, disclosure and an apology from Google for its alleged undermining of the security settings on Apple's Safari browser to track online usage covertly.

Members of the group, described as informal, have instructed a technology and media law firm, Olswang, to begin action against Google, the group said.

The claims center around tracking cookies, which were allegedly installed in secret by Google on computers and mobile devices of users of the Safari browser, Olswang said in a statement on Sunday. The legal firm has been retained by the group to coordinate claims.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said in August last year that Google agreed to pay US$22.5 million civil penalty to settle charges that it misrepresented to users of Safari that it would not place tracking cookies or serve targeted ads to those users, violating an earlier privacy settlement between the company and the FTC.

FTC charged that Google placed advertising tracking cookies on consumers' computers, in many cases by circumventing Safari's default cookie-blocking setting. A court accepted the consent decree. Google however denied wrongdoing.

The group has also set up a Facebook page, called "Safari Users Against Google's Secret Tracking", to provide information for anyone who used the Safari internet browser between September 2011 and February 2012, and "who was illegally tracked by Google."

Any users in the U.K. may have a claim against Google for this breach of their privacy, according to the group. Other users, who have set up this group, are taking action against Google to hold them to account, it added.

This has the potential of being the biggest ever group action filed in the U.K., with millions of potential claimants, privacy advocate Alexander Hanff said in a Twitter message.

Google did not immediately comment.

Google+ outranks Twitter as no. 2 social network after Facebook

Google+ is now the world's second largest social network, outranking Twitter that comes in at the number four position. But both social networks are still far behind Facbook, which is used by more than 51 percent of the world's online population, according to a new survey.

Trendstream's Global Web Index for the final quarter of 2012 estimates that Facebook had some 693 million active users, seconded by Google+ with 343 million active users. The firm also tracked YouTube as a social network, which came in at number three in its ranks, followed by Twitter at 288 million active users.

The study does not count total numbers of users, but active users on a monthly basis. In October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the social network had 1 billion active users a month.

Although Google+ ranks as the world's second largest social network, many would argue the platform is a ghost town, with not many people contributing. Brett Petersen, Consulting Director of GlobalWebIndex explained: "I think that Google+ is working particularly hard to address this, and Google+ contribution is becoming increasingly important as Google ties search, along with all of their other services, together with Google+ being the glue that binds them all."

The continued growth of Facebook, Google+ and Twitter also has a secondary side effect, the survey found. Local social networks in various countries are seeing a dip in usage, up to 57 percent in some cases, particularly in China. This is apparently due to a saturation of the market and shift towards more informal social media including blogs and forums, where privacy is easier to maintain from growing government clampdowns.

Google stakes Pwnium hacking contest to $3.14M in potential prizes

Google today announced it would again host its Pwnium hacking contest at a March security conference, but boosted the maximum amount it will pay to $3.14 million and changed the target to its browser-based operating system, Chrome OS.

Dubbed Pwnium 3, the challenge will pit researchers against its still-struggling-for-relevance Chrome OS, rewarding those who can hack the operating system with individual prizes of $110,000 and $150,000.

Google capped the total up for grabs at $3.14159 million, giving multiple researchers a chance at prize money. The "3.14159" comes from the first six digits of the value of .

Each hacker able to compromise Chrome OS or the browser that is its foundation -- Chrome -- from an exploit-serving website will receive $110,000 said Chris Evans, an engineer with the Chrome security team, in a Monday entry on the Chromium project's blog.

Researchers who manage to accomplish what Evans called a "compromise with device persistence," meaning that the hijack survives a reboot of the Chrome OS-powered notebook, will receive the larger award of $150,000.

"We believe these larger rewards reflect the additional challenge involved with tackling the security defenses of Chrome OS, compared to traditional operating systems," said Evans.

Pwnium 3 will take place March 7 at CanSecWest, the Vancouver, British Columbia, security conference where Google will also partner with HP TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) bug bounty program to host Pwn2Own. That contest, with $560,000 in total cash prizes, will focus on Web browsers, including Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla's Firefox, as well as plug-ins from Adobe and Oracle.

The contest cooperation at CanSecWest will be quite different this year than in 2012, when Pwn2Own and Pwnium were rivals. Google inaugurated Pwnium then after it withdrew its financial support from Pwn2Own after it and HP couldn't agree on the rules -- specifically, whether researchers would be required to divulge full exploits and hand over all the vulnerabilities they used to hack a browser.

"This year, we've teamed up with ZDI by working together on the Pwn2Own rules and by underwriting a portion of the winnings for all targets," said Evans about the new understanding between Google and HP TippingPoint. "The new rules are designed to enable a contest that significantly improves Internet security for everyone. At the same time, the best researchers in the industry get to showcase their skills and take home some generous rewards."

Both Pwn2Own and Pwnium will require winners to provide functional exploit code and details on all the vulnerabilities put into play.

Pwnium 3's $3.14 million cap is more than three times the $1 million Google said it would pay if necessary in 2012, and more than 50% above the $2 million it staked at a second challenge that took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last October.

But if past practice holds true again this year, Google won't write checks totaling anywhere near $3 million. At the first Pwnium of March 2012, the search giant paid out $120,000 to two researchers for exploiting Chrome; the Malaysian edition's single award was a $60,000 payoff to "Pinkie Pie," one of the two hackers who took home the same amount seven months earlier.

Chrome OS has never been a contest target before, although Pwn2Own offered a Chrome OS notebook as one of four laptop prizes in 2011.

Although Chrome OS continues to struggle to gain share -- metrics company Net Applications, one of the most-cited market scorekeepers, hasn't even bothered to measure the operating system's usage -- but several major computer makers have recently gotten behind the open-source operating system. Earlier this month, Lenovo joined Acer and Samsung when it introduced a $429 ThinkPad laptop that's scheduled to ship in February.

Acer's C7 "Chromebook" -- a term often applied to notebooks powered by Chrome OS -- costs just $199, while Samsung's line starts at $249.

Google has not yet posted the official rules for Pwnium 3, but they will probably appear on theChromium Security page.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about cybercrime and hacking in Computerworld's Cybercrime and Hacking Topic Center.

Lenovo gives Chrome OS a try with Chromebook for Schools

In perhaps a sign that Chrome OS hasn't been a failure, Lenovo plans to release its first Chromebook laptop, which it calls a "rugged" model for K-12 schools.

Before now, only Acer and Samsung have offered computers based on Google's Web-based operating system. Their first Chromebooks launched in 2011, and both companies released new models late last year, including a $200 laptop from Acer and a $250 laptop from Samsung.

Lenovo's newly unveiled ThinkPad X131e Chromebook runs on an Intel processor (no word on which one) and has an 11.6-inch, 1366-by-768 resolution LED display. It also has three USB ports, HDMI output and VGA output. A blog post from Google says the X131e lasts 6.5 hours on a charge, and it weighs about four pounds. A bumper for the top cover, stronger corners, and reinforced hinges account for the laptop's rugged design.

Lenovo only plans to sell its Chromebook to schools at volume bid pricing of $429 and up, starting February 26. The company hasn't said whether it'll release any Chromebooks for consumers.

It's nearly impossible to write about Chromebooks without discussing why they should exist. The common argument against these machines is that similar Windows laptops can be had for roughly the same price without restricting you to a computer that only runs Google's Chrome browser and can't install any other software.

My feeling has been that Chromebooks--or the really good ones, at least--provide an Apple-like experience at a fraction of the cost. No, you can't find all the applications you might want in a Web browser, just like you can't get Microsoft Office on an iPad or play all your favorite computer games on a MacBook. But the Chromebook performs its core function of Web browsing very well, and a lot of the little things--weight, thickness, boot times and quality of the keyboard and trackpad--are better than what you'd get on a comparably-priced Windows machine.

I know this from experience, having purchased Samsung's $450 Series 5 550 Chromebook late last year. I brought it with me to CES 2013 last week, and used it as my primary laptop to carry around and to file stories from the show floor. It always booted up quickly, was light on my shoulder and was a pleasure to type on. Not all Chromebooks are as well-suited for the task--Acer's $200 model, with its bulky construction and three-hour battery, is a bit puzzling to me--but the $450 model was a great travel laptop. I can't say the same for most sub-$500 Windows machines.

Also, price is a consideration. Lenovo's Windows-based X131e, for instance, starts at $539. Schools could some money by getting Chromebooks instead, and they won't have to worry about viruses or deal with installed software.

It's unclear if Lenovo plans to do more with Chromebooks in the future, but there are rumors of aChromebook with a touch screen in development (though rumors of a late 2012 launch didn't pan out). Maybe Lenovo, with its many experiments in convertible Windows 8 machines, would be a good candidate to release one.

Google gives cloud-based database a performance boost

Google's Cloud SQL database has gained more storage, faster reads and writes, and now offers users the choice of running their instances in data centers based in either the U.S. or Europe.

The performance upgrade allows enterprises to run bigger, faster MySQL databases on Google's cloud, Joe Faith, product manager for Google Cloud SQL, wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

Faith and his team have increased the available storage on Cloud SQL by a factor of ten to 100 GB, according to the blog post. Faster reads and writes are also possible thanks to instances with more memory and optional asynchronous replication, it said.

The maximum amount of RAM is now 16GB, quadrupling the amount of data users can cache to increase read speeds.

Asynchronous replication results in faster writes to the database, because the system doesn't have to wait for the replication to finish. However, users might lose their latest updates in the event of a data center failure within a few seconds of updating the database, according to Google's FAQ.

Besides improving performance, Google now allows Premier customers to choose if they want to store data and run their Cloud SQL database instances in U.S or European data centers.

Google's update comes just two days after Amazon Web Services announced two new instance types for its Relational Database Service: the Extra Large DB Instance and the Medium DB Instance, which have 15GB and 3.75GB of memory, respectively. Both of them can be used to run SQL Server and Oracle's database, while the medium instance can also be used to run MySQL.

Amazon has also reduced prices by up to 14 percent in the US East (Northern Virginia) and US West (Oregon) regions.

For example, a standard deployment of a large instance now costs US$0.365 per hour, which is 5 cents cheaper than what Amazon used to charge.

Similar to Amazon's existing free tier, Google has introduced a new trial offer for Cloud SQL. Users get to test one instance with "a small amount of RAM" and 500MB of storage until June 1 next year.

Users who want Cloud SQL with 16GB of memory pay either $46.84 per day, which includes 10GB of storage and 32 million requests, or $3.08 per hour plus $0.10 for every one million requests and $0.24 per month for 1GB of storage.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

Amazon, Microsoft and Google targeted by cloud provider Joyent

Joyent may be the biggest cloud provider you haven't heard of.

According to the pure-play infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider -- which was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in San Francisco -- it is a top 5 vendor of cloud-based virtual machines in the world, a stat that's backed up by Gartner. That means it's rubbing elbows with the big names of cloud computing -- Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google.

"They're the most interesting cloud company that few people talk about," says George Reese, CTO of enStratus, a company that consults with enterprises on cloud strategies and helps business deployapplications to the cloud. "When we talk to people we get questions about AWS, Rackspace, HP, and when we mention Joyent, they're like, 'Who?'"

Perhaps users should start paying attention, though. The company this week released Joyent7, the latest version of its cloud management platform named SmartOS, which it says enhances capabilities for hybrid cloud deployments between a customer data center and Joyent's cloud.

Company founder and CTO Jason Hoffman is aiming for the fences with his company, openly stating that he's looking to take on the Amazons, Googles and Microsofts of the world.

Does he have a shot?

MORE CLOUD: Gartner's IaaS Magic Quadrant: a who's who of cloud market

VMWARE'S MOVES: CTO: Adapt, enable choice, or die

Joyent's differentiator, Hoffman says, is its integrated stack. SmartOS is not just an operating system, but also a networking fabric and hypervisor -- it uses KVM. He describes it as analogous to a large-scale storage area network (SAN), with an integrated network between compute and data layers that run virtual machines directly on it. "We completely collapse the model into a single hardware design," he says. By doing this, new customers are easily onboarded to the cloud, with each new customer site added to Joyent's network being like the equivalent of adding another availability zone in AWS's system.

Hoffman says Joyent is cheaper and offers more compute for the buck compared to AWS. A pricing comparison chart on the company's website shows that Joyent prices are between 6% and 29% less compared to prices of similarly sized VM instance types in AWS's cloud.

Reese, the cloud consultant, says Joyent seems to have a dedicated user base, but it is still a niche play in the market. "They don't have a ton of features, but the features they do have perform really well," Reese says. VMs come up fast and are predictable and reliable, he says, based on testing he's done within enStratus for customers using Joyent's cloud.

Joyent seems optimized for customers that run large, complex, cloud-native apps in Joyent's cloud, apps from which developers want high visibility and highly reliable performance, Reese says. The focus on its core features leaves some wanting, though. Joyent doesn't have a database as a service feature, for example, nor does it have nearly the breadth of services offered by AWS or Rackspace. Ultimately, that could provide a challenge for Joyent significantly biting into Amazon or Rackspace's dominating market share.

Joyent is continuing to develop its products and company, though. The release of Joyent7 is about enabling "seamless hybrid cloud," Hoffman says. The new OS furthers LDAP integration and adds a catalog of APIs, specifically around workflow management, image management and security groups.

In addition to announcing Joyent7, the company also appointed a new CEO, Henry Wasik, formerly president and CEO of Force10 Networks, to lead the company.

Hoffman likes his chances of going up against the gorillas of the industry. "If someone really wants to take on AWS," which Hoffman clearly states he wants to do, "you have be multi-region, multi-AZ from the get-go." If a provider takes a pure-hardware approach, it says it would cost a half billion dollars to set it up. "We're in a space where, as a private company, we're partnering with a top-three chip maker [Intel], we have our own technology stack end-to-end and we've raised hundreds of millions of dollars." The company announced its latest $85 million funding round in January.

Gartner says it will be an uphill climb for Joyent, though, especially when it's competing with companies that have much greater resources they can devote to R&D. "Joyent is focused on developing its own technology, which creates long-term challenges in competing against providers with greater development resources," Gartner says. If Joyent remains a niche provider, Reese believes it has a chance to carve out a chunk of the market and serve it well. It's an open question if a company like Joyent can scale up to the size of some of the major cloud providers in the market, though.

Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.

Google to issue credits for App Engine outage

Google will give refunds to paid subscribers of App Engine, its Web application development and hosting service, which suffered a partial outage on Friday.

During a four-hour stretch, about 50 percent of requests to App Engine applications failed, so Google will credit all paid applications for 10 percent of their October usage, the company said in a blog post.

The problem started when traffic routers in one data center got overloaded, and an attempt to reset them backfired. A broader overload spread to all App Engine data centers and caused widespread problems in many hosted applications. However, no application data was lost.

"In response to this incident, we have increased our traffic routing capacity and adjusted our configuration to reduce the possibility of another cascading failure. Multiple projects have been in progress to allow us to further scale our traffic routers, reducing the likelihood of cascading failures in the future," wrote Peter S. Magnusson, Google App Engine Engineering Director.

App Engine suffered recurrent performance problems in the second half of 2010, but the service had been stable since a revamping of its datastore in early 2011.

Hundreds of thousands of developers and companies use App Engine, including Best Buy and Met Office, the U.K.'s national weather forecasting service.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at@JuanCPerezIDG.

Google Dart cracks Top 50 list of programming languages

Google's Dart programming language, envisioned as a JavaScript rival, has for the first time cracked a monthly Top 50 list of the most popular programming languages.

Launched in late-2011, Google has intended for Dart to be a Web programming language that addresses supposed shortcomings of JavaScript, such as difficulties in maintaining structure once a program grows beyond being a simple Web application. Dart ranked 43rd in the Tiobe Programming Community Index for October 2012.

[ Also read InfoWorld's interview with Lars Bak, the lead software engineer for Dart. | For more software news and analysis, subscribe to InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter. ]

That index, though, gave Dart a rating of just .189 percent, based on Tiobe's calculations. "It's Google's aim to let Dart replace JavaScript as the dominant programming language of Web development," Tiobe said in its report. But Tiobe questioned how much momentum Dart can build without support for it in major browsers.

A representative at Mozilla said Monday the company would not add support for Dart to the Mozilla Firefox browser. Microsoft also does not support Dart in Internet Explorer. But Microsoft last week revealed its own TypeScript project, which is intended to enable JavaScript to support the development of more complex applications. TypeScript features a subset of JavaScript capabilities for static typing, classes, and modularization.

The Tiobe index is gauged by assessing the number of skilled engineers worldwide, programming courses, and third-party vendors interested in a particular language. Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo are examined, along with websites such as Wikipedia and Amazon, in calculating the ratings. 

Topping this month's ranking was the C language, which had a 19.822 percent rating, followed by Java, at 17.193 percent; Objective-C (9.477 percent), C++ (9.260 percent) and C# (6.530 percent). 

This article, "Google Dart cracks Top 50 list of programming languages," was originally published atInfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Read more about application development in InfoWorld's Application Development Channel.

Google upgrades Search Appliance, aims for large enterprises

Google has released a new version of its Search Appliance with new and improved features intended to make the enterprise search device more useful in large enterprises.

The Search Appliance, which is sold as a hardware device loaded with Google search software that is installed on customer premises, has historically been considered a good fit mostly for medium-size businesses that lack the money and in-house expertise needed for high-end enterprise search systems.

But with version 7.0 of the Search Appliance, Google is aiming higher, and seeking a stronger position against high-end rivals that in recent years have been acquired by larger vendors, including Autonomy, which was bought by Hewlett-Packard, and Fast Search & Transfer, which was acquired by Microsoft.

"We're doubling down on enterprise search," said Matthew Eichner, general manager of Global Enterprise Search at Google.

For starters, version 7.0's interface adapts to smartphones and tablets, which is increasingly important as enterprise users rely more and more on these mobile devices for accessing workplace documents, files and data.

Google also improved the product's query resolution speed as well as its results relevance algorithm, which now includes new signals that customize results for each user, the company said on Tuesday.

Version 7.0 also features improvements for dealing with multiple languages, in particular those whose grammar and syntax present special challenges for search engines, such as Chinese, German and Arabic, he said. In addition, the Search Appliance now has gained as a native feature the Google Translate technology, which will allow enterprises to translate content on the fly to more than 60 languages.

The product also can now be used as a search engine for the 2010 version of SharePoint, the collaboration server from Microsoft which is ubiquitous in enterprises where it's used for intranets, public websites, document and content management and workplace communities. For SharePoint, the Search Appliance provides features like query suggestions, clustering of results and identification of end user expertise.

Other new features in version 7.0 are assisted navigation for refining search results, document previews and the ability for users to add items to the index.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at@JuanCPerezIDG.

Google upgrades Search Appliance for enterprises

Google is upgrading its Search Appliance for the enterprise in an effort to help workers find information stored anywhere in their organization.

Google Search Appliance 7.0 was unveiled today and will be available Oct. 16 for sale or for customers to download. The new version would help employees in large enterprises find stored information whether they're using a desktop, tablet or smartphone.

" Google is really doubling down on enterprise search," said Matthew Eichner, general manager of Enterprise Search for Google. "We think that enterprise search is an unsolved problem ... We're really targeting now the world's largest organizations with great complexity problems."

The appliance is designed to enable administrators to add information from sources stored in thecloud, social networking sites, the public Web and secure storage. The new appliance also offers search for SharePoint 2010, Microsoft's collaboration tool.

"With GSA 7.0, we've refined our relevance signals ...," Eichner wrote in a blog post. "Entity Recognition automatically identifies and suggests content you might be looking for, and GSA 7.0 also harnesses the "wisdom of crowds," allowing employees to add their own search results."

The update also includes a new interface and a new document preview feature that enables users to view thumbnails and flip through full-screen document previews alongside their search results. Google Translate offers automatic translations in more than 60 languages displayed in search results.

David Schubmehl, an analyst with IDC, said the appliance update is important for major enterprises that need to make their information stores available to employees.

"People are still dissatisfied with the way their internal search systems work," Schubmehl said. "Everybody wants it to be as good as the Web. If I don't find the answer, I at least want to find an answer... Google is trying to make internal search as good as Web search."

Schubmehl noted that there is a lot of lost productivity based solely on how much time workers spend searching for information stored within their own company.

An IDC study in 2009 found that the time spent searching for information that year alone averaged 8.8 hours per week per employee, adding up to a cost of $14,209 per worker per year.

"There's a generation of workers who are starting to leave the workforce, and they've created years or decades of information and that information could be very valuable if people knew about it," said Schubmehl. "Let's say I'm working in a pharmaceutical company doing drug research and I know there are seven groups doing research around the world. Who are these other researchers and are they doing the same work I am? It can be hard to get even that information."

He added that Google Search Appliance 7.0 still has challenges. For instance, Schubmehl noted that each kind of repository has a different access method so administrators have to create a custom program or control to read the data from each particular system.

However, the new appliance also has benefits, such as better navigation and more filters for different types of files.

"You might have information siloed in 15 or more different systems," said Schubmehl. "Being able to put all of that into one search index and letting people use that information and pull it up at need would be a tremendous improvement. The Google Search Appliance moves us further down the road of being able to do that kind of stuff."

took the wraps off its Google Search Appliance 7.0 today. It will be available on Oct. 16.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com.

Read more about internet search in Computerworld's Internet Search Topic Center.

Google tweaks travel search site for tablets

Nearly half of tablet owners who perform travel searches end up buying their tickets on those devices, Google said

Google has updated its flight search engine to make it easier to use on tablets, as more and more people use those devices to book their travel, the company said in a blog post Friday.

Google now renders Flight Search for tablet users with a layout, features and format adapted to those devices, including a tool for finding low fares by scrolling through dates, Google said on Friday.

"With the touch of your finger, you can easily explore places to visit on the map and see prices updated in real-time for each destination," wrote Rani Manoharan, a Google user interface designer, in a blog post.

Google had previously adapted the site for iPhone and Android smartphones.

Google launched Flight Search in September last year, after acquiring air-travel flight-information software maker ITA Software for $700 million, a move prompted by the fast-growing number of travel-related queries on the company's search engine.

The deal raised antitrust concerns among Google competitors and in the travel industry because ITA Software customers included major airlines and online travel agencies. After a review, the U.S. government gave the deal the green light but with conditions, such as the requirement to develop and license travel software to competitors, as well as provide arbitration for complaints about fees from online travel sites.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

Google to block YouTube video in Brazil after losing court appeal

The director of Google in Brazil was detained for disobeying a court order

Google said it had no choice but to block a political video in Brazil, after it lost a court appeal.

"We are deeply disappointed that we have never had the full opportunity to argue in court that these were legitimate free speech videos and should remain available in Brazil," said Fabio Coelho, country director of Google Brazil in a statement on Thursday.

A user who published one of the two controversial videos has now removed it and closed the account, showing "just what a chilling effect these episodes can have on free speech", Coelho added.

A warrant for the arrest of Coelho was issued by a court in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul for not obeying its order, while Google was waiting for an appeal to be heard. Coelho was also detained by police on Wednesday though the officials said that the arrest was only temporary as the crime had a "low potential to offend." Coelho would be released after he agrees in writing to appear in court, according to a police statement on Wednesday.

Google has maintained that it will block access to videos in countries where it is notified that a video is illegal and where the Internet company has launched YouTube locally. The company for this reason blocked earlier this month a controversial anti-Islam movie trailer in countries like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia, where it has local versions of the video-sharing site, but not in Pakistan or Bangladesh.

It however also blocked the video in Egypt and Libya citing the very sensitive situations in the two countries.

The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans were killed earlier this month when a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was stormed by gunmen. U.S. embassies and consulates in some countries like Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan and Indonesia were also targeted in the protests against the trailer.

If a video is illegal in a particular country, and the company has a local version of the service, as in Brazil, Google will restrict access to it after receiving a valid court order or government complaint, Coelho said in the statement for which a translation in English was provided.

During an election season, it is usual for Google to receive court orders for the removal of videos that are critical of political candidates, and it has appealed on requests that it does not believe are valid, Coelho said.

In December last year, Google received an electoral court order in Brazil that resulted in the removal of four profiles from its Orkut social networking site for content related to political campaigns, the company said in its Transparency Report. Government requests for content removal are high in Brazil relative to other countries partly because of the popularity of Orkut in the country, Google said.

[Loek Essers in Amsterdam contributed to this report]

Top 5 Alternatives of Adsense

Google AdSense is the leading ad-serving program in the market, yet many people are sitting unapproved from it. If you’re not approved by AdSense till now and looking for alternatives, this post is for you. Here are top 5 AdSense alternatives you should try to make earnings with your blog or website:

AdBrite : It is the famous and most trusted AdSense alternative. It allows you to select (choose or reject) the advertisements for your blog or website. You can also set up your own ad space prices. Payments are trusted and are made via cheque. The minimum payout is $100.

Chitika : If you have a blog or website based on product reviews or sales, Chitika is the best alternative for you. It’s a PPC program which offers three kinds of ads: Search Targeted ads, Mobile ads and Local ads. Chitika ads are non-contextual in nature. You can also see their referral program which pays 10% of what your referred party earns. It pays through PayPal and Cheques with a minimum payout of $10.

Text Link Ads : You have probably heard of John Chow, who made millions from TLA. This program enables the users to earn money by selling text-based link ads on your website or blog. Trusted and instant payments, made on the first day on each month.

AdBull : AdBull provides publishers with a new stream of advertiser-driven revenue - it's completely additive and doesn't displace other forms of advertising you may currently use.You can also see their referral program which pays:

$5 if referred publisher earned between $5-50.00
$25 if referred publisher has earned between $50.01 and $250
$50 if referred publisher has earned more than $250.01

It pays through PayPal and Cheque with a minimum payout of $10.

Bidvertiser : Similar to Google Adsense, Bidvertiser is a PPC based program offering fully customizable, content based advertisements. They also offer an affiliate program which is optional, but can help you earn extra cash. It pays via PayPal and cheques with a minimum payout of $10 (PayPal) and $25 (cheque).