Google's July 4th message includes this user-generated American flag, which echoes the Declaration of Internet Freedom: "Just as we celebrate freedom, we need to celebrate the tools that support freedom. Add your voice here: http://goo.gl/qOAnS." (Watch the related video below.) Google, meanwhile, announced today that it's the end of the road for a number of products, including iGoogle, Google Video (which has lost out to YouTube) and Google Mini.Continue reading...

In the latest update of its Transparency Report, Google says it has received more than 1,000 official requests from governments to take down content from search results or YouTube in the last six months of 2011.

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," stated Dorothy Chou, Google’s senior policy analyst, in a blog post. "Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not."Continue reading...

CNET’s Paul Sloan calls it "the greatest landgrab in Internet history.” The new gTLD application window that opened on January 12, 2012 and closed on May 30th is finally revealed with all of the gTLD strings applied for during this round announced today at a press conference in London. From .AAA (filed by the American Automobile Association to .zippo, there were 1,930 top-level domain applications in all, with a few surprises including what wasn't on the list.

“One of the biggest 'reveals' of the day has been the absence of some very significant players: we did NOT see .FACEBOOK, .COKE, .COCACOLA or .PEPSI, .DISNEY, .IKEA, .EBAY, .NINTENDO or .NESTLE or .NESCAFE,” stated FairWinds Partners, which submitted applications on behalf of clients such as Allstate (.allstate), Symantec (.antivirus) and SC Johnson (.afamilycompany). “The heaviest-hitting industries are Auto, Finance and Pharmaceuticals. We've also seen many brands apply for generic terms. Google is a big one, of course, with 101 applications in total, as is Amazon.”

What we did see, as the Washington Post notes: "Amazon.com wants '.joy,' Google wants '.love' and L'Oreal wants '.beauty.'" The most coveted domain? .APP.Continue reading...

If the Internet is an information superhighway, the thing has been stuck in a traffic jam for years and it was getting worse. All of those new devices that can log onto the Internet – your car, your freezer (someday your dog?) has access – was causing the Internet’s address book to continue filling up fast. So the Internet Society, a global-standards-setting organization, has been working to fix the situation and finally made the big move Wednesday, as Google noted with a homepage link (and the video above).

The agency moved the Internet’s capabilities from 4.3 billion unique addresses to 340 undecillion. For the non-Saganites in the house, that's about 340 trillion trillion trillion, or a growth factor of 79 octillion (79 billion billion billion). In other words, massively ginormous.

The new standard, called IPv6, offers up “enough IP combinations for everyone in the world to have a billion billion IP addresses for every second of their life,” CNN notes. (Good news, by the way, because Cisco estimates that there will be three networked devices per human on the planet by 2016, as CNN also reported.)

The two standards, the outgoing IPv4, and the new one IPv6, will live together for some years as one is slowly worked out of the system and the other slowly begins to dominate. CNN notes that most major websites and networks have made the switch to IPv6 already.

The mad dash for ICANN-approved generic top-level domain names (also known as gTLDs) is on.

The most popular generic suffixes, .art, .radio, .music, .shop, .food, .bank, and .web are being most aggressively pursued. Google is spending an estimated $10 million to apply for 50 domain name suffixes including .Google, .YouTube, .Docs and .LOL. (Is Google looking to buy a sense of humor?) It's actually one of the biggest brands to jump in, while more than 40 major companies, including Coca-Cola and GE continue to oppose the top-level domain program.

Go Daddy has applied for only two top level domains, .home and .casa. CEO Warren Adelman said the names “were chosen in part because they have multiple meanings with big market opportunities: they can be used in both a real estate context and personal context.” (Of course, the relationship between "Daddy" and "home" in English and Spanish is another lure.) “Dot.com has been getting the lion’s share of branding since the dawn of the internet,” added Adelman. “Any kind of new branding is heavy lifting.”

According to a blog post by Vint Cerf, Google's chief internet evangelist,

We’re just beginning to explore this potential source of innovation on the web, and we are curious to see how these proposed new TLDs will fare in the existing TLD environment. By opening up more choices for Internet domain names, we hope people will find options for more diverse—and perhaps shorter—signposts in cyberspace.Continue reading...

The latest target dates were announced last night by ICANN for the next phase of the New gTLD (generic top-level domain) Program, which opens up URLs to so-called dot-branding such as .nike or .pepsi at the end of web addresses. The Batching period will open on June 8, close on June 28, and Reveal Day occurs on June 13.

Applicants remain confused about the mechanics of ICANN’s Batching process, the Target Time Variance procedure (also known as “Digital Archery”), available options and the implications the batch they land in could have for their applications.

Two blog posts from FairWinds (see Part 1 and Part 2) break down the Digital Archery process, and offer predictions about what various applicants will do to try to “game” the Digital Archery process and how those actions will ultimately affect brand owners that applied for new gTLDs.

Applicants that land in late batches will have their gTLDs delegated much later – some perhaps not until 2018; applicants who plan to build a business selling domains in their gTLDs will be aiming for the first batches; many brand owners who applied for gTLDs will probably take their cues for participation in the Digital Archery process from Reveal Day.Continue reading...

ICANN 43, the other digital conference of note this week, wraps up today in Costa Rica with a piece of the Internet’s future in hand, as the April 12th deadline for domain name applications draws near.

As of March 10th, an estimated 254 applicants had registered their intent to apply for generic top-level domain names or so-called dot-brands, each one having up to 50 new gTLDs, although "the actual number of new gTLDs for which application will be made is still unknown," according to an official advisory.

The expectation is the number will be relatively low as major companies including Coca-Cola and General Electric plus 50 or so other big brands remain opposed, citing reasons of increased costs, customer confusion and potential for Internet fraud.Continue reading...

Google is continuing its campaign to increase transparency around its targeted advertising and privacy practices.

The latest volley: "How we make ads better," a video that highlights its staffers policing scam advertisers (which didn't help avert the recent Valentine's Day florist AdWords fiasco). The pitch: "Did you know that hundreds of Googlers work around the clock to make sure the ads you see on Google are safe? David Baker, Engineering Director at Google, explains more about our fight against scam ads and our process for keeping you safe."

Google's past around display ad scammers and consumer privacy is a thorny one, to be sure.Continue reading...