The companies involved blame the consumers for not utilizing the tools that are in place. Consumers, on the other hand, think that companies need to be clearer on what they’re collecting and how they can opt-out if they want.

Should consumers or companies be blamed for online privacy concerns? Is one side at fault, or is it both, or neither? What do you think?

The debate over these areas is heating up again with the Commerce Department and the FTC expected to release reports on how to improve online privacy in the next couple of weeks. WebProNews spoke with Jules Polonetsky, the Director of the Future of Privacy Forum, who told us that the Commerce Department’s report was worth noting since it would outline where the Obama administration stands on the issue. Interestingly, no acting President or administration has ever before introduced or endorsed a federal privacy law.

Polonetsky told us that it was “highly unlikely” the U.S. would see privacy legislation this year but said that it would happen in the future.

“I think it’s clear that we are going eventually going to have a privacy law,” he said. “The question is, whether it’s gonna be a good one.”

“If we are able to craft privacy law that supports innovation [and] gives users more protection, we’ll win,” he added.

According to Polonetsky, the goal of the Commerce Department and President is to create a framework, in which companies and advocates develop rules for their own industries. If the FTC thinks these rules are adequate, they can create a safe harbor and make them enforceable.

There are, however, questions that remain since the administration may target certain companies and topics. In addition, there is the question of whether companies and consumer advocacy groups will agree to work together.

Up to this point, many of the people and groups that have spoken out against privacy legislation have said that tools already exist that allow consumers to take control. While Polonetsky said that consumers should be more proactive when it comes to sharing data and using online tools, he also said that companies should make it easy for consumers.

“If companies really got serious about delivering first for users, we wouldn’t need some of the proposals that are out there,” he said.

Through his experience as Chief Privacy Officer for both AOL and DoubleClick, Polonetsky told us that some companies understand privacy concerns and some don’t. There are also companies that want to “push the envelope” in a way that encourages others to do so as well.

Some companies believe that a self-regulatory approach would be much better than federal legislation, but according to the FTC’s first draft, the self-regulatory measures in place at that time were inadequate. Polonetsky said that, if companies really are against a national law, they need to prove that they are self-regulating.

“Any company that wants to avoid legislation ought to be really pushing to show how it is self-regulating,” he said.

On the consumer side, some don’t mind the tracking when it benefits them. For instance, many Amazon users like that the company sends them deals for items they want to buy.

“Let the users in, and guess what, they may be more than happy for you to know them well, if what you’re doing is making money serving them well,” Polonetsky pointed out.

Another angle to this saga is the fact that the European Commission is reportedly going to change its privacy directive as well. Polonetsky told us that the White House and Commerce Department pay attention to what Europe is doing because, over there, privacy is considered a human right. Historically, whatever Europe puts into law, the other countries follow suit. For this reason, the U.S. wants to show Europe that it is serious about privacy.

Although Polonetsky does not expect a privacy law during 2012, he did tell us that the year would bring lots of scrutiny for companies and lots of hearings.

“I’ve never seen as much scrutiny,” he said.

Even though the debate is nowhere near being over, the FTC and Commerce Department reports should shed some light into what we can expect going forward.

Are you in favor of privacy legislation, or would you prefer self-regulation in industries? Let us know.

Epic Poker League, the new professional poker league that hosted its third Inaugural Season Main Event in Las Vegas last month, announced a partnership today that will bring Epic Poker League programming to millions of fans across Europe. More than 70 hours of Epic Poker coverage will be featured on The Poker Channel. The channel broadcasts to 30 million cable and satellite TV homes and online to a global audience.

“Expanding our television coverage into Europe is a step forward for building a global fan base for Epic Poker,” Katherine Kowal, Vice President of League Operations and Programming, Federated Sports + Gaming, said. “Poker Channel Europe, with quality distribution and broad reach, will help us introduce our content to a very important market and audience.”

Epic Poker League is an exclusive tournament series created by Federated Sports + Gaming that has more than 200 of the world’s top live tournament players vying for $20,000 in rake-free main events and a $1 million cash prize to the overall champion.

Epic Poker League will begin airing on The Poker Channel on Sunday, January 15. A full TV schedule with previews and programming details can be found at their Web site.

“With the incredible success of Epic Poker League’s first three events and high-quality production, they are a great partner for the Poker Channel,” Chris White, Gaming Media Group’s Director of Business Development, said. “We’re proud to bring this unique format featuring the world’s best players to millions of Poker Channel viewers.”

The Poker Channel broadcasts tournaments, alongside instructional shows, news updates, live events, tournament reports and player interviews. Cable and TV satellite coverage extends to all of Western Europe and most of Eastern Europe.

Epic Poker has also launched a new Facebook game that is available to play now.

I guess no news is good news for Google in this case.

According to Bloomberg, the formal complaint that may or may not happen would be related to alleged anticompetitive practice, as regulators investigate claims from competitors (including Microsoft of course) that Google has gone so far as to stop some sites from accepting rival ads.

The investigation appears to be about much more than just search results, though that is a big part of it. Some have even alleged that Google’s famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) Panda update has been used anti-competitively.

Newspaper publishers in Europe are complaining about Google’s use of news content…an age old complaint really.

Antitrust complaints about Google in general have also included complaints about reviews and travel information.

The company’s acquisition of ITA Software has been one of the biggest catalysts to such scrutiny, with travel sites, led by the FairSearch Coalition going on a huge campaign to push for regulation of Google’s ways.

As Google continues to acquire companies and get into more spaces, the complaints are likely to continue piling up.

In Europe, it’s still possible that Google could face a massive fine.

“Yes, we’re looking for help improving Google search—but this time we’re not asking you to submit more spam reports,” writes Kaspar Szymanski of Google’s Search Quality team. “Although we still appreciate receiving quality spam reports, today we’ve got a different opportunity for you to improve Google Search: how about YOU join our team and do the webspam fighting yourself?”

Earlier this month, Google launched what it called “the biggest refresh in 10 years” to its spam report form. We looked at this more closely here.

It’s worth noting that the job is in Dublin. Szymanski posted the above image, saying that it’s an actual work environment photo taken at the Dublin office.

“Here’s what we’re looking for: open-minded academic graduates willing to work in a multinational environment in our Dublin office,” says Szymanski. “Looking at a site’s source code should not scare you. You should be excited about search engines and the Internet. It’s also essential that you share our aversion to webspam and the drive to make high-quality content accessible. PlayStation or foosball skills are a plus.

So what does Google look for in a spam fighter (or “Search Quality Associate”) exactly?

The requirements are listed as:

• Review assigned sites for quality and content.
• Improve the quality of Google’s search results by evaluating websites to identify areas of concern and interest.
• Cooperate with engineering teams to improve our search quality.
• Develop and share practices for search quality investigation and analysis.
• Investigate and analyze search quality issues in Google’s European indexes.

“As a Search Quality Associate, you have the opportunity to make a significant and direct impact on the quality of Google’s search results through search quality evaluation,” Google says. “You will be working on the cutting edge of search and the forefront of the web ensuring quality information is provided to millions of internet users, and you will be expected to keep pace with constant change in a fast-paced work environment, bringing innovative ideas to improve access to relevant information on the web. You are a web-savvy individual who is a take-charge team player, as well as a quick learner and strongly interested in providing a better search experience for Google users.”

The position requires he candidate to review assigned sites for quality and content and improve the quality of search results by evaluating sites “to identify areas of concern and interest.”

Searchmetrics has also shared data on Austria, France and Germany.

On August 12, Google announced that it was beginning to roll out Panda in all languages around the world, except for Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Google’s Amit Singal said Google was still testing improvements in those languages.

“For most languages, this change impacts typically 6-9% of queries to a degree that a user might notice,” said Singhal. “This is distinctly lower than the initial launch of Panda, which affected almost 12% of English queries to a noticeable amount.”

Nevertheless, the effects have been felt.

Let’s get right to Searchmetrics’ lists.

Losers in Switzerland:

Winners in Switzerland:

Losers in Spain

Winners in Spain

Losers in Italy

Winners in Italy

Losers in Austria

Winners in Austria

Losers in France

Winners in France

Losers in Germany

Winners in Germany

As made abundantly clear from a recent infographic from SEO.com, Google’s war against spam and low quality content goes way beyond Panda.

Aoife White reported this morning after attending a competition law conference in Switzerland, “Joaquin Almunia . . . said a complaint about Google filed by Microsoft Corp. last week will ‘not be the last one’ and regulators had received more than 500 responses to questionnaires sent to Web companies, publishers, and advertisers earlier this year.”

That’s bad news for Google, considering it indicates a veritable mob felt the need to express an opinion (and everyone knows people are more likely to complain than compliment).

Then here’s one other piece of information execs at the company will find discouraging: White wrote, “The EU’s antitrust agency would be ‘as firm as possible in eliminating all kinds of barriers’ that may prevent rivals from challenging the world’s biggest search engine, Almunia said . . .”

So it sounds like Larry Page may want to send a few more lawyers overseas to handle the paperwork and issue statements, with perhaps a few dozen standing by if the situation gets worse.

On the bright side, this development hasn’t worried Google’s shareholders (assuming they’ve heard about it).  Google’s stock is up 0.21 percent at the moment, even though the Dow and the Nasdaq are down 0.04 percent and 0.07 percent, respectively.

Retail sites also had a significant reach in individual markets, representing at least 75 percent of the total online audience in 7 out of 18 European markets. In 2010, one out of every ten Internet sessions in Europe included a visit to a retail website.

Ireland and Russia had the highest growth in retail penetration in Europe, with both markets seeing gains of 15.8 percent, according to comScore. With 40.6 million visitors coming to retail sites in January, Germany remains the largest European market for this category, followed by France and the U.K. with 36.6 million visitors and 34.6 million visitors, respectively.

In January, visitors from the U.K. Led in engagement in the retail category, with an average 0f 84.1 minutes spent on retail sites. France trailed closely with an average of 83.2 minutes, with Turkish visitors coming in next at 73 minutes. Across the board, Europeans spent a collective average of 52.4 minutes, or a little under an hour per visitor, on retail sites in January.

Within the Retail category, the subcategory with the highest market penetration was Comparison Shopping, which reached 31.6 percent of the European market in January 2011, buoyed by Bing Ciao and Shopzilla Sites. Apparel ranked second with a 28.4-percent reach, followed by Consumer Electronics with a 27.1-percent reach.

Ranking the subcategories by engagement, Apparel sites ranked first, with European shoppers spending an average of 23.3 minutes on these sites in January. Apparel sites also had the highest percentage of page views within the Retail category, accounting for 21.6 percent of Retail pages viewed that month.

He talks about Google increasing its presence in Europe and Germany, and the funding of a center for discussing/debating the evolution of the web. He also announces a small business initiative.

He then talks about OnePass, the new subscription service the company announced recently.  

There are some microphone issues at the beginning that are somewhat comical. 

According to Robin Wauters, Schmidt said at the DLD (Digital Life Design) Conference in Germany, "Our businesses are doing very well around the globe, and as a result I’m happy to announce we’ll be adding 1,000 new employees in Europe and make some significant investments."

Then Schmidt continued, "Hundreds of these people will be located right here in our technology center in Munich."

By comparison, Google only added 1,069 employees worldwide during the fourth quarter of 2010, so if this hiring spree occurs in the space of a few months, it’ll represent a seriously quickened pace.  Which could hint at some sort of big new project or advertising push.

Unfortunately, Google’s intended timeframe, along with what all those new employees will be asked to do, remains unknown right now.

Stay tuned, then, and we’ll be sure to report any additional info as it becomes available.

The move makes tons of sense considering that Amazon already had such a stake, and the fact that Amazon doesn’t already operate a similar business in Europe. Netflix has not expanded globally on a large scale yet either, though it seemingly plans to soon.

"LOVEFiLM has been innovating on behalf of movie rental customers across Europe for many years and with the advent of the LOVEFiLM player, they are further delighting customers by streaming digital movies for their immediate enjoyment," said Greg Greeley, Amazon’s Vice President of European Retail. "LOVEFiLM and Amazon have enjoyed a strong working relationship since LOVEFiLM acquired Amazon Europe’s DVD rental business in 2008, and we look forward to a productive and innovative future."

"The deal is a winner for the members who love LOVEFiLM because of its value, choice, convenience and innovation in home entertainment," said LoveFilm CEO Simon Calver. "With Amazon’s unequivocal support we can significantly enhance our members’ experience across Europe."

Competition could one day get interesting between Netflix and Amazon on the European front. Both companies earned top customer satisfaction scores in ForeSee Results’ E-Retail Satisfaction Index. For now, Amazon will have a pretty big advantage, however. LoveFilm currently operates in the UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. 

Financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, and it is subject to customary closing conditions, but the companies expect it to close in the first quarter. 

According to a Reuters report back in September, Amazon had offered to buy LoveFilm for about $312 million, but this was never confirmed, and could certainly have changed greatly since then.