The court today ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to do such a thing, and now many throughout the Internet industry are growing concerned about what this ruling may mean for the future of net neutrality.

Markham Erickson, Executive Director of the Open Internet Coalition, which counts Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and eBay (just to name a few) among its supporters, says:

"Today’s DC Circuit decision in Comcast creates a dangerous situation, one where the health and openness of broadband Internet is being held hostage by the behavior of the major telco and cable providers.

"The court recognized this issue and appeared to invite the Commission to proceed against Comcast and other broadband Internet access providers under Title II. Establishing limited Title II authority with restraint and forbearance over broadband Internet access will remedy the Agency’s own now-discredited attempt to cobble together ancillary authority under Title I. That effort, undertaken by the previous Administration, was based on numerous incorrect legal, technological, and market assumptions. By contrast, Title II authority rests on sound factual and legal grounds, and will serve as a strong foundational basis for the FCC to protect access connections for consumers and small businesses."

The FCC itself has issued the following statement on the subject:

"The FCC is firmly committed to promoting an open Internet and to policies that will bring the enormous benefits of broadband to all Americans. It will rest these policies — all of which will be designed to foster innovation and investment while protecting and empowering consumers — on a solid legal foundation."

"Today’s court decision invalidated the prior Commission’s approach to preserving an open Internet. But the Court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet; nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end."

Interestingly enough, no update has been made on the FCC’s OpenInternet.gov site, about what the next steps are. One can only assume this will be addressed here before too long.

There have been a lot of privacy concerns regarding Google’s Interest-based advertising, which was announced earlier this year. Essentially, this is where Google serves ads based on users’ browsing history. The company does have a video available about privacy in relation to this.

In her testimony, which is available in its entirety in this PDF document, Wong discusses three main topics. These are:

- Google’s main advertising products and the benefits Google believes online advertising brings to advertisers, online publishers, and individual Internet users

- Google’s approach to privacy, specific steps that the company takes to protect users’ privacy, and the release of interest-based advertising

- Ideas and recommendations for how to better protect Internet users’ privacy with respect to advertising, as well as more generally

In the first part,  Wong discusses the benefits of AdWords, AdSense for search, AdSense for Content, the Google Content Network, DoubleClick, etc. "In our experience, users value the advertisements that we deliver along with search results and other web content because the ads help connect them to the information, products, and services they’re looking for," she says.

With regards to privacy, Wong says the following three fundamentals have to be "at the bedrock of" privacy products and practices:

- Transparency
- Choice
- Security

Wong also notes that innovation is "a critical part" of Google’s approach to privacy. "To best innovate in privacy, we welcome the feedback of privacy advocates, government experts, our users, and other stakeholders," she says. "This feedback, and our own internal discussions about how to protect privacy, has led to several privacy innovations, including our development of new privacy tools for new products and our decision last year to anonymize our server logs after nine months for IP addresses and 18 months for cookies."

If you have any amount of interest in Google and privacy, particularly with its relation to advertising, you should definitely read the entire testimony. What do you think about it? Comment.

“California faces challenges unlike any other time in its history — a weak and faltering economy, massive job losses, and an exploding state budget deficit,” Ms. Whitman said in a statement. “California is better than this, and I refuse to stand by and watch it.”

Whitman uses a YouTube video to get her message out and tells Californians that she wants to "hear from you." These are certainly familiar tactics for political campaigning.

Whitman served as President and CEO of eBay from March 1998 until March 2008 when the reigns were handed over to John Donahoe. Since then, eBayers have had, we’ll say mixed emotions about the company.

Whitman named Pete Wilson as campaign chairman with co-chairs Kevin McCarthy and Mary Bono Mack. According to the New York Times, the most likely competitors Whitman will face for the Republican nomination include Steve Poizner and Tom Campbell. Arnold will not be up for re-election.

John Dowdell at Adobe discovered that they play by the same rules, pointing to the Adobe Terms of Use page, and confirming that Google’s not alone in this practice.

Jessica Dheere at PBS.org has a detailed look at the Google situation, but also points out something even more interesting than the blocking of Google’s services:

Another curious aspect of this is that though Google blocks Syrians and Iranians from accessing these programs, it still serves them ads. According to Sadeq [a Syrian blogger] , Google AdWords ads appear on websites and blogs in Iran just as they do elsewhere. Sadeq double-checked that this was the case and that clicking through didn’t pose any problems. "Moreover," he said, "I don’t think there is a problem in setting up an [AdSense] account for one’s blog/website (I tried it once in my blog)."

How did he set up the AdSense account? When asked what country he was from, he simply chose Lebanon because Iran wasn’t an option. The account was easily set up that way.

Well isn’t that convenient? With Google’s aggressive push of advertising services, it’s not very surprising that there is still a loophole to get people signed up for that. Google is getting ads everywhere it can. See the pending Yahoo! deal. See the NBC deal. See the new YouTube search ads. See the mobile push. See Google Maps. Etc. Etc. Etc.

According to Dheere, regulations suggest that ads from U.S. parties would be ok to show in these countries, but marketing services would be prohibited. AdWords is a service, is it not? The question is whether or not Google is abiding by these regulations. The removal of the countries from the drop down list would suggest an effort to abide, but the ease with which users in said countries are able to sign up for AdWords would indicate either a flaw in the system or an ignored loophole. I don’t want to make any accusations, but it’s a curious situation.