Is Google Flouting Privacy Law?

• By Peter Varhol
• 06/17/2008

Google has thus far refused to do so, citing the clean appearance of its home page. According to the company, users can simply type "Google privacy policy" into the search field and bring up both the privacy policy and further information on Google and privacy. Google says that this conforms to the spirit of the law.

Sounds like a tempest in a teapot to me. We've all complied with sillier laws before, and it makes you wonder why Google considers this a principle worth risking legal action. Is it good design or some other reason? Shoot me your thoughts at [email protected].

Yahoo and Microsoft Are Definitely Not BFFs
Less than a day after Yahoo announced that it was ending talks with Microsoft on any sort of acquisition or partnership, the company announced a tie-up with Google.

Yahoo has agreed to a non-exclusive arrangement with Google to use its text-based ads on the Yahoo Web properties as well as on its search results. Yahoo claims that this deal will bring in several hundred million dollars of revenue over the next few years.

Yahoo is by no means out of the woods when it comes to its business crises. Wall Street still doubts its business model, the Justice Department could invalidate its partnership with Google, and it could very well lose the lawsuits filed after its original talks with Microsoft fell apart earlier this spring.

Are Yahoo and Google a match made in heaven? I have my doubts. Send any doubts you have my way to [email protected].

Microsoft's Patching Problem
It seems like we hear of problems involving patching every other week, and this week is no exception.

Admins using a Microsoft patch distribution tool haven't been able to install June's security updates across their clients. Specifically, admins using System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and those client systems running System Management Server 2003 client software refuse to accept the patches. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem and is offering a workaround, but doesn't yet have a fix.

These types of bugs seem to be happening with greater frequency lately. Is Microsoft's patch system getting too complex? Send me your thoughts to [email protected].

Mailbag: Hyper-V Doubts
Doug wrote yesterday about Microsoft's much-touted Hyper-V. But a few of you aren't buying into the hype:

Hyper-V is still in beta, has no live migration, has no farm concept with automatic load balancing and HA, no over-committing of resources, requires an installation of at least Server 2008 Core Edition, has restricted x86/x64 OSes, is dependent on specific CPUs, is unable to throttle or isolate the root domain from VMs, and -- to top it off -- it's basically a Xen knock-off. In fact, it is so similar to Xen (down to the problems), that I wonder how much open source code crept into this closed-source product.

It amazes me, the giddiness with which people are approaching this pre-1.0 product and clearly inferior technology. The Microsoft Machine with its adherents are at work here, but it's certainly not amazing technology. Maybe one day, a few years from now.
-Anonymous

"Hyper-V Poised for Greatness"? Rhetoric. Don't get taken by the Microsoft advertising juggernaut. It will stop at nothing to make us all think the Hyper-V will challenge VMware ESX or even Citrix Xen in the short-term. It will be a challenger in the long-term, but is definitely not enterprise-ready in its current form.
-David

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