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Is Google Flouting Privacy Law? (RedmontMag)

A California assemblyman and a number of consumer and privacy advocacy groups have demanded that Google adhere to a California law that requires Web sites to include a link to the privacy policy on their home pages.

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.

California lawmaker puts Google on notice about missing link to privacy policy (Computer World)

Under the California privacy act, Web sites that collect personal information are required to include a prominent link to their privacy policies on their home pages. In addition, the links must provide one-click access to the policies.

Google didn't immediately return a call seeking comment about Anderson's letter. The company has maintained that although it considers privacy protections to be important, it doesn't think a link to its policy is needed on its home page.

"If Google continues to hide behind legal loopholes, then I will take matters into my own hands and close the loophole," Anderson [State Assemblyman Joel Anderson] said in the statement. "New legislation is one way I can close that loophole."
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Google Translate Adds 10 Languages (Digital Trends)

Google has added 10 new languages to its Google Translate tool for a total of 23, and now has a detect language feature so users can discover the identity of the language being translated.

Teams from 17 countries vie in multimedia search technology contest (The Earth Times Online Newspaper)

Singapore - Fifty-six teams from 17 countries will compete in a next-generation multimedia search technology contest starting on Sunday, organizers said.

The team with the best designed search engine for trawling through multimedia data will take home 100,000 US dollars and intellectual property rights to its search engine, said the Agency for Science, Technology and Research on Tuesday.

The participants will work on creating new technology that can search audio and video files online, instead of just text files.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Is the Best Browser for Web — For Now (Walt Mossberg - AllThingsD)

When Firefox first came out, it was the fastest browser, but it lost that title over the years. However, in my tests, this new third version of Firefox regained the speed crown. It beat IE 7 handily on my test Windows computers and edged Safari slightly on my test Macs.

Security is also improved. The old version of Firefox would warn you when a site you were visiting appeared to be a fake, designed to steal your identity. (IE has a similar feature, though Safari doesn’t.) But Firefox 3.0 now warns you about sites that are known for trying to plant viruses, spyware and other malicious software on your computer, a warning the other big browsers don’t yet provide.

My verdict is that Firefox 3.0 is the best Web browser out there right now, and that it tops the current versions of both IE and Safari in features, speed and security. It is easy to install and easy to use, even for a mainstream, non-technical user.

The Future of SEO (ClickZ)

I'm back in the U.K. this week to see if my wife still remembers me and to speak at the London eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. My presentation takes a closer look at balancing organic and paid search -- and the impact they can have on each other.

Free business news search engine from Northern Light (Pandia, Norway)

Northern Light has been around since the beginning of web search. For the last six years, however, Northern Light’s services have been reserved for enterprise customers. Recently, they launched a free business news search engine. Pandia has talked to CEO of Northern Light, David Seuss, to find out more about this and other Northern Light products.

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
(ReadWriteWeb)