Google cuts Facebook's G-mail line

Google has fired the latest salvo in its ongoing war with Facebook over who gets to know who your friends are, updating its terms of service so that Facebook can't access G-mail's Contacts API unless Zuckerberg and company offer a similar API, writes The Register.

It has already started to cut Facebook's access to the Google API, according to a source familiar with the matter.

This means users signing up for a new Facebook account may not be able to directly import names and addresses from G-mail. Facebook has long prevented Google services from offering users the option of accessing contact information from Facebook's "friends lists".

Computing giant Dell has still not ruled out going private, according to the firm's chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, reports V3.

In an interview with CNN, Gladden said the firm had spent a great deal of time thinking about the issue.

"There are many options for us, and we have lots of cash on hand," he is reported as saying. "We talk about everything from keeping everything the same, to doing a bigger and broader buyback while still keeping the company public, all the way to doing a leveraged buyout and taking the company private with Michael Dell as the primary shareholder."

Shares in Russia's Mail.ru jumped more than 30% on their London debut, after the Internet group raised $912 million in a stock market flotation, says the BBC.

Strong demand helped the group, an owner of a 2.38% stake in Facebook, price its shares at $27.7 each, the top of the firm's range.

The shares are now being traded conditionally, ahead of the formal start of trade on 11 November. The initial public offering values Mail.ru at $5.71 billion.

When Mark Hurd resigned as HP CEO in early August, he stood accused not only of sexually harassing HP contractor and former soft-porn actress Jodie Fisher, but also of passing her insider information, reports The Register.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a 29 June letter to Hurd from Fisher's lawyer said: "Hurd told her of HP's intention to buy EDS at an HP event in Madrid in March 2008."

HP officially revealed its intention to acquire EDS for $13.9 billion in May of that year. In the same letter, Fisher's lawyer - celebrity attorney Gloria Allred - accused Hurd of sexually harassing her client, according to The Journal.