Yahoo owns patents on Google Instant

Yahoo owns several patents covering Google's new Instant search engine, according to Shashi Seth, Yahoo's senior VP of search and a former search product leader at Google, The Register has revealed.

In 2005, Yahoo rolled out a service remarkably similar to Google Instant, at a site called AlltheWeb, a small search engine it had purchased a few years before.

Like Google Instant, it tried to predict what you were looking for, and served up results pages as you typed. That same year, the company introduced another similar service - if less similar - dubbed Yahoo Instant Search, which launched "speech bubbles" of results just below the search box as you typed. Seth said Yahoo had introduced a Google Instant-like service five years before its rival, and he said Yahoo owns "about five... broad" patents that cover Google's technology.

The German government has called for voluntary data protection code to be in place by 7 December 2010, reports the BBC.

The move follows a meeting with Google, Apple and other companies to discuss how personal data is accessible online. It comes as the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, reports that "several hundred thousand" people have opted out of Google's Street View service.

Google has yet to launch its service in Germany, following privacy complaints.

Adobe has issued a fix for a critical hole being exploited in Flash Player, at least a week earlier than planned, notes CNET.

The company had warned of the vulnerability a week earlier and said it would release a fix the week of 27 September. The critical vulnerability, which could allow an attacker to take control of a computer, affects Adobe Flash Player 10.1.82.76 and earlier versions for Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and Android, according to the advisory.

The hole also affects Adobe Reader 9.3.4 and earlier version for Windows, Mac, and Unix, and Adobe Acrobat 9.3.4 and earlier versions for Windows and Mac. Adobe said it is not aware of any attacks exploiting the hole in Reader or Acrobat.

London mayor Boris Johnson wants to see mobile access on the London tube network before the 2012 Olympics, Computing says.

Johnson has asked five mobile operators - 3 UK, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone - to pool financial and technical resources for a London Underground radio access network (RAN). The RAN would see coverage enabled by transmitters and receivers positioned on tube tunnel roofs, with antennas deployed on the ends of each carriage.

Each carriage would become a mobile phone microcell, with voice and data backhauled out of the tube network with standard network cabling attached to the radio base stations.