Google loses Chinese market share

A year after a public spat with Beijing over censorship, Google says its business with Chinese advertisers is growing even as the Internet giant's share of online searches in China plunges, says the Associated Press.

A major Chinese portal last week revealed that it would no longer use Google for search, compounding its rapid loss of market share since March last year when it closed its local search engine.

The future of a Google map service that is a key part of its remaining appeal in China is in doubt. Google's main presence in China has become its advertising sales offices, an unusual situation for a company that dominates the Internet elsewhere.

Microsoft may be taking a measured risk with its decision to exclude Windows XP systems from its Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser update, notes V3.co.uk.

Research firm Net Applications said in its recent browser market share report that the company could be banking on a flow of updates from Windows XP to Windows 7 to sustain its lead in the Web browser space.

Microsoft released IE9 earlier this month, notifying users that the update would not be compatible with systems running the older, but still popular, Windows XP. Mozilla, meanwhile, released Firefox 4 with Windows XP compatibility, and in early downloads the Firefox browser surpassed IE9.

Hundreds of thousands of Web sites appear to have been compromised by a cyber attack, according to the BBC.

The hi-tech criminals used a well-known attack vector that exploits security loopholes on other sites to insert a link to their Web site.

Those visiting the criminals' Web page were told that their machines were infected with many different viruses.

The mayor of San Francisco and some city hall legislators are in a disagreement over a possible tax break for technology start-up businesses, including the social media networking giant Twitter, that would make them stay put in the city, reports the Digital Journal.

In 2006, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams founded Twitter, a microblogging and social networking Web site that would allow users to generate text-based messages up to 140 characters.

The Web site has more than 200 million users and earns approximately a projected figure of $150 million. The company was established with a few hundred employees, but is expected to increase that number to about 3 000. Therefore, Twitter is looking to expand its size, but this would also lead to a higher tax bracket.