Facebook unrestrained amid NY ownership lawsuit

Facebook may continue business as usual while it fights a New York man’s claim he has a contract with founder Mark Zuckerberg that entitles him to 84 percent ownership of the world’s leading social networking site, a U.S. court heard on Tuesday.Paul Ceglia of Wellsville, New York, sued Zuckerberg and Facebook Inc last month claiming a 2003 contract with Zuckerberg to develop and design a website now entitled him to a majority stake in the privately-held company.

A New York State judge in Allegany County put a temporary restraining order on company asset transfers, but that order was suspended on June 30 by Judge Richard Arcara of federal court in Buffalo, New York.Arcara decided at a hearing on Tuesday that his ruling should remain in place, Facebook and a lawyer for Ceglia said.

“We have reached an agreement with respect to the progress of the next stage of the litigation,” said Ceglia’s lawyer, Terrence Connors.In a statement, the Palo Alto, California-based company said: “We are pleased that the court’s decision to stay the temporary restraining order remains in place and will continue to fight this frivolous claim.”The purported contract was dated April 2003 and ended in February 2004, according to Ceglia’s complaint, which had a two-page “‘Work for Hire’ Contract” attached.”He has contract. The contract is clean and clear,” Connors said by telephone after the hearing.Connors said he argued in court that Zuckerberg had signed the contract.

“The judge asked the question of the defense and they said they were looking into it,” Connors said. “I suspect that, if their client did not sign it, they would have made that clear.”In court documents, lawyers for Zuckerberg and Facebook wrote that Ceglia “sat on his allowed rights for over six years” and should not be permitted “to say that now, all of a sudden, he requires immediate relief.”The company, which has nearly 500 million users and 1,000 employees, argued the “purported contract itself is wrought with irregularities, inconsistencies and undefined terms.”Zuckerberg was a freshman at Harvard University in Massachusetts at the time of the purported contract.

Facebook’s court papers noted that last December a state prosecutor accused a wood-pellet fuel company that Ceglia owned with his wife of taking $200,000 from customers and failing to deliver products or refunds.The company is also defending a claim in federal court in Delaware that the most basic functions of its website infringe a patent held by a little-known company [ID:nN16102757].

Facebook ranks among the Web’s most popular sites, alongside Google Inc, Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp. Facebook is also one of the most closely watched Web companies by investors eager for a blockbuster initial public offering.The cases are Paul Ceglia v Zuckerberg & Facebook, New York State Supreme Court, Allegany County, No. 038798/2010 and Ceglia v Zuckerberg et al, U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, No. 10-00569.(Reuters)

Firefox 4 promises to let users better control relationships with websites

NEW YORK  The next version of the Firefox browser, set for release by the end of the year, will pare down the software’s menus and certain user options while giving Web surfers more control over privacy. Firefox 4 promises to let users better control relationships with websites by describing more simply what information is gathered by cookies, which are files that store data on website visits.

In Firefox’s current version, determining which websites are peering into users’ Internet habits is a complex process involving many menus and submenus. With the change, users will be able to see from a single menu what information websites are gathering. Users will then have the option of deciding which cookies to allow and which to disable. But Mozilla, the browser’s creator, will also take away some user controls to make Firefox sleeker. That means taking out buttons and menus that Mozilla says few people use anyway. Mozilla says the change won’t just make websites load faster, it will make them feel faster. “The simpler an interface looks, the faster it will seem,” Mike Beltzner, Firefox director of development, said in a video presentation posted to its website this week. Firefox said the browser will be made more stable, by requiring fewer add-on programs for additional functionality.

The program will use the new Web programming language, HTML5, which will allow videos and other multimedia content to play in the browser without needing companion software such as Adobe System Inc.’s Flash. Firefox is second to Microsoft Corp.’s market-dominant Internet Explorer browser in usage. Microsoft is also working on an update. Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft’s latest browser offering, will also support HTML5. An early version is already out for testing.(AP)

Microsoft Corp launched a line of phones aimed at young people (Kin phones) on Monday

Microsoft Corp launched a line of phones aimed at young people on Monday, marking a fresh assault on the low end of the growing smartphone market, where it has been losing out to BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, Apple Inc and Google Inc.

The software company’s first foray into designing its own phones comes six months before it rolls out its new Windows software for phones made by handset makers HTC, Samsung and others, which should be a more direct challenge to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones.

The new phones launched on Monday, called Kin One and Kin Two, are made by Japan’s Sharp Corp and will be sold by Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group.(Reuters)

antitrust regulators are taking a closer look at Google Inc.'s

Google

SAN FRANCISCO  U.S. antitrust regulators are taking a closer look at Google Inc.’s proposed $750 million purchase of mobile phone marketer AdMob, the latest sign of greater government vigilance as Google tries to expand its advertising empire.The Federal Trade Commission sought more information about the deal this week, according to a Wednesday post on Google’s blog.This so-called “second request” doesn’t mean regulators intend to block Google’s AdMob deal. Most other acquisitions that go through this stage end up getting approved.But the FTC’s action shows regulators are watching Google more carefully as the company tries to build upon its dominance of the Internet’s lucrative search advertising market. Google is expected to pull in more than $22 billion in revenue this year, mostly from ads shown alongside search results and other Web content.

“We know that closer scrutiny has been one consequence of Google’s success,” Paul Feng, a Google product manager, wrote in Wednesday’s blog posting. Echoing previous management comments, Feng said the company remains confident its AdMob purchase, announced last month, will be approved.Google’s huge lead in Internet search triggered a 2008 government investigation that scuttled its plans to enter into an advertising partnership with rival Yahoo Inc., which runs the second most-popular search engine. Yahoo plans to work with Microsoft Corp. instead, beginning next year if those two companies can gain regulatory approval.

Since its inception nearly four years ago, AdMob has built a thriving network that sells and delivers ads on applications and Web sites designed for the iPhone and other mobile devices. It’s still relatively small with estimated annual revenue of $45 million to $60 million, but regulators apparently want to understand whether its technology and advertising contacts would give Google an unfair advantage in its quest to sell more mobile phone ads.

Google management has indicated that it believes mobile marketing eventually may become bigger than advertising on Internet-connected computers. That tipping point still appears to be many years away, with U.S. mobile advertising expected to total $416 million this year, about 2 percent of overall Internet ad spending in the country.

The FTC’s decision to take more time digging into the AdMob deal means Google probably won’t be able to take over the company for several more months, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast wrote in a Wednesday research note. It took a year for the FTC to approve Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition of Internet ad service DoubleClick Inc., which was completed in March 2008.

Google’s first big deal, a $1.76 billion acquisition of the video site YouTube, was cleared by regulators in a month in 2006.
Separately, Google ran into another potential roadblock Wednesday after another takeover target, On2 Technologies Inc., said that it still hadn’t collected enough shareholder support to close its deal. On2, based in Clifton, N.J., adjourned a shareholder meeting to approve its $106 million sale to Google until Feb. 17 in hopes of getting the necessary support.Google, which is based in Mountain View, agreed to buy On2 in August to help improve YouTube’s video technology.