Google faces new Antitrust complaints in Europe

Brussels — Google has tackled new accusations on Tuesday that it was blocking a small European search service, limiting the use of its powerful system to attract advertisers.

A French company, 1plusV, which owns the Ejustice .fr, one of the three companies that have already deposited accusations against Google, has said that he sent a supplementary complaint to the European Commission, the European Union's executive body.

The Commission initiated a formal antitrust investigation of Google, three months ago looking for evidence that Google had the power to shut out competition and restrict advertisers to do business with other search engines.

A Commission spokesman, Amadeu Altafaj, said "give Google the ability to comment on the accusations levelled before deciding on what, if any further steps to take."

Google's advertising service, called AdSense, allows advertisers to buy a keyword, when you type in a search query, produces a link advertising alongside the search results. Marie-Cécile Rameau, a lawyer who represents 1plusV, said that Google was preventing the websites operated by 1plusV from using AdSense with its search technology.

MS. Rameau, who practice "hinders development of efficient vertical search engines" that could compete with the specialist services of Google, said in Brussels. It also prevented consumers access to technologies that could provide them with more search options, he said.

At Verney, a Google spokesman, said that it continued to work closely with the European Commission to explain many different parts of our business. " He refused to comment on specific allegations from 1plusV.

Echoing earlier statements from Google on the case in Europe, Mr. Verney said the company had "always tried to do the right thing for our users and advertisers" and added, "there is always room for improvement."

In a complaint to the regulatory authorities a year ago, the European Ejustice. fr claimed that Google has removed most of its pages to an online index. Consequently, the ejustice said visits to its site suddenly dropped so sharply that was actually invisible on the Web.

But he said that the action was necessary because Ejustice. fr was violating its guidelines on how to make your website findable in Google search engine. That was a problem, according to Google, because users might end up never find a Web page with the answer to their question — just several pages of search results.

Bruno Guillard, owner of 1plusV, said Tuesday that Google had begun to make those pages findable again on its search engine as part of a process known as whitelisting, which started after the European Union regulators launched their formal investigation on 30 November.

MS. Rameau, the lawyer said, "The whitelisting massive since the opening of proceedings by the Commission clearly demonstrates that the blacklist, in March, was completely arbitrary".

Mr. Guillard said Google's actions meant losses for its holding of "a lot of millions" of dollars, but he refused to give a specific number. Aides to Mr. Guillard, said the company was still calculate total losses.

Mr. Guillard also said Google's actions meant that another site powered by 1plusV, Eguides, had lost a contract with the French national library to help make their resources available online.

"Due to traffic collapse" French library "understandably thought Eguides. fr was no longer a suitable partner and signed an agreement with Microsoft," said 1plusV.

Online crime complaints down botnet numbers up

Complaints about Internet criminal activity fell 10 percent last year, as well as the number of computers hijacked by botnets shot more than 600 percent. Computer users may be getting savvier, but security experts that online criminals are scurrying to find new methods of attack.

Americans reported 303,809 instances of online criminal activity in 2010, down from 335,655 in the previous year, according to the Federal Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2009 Internet crime report.

IC3 has logged an average of 25,317 complaints per month in 2010 to its website. Most complaints (14.4%) regard the non-delivery of merchandise or payment. Scams using FBI name accounted for 13.2% and 9.8% of complaints were about identity theft.

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Although statistics 2010 rank as the second highest in the ten-year history of IC3, experts speculate that strong decline in the last year is a significant indicator of the growing awareness of protection for the average computer user.

On the other side of the coin, as the Internet population — companies and online merchants including — get savvier, online criminals find new routes to attack, or adapt older ones to meet the challenge of victims more informed.

Top 10 Botnet Threat Report – 2010, from security firm Damballa, shows that the total number of PC enslaved by botnet grew from 654 percent.

Other security news from MSNBC Tech & science as crooks fake an ATM and steal from your money there is no shortage clever tools for ATM thief. But Skimmers not exactly an aisle at Wal-Mart takes Gizmodo. a look at the black market Internet where scammers get their scary tools — or get cheated themselves. Man pleads guilty to running vast spam network Charles Manson had phone under the mattress NYT: Google China hacked, leaked say cables

A botnet is a large number of computers connected to the Internet that have been infected by malware that links them together to form a network, which is then in turn used to send spam, launch attacks against targets or distribute other forms of malware.

The "zombie" machines are often ordinary home or business PC whose owners have no idea that you have been diverted.

Botnet Software was found on more than 35% of all computers that Damballa monitors, as the technology blog that reading Dark underlined. Many machines had more than one kind of botnet malware.

Security researchers Damballa said that many botnet operators were now using their armies of zombie computers to steal data.

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