244,000 Germans opt out of Google mapping service. “Google on Thursday
said 244,000 people in Germany had asked the company to remove images
of their houses and apartments from its Street View maps, but that the
requests would not derail its plans to activate the service this year,” The New York Times reports. “The figure was in line with what German
data protection officials had previously estimated. The officials
predicted that several hundred thousand people would opt out.”
http://nyti.ms/bhw7Jr

Networks block Web programs from being viewed on Google TV. “ABC,
CBS and NBC are blocking TV programming on their websites from being
viewable on Google Inc.’s new Web-TV service, exposing the rift that
remains between the technology giant and some of the media companies it
wants to supply content for its new products,” The Wall Street Journal
reports. “Google TV enables access to all the Web content you already
get today on your phone and PC, but it is ultimately the content owners’
choice to restrict their fans from accessing their content on the
platform,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement. http://bit.ly/agGTLe

Are Facebook ads outing gay users? “Facebook ads are guessing
whether users are gay and targeting a broad range of products to them
based on the answer, according to a research study making the rounds on
the internet Thursday,” CNN reports. “The research, by the Microsoft
Institute and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, has some critics
saying that by pushing ads toward those users and then registering
whether they respond, the system could inadvertently be outing some
users on the site.” http://bit.ly/cLswNH