Internet news stories on Newser

Cuba's Celebrated Internet Cable MIA

Tue, 22 May 2012 06:41:36 CDT

It was all sunshine, smiles, and celebratory speeches as officials marked the arrival of an undersea fiber-optic cable they promised would end Cuba's Internet isolation and boost web capacity 3,000-fold. Even a retired Fidel Castro hailed the dawn of a new cyber-age. But more than a year after the...

Yahoo, Alibaba End Years of Bickering With $7B Deal

Matt Cantor — Mon, 21 May 2012 06:45:38 CDT

It's a resolution for what All Things Digital's Kara Swisher calls "perhaps the longest running global cat fight in Internet history": In a $7.1 billion deal, Yahoo is selling back up to half its 40% stake in China's Alibaba , the Wall Street Journal reports. For the US internet giant,...

Google Revamps Search With 'Knowledge Graph'

Dustin Lushing — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:47:55 CDT

Google is rolling out a major new change to its search engine today—the Knowledge Graph . When a user searches for a famous person, place, or thing, a box will pop up on the side of the screen offering a concise list of relevant facts, reports ABC News . Google's database...

What's It Take to Get a Wikipedia Page? Try $300

Dustin Lushing — Sat, 05 May 2012 07:20:10 CDT

If you're important enough to warrant your own Wikipedia page, it should, in theory, just kind of appear on its own. But sometimes, giving it a $300 nudge doesn't hurt. Two Brooklyn entrepreneurs charge that much to craft an in-depth entry for you or your business on the free online...

Facebook, Google Could Fall Apart

Kevin Spak — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:51:03 CDT

Right now, Google and Facebook seem invincible, but in five to eight years they could well be gone, argues Eric Jackson in Forbes . "Not bankrupt gone, but MySpace gone." After all, it's happened to loads of web giants before them. The more you look at the Internet, the more "it...

House Passes Controversial Cybersecurity Bill

Rob Quinn — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:21:10 CDT

The controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act has passed the House, despite privacy concerns and a veto threat from the White House. CISPA, designed to make it easier for companies and the government to share information about cybersecurity threats, passed 248-168, which isn't a big enough margin to override...

Web Service May Die for Hundreds of Thousands

Neal Colgrass — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:44:06 CDT

The FBI says it's time for Windows users to make sure their computers aren't infected by an unusual virus. As it stands, hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide are infected and will be unable to surf the Web after July 9, the AP reports. It all started when an Estonian...

Google's Brin: Free Internet in Serious Danger

Matt Cantor — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:00:00 CDT

Internet freedom is under attack, says Google's co-founder. "It's scary," Sergey Brin tells the Guardian , saying he's "more worried" than ever about "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world." Once, Brin doubted the Internet could be controlled. "I thought...

Ai Weiwei: China Will Never Beat Internet

Mark Russell — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:55:00 CDT

Authoritarian societies are all about propaganda and control, but the Internet has destroyed both of those pillars, writes the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in the Guardian . Unlike Russia's glasnost , China never really opened ideologically to the West, only practically. Then came the Internet, and thanks to blogs and microblogs—...