Google Facing $30 Million Lawsuit

Google has just opened its new French headquarters, but it seems that they won't be receiving a warm welcome in the nearest future. The reason is that the company has recently landed itself in hot water over the abuse of its dominant position one more time, facing a lawsuit that demands over $30 million for damages to some navigation software firm.

French company named NAVX is currently suing Google in the Paris Commercial Court over what it believes to be wrongdoing about blocking advertisements from the company. NAVX has appealed to the local antitrust authorities over its treatment by the search giant where it was discovered that competition legislation has been violated. The search giant was ordered to reinstate the NAVX’s advertising, as well as clarify the conditions of its Adwords service for further use. NAVX, which offers content for GPS and smartphones, confirmed that Google did agree to do so.

Nevertheless, the French firm acknowledged that it has lost out on a load of money because of Google’s meddling, so it has demanded damages of around $31 million. NAVX Chief Executive Officer Jean Cherbonnier has announced that the dominant position of Google on the advertising market connected with search engines can’t be disputed, particularly after the investigation carried out by the French Antitrust Authority that concluded a year ago that the search giant undoubtedly holds a dominant position.

NAVX is currently asking the Paris Commercial Court to hand down ruling saying that Google abused its dominant position. The company also hopes the court will order Google to pay damages. Meanwhile, such court case couldn’t come at a worse time for the international corporation. Its CEO has just met with European Commission antitrust boss in a kind of last ditch attempt to stop a formal investigation into the company landing the search giant with a statement of objection over its practices.

Truly, it looks like NAVX isn’t the only company out for Google’s blood after the latter allegedly mistreated them. Such firms as Ciao and Foundem are also enraged at Google’s activities and are currently pushing for intervention of European Commission into what they see as bullying and bullish behavior. In other words, it is very unlikely that some other companies making detrimental claims against the search giant while talks are ongoing do Google any favors.

Microsoft Restricted Access To Geolocation Database

Microsoft has locked down their Wi-Fi-powered geolocation service. The reason for the decision was that insecurity expert Elie Bursztein recently raised privacy concerns about the data which is being stored within the service.

The expert was trying to find out whether it was possible to track a laptop by snuffling the Wi-Fi information stored by Windows each time it connects to an access point. Actually, the only way he could do that was by obtaining access to Microsoft's MAC Address Database. As a result, Microsoft took a decision to restrict access to its database as a prevention measure for the future.

According to media reports, the decision follows the Google’s move, which had the same privacy complaint. Currently Microsoft, Google, and Skyhook operate Wi-Fi geolocation databases particularly designed to provide quick location data to electronic devices, including phones, tablets, and laptop computers.

Recently it was discovered that Google's database was full not just of access point MAC addresses, but also of laptop and smartphone addresses that could have been easily tracked. As a result, search giant switched something in its service so that it restricted access by requiring two nearby MAC addresses to be entered instead of only one. In other words, the new approach made it virtually impossible to query a particular phone's MAC address in order to learn where the person was.

Meanwhile, the disadvantage of all this is that if someone wants an approximate location with only one access point visible, Microsoft will reject to give them one. On the other hand, it seems that companies like Google and Redmond took a decision to better ensure their users’ privacy than convenience, in this particular case. As for the industry experts, most of them believe that the change is really unfortunate, because Wi-Fi-based positioning is a very convenient feature to have, particularly for laptops often Wi-Fi-enabled but in most cases lacking GPS hardware. In our days, geolocation is a feature from HTML5, supported by all up-to-date browsers in order to enable services like foursquare and location-based search. Some suggest that instead of restricting the service, a move in the opposite direction, like publishing the API and making it accessible to 3rd parties, plus integrating system-wide support for it would all be a valuable improvement to Windows and the online community.